The Sunshine Shake: Poison the Well

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THE SUNSHINE STATE gives Poison the Well guitarist Ryan Primack the sunshine shakes. It's a condition documented on the Florida band's furious new CD, "The Tropic Rot" (Ferret Music).

"There is a common theme within the record directly related to how a lot of us feel living here, the common experience of being a resident of Florida instead of a visitor," Primack said. "A lot of people think this place is just a vacation all the time — people just hang out and go to the beaches and drink all the time. To a partial degree, that's true, but they do that because they're depressed, not happy.

"A lot of times, this whole area reeks of stagnation and people that are miserable," he continued. "The whole purpose of us being in a band was to find a way to leave Florida."

Lyrically, the album is even angrier than 2007's "Versions," which Primack described as "really sad, but almost in a more romantic way. ... Forlorn more than pissed off." But "The Tropic Rot" is a more sonically inviting record because it's so much less cluttered. "Versions" was stuffed to the gills with overdubs from non-hardcore instruments such as slide guitar, horns, mandolin and banjo.

"We all made a conscious effort when writing this record to not have things be so over-the-top tense and never sort of release, and I think we achieved that goal," Primack said. "We all wanted to strip down from 'Versions' and make it more simple and direct, but at the same time push it by making it different and slightly unpredictable."

Credit producer Steve Evetts with helping Poison the Well clean up a bit.

"I also think Steve is a bit more open-sounding producer," Primack said. "['Versions' producers] Pelle [Henricsson] and Eskil [Lovstrom] really like that tense-all-the-time thing and lots of crazy, crazy noise happening. I think Steve is a little cleaner — and I don't mean in a negative way. ... I don't think the recording itself sounds clean; it just has a little more room for you to hear things, as opposed to being completely layered and layered and layered until there's just no room left. And what you get isn't a lot of sounds, you get one sound because 18 sounds are happening at once."

There are even parts of "The Tropic Rot" that evoke the hazy grandeur of Pink Floyd — perhaps the least hardcore band of all time.

"That's one of the biggest compliments anybody can ever give — they're one of my favorite bands," Primack said. "No more Johnny Rotten with his 'I Hate Pink Floyd' T-shirts."

How about an "I Hate Florida" hoodie instead?

» Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St., Baltimore; "10 for $10 Tour" with Madball, Poison the Well, Terror, Vision, Trapped Under Ice, Crime in Stereo, The Ghost Inside, War of Ages, This Is Hell, Sat., July 11, 3 p.m., $10; 410-783-7888.

» Stream "The Tropic Rot" in its entirety.

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