In mid 2005, after some telltale symptoms, McMahon was diagnosed with leukemia. Six weeks of chemotherapy led to a bout with pneumonia, which nearly killed him, but his recovery soon found strength with the news that his sister was a bone marrow match. After a stem cell transplant (which ironically took place just as his new album hit store shelves) there was another setback, a case of the shingles, which attacks the central nervous system. But eventually, good news: the leukemia seemed to be in remission. \"It's tough to be sick that long, especially when you're young and have a lot to accomplish, and it's been a long, painful road back,\" said McMahon. \"Luckily, I have a great family and friends who took care of me. I will be forever grateful for their help.\"
While unable to support Jack's Mannequin with tour dates or interviews, McMahon has watched the album gain speed through word of mouth and critical kudos, including one from his hometown newspaper, the Orange County Register, which called Everything in Transit \"clearly the best release by a local artist in 2005.\" Its first single, \"The Mixed Tape,\" will soon be featured on the soundtrack for the WB series \"One Tree Hill.\" McMahon himself will also make a guest appearance on the show, appropriately with his Jack's Mannequin bandmates in an episode featuring a charity cancer fundraiser (also appropriate since, now that McMahon has recovered, Jack's Mannequin has been playing a few real charity fundraisers locally). A live-action video of \"The Mixed Tape,\" initially produced as an animation while McMahon was hospitalized, will be released this spring.
With Something Corporate on break, McMahon united the best of his songs into a concept album exploring his alienating return to the hometown he left to pursue his music, and the dissolution of a long, meaningful relationship because of it. He brought his signature piano and distinctive tenor to the project, with vocals, bass and guitar offered by Something Corporate producer Jim Wirt, a friend and collaborator. McMahon and Wirt produced the album, which also features Bobby (Raw) Anderson on guitar, and Patrick Warren (who's worked with Fiona Apple, Macy Gray and Jon Brion) with organ, strings and arrangements. Mštley CrŸe's Tommy Lee supplied live drums to complement samples by CJ Eiriksson, who also served as the album's engineer.
Inspired by such theme albums as The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Everything in Transit weaves an autobiographical tale reflected in the storybook written into its liner notes. It begins with the laid-back, bohemian California mood of \"Holiday from Real,\" with McMahon coming home and feeling like a visitor in his own world. \"The Mixed Tape\" offers bursts of punk-flavored riffs along with lyrics such as \"I read your letter, the one you left when you broke into my house... where are you now?\". The album's emotional duality is shown in the hopeful and upbeat \"I'm Ready,\" followed by the sullen \"Kill the Messenger.\"
McMahon's tribute to The Beach Boys is best heard on the sad-yet-sunny \"Miss Delaney,\" an electronica-flavored pop nugget with a synthesized theremin reminiscent of \"Good Vibrations.\" The disco flagellation of \"Bruised\" tumbles \"Into the Airwaves,\" McMahon's otherworldly tenor drawing a fatalistic analogy: \"I am slipping through, I am slipping into the airwaves / You are slipping through my fingers and into the airwaves.\" Everything in Transit eases into acceptance with its final triptych of songs: the ballad \"Rescued,\" McMahon's examination of his place in the world in \"Made for Each Other,\" and its denouement \"You Can Breathe.\"
McMahon has breathed the distinct smell of success since the 2001 debut of Audioboxer by the alternative-rock band he co-founded out of high school. Subsequent albums (Leaving Through the Window and North) proved the band's growth potential as well as the appeal of McMahon, whom MTV called \"the good-looking, shaggy-haired, thick-framed-glasses-wearing frontman.\" This past year, in addition to a more expansive tour schedule, Something Corporate was nominated for Band of the Year at the 2004 College Music Awards.
While Jack's Mannequin and Everything in Transit has given McMahon a chance to broaden his musical landscape and vocalize a difficult period in his life, it's certain that his recent experience with leukemia has offered even more songwriting fodder, both temporal and transcendental. It's also certain that his future work, as a solo artist and with Something Corporate, will reflect it.", "To simply say that El-P is serious about his music would be an understatement. Upon first listen to his upcoming album, I'll Sleep When You're Dead, it's readily apparent that this record - a magnum opus 4 years in the making - represents a culmination of profound musical, personal, and political experiences reaching their tumultuous climax. This record is about the struggle faced by those living in a rapidly changing society, El himself calling this his post-traumatic stress album where he attempts to capture the political by representing the internal. Evoking vocals and production aesthetics so viscerally indicative of the current era, El-P has outdone himself yet again, effectively mastering his brand of cutting-edge head-nodders and pushing forward a genre that has long held him as an undisputed kingpin. I'll Sleep When You're Dead embodies everything that is El-P - a groundbreaking artist, virtuosic producer, profound lyricist, label founder, A&R maverick and underground icon reacting to the malignant societal changes occurring today - a very serious matter indeed. This record is an urgent document, a collective representation of a critical individual crossing their personal Rubicon, assessing the dismal reality inherent, and deciding to forge on despite the cost. With appearances by Trent Reznor, The Mars Volta, Cat Power, Aesop Rock, Cage, Matt Sweeney, Tame One, and others, this is an album poised to extend a genre into a new realm of artistic expression.", "Ted Leo is a unique artist for these times. He provides a near perfect combination of politics, art, punk values and humor in his songwriting and the combination is resonating with people all over the world. Having toiled for years in the punk underground with both his former band Chisel and his solo effort Ted Leo/Pharmacists, Ted Leo is now primed to break out into the mainstream.
In February 2003, Lookout Records released the critically acclaimed \"Hearts Of Oak,\" a gem of a record that received accolades from Spin, Rolling Stone, Magnet, the New York Times, MTV and many others. Touring and promotion in support of \"Hearts\" was massive and included 5 US tours, a run in Japan and the UK and an appearance on \"Late Night with Conan O'Brien.\" A brief respite from touring was required mid way through his second US run when his vocal chords became enflamed due to the rigorous schedule of radio station visits, in store performances and nightly gigs. A regimen of vocal warm ups, fewer shows in a row and a dram less Irish Whisky was adopted and everything since has been in fine form.
In early 2004, in between some short tours, Ted began to write his fourth solo album. Motivated to keep pushing himself as a songwriter, performer and cultural critic, he shut himself in the basement of his childhood home in New Jersey and began to write. The songs that resulted in \"Shake The Sheets\" are fresh, smart, and passionate. \"Me and Mia,\" \"Heart Problems,\" \"Little Dawn\" and the rest discuss personal, political and societal ills in Ted Leo's signature style: soulful but never preachy or heavy handed. The message, as powerful as it is, is never greater than the music. Ted's light touch and vast array of influences makes the pop perfect while the lyrics are searing and searching.
Producer Chris Shaw proved to be the perfect partner for Ted and his sonic vision for the album. Well known for his work in producing the last 2 Bob Dylan albums, Shaw has also worked on many other diverse projects, from Dashboard Confessional, to Bell Biv De Voe to the classic Public Enemy album, \"It Takes a Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back.\" Chris helped Ted develop and layer \"Shake The Sheets,\" certainly Ted's most sonically powerful album to date.
Ted Leo is an artist who is well poised for a career with no limits. He will continue to write pop rock gems and work hard on the road to connect with his fans who continue to grow with him as he connects with more and more people. Do not be surprised if in 25 years you are dusting off your album jackets and along with Joe Jackson, Nick Lowe and Paul Weller you throw on Ted Leo to change your mood for the day.
