Handgrenades epitomize a never-ending and invigorating state of musical evolution. Not content to rest on their laurels or remain complacent in a sound that serves them well, the Detroit quartet constantly pushes their aesthetic. Credit this to three of the four members being songwriters, challenging one another in the creative process.

Formed in 2009, the band found their footing with Beatles and Motown covers. Their earliest original tunes wear these influences on their sleeve on 2012 debut LP The Morning After. Things took an abrupt stylistic shift thereafter, when singers/songwriters/alternating frontmen Nick Chevillet and Andrew Pawelski welcomed a third voice into the mix in Jesse Shepherd-Bates. The new format (still with drummer extraordinaire Joby Kaslowski) bore fruit in 2014 with the four-song EP 52, full of tight, instantly catchy pop-rock songs that found the band asserting its own identity. The mini-record both cleansed the palate of what came before and teased what was on the horizon, namely, their sophomore full-length, Tunnels. In fact, the band’s sonic makeup had progressed so deeply yet naturally, it’d be more apt to consider 2016’s Tunnels a second, revisionist debut. Largely gone were the British Invasion and soul emulations, replaced with a rich tapestry of touchstones and a more nuanced and esoteric approach owed to the likes of Radiohead, the National, and Jeff Buckley.

With Chevillet, Pawelski, and Shepherd-Bates trading lead vocals and harmonizing, their diverse writing styles cleave against and merge with each other, remarkably avoiding sounding like they’re in competition. Whereas other bands with multiple songwriters can sound like they’re pulling apart from the center, Handgrenades’ members manage to weld their various influences into a new concoction achieving a unified front.

Since Tunnels, the band has continued excavating their psyches’ rabbit holes, as seen on a series of tantalizing new singles. First, there was the sugary pop gem anthem of “Vampires & Freaks,” followed by the hoof-stomping rocker “Honey B,” only to be capped off with the eerie fluidity of “Heads or Tails”. The three tunes serve of a microcosm of Handgrenades’ strengths, promising all manner of further-mined, earworming weirdness on their forthcoming LP, expected in late 2019.

Andrew Pawelski
[vox, guitar, bass]

Nick Chevillet
[vox, guitar, bass]

Jesse Shepherd-Bates
[vox, guitar, bass, percussion]

Joby Kaslowski
[drums, drums, drums. drums]