Matt Berry rocks back and forth while clutching his black 2013 Jazzmaster guitar, his long, bleached-blond hair intermittently casting a dancing shadow over his densely populated pedal board. Beside him Kevin Prochnow stomps his foot in rhythm with Sam Cruz's emphatic drumming. It's Prochnow's first show as a member of Happy Diving, and the packed house (a suburban garage with four or five people, a Kenmore washer and dryer, and some gardening equipment) is soaking up every note. But the band's sound — a sonic sledgehammer of fuzz rock with the weight of Dinosaur Jr.-comparisons — punches through the garage's old, moldy walls as if it's destined to find a bigger crowd.
That was a year and half ago. Now, Happy Diving is looking to spread its brand of fuzz rock to more than just annoyed neighbors — teaming up with the high-resolution noise-rock act Never Young for a trek up the West Coast, starting with a kickoff show in Oakland July 15. The two groups feel a kinship beyond sharing a drummer in Cruz; they're both Bay Area-based bands born out of the underground DIY scene doing something different, championing a noisy guitar rock sound, unafraid to throw a hook instead of the more generally accepted straightforward jab.
Berry, 21, grew up on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel as part of a tightly knit clique of young San Ramon Valley musicians equally interested in poppy guitar riffs as highly moshable breakdowns. As he explains the time the group spent discovering — and toying with — various genres together, it's clear the memory is near and dear. But as time passed, and friends started moving on (headed off to college or breaking up their bands) the suburban nest Berry once cherished suddenly became stifling. With the end of a long-term relationship fresh on his mind, and guitar in hand, Berry headed north, relocating to Seattle.
"Music has never been disappointing to me. It's never trapped me — it makes me feel free. If I set goals [about future plans] then I put myself in a trap. A lot of life is disappointing and music is one of the few things that's not," Berry says, pausing for a second before concluding in a way that sounds like it's the first time he's realized it. "Music just makes me feel good in a way that life can't."
Perhaps that's why the prolific, albeit easily distracted musician, has produced a laundry list of serious and distinctly unserious projects. He bought his guitar with the money Adult Swim paid him to use his sea punk project, Liquid Passion, as background music for a flash game. He also had a somewhat well-received vaporwave project called Cyber Jacuzzi, a Joy Division-worship band called Cult Dive, and a satirical beat-down band called Tucker and The Jiblets. And unless you've got a lot of time on your hands (or enjoy enthusiastic impressions), don't ask him about his Cro-Mags fan fiction project (it's something about lead singer John Joseph living in the sewers and becoming king of the rats after former member Harley's "final betrayal").
"Making music is the only thing that makes me feel satisfied with my life," Berry says. "There's so many genres and so much that interests me — I just want to do it all. If I can just interact with every medium and genre of music, and form my own version of it, it helps me understand myself."
So even if it means flying home to the Bay Area for each Happy Diving show, Berry feels more at home living in a house with four other musically involved people in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood.
But there's something different about Happy Diving. It doesn't fit in with the rest of Berry's groups. It's serious. Serious enough to win over crowds of normally tunnel-visioned hardcore punks, garner praise from Pitchfork, and count Stephan Jenkins, the lead singer of Third Eye Blind (a band Berry has always admired and enjoyed), as one of its vocal supporters.
"They're one of those bands where I can't tell if they'll be on the main stage of Coachella next year or just gone," Jenkins says of Happy Diving, adding that he hopes the band, like the rest of the San Francisco music scene, can survive.
As for Never Young's Nikolas Soelter — he, like Berry, is also suburban-bred, but of the Southern California variety. Soelter's earlier band, Calculator, had supported Happy Diving early on. It only made sense that the two bands would share the tour, especially after they started sharing members, Berry says.
"Sam [Cruz] joined the group right after we had written the self-titled EP," says Soelter, 23, adding that Cruz had earlier jammed with the band and fit in immediately. "Sam's an incredible drummer — so we were like, 'Do you want to join the band for real and be a 100 percent member and collaborate on everything with us?'"
Cruz accepted, solidifying the bond between the two groups. But Cruz was already influencing Never Young before becoming an official member; his posting of the band's Master Copy on Happy Diving's Facebook page would result in Happy Diving's Bay Area label putting out the Never Young record. Master Copy sees Never Young synthesizing secretly melodic noise rock by mixing healthy servings of Fugazi within a digital, information-age aesthetic.
But a label, tour route, and drummer isn't everything Happy Diving and Never Young share — the two groups also both recorded their recent albums at Jack Shirley's Atomic Garden Studio. For Happy Diving it was the melancholy-soaked So Bunted 7-inch, due out July 17 on Topshelf Records; for Never Young it was the self-titled, one-sided 12-inch that draws inspiration from electronic artists like Arca and Jesse Kanda.
"We were going to do a full U.S. tour but it fell through, and when it did, our first thought was, 'Let's do a West Coast tour with Never Young,'" Berry says. "And we share drummers, which just makes it so much easier — well, not for Sam because he's going to be so sweaty every night."
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