Colorado’s longtime “eccentric, punk-minded” rock band Gasoline Lollipops has been celebrating the recent release of their latest album with an aptly timed protest show, a label signing, a managerial partnership, and the planning of an official release party in early September. The album — Kill The Architect — is the band’s seventh, which is unsurprising considering Gasoline Lollipops has been making music for over a decade, with their current iteration going back as far as grade school. Having become both a fixture and a household name throughout the local music community, Gasoline Lollipops is geared up and ready for the embrace of this most recent album, and all that it has to say.
Gasoline Lollipops’ founding member, frontman, vocalist and acoustic guitarist Clay Rose, and newest member, keyboardist and organist Scott Coulter have known each other since they were in first grade. Seven or eight years ago, Rose and Coulter’s musical paths recrossed for the album Soul Mine, which was Coulter’s preliminary joining of the band. As its last remaining original member, Rose is hopeful in his belief that the band has been evolving and maturing along with him, with a present-day lineup that consists of Coulter, electric guitarist Don Ambory, bassist Bradley Morse and drummer Kevin Matthews.
For Rose, the band’s most recent evolution has looked like a refinement, in that they’ve been “calming down a bit.” Simultaneously it has also looked like a “real culmination” that “covers a huge amount of sonic ground.” With a new cohesiveness to their music, Rose feels that Gasoline Lollipops found a through line with this latest album that he wasn’t sure was there before, something which he credits producer Steve Berlin for. Their first time working with a producer, the band may have simply been too close to their projects in the past. With this project, Steve “vetted which songs go on, helped us arrange them,” Rose said. “He had a vision for the record, and knows how to define his vision.”
“We still kick out the jams,” Rose went on to say. “We got a little more rowdy with this last recording,” creating an intriguing dichotomy within the album that seemingly reflects the present human state. “For this record, the main influence was probably sociopolitical anxiety,” Rose divulged, which further showcases that state of humanity and what it means to exist in today’s society. For Rose, the songwriting started with his pride of coming from grandparents who fought in World War II, preserving “democracy and freedom for a lot of people around the world.” Then came feelings of rage, grief and bewilderment in the face of today’s “completely overt racism, classism and misogyny,” which then morphed into much contemplation and soul-searching, resulting in Kill The Architect and its vulnerable human experience.
While Kill The Architect seeks to both explore and challenge the oftentimes painful human experience, as both a person and musician Rose is constantly finding light within the local music community. “I think the community here is everything,” Rose said, giving props to his fellow musicians and bands that he feels are helpful, loving and respectful towards each other, leaving him “consistently struck by the heart of the music scene here.” It’s a community that creates space for something like the band’s recent protest show, benefitting Casa De Paz and working to help immigrants find resources. While they continue to fight the good fight and reach an even greater audience with their music, Gasoline Lollipops will be wrapping up their summer with an album release show at the Fox Theatre on September 5.
Listen to Kill the Architect here!