slice of lime

‘Summer Thunder’
This song starts wide and fuzzy, the 70s rock elements blending into the best vocals on Garage Days. The guitars are spiky with saturation and are the perfect addition. Social Contract exemplifies their ability to write a song and wrap it all up neatly with a bow, the song consistent in its central emotions and sounds but still having room for the young band to play and explore. The last minute of the song brings in the Luigi Mansion-esque keys, with the vocals giving in to this beautiful scream completing off the song with a fuzzed-out exhale.

“It’s really exciting as a fresh new band to join the community and get to know more people and try to explore that landscape.”

‘Asteroid Blues’ is slow to start, creating a nice ambient tension in the beginning with the chaotic guitar and consistent drums. It has this background desert rock type of echo, the detached vocals and melody wandering making it feel emotionally vulnerable. I think it could use some thickening out, the moments where the guitar wanders in feeling the most velvety and finished. The empty spaces that accompany a song like this can be hard to balance, and this young band is already figuring out how to place the liminal spaces in music to create emotion.
The second song ‘Atmosphere’ has added psychedelic effects that feel very at home and the texture they add creates a feel to the song that it would lack completely without this addition. I can hear the Queen influence as they speak out in this song, the use of the keyboard feeling explorative and jovial. Their music is indie psych exploration, this avenue of indie music centered around meandering melodies, adding psychedelic effects, and lyrics of hope and loss tied to self-identity. You can visualize the intensity of the musicians while listening to the end of this song.

“I think jovial and energetic tend to be like the thing no matter what genre we’re doing.”

I hear more of the Beatles side of influence in the intro to ‘It’s Happening Again’. The muffled guitar and drums almost feel hand-painted into this song, the warm feel lingering behind each beat. It doesn’t meander too far or wide, just stretching out into the first minute of the song with lazy ease. The song picks up into this quick melody as the vocals repeat the central theme to this song – “It’s happening again”. The mixture of this insistence and quickened melodies creates a feeling of desperation. The lingering need translates into the back half of the song as well, the wide and echoing chords and harmonica feel like a baying hound waiting for its owner on a front porch, the setting sun behind him.
With ‘Gay-Fil-A’, they take a more indie rock turn with this song, the youthful energy behind the chorus being the main highlight of this song. The instrumental melodies follow this wound-tight intensity and the twangy tone of the guitar is the perfect finishing touch. It’s a shorter moment in the latest release from the band, Garage Days.

Interview

Q: Starting, roles, and anything you would like to tell me about yourselves.

Bob: My name is Bob McCarty, I’m a singer for Social Contract and I’m happy to be here.
Leo: My name is Leo. I’m the guitar player for Social Contract and I can bench press 500 lbs.
Jack: My name is Jack Smith. I’m the bassist for Social Contract and I can bench press our guitarist.
Dani: My name is Dani. I am the key player for social contract, and I like pears.
Raul: I’m Raul. I’m the drummer and sound engineer for Social Contract.

Q: How did you guys all meet?

Bob: College, and then a Super Smash Bros Tournament.
Raul: Yeah, I met everyone through Bob. I met him at a smash tournament. We both sucked. He always did better with results. But I won the most first to tens.
Dani: Very important distinction.

Q: What made you guys decide to play in a band together? What was the inspiration?

