by Jennifer Pelly // Fordham University
Rescuing a kitten while on tour in Detroit may not be a particularly rock and roll thing to do, but don’t let that fool you: the New York City alt-rock four-piece Vision Through Sound is decidedly rock and roll. Even the kitten now has a taste for rock, says guitarist and front man Andrew Krolikowski, surrogate father to Monte Shakespeare Stardust (named after the guy whose floor the band slept on while touring in Michigan). “He’s a big Bob Dylan fan,” Krolikowski says.
Krolikowski, a junior at New York University studying education and American Sign Language, and drummer Mike Sarna, a junior at Hofstra studying history, were thirteen when they started VTS. For the most part their musical tastes differed, but their shared distaste for Blink 182 was enough of a bond to motivate their incessant practicing in Sarna’s garage and bedroom. “Mike and I were just happy not to be playing pop-punk,” Krolikowski says.
Just as their musical tastes differ, the two founding members have always disagreed on their visions of what the band should be. Krolikowski says that this tension is what has helped them develop their unique sound—their creative pop experiments manage to be both bizarre and refined, bringing color to one of music’s grayest areas with their catchy lyrics and dance-inducing melodies. This sound shines on their fourth release, Cheer Up Chap, Middle School Isn’t Everything (2006), which has lead to the guys’ developing a significant fan base on LI Long Island and throughout New York City.
Vision Through Sound has always been a four-piece group, but it took Sarna and Krolikowski a while to find permanent guitarists or bassists. Guitarist Fran Berkman, a 2006 Cornell grad with a degree in Human Development, joined in 2003. Berkman would come home to Long Island to practice and play gigs on weekends—the band would also head up to Cornell for shows, and still continues to do so. Two years after Berkman’s arrival, VTS picked up bassist Mike McManus, a longtime fan of the band and current freshman studying theatre at Hunter College in NYC. Since the band’s beginning in 2001, the songwriting process has become far more collaborative; Krolikowski used to write the majority of the music, but now Berkman also contributes significantly.
The guys’ eclectic personalities heighten the band’s unique qualities. “Honestly, we’re all a bunch of freaks,” Krolikowski says. The guys have been known to distribute containers of bubbles at their shows, and show up on stage in three-piece suits with Converse or quirky vintage hippie-age threads.
The guys like the fact that their musical tastes differ radically, with an assortment of favorite artists including The Beatles, The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin. Krolikowski says that they don’t try to sound like any particular group: “What we write is just organically what happens when we play together.” There is a distinct air of Vonnegut-esque humor that surrounds VTS’s music. One of their newest songs, “Millipedes,” refers directly to lines from the beginning of Slaughter House Five.
Krolikowski also explained that although many bands today cite The Smiths as an influence, most of them don’t catch the epic group’s “absurdly dark sense of humor,” which is something VTS has embraced. “I guess our philosophy is that, yeah, life isn’t all great all the time, but what the hell—we’re going to have a good time and dance and try to find some beauty,” Krolikowski said. These good times are paired with a serious perspective towards their work. Although the guys all work at odd jobs (Fran subs at a high school and Andrew docks boats at NYC’s South Street Seaport), they all hope to one day make the band their full time careers.
After the shows are over and the dance parties and sing-alongs cease, the guys of VTS find deeper reasons to remain dedicated to what they do. “I just feel like the whole point is to make people feel that they are not alone,” says Krolikowski of the band’s music. “That there is something utterly human that we all have in common and that we could all take part in.”
Website: www.myspace.com/visionthroughsound