Visit TedLeo.com ",
"\"The songs on The Believer are about sex, war, love and death . . . but mostly sex,\" Rhett Miller says of The Believer, his second solo album and his Verve Forecast debut. \"Before going into the studio, I thought I\'d be making a punk rock Ziggy Stardust, but I wound up with George Gershwin does T. Rex\'s The Slider.\"Already widely loved for his work as frontman and main songwriter of the hard-charging rock \'n\' roll quartet the Old 97\'s (of which he is still a member), Miller revealed a more introspective side with his acclaimed 2002 solo debut The Instigator. The Believer takes its predecessor\'s achievements several steps further, with a dozen deeply-felt, craftily melodic tunes that demonstrate the Texas-bred artist\'s knack for using accessible songcraft to address complex emotional issues.The Believer ranges from the puckish rock punch of \"My Valentine\" and \"Ain\'t That Strange\" to the expansive art-pop textures of \"Brand New Way\" and \"Meteor Shower.\" \"Help Me Suzanne,\" \"I\'m with Her\" and \"Fireflies\" Ñ the latter a duet with Rachael Yamagata Ñ demonstrate Miller\'s ability to write poignant, pointed love songs whose depth and insight are matched by their tunefulness. The spare, thoughtful \"Question\" finds Miller revisiting an Old 97\'s favorite from an older-and-wiser perspective. The album\'s one cover is a buoyant, barbed reading of \"I Believe She\'s Lying,\" written by frequent Miller collaborator Jon Brion.
The Believer\'s quietly powerful title track was inspired by Miller\'s acquaintance with the late alt-rock troubadour Elliott Smith. \"I wrote it in New York City the day he died,\" he explains. \"It really hit home for me. I met him and spent some time with him during his last years. My first date with my wife was seeing Elliott play at the Royal Albert Hall, and his drummer Scott McPherson ended up playing with me on the tour for The Instigator. I had a pretty serious suicide attempt when I was 14 years old, and I\'ve always wrestled with that impulse, as do a lot of people in my line of work. I don\'t know if the song is all about Elliott; maybe it\'s about me at 14, I\'m not exactly sure. But the song\'s kind of saying thanks for doing the good work you did, and I understand that you were doing your best.\"
Miller recorded The Believer with renowned producer George Drakoulias (Black Crowes, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) and a distinguished musical cast including guitarists Lyle Workman and Josh Schwartz, bassist Salim Nourallah, drummer Matt Chamberlain and keyboardists Patrick Warren and Jon Brion, whose collective resumŽ encompasses work with the likes of Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Frank Black, Macy Gray, Robyn Hitchcock, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Todd Rundgren and Elliott Smith. Gary Louris of the Jayhawks adds backing vocals.
Jon Brion last worked with Miller as producer and multi-instrumentalist on The Instigator. \"I made The Instigator while I was homeless as a result of 9/11, and there was some stuff on there that was really raw and directly out of that experience,\" Miller observes. \"But in a lot of ways it was a very stiff-upper-lip kind of record. Kind of like ÔWe love each other, everything\'s gonna be great.\' For me, The Believer is more confident and more based in reality.
\"I thought that with George Drakoulias I\'d end up making a straight-up rock record,\" the artist continues. But the night before we started pre-production, George came and saw me play a solo gig at Largo, and I did what I normally do, spazzing out, thrashing around and breaking guitar strings. The next day, George told me that his vision for the recording was that I would be Frank Sinatra, that I would be surrounded by the greatest musicians and I could give myself up to that process. It was less a matter of me putting myself into someone\'s hands and more a matter of me using this system, where I had written these songs, but I was now also interpreting them, like I was Bing Crosby or something.
\"With The Believer, it was very much my show. George put me in front of a microphone in a room full of incredibly talented musicians, most of whom were already friends of mine, thank god, so it didn\'t feel at all like an L.A. snow-job. I had no guitar to hide behind, and I flourished. I accepted the responsibility, and was able to direct the proceedings in a way that I hadn\'t before.\"
Miller continues to balance his solo endeavors with his membership in the Old 97\'s. The still-active quartet has released seven albums since 1994 (the latest being the live set Alive and Wired) and are prominently featured in the soon-to-be-released Jennifer Aniston/Vince Vaughn romantic comedy The Breakup.
\"I love to rock, but it\'s liberating not to always have to keep up with the freight train that is the Old 97\'s,\" Miller says of his dual musical careers. \"When I made The Instigator, I was constantly calling the 97\'s, sending them mixes, trying to feel out how this was gonna work. But making The Believer, I felt like I didn\'t have to answer to anybody. Part of that was because I\'d proven that I could do both, and part of it was because the guys in the band have been so cool about it. After ten years, we\'re beyond the bullshit. The other guys all have lives and families, so now we\'re at a point where we can do the Old 97\'s for the rest of our lives, but we don\'t have to do it every day.\"
\"I always secretly fantasized about making the perfect record and then faking my own death, but none of my previous albums seemed quite good enough. Now, if I disappear, you should check the beach in Bora Bora,\" Miller laughs, \"Because I feel pretty fucking strongly about this one.\" " ,
"Life as a traveling musician can become monotonous. Sleep, eat, perform. Load in, load out, pass out. Repeat. This is your day, and before you realize it, your life. After a decade of the three-step grind James LaValle—the classically trained multi-instrumentalist whose tone poems have been collated as The Album Leaf since 1999—decided to get off the well-worn path.
\"A lot of traveling and time away from home, learning about yourself while losing yourself, that\'s what has gone into recording for me,\" says LaValle. \"Following a year-and-a-half of straight touring I took a break from worrying only about where The Album Leaf was going and instead concentrated on the best parts of what it\'s been this entire time.\"
If musicians could keep time in a bottle its consumption would likely outpace vodka and bourbon combined within the first year. Next to a comfortable place to sleep, time is the luxury few touring musicians are afforded. Time alone is even more rare. Following stints with instrumental artisans Tristeza, post-hardcore spastics the Locust, contorted punk-funk ritualists GoGoGo Airheart, shadowy conjurers The Black Heart Procession and is often a special guest of Iceland\'s celestial menagerie Sigur Rós, LaValle recognizes this lifestyle and its constraints.
Bottled up on the road long enough, LaValle felt the timing was right to give it a go from a different angle. Using time bought by the success of his Sub Pop debut, 2004\'s In a Safe Place (which saw songs as the soundtrack to six episodes of The OC, and stints with CBS, NBC and Showtime). LaValle sequestered himself for six months in his San Diego house solely to write. This upswing of downtime resulted in his fourth full-length, Into the Blue Again.
At the core of The Album Leaf (named for a Chopin piece) has always been LaValle\'s melodic daydreams personified. But while 2004\'s In a Safe Place featured embellishments from members of Sigur Rós and Amina (the Sigur Rós string section), Into the Blue Again sees a return to The Album Leaf\'s conception and LaValle handling virtually all of the instrumental duties. LaValle\'s few collaborators on Into the Blue Again are Josh Eutis of Telefon Tel Aviv, who aided additional drum programming and engineering on choice songs, The Black Heart Procession\'s Pall Jenkins adding vocal harmonies on \"Wherever I Go,\" violinist Matt Resovich (who performs with The Album Leaf live, and also played on In a Safe Place), Drew Andrews adding additional guitar work on select songs (Drew also performs with The Album Leaf live) and Brigir Jon Birgisson, \"Biggi,\" engineer at Sigur Rós\' Sundlaugin studio.
Sundlaugin, also the studio used for In a Safe Place, is a former swimming pool turned into a primarily analogue recording facility. This contoured, textural environment lends itself well to LaValle\'s lustrous, resounding palette. Wanting to employ his own equipment (not possible on the last record, recorded wholly in Iceland), LaValle loaded up a van and held his initial three-week tracking session with Ryan Hadlock at appropriately earthy Bear Creek Studio, a converted turn-of-the-century barn isolated outside Seattle. LaValle then took the concentric billows of feathered keyboards, filmy strings and chiseled drums to Iceland for three weeks of mixing to tape to maintain Brian Eno-informed translucence.
\"Rough warmth, that\'s a good description,\" says Birgisson of LaValle\'s intonation on Into the Blue Again. \"The goal was to make sure you\'re not overproducing to keep things live, organic and intimate.\"
\"I like drones and keeping notes intact,\" admits LaValle. \"A lot of times songs become written around a sound I feel is important and should not be forgotten. But I anchor them in a verse-chorus-verse structure. It helps focus the melodies.\"
Indeed, personal focus has been LaValle\'s primary objective with Into the Blue Again. The album\'s 10 tracks exhibit an elegant, ascendant assurance informed by LaValle\'s more settled relationships at home. While still delivering the placidity of a track such as album opener \"The Light,\" LaValle has composed even more corporeal, insistent cuts such as \"Shine\" and \"Red-Eye.\" Into the Blue Again also showcases LaValle\'s increasingly confident, buoyant vocals striking heightened presence on unfeigned selections \"Always for You,\" \"Writings on the Wall\" and \"Wherever I Go.\" There is a greater sense of both the \"I\" and eye in the way LaValle lays out the topography of his pivotal past and makes it universally palpable.
