Rochester's Gonculator comes off as controlled chaos. It's progressive rock with carnival undertones and contradictory parallels, the sonic equivalent of Pop Rocks mixed with holy water. It is delightful madness with an uncanny literary depth. But the band's sense of humor is a tool - not a lure, not an excuse, but a tool it uses to forge its multi-dimensional music. Sure, a lot of the material is hysterical, and the arrangements perpetually oddball. But if you laugh, you didn't get the joke.

Gonculator - Jake Kodweis (vocals, guitar), Derek Stoll (bass, vocals), Sean Greif (vocals, guitar), and Cam Griffith (drums) - exhibits the kind of tightness that can only be achieved through years of playing together (the members met freshman year at Hilton High School in the early 2000's). But the group's true talent lies in its ability to balance the batshit with the beautiful. Just dig the tune "This Just Isn't Working Out Anymore So I Think I'm Going To Be Amish" off Gonculator's 2010 release, "Omnomnom." It is a lofty and lush arrangement that floats between The Beach Boys and Yes as it comments on the frustrations of living in a material world.

The band has one other release, 2007's "Gonculator's Family Restaurant," and is hard at work on disc No. 3, tentatively called "Welcome, Spirit."

Kodweis and Stoll recently stopped by the City offices to explain the band. An edited transcript of the interview is below.

CITY: You're one of the most fiercely original bands in Rochester - even your influences are obscured. If you were to cover something, what would it be?

Jake Kodweis: Personally, I've never been impressed by... I've never really had the desire to play covers. Sure, every once in a while, at Christmas time we throw in a Christmas song just for fun. But the idea of playing covers was never appealing to me. We've always been amped-up about writing our own music.

Jazz and blues artists routinely get away with it without being labeled cover artists. Why not rock?

Kodweis: I think it's just part of the genre. That's just the way it is for rock ‘n' roll. But bands do that all the time - take covers and make them their own. Sometimes they sound great, sometimes they disappoint members in the audience who want to hear the original. I'm not saying that covers are not OK at all, but the career path we're trying to take with this band is very much on our own originality. When I see bands, that's what I'm most impressed by; their creativity coming through their music.

The biggest part of Gonculator's creativity lies in the humor.

Kodweis: It's been like that since the beginning

Derek Stoll: We've always tried to be a very entertaining band. We always have fun. We want the people that watch us to have fun. We'll open a show with the "Jurassic Park" theme song or we'll completely change one of our songs and make it into a reggae song. We just try to be different and exciting, something fun to be around.

But there's clearly a lot going on beyond the musical and lyrical funny business, right?

Kodweis: A lot of our songs, on the face, are very humorous. There's kind of this front image, but they're ambiguous; there's some serious music going on. There are some serious concepts going on behind those lyrics as well.

For instance...

Kodweis: The song "Kelly's Educated Duck, Melvin," that's based on Plato's "Allegory of the Cave."

Uh-huh...

Kodweis: There are 10 people tied to posts facing the wall of this cave. And behind them is this bonfire. All they can see are their shadows on the wall. That's all they've known. One day, one of them breaks free, climbs out of the cave, and steps into this world where there's sun and there are trees, and there's grass, there are other human beings, everything. Then he goes back into the cave to tell everyone that's still tied up, "There's so much out there. There's a bigger world, something much grander than yourself."

Kelly's duck, Melvin, is plucked from his duck world, his duck family, all he's ever known, and is brought to school and taught the ways of being a human being, how to read, how to write. On the face of it, it's a story about a duck. Behind it, there's a philosophical concept.

Stoll: A lot of our songs are about characters and character development.

Kodweis: They can be funny characters or ones you wouldn't expect, but it's about their development. Like "Roxy." His real name is Rocky. This is a person my parents were in a band with. He comes in one day in make-up and his hair's all done, he's got tits, and says, "From now on I want you to call me Roxy." There was an awkward pause and then, "OK. Let's get on with rehearsal."

Do you have any songs that can be taken at face value?

Kodweis: "Dana Novocaina." Her name wasn't Novocaina, but we needed something that rhymed with cocaine.

Does Gonculator's music share the same depth as the lyrics?

Kodweis: I think our songs in the beginning started out to be these multi-movement compositions: bigger songs, longer, more epic, without anything necessarily tying the sections together. Or maybe we'd switch styles in the middle of the song. I kind of describe it as shock rock.

Was that the goal or did it happen naturally? Or accidentally?

Kodweis: That's just the natural progression of our writing.

Do you have a comfort zone?

Stoll: I feel like we've always evolved. We start in one place, we do one thing, then try to do something different - different from the standpoint of our own playing or creativity.

Kodweis: That's a huge thing for us, to always be trying new things.

What do you want audiences to get from your show?

Kodweis: That we are not all humor. We don't want anybody walking away saying, "That sucked." Honestly my goal in playing a live show is to give people that surge of unified excitement and electricity - a oneness.

That includes the audience.

Kodweis: Our shows are very interactive. We call for a lot of audience participation. It's an emotional thrill ride.

Gonculator

Performs as part of The Isotopes Christmas Show

Friday, December 23

Montage Music Hall, 50 N. Chestnut St.

8 p.m. | $5 | themontagemusichall.com

gonculatoronline.com