Darkness is as darkness does

Yoodoo Park does not believe in maintaining the status quo. One listen to his most recent effort, 2013’s Empire, released under the moniker Grmln—an album that marks a dramatic shift away from the more laid-back, dreamy aesthetics of Park’s debut EP Explore—confirms this.

“I was getting bored of writing that type of music,” Park says of the EP. “I wasn’t really straining to [make] that kind of music. … I wanted to change things up.”

Change it up he did. Over the course of Empire’s nine songs, Park, who performs with a band, introduces listeners to something more akin to Jimmy Eat World or Blink-182 (with a touch of ’90s-era alternative thrown in for good measure on tracks like “Summer Days”) and less like the melodic dream-pop tracks which populated that previously released EP.

Recorded during breaks from his sophomore year at UC Santa Cruz, Empire sounds as though it’s as much about engaging the artist’s musical preferences as it is about giving fans a more engaging live experience.

“I didn’t necessarily want a challenge; it was that I had more fun playing this type of music than what I was making before,” Park says. “For recording purposes, it’s easier to make the kind of music I was making, but live, it’s harder for people to get into that.”

Park says he’s not content to stop here, either. Grmln fans who have been paying attention to the artist’s Facebook page know to expect a new album, Soon Away, in September. Details about the project remain sketchy, but Park confirms that the switch from dream pop to pop punk is not the end of his creative evolution.

“It’s definitely going to be a lot darker and heavier compared to my other material,” he says.

The reason for the latest creative shift is, to say the least, amusing,

“I pretty much only listen to music when I work out, so that’s probably why I’ve been writing heavier music. … [It’s] more like workout music,” Park says with a laugh. “I guess it could be a subconscious thing, because I’ve been so exposed to that type of music this whole time.”

This is part of what makes Park’s Grmln so interesting—there’s always the possibility of having a curve ball thrown, and so listeners must stay alert.

Not content to be labeled as pop or alternative or even as a singer-songwriter, Park’s focus seems to be on just going wherever the hell the music takes him during a given season of his life. Even if that means using somewhat unconventional methods to get a point across in a song, as he does on Empire’s crunchy rocker “Hand Pistol.”

“I like using symbolism, and here, it’s a gun,” he says. “It’s about how people get pressured into finding someone, and then it ends up being a one-way street, where one person puts too much time and effort into the other. The gun symbolizes pulling the trigger, and whether they should go with it or not.”

Park says he’s happy with his creative direction and looks forward to the release of Soon Away, and even though he feels his sound is taking a turn for the darker, he also knows that is just his assessment of the situation.

“Musically, the album is still poppy to an extent, but it’s becoming darker and moodier, like I am,” he says. “But that’s just my opinion. It might sound really happy to somebody else.”