Division Day bassist/Sagittarius Sebastian Bailey, singer/songwriter/keyboardist/pianist Rohner Segnitz and drummer Kevin Lenhart met each other at Los Gatos High School. Ryan Wilson joined the band when sharing a UCLA adjacent room with Kevin Lenhart. One day Wilson was majoring in English with his fellow Bruins, and the next he was playing guitar in a house in Santa Cruz with his new family, Division Day.
Rohner Segnitz was nearly a child prodigy of sorts. Well, kind of. As young as eighteen he’d already been dubbed a “Renaissance Man". By his high school art teacher, that is. At that time he played his family’s grand piano for fun. And composed songs on aforementioned piano using a technique I’ve only seen employed by another prodigy, Marc Wu – where one makes use of both the piano keys and piano strings. Segnitz was a painter, a musician (piano and guitar) and wrestler – Los Gatos High School and Stanford respectively. He’s still an artist – creating the artwork for his own bands EP, as well as for bands such as Onelinedrawing and Dredg. Segnitz’s picturesque background is evident in every note of Division Day’s second EP, “The Mean Way In”.
“The Mean Way In” is collegiate in nature: Literary, experimental, and liberal. What else could one expect from a band who’s equally inspired by the Beach Boys and corned beef? On the bands MySpace page they describe themselves as Indie/Rock/Nu-Jazz. There are small traces of Emo (or as its more commonly known – Elmo) in “The Mean Way In” which only adds to the tense, dissonant goodness.
Division Days live show has been likened, in terms of capriciousness, to Yo La Tengo’s. Not having had the pleasure of said live show - I can only say that as with the Hoboken songbirds, the effects of “The Mean Way In” are very pleasant indeed. |