Bob:  Well, Leo was. I saw him and he’s like, really sexy.
Dani: That’s what happened to me. I had a class with Leo and I was like this man is so sexy I need to play music with him. And then we did. That was pretty much it.
Leo: And then for Jack, we just really needed a bass player and he was like our only option. So we just brought him. And we had a drummer, and Raul came in and played the Pornhub intro better than he did. And so you’re like, well, this is our guy.
Raul: That’s true. So, there was a band called Oort. Bob, one day was like, ‘dude, you gotta meet my roommate Leo, he’s awesome’. He just talked him up a ton and then told me that they played music and that I should join in. I went to go play with them, and I pretty quickly noticed that Bob, Leo and Dani had something special. They played a little different, you know, they had a little more to what they were doing, I could feel it more. Then one time I hopped on the kit of the guy that played drums in Oort and I played the Pornhub intro. The other guy could not play it. I heard later that after that they were like ‘Bro, Raul’s got to be our drummer’.
Dani: Yeah, me and Leo were both like ‘Okay, Raul’s the drummer!’ We called you up or whatever and he was like ‘I… don’t want to be the drummer.’ We were just like, ‘Oh… I didn’t see that being a thing.’
Raul: At the time, I was mostly just focusing on my own stuff. I’ve been doing solo stuff my entire time as a musician, so I just wanted to branch out, collaborate with people. So, I joined up with these guys. Dani invited us over at one point and over time it slowly just dissipated into us four. We would play at Denny’s house mainly, and at that time I was working at Amazon. I brought him a couple vests from work, so we were The Amazonians.
Dani: I started playing with Oort and it was a bunch of people in the living room at some point, it was so chaotic. We didn’t really have any direction like, it just seemed like a mess of sounds.
Leo: Which is not too far off from where we are now.
Dani: We’re a little more organized. I also, like Raul said, I could see that Leo, had some crazy guitar chops and he was just, like, very talented, like obviously very talented. He stood out from the group. Bob just had his mentality; he gave everyone a direction and was trying to keep everyone together. Then we met Raul, and Raul was like fucking crazy. He knows a lot of music and he has this crazy solo project. He does electronic music and so obviously we all want to get together. I think we were all interested in playing together. That was the right move.
Leo: Then, we played for how long without a bass?
Jack Smith: I don’t know how long it was. Up until like spring of 2022 because that’s when I saw you guys in the house show.
Raul: So, it was from May 2022 to March 2023, because you joined for our first show at Funktional with us when I used the real kit for the first time.
Jack Smith: So, I watched them play a house show and their nine-minute rendition of Asteroid Blues. I have played bass since I was in junior high. I was in the School of Rock program, so I played live quite a bit, and I really missed it. So, I was like you guys need a bassist and they were like, yeah, we do. I then joined in on a practice and got to know them more. I met Bob back in freshman year in college, but I didn’t know Raul or Dani until last year. And then they’re like, yeah, you’re good enough you can stay. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve loved it so far. Now I live with them, so we progressed quickly.

Q: How do you guys decide on your current sound?

Bob: Well, I don’t think we have decided really. A lot of our music tastes overlaps, but we all kind of have our own specialty niches or whatever that we really love. We basically just mash that all together. Right now, our songwriting process is one person who is basically like the director, and they have a chord progression or whatever and bring it to the band. For example, one of my favorite bands is Coldplay. So, my last song I brought was very Coldplay inspired, and so we made a whole Coldplay-esque sound. That’s basically what we’re doing right now.
Raul: Yeah, there are a few things about our songs that tie them together that make them sort of Social Contract songs. Mainly, we’ve been doing that process of having a single person bring in an idea and then we expand on that together with that person as a sort of ringleader deciding what stays and what goes. I think the most distinct of that was Jack. To take that role of director, to say what does stay and what does go. Most of the time it’s been more of like, I have these two aspects of the song – help. But it makes it really collaborative, and I feel like it’s really nice because we have sort of like a happy little family vibe kind of going. It just feels really collaborative, really comfortable, but that’s kind of how we got to where we’re at.
Jack: Our different tastes push our instrument playing into new genres too. As a bassist I’ve never really delved into funk or jazz, but these guys have pushed me to explore them more. Or like Leo’s more of a Blues guitarist whereas I’m like, let’s throw some metal guitar in there. We all push ourselves to be better instrumentalists.
Leo: That is one thing that I really like about playing with you guys: is that I feel like I’m constantly being pushed into doing new stuff and whatnot. Eventually I think our plan is after a few EP’s we change the process up. Then make an album where we kind of get rid of that director idea and really work on making a Social Contract sound.
Raul: I guess right now we’re kind of just exploring what we’ve got and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t. Yeah, we’re already seeing some patterns we’re about 8-9 songs in, and we’re seeing some like commonality between like what certain things we like to do more than others. Some things that have come up as patterns we’re like let’s nip it in the bud.

Q: If you had to describe that Social Contract sound to someone whose never heard you before, how would you describe it?

Dani: This is such a hard question that everyone asks us all the time, like I can never.
Raul: There’s a few words that I like to throw out. I think jovial and energetic tend to be like the thing no matter what genre we’re doing. It tends to be in that realm, but also psychedelic. We like to do a lot of effects work that could be psychedelic, very bluesy, almost everything we do has blues so that would be some, some things I could draw. I think it’s much more than that.
Jack Smith: I always say psychedelic rock. It’s like we’re a rock band with just sprinkles of everything else on top.
Raul: Yeah, I have no idea. I guess just fucking epic.
Jack Smith: Yeah, I guess we’ve thought about it, but it’s hard to nail down, especially with that first EP, it’s every song is very different.
Bob: Yeah, the jovial thing but Shifting Baselines is serious as hell.
Leo: Woah Bob, you’re talking about unreleased material right now.
Bob: It’s called marketing bro.
Raul: Bob was a business major in college.
Bob: I sell the sound.
Raul: Anyway, how different was that response to what you usually?

