Once upon a time, Ryan Hamilton and Jencey Hirunrusme met and fell in love.
The Dallas-based pair wrote some tunes, formed a band called Smile Smile, moved in together and planned to be married.
Then things fell apart in dramatic fashion. The couple called off their engagement, Hirunrusme moved out and placed the future of the band in jeopardy.
Hamilton, reeling from the breakup, began writing and recording alone in the house he once shared with Hirunrusme. In an effort to convey his pain to his former lover, Hamilton e-mailed these songs to Hirunrusme, who, incredibly, didn't flinch at the raw emotions on display.
"It's weird because Ryan would be e-mailing me these songs, and they were about me, but they were how we'd always written -- the whole process was looking at it objectively," Hirunrusme says now. "I don't think these songs ever hurt my feelings or made me realize what was going on until we actually performed them and I'd see people's faces in the audience, freaking out."
In an effort to salvage Smile Smile, the duo brokered a truce of sorts in the months after Hamilton reached out. Eventually, they built upon Hamilton's demos and created the mesmerizing Truth on Tape, a breakup album in every sense of the word and the follow-up to the band's 2006 debut, Blue Roses.
Truth on Tape arrived in stores Feb. 9, and the band will celebrate its release with a show Saturday at Dallas' Double-Wide. (Surely the irony of the album's timing, with a release so close to Valentine's Day, can't be lost on the pair.)
Smile Smile's live shows only heighten the intimacy of the songs. And so, from the wreckage, something resembling catharsis has emerged for Smile Smile. Neither member admits to thinking about the future beyond Truth on Tape, although the band will be performing in Austin during South by Southwest. It's a perversely happy ending for this twisted fairy tale; an epilogue that, by rights, shouldn't exist -- and that left little on the cutting-room floor.
Info: www.smilesmilemusic.com
Preston Jones is the Star-Telegram pop music critic, 817-390-7713
