BOSTON, Mass. [September 20, 2024] – It’s often said that the third time’s a charm, but it’s rarely discussed why. For Charming Arson, set to release new EP Another Kind of Vision on Friday, September 20, two weeks before showing it off on stage October 4 at The Jungle in Somerville, this third record from the Boston alternative rock and power-pop band represents a musical vision fully realized and a sonic palette properly expanded.
Like the quartet’s music itself, a psychedelic trip of expansive sounds that transports the listener from one place to another, usually within the same blossoming song, the journey Charming Arson took to get here in assembling this kaleidoscopic six-song EP is just as fascinating as the destination.
And at the core, under all the harmonies and melodies and hooks and riffs, is a sense of joy, a feeling that takes anecdotes of modern life with inspirations of yesterday to craft a cohesive and vibrant record that not only stares back at the listener, but provides a cushion for the inevitable fall deep within the band’s blooming world.
“It’s important to me that the lyrics express a sense of exuberance and of joy,” says Charming Arson vocalist and guitarist David Cameron. “I’m not talking about ‘the sun is shining and I’m in love’ kind of joy, but a deeper spiritual joy that I believe lives in the core of every human being, whether you know it or not. It will always be chic for lyrics to be dark and brooding — and more power to the ones who do that honestly. But there’s also room, and a thirst, for music and lyrics to reach the untapped joy within.”
That’s at play across Another Kind of Vision’s six blossoming tracks, including the rollercoaster power-pop of May single “Saving Chelsea,” the groove-train swagger of June’s “Inside You I See Everyone,” a homage to the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi that provides the lyric inspiring the record’s title; and the punchy opener and July table-setter “Hey, Policeman!”, inspired by the Breaking Bad character ASAC Hank Schrader.
Combined with three new offerings, including the psychedelic yacht rock of “The Golden Teachers,” a song inspired by a popular strain of magic mushrooms, and aided by a video by Harvard University digital animator Ruth Lingford, which arrives this month, the EP is taking Charming Arson to new creative territories. That’s heard clearly on the street-walking and confrontational “Subway” and EP closer “Magic Alex Knows,” a theatrical tribute to Alexis Mardas, the huckster engineer who once famously duped The Beatles.
Part of that arrival into this new territory is rooted in the band’s now locked-in lineup, which surrounds band leader and visionary Cameron with a trio of like-minded players raised on British Invasion, guitar heroes, and a penchant for big, catchy choruses: New guitarist and keyboardist Stefano Bellezza (whose solo on “Saving Chelsea” earned more than a few radio and media endorsements); recent bass recruit Aaron Clark (who joined in time for Cabaré Apocalypse, their 2023 sophomore EP), and drummer Dave Gould, who co-founded Charming Arson with Cameron during the pandemic after the duo rekindled the musical chemistry that first formed in late-‘90s alternative and prog rock trio Zoot.
“We are now at the point as a band where if one person leaves, it wouldn’t be like getting a new baritone for the choir,” Cameron admits. “Each person has made such an indelible impression on this album that any new member would radically change the band. Each person’s musical personality shines and defines the sound. That’s a nice – and delicate – place to be!”
And that speaks to the journey each song takes from the writing sessions to their recording, where each of the six tracks were engineered, mixed, and mastered by Alex Garcia-Rivera at his all-analogue Mystic Valley Studios in Medford, Massachusetts.
“David comes along with a pretty well-developed song, then each one of us contributes parts and more ideas,” says Bellezza. “Personally, I will let the song talk to me and help me decide if it’s going to be a guitar or a keyboard song, and the sort of solo I should write. This is my first original project in decades, so I am more on a quest to find out who I am musically than trying to make any bold statements; David, on the other hand, is out to say something, and I will do whatever in my power to help get his message across.”
That message is reflected in the EP’s title, which is from the song “Inside You I See Everyone.” “See all that’s given / Look inside, there’s another kind of vision.” It’s not solely an existential and spiritual impulse behind the lyric, but it also a clarion call for where the Charming Arson is right now.
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