Next Levels

The Creeping Weeds get complicated on See Through.

by John Vettese

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Published: Feb 9, 2011

CREEPERS: The latest album by Creeping Weeds evokes the hybridized psych of Olivia Tremor Control and the eclectic style-hopping of Revolver.

[ rock/pop/enigma ]

There's a puzzle in the latest Creeping Weeds album.

See Through 's cover photo, taken by guitarist/percussionist Kate Stewart, is a still life of an ornate room: chipped blue paint on the wall, an oval mirror and candelabra, a ship on a pedestal, a laptop on a hutch — each item referencing one of the 11 songs within. The band's name is spelled out in yarn on the floor. Inside the gatefold is the same scene, only some things are rearranged or missing, and there's a hole punched in the wall. Finally, the back cover peers into the room from that hole.

"I think it functions as a sort of visual interpretation of our music," says singer-guitarist Pete Stewart — brother to Kate, husband to keyboardist/vocalist Cara Stewart. "There are many layers that are all interconnected, and there are lots of small details." He hopes listeners will take something new away from the album and its artwork each time.

We're sitting in the band's basement studio and practice space in Chinatown. Both See Through and Creeping Weeds' 2007 debut, We Are All Part of a Dream You're Having, were recorded here. The band (the Stewarts, plus bassist Justin Seitz and drummer Chris Wirtalla) has learned and grown together, which is probably why See Through took a year and a half to make, where their debut dragged on for more than three. "We've been doing it long enough," Seitz says. "We know what to do to make things sound the way we want them to."

Example: the ebullient "Light in the Window," a rollicking affirmation of a pop song with a massive hand-clap coda — 25 tracks worth, Wirtalla says — and a rich acoustic guitar tone. If they'd tried doing that for Dream, Stewart says, "we really would have botched it up."

Along with the layers of experience come layers of styles and sounds. See Through can be bright (the gauzy guitar of "Weekend at the Shore," the warm organ drive of "Outsiders") as easily as it can be melancholic and claustrophobic (unsteady leadoff track "Fountain"). Hybridized psych from the '90s, like Olivia Tremor Control, is an easy reference point, as is the eclectic style-hopping of Revolver. "I like albums that jump around a lot like that," says Stewart. "To me, it gets boring if it all comes from the same place."

Stewart gravitates toward oceanic imagery on several of See Through's tracks, and escape is the common theme throughout. The album concludes on a line describing the scene on the cover: "There's a secret that the mirror hides/ A hidden portal to another life/ We'll smash the mirror and away we'll climb."

"It's not that important for people to analyze the song too heavily for an exact meaning," he says. "The lyrics can mean something different to them than they do to me, and that's OK. Some of the lyrics have multiple meanings to me."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Sat., Feb. 12, 9 p.m., $10, with Cheers Elephant and Hong Kong Stingray, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 877-435-9849, johnnybrendas.com.

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