Kevin Bronson on October 8th, 2008

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On the website of Softdrive Records, the imprint owned by Scott Weiland, the Stone Temple Pilots frontman professes to like “every kind of music,” even something he calls “dreamo.” I wondered, did Weiland have his young signees the Color Turning in mind when he coined that term?

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure,” Color Turning singer-guitarist Steve Scavo says. “I know we’re not an emo band — we probably consider ourselves an ambient band that’s trying to do big rock songs. An old producer we worked with said we were the indie Pink Floyd, and it’s flattering to be spoken of with a band that iconic. It’s better to have those influences than to be compared to an imitation of an imitator of an imitator.”

The L.A. quintet’s music certainly has Floydian elements, with Sean Rodriguez on the Rhodes contributing to the outer-space feel and the rhythms provided by drummer Garet Powell and bassist Jason Abraham adding an urgent churn. The band, including guitarist-keyboardist Dave Del Fonzo, completed recording its debut album, “Good Hands Bad Blood” (with producer Doug Grean), in late 2007. With the exception of a few studio tweaks, the band has been playing the waiting game since then.

“It feels as if we’ve been recording it forever,” Scavo says of the album, scheduled for an early 2009 release. “We’re dying to get it out, and then tour the Midwest and the East Coast, but we’re trying to work strategically with the label to get everything in order.”

The Color Turning earned some attention from labels after releasing an EP in 2005 but were surprised when they were invited to meet with Weiland. “We were skeptical, because a lot of people had said they could do this for us or they could do that for us, but then you’d meet them and they’d know one song, or half a song,” Scavo says. “We went to Burbank to meet Scott, and he knew all our songs. I looked at the guys and laughed and said, ‘This can’t be happening.’ He was leaning back in the chair, smoking a cigarette and tripping out to our tunes.”

Scavo says the album is a mix of older songs and more recent material that finds the Color Turning exploring “a lot of spooky percussive music and synth-based stuff.” A new track they recently debuted on their website, “Me vs. Me,” fits that. “And it turns out it was one of the quickest songs we put together,” Scavo says.

||| Live: The Color Turning plays tonight at the Silverlake Lounge and Oct. 30 at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.

||| Download: Visit the band’s website or MySpace for a free download of “Me vs. Me.”

Photo by Rennie Solis