Nes Tarot’s Psycho Tropics play Dusk on Father’s Day

Posted 6/14/22

By ROB DUGUAY

The local music scene in Rhode Island has been vibrant for years and there’s always new bands popping up. Ever since live music returned last summer there’s been a …

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Nes Tarot’s Psycho Tropics play Dusk on Father’s Day

Posted

By ROB DUGUAY

The local music scene in Rhode Island has been vibrant for years and there’s always new bands popping up. Ever since live music returned last summer there’s been a fresh crop of acts delving in all sorts of styles. These styles range from hardcore punk, alternative & indie rock, psychedelic, hip hop, metal and everything in between. Nes Tarot’s Psycho Tropics out of Providence are part of this fresh crop with an interesting blend of psych-rock, shoegaze and funk. They have a show coming up at Dusk located on 301 Harris Avenue in their home city for an afternoon Father’s Day special on June 19 starting at 4pm.

I had a talk ahead of the show with guitarist & vocalist Teagan Gardiner-Souza and drummer Nick Gardikis from the band about how they started out, a cover song they recently released and thoughts on the upcoming show along with other things.

Rob Duguay: How did you, Nick and Triston come together to start this band? Did you guys grow up together?

Teagan Gardiner-Souza: Nick and Triston were buddies when they were a bit younger, I’m a few years older than them. I know them through my ex’s little brother, they’re in that friend group and they’ve been buddies for quite a bit. They would come over my house just through association and whatnot but once I graduated high school they started coming over more after a few years of us just not speaking. I don’t even remember what kicked it off, Nick and I went to Camp Flog Gnaw which is Tyler, The Creator’s music festival back in 2019 and we really bonded through that. He introduced me to a lot of indie music as a whole, until that point I was only listening to alternative music so that really caught my attention.

From there, I got a drum kit in my basement. Nick came over one day, started messing around with it and then we decided to get a bassist which is how Triston came into play. That was just under two years ago so we’ve been loose jammin’ for that time.

RD: For the three of you, what would you say are your common bonds when it comes to musical influences? Which bands or musicians do the three of you enjoy that you like to incorporate into your sound?

Nick Gardikis: We like Hirs, we love Red Hot Chili Peppers and Inner Wave is the first indie act I got Teagan into and we all love that band.

RD: Going back to Tyler, The Creator, this past February you guys released a cover of his song “Parfait (Perfect)”, so how did you go about transitioning a hip hop song into the psychedelic shoegaze sound you guys have going on?

TGS: I find it to be very boring when covers are the exact same thing as what they’re covering. I find it to be very interesting when an artist takes a song and of course tries to incorporate all the elements that make the song but we switched it off where I was doing what would have been Kali Uchis’ vocals. She has a beautiful, high voice and I have this vampiric, dark voice so it was an interesting attempt to hit some of the notes that she hits within my own range. I think I originally learned the second half of the song because it’s actually played on a guitar and we just transcribed it over to the keys and stuff that’s being played in the first half. It was very interesting just taking a song that’s hip hop oriented and trying to make it into the shoegazey, psychedelic nonsense that we procure.

RD: It’s cool that you guys were able to pull that off.

TGS: Thank you.

RD: No problem. What can folks expect when they attend the upcoming show at Dusk?

TGS: It’s definitely going to be a heavy night. Not like heavy metal but it’s going to be a punky night, maybe some garage rock I’d say. We got Balloon Thief opening up and they are really, really cool, I’d check them out. We actually came across them at Beauquet’s EP release over at the Galactic Theatre in Warren back in October of last year and it was an insane night. We loved the energy that Balloon Thief gave off so we got them, we got Hi Fi who are from just south of Boston but they have a pretty grungy sound.

The frontwoman in that band is really cool, she does some cool stuff and she has a really good voice going for her. Then we got So So who are this psychedelic, math rock, shoegaze, I could list it all off and they’re a weird combination of a lot of stuff. We got some weird music in store for this upcoming Father’s Day gig.

RD: Nice. Along with this new track you put out in February, can we expect any more new music from you guys before the end of the year?

NG: Oh, yeah.

TGS: Before we have the show at Dusk, we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time at Nick’s place where we’re slowly building a mini-studio in his basement. We’re going to try to record a bunch of takes of us doing the different songs that are going to be on the set and we’re going to narrow them down to what we think would fit as an EP. We go from really punky stuff to lighter, spacey stuff so we’re going to separate a few songs for one final piece which we hope to have done by the end of the summer.

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