This weekend, local band Fault Choir graced the stage at the Orpheum Theatre in Hancock for another performance of unique instrumental music which they’ve described as “post-rock influenced ‘chillwave,’” with reverberant guitar and strong, “headnodic” rhythm sections. The band’s current lineup consists of Alex Arseneau, performing lead guitar and vocals, Alex Lorenzoni on guitar, Victor Ierulli on bass guitar and Tino Moore on drums. Fault Choir has been together since June 2016, and is well known in the area for their involvement in the local music scene as performers and show coordinators. Alex Arseneau interviewed with The Lode to talk about how Fault Choir has developed as a band.
“I moved up here about four or five years ago and, about a year after, the band I was playing with disbanded. Our singer and drummer moved downstate to the Lansing/Detroit area to start his pop career and during that time I played by myself for a little bit, trying to write some acoustic-influenced stuff, but I always liked playing in bands. There’s just something about the collective effort of setting forth and writing together that I just seem to vibe off better. So our drummer Tino and our old bass player Jon reached out after a little while and asked if I would be down to jam around and play some ideas together. It just fell together so quickly.
“We put together a few songs in the span of a few weeks, and, before we knew it, we had some house shows and some opportunities with contacts I met to play music in the UP over the years. It came together a lot faster than I thought it would. None of us sing, and none of us have sung in bands before, so we played around with that for a little while. I’m not saying we’ll never add vocalists to our music, but it’s just a lot easier to start writing instrumentally. The way I play guitar kind of mimics a vocal part and it felt right to go in the instrumental direction. I did have two songs in our first batch of songs, one in our EP, that I do sing on. I had a lot of fun writing that, and like I said, it isn’t like I’d never come back and add more vocals later, but I think that was a real objective for us as a band. Before we settle on being all instrumental, Tino especially was like, ‘I need you to sing one song. I need you to write lyrics for just one song and see how that goes.’ I’m happy with how that turned out, and it definitely took me out of my comfort zone.”
“The original lineup was [Alex Arseneau], Tino Moore, John Courter, and Jordan Truitt. They all lived together…so it was really easy to get everyone together for band practices. I knew Jordan all through high school, and Jon and Tino have been lifelong friends and have always played together, so it was a really comfortable mix of four guys. We had a keyboard player, an aux percussion player named Luke McCloskey, for a while.
“That’s just part of being in a band in a college town: people will graduate, and people will get those job opportunities and leave. Tino’s going to be here for a while yet, and we’re so vested both emotionally and financially into this band, and there was no way we were just going to hang it up. We could have started something different, but we had met some friends that also played music and were coming to all of our shows. Our guitar player, Alex Lorenzoni, just came with us on our summer tour, and Jordan got that job opportunity. Alex learned all of our songs in about 12 days before we left for our month-long tour. Then, after we got back, Jon got a job opportunity and had to go to Lansing.
“A good friend of ours, Victor, had just started learning to play bass, but he picked it up so quickly and he’s just such a perceptive musician that despite the lack of experience, he’s been so easy to write with. So we’re able to continue this and start writing some new songs, and I think that the songs that they’ve written together with us, as opposed to the older ones,…are really pushing us in a different direction, and I like where it’s going.”
When asked about his long-term vision, Arseneau responded that it’s “really hard to say…I think that the three of these other guys are definitely on a career path…They’re all engineering students at MTU. They’ve got a lot going for them; they’re all super smart…I’m happy just to have them in this project with me at this point.” Despite his busy lifestyle and the two jobs that Arseneau is currently juggling, he is able to say, “Whether it’s under Fault Choir or some other name, I know I will continue to write music, and I hope to have these guys with me as long as possible…It’s a good friendship, and that’s important. Good chemistry as far as writing music is very important, too, but I would not have been able to spend 20 days in a van this summer with guys I didn’t get along with or genuinely like.”
Currently, the band is working on writing and recording a new EP and has planned some shows in Eau Claire, WI. Arseneau is hoping that towards the end of summer the band can put together another Midwest run around the Rust Belt.
The band’s first EP and a collection of recordings they did at MTU with Above the Bridge Records is all on their Bandcamp account, as well as their official website, faultchoir.com. The first EP can also be found on iTunes and Spotify.
