SEATTLE — By now, the sweat has dried. So have the signatures on the stacks of records the guys from Washington's buzziest band, Enumclaw, sold during what frontman Aramis Johnson deems the young indie rockers' top local show to date — a Friday night album-release bash recently at a packed Easy Street Records, a rite of passage for hometown acts on their way up.
Between a wonky power strip, a brief duct tape shortage and a sliding drum kit, it almost went off the rails. In what might have been the grittiest show of support for the rising quartet that's become the talk of western Washington, a friend of Johnson's cousin knelt in front of the kick drum to physically hold it in place during a fun and frenzied set that, for about an hour, turned the West Seattle shop into the coolest punk house on California Avenue Southwest. More than three weeks later, dude's ears are probably still ringing.
"The drummer needed so much help tonight," jokes LaDaniel Gipson, the soft-spoken, steady-handed drummer in question who's perched on the ledge of Easy Street's outdoor parklet as cars whiz by.
Still surrounded by friends who made the trek from Tacoma, sitting among the Enumclaw guys decompressing after an adrenaline-fueled set and meet-and-greet is like being in the postgame locker room with the winning team, recounting how near calamity almost cost them the game while popping Champagne (or in this case, passing around a bag of Doritos), still taking it in. Every few minutes a carload of friends or fans rolls by — either leaving the show or heading to the nearby Benbow Room where the group will keep their "Save the Baby" release party rolling with a late-night DJ set — shouting inside jokes and unleashing a stream of celebratory honks.
"I can't believe we were there for 45 minutes straight, just like signing, signing, signing," guitarist Nathan Cornell says with giddy bewilderment. "Weird. It's a grateful feeling."
The last year and a half has brought a wave of new experiences for the fast-tracked Tacoma band that caught the ear of the Washington music community (and the indie world at large) when 2021's "Jimbo Demo" EP set music blogs ablaze before they ever played a show. Since then, Enumclaw has graced the requisite Seattle festivals, signed with Fat Possum imprint Luminelle Recordings and landed desirable opening slots touring with an eclectic mix of bigger acts, including their current run with "tender punk" favorites illuminati hotties, which ends Nov. 19 at the Neptune Theatre.
In that time, there's been a steady increase in the number of Enumclaw T-shirts bearing their winking tagline, "Best band since Oasis," spotted at local rock shows. The energy around the quartet that blends hints of '90s alt rock with a modern DIY spirit and Johnson's earnest morose-pop melodies that rattle around your head until you're not bummed out anymore has been unlike anything the western Washington rock scene has experienced in the last few years.
For all the hype, the band that formed after a night of karaoke at Bob's Java Jive insists they didn't feel any pressure to deliver as they buckled down to record their first full-length in Tacoma.
"This was happening so fast, we didn't really stop and think about it," says Johnson, the amiable singer who wears a hard-to-miss 'stache and his heart on his sleeve. We just were like 'We're the [expletive] and this album's gonna be the [expletive].' We were in the studio jumping around like we're about to sell 50 million copies and if it doesn't go triple diamond, we did something wrong."
Triple diamond might be a tall order (even for the Taylor Swifts of the world), but Gipson's "no skips" assertion certainly rings true. From the mellifluous jangle-and-fuzz on songs like "2002" to acoustic closer "Apartment," there's no filler on their impressive debut album flecked with Tacoma-area references.
Johnson's deeply personal and to-the-point lyrics spill from his lips with the intimacy of a house party heart-to-heart on the back porch, confiding in listeners his most vulnerable, and easily relatable emotions. Beyond Johnson's words and frayed, non-choirboy vocals, the album's intimate feel is partly due to its at-home recording at ALMA, the Tacoma venue and restaurant complex with an in-house recording studio, and a quick chemistry with producer Gabe Wax, chosen for his work with pensive indie rock songsmith Soccer Mommy. Every night at 6 o'clock, Johnson's mother would drop by the studio with dinner.
While many of the songs stem from a somber place — self-reflection amid an ill-fated romance ("Save the Baby") or the absence of a close friend dealing with schizophrenia ("Park Lodge") — Enumclaw's live sets have increasingly taken on a fun-loving, punk-rock intensity thanks in no small part to bassist Eli Edwards, the band's screaming spark plug of a hype man, who's also Johnson's younger brother.
"Music that means the most to me is music that I can see myself in," Johnson says. "I'm trying to write from that place. ... And we're a rock band, you know. We're not here to cry together. I mean, if you wanna shed a couple thug tears, that's OK, too, but we're here to have a good time."
Less than two years since releasing their first single, "Fast N All," before Edwards had even learned his instrument, that combo is clearly connecting with people.
Johnson recalls two fan encounters at a particular Denver gig "that started to put things in perspective for me." Before the show, they met someone who had driven several hours to be there, springing for a hotel and making a weekend trip out of it just to see them.
"That was pretty cool," Johnson says. "And then when we walked out on stage, there were these two Black guys in the front of the crowd and one of them had a 'Best band since Oasis' shirt on. He had to have bought it prior to the show. After the show, we were talking to him, he had brought his cousin and he was like, 'You guys inspired us to start a band. We didn't know we could be in a band until we saw you guys do it.' That was really special."
Before forming Enumclaw, Johnson, who grew up in Lakewood, made a name for himself as a DJ/underground party thrower in the local hip-hop scene, founding the popular Toe Jam series. Tacoma rapper/producer Khris P recalls meeting Johnson for the first time back in 2014 at eTc Tacoma, a homegrown apparel brand with a downtown shop that's become one of the city's cultural hubs.
"This little guy walks up to me and says 'Hey, give me a beat. I'm gonna be famous, I'm gonna be a star.' I looked at him, I was like 'Who the [expletive] are you?'" As the two grew closer over the years, Khris says it was clear that Johnson was destined "to do something big."
"Aramis has such a charisma and a determination that's hard to deny," Khris says. "Just meeting him and getting to know him, you could tell he was set for something."
Johnson's never been shy about his long-held desire to be famous. Such an admission would have been unfashionable in some of the past rock movements that echo through Enumclaw's music, but in the contemporary indie rock world, a little healthy bravado feels refreshingly honest.
One of Enumclaw's biggest strengths in their young career has been an ability to organically share bills with a wide range of acts, from big gigs with chillwave graduate Toro y Moi (who wore an Enumclaw shirt during his main stage Capitol Hill Block Party set) and touring with shoegazers Nothing, to local shows with Tacoma rap stalwarts GLENN and Khris P or Olympia hardcore kingpins GAG.
For Edwards, it's been a joy to see how various crowds react differently to the same songs. "Playing with a bunch of different headliners and playing to a bunch of different crowds will eventually lead to us having a really cool, diverse audience," he says.
"We wanna bring monoculture back," Johnson quips. "We're the band for everybody."
