Cresca is queer, punk and proud

Think of Cresca as a group of dabblers. The goal isn’t to refine one musical genre, but to dip into a whole bunch of different ones, like punk, metal, jazz and styles that don’t even have names yet.

“The idea is to write a song that uses a technique that I’ve never used, or a style I’ve never used,” guitarist Tristen Winnen says. “I can only really write if I’m trying to innovate.”

This adventurous approach reflects the members’ personalities, and their unwillingness to just accept reality as it’s been dictated to them by others.

“I’ve always been a questioning person,” Winnen says. “The moment my parents were like, ’You are this,’ I was like ’Why?’ We all feel like this limited us as kids, and it limited our growth.”

The current lineup of Winnen, bassist-vocalist Brianna Carmel and keyboardist Luis Quintero all identify a little off the spectrum of gender.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking that everyone’s queer on some level,” Winnen says. “You’re not one of the two boxes that society decided to implement for some reason. No one is.”

Their exploratory spirit comes in handy—for example, when members come and go. Cresca doesn’t have a drummer right now, which might cause other bands to take a hiatus. Instead, for this upcoming show, they will try something they’ve never done before: Winnen will play drums and prerecord her guitar parts.

Cresca’s website describes itself as a “queer prog-punk” band, but labels are tough. Members have considered other terms like “experimental” and “ambient,” but those terms have very specific connotations. Still, “prog-punk” doesn’t quite explain the unusual, unique sounds off their debut full-length, Cresca II, which the band partially released this past spring. The songs so far are slow, eerie, heavy-alt, guitar-driven and punctuated with spooky synths—and more will come at some point in the future. There’s also a new dark and brooding EP, The Downfall of Feeling, that should be released in the next couple of months.

“It’s not that I think genre doesn’t matter, but I think trying to put anything in a box is just kind of limiting,” Carmel says.

In the band’s short existence since it formed in 2013, the members have gone through several phases. The initial incarnation, which was under a different name, was a straight-forward pop-punk band. When they changed the name to Cresca, they were playing progressive-metal songs that topped eight minutes in length. As they work on new material, they are already trying out new, jazzy sounds with clean guitar channels.

“We can play with soft bands and heavy bands,” Winnen says. “You can put us anywhere and people are like, ’Oh yeah, that makes sense.’”

So far, Cresca has played with a lot of different bands, welcomed in the metal and punk scenes as well as on more eclectic bills. On Friday, August 26, Cresca will play alongside a garage-soul band, standup comedians and local promoter Jerry Perry, who will be getting interviewed on stage. In a way, this is the most appropriate lineup for this hard-to-classify band.

“A lot of people started telling me, ’I love you guys because I don’t really know what to call you,’” Carmel says. “We talk about doing all kinds of things. Nothing’s really off the table, as long as the music’s good and it has a certain feeling to it.”