Lawrence’s Spirit Is the Spirit wants to get back on your radar

Usually, when a band that hasn’t toured or recorded lately offers as a reason that “life gets in the way,” everybody knows that the excuse is a bit feeble. But the silent two years since Spirit Is the Spirit’s Baktun Baby EP is owed to more unusual events.

In the first year after Baktun Baby came out, the quintet played a handful of shows and carved out some new songs. Studio time was booked for early summer. But the exact date of that session — June 17, 2014 — is burned into lead singer Austen Malone’s memory for nonmusical reasons.

“My brother was in a really bad, unfortunate work accident,” Malone tells me. “He had a traumatic brain injury — he shouldn’t have survived even the surgery to make him stable. Within that same week, he also suffered a couple really serious strokes. He’s still recovering, rehabbing at a facility in Omaha. We’re waiting for him to be able to start talking again. Something like that, you never think it’ll happen to you, and you just don’t know how it’s going to change you.”

Malone is sitting on the living-room floor of bassist and trumpet player Brook Partain’s Lawrence home. His bandmates watch him closely as Partain’s chocolate lab, Bill, nudges him with a toy, interrupting the moment.

Spirit Is the Spirit rescheduled that studio session and recorded four new songs that fall.

“We were about to lose our drummer [Noah Compo], so we wanted to go in and get them recorded,” guitarist Danny Bowersox says. “We didn’t know whether we were going to do an EP or a full-length, but Noah helped write those songs, and we wanted him to be on the record for them.”

Compo left the band to focus on school, and Zach Kinser replaced him last October. For a moment, it seemed like the band would pick up where it left off. Then Malone received further bad news.

“In December, doctors discovered a tennis-ball-sized nerve tumor that was growing in the third vertebrae in my spine,” Malone says. “The doctor straight-up told me that because of the size of it, it had to be growing since childbirth, and I could have dropped at any second, either dead or completely paralyzed, because of where it was growing.”

He gestures to a pinkish line encircling half his neck. “That’s why you see this gnarly scar across my neck. And I still can’t feel this side of my face. It’s a long story, and it was a painful recovery.”

In the meantime, Spirit Is the Spirit shelved the new tracks, giving Malone time to recuperate. Finally, in mid-April, came “Televangelist,” a reverb-soaked, lick-laden cut that expands on Baktun Baby‘s psychedelia.

“The ‘Televangelist’ release was a little premature in terms of the timeline that we’re actually able to release the album on,” Malone says. “But we released that because people hadn’t heard anything from us in a while, and we felt very off-the-grid. Releasing new music definitely helps solve that.”

“Televangelist” will be on Spirit Is the Spirit’s next album, a proper full-length. But the band isn’t cranking up the pace just yet. Studio time is booked for August and December, and Bowersox estimates that next spring is the earliest possible release date.

I’ve come to watch the band rehearse, and the new material sounds worth the wait. The hallucinogenic “Could You Hear Us,” which Malone wrote for his brother, channels the Who and My Morning Jacket, with Malone’s and Bowersox’s guitars making deep layers over keyboardist Josh Landau’s iridescent, chimelike patterns. This isn’t the sound of musicians who have been sitting idle.

I turn again to Malone — who, with his muttonchops, bell-bottomed jeans and flip-flops, looks dressed for the original Woodstock — and ask if he was tempted to take a longer, maybe permanent, break.

“I don’t know if I have a specific reason for staying with Spirit,” he says after a pause. “I mean, why is Bill [Partain’s dog] going to come at you every time you whistle at him? God, it’s the same reason that within fucking eight hours, Josh and his girlfriend were up at the hospital with me [for my diagnosis], and Brook and Louise [Partain’s girlfriend] brought burritos to my family at the hospital room.”

His eyes get a little glassy, and he continues with a rasp: “This is it. As a creative person or musician, Spirit is the only thing that’s helped me get through everything. This is my family, and I love ’em all so much.”

Bowersox reaches over and grasps his shoulder. The conversation moves on, grows more lighthearted. Eventually, Malone offers a toast: “Spirit’s not dead!”