So Many Wizards play some sort of enigmatic music, quite hard to describe at first, sounding a bit exotic and a bit familiar at once, with very fast guitar strumming and layered melodies, making your head dance and turn around the musical theme which can be hard to follow at times. With a punk-ish energy and an upbeat mood, their music has urgency and high-pitch vocals and is running as fast as a ride on an empty freeway with frequent tempo changes or abrupt accelerations, which suddenly slow down into melancholic ballads.
They were doing an in-store at Amoeba on Thursday night, and had gathered a good crowd for the second ‘Converse Rubber Tracks’ show and a giving away of a split 7” of So Many Wizards and Tennis System, a band who had played the first show two weeks ago. Both bands have develop their own sound, a personal blend of many influences, and So Many Wizards seemed to have a punk rhythm tamed by soft and heartfelt melodies, hazed into a dream pop sound.
May be the vague foreign part was coming from the exotic name of their frontman, Nima Kazerouni – who grew up in a war-torn Iran, before his family escaped the violence and moved to Europe, South America, Jamaica and finally to Southern California – and even though he has said that the experience has deeply affected his life and music, it was really difficult to exactly pinpoint any real influence. The rest of the band, including Erik Felix on drums, Bassist Devin Ratliff, and Martin Tomemitsu on lead guitar, was playing tight with a natural dynamism.
I particularly enjoyed one of their songs, called ‘Everybody Goes Away’, which is the one featured on the free 7” given away at Amoeba. It was a very fast, angst-driven song about loss and heartbreak and their very distinctive lead guitar had an almost Interpol-vibe, only sounding much more upbeat… the other songs were running as quickly as life goes fast, and it may have been this sense of urgency that made Kazerouni to start four bands, three other ones (Crown Plaza, GNTLMN/Others, and Nectarine) in parallel with So Many Wizards,… talk about prolific!
So Many Wizards has already released EPs, a debut album, two 7”s, and they even had their single ‘Lose Your Mind’ featured on FOX’s New Girl recently. They will soon release their Part Time Punks session EP via Lolipop Records, and their next album ‘Heavy Visions’ some time during 2015. Everything they played sounded rather uplifting despite Kazerouni’s traumatic past, in an interview, he even admitted to have had night terrors, chronic anxiety and OCD…. And this may explain why his music was a sort of tension-releasing vessel in the most upbeat manner.