Q: I get all sorts of responses to my questions which is why I ask it. We just entered 2024, and you said you joined in 2023. Looking back on the last year what are some of your favorite moments as a band?

Raul: Bringing this guy in, Jack coming in like grounded everything.
Jack Smith: Editor’s note: Jack is blushing right now.
Raul: Jack is the bassist in case anyone and probably everyone forgot.
Leo: Yeah. Well, you never say his name during the concert.
Raul: We have a bit, and we like to interrupt introducing the bass player with the drum.
Dani: It’s like we’re presenting everyone. It’s like ‘This is Bob, the lead vocalist. This is Leo, the lead guitarist. This is Raul, the drum player. This is Dani, the key player and this is *drum noises*.’
Jack: For me, that would be the Halloween show at our house. Just surrounded by friends and new faces. We had an hour-long set, and we got two other bands, Windmill Fauna and Curbside. Everything just went right like the lighting and the set design was really nice and we all were dressed up as like monsters. We played some really fun covers that got the audience into it. It was the most tangible, pure rock live show I felt we’ve done as a group. Bob was doing little dances like all the little bits that you do on stage too are super fun and make it more than just playing music.
Leo: You walking into the crowd, bro.
Jack: Yeah, I had my wireless setups, so I could walk through the crowd while playing bass. It was just so much fun. That’s what I look forward to every time we make music.
Leo: I will also say making Gay-Fil-A was one of my highlights because that song we made in like a day.
Raul: We went to Chick-fil-A, came back, and wrote it.
Jack Smith: Oh yeah, they met him through me because I’m a manager at Chick-Fil-A and he used to be my boss. He’s not anymore, but whenever I went to a party with him, he would flirt with every single man at the party.
Leo: He’d strip, yeah? He’d get naked, right?
Jack: Not naked, he’s not an offender but he’d lose some clothing articles. Yeah, it’s just a very fun song.
Raul: Heavily inspired by that story, Bob and I started to work on lyrics. We came back and expanded on that riff. Leo made-up a fucking riffin solo, changed a little bit during performances and recording, but every time it just kind of slaps. Then Dani hopped on the rhythm guitar, that was fucking awesome. They kind of rounded out the ideas.
Jack Smith: I just remember walking up to the garage because at that time we were playing in Raul’s garage, and I heard the riff and was like ‘what you guys working on?’ Then I’m reading the lyrics they wrote down and I’m like, ‘Oh my God. Dude.’
Bob: My favorite would probably be the Halloween, but that’s taken so road trip to Illinois for the amp. We drove all the way to Illinois and back in a matter of a day and a half, two days.
Raul: No, that’s three days, Friday to Sunday.
Bob: We left, drove through the night, got there, picked up the amp, and then drove back.
Raul: It was a day and ½.
Raul: We were only there for like 4 hours.
Bob: Yeah, it was all for this amp that my dad got me for graduation. That was-
Raul: A great decision, but it was the only way you were going to actually make it back in time to practice on Sunday. Between Thursday and Sunday practice, so we had to go get an amp in Illinois and come back.
Leo: That was insane.
Raul: And it was worth it. We can actually hear Bob more than anything now.
Bob: Yeah, I’m a fan of it.
Raul: It was fun. We went in my car; we had a little sleep set up with the seats in the back pulled down into a makeshift bed. It was awesome.
Leo: We got pulled over by the cops.
Raul: Bob’s dad paid my ticket, shout out to Bob. Love you, brother.

 Q: Moving into 2024, do you guys have any projects or goals planned?

