Temple Canyon - Fortress (2019)

Laurel Canyon-inspired psychedelic folk rock with a penchant for reverb-laden, feedback-heavy rockouts.

Fortress is the third Temple Canyon release, but the first to be fully self-produced. It was recorded at the band’s rehearsal space in Crybaby Studios and Mariko’s apartment “The Madkin,” with some final overdubs and mixing at Earwig Studio, all in Seattle, WA. Featuring Mariko on lead vocals and guitar, Al Reiter on drums, and Jason Shao (who also engineered and mixed it) on bass, Fortress channels the ideas and energy of their previous records into a whole new Cascadian freak happening. It even has additional vocals from The Rolling Twenties, Mariko’s husband’s hardcore D&D group.

Mariko was born and raised in Santa Barbara, CA, and like other transplants that moved here from South and East, she’s burrowed into the Emerald City to woodshed and lovingly craft haunted, dazzling odes to liminal zones and nocturnal aches. Fortress was titled after a lot of thought of how to symbolize the inclusivity that encapsulated the way the trio made their record, creating it in the intimate settings of Crybaby Studios, crafting the songs closely together with full engagement and familiarity.

Mariko and Al Reiter met while they were regularly playing the Hopvine open mic around 2011, and he joined her original band around 2013. “After making a record in my bedroom, I put together a band of friends and never really looked back,” she says. They began practicing in the rehearsal space that Al shared with his other band, Supply & The Man, which included Jason Shao. After recording an EP at the historic London Bridge Studio, the band found themselves in need of solid bassists who could hit the ground running to support an already extensive repertoire and a reputation on the rise. “When we lost our bassist we asked Jason to hop on,” Al says. “This band has gone through its fair amount of hardships, especially involving people coming and going. But we feel really solid about what we have become...a phoenix out of the fire and ashes.” Within a year Jason had inspired new directions and become an integral part of the band. “The chemistry between Al, Jason and I has defined our identity” Mariko says. “It’s pure magic that we all found each other.”

Over the last year, Temple Canyon has become known for their expansive sound and textured playing despite only having three members. When asked about the band’s approach, Jason explains: “Mariko’s flowing melodies and distinctive voice are in the forefront. Her incredible range of expression is what carries many of our songs.” This is especially true on the title track, “Fortress,” which begins with the hushed magic of the very first studio take, followed by a fireworks display of choice licks by former lead guitarist Kris Gray and a veritable Eddie Vedder vocal moment. It is a perfect example of what Temple Canyon are known for — wild shifts in dynamic, soft beginnings that grow into grand explosive rock-outs. With the collection of songs on Fortress, Temple Canyon swing between intimate, stripped-down arrangements like “Roses In My Hair” to full-on stadium-tinged rock anthems like “Pressure” and “I Tangled With The Serpent.”

Delving deeper into the lyrical content, Mariko says, “The theme of the album takes place in two realms, Earth and outer space. When we are on the moon or other planets, we are still dealing with earthly things, much like Ray Bradbury’s All Summer In A Day. I was deeply moved by that short story at age 10 and I’m sure it has affected my writing.” Whether set on Earth or in some parallel universe, the lyrics of the songs on this album are very much rooted in true stories. “These songs are about family dissonance, ex-lovers, sociopolitical issues, friendship, inner demons, self-doubt, love and loss, etc. I come from a long line of people who have been separated from in often very unfortunate or occasionally, positively liberating instances. As I get older, the more I find myself trying to piece together a story of where I come from, finding a great deal of comfort in sharing with others, and learning of the universal experiences had between loved ones.”

The album includes songs like the churning, dizzying “Traveler,” a tender story about Mariko’s parents meeting and then separating, and how it affected her. The winding, effervescent ballad “Elysium” is inspired by the last time Mariko spoke to her older sister on the phone. “It’s a semi-campy satire of a relationship that’s become distant and somewhat broken but is rooted in a super beautiful deep connection that can never fully dissolve.” The title track, “Fortress,” takes a single line from a phone conversation and expands it into a mantra. “The fact that we named the album after a one-word song title is significant,” explains Mariko. “We wanted the title to be something people would immediately latch on to, remember but still have a little interpretive mystery.”

Indeed, despite the often emotional and highly relatable subject matter, Mariko’s misty phrases maintain a hidden code. “My Goldmine” is an eerie, elegiac pop of an apocalyptic love story about sharing emotional baggage with a soul mate, the transmuting of trauma into a rich source for an artist to draw from. “Like A Champion” is about the parallels between natural disasters and the emotional blows endured by a single mother, told symbolically through the character of a heavyweight boxer. The sweet sense of poetic lit continues with “Desire,” which is a Philip K. Dick-style psychedelic exploration, and “Roses in My Hair,” an inspirational self-hymn about forgiveness. Heavy, but utterly transcendent anthems of adventure and discovery. the first single from Fortress is the hook-filled and resonant “I Tangled With The Serpent,” which covers perhaps the most intense of the album’s subject matter. “It deals with the rampant physical and emotional abuse so many are experiencing and healing from,” Mariko says. Masked in a brightly pulsating, “Nashville”-inspired arrangement, it converts a horror story into an anthemic fight song that calls into mind classics like “Eye Of The Tiger.” The song anchors the dark and light moods and tones that Temple Canyon are continuously balancing, one song at a time. Like many of the songs from Fortress, “I Tangled With The Serpent” leaves the listener with a lot to interpret. “My role in the song is the witness,” says Mariko. “I was intentionally very cryptic when writing this. I was struggling with how to process my own experience, without divulging a story that is not mine to tell. For me the serpent is a woman afflicted by her own trauma to the extent that she is paralyzed and blind to her own trespasses. She is the character that you can’t help but empathize with despite having a conflicted moral sensibility.” Of course, the song can be interpreted many different ways. The conversational lines are transportive, taking the listener into their own story, making the twisted imagery that much more visceral and physically jolting. The clarity of musical direction and confidence in the emotional power of this song is what pushed Temple Canyon to pull the trigger and start recording Fortress. “We made it through hell recording this album,” says Mariko. “But we got what we wanted, we can’t wait for people to hear it.”