Silent Comedy rocks with religious fervor

The Silent Comedy’s live shows have often been likened to religious tent revivals, and that seems appropriate: Joshua and Jeremiah Zimmerman, two of the band’s founding members, are the sons of a former traveling preacher, and they spent much of their childhood surrounded by gospel choirs in churches around the country.

“There’s a wild, twisted, Pentecostal vibe to our shows,” Joshua Zimmerman said, noting that he was inspired by the church music programs he and his brother were exposed to as kids. “There’s such a power in that environment, all these people together and singing and everyone’s a participant. … We were raised on that. Our music isn’t religious and we’re not religious guys, but that kind of aesthetic and that kind of passion in performance just comes out whether we want it to or not.”

The band, which is based out of San Diego, was initially formed as a side project with a revolving group of members. It was also an excuse for the Zimmermans and their musician friends to throw raucous, booze-soaked parties where they could play their ramshackle rock tunes. He recalls their earliest shows featured 10 or more people onstage at once, likening them to the musical free-for-alls of the gypsy punk group Gogol Bordello.

“Back then, everyone would compete with each other to see who could drink the most, then we’d get onstage to see what happened,” Zimmerman said. “People responded so passionately to it so quickly that we ended up on tour before we really knew what was going on. For the first couple years, we played more shows than we ever had rehearsals. It was a very casual project.”

The lineup has since solidified into a four-piece, but the band’s music still maintains the conviviality and pluck of a riled-up bar band performing for a packed Saturday night crowd. The Silent Comedy’s last EP, 2013’s “Friends Divide,” bounces from rollicking, stomping blues-rock anthems to sing- and clap-along folk pop earworms, and you can just as easily compare them to the Black Keys as Mumford and Sons.

“Now we’ve come to the point where we’re more of a rock band, and the songs have more defined arrangements and parts,” Zimmerman said. “Some of our songs naturally come out sounding like hymns or spirituals, and I think it’s something that’s just subconscious.”

The Silent Comedy’s upcoming album, which the band plans to release in the summer, was recorded in Georgia, and Zimmerman says that it leans more toward straight-ahead rock than folk or blues. But it’s onstage and with an engaged audience where the band really comes alive, and it’s how their music should be experienced.

“One of the ways we keep some of that energy and craziness with a smaller lineup is we see everyone who’s at the show as a part of the experience,” Zimmerman said. “They’re generally much more participatory than a lot of shows you would see. We don’t want people to just stand and observe what’s happening – we want people to lose themselves and get involved.”