Concert preview: SafetySuit have big plans to make up for lost time

When SafetySuit emerged from a long hibernation and popped up in Salt Lake City last February, they did so intending to reward the patience of fans who'd stuck with them through several years of near-total absence from the alt-pop scene.

That small headlining tour, bolstered by the earworm single "Looking Up," was eventually followed by a new studio album (their first in four years), and then another tour — this time opening for the Goo Goo Dolls — this past fall.

"We've had a very adventurous 12 months," frontman Doug Brown said in a recent phone interview.

He and his bandmates intend to continue the adventure a good while longer, including a stop this Friday at The Complex in Salt Lake City.

While SafetySuit had been teasing a return for some time with a few scattered singles, it wasn't until this past November that their self-titled third album was finally released.

Brown said the band's newly gained indie status encouraged the musicians to take their time and make sure the final product was exactly to their liking.

"You're wired, as an artist, to constantly want to tweak, so I'm sure we could still be tweaking that record right now if we let ourselves. … When you don't have a record label breathing down your neck, you can take as much time as your heart desires," he said. "And I think that was fun, but I also think that we usually ended up liking our initial gut instinct on songs in the end anyway."

Many bands tend to limit the number of new songs they play live for fear of arresting the energy by exposing the audience to too much unfamiliar material.

Brown, though, was pleased with the reactions the songs from "SafetySuit" received at the concerts with the Goos.

"When you try new songs, the litmus test and the barometer that you go off of is just, 'Does the set lift, or is the set dragging at the point of the new song?' " he said. "And all of the new songs that we played on that tour were just big parts of the set. And that was a big encouragement, because you knew that you weren't gonna have all the new stuff be the boring, not-as-engaging part of the set and then you have to go and rely on the old stuff."

While Brown said the new batch of shows will feature even more of the new batch of songs, fans of the older stuff need not worry that their favorites will get muscled out of setlists.

His level of affection for them is more than sufficient to overcome his occasional embarrassment about some of them.

"When you come to the show, you're certainly not gonna be disappointed, you're not gonna feel like the band is taking some detour and deviated so far off from where it originally started," he said. "… The old stuff … is not necessarily the most technically sound songwriting or melody or lyrics you've ever heard, but they're beautifully naive, and they have all the makings of someone just figuring out how to write, and figuring out what they want to say and just saying it as they know how at the time. There's a beauty in those types of songs."

Meanwhile, SafetySuit hope fans find some beauty in more new songs set to come their way.

Brown said a few more tracks from the "SafetySuit" sessions will be seeing the light of day in the next few months.

"We had to leave a bunch on the cutting-room floor. And we're gonna release some of them … a few of them … not many," he said. "I don't want to come off like we've got 10 amazing songs left off the record, but there were two or three that actually were much better than we gave them credit for in the studio."

And after that, the band will keep on making up for lost time.

"We've got a single that you're gonna hear in the next few months — right after the tour, I should say. A video, and some radio promotion, we've got some cool little marketing things that we're gonna do with some big companies that we can't announce yet, but it'll be really fun. And then a big support slot on a summer tour that is not locked down so I can't say what it is yet. And then probably a fall headline and co-headline in October," Brown said. "We'll be busy."

So if you're a fan of SafetySuit, I'd say things are looking up.

ewalden@sltrib.com

Twitter: @esotericwalden

SafetySuit

With Armors and John Allred

When • Friday night, doors at 7

Where • The Complex, 536 W. 100 South, Salt Lake City

Tickets • $18, Smith's Tix