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Reviews

Dieter Spears / Brian Paris / Gray Lagere — Speris
(Bandcamp Wayfarer no#, 2025, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-01-25

Speris Cover art

Legend has it that near the end of the last century there was a Nashville based indie rock band called Subject to Change, and at various points in time both Dieter Spears and Brian Paris were members. Although the band split up, Spears and Paris found they had a shared compositional chemistry and continued to work together for a period of time. In fact the two made a full album in 1997 and shopped it around, but the winds of popular music were changing and their album Speris (part Spears, part Paris) never got released; our two protagonists got on with new projects and parted ways, although at the time someone created a video of a track from their demo, years later rediscovered by Spears. The duo made contact again, and realizing they had some done some very good work all those years ago, decided it was time to revisit their old recordings and rework them into a new and improved Speris, with real bass guitar instead of synth bass, and real drums (courtesy of drummer Gray Lagere) in lieu of drum programs, plus some additional work that bore the new version of Speris in 2025. Spears plays synths, bass guitar, MIDI drums, and sound design, Paris plays acoustic and electric guitars, synths, MIDI programming, and sound design, and Gray Lagere plays drums, with some additional percussion by Dashmesh on the opening track “New Beginnings.” Hard to know exactly how much has changed since I don’t have that original demo to compare the new version to, but in this writer’s opinion, real bass and real drums are always superior to synthesized facsimiles, and the ten mostly-instrumental tracks (save some vocalizing on the opener and one other cut) herein are soundly anchored in the current state of electronic rock, with plenty of blistering electric guitar solos by Paris and a propulsive bottom end — in fact I’d not even realized this was a reworking until I’d given it several listens and noticed the fine print at the bottom of the Bandcamp page. Thacks like “The Train,” “Innocence,” and the eleven-minute “Giants at Dawn,” as well as the closer “Lost Blessings” and all of the others are excellent examples of instrumental synth-based rock: urgent, vital, melodic, and aggressive when it needs to be.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Dieter Spears

More info
http://wayfarermusicgroup.bandcamp.com/album/speris

 

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