The Zendeavors have a saxophonist. His name is Ted Schera, and he works his ass off throughout the band’s self-titled debut album.
His instrument fizzes, honks and shrieks, filling up every bit of available space in the stereo field. It’s as important to the band’s sound as guitar, perhaps more so.
There are bands far more jazz-influenced than the Zendeavors who have no idea what to do with their saxophones (listen to the dispassionate hooting on some of Sade’s deep album cuts). It’s a miracle, then, that Schera’s instrument never sounds intrusive or, worse, gimmicky.
The Zendeavors, a band of University of Oregon alums now based in Portland, Oregon, are a good reference point for how to make “real rock” in 2016. Though the band jams out a lot (sometimes too much; most of these songs could be halved), there’s barely any soloing in the traditional sense. Rather, there’s a lot of soft, ethereal strumming. Though nobody here sounds particularly eager to prove their chops, they’re tight enough to make their prowess obvious. And though singer Andrew Rogers is obviously an heir to the blues-rock singers of the ’60s and ’70s, the band’s sound isn’t retro by any means.
Rogers has come a long way as a songwriter from his 2014 solo album Through An American Wasteland, released as Abraxas Wandering, whose sinners-and-saints clichés distracted from its otherwise lovely pre-Dylan folk. But he’s still prone to clunkers like “if I die before I wake, then I don’t get to wake and bake.”
Rogers does a lot of drugs on this album, but it’s never clear if he’s an addict or if he’s just a 20-something musician living the carefree life of a 20-something musician. As such, it’s hard to tell if we should be concerned by a lyric like “one day I’m gonna die of overdose” or just accept it as part of a gritty seeker persona.
Even if Rogers is affecting an image, he’s certainly not affecting his voice. I’ve met Rogers, and he actually sounds like that when he talks. His gritty, feline yowl is a thing of wonder. But his voice is rather low in the mix throughout the album. This isn’t a flaw; in fact, it’s refreshing. Many rock bands go into the studio with a mainstream-rock idea of how their music sounds, and as a result, thousands of small-time bands release hyper-compressed, Californication-sounding debuts every year. The Zendeavors does not sound like Californication.
In fact, it’s hard to find a reference point for the Zendeavors’ music, no small feat for a band working in a genre as spent as rock. The closest thing I can think of to the sound of this record is David Bowie’s Blackstar, with its towering walls of sax and pit-pat drums. The Zendeavors are still young, still growing, and certainly capable of a far better album than this. But it’s always nice to have bands around that are willing to deviate from rock’s established templates.
Listen to The Zendeavors’ “Mr. Muddy Jeans” below.