In December 2017, the Cinema Bar in Culver City opened its doors to local trio Cheekface for the group to play its first official show. More than seven years, hundreds of shows and tens of thousands of fans later, the band was ready to return to the venue that started it all on a brisk Valentine’s Day afternoon.
Unfortunately, Cinema Bar was unexpectedly closed, as was the doughnut shop across the street.
“It’s kinda fitting,” drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards says with a chuckle behind a face mask and glasses as the band jaywalks across Sepulveda Boulevard for the second time before settling in at Maple Block Meat Co.
“For us or for Cinema Bar?” both singer-guitarist Greg Katz and bassist Amanda Tannen quip back, nearly in unison.
Edwards meant it as a polite rib at the Culver City staple dive bar, but it’s also an appropriate joke to crack about the group that calls itself “America’s local band.” As an indie rock band that dabbles in everything from ska to crabcore on its new album, “Middle Spoon” (released Tuesday), Cheekface,since its 2017 formation, is probably best described with words like “scrappy,” “unconventional” and “surprising.”
“When Greg and I started the project, it was like, ‘Let’s do everything with the intention of having fun and not take ourselves too seriously,’” bassist Amanda Tannen of Cheekface says.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Why? Well, for a band both releasing its fifth album and headlining a national tour this spring, Cheekface is committed to a DIY mentality on levels that many bands abandon the second they taste success. All three members have spent plenty of time in the music industry (both in other bands and in other positions) outside of Cheekface, and they’re each willing to use their acquired skills for the betterment of the band.
For instance, Tannen handles all of the visual artwork and merch side of things while Katz uses his publishing experience to have Cheekface self-release all of its albums without a label (and Edwards contributes his “glowing” skin care routine, the band jokes). And it helps that the band has a writing style that interjects memorable wit and humor into catchy songs about relatable topics — particularly for its audience of largely therapy-attending millennials and Gen Zers.
“I’ve come to understand that the only thing that matters as far as a project ‘succeeding’ is whether people like the music and want to listen to it,” Katz says, wearing a pink crewneck sweater. “The deeper you get into it, the more you relearn that. If you put out music that people want to hear, they will keep voting for you to continue doing it. I also think we stripped the need for external validation for this band from the jump by basically planning for it to be nothing.”
When Katz says Cheekface began with no expectations, he means it. The entire project started with the goal of he and Tannen writing a handful of songs together for their own mental health, releasing them on Bandcamp and maybe playing a backyard show or two. But one local gig became many, with the group jumping on to dozens of shows with friends’ bands around L.A. in 2018 and 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down its touring plans in 2020.
By the time live music was a thing again later in 2021, Cheekface was already two albums (2019’s “Therapy Island” and 2021’s “Emphatically No.”) into its career and had started building an online following of “Cheek Freaks.” The trio found a niche in the oft-serious indie world by using humor and irreverence to lighten the mood of their anxiety-infused pop-rock, earning a unique fan base that spans generations, genres and scenes across the country.
So even though “Middle Spoon” was born out of a traumatic 2024 for both Katz (whose father suffered a stroke and grandmother passed away) and Tannen (whose long-term relationship ended in “a really traumatic breakup”), the songwriters are quick to point out that it’s neither a breakup album nor “a dead grandma album.”
“Both Greg and I were going through a period of change at the same time right before [2024’s “It’s Sorted”] released,” Tannen says, referencing her breakup and Katz’s familial losses. “I had also just left my full-time job to be able to focus on Cheekface, so all of the things that were stable in my life got taken out from under me, and I didn’t know how to process things. When we got home from touring, we really had to face that, so I think a good part of this album is about change and loss and finding your footing.”
“A lot of our music references self-help culture,” Katz adds. “In self-help culture, ‘growth’ is very romanticized where you do breathwork and meditate, and then you mature into this philosophic version of yourself. But a lot of growth is not intentional. It happens because some s— occurs and you have to move through that s—, whether you like it or not. That process is awkward and painful and makes you look at a part of yourself that you really don’t like. A lot of this album grapples with that discomfort that we were feeling as we were writing it.”
From a logistical standpoint, the release of “Middle Spoon” is also a perfect look at how the DIY wheels of Cheekface turn. Having just released its last album in January 2024 and then immediately touring through late May, the new album comes just nine months after the band began writing it. And having put out five albums (plus a few EPs, covers and other tunes) in less than six years, the quick turnaround is effectively par for the course for the trio.
While other artists see their release schedule slowed by label politics and producers fiddling to perfect every song, Cheekface isn’t beholden to any of those limitations and sees no reason to delay creating or releasing new music whenever it wants.
“I’ve come to understand that the only thing that matters as far as a project ‘succeeding’ is whether people like the music and want to listen to it,” singer/guitarist Greg Katz of Cheekface says
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“Writing the music is the most fun part, and recording the music is the second most fun part, so why would we block that off?” Katz says. “If it’s the fun part, we should do it the most, because this band runs on having fun. We don’t have to deal with a label because we’re not on one, so there’s no one saying, ‘You should space this out,’ or ‘We have a lot of other albums that we need to put out before we get to yours.’ One of my favorite bands is Bad Religion — who also self-released their own records — and from 1988 to 1994, they released six of the most classic Bad Religion albums.”
“When Greg and I started the project, it was like, ‘Let’s do everything with the intention of having fun and not take ourselves too seriously,’” Tannen adds. “We just want to have some fun and write some music, so the songs mostly get written quickly. If a song takes months to write, there might be something wrong with that song, and maybe it’s not a Cheekface song anyway. We’re not looking for something perfect, because there is no perfect.”
“I’ve been in bands where things get super bogged down by that sense of preciousness, where it’s like every song has to be perfect,” Edwards adds. “You can never move on with ‘good enough,’ and it gets so frustrating.”
“I don’t think we feel burdened to make a heartbreaking work of staggering genius when we sit down to write,” Katz says with a laugh. “We just make the music we want to hear.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