Jack: Yeah, yeah, quite a bit. We’re working on a second EP right now. We have two songs basically done, another song that’s I don’t know what percentage you would say is done, and another one that’s like 90% done.
Raul: We’re still figuring out that one it’s called “Void”.
Jack: Yeah, we actually just made a single, I guess you could call it that. We just need to write lyrics for it. So, we have a lot of stuff in the tank. Raul’s got a membership to the Music, so we’ve been getting used to the studio environment there and already it’s a vast improvement sound quality wise.
Raul: Yeah, I take care of like the production and mixing and mastering of the songs. So, it’s been a journey trying to get my room to work and then my garage to work. It was a fucking miracle that we got an EP made in there. I had to set up all sorts of furniture, weird stuff, blankets on amps and facing the walls, can’t hear myself type of shit. Crazy, but it sounds pretty good. Immediately working with the Music District, which thank you so much to them, you can hear the difference. It sounds much more professional. I don’t have to work on every song for 20 hours anymore. It’s a big difference. So yeah, we’re excited to release that second EP and we’ve got a few shows kind of in the works. We’re communicating with some venues in town. We made a music video with CTV from CSU. It took about 3 days. Shout out to CTV, the homies.
Jack Smith: We still got all our helmets from that music video on our shelf in our studio. I think what I’m super excited for is anyone who’s familiar with our first EP I think is going to be blown away by anything we do afterwards. Now we’re working in an actual studio, all of us are just getting better and learning each other’s musical languages and all the tech upgrades too. I actually have a bass amp now, the first EP is entirely on a guitar amp, and you can tell. Summer Thunder especially.
Raul: I think we’re just maturing a lot too as we write music together.

Q: Yeah, I was gonna ask, between these two EPs how would you say you’ve grown as musicians?

Dani: I think our sound has changed a lot like Jack was saying.
Raul: I’m a little smoother.
Dani: Yeah, it just I think we’re honing down on what we like and kind of getting rid of what we don’t like. Also, we’re doing stuff that works and we’re repeating that. Every time we come up with a new song, I feel like I like it better than the last one, which I feel like is a good sign of progress and maturing.
Leo: Our songwriting in general, I mean “Atmosphere” and “Asteroid Blues” is one chord progression in the whole song.
Raul: For 5 minutes. “Asteroid Blues” is 8.
Bob: It uses literally one chord progression for like 8 minutes. So, our songwriting ability is leveled up, our technical abilities are leveling up.
Leo: Bob has grown a lot as a singer. I’ve noticed. It’s amazing.
Dani: I mean, I think everyone’s grown up some musician like Jack I feel is obviously like especially stands out to me. His songwriting to me is crazy sometimes he just comes up with really cool shit in a matter on minutes. Just makes a whole song out of that. I think he has a very concrete vision for his songs which is cool.
Leo: You also have like 5 songs just in your head.
Raul: In the dome.
Leo: Ready to go. Yes, I think 2024 is going to be pretty fun.

Q: A larger part of the ethos for Slice of Lime and what I do is the community in Fort Collins and Northern Colorado. What do you think about the music community, the scene?

Raul: It’s pretty interesting; it seems really active. There’s little pockets of different styles, there are pockets of electronic music that’s present in different parts too. It’s kind of in the NOCO area more so than just Fort Collins. It’s split between Greeley and here, and kind of Denver. Denver’s pretty connected to Fort Collins too, I find that pretty cool. There’s a lot of different styles and genres. They get very jazzy, sometimes big bandy. There’s a really nice combination of musicians, of classically trained musicians versus rock and punk musicians. There’s all sorts of metal and black metal, hard rock, it goes all over the place. I love the scene here. I love going out to a local concert and being surprised by the opener more than the second or third person that shows up. Like who are these people? Then you go see them headline at the Aggie and things like that. It’s cool too how there’s like a bit of a scaling degree there, of like growing. You’ll see someone at a Blast n’Scrap show or at a bar show and then suddenly they’ll be at the Aggie and then suddenly they’re touring. It’ll be really quick, too. It’s really exciting as a fresh new band to join the community and get to know more people and try to explore that landscape. It’s been very, very fun to learn about how all that works. Mainly just getting to know different bands.
Leo: Yeah, everybody that we’ve met in the music scene here is super cool and super friendly.
Dani: They’re accessible, we can talk to them.
Jack: Yeah, there’s no bar on entry, you can just start talking to anybody, even if you’ve played one show at a thrift store. Everyone’s been super cool and supportive and willing to collaborate. I didn’t expect that since I was coming outside of the music scene, I thought it would be way more like presumptuous. People acting like ‘you gotta be this level to talk to us’, but no everyone’s super humble. You can tell they care about making music and want others to care about making music too.
Raul: It’s very interconnected.
Leo: You guys remember when we got our first Blast n’Scrap message? It was like holy shit. I feel like our mindset was ‘it’s going to take a while to get a show, we’re gonna have to grind our asses off.’
Raul: We had just made an Instagram and then we got reached out to. Then we had a show with them, they were super kind and really easy to work with and gave us that chance. 
Raul: We’re excited to work more with them because their mission, that sort of local community feel is like what’s most present, as in everyone that’s in it works for it. You know supports creating more of it. It’s self-sustaining.

