On The Verge

Pomegranates

Cincinnati, Ohio
Dream-Rock-Artsy-Pop
www.myspace.com/pomegranatesart

“It’s dream-rock-artsy-pop,” says drummer Jacob Merritt, 26, of his band’s sound and influences. “Talking Heads always seems to come up as well as shoe gaze-y stuff like Spiritualized and T.Rex, Neil Young and dance-y stuff like !!!” Pomegranates, who formed in 2006 in Cincinnati, released its third full-length One of Us this past fall. “We had a better idea of what we wanted to accomplish this time around, aesthetically,” Merritt says of the quartet’s new album. “We wanted to make the lyrics more personal. Overall, it feels more earnest.” The musicians are longtime friends and collaborators who treat songwriting “like a democracy” and thoroughly enjoy the creation process, especially while “holing up in the studio for 10 days relaxing and recording.” The twentysomethings are fresh off of a whirlwind tour in support of One of Us and have generated a lot of buzz for experimenting with ragged guitars, employing call and response vocals, inciting ‘80s rave-ups and producing dreamlike yet feverish sounds. “There’s a lot of themes that run throughout,” says Merritt. “It’s an album of love, friendship, growing and aging—just dealing with life and moving on.”