MUSIC FEATURE
Drummer O’Brien hopes fans of the band’s earlier music will keep an open mind toward the fresh material on the new album. He thinks they’ll hear three players that have matured as musicians and songwriters, while pulling together to improve as a band. The advance single for the album, “Peace of Mind,” Jail Socks release debut draws on the soaring guitars, propulsive rhythms album and discover a new and aching vulnerability the band established lease on life on previous releases, ramping up those elements to craft a spacious, anthemic guitar-driven tune BY PAT MORAN with an arrangement that sounds just right while incorporating inventive twists and turns. Jail Socks As Aidan Yoh tells it, Jail Socks began with a rips through the rocking, plaintive three-minute song bang — quite a few of them, actually. Years before with nary a wasted chord, drumbeat or howl. Yoh became guitarist and colead vocalist for pop punk trio Jail Socks, he was 16 years old, getting into trouble with his friends by shooting off fireworks from the roof of a middle school. “I ended up getting arrested,” Yoh says. “I got charged with two felonies — for stupid stuff.” Yoh was booked and told to hand over his clothes to his jailer. The only item he didn’t give up was his favorite pair of socks. All night, Yoh paced the grimy floor of his cell in his prized socks, which quickly became indescribably filthy. By 4 a.m., Yoh was deliriously tired. He became convinced that he could never wear that pair of socks again. “They were my jail socks” he says. “They were bad luck.” The cursed socks became a joke, one that eventually transformed into the name JAIL SOCKS (FROM LEFT): COLMAN O’BRIEN, JAKE THOMAS AND AIDAN YOH. of Yoh’s band. But Jail Socks, a melodic, emo-tinged punky power trio comprised Growing pains and placeholders of Yoh, drummer Colman O’Brien and bassist Jake Today, Yoh shares lyric writing chores with Thomas, didn’t explode upon the local music scene bassist Thomas, but in Jail Socks’ early days, he was directly after Yoh’s ill-considered fireworks display. the primary songwriter. Many of those songs were To get where it is today, Jail Socks had to go through fueled by the compressed, foregrounded nostalgia a nearly four-year growth period that included a people often feel as they move out of their teens and line-up change, a record label switch and a musical into their 20s, a time when experiences are deeply and artistic rejuvenation with the right producer. felt and long remembered. The three-piece band releases their first full “A lot of the music I write is nostalgia-based and length album, Coming Down, on Sept. 3 and is [about] coming to terms with growing up,”Yoh says. He preparing for a fall tour that will take them to points out that he is now 21, and he started seriously Brooklyn, Chicago, San Antonio and many points in making music at 17. “A lot changes in those years.” between.
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A NEWFOUND FREEDOM
Yoh was primed to appreciate music long before that pivotal period. Although he was born in Mechanicsburgh, Pennsylvania, his family moved to Charlotte when he was 4 years old. His parents weren’t musicians, but they kept a musical household. “My dad grew up a punk and my mom was a goth kid,” Yoh says. As he grew up, Yoh’s tastes progressed through commercial alt rock of the 2000s like Limp Bizkit and System of a Down into heavy metal, before he embraced emo in his high school years. This was also the time when Yoh’s run-in with the law provided him with a temporary band name that never went away. Yoh formed the first version of Jail Socks as a
“[Punk] seemed so accessible,” O’Brien says. “I thought, ‘This seems easy to play, and [it’s] the coolest music I’ve ever heard.’” O’Brien dove headfirst into his newfound musical obsession and surfaced in Placeholder. On June 14, 2018, Jail Socks and Placeholder released a split seven-inch EP. The track list consisted of two songs by Placeholder and two by Jail Socks. “On the split seven-inch, Jake and myself were playing on the Placeholder side of the seven-inch, and Aidan and the drummer were playing on the Jail Socks side,” O’Brien offers. Both bands began touring behind the EP, and O’Brien gradually shifted from playing in Placeholder to playing in Jail Socks. Thomas shortly followed suit. Placeholder dissolved as O’Brien and Thomas shifted their energy and creative focus toward playing with Yoh. The new Jail Socks lineup became official by August 2018. “We felt more creatively fulfilled doing Jail Socks,” O’Brien says. The band’s new lineup gelled, with everyone sharing a dedication to making music and being a successful band. The band’s bond extends to day-today living, as all three members currently share an apartment in Charlotte. In some ways, the band’s first release with the current lineup, the six-song EP It’s Not Forever, which dropped in September 2019, was the last collection of material heard from what Yoh calls “the old Jail Socks.” Yoh had already written most of the songs on the EP before O’Brien PHOTO BY NICK LEWIS and Thomas came into the band. Although the drummer two-piece comprised of himself and a drummer. That and bassist contributed musical input, a large part lineup released the single “No Promises” as an online of practice sessions consisted of Yoh showing his demo in January 2018. In the meantime, Yoh had bandmates how the songs went. become a fan of a local band called Placeholder. He With increased input from O’Brien and Thomas, was particularly impressed with the band’s drummer, the songwriting dynamic and the band’s sound Colman O’Brien, and its bassist, Jake Thomas. changed. As Jail Socks prepped the EP, the band Unlike Yoh, O’Brien was born and raised in members decided to hold on to their newer songs Charlotte, and he grew up in a family that was only for a future project, and release just the older Yohmarginally interested in music. Early on, he went penned material on the EP. against the familial grain. Through skateboarding, “We just took what we considered to be the old O’Brien discovered the power of punk, the pastime’s Jail Socks sound and put that on the EP to get that soundtrack. out there,” Yoh says.