\"The Album Leaf is my little solo endeavor, my little toy,\" says LaValle in summation. \"It\'s something to keep you happy when you\'re alone and frustrated, and sometimes frustrating in itself when it doesn\'t do exactly what you want. But still something fascinating.\"
Having shared so much time and space with others on the road, LaValle proves with the personally charged Into the Blue Again that The Album Leaf resonates most profoundly when he goes it alone.",
"French Kicks are obsessed with possibility. For this band experimentation and self-discovery are the whole game, and the results of their continued explorations have set them in a category all their own, and earned them a dedicated audience. From the time they began as a raucous four piece with a singing drummer, to the more refined, intricate and subtle experimental pop band they are today, French Kicks have taken that experimentation always further, consistently trying to surprise and surpass themselves with each new chapter. Two Thousand, the bold newest installment in the story, offers a rare collection of thrills and intrigues, composed of sounds both foreign and familiar. Each song offers its own logic and its own rewards: masterfully crafted arrangements that are fun to listen to, but never obvious, with lyrics that resonate with truth while still being open and suggestive.
Vocalist, keyboardist Nick Stumpf and guitarist Josh Wise wrote the bulk of material over the course of 2005 while living in New York. As always, they avoided any repetition from previous efforts by trying new songwriting techniques, new instruments, and new recordings situations. They then decamped to Los Angeles, along with the rest of the band, and spent a very, very intense month in LA with producer Doug Boehm. What emerged is both a departure and a continuation of the French Kicks oeuvre. Two Thousand taps into the energy and excitement of their earliest records while adding new sounds and a mastery of song craft and studio technique.
The founding members of the French Kicks have all known each other forever. Nick Stumpf and Matt Stinchcomb met nearly two decades ago in grade school and played in bands together throughout high school and college. Bassist Lawrence Stumpf is Nick\'s younger brother. In 1998 Nick and Matt met Alabama native Josh at a party shortly after moving to Brooklyn. The bond was immediate and they became the French Kicks quickly thereafter.
Their first two early EPs were recorded as an extension of their live shows—four friends plugging in and playing. Their debut album \"One Time Bells\" was a ramshackle but brilliant piece of work showing a group chafing at self-imposed limitations. In 2003, Nick emerged from behind drum kit, brought in drummer Aaron Thurston and the band begun an evolution from its original incarnation to something wholly new with Nick and Josh more formally taking over the writing and recording of Trial of the Century. Trial proved to be their breakthrough both artistically and commercially. The mature songwriting, sophisticated arrangements, and coherency of sound and aesthetic wooed critics and granted the band an audience who, finally, loved the French Kicks for the music they made—rather than the subgenre or scene they were never really a part of.
The emerging dynamic that fueled the artistic success of \"Trial\" would test relations between bandmembers, and before entering the studio to record Two Thousand, founding member Matt Stinchcomb decided amicably to leave the group. Reuniting with Trial of the Century producer Doug Boehm, the French Kicks sought to bring a stable hand to a band whose experimental nature and perfectionism can lead to a stressful studio environment. According to Nick, however, \"there was no element of calm. \"We all, Doug included, fell quickly into a resigned, fatalistic doggedness.\" Both Nick and Josh put an extreme, almost absurd, amount of pressure on themselves to improve on both the songwriting and production of Trial. The sessions were long and tense with Doug pushing the band as hard as they pushed themselves.
The results are some of the finest, most powerful, and also most beautiful songs by the French Kicks. Two of Josh and Nick\'s most pop-oriented compositions, \"Knee High\" and Also Ran,\" have a power recalling their earlier recordings but a finesse emblematic of their current sound. A highlight of the set is opener \"So Far We Are,\" one of the Kicks most soulful songs to date. While the melody and guitar riffs are immediate, repeated listens reveal layers of supporting instrumentation, rhythm tracks, and counter-melodies. Deeper cuts in the album like \"England Just Will Not Let You Recover\" and \"Go On\" showcase their layered approach to songwriting with various instruments, recognizable and foreign, creating an intriguing landscape for Nick\'s melodic ideas.
To bring the songs on Two Thousand to a live audience, the French Kicks, who\'ve been touring continually since 2001, have added Kush El Amin to assist with extra percussion, second guitar, and a lot of keyboards: \"basically everything we don\'t have enough hands to play.\" They\'ll be on the road through all of 2006 and 2007, and Two Thousand will be released July 18, 2006.",
"\"I don\'t like Robert Johnson,\" Jolie Holland says, \"but I\'ve got an awesome live recording of [singer-songwriter] Entrance doing \"Love In Vain.\" His version goes, \"When the train left the station, there were two lights on behind/the blue light was the blues and the red light was my mind/is all my love in vain?\"
It\'s a nice coincidence, then, that when writing notes on her third album, Springtime Can Kill You, Holland was on a train. What she wrote, in fact (her aversion to Johnson aside), is as unvarnished and poetic as that song. As well, it\'s a consummately eloquent sketch of the record and through-line for this bio.
She writes: This baby is the picture of a lovesick, convoluted mind. Sometimes my voice is as a lusty young woman, sometimes an adoring friend, sometimes a tormented soul, sometimes a whispering ghost.
Just as with her lauded 2003 basement-tapes, Catalpa, and 2004\'s studio debut Escondida, Holland writes with a soft focus and a sharp edge (and sometimes vice-versa). Springtime Can Kill You takes this approach to a transcendent level. Holland\'s sepia-toned song noir and billowy voice are in rare form as she weaves ethereal tales at a crossroads where haunting meets joyfulÑhers is a voice from the heavens singing stories of the underworld. The songs rise and fall like heavy eyelids and convey the peace of a place between asleep and awake. Sounds from past and present-tense waltz together to a never-ending melody that flickers between folk, jazz, blues and pop as Holland\'s characters and situations play on surrealistic celluloid.
We return to Holland\'s notes: ... The hallucinations keep emphasizing the meanings of birdsong, moonshine, crazy dreams and the profusions of spring. There are open doors onto isolated county roads. Echoes of Memphis Minnie\'s \"Homesick Blues,\" of Freakwater\'s \"My Old Drunk Friend,\" Jimmie Rodgers pining for love. This is a pilgrim\'s progress through the haunted season of lust.
The lilting \"Crush in the Ghetto\" is the birdsong, Holland cooing about a new love (\"I\'m flirting with the birds, I\'m talking to the weeds, look what you\'ve done to me\"). \"Moonshiner\" is a countrified, sultry appeal (\"You got that good hard stuff that always gets me high\"). \"Crazy Dreams,\" written by Holland\'s friend C.R. Avery, has Holland trapped and tormented (\"caught in the thistle, someone stumped on my pride\") in a troublesome trance.
\"Springtime Can Kill You\" is the sum of those songs, blending bliss, lust and torment into a creepy-beautiful, Jarmuschian reverie. Holland, singing as if deceased, warns there\'s no time to smell the roses (\"you don\'t have the time for the least hesitation\"). Though existential at first blush, it\'s a coy, sultry, spectral, even baleful tune where death is a metaphor for the black aftermath of rent love. \"It\'s just about being fucked-up, heartbroken and burnt,\" says Holland.
This is the first time she wrote songs specifically for an album as well as a band. \"I even wrote myself out of a few songs, so I could work solely as a singer.\" She says allowing her band members to stretch their legs, particularly with guitarist Brian Miller (co-writer of \"Crush in the Ghetto\" and the title track), helped her focus more on each song\'s essence. Consequently, Springtime Can Kill You\'s rich tones swirl through Holland\'s unique storytelling to create a departure from reality, a reminder of the beauty humans can create.
In her words: Most of the stories and words are mine, but there are a few instances in which I let other people\'s songs tell the story because my voice is one of millions, just a tiny drop in an ocean of love songs...