Q: You’ve mentioned when writing a song, you were inspired by Coldplay. Do you guys have a lot of major inspirations in your writing as well?

Dani: I feel like Radiohead is a big one for me. They just represent like a band that has experimented with so many sounds and evolved in crazy ways. I think they have a lot of different ideas and they’re just really exciting. So, I look up to them a lot. But then, other bands like the Beatles. They are, I think, a big one for all of us, most of us. It’s a big one just because they represent a big influence on everyone’s sound. I look up to them a lot. A lot of my influence in my own playing comes from jazz, blues and stuff like that. I studied jazz at CSU, so like that inevitably makes its way into our playing. 
Jack: For me, growing up, my father introduced me to all of his favorite bands, which was like all metal, heavy rock. So, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax. That’s always been my thing. I guess my kind of contribution is the heavier side of rock. Then my mom funnily enough was like ‘this is the band I work out to.’ It’s this band called Royal Blood. Which is a two piece band with a bassist and a drummer, and they’re my favorite band up to this day. I’ve always been a fan of loud, crazy production and maximalist kind of tendencies, and especially when the bass gets to show off and be the star of the show.
Raul: Yeah, I’m the only one that doesn’t disagree.
Jack: Yeah, that’s where a lot of Summer Thunder came from was just hooking up my bass to a guitar and a bass amp now at this point. Being very, very loud and having a lot of riffs and that’s always like what I’ve liked most in music is the instrumentals. For me, vocals are usually just another instrument. I don’t get too into the actual lyrics, which might be sacrilege to some people I understand. It’s like Royal Blood and Muse- their bassist I love the variety of tones and things he’s doing to bring that band together. So, it’s always been just heavy metal, stuff like that. It’s been my thing.
Leo: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, Dani mentioned The Beatles. I think that’s a big one like you said, for all of us, a lot of us, most of us.
Jack: My dad thought they were hippies.
Leo: They are. I also really love like Black Sabbath, Muddy Waters and some of those older like Chicago and Delta Blues guys. The last song I worked on was kind of inspired by Parliament funkadelic, Jimi Hendrix, Prince and stuff, I guess. I’ve been really into the Brian Jonestown massacre recently.
Bob: I just like to write sad acoustic shit, which is very Coldplay-y. My top five is like Pink Floyd, Strokes, Coldplay, Mac Miller, and Black Keys but like when it comes to songwriting, I only ever really think of like Coldplay, folky shit. I’ve only ever written songs with acoustic chord progressions. Something I’m trying to branch out from, but it’s really hard because I only write songs when I’m like, really feeling emotions. Those emotions are usually sad, Coldplay emotions. So, if that’s how I feel, then why change it? But I also want to expand, do some like Stroke-y type shit.
Leo: Start Stroking.
Dani: Start Stroking it.
Raul: I’m learning to tap into whatever it is I feel with you guys, because I’ve been working on electronic music since I was like 12 or 13, I’m 24 now. It’s always been like house music, very inspired by video game music, Nintendo mainly. Just trying to branch out from that. I did some electronica, indie stuff on my recent album. But with Social Contract, I find that I’m mainly inspired by is the Thee O Sees, psychedelic rock. I find a lot of inspiration in The Beatles, too. Just because of the variety and the storytelling in their songs. Queen is a big inspiration for me, mainly because of Freddie as a vocalist. I just love the way he expresses and I try to bring that into not just singing but songwriting, just that like heavy attention to detail.  To what word is being used and how you express that word. I kind of like that theatrical feel to things, that epic feel. I thought “Asteroid Blues”, that was kind of the intention: more Floyd-esque, prog rock. Trying to get everywhere and explode that maximalism. Justice, speaking of maximalism, the French electronic. Tame Impala is a huge influence on all of us.
Dani: I also fuck with a lot of slower indie shit. I feel its more of a me thing, maybe Bob is also into it.
Raul: Men I Trust is a good one.
Dani: I love Men I Trust, but also like Dwayne, Mac Demarco.
Jack: I think there’s the music that inspires us in our songwriting, but it’s way more expansive beyond that. One of my favorite bands is Mild Orange and you will never see me writing a song like Mild Orange.
Dani: I think everyone’s taste is varied and expansive.
Raul: I guess the difference is what connects to what we want to communicate and what just resonates with us. What we want to try and say.