The Whether Channel’s upcoming EP tells story of a skeleton

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For their newest EP, The Whether Channel continues the story of an ordinary skeleton, Skully, and his imaginary stick figure friend, Ted.

Skully and Ted are the fictional characters that the band’s latest EP “Skully and Ted’s Bogus Journey” centers around. The characters are inspired by the “Bill and Ted” movies, a series of science fiction films in which two teenagers time travel though they are not very intelligent.

In the previous EP “Skully and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” the music is more upbeat with stories about Skully — a 9-to-5 skeleton who is bored with his job — and Ted. The two characters go and take on the world through various adventures that are detailed in the music. The skeleton is currently the band’s mascot.

Contrasting the tone of the last EP, the new release will “be sonically darker, more ambient, and the lyrics are more brooding,” said Andrew Garces, a Syracuse University senior and one of the band’s guitarists and singers.

“Skully and Ted’s Bogus Journey” will be released on May 14 and contains five songs. The band intends to portray the fluctuation of life with its ups-and-downs.

The EP is meant to remind people that they are not alone in tough times, especially during the pandemic when people are required to quarantine and practice social distancing. The band hopes to make the EP relatable, said Rory Stanley, an SU senior and a singer and guitarist with the band.

These topics of life and depression are the focus of the band. They are embodied in its name — The Whether Channel.

“The meaning behind “whether” is that life is all about what ifs and whatnot,” Garces said. “And the choices you make define you as a person and the paths you take. It really symbolizes what we talk a lot about with topics of life, depression and all that kind of stuff.”

The band first started with a group of friends who are into the 2000s emo music. Stanley, Garces and Max Marcy, an SU senior and the band’s bassist, came up with the idea of a band as a joke.

They set out to play an emo show together and planned to quit afterwards. However, after their first show, they decided to continue the band and eventually added SU senior Jimmy Unanue on as their drummer.

Garces, Stanley and Marcy came up with the idea for the band as a joke. They intended to play one show together and then quit. Chenze Chen | Staff Photographer

“We were all in different groups doing different styles of music, but we all just realized we like corny emo music from the 2000s,” Marcy said. “We’re gonna make that kind of music, and we just started doing it.”

While describing themselves as an emo band, the band also takes influences from punk, rock and pop.

Unanue said they mostly play emo punk pop while also getting influences from progressive rock.

The band composes their music to feel catchy and friendly to people who are not familiar with hard rock. Stanley admitted that the term “emo” can be intimidating to people because they associate it with music like metal core, where there is a lot of screaming involved.

“We do have a lot of screaming throughout our stuff, but we try to make it in a way that’s very digestible,” Stanley said.

The band wrote and recorded their latest EP in Stanley’s apartment. Chenze Chen | Staff Photographer

The upcoming EP is the product of the band’s cooperation during the pandemic. With some lyrics and melodies by Garces, the band members gathered, edited and recorded the EP through winter break in Stanley’s apartment.

Garces’s favorite track is “For lack of” because it was written during a brainstorming session in Stanley’s living room.

With the skills and time spent during the pandemic producing music, the band hopes to continue their music career together after graduation.

“Our plan is basically to record remotely, keep grinding the way we’ve been doing it,” Marcy said. “We’ve kind of gotten good at writing from a distance through pandemic, so nothing’s gonna stop that now.”