Holland produced Springtime Can Kill You with friend Lemon DeGeorge at two studios in Holland\'s home base of San Francisco. Most of the tracking was done at John Vanderslice\'s Tiny Telephone (where Holland and her band indulged in its array of vintage gear) and a few mix sessions and some overdubbing occurred at the venerated Hyde Street Studios (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Son Volt, Chris Whitley). Many tracks were recorded live to tapeÑand a few of these were tracked before an audience of Holland\'s friends.
Springtime is a remarkable statement for an entirely self-trained singer-songwriter whose first dalliance with music was with a toy piano (a harbinger of her love for classic instrumentation) and whose musical identity manifested while playing itinerant songwriter throughout the South. It bears both the rustic grain of her work with the Be-Good Tanyas (which she co-founded and departed after their debut album, Blue HorseÑa subject she confronts on \"Mexican Blue\") and the self-reliance of Catalpa, her much-adored debut. As well, it expands on the not-so-hidden charms of Escondida, which earned raves from the press and fans like Tom Waits.
Holland will preview tracks from Springtime Can Kill You at several pre-tour warm up shows among those will be two at Largo in Los Angeles, April 5th and 26th . She\'ll follow these with tours of North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand throughout 2006. Along the way she\'ll continue her genre-hopping guest appearances, which last year included an onstage turn with hip-hop artist Sage Francis and singing on Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin\'s upcoming solo album.
But right now Holland\'s thoughts remain with Springtime Can Kill You. In particular, its haunted lust, true adoration, gentle torment and persistent whispers and how, in concert, they ask the same question: is all her love in vain? In her notes, Holland\'s parting thought answers \"yes\":
We are all lovers, and every heart can break. And springtime is always a beautiful minefield strewn with honeysuckle and thorny roses.",
"Since its inception, Waking Ashland — drawing much of its sound from Ben Folds — has mainly centered around vocalist/keyboardist Jonathan Jones and guitarist Ryan Lallier, who originally formed the band in November 2003 while they were both music majors at California State University. In early 2004, they self-released their debut EP, I Am for You. The members dropped out of college when finding success with the record and garnering attention from several record labels. Tooth & Nail signed Waking Ashland and released the full-length Composure in May 2005. Since then, the lineup was completed by guitarist Nathan Harold and Tim Very. In June 2006, Waking Ashland released the Telescopes EP on Immortal, who will also be releasing the band's much anticipated sophomore LP.",
"Sometimes driving directions look overwhelming, and then you get in your car to use them, and the drive is smooth through until the end. Just as a song by Chiodos takes you in many directions, but when it\'s done you never question how you got there.
The band Chiodos formed in high school, just outside of Flint, MI. Then known as The Chiodos Bros, they played the local scene and began writing original music. In June 2002, they recorded a demo called, The Best Way To Ruin Your Life, which gave the group a healthy local following.
Chiodos (now with a shortened moniker) has covered plenty of ground since then. Lead singer Craig Owens\' bout with pneumonia in 2004 stalled the band\'s progress for a brief period of time, but soon after, the band was ready to join the Equal Vision Records family to release their new album, All\'s Well That Ends Well.
After spending a month recording this past winter, All\'s Well That Ends Well blasts menacingly at times, and sighs thoughtfully at others. But the various styles found in Chiodos\' past songs have become more defined on the new album. \"Everyone [in the band] really wanted this album to be somewhat more categorized,\" says Owens. Chiodos\' maturity is evident in the dueling guitar riffs of \"There\'s No Penguins in Alaska;\" and the defiant lyrics, \"take these misunderstandings/and send them back where they came from/it\'s hard enough to live life\" from \"All Nereids Beware.\"
Despite the complex range and genre-shifting within songs on the album, when asked how the album will transcend live, Owens sums it up by saying, \"We take pride in sounding better live [than on the album].\" Considering he and keyboardist Brad Bell grew up together, Owens boasts their sincere vocal harmonizing doesn\'t falter under the bright lights: \"We don\'t want to let the kids down.\"
Chiodos\' style and layered complexity have strengthened over time, yet they\'ve always been in control of their music. Shortly after their demo release in 2002, the band used guitarist Pat McManaman\'s bedroom to self-record, engineer, produce, and master their first full-length album, The Heartless Control Everything, which was soon after released on Search and Rescue Records. Although the album was a raw effort, it did not go unnoticed – fans from hometown state of Michigan and beyond buzzed about the album, along with praise of the band\'s live performances.
Once The Heartless...was finished, the band hit the road for 7 full U.S. tours (including performances with Yellowcard and Coheed & Cambria), in which time sold thousands of CDs and gained countless enthusiastic fans and friends. All\'s Well That Ends Well is sure to impress these die-hards as well as new listeners, with a tighter, quicker punch than previous efforts.
The band\'s style only definable as a melting pot – band influences include Saves The Day, Queen, and At The Drive In – a song could begin with electronic beats behind piano, ease into metal guitar riffs, then speed into a poppy melodic vocal line that leaves you humming. Lead singer Craig Owens says, \"We don\'t want to feel pressured into a single genreÉwe have a rule to stay away from Ôverse-chorus-verse\' songwriting.\"
From a band who named itself after an obscure term used in 80\'s horror movies, Chiodos\' All\'s Well That Ends Well, is more tangible than their previous releases, which will ignite interest from metalheads, pop-punkers, and curious music fans in general. Chiodos has created an album that defies generic song structure – yet continues along on its signatory song-map, where no one gets lost and everyone ends up in the right place.
Craig Owens – Vocals
Bradley Bell – Keyboards
Pat McManaman – Guitar
Matt Goddard – Bass
Jason Hale – Guitar
Derrick Frost – Drums",
"Ocean Beach, CA's Slightly Stoopid, who are already coasting into their second decade of rock n' roll at the ages of 26 - 27 years-old, are releasing their fifth album, Closer to the Sun, on April 19. Fusing acoustic rock and blues with reggae, hip-hop, and punk, Slightly Stoopid have cemented a signature sound and created a legion of die-hard fans in the process. The band, whose D.I.Y. nature has seen them thumb their nose at more than a few major label record deals over the course of their career, will release Closer to the Sun on their own imprint, Stoopid Records/Caliplates Recordings in conjunction with Reincarnate Records. As Miles Doughty, one of the group's two front men explains, \"It's all about the grass roots style you've got to tough it out, got to get your hands dirty touring and making music. We have 100% creative control of what we do, and we've worked way too hard to have other people telling us how to do it. It's working, so we don't feel we need to change.\"
Recorded at Total Access studios in Redondo Beach, CA, Closer to the Sun is loaded with 20 new jams that both refine and cement the group's trademark sound. The album, which flows through a seamless mix of dubbed out funky blues, rock, and reggae, and a few clashes with old school punk, re-enlists production alumni and soundboard manipulators Miguel (Sublime, Long Beach Dub, Unwritten Law, Skunk Records), Philadelphonic/G-love & Special Sauce resident producer Chris D, and Dub Reggae legend (and King Tubby protŽgŽ) Scientist for the follow up to 2003's Everything You Need.
The album's first single \"Somebody\" is a blues romp peppered with a timely sample of the late ODB from Wu Tang's \"36 Chambers\" (eerily recorded less than a month prior to the late hip-hop luminary's overdose, and scratched by the infamous D.J. Field Marshall). The solid bass lines of the band's newest weed anthems \"This Joint\" and \"Fat Spliffs\" lend deep grooves to hip-hop rhythms. In fact, reggae legend Barrington Levy, who appears on \"See It No Other Way,\" said, \"I took this song back to Jamaica and my kids wouldn't let me take it out of the tape deck.\" Closer To The Sun debuted in the Billboard top 200 charts, and has sold 25,000 records in the first 8 weeks of being released.
Boasting dual front men, Slightly Stoopid possesses a unique dynamic and kinship. They share a multitude of influences, from the acoustic leanings of Cat Stevens, Tom Petty, Django Reinhardt, and the Grateful Dead, to old school reggae and dub artists Augustus Pablo, Lee Scratch Perry, Yellowman, and UB40. In addition, their more modern influences such as Sublime, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Wyclef Jean certainly shine through, and hint towards the band becoming the natural heir to the close-knit musical lineage which spawned them.
