With Annastacia Monroe behind the wheel, The Dream Masons are chaperoning listeners through a curtsey of uplifting top-lines, carbonated riffs, and tight-knit indie-rock instrumentation.
The Cleveland-rocker foursome performing under the cognomen The Dream Masons, admit that the light-hearted and blithe sounds oozing from their catalog are often covering up a more morose topic, like how OutKast's "Hey Ya," had a pessimism-tinged despair in-laid underneath the carbonated top-lines that decorated that single.
Similarly, with "Another Great Day," the latest endowment of salacious rock music from the Cleveland quartet, a more profound meaning lies beneath the enthusiastic melodies, booming rhythm section, and riffing guitars; operating over that same bait-and-switch stratagem to produce a comparable emotional response from their listeners.
Over a grungy, 90s-reminiscent guitar that quickly develops into a ska-festooned upstroke, the opening of "Another Great Day" finds Annastacia enticing listeners over a carbonated inauguratory verse where she whistles, "You won't sit through anyone more of this, won't subject yourself to my lack-luster ways," over the verse with a nonchalant attitude, painting a customary portrait of self-depreciation and foreshadowing the core message.
When the pre-chorus hits, the rich panorama of hi-fi sonics oozing from her backing-band mates copulate together and follow Anastasia over a slow-simmering rise into the deep chasm of their erupting hook.
Through self-examination and transparency, "Another Great Day's" upbeat conventionalities start to become more vivid. Beneath the uproaring transitions from pre-chorus to hook, Eric Hellinger's scintillating guitar erupts with timeless enthusiasm, punctuating each vocal line that sarcastically resounds over to top-line, "oh hello blue skies, hats off to another great day!"
It may seem like she's content and uplifted, but as Annastacia explains, "It's really about self-loathing, but it also strives to attack the society that helped create the self-loathing in the first place," and the contempt in her voice as she sings the hook, in this case, is self-evident.
"Another Great Day" establishes the experience behind The Dream Masons as one audience won't soon forget, with a musical aesthetic as unique, impressionable, and profound as Paramore's was back in their prime.
What were some of the emotions you found yourself channeling into in order to capture the best performances possible for "Another Great Day?"
Performing is one of my favorite things and my favorite part of the job because I am naturally crazy as a human. I am a total wild woman. I am just frequently emotive and expressive and it's my chance to behave like a complete and total animal without being judged. Instead, I am admired for my bravery. But I'm not being brave. I'm just finally able to express myself and let it all loose and just go nuts. So I didn't have to tap into any emotions. I am already a constant spout of emotions. None in specific, just all of them, like mixing all the colors together or something. You just go and go and go and unleash all of it and be wild and you don't really know what the root feeling is, you just feel free. Like releasing tension
Where did the concept for "Another Great Day" initial present itself to you? Was this a track formulated from your band's own personal struggles with self-loathing?
This track I wrote years before I was in The Dream Masons, a couple of days before what ended up being a long stay in the psych ward at the hospital. It absolutely has to deal with self-loathing. It's a song full of dark sarcasm. It's about being too much, and the only things that make you feel better to ruin your health and destroy your brain. It's about just feeling horrible day after day after day, and then knowing that until you die, the suns gonna keep coming up and you're just going to keep on living. So fuck it, might as well just have another great day!!!
What was the most significant learning experience behind the entire recording and release process for "Another Great Day"?
The most significant learning experience was that in order to release any music, any at all, you have to have the internet. For a long time, I tried to live off-grid and to do everything at libraries and stuff, but a release is like a full-time job. You need the internet at home, you need to be able to share information and ideas and work around the clock. Living off-grid is not gonna give you the competitive edge it takes to make a release go in this world. Just put time into it every day. Set aside friend drama, set aside family events, and personal issues. If you want a release to work well, you really just have to be selfish and think only about the art, every day, until you get the ship off the ground. Because if you don't, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life, always wondering "what if" and if there was something you could have done differently to reach better success.
If you could give your audience a few words that would promote the right mind-set for "Another Great Day," and your E.P. "The Lesser of 200 Evils," dropping later this fall, what would you say?
For another great day, the mindset is "It's just going to keep being this way until you die, so you might as well have Another Great Day" for Lesser of 200 Evils, (which actually did a soft release on our bands Band Camp if you go check it out it's already up, we're just not releasing to Spotify until mid-October) The concept there is just about morals. It's an eclectic Ep though, it's hard, to sum up. And lesser of 200 Evils the song is just basically about the fact that people aren't willing to believe in themselves, they only believe in fear. But voting for the lesser of any number of evils only leads to more evil. I wish people would have the balls to stand up for something new, something good.
What has been keeping you inspired in 2020?
As far as inspiration for 2020:
1) opportunity, our band is going to GA this month to record another EP and we've been so excited about that.
2) The ever-looming guarantee of death, that someday, in less than 100 years we will be beneath the ground.
3) ABSOLUTE F**** RAGE has a way of concentrating your focus
4) LSD. Lots and lots of LSD. probably not enough LSD. Haha