Level and the Square

Like many, Nik Piscitello started screaming in his parents’ garage, lost in the ennui and youthful hopefulness so often found in the Southern California suburbs. He was just a kid then. We all were, really. And life was simpler. The endless Saturdays. The bits of carpet tacked to the walls so our parents wouldn’t complain about the noise. The garage door cracked just above your ankles below your knees on those sweltering August afternoons.

 But, at some point, you look up and those days are gone. Suddenly there is an endless pile of bills. A family. A nine-to-five job that feels more like an eight-to-eight nightmare. Like any of of us who longed for the innocence of those times, Piscitello found some necessary distractions before adulthood came calling. In his early 20s, he performed in a group called Spark Of Life. They released a promising debut filled with hardcore histrionics recorded by Russ Rankin, frontman for progressive-punk survivors Good Riddance.

 But when that fizzled, he and Spark of Life vocalist Steve Jennings, along with former Rise Against guitarist Chris Chasse, formed a new act called Last Of The Believers. It was a post-hardcore rage-fest that resulted in a single EP, “Paper Ships Under A Burning Bridge," and a series of major label offers. But then, of course, history repeated itself, and adulthood set in. For NIk, maybe even more so than for others.

 But at night, when he thought about the music he had created—and, more importantly, the music he could be creating—he dreamt up yet another escape. At the time, his children slept in the next room. His wife slept in the bed next to him. On most nights, but not always. Suddenly, there they were—the responsibilities he had spent all those years screaming against in those garages and local vets halls—staring back at him.

 So he responded the only way he knew how. He called his new band Wayfarer, but it wasn’t really a band at all. It was the sound of one man trying to make sense of the very adult world he is now placed in. Most of Piscitello’s new songs started out lightly strummed, recalling the more haunting work of artists like Mark Kozelek, Ryan Adams and Jeff Buckley. But soon enough, Wayfarer started sounding like, well, a band, with songs like “Skeletons" swirling with the kind of hypnotic guitars that Piscitello’s teenage heroes in Slint once perfected.

 For Wayfarer’s sophomore EP “The Albatross We Keep,"Piscitello commissioned producer Doug Grean and enlisted the help of bassist Joe Ginsberg, drummer Ryan Seaman, and backing vocalist Brian Marquis. In spite of itself, “The Albatross We Keep” isn’t the soundtrack to those summers in the suburbs, thrashing away. It’s a portrait of a man very much trying to come to grips with adulthood, armed with little more than his heart and his songs. Only some things haven’t completely changed. This becomes increasingly apparent at the end of “Best And Worst," a seemingly simple folk song about private hells and California stars that dovetails into a cacophony of emotion and sound.

 "My broken heart," Piscitello sings, near the song’s chaotic end, “where’ve you been?" And just like that he’s back in that garage, screaming over the everything. Because sometimes, that’s all that you can do. Level and the Square @levelsq