Back In 1995, while still in high school, Miles and Kyle caught the ear of Sublime vocalist Bradley Nowell, who then signed them to his own Skunk Records label. Staying true to the D.I.Y ethic of punk rock, the band released its first two albums independently on Skunk. With minimal distribution (primarily in Southern California), the Skunk label released the punk-tinged debut Slightly Stoopid (1996), and the heavier-produced reggae leanings of the band's surf inspired Longest Barrel Ride (1998). After a couple of years of hard core gigging, and between recording a legitimate new studio album, Slightly Stoopid delivered a live CD from an hour long live acoustic set from San Diego's Rock 105 which helped them kick off their own Stoopid Records imprint. Titled Acoustic Roots: Live and Direct, it featured both players on acoustic guitars and vocals, and was recorded live, one take with no overdubs. Then in 2003, Slightly Stoopid released Everything You Need, their first legitimately produced studio album since 1998. A departure on some levels, Everything You Need was the culmination of the band reaching a new creative plateau, forging their own brand of music without abandoning the philosophy of where they started. According to co-front man Kyle McDonald, \"Miles and I both love music, and we have been friends since we were one and two years old. We are just like brothers, and it's really nice to be able to make music with your family. We've been listening to music together all of our lives, have been playing together since our mid-teens, and are in our 11th year as a band.\"
On the live front, the band's fan club, which is known as \"Ese Locos\" or \"Stoopidheads,\" flock too nearly 200 live shows a year. Slightly Stoopid's touring schedule typically has them locked into two-plus hours of improvisational jamming, five days a week. Along the way, they have supported such acts as Dave Matthews Band, The Marley Bros, Sublime, The Roots, G-Love and Special Sauce, Blink 182, Toots and The Maytals, N.E.R.D, Pennywise, and The Warped Tour, to name a few. The group's diversity appeals to a wide demographic of music fans. \"Our live shows are fun, and we get every sort of person you can imagine in one room,\" Kyle reveals. \"And a lot of them are crazy. We're all about having fun - we interact with the crowd and get 'em riled up.\"
Slightly Stoopid remain a group devoted to the pursuit of the perfect mix of lifestyle and sound. With Closer to the Sun, Slightly Stoopid has created a soundtrack to compliment their quest for the most crucial mix, and prove that hard work, perseverance and staying true to their roots is their path to creating genre-bending music with integrity.
Visit SlightlyStoopid.com",
"\"I see the world in a swirl of hues / but my favorite color is shame\"
This confession, delivered by Gatsbys American Dream vocalist Nic Newsham in opening track \"Theatre,\" begins the journey that is the band's third full-length album, Volcano. Filled with literary references ranging from Jurassic Park and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy to Interview With A Vampire and The Lord Of The Flies, Volcano is not easy music to swallowÑand it's not meant to be, says guitarist Bobby Darling. \"We're pulling from a lot more influences to tell a more personal story; this record has a much stronger central idea than anything we've done in the past.\"
But what is that central idea? Darling explains: \"I've always been attracted to stories about volcanoes, not to mention my childish fixation on dinosaurs. We all loved the story of Pompeii, and somehow we came around to the idea of the volcano narrating a song [track two, \"Pompeii\"] and becoming the main theme of a record.\" A refresher course, for those who slept through World History in high school: Pompeii was a Roman city that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption; but instead of learning their lesson and moving away, the prideful residents rebuilt their town only to have the same volcano erupt 50 years later, completely wiping out the entire city and turning its citizens into ash. The band took this story of pride and ignorance and let it inspire the songs on Volcano. While each track can stand on its own, the album as a whole is an intense look inside the heart of man and human nature.
The concept might seem a bit heady for those who are unfamiliar with the band's back catalog; but for a group whose previous LP, 2003's Ribbons & Sugar, was based around George Orwell's Animal Farm, Volcano is just the next logical step for a band who have never been content to be pigeonholed. Starting off as a young speed-punk group with their 2002 debut Why We Fight, the band quickly progressed into a multifaceted indie-rock hydra, fusing together conceptually stimulating lyrics with soulful vocals by Newsham, as well as polyrhythmic drumming from Rudy Gajadhar (whose last name you may already recognize—younger brother Mark Gajadhar drums for fellow Seattle intellipunks the Blood Brothers). The quartet's sound is even further propelled by bassist Kirk Huffman's vocal interjections, and ingenious time and tempo changes scattered throughout songs. Essentially, Gatsbys American Dream are not for the faint of heart.
Showcasing the band's diversity, Volcano contains everything from \"Fable,\" a Strokes-esque pop song about (what else?) The Lord Of The Flies, to \"A Mind Of Metal And Wheels,\" which finds Newsham and Huffman trading vocal lines alongside the most unironic use of a cowbell in ages. The band's penchant for interweaving lyrical themes pops up all over Volcano, with \"Shhhhhh! I'm Listening To Reason\" recalling lyrics from former albums, before decaying into a drunken pub sing-along. \"Badlands\" also revisits older lyrics, where \"Meet Me At The Tavern In Bowerstone\" actually becomes the lyrical postscript to \"The Giant's Drink,\" just two tracks prior. It's nuances like these that reveal Gatsbys American Dream to be more than just another band.
As the cult of Gatsbys has grown over the past few years, many have championed the band for seemingly ignoring the idea of inserting choruses in their songs, as a sort of middle finger to record labels this is best documented on the band's 2003 EP, In The Land Of Lost Monsters, where Newsham howls \"'The songs are uninspired / Where's the fucking chorus?' / Here it is, but you can't fuck with my integrity\" in \"The Dragon Of Pendor.\" Darling says this is a common misunderstanding about GAD, however. \"We don't really focus on writing songs without choruses, and we don't have a problem with choruses—but we're not gonna put a chorus in our song to make a record label happy. We've heard a lot of industry-types say that Ribbons & Sugar would have been a great record with some really strong choruses. Ribbons & Sugar is a great record. We just didn't sound like other bands; and we still don't sound like other bands. I think more times than not, it's the bands that are doing something new or different that make the biggest impact.\"
Gatsbys are definitely one of the bands doing something new and different, and are helping spearhead a scene that is quickly becoming \"the new Seattle\"—Seattle itself. \"We've been so lucky to be part of what's been going on here the past few years,\" says Darling. \"There were some key people in the scene that taught us a lot about being in a band, the right way to do business and how fucked the music industry is.\" Gatsbys American Dream join fellow Seattleites Minus The Bear, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Akimbo, the United State Of Electronica and the Blood Brothers—all of whom are branching out in previously uncharted musical directions. They may not sound alike, but their goal is shared: Make the best music possible. Darling sums it up perfectly, saying, \"This town has been amazing to us. It\'s more than a scene; it\'s a community.\"
Of course, for a band this obviously intelligent, both musically and literarily, one simply has to ask: Why is there no apostrophe in Gatsbys? Darling laughs, before admitting, \"That is straight up because we thought the apostrophe would make finding us on the internet confusing.\" Luckily for the band, Volcano's inevitable eruption will undoubtedly make Gatsbys American Dream a household name—correct punctuation be damned.
Visit GatsbysAmericanDream.com",
"With no band member over the age of 18, not many would consider My American Heart veterans of the rock scene. But the old saying of don\'t judge a book by its cover rings true for this San Diego five-piece.
My American Heart already has five national tours under their belt including the 2005 Warped Tour, 2005 Taste of Chaos and is winter Myspace Tour. Having accomplished so much in so little time speaks volumes about the band\'s work ethic, but to them, it\'s simply in their blood.
\"I believe we work just as hard as any other band trying to become successful, you just give it your best and it\'s true, you get out what you put in,\" explains vocalist Larry Soliman.
The becoming sound of My American Heart is centered on \"bringing the rock\" with their own inspired and creative flair. \"We have a retro rock kind of vibe mixed with our own sound,\" explains Soliman. \"We never ever came out saying we want to sound like this band or that band, we just made what felt natural to us from what we\'ve learned and just went with it.\"
This unique sound is evident in the band\'s debut album The Meaning In Makeup, which was released September 13, 2005 via WARCON Entertainment. Produced by Sal Villanueva (Thursday, Taking Back Sunday) and mixed and engineered by Matt Squire (Thrice, Northstar), the band\'s first release is already being hailed as one the top break-out records of 2005 with such strong singles as The Process, Runaway and Poison.
",
"Indiana's Murder by Death layers the vocal sounds of an old saloon with the haunting strings of an Hungarian folk dance and the hard driving rhythms of pure rock n' roll, producing what Stuff magazine has called \"lush, orchestrated songs,\" somehow simultaneously reminiscent of Johnny Cash and Radiohead. Added to that thick and intriguing sound are a series of dark and ironic lyrics, combining the mood and tone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with the narrative force of the Decemberists or a short story by Nathanial Hawthorne. Adam Turla fills out these sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful lyrics by conjuring up a cast of character voices, allowing the songs to speak with the force of the characters themselves, and providing the listener with a sense of ensemble unique in rock music.
But this ensemble feel is not only the result of Turla's vocal playfulness, but of the cohesive playing of the band itself. Sarah Balliet channels her Kentucky Bluegrass roots through the skilled hands of a concert cellist, playing point and counterpoint to the lyrics and guitars with magnificent grace and style. Matt Armstrong's bass guitar provides the rhythmic framework of the band, but also takes the lead with surprising frequency, guiding Murder by Death into driving highs and brooding lows. And Alex Schrodt's drumsticks almost dance across the skins, giving the band what the Chicago Reader called \"a rhythm section Nick Cave or the Faint would die for.\" The result is a fascinating slice of American Gothic, replete with trail rides, whiskey shots and Old Scratch himself.
Murder by Death's unique sound has developed over several years of touring and recording. Constantly evolving their sound, the style changes from their first release \"Like The Exorcist, But More Breakdancing\" to their sophomore release, \"Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?\". \"Who Will Survive...\" grew from a small, limited pressing album into a sleeper hit as they constantly toured the country, sharing the stage with bands as diverse as The Weakerthans, Rasputina, Lucero, Against Me!, and William Elliott Whitmore.\” Who Will Survive's...\" rich narrative structure, which recounted the travails of a small western town besieged by the devil, not only garnered popular and critical attention, but inspired a number of artistic reactions and responses, including ballet and stage productions, paintings, and even a PhD thesis.
The band's new album, entitled \"In Bocca al Lupo,\" forgoes the integrated narrative structure of \"Who will Survive...,\" presenting the listener with an album built on thematic connections. \"In Bocca al Lupo,\" which translates roughly to \"In the Mouth of the Wolf\" (a phrase said before students take exams in Italian classrooms, and to which the students respond \"Kill the Wolf\"), examines themes of sin, transgression, punishment, and redemption, touching on different lives and different stories in each individual song. The resulting album resembles the 1979 murder mystery from which the band takes its name-a pastiche of bad deeds and good intentions, of last minute heroism and, in some cases, nearly impossible forgiveness.
Musically, \"In Bocca al Lupo\" is as diverse as the various stories that the album recounts. The songs themselves reflect the stories they tell-gritty rock and roll beats drive “Brother” and “Sometimes the Line Walks You”, complex tango rhythms twine themselves through “One More Notch” and lonely western guitars accompany the simple elegance of “Shiola” and “Raw Deal”. Each of the album's ballads and waltzes, chants and hard hitting rock songs, meld content and form, creating meaning in the music itself. Murder by Death's unique musical aesthetic ties these seemingly disparate tracks together. With the help of producer J. Robbins (Jets to Brazil, Jawbox, Against Me!) the lush melodies and harmonies so unique to the band transform these varied sounds into a coherent and cohesive album, an album whose overall sound and sensibility melds the darkest moments of Modest Mouse's \"Good News for People Who Love Bad News\" with the maudlin country roots of Western folk rock. The band's thick, fretted, knotty sound provides a through line, tying together an album as musically diverse as the backcountry roads and basement rooms that inspired it.
\"In Bocca al Lupo\", on Tent Show Records, the band's own label, shows off Murder by Death's maturity, both as songwriters and musicians. The album is alternately rough and gentle, elegant and complex, intelligent and playful; it moves from one to the other without breaking stride, without interrupting the album as whole. Murder by Death is known for their talent as performers, for their live presence, the ambiance and energy present in their music. \"In Bocca al Lupo\" harnesses this energy and distills it, adding to it the maturity of a band constantly on the road.
Visit MurderByDeath.com
And, sure enough, by the summer of 2003, they were in a holding pattern, resulting in one of the shortest-lived successes in Gilbert's tiny music scene. Months earlier Costa and guitarist Chad Crawford had formed the band with their fellow classmates, guitarist DJ Wilson and singer Tyson Stevens -- borrowing the Scary Kids name from a song by influential emo band Cap'n Jazz, and quickly honing their notoriously raucous live set. Those shows, especially early on, found the band carelessly smashing and recklessly lighting their instruments ablaze. \"It just got insane,\" Costa recalls. \"I remember one time we almost lit the basement of [defunct local rock club] the Nile on fire!\"
By the time that Scary Kids recorded their first, independently released EP, After Dark, with local luminary Bob Hoag (Recover, The Format), they were operating on borrowed time. Costa who was also acting as the band's de facto manager -- had decided to return to his first love, the piano; seeking out a career as a concert pianist. While Costa began pecking away for eight hours a day his bandmates shrugged, registering for classes at their respective local universities instead. For all intents and purposes, the Scary Kids story should have ended here. But in reality, it had just begun.
By the fall of 2003 (and with virtually no effort on their behalf) the growing interest in the band began to grow. Influential webzine AbsolutePunk.net posted After Dark on their site and, unexpectedly, the calls started pouring in. Immortal Records eventually won out, re- releasing After Dark in 2004 and signing on for The City Sleeps In Flames, the band's highly anticipated debut. \"I didn't know very much about the music business going into this,\" Costa admits sheepishly. \"But I knew I couldn't do one or the other. Steve had a scholarship. He gave that up. We stopped everything.\"
Decamping to Salad Days studios in Maryland this past February, the band began a five-week recording excursion with renowned underground producer Brian Mcternan (Thrice, Cave In, Snapcase). Now joined by second guitarist Steve Kirby as well as keyboardist Pouyan Afkary, the band's once-refined heavy rock sound had grown more anthemic and dramatic in scope. \"Our attitude isn't totally serious,\" Costa insists, \"But I think Brian did a good job at making the music mature for our age. It still sounds fun. But he made us realize how to make, as he would say, a better Ôbed' for everything.\"
The songs on The City Sleeps In Flames indulge in new wave's careless spirit, post-hardcore's lacerating dynamics, and the moody atmospherics of heady guitar rock bands. But also of note is Stevens, who has risen to new heights lyrically exposing the kind of earnest vulnerability on songs like \"Faith In The Knife\" and \"Just A Taste\" that you wouldn't expect from a songwriter that's still only 19 years old. \"Over two years things can change a lot,\" Costa says casually. \"Everyone is a lot more motivated to play music, we've been doing it so much now. I think this is just the beginning.\"
And, essentially that's what The City Sleeps In Flames reflects—a blazing starting point, if not the realization of the bright future they nearly left behind. With years ahead of them (and countless miles out on the road already booked) this is a band that is still in the midst of something bigger. As Stevens sings above a layer of warm snyths on \"Empty Glasses,\" often in this life \"with a flash the moment is gone.\" On The City Sleeps In Flames, Scary Kids Scaring Kids have undeniably entered their moment -- and it's one that's seems sure to stay.
Visit ScaryKids.com",
"\"Gutter phenomenon\" is a term that was used in the 1950s to describe rock 'n roll music. It was society's reaction, at the time, to a style of music it considered 'sinful.' Rock music was actually viewed as a discredit to American society. The people at the time believed that rock music would lead to people's downfall. They thought rock 'n roll would never last.
Fast-forward 50 years, and rock 'n roll is still a thriving force of expression. However, when any music scene or culture flourishes and prospers, it can become watered down and generic, populated with more than a few been-there, done-that sounding bands, many of which are passionless and are there with sole purpose of cashing in. Every Time I Die understands this reality, and aims to shatter it. They're making rock music new, exciting and dangerous again.
If there is any band out there that will change the face of rock 'n roll underground if there is any band that will claw their way to the top while expunging current preconceptions about rock music, it's Buffalo's Every Time I Die.
Armed with two formidable assault weapons their breath stealing new album, titled Gutter Phenomenon, and their devastating, enthralling live shows- this upstate New York wrecking crew are poised to redefine underground heavy music as we know it.
Since the release of 2003's Hot Damn!, ETID, featuring vocalist Keith Buckley, drummer Michael \"Ratboy\" Novak, guitarists Andy Williams and Jordan Buckley, and bassist Stephen Micciche, have enjoyed stints on Ozzfest 2004's second stage, as well as sharing the stage, and selling out venues, with Dillinger Escape Plan, Lamb Of God, Unearth, and As I Lay Dying. Hot Damn! was a breakthrough record for ETID, and was the record that turned people's heads. But Gutter Phenomenon is the Every Time I Die Record, quite possibly the yardstick by which their career will be measured.
\"The last record made people notice us,\" says singer/wily lyricist Buckley. \"This record will keep people's heads turned in our direction. We have memorable parts, and choruses, and hooks that are so much more memorable and show that we have graduated to a profound level, as musicians. We're not just throwing riffs together.\"
Buckley's not kidding. On Gutter Phenomenon, ETID have taken the subtle Southern riff influence, which can be detected by a finely trained and tuned ear on Hot Damn!, and made it a crucial elements of their sound. Dirty guitar tones are quite prominent throughout Gutter Phenomenon. \"We listen to a lot of Motorhead, Black Crowes, and Thin Lizzy,\" Buckley freely admits. \"We got into the groove. The scene we're a part of is inundated with hardcore bands, so we listened to classic rock.\" Buckley also took vocal lessons to expand his range, and he pulls off things he never thought he could, vocally-speaking, because of his training. He says his style is now \"exactly what I've been trying to do, and now I'm doing right.\"
Songwriting was also a key focus on Gutter Phenomenon, which was recorded at The Machine Shop in New Jersey, with Machine (Clutch, Lamb Of God). \"We worked on arrangements, instead of plopping riffs next to riffs. We focused on the psychology on how people listen, and what they remember when they listen.\" Sure, this might seem like ETID are pulling some Jedi mind tricks, but really, this technique helped Gutter Phenomenon became their most well written work to date.
\"It is mature,\" Buckley exclaims, when asked if he thinks that ETID have grown up and developed. \"But it still has the lyrics that are as cynical and sarcastic as ever.\" So just because Every Time I Die have grown up a little, they haven't lost their notorious sense of humor, and their biting, intelligently acidic lyrical bend nor have they given up their crazy on-stage antics.
\"It's too easy to rest on your laurels and make the same record again,\" Buckley says. \"We have the right to not make sense, but you can only do that for so long. We want to stand out as a band. So many sounds the same. Look at the Hellfest line up. There are 100,000 bands, and unless you're a headliner, you have to find some way to stand out, and you can't stand out just by being a spastic metal band. You can't just worry about the last live performance you gave. A record has to hold your attention, and you can't be remembered only while you're performing.\" Lucky for ETID, not only does their record hold you hostage with its blazing intensity, so do their performances.
As for the record's stand out tracks, there's \"Guitared And Feathered,\" a prototypical ETID song, but it's \"bigger\" than anything they've ever done, so says Buckley. \"The New Black\" kicks off with the sound of a beer can being cracked open, while \"Champing At The Bit\" has 4-part harmonies. Obviously, ETID are doing things to kidnap your attention, and keep it, with their new stuff.
Critics and fans may think that the cold, snowy, and oft uninspired region of Buffalo where the members of ETID hang their hats is what fuels their fierce creativity. In a way, Buckley agrees. \"Buffalo birthed really good bands, from Goo Goo Dolls to Snapcase,\" the singer explains. \"It's a mess here. Everyone is leaving the city, so there has to be a creative outlet, and bands are popping up because of it. It's depressing here. There's a sense of hopelessness, and it's like a theme that hits the band, but that kind of hopelessness is not going to last forever.\"
Gutter Phenomenon is one of those records they're going to be talking about for years after its release. It's going to push Every Time I Die even further on the map. They're going to talk about the great bands from Buffalo and they're going to say, \"Oh, Buffalo produced great bands, like Goo Goo Dolls and Every Time I Die.\" When they, be it the kids, rock historians, or critics, talk about some of 2005's break out bands and albums, Gutter Phenomenon and Every Time I Die will undoubtedly top their lists.
So, whether or not you subscribe to the belief that rock 'n roll is a gutter phenomenon that's an unsightly scar on the face of American society, one thing's for certain. Every Time I Die have arrived, and their Gutter Phenomenon will slay all opposition in its path, and make converts out of non-believers. There's no escape, so get on board now. – Amy Sciarretto
Visit EveryTimeIDie.com ",
"Bands usually seek to do one of two things: define their genre, or defy their genre. However, since bursting out of Tucson, AZ in 2001 with their unique mix of hardcore brutality and an eclectic musical palette, The Bled have done both. Taking cues from their peers in the burgeoning hardcore scene of the time—bands like The Refused and Dillinger Escape Plan—The Bled quickly became one of a handful of bands who set the standard for the genre. But with the release of the Found in the Flood— the band's second full-length and first for Vagrant Records—The Bled have set themselves apart from the hordes of bands joining the hardcore fray, in the process forging their own place in the musical spectrum.
Cutting their teeth in the relatively remote Tucson scene, the members of the Bled— vocalist James Muñoz , guitarists Jeremy Talley and Ross Ott, bassist Darren Simoes, and drummer Mike Pedicone—shared more than just a common background. They also shared the drive necessary to break out of their hometown. \"We all pretty much grew up together in Tucson and we'd all played in different bands together throughout the years,\" says Pedicone. According to Pedicone, it was obvious, even then, that the future members of The Bled were bound for more than just local scene notoriety. \"It's so rare for bands to get out of Tucson,\" says Pedicone, \"but it was apparent that we were the ones, in the bands we were in, who were going to keep playing forever. It was just a matter of time before we got together and got a serious band going.\" Upon joining forces, the band wasted little time making a name for themselves. \"We were friends with the lady who runs the main club in Tucson called Skrappy's, so whenever we needed a show she would put one on. And it just seemed like more and more kids started coming out, says Pedicone. But the The Bled wanted were definitely not satisfied with being local hardcore heroes. \"We had always wanted to tour, but we obviously didn't have any booking agents who wanted to take us out, so we booked our own first tour. It was four shows, one that ended up being booked for a month later and another that was cancelled.\" However, the band's luck quickly changed. An EP, and a string of fortuitous shows culminated with the band signing to Fiddler Records and releasing Pass the Flask, their first full-length and first time recording with vocalist James Muñoz , who took the place of the band's old vocalist before work on the album began. \"The same night that the old singer quit, James was in the band,\" remembers Pedicone. \"Adam, the old singer actually recommended that we try out James, and there wasn't even a question. The next day we practiced and it was a better fit than it had ever been before.\" The Bled hit the road like never before, touring relentlessly. Along the way, the band parted ways with its former record label and found themselves being courted by labels big and small. \"We didn't want to go to a major label, though that interest was certainly there,\" says Pedicone. \"We had always been fans of Vagrant, so after we were out of our contract, we started talking to Vagrant and it's been amazing. We're happier than we've ever been.\"
With their new deal inked, The Bled entered the studio, this time with legendary producer Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World, Blink 182). With Trombino at the helm and two years of touring under their belt, the band felt more comfortable exploring different directions with their music. \"Vocally, I tried to challenge myself to be a better singer, a better screamer,\" says vocalist James Muñoz . \"I tried to do different things. With the last record I didn't have much time to put my own spin on it; I just did what I could with the songs. On this record, the songs are just more dynamic. I got to work with a good producer, who was really responsive to new ideas. He became like a member of the band.\" The resulting record, Found in the Flood, is a marked change from the band's earlier efforts, documenting the band's technical talent and brutal heaviness, while also showcasing their ability to weave disparate musical ideas into a cohesive whole. \"Within the two years since the last record came out, I think we've all become better musicians, and we're all interested in a lot of different things and trying to convey them through this music.\" Pedicone offers similar sentiments regarding Found in The Flood. \"The softer side of us got softer, and the harder side of us got heavier. James is really showing more of what he's capable of. He did some vocal training and it's really amazing how it came out.\" No song on Found in the Flood is more representative of this dynamic range than \"My Assassin,\" with Muñoz showcasing his ability to hit falsetto high notes and demon screams with equal conviction. Likewise, the instrumentation vacillates between anthemic choruses and jarring moments of hardcore staccato. Elsewhere on Found in the Flood, the band moves from the chaotic (\"Hotel Coral Essex,\") to the slow and brooding (\"Daylight Bombings\"), with an epic closing track (\"I Don't Keep With Liars Anymore\") that has to be heard to be believed. The fact that such diversity makes it harder to place The Bled firmly into any one musical category, is something the band is not necessarily too worried about. \"We just kind of do what we do,\" says Muñoz about the band's musical style. \"Everyone always says that they don't like to be classified, but then they put out an obvious metal record. We could get away with calling ourselves hardcore on the last record, but on this record, we have some rock songs, we have some slow jams; it's heavy music, but we try to do it in different way. We don't know what to call it.\"
Regardless of what you want to label it as, the music of The Bled has brought them from the deserts of Arizona to the fore of the contemporary hardcore scene, and will certainly be around long after the majority of cookie cutter hardcore bands now making the rounds have moved on to the next big trend. For The Bled, the sound documented of Found in the Flood is nothing more than the answer to their own musical equation, a combination of everything from jazz to Converge to Led Zeppelin. But if you must call it something, take the advice of Mike Pedicone. \"I just tell people that we're heavy.\" Exactly.
