Kevin Bronson on September 7th, 2009

1

Along with a penchant for combining elements of this decade’s hitmakers (think Franz Ferdinand, the Killers and the Bravery) into one explosive rock package, the four guys in Los Angeles quartet Saint Motel have a sense of humor.

“We tried to get married in a chapel in Las Vegas,” drummer Greg Erwin says, before frontman A/J Jackson picks up the story: “It would have been, ‘Do you take you, you, you and you to be lawfully wedded to you, you, you and you?’ …” Alas, Erwin says, “They told us to [bug] off.”

You can expect a healthy share of whimsy when Saint Motel kicks off its September residency tonight at Spaceland – each Monday, after all, will have a different cinematic theme: sci-fi, erotica, experimental and slasher. But make no mistake, Jackson, Erwin, guitarist Aaron Sharp and bassist Dak are deadly serious about making music that transcends the boundaries of four-piece rock ‘n’ roll. Their “super CD” titled “ForPlay,” released this week via the band’s own On the Records imprint, offers six single-worthy tracks along with videos for each song.

||| Stream: “Do Everything Now”

The band’s visual bent reveals its roots – they met as film students at Chapman College in Orange County. Their songs, which sometimes feel like quick-cuts to a lot of what you’ve heard on post-Strokes rock radio, can be rife with imagery or merely a little bit bawdy. Yeah, like the antithetical band name. “Religion and one-night stands,” Erwin wisecracks.

“It’s not necessarily about being original,” Sharp says of the band’s pliable sound. “It’s about taking all the relevant things that happen in your life and putting them together in different ways.”

“ForPlay” was two years in the making, with the quartet taking a hard look at its material after each live show, based on what they felt connected with the audience. “It’s extremely hard to capture the sound of this band on a hard drive,” Sharp says. “You have to see us live to capture what we’re doing.” Adds Jackson: “Live has always been our proving ground for new material.”

That Saint Motel has found audiences on both sides of town – they’re just as likely to play to a full club on the Sunset Strip as they are an Eastside venue – speaks to the elasticity of their music. “It’s a big city,” Jackson says. “Westsiders don’t go to Eastside shows, and Eastsiders don’t go west. In one place, it’s “I can’t park!” and in the other it’s “I can’t find my car!”

“The songs seem to hold up,” Sharp says. “For some reason they’re palatable to hipsters and to people in the Hollywood scene who might listen to metal or something like that.”

||| Live: Saint Motel performs tonight at Spceland with the Jakes, Fight From Above and Giant State.

||| Watch: The video for “Dear Dictator,” directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada.