In the a crowd of Boston pedestrians, Nate Bluhm and Michael Potvin look more like a couple of bikers than the typical 20-something guys in their promotional pictures.  Potvin’s eyes are hidden behind vast aviator glasses, his mouth framed by an impressive Fu Manchu mustache.   Bluhm sports a black leather jacket with plenty of buckles and a “Rockin’ Rooster” trucker cap. Together they are the creative masterminds behind We Are Cassette.

Make no mistake, though—these two won’t be getting any play on the country stations in the near future.  In lesser hands, their musical choices might sound like a lounge singer on top of Nintendo music, but they manage to craft a rich fantasy world evoking elaborate frescoes of pixilated primary color.  

“A big thing that’s very important to us is having the ideas of sounds in your head beforehand,” says Potvin, who writes much of the duo’s music by sequencing.   WAC’s music is a marriage of Potvin’s technical savvy with software and synthesizers and Bluhm’s imaginative lyrics and emotive singing. Rather than using settings built into keyboards, Potvin prefers to work from the ground up.  

“Michael makes the sounds from scratch,” Bluhm elaborates.   “If I say I envision this on a harpsichord, he doesn’t find a harpsichord on the keyboard—he constructs a harpsichord with the knobs.”

Though Bluhm acknowledges that there are many other bands using similar retro synthesizer sounds, he feels the strength of the music is in the songwriting and that it holds up just as well when played with an acoustic guitar. However, don’t hold your breath for an acoustic show.   While Potvin now incorporates more live keyboard into performances, in shows past he would often simply set up the backing tracks and then pretend to play a key-tar.

“We’ll do what it takes to make that sound,” Potvin continues, going on at length to describe the technical process of developing pure sound waves into specific sounds and tones, even going beyond the original inspiration for the sound. “If we can invoke the general feeling and idea of the harpsichord for our own sound, we can even take it to some next level where it doesn’t even end up sounding like a harpsichord, but it gets the point across.”

Bluhm connects the re-imagining of sounds and instruments to his lyrics. “With the song subject matter being really geared towards imagination, the fact that it isn’t a real harpsichord but kind of an imagined harpsichord,” he says. “I think it lends itself well to the overall presentation.”

Potvin, who grew up in Vermont and came to Boston for college, is easily the more reserved of the duo. Both agree that, if not for the grape-leaf wrap on which Bluhm chows during the interview, Potvin would scarcely get a word in edgewise. Bluhm has twinkling silver-blue eyes that can seem like they’re seeeing deep into your soul. Maybe it’s his geniality and friendliness, or the fact that he can’t afford glasses right now. What’s for sure is that he’s a born showman, whether he’s tracing the outline of a whale’s tail with his fingers as he tip-toes around the dance floor during “The Blue Whale” or flinging off his clothes as he sings about a prom dress in “Try Me On.”  

“I think it’s harder to wear clothes, I really do,” he says. “I think (taking them off) brings down barriers.”

“There’s such a choice you have to make when you’re picking your clothes, you’re the focus of attention on a stage,” he continues. “(Taking them off is) an outrageous thing to do, and I think people like it.”
With these images in mind, it’s hard to picture the lonely kid Bluhm describes as his younger self. He grew up an extrovert trapped in a thinly populated part of Pennsylvania. “I played alone a lot, with G.I. Joes and stuff, and I just remember being really sad, and my imagination was really big.”  

This introspection became the source of much of Bluhm’s songwriting, even before forming a band. “‘The Blue Whale,’ it’s not about a blue whale—it’s about this lonely boy who’s imagining himself somewhere other than where he is,” he says. “And I think growing up gay in a rural environment was also really difficult, and encouraged me to use my imagination. All those songs are about imagining yourself to be something other than what you are, an escape.”

No longer isolated by geography, Bluhm enjoys the benefits of having lots of people around and is always eager to join the crowd in a spontaneous dance party.

“When there’s a stage that’s over three feet high, I feel uncomfortable. I feel so weird, I’ll jump down off of it, sing in front of it.”  

Potvin concurs.

“When we’re right there on the floor, with the people, that’s where we’ve done the best,” he says. “I want the people to feel like they’re part of the experience.”

In the past six months, the band has gone by three names.   Originally just “Cassette,” they briefly expanded the band by adding two members to play live drums and keyboards, calling the project “The Cassette Unlimited Orchestra.” Unfortunately, differences arose.

“One of the things that smarted us the worst was that they were our friends. We started the band, and they came in to supplement what we had already started. The role was never really defined, and we felt really bad sometimes because it was a fight to maintain what we had already started,”  Bluhm explains.
After a short hiatus, Potvin and Bluhm decided to return to performing as a duo, but with a legal threat from a band called “The Cassettes,” decided to change to their current designation.

With a new name, the duo is preparing not one, but two new recordings. Their last album, “Broadway Showstoppers,” had seven original songs and remixes of those songs by friends. Of the new recordings, one is a pop album with plenty of new songs, and the other is a concept album —a musical reinterpretation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

If all of this sounds a little strange, and perhaps hard to take seriously, don’t worry—Bluhm and Potvin are aware of that.  

“If they like to get in to the lyrics of songs more seriously, great,” says Potvin. “If they don’t, if they just want to have fun and listen to some pop music for their ears, fine.”

Bluhm adds,  “A lot of people do understand that it’s kind of like a sad clown routine.”

Except the audience is more likely to be hit with flying pants than flying pies, and more interested in the synths than rubber noses and big shoes.

 We Are Casette
(www.wearecassette.com)
returns to Portsmouth on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at the Muddy River to share a bill with hometown heroes The Texas Governor, marking the beginning of the Gov’s East Coast tour.