MuteMath, courtesy.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

New Orleans alt-rockers MuteMath have toured through the Bay Area several times, but their most vivid memory here is of an animal shelter near Slim’s in San Francisco.

The band, which plays at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in radio station KITS-FM 105.3 (Live 105)’s BFD Saturday, found a stray, sorry-looking dog on a street in Los Angeles.

“It was covered in spurs; hundreds of them — it couldn’t even see,” singer Paul Meany said. “It was poking at its eyes, it was crying; that poor dog.”

So Meany, drummer Darren King, bassist Roy Mitchell-Cardenas and guitarist Greg Hill decided to lend a hand.

“I took him onto the bus and I tried to cut the spurs off him,” Meany said. “We couldn’t get the dog to sit still so I gave him a Valium. It really helped, actually, though I (now) wouldn’t suggest that.”

The dog accompanied the band to San Francisco, where Meany spotted the animal shelter. When they told their tale, they were promptly scolded for kidnapping the dog and giving him Valium.

“The (shelter) did call me and let me know they found a home for him,” Meany recalled.

They may be in a rock band, but the members of MuteMath are not above helping the less fortunate.

The quartet came together in 2003, but the seeds were sown several years before that, when Meany met King. The drummer was 14 and the guitarist/singer was 20. King was drumming in his Springfield, Mo., church band when Meany, from New Orleans, arrived as a guitarist with a traveling evangelist. The two hit it off. 

“I would send tracks, songs and ideas to Paul — to get him to get me to be in his band,” King said.

Eventually Meany invited King to drum in Earthsuit, his Christian band. At his tryout, King punctured the drums by striking them too hard and blew out the band’s sound system. Maybe that was a sign.

The experiment lasted two months, and then two band members complained that King’s overambitious, manic drumming was throwing them off. They convinced Meany to give him the ax.

“That band went on, as Darren likes to recall, and failed,” Meany said.

Later, the pair dove into the new project. They recruited Hill and Mitchell-Cardenas from Earthsuit for a new band that kept evolving its sound before settling on layered melodic, spacey synths and rock guitar laid over syncopated, frantic drums and computer beats.

After a hiccup — the band’s self-titled debut was released on a Warner Bros. Christian label, which Meany said upset the musicians — the album was rereleased in 2006. The video for “Typical” garnered a Grammy nomination and heavy airplay. 

MuteMath went back into the studio last summer to record a follow-up. For the first time, all four musicians wrote the music, rather than just King and Meany. More opinions meant more debate about the direction the band was to pursue.

“It was wonderful, scary, arduous, exciting and sometimes it just clicked,” King said. “We’ve finished the album so many times and thought we were content with it but then decided we weren’t.”

They recorded together in one room, in different rooms inside the same house and by themselves from different cities. They traveled from New Orleans to Oxford, Miss., to Nashville, back to New Orleans and back to Nashville.

“That’s what brings us to the place where we feel confident in what we’re doing,” King said.

Fans may get excited, because “Armistice” was (probably) completed for the final time about two weeks ago. The name of the album refers to the battles the band members fought to create something they were all proud of.

“Armistice refers to a cease-fire,” King said. “It came from us working together and learning how to do that. 

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.