You have to love it when rock ‘n’ roll gets all educational on your bad self. And Oklahoma art-rock quartet Colourmusic is doing just that, making its fans think about — and feel, even — the relationship between color and music.
It all goes back to the late 1660s, when Sir Isaac Newton changed the way his peers saw things. Everyone knew of color, of course. But they didn’t know where it came from. Newton proved that light gives us color — and light alone. And that lead to Newton’s theory of color, a groundbreaking treatise on color’s true roots.
His theory on “colour music notation” is intense and structured, and many other theories have followed. And even now, Colourmusic the band — with the British spelling to pay homage to Newton and also to make the group’s U.K.-born Nick Turner feel OK about living in Stillwater, Okla. — has its own spin on the theory.
“We would never be able to write a decent song without thinking about music in terms of colors,” said Ryan Hendrix, who founded the band with Turner in 2005. “As songwriters, we all come from different backgrounds, and if we didn’t have the colors, we would be writing generic songs.
“The colors allow us to be able to talk about music and find a way to avoid personal opinion being the only thing that dictates our direction.”
Sure enough, the band’s lists its influences on its MySpace page as “Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.” There was also a period of time when the members all paraded around as the same man, Roy G. Biv — now an elementary school pneumonic device for memorizing Newton’s aforementioned colors of the spectrum.
And it doesn’t stop. The band started with two EPs, “Red” and “Yellow” — with songs written accordingly. Most of those songs are featured on the new release, and the band’s debut full-length, “f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13.” The songs, sure to be the focus of Colourmusic’s Colorado shows this week (at Fort Collins’ Road 34 on Tuesday and at Denver’s Hi-Dive on Wednesday) are exercises in emotions.
“Our real philosophy about colors and music is essentially about emotion,” Hendrix said. “What produces our record is not us but the emotions.”
“What emotions are in the music?” is an easier question to answer than “What color does the music sound like?” So here we go, song by song: “You Can Call Me by My Name” is giddy and exuberant; “Yes!” is raw and meditative; “Circles” is playful and curious; “Rock and Roll Polar Bear” is shy yet adventurous; “Put in a Little Gas” is boisterous and defiant.
The band specializes in joyous music, and their live shows follow suit — in suits, no less. The group’s in-concert uniforms: matching white jumpsuits.
Yes, they’re toning things down from the days when they focused on outrageous spectacle in their live shows. Gone are the days of Colourmusic portraying the American family onstage with some lucky members in drag operating various props (including an ironing board) in addition to their instruments.
The band’s first swing through Denver a few years ago saw them pulling off the American-family show at the Hi-Dive one night while employing a different theme (involving exercise outfits and routines) the following night at the Larimer Lounge.
It was impressive, to say the least, although not nearly as cool as a festival performance they threw down in Oklahoma around that same time — a show that saw the band (and its many stage props) get painted by energetic, paintbrush-wielding fans.
But the costumes and props and many peripherals were starting to get in the way of things, although Hendrix admits that even the white jumpsuits are a holdover from a different time — when the band would wear them so their bodies would pick up whatever was being projected on them.
“We’ve hung that up,” Hendrix said. “The things we’ve been doing now have been so much more introverted. . . . We’ve been accused of being a gimmick band, and we’re like, ‘Our music is not gimmicky.’ But live, we were comfortable doing something weird, but not anymore.
“Now we’re just mining our own depths as performers and focusing on ourselves. Now we’re more of a rock band than we’ve ever been before. Only we’re still wearing the jumpsuits.”
And how do you keep an all- white jumpsuit clean on a national tour?
“Some of the guys like to clean their stuff,” Hendrix said, “but I don’t. I don’t like to clean it. It doesn’t stink, yet. And I don’t clean my outfit because these are my war wounds. It’s filthy, and it shows how ferocious we are — and these are the scars of previous performances.
“It’s like, ‘I’m here, and I intend to add to that.’ It’s a football player’s attitude.”
The band is already working on material for its follow-up to the bafflingly titled debut, and the theme for No. 2 is “pink.” What does pink look like? What does pink sound like? They might give you a sneak peek next week if you ask nicely.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
Colourmusic
Art rock. Road 34, 1314 W. Elizabeth St., Fort Collins. Tuesday. 9 p.m. Free. More: .
Hi-Dive, 7 S. Broadway, Denver, with Blue Million Miles and Porlolo opening. Wednesday. 9 p.m. $8. More: hi-dive.com.
