Cute Is What We Aim For looks to turn heads with cover song

By John Benson

Their fans are getting older, and their new CD is rockier.

Cute Is What We Aim For aimed for success and might have gotten it too soon, admits singer Shaant Hacikyan about his Buffalo, N.Y.-based band.

Not only had the group barely toured before it signed with emo-centric Fueled By Ramen but the outfit’s thrust into the spotlight left it feeling, if not stunted then, stylistically undecided.

“That definitely had an effect on us in the amount of member changes we had, because we didn’t really know each other and no one knew what a full touring lifestyle was,” said Hacikyan, 22, calling from Townsend, Md. “Some of the guys were really young, 17 or 18, but a few of us decided to stick around. I kind of wish we would have done the grunt work and kind of found ourselves prior to jumping into it.”

While the band’s pop-punk debut effort, 2006’s “The Same Old Blood Rush With a New Touch,” received mixed reviews, the group started to spread its wings with its recently released follow-up affair “Rotation.” The new CD is more of a rock affair, with Hacikyan already noticing a difference in its audience makeup on the group’s current co-headlining tour with Secondhand Serenade, which comes to Cleveland’s House of Blues Tuesday.

“We’re seeing more dudes come out,” Hacikyan laughed. “So it’s a diverse crowd just of high school kids or freshmen in college. Our demographics, I’d say right now we’re looking at the 14-to-18 crowd, but this album has been expanded a little bit. We attribute that to the kids getting older.

“With this album, we wanted to tell stories. We wanted to have a cohesive album that was diverse. We weren’t scared to go in ways that we had been curious about, but also we felt like on the last record, we were more loose-ended with things. It was basically trying to polish what we had already accomplished, I guess.”

Proving that Cute Is What We Aim For isn’t scared of, well, scaring off its audience, Hacikyan hints that the act is thinking about adding a cover song to its set that might leave fans with “OMG” and “WITW” reactions.

“We’re looking at doing Matchbox Twenty’s ‘How Far We’ve Come,’” Hacikyan said. “That song really struck a chord with me and formed a lot of my thoughts for this whole record. It’s a pretty impactful song and it’s quite political.”

When it’s pointed out that the tune could result in a fan backlash — after all, Matchbox Twenty is the antithesis of Vans Warped Tour cool — Hacikyan remains stalwart in his decision — for the moment.

“Yeah, but that’s the beauty of when you get to headline,” Hacikyan said. “The audience has to watch. But you know what, maybe we’ll show these kids to look outside the box. Maybe Matchbox Twenty is uncool. Like when I was in high school, I only liked emo-screamo rock or something like that. And now I laugh at that because now I’m in love with Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and the Beach Boys. Maybe this will open some eyes.

It was a popular mainstream song, so maybe they’ll be able to sing along.”

After a brief pause with his words still hanging in the air, Hacikyan quipped, “And if it doesn’t work, screw it, we won’t do it, but regardless it’s fun to try.”