Lemuria: The Buffalo Scene

Buffalo, New York’s Lemuria aren’t alienated by being a poppy indie-rock band in their predominately hardcore local scene; rather, it’s something they’ve come to embrace.

“The Buffalo scene, mainly the underground scene, is mostly hardcore. It’s known for a lot of faster music,” drummer/vocalist Alex Kerns said. “Our local scene has kind of dropped us into the hardcore scene, even though our music is far from hardcore.”
The band’s roots can be traced back to Kerns’ longtime friendship with vocalist/guitarist Sheena Ozzella. The two met by going to punk shows in the small town of Olean, New York, while in high school.

“For a while we had dated, and then broken up, and then became best friends,” Kerns said. “Eventually, she started playing guitar and I just started playing drums, and then we started a band together and moved to Buffalo.”

There they found bassist Jason Draper, rounding out the band’s line-up. After doing several EPs and splits with Frame, Kind Of Like Spitting and The Ergs! (which were recently compiled into one LP titled “The First Collection”), Lemuria released their full-length debut, “Get Better,” earlier this year on Asian Man Records. The process of putting together the dozen songs that comprise the record pushed the band to elevate their focus.

“With all the splits and EPs we did, we’d write a couple songs and be like, ‘All right, well we got two new songs,’ and then we’d get too impatient and be like, ‘Let’s release them, we can do a split with this band or this band,’” Kerns said. “But when we wrote the album, we dedicated a few weeks to our lives to just write.”

The extra time and patience put into “Get Better” paid off, resulting in one of the most top-notch pop-punk records put out in recent memory. The trio’s fine-tuned melodic sensibilities lend tracks like “Yesterday’s Lunch” and “Mechanical” an addictive quality that demands repeated listens, and the album is more likely to shred your eardrums with sharply written hooks than bludgeon your skull with the brutal aggression favored by their hometown peers.
Kerns and Ozzella alternate on vocals and write the majority of the lyrics.

“Me and Sheena are so close, she already knows pretty much everything about me and I know most things about her,” Kerns said. “Anything that she would say, she could say just like I would say it, and I think it goes the other way around as well.”
Those lyrics on “Get Better” are often brazenly honest and unafraid to assault your heartstrings. “Wardrobe,” written about Kerns experience of taking his father’s old clothes to the thrift store after he had passed away, closes out with a heavy emotional sentiment when Ozzella and Kerns trade off singing, “I want to punch the clerk’s light out as he accepts the shirt / That was a gift and the first time that I ever spent money / I was two or three, counting on my fingers / I should have bought you a drink.”

While much of “Get Better” is painfully sincere, it never delves into self-absorbed misery. Quite the opposite, the title of the record itself is meant to be a motivational phrase.

“One of the things that I always do with my drum set, and my drum sticks and stuff like that is I write ‘get better’ on them,” Kerns said. “It always makes me push myself.”

If You Go

What: Lemuria, Gordon Gano’s Army (punk rock, from Southampton, England), plus locals
Where: Aquarium
When: Oct 20, 6:30pm, all ages
How Much: $5
Info: 701.235.5913