Sim Castro, leader of San Jose band The Albert Square, says in some ways his group’s new album, I (Assume I) Know What I’m Doing, is “a record about fear.”

Over the course of its 13 tracks, Castro ponders, among other things, “fear of growing up and not having your shit together; fear of being perceived as not having your shit together; fear of being perceived that you DO have your shit together when, in fact, you can’t tell which end is up; fear of mortality; the fear of being alone; the fear of wasting your youth; and, probably most of all, just being paralyzed by the fear of making poor life decisions.”
The trick to facing those fears, he says, “seems to be acknowledging them and learning how to move forward, accepting the good along with the bad, and making better choices or more informed choices the next time around.”

As the frontman, singer and guitarist of The Albert Square, Castro has been the one constant in the group, which has seen several personnel changes since its inception in 2007. The current lineup includes Castro’s longtime collaborator Spencer Taplin on drums and James Baker on bass.

The album features former bassist Chris Hopkins on many tracks and was recorded by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden in East Palo Alto. The songs, with their sometimes frantic drums and often fuzzed-out guitars, are reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel. Some are slow burning (“One Seventh of the Week”); some verge into more straightforward indie-pop territory, such as “Galesburg, IL.” Track nine, the exhilarating “Agnes (I Assume I Know What I’m Doing)” is a catchy, Pixies-esque standout that was previously released on an EP and is referenced in the album’s title.

Castro finds the San Jose music scene, including punk band Hard Girls and the socially conscious community involved with the Think and Die Thinking festival, inspiring. “I strive to just keep up with my peers and all the amazing things they do,” he says.

The band will celebrate the release of I (Assume I) Know What I’m Doing with a house concert in San Jose on Jan. 22. Check facebook.com/thealbertsquare for details.

The Albert Square
Jan. 22, 7pm
1010 Ruff Dr., San Jose

There’s such a thing as being a diverse band—then there’s Curious Quail, whose members don’t seem to know what kind of music they play.

“People ask me what the band sounds like, and I say it depends on the album—or whether it’s live,” singer/songwriter Mike-Shirley Donnelly says.

Initially, that live sound was Shirley-Donnelly playing solo—a sort of weird, one-man acoustic-guitar-meets-laptop project, which eventually morphed into a six-piece indie-folk jamboree. Yet Shirley-Donnelly does still play some shows solo as an electronic-folk singer.

The first EP, The Glow, reflected that one-man sound. Then there was the long awaited full-length debut, Instant Gratification, which was released in June of 2012. It represents the full band’s live sound yet is loaded with electronic sounds and drum machines—unlike the live sound.

It’s no wonder it took Shirley-Donnelly so long to finish an album that was already half-written nearly two years ago—there are so many options for how to execute each song. With each passing year, he only adds more possibilities to his styles.

Shirley-Donnelly started out by demo-ing every song on Instant Gratification himself, thinking he would release these recordings. As people joined the band, he add their parts to the mix. In several instances, he even scrapped entire versions of songs and started over. “Survivor’s Guilt,” for instance, went from being an electronic-pop number to a power-pop indie-rock song with heavy guitars and lightly textured pianos.

“When you’re doing stuff with yourself, it’s a totally different experience,” Shirley-Donnelly explains. “Joey’s drum parts really helped shape what the song turned into. It needed Joey’s drums. It needed the fuzzy guitars.”

When Shirley-Donnelly started Curious Quail in 2008, the songs weren’t as fluid. Shirley-Donnelly would play an acoustic guitar, keyboards and effects on his loop pedals, all while performing over backing tracks on his laptop. Everything had to be very precise, or it would all fall apart.

“It was super neat, but it was super stressful,” Shirley-Donnelly says. “If you hit the wrong pedal, then suddenly you’re in the verse.”

The Glow, which was released in 2009, matched his live shows exactly, which Shirley-Donnelly thought took some of the steam out of his performances.

“If you’d heard the album, there wasn’t too much to gain from seeing it live,” he says. “It was a lot of the same sound effects. It was kind of static audio-wise. There was no real room for fluctuation or improvisation. That aspect of it was frustrating.”
The band came together almost by accident. Joey Guthrie, a friend, asked if he could sit in on drums during a set. He was quickly followed by Sean Nolen (guitar) and Alan Chen (violin). Greg Keeney (keyboards) later joined the band, followed by Steve Garber (bass).

“The band happened to me. It all sort of crept up on me,” Shirley-Donnelly says.

As Shirley-Donnelly wrote Instant Gratification, he not only allowed himself to make a full-band album, he completely changed his sound. Instant Gratification is upbeat and fun, while The Glow is downright somber and depressing. But both albums evince equally dark lyrics. Shirley-Donnelly liked the unpredictability of having the music and words not match in an obvious way.

“It catches you off-guard,” Shirley-Donnelly says. “Anytime you’re not prepared for something, it’s going to hit you a little harder. You listen to it, and you’re like, ‘This is really fucking sad, but musically it’s trying to tell me something different.'”

One song, “Something Under the Bed Is Drooling,” for instance, is about suicide. Musically, however, it is a bouncy rocker offset with a pretty violin part.

Shirley-Donnelly has always been drawn to dark lyrics, despite being a generally upbeat person. “It’s not like I’m necessarily a very dark person, but I’ve seen some pretty horrific stuff,” he says. “I try to be positive no matter what. It’s not like I’m at home cutting myself in a bathtub. Bad shit happens, and there’s no reason to cover it up.”

Just as Shirley-Donnelly mixes lots of competing elements in his instrumentation, the juxtaposition of the music and lyrics helps to create a more complex experience. The result, according to Shirley-Donnelly, is ultimately better than a singular, overt mood.

“The concept of the album is ‘Things can get really bad, but they also can get better.’ The underlying aspect of the whole album is hope,” Shirley-Donnelly says.