There are obvious concerns that arise over a record-release party. Will anyone attend? Is the vintage Karl Lagerfeld suit jacket overkill as far as stage attire goes? What if the sound guy is too stoned to get the levels right? When it comes to SSRIs, though, there are more serious trepidations swirling about.

With the soirée for the ostentatiously titled debut album Effeminate Godzilla-Sized Wind Chimes just around the corner, the band’s cofounders, multi-instrumentalists Joseph Hirabayashi and Elliot Langford, are doing their best to ignore the fact that this is usually when misfortune strikes. Shortly after the last time the Vancouver post-everything extremists cut a record, 2008’s Teems EP, a tragic accident took the life of their drummer, Tommy Milburn. And prior to that, when the guys were in the midst of celebrating their second-place result in the 2007 edition of CiTR’s Shindig battle-of-the-bands competition, original SSRIs stickman Jon Holisko announced that he was off to pursue other projects. Whenever things have appeared to be going along swimmingly, a little thing Hirabayashi refers to as “the curse” stops the group in its tracks.

“We’ve been around for almost four years, and I feel like out of that four years, we’ve been active for one,” Hirabayashi says between bites of a Very Berry vegan muffin, scored from the JJ Bean on Main Street. “We keep having bad things happen, and having band hiatuses or ending up having to go back to the drawing board.”

Along with his bandmates—Langford, bassist Aaron McKinney, and drummer Tony Dallas—the animated 23-year-old is kicking back on a shopping-mall bench across the street from the beardo-studded coffee shop, which is located in Vancouver-hipster central. To an outsider, SSRIs would seem to be engaged in the kind of conversation that can send serotonin levels hurtling to dangerously low levels, especially when you take inventory of the unseasonably gloomy weather on this particular June morning. But the mood within the mall doesn’t come even close to flat-lining.

Despite being dealt some truly awful hands, Hirabayashi and Langford—who first met back in high school, when Hirabayashi would cut class and visit his girlfriend in Langford’s drama course—aren’t looking to fold just yet.

It’s this tenacity that drives Effeminate Godzilla-Sized Wind Chimes, an album that stands as a powerful testament to the importance of carrying on when life delivers cruel blows. The band gathered before the Georgia Straight today is a much different crew than the one that came together back in 2006, but the lineup change with the arrival of McKinney and Dallas has only strengthened SSRIs’ resolve.

“I never wanted to be a super high-turnover band,” says Langford, nervously tapping the ground with his festive plaid-green Converses, clearly still trying to warm up to the idea of being interviewed (as are McKinney and Dallas, who seem content throughout the interview to let the other two do the talking). “In my mind, I look up to bands that have been the same four guys since high school—it just didn’t work out that way.”

“We’ve had to be open to things,” concurs Hirabayashi, who admits to learning this trait from his parents, the artistic directors of famed local company Kokoro Dance.

Had SSRIs lined the walls of its rehearsal space with press shots of posthardcore stalwarts like Fugazi and At the Drive-In, and pledged dogmatic allegiance to the teachings of Maximum RocknRoll before each practice, the band might not have been so willing to move beyond its original vision. Without any musical blueprint or steadfast rules to adhere to, though, Hirabayashi and Langford have been nothing if not flexible. While they started out as a trio, with two guitarists and a drummer, they’ve incorporated a bass player and expanded not just the number of people in the tour van but also SSRIs’ sound.