Spiritual Mansions

Ryan Harris was tired of screaming. After a few years spent as a guitarist and backing vocalist in local post-hardcore outfit My Rubicon, Harris, 24, was ready to give his vocal chords a rest and turn down the volume on his music-making. “When I was playing in My Rubicon I got really tired of playing shows to audiences that were my peers and didn’t enjoy it because it was too loud,” admits Harris. “It felt weird to me to be playing to kids younger than me all the time. I wanted to make more timeless stuff that would be enjoyed by people of all ages and anywhere. I wanted to write songs instead of riffs.”

With new venture Spiritual Mansions and their debut seven song EP, Give Us Your Hearts, Harris is officially off to a good start. A macabre tour through broken relationships played with a boozy, lurching, late-night vibe, the sinister lounge-pop dirges Harris is now crafting couldn’t be further removed from the high voltage adolescent angst of his musical past.

Album opener “The Tumbler” is all warm vintage keyboard lines, gentle vibes, and slowly plucked guitar tremolo, with Harris’ sweetly-honeyed croon front and center, supplemented by classic soul music backing oohhs and ahhs. That is until guitarist Joel Roberts steals the spotlight over the songs last third with understated and beautiful classic guitar riffs. Elsewhere the group tries out some sad saloon trappings on the slide-guitar abetted “What Did I Tell You?,” and gets cheeky on the playful garage-lite stomp “Danny B. Cool,” before closing things out with the weepy acoustic guitar-piano-and voice ballad “Don’t Blame Me.”    

The album’s off-the-cuff feel serves the songs well, with all the sound except vocals and one guitar overdub cut live in the studio with local music veteran Knol Tate (Askeleton). The loose and airy arrangements shed the spotlight equally on the grand keyboard flourishes of classically trained pianist Sam Harvey-Carlson, Roberts’ stinging guitar leads and Harris’ rich voice.

“What usually works best is when I write a song, have it about 90% complete, and then bring it to the band,” says Harris of Spiritual Mansions’ creative process. “Most of our stuff just happens because the other guys in the band are good musicians who can figure it out; I don’t have to tell them the chords. Everybody just kind of makes it up as they go and if we play something long enough the parts come into being and solidify. Except for our lead guitarist - he tends to play a different thing every time. It’s great having Sam in the band because he knows all the music theory and can help figure arrangements out. Our drummer plays guitar also and it helps having a guy who understands the different roles from both perspectives. Our bassist and piano player are both into jazz. We actually have a new song that’s real jazz.  I want to keep everybody happy, so it’s never a situation where I’m telling everybody else what to do. I feel like that way of working is why a lot of bands break up.”

The music sets a pretty specific mood (dark, seedy, desperate), and Harris nails the rest, with a stunning voice that projects boldness and vulnerability in equal measure. It’s hard to believe the guy wasn’t born with a mic in his hand, but as it turns out his embrace of the vocal spotlight is still a recent development. “I could never sing at all growing up,” admits Harris. “I just never could do it. Awhile ago though I was sitting in my room covering some band and I figured out how to use my voice so it didn’t sound terrible. It’s hard to explain, it just kind of clicked, I still feel like I’m a long way off from being a confident singer, but I don’t think my voice is boring.”

It helps that Harris is already a cunning enough lyricist to give Greg Dulli a run for his money in the black-hearted-lothario-with-devilish-intentions department as evidenced on “No Matter,” in which he professes his undying devotion to a departed lover while chronicling his new erotic dalliances (“She’s lying on her back beneath me. / But you’re all that I have on my mind.”). “I would say a pretty large portion of our songs are based on relationships and different aspects of them,” says Harris. “I feel like I have somewhat of a different take on it then other people. When I write lyrics I base it around one or two phrases, the chorus really, and just try to pop things into place around it. I really try to get away from writing songs about girls, but it’s hard for me not to write about that so it usually ends up going down that road.”

Although still a very new band, with just twenty shows under the belt in the Cities during their first year on the scene, there’s plenty of reason to keep an eye on Spiritual Mansions. Plans are already underway to record a full-length this fall, and it’s clear that Harris boasts the restless creative spirit necessary to keep any music making endeavor vital. “When we first started we were doing kind of more psychedelic stuff and then we started playing pop songs,” says Harris of the group’s continual evolution. “So then we ended up recording the pop songs. I wanted to have all the pop songs together on an album because I thought that would be more accessible to people. We really haven’t played that many shows, and if people have only heard the EP they’ll be surprised because we get kind of out there. Playing metal is how I learned to play guitar and then I had to forget it all in order to write songs. So I just look at our first record as the next step that will lead to something else.”

Spiritual Mansions' page at Afternoon Records 

Spiritual Mansions' MySpace page 

"The Tumbler" from Spiritual Mansions' debut EP, Give Us Your Hearts 

COMING UP: Spiritual Mansions with Jack Klatt, A Night in the Box, August 25. Lee's Liquor Lounge . 9 p.m. 21+. $6.