Five years after “[laughs]”, Kali Masi want to clear something up: they didn’t disappear. The Chicago four-piece have been on the road this whole time. Last fall they ran Europe on the Common Thread tour alongside Joyce Manor, The Hotelier, Hot Water Music, Strike Anywhere and Tigers Jaw, with a separate stretch sharing bills with Spanish Love Songs, The Dirty Nil and Deanna from Sincere Engineer. The gap was a recording gap, not a hiatus.
“We just haven’t released anything new in many years,” frontman Sam Porter says. “Shit, we’ve played Some Friends all over the world a few hundred times and most people have still never heard of this band.”
“Searching For A Sunbeam” — out May 1st o— is the first new Kali Masi song since 2020. Three minutes, produced and engineered by Joe Reinhart (Algernon Cadwallader, Hop Along), mixed by Dave Alcan (Love Letter, Still Motions) and Jay Maas (Love Letter, Defeater). The accompanying video pulls together live footage from last fall’s European run rather than something staged after the fact.
Behind the scenes, the band rebuilt itself in the years between records. Guitarist Tim Roark came in right after “[laughs]” dropped. Bassist Adam Romero joined not long after. The current lineup — Porter on lead vocals and guitar, Roark on guitar, Romero on bass and vocals, John Garrison on drums — needed time to lock in.
“Finding the right people and getting everyone up to speed on the songs was time consuming,” Porter says, “like simultaneously trying to stay tight with older songs for playing shows and also work on new material. But we never went ‘silent’. We were consistently touring and playing shows. Songs were getting written slowly here and there, but in the fall of 2024 we were just like ‘Okay, let’s set a date, book time and finish the record’. We stuck to that.”
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
There’s a personal layer underneath the structural one. Porter and Garrison started Kali Masi in their early twenties. They’re in their thirties now, and the people around them are starting families, building careers, recalibrating priorities. Music doesn’t always end up at the top of the list, and Porter is honest about what that does to a long-running band.
“After doing it for so many years, some occasional distance is healthy to keep writing music exciting,” he says. “I’d say there is more of an effort to push ourselves and challenge each other with new ideas than there has been in the past.”
The grind isn’t abstract. He talks about the cycle of putting out new music, getting your hopes up, and watching it not reach the audience you wanted it to. “There’s always this feeling when you’re putting out new music like, ‘This will be the one. No, THIS will be the one.’ and it can get frustrating to put in so much and not necessarily feel like you’re reaching a ton of people with an album.” He half-jokes that Kali Masi have always been the bridesmaid and never the bride.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The five years between releases involved van breakdowns, cancelled shows, cancelled tours, illnesses, fights. People left. Porter and Garrison had what he calls fundamental disagreements that altered the chemistry of the whole thing. They’re still working out how to grow inside the project.
“We’re still learning how to grow, how to be better towards one another and how to work towards the common goal of putting out sick records, and make the band a paradise for us all and not a prison,” he says.
“Searching For A Sunbeam” wasn’t picked for lead-single logic. It became the first thing back because it kept earning that position. Porter wrote the lyrics first.
The band demoed it first. It was the first new track they played out at shows, the first one they all felt confident performing. During pre-production with Reinhart, a rhythm change in the second chorus came together that lit everyone up.
“Any time we collectively go ‘that’s fucking sick, let’s do that’, is important to chase and pay attention to,” Porter says.
The track doesn’t depart hard from “[laughs]” — Porter calls the vocal delivery here calmer, more inquisitive. He’s also more comfortable with his own voice on the new stuff than he’s ever been on a Kali Masi recording. “I’ve never felt that way before. I’ve always cringed hearing myself sing, but I think I’ve kind of hit a stride with singing here, knowing my limitations and strengths.”
Chicago is the band’s home base, but not their loudest cheering section. Porter is candid about the relationship: the local scene is full of people they love and rely on, but Kali Masi have never been treated as a flagship Chicago band. Their biggest shows have happened in other cities and other countries. He and Garrison are both the youngest siblings in their families, and Porter half-traces the band’s chip on its shoulder back to that.
“There isn’t anywhere else I’d want to be from or call home,” he says of Chicago. “Playing overseas is literally a dream every time we go. It feels really special for us to play in other countries and connect with people through cultural and linguistic barriers. Particularly with the state of the world, it’s really grounding to feel like you’re a part of a global community and connect on a human level through music.”
He’s also less plugged into the Chicago scene than he was in 2017. Back then he lived at punk houses and booked shows. The web of house venues he knew was thinned out by COVID, and the band’s traction around their debut “Wind Instrument” made them more selective about hometown shows — a call he isn’t sure was the right one.
“The music scene has changed and grown without us because of that, and I’m super down at this point to just play a fuck-ton of local shows, because the reality is, not a ton of people outside of our little bubble at home know our band. Living in a big city, you can be here 20 years and never bump into someone who lives a few blocks away. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’ve conquered something just because you’ve seen it many times, when you’ve never really permeated its surface.”
Last fall’s European tour cut the other way. Sharing bills with Joyce Manor, The Hotelier, Hot Water Music, Strike Anywhere and Tigers Jaw on Common Thread, plus the Spanish Love Songs / The Dirty Nil / Deanna from Sincere Engineer run, lined them up next to bands they consider formative. Porter calls those bands well-oiled machines and Kali Masi the little brother that got to tag along. He uses the word validating twice.
“There were people who were not seeing us by accident at those shows,” he says, “and after so many years, you can lose sight of how important bands can be to people. It feels important. We played Searching For A Sunbeam at those shows as well, as you can see in the video. You never know how new songs will land. If you’re a fan, I think hearing something new from us would be exciting. If you’re not a fan, it’s all new to you anyway.”
Five years between records also raises the obvious question of audience expectation, and Porter doesn’t entertain it. There’s no interest in making “Some Friends” vol. 2.
“You think you want ‘Some Friends vol.2’ but you don’t,” he says. “You want the version of yourself you were when that song first hit you. And if you’re open, it can happen again with new bands and new songs.”
His attitude toward how the new songs will land is similarly unbothered. “Sometimes my favorite bands’ records take a while for me to sink my teeth into. Like seeing an old friend you used to be close with, you have to find your footing again and see if it’s still someone you see yourself in.” On the question of whether he’s worried about expectation in general, he’s blunt: “You have to believe that if there is a market for chocolate-covered cockroaches, that someone will pick up what you’re putting down.”
This is the band’s third record. “Now haters have TWO things for us to not live up to, haha,” Porter says. He closes on a Gorilla Biscuits line: “Good luck to bands that change. Good luck, go your own way. Why play for us if your heart’s not in it?”
Catch the band live at the following dates:
5/8 — Lansing, MI @ Green Door
5/9 — Cleveland, OH @ Riff’s
5/11 — Washington, D.C. @ Pie Shop
5/12 — Philadelphia, PA @ Ortliebs
5/13 — Long Island, NY @ Amityville (w/ Ways Away)
5/14 — Garwood, NJ @ Crossroads (w/ Ways Away)
5/15 — Montreal, QC @ Pouzza Fest
5/16 — Toronto, ON @ Supermarket (w/ Ways Away)
5/17 — Chicago, IL @ Cobra Lounge (w/ Ways Away)
7/8 — Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s (w/ Sincere Engineer & Ways Away)
7/10 — Denver, CO @ Marquis (w/ Sincere Engineer & Ways Away)
7/11 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court (w/ Sincere Engineer & Ways Away)
🔔 IDIOTEQ is ad-free, independent, and runs on one person’s time. If you want it to stay that way: DONATE via PayPal 𝗈𝗋 SUPPORT via Patreon.
Stay connected via Newsletter · Instagram · Facebook · X (Twitter) · Threads · Bluesky · Messenger · WhatsApp.
