Milo Greene Comes Alive At The PAC

Milo Greene is a gentleman. He dresses in a three-piece suit. He wears a watch and a monocle, and he carries a cane. He keeps his sideburns groomed into mutton chops. He is confident, charming, well-read, well-spoken.

Milo Greene is the type of man that men aspire to be. And he does not actually exist.

The brainchild of bandmates Andrew Heringer and Robbie Arnett, Milo Greene is the suave, tough, yet fictitious manager they always wanted, but never had, in their early days as struggling musicians.

“In an attempt to make ourselves sound more professional, we made up a booking agent,” Mr. Heringer laughed during a telephone interview last week. “It’s kind of grown as we’ve talked about him more and more. He thinks he’s hip. He would have been hip a long time ago, maybe during the 1930s or something. You don’t dare tell him he’s not hip anymore.”

These days, the band doesn’t need Mr. Greene. But the moniker stuck as the name for their indie-pop band—which now includes Marlana Sheetz, Graham Fink and Curtis Marrero—that is booking gigs across the globe, including England, Scotland and, on Saturday, February 16, at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center as part of the theater’s Breakthrough Artist Series.

Los Angeles-based Milo Greene will make its first-ever splash on the East End with its four-part harmonies and ethereal “cinematic pop” sound, which Mr. Heringer describes as landscapes of emotional undertones, a sound that would fit into a film’s sound track—or one of Milo Greene’s own.

In addition to the band’s self-titled debut album, which dropped in July, Milo Greene also released the short film, “Moddison,” in October. The film, like the CD, runs for 37 minutes, and is synched with the music of the album, which is overlayed in the same order. Mr. Heringer explained that the film project was an effort to revive the artistry behind the album, start to finish, in an industry where singles reign.

“We made a movie for the album. Where that was shot, Shaver Lake, my grandpa has a cabin up there. We were recording a whole bunch of music up there,” he recalled of his grandfather’s home in California. “We recorded all sorts of places, all sorts of cabins. We write best when we’re out in the middle of nowhere with no distractions.”

In 2010, at one such cabin, it happened. The five friends—all involved with different bands—were hanging out for a week, messing around with their music together for the first time. Until Mr. Heringer, Mr. Arnett and Ms. Sheetz wrote the haunting ballad “Autumn Tree.”

They played it, recorded it and while listening to it, the mood in the room shifted. Milo Greene was officially born.

“It’s the version on the record that we recorded in that demo, hang-out, collaboration session. We tried to re-record it, but it never had that vibe,” Mr. Heringer said. “We owe a lot to that song for being a band at all. It made us turn our heads and it made us say, ‘This is something that grabs us and really moves us, emotionally.’”

With five driven, passionate musicians—four of them being singers and multi-instrumentalists—ego could easily be a problem, Mr. Heringer said. But more often than not, he finds that it works to their advantage. Instead of sitting alone in a room, isolated, strumming on his guitar—or fiddling with his mandolin, bass, violin or keyboard—Mr. Heringer always has four unique perspectives listening.

“Why box yourself in?” he posed. “I come from a theatrical background, so for me, it’s about having a show, too. There’s no set roles. We switch around instruments. From a creative standpoint, that helps us get songs we normally would have never written before. From the standpoint of the show, it allows people to always be wondering and locked into, ‘What’s going to happen next? Who’s going to play what instrument? Who’s going to be singing?’ It catches people’s attention.”

Milo Greene is definitely breaking through here in America. The band’s debut CD peaked at number 1 on the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums and two tracks, “What’s the Matter” and “Perfectly Aligned,” have been featured on The CW Television Network’s shows “Supernatural” and “Nikita.”

After finishing up a two-week stint playing shows in England and Scotland, the band is back to the tour bus life—which has its ups and downs, Mr. Heringer said.

“It’s what we signed up for. Everybody knows everything about each other and everybody has things that piss each other off, but we all help each other out and we’re all together pretty much all the time,” he said. “It becomes a little unit of people. It’s definitely a team. We all understand that sacrifice and effort we put into this. We all know we need to do a couple years of this to really get to where we want to be. We’re keeping each other sane, that’s for sure.”

The fictitious Milo Greene would be proud.

Milo Greene will give a concert at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, February 16, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. For more information, call 288-1500 or visit whbpac.org. To watch “Moddison,” visit youtube.com/watch?v=wV8tZKrSrcA.