Left to right: Joe, Jeff, Steven, Mike, Kelly
Kindo, formerly known as The Reign of Kindo, is an alternative/jazz/progressive rock band based in Buffalo, New York.
The band started out as four out of five former members of the indie band This Day & Age, after its vocalist Jeff Martin left in 2007. Joseph Secchiarolli, who originally played bass, took over as vocalist, and they recruited Jeffrey Jarvis to round out their lineup on bass. After their second album This is What Happens was released in 2010, pianist Kelly Sciandra left the band and was replaced by Danny Pizarro Jr., who first featured in the band's live studio performances of some of the aforementioned album's songs. After the release of their third album Play With Fire, guitarist Mike Carroll was replaced by John Baab as they toured to support the album. Later, percussionist Geraldo Castillo, who had collaborated with the band on several live videos, became an official member as well. After the release of their fourth full-length album Happy However After, however, the band's lineup changed significantly, now leaving Secchiarolli and Jarvis as the only remaining original members.
They have several live studio performance videos uploaded on YouTube, which can be viewed here
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The band is composed of the following members:
- Joseph Secchiarolli - vocals/guitar/saxophone
- Jeffrey Jarvis - bass guitar
- Rocco DellaNeve - keyboards/backing vocals
- Kendall Lantz - drums
- Amit Peled - guitar
- Rodney Flood - percussion
Former members:
- Kelly Sciandra - piano
- Mike Carroll - guitar/percussion
- Danny Pizarro Jr. - piano
- Steven Padin - drums/backing vocals
- Geraldo Castillo - percussion/vocals
- John Baab - electric guitar
Discography:
- The Reign of Kindo EP (2007)
- Rhythm, Chord, & Melody (2008)
- This is What Happens (2010)
- Play With Fire (2013)
- Happy However After (2018)
The band and its music provides examples of the following tropes:
- Album Title Drop: The album title This is What Happens is taken from one of the lines in "Comfort in the Orchestration", while Play With Fire comes from the very last lyric of the album, from the song "The Man, the Wood & the Stone."
- And I Must Scream: The singer in "Nightingale" is a man left paralyzed and unable to speak after a car accident, who's lamenting not only that he can't tell his girl how much he misses her, but also the fact that she left him for another man.
- Anti-Love Song: "Romancing a Stranger" is about the feeling of unrequited love, with the singer realizing at the end:"I've earned a few smiles, I've heard a kind word here and there,
But I must face the morning air, how pathetic that I care,
For the romance of a stranger's wandering eyes
She doesn't love me..." - The Band Minus the Face: Averted in that This Day & Age only released two albums before Jeff Martin left.
- Call-Back: "Sing When No One's Around" from Play With Fire reuses an instrumental riff from "Morning Cloud", which is off of Rhythm, Chord & Melody, two albums prior.
- Call-Forward: In the album Play With Fire, the lyrics "You put a feeling in the night" is first sung in "Help It", several tracks before the actual song "Feeling in the Night".
- Cover Version: Their first self-titled EP includes a cover of "Do You Realize?" by The Flaming Lips. On live performances, they sometimes cover John Mayer's "I Can't Trust Myself (With Loving You)".
- Did I Mention It's Christmas?: "Breathe Again" has to be one of the darkest Christmas songs ever. See Lyrical Dissonance below.
- Epic Rocking: "Hold Out" is a great example of this.
- Genre-Busting: The band's music is mostly jazz-influenced progressive rock, with some elements of blues, and also influenced by video game music, given that Mike and Steve are big fans of Nintendo video games. As proof of the latter statement, they made an 8-bit version of This is What Happens, titled This is Also What Happens. Play With Fire also had an 8-bit remix album titled PLAY.
- Love Nostalgia Song: "Nice to Meet You" is about a solitary man who screwed up his one chance to escape his loneliness. "Nightingale" is this trope combined with And I Must Scream. "Return to Me" counts as well.
- Lyrical Cold Open: The first two songs of the album Play With Fire ("The Hero, The Saint, The Tyrant & The Terrorist", "Help It") feature this.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Breathe Again" is about a man who chases down and brutally murders a thief who broke in and robbed his house on Christmas Eve. "Nightingale", as indicated above in And I Must Scream, is about a paralyzed and heartbroken man. The former is set to a mellow jazz melody, while the latter is a more fast-paced song with a peculiar rhythm.
- New Sound Album: Happy However After is the first album with John Baab, a blues guitar player. Accordingly, some of the songs incorporate more distorted rock riffs. Aside from that, there are also a lot more percussions and electronics throughout the album.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "The Moments in Between" is about a man dreaming of paradise and waking up to a living hell.
- Sequel Song: "Now We've Made Our Ascent" from This is What Happens is one to "Till We Make Our Ascent" from the previous album Rhythm, Chord & Melody.
- Take That!: "I Hate Music" castigates the shallowness of modern radio music and meaningless "talent shows" on TV, and rants on how the quality of music in recent times seems to have gone down the drain. Note that prior to this album, none of the band's songs ever included a swear word before this song, in which the word "shit" is sung twice."There was a time when you couldn't fake your game,
You turned the red light on and you delivered the goods,
Or you were chased off-stage by someone else who could,
You were making magic, or you couldn't make nothing at all
I hate music, if that's what you call music, that's for sure
If you're amused by the polysonic zoom, well, it's all yours
Every day, there's a new song being played that sounds like hell
Whoever puts that garbage on the air must love the smell
You can listen to whatever you like, I try to keep it bottled up inside,
But don't pretend it's not polluting the world, as it plays on and on and on and on
Somewhere they must have lost their way, and threw their souls out for attention and fame,
Their taste is bad, their opinions are wrong, they make awful shit, but the radio keeps playing their songs..." - Truck Driver's Gear Change: The band loves this trope. A short list of songs featuring this trope: "Needle and Thread" (G minor to C minor), "Great Blue Sea" (D# minor to G# minor to D minor), "Till We Make Our Ascent" (D major to C# minor to E minor and back to D major), "Thrill of the Fall" (C minor to A# minor), "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" (D# minor to D minor), "Battling the Years" (A# minor to D# minor), "Help It" (A minor to A# minor), "Make a Sound" (G minor to G# minor), "Feeling in the Night" (G minor to A# minor and back to G minor), "Romancing a Stranger" (A# minor to G minor), "Return to Me" (D minor to F# minor), Obsolete (A# minor to A minor).
- Uncommon Time: "Thrill of the Fall" is set in the highly uncommon time signature of 7/8 (though there is one 4/4 measure in the bridge, when Joe sings "I keep knocking at the door"). It's incredibly difficult to follow the rhythm on the first listen.
- "The Hero, The Saint, The Tyrant & The Terrorist" uses 5/4 (like the Mission: Impossible theme).
- The instrumental refrain of "Sing When No One's Around" is a mildly complex 11/8 (6/8 + 5/8).
- "Feeling in the Night" plays fast and loose with this trope. It starts out with a relatively consistent 5/4 timing, but it only gets more confusing starting from the end of the first chorus, which introduces 7/4 measures in the mix.
- "Let Me Be" is in 12/4.
- "The Hero, The Saint, The Tyrant & The Terrorist"
- Word Salad Name: According to Joe, the band got their name from a bunch of nonsensical phrases Mike Carroll made up. A decade later, they officially decided to just go by "Kindo" instead.
- The World Is Just Awesome: The theme of the song "Impossible World".