Visit TheBledSite.com",
"The folks in Triangle met on a frozen tundra. They hooked up their plastical electric music boxes and it made them warmer. This place was St. Paul, MN. It was a lot like any other place except for the severely debilitating cold and the potential loss of various extremities due to horrific frost bite. These are the people who found each other despite the blinding snow: Amanda W, a Fargoan who played upright bass in the local college orchestra and tapped on garage-sale keyboards in a yellow jumpsuit; Brian T, a townie who escaped from the middle midwest back into the great white north with a bunch of synthesizers and unloved electronic junk; and Susan L, another Fargoan with a nice bmx bike and some fresh records. They played their hectic elektronik music out of a boombox and some guitars.
They put out two EP\'s on their own label, smoke + mirrors, which they shared with pals Walker Kong. Not long after, Susan left the band to tune Buddy Holly\'s double\'s guitar and Amanda and Brian signed as a duo to File 13 records, in old-timey Philadelphia Pa. File 13 released Triangle\'s debut record, \"*\", in 2001. The Triangle bought a computer to replace the boombox, trekked to the east coast a few times, got some parking tickets. The crew of the ship called Triangle began to tour and play with a wide variety of bands, and managed to appear at a couple of CMJ\'s and a SXSW.
In their journeys, they have played with many fine and weird practicers of contemporary music, like The Beachwood Sparks, The Shins, Ted Leo + Pharmacists, the late great Dismemberment Plan, Deerhoof, The Flying Luttenbachers, Kreamy \'Lectric Santa, The Busy Signals, Bobby Conn, The Numbers,The Mates of State, Fruitbats, Broadcast, Marc Almond, The Coachwhips, C.R.A.C.K. We Are Rock, Mochipet, and many others you have probably never heard of.
Triangle have since moved to Oakland, Ca. They definitely went through the changes. The Triangle ship took on a few old salts, namely Jon Otto Schroeder on music box and Mark Treise on tenor bass and Elias Reitz (from Bright Black Morning Light) on percussions. They all help to bail.",
"Los Angeles band Oslo comprised of songwriting trio Mattia Borrani (lead vocals, guitars), Kerry Wayne James (bass) and Gabrial McNair (guitars, backing vocals), has enjoyed much success independent of any label support. Their emotive and engaging live shows and self-titled, self-produced debut release (2005) garnered significant buzz and coverage from RollingStone, Billboard, Music Edge, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, which named Oslo one of the top 10 bands to download in the Fall of 2006. Oslo recently wrapped recording of their forthcoming sophomore release The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate, which they co-produced with Grammy Nominated engineer/mixer Ryan Hewitt (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Mickey P (Beck, Peaches, The Eels) and Sam Fogarino (Drummer, Interpol).
The critical acclaim of both their live shows and their debut release underscores not only the band's onstage showmanship but the complexity and depth with which they compose music. Rich in texture, melody and fervor the Oslo sound conveys a layered listening experience that is as intricate as it is intelligent and evocative. \"One of us will come up with a rough song structure and as a band we'll morph it into something that has a life of its own, something that we never, as an individual, would have created. That is one of the things I love about making music as a band.\" Borrani reflects, \"it's very organic.\"
Though Oslo was founded in 2003, the band's history begins ten years earlier when Gabrial McNair, known for his work as touring and recording multi-instrumentalist for No Doubt as well as Green Day and Gwen Stefani, met Kerry Wayne James, backstage at a gig in San Francisco. Later, Kerry would meet songwriter and vocalist Mattia Borrani, through a mutual friend. All three would continue their individual endeavors until a series of serendipitous encounters in Los Angeles led the trio to reconnect and begin writing together. Shortly thereafter, they founded Oslo, recorded their debut release and beefed up their onstage set as a quintet with keyboardist Damon Ramirez and drummer Charlie Walker, both of whom play on the self-titled debut and The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate.
\"Minutegun,\" off the band's debut release, quickly became a Los Angeles radio favorite while \"The Stranger\" was featured on CSI: NY in the Fall of 2006. After touring for most of 2005, Oslo began writing again, returning to the studio last summer to record their forthcoming sophomore album The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate. The album features guest appearances by Adrian Young, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Paz Lechantin and Ana Lechantin.
In the Fall of 2006, Texas natives Blue October, having caught Oslo earlier in the year playing the Texas RockFest during SXSW chose the band over 30 others to support their Fall tour in the US and Canada, further broadening the Oslo fanbase. Oslo, recently appeared on Indie 103.1's Check One...Two to preview new tracks from their upcoming release. \"Oslo have the chops, tunes and aura to influence rather than be influenced. It's time for a liberating leap into originality's embrace,\" says LA Weekly's Paul Rogers.",
"Formulaic rock stars and imitation punk-rock boys rule the airwaves with their derivative ditties and textbook teen angst, but as fads fade one musical force will remain—the ability to craft intoxicating songs rife with beauty, intellect, and empathy. And, this is why a four-piece rock act from Alabama will leave a long-lasting impression on music. They are Eyes Around—Michael Donahue (vocals, guitar), Neil Chevallier (guitar, vocals), Tim Morgan (bass) and Tye Hammonds(drums).
The music of Eyes Around is a cocktail of mastery accepting long-held truths about the power and theory of music. The band delivers thoughtful songs punctuated with climactic bridges and significant choruses that build with dream-wrenched layers of passionate vocals, a driving bass line, infectious drums, soaring strings, and two guitars, one raw, the other pristine.
Lead singer and lyricist Donahue shares, \"I like the sounds an orchestra makes, the honesty of Jeff Buckley, the spirit of U2, the vastness of Pink Floyd, the melody of the Beatles, the grit of the Pixies, and the smoothness of Zero 7,\" and the traces of each resonate throughout the bands latest self-titled EP. Without the support of a label, the band's solid EP has earned them regional airplay on Alabama's biggest rock station 107.7 WRAX Birmingham where the catchy \"Say What You Will\" has generated countless requests. The station has proclaimed, \"Eyes Around embodies what the 'alternative rock' movement once stood for.\"
And if the alternative rock movement once embraced riveting live performances, Eyes Around delivers. The texture of Neil's guitar, who has only been playing for a little over two years, rival the most brilliant moments of the Edge and Radiohead. The persistence of Tim's bass lends comparison to Adam Clayton. Russell breaks drum pedals, and Michael scorches a room with fiery vocals. With humility, Tim quips, \"We don't have a stand out player in the band, and it makes us rely on each other to make great songs and music.\" The band's powerful chemistry has landed them spots opening for R.E.M., Kid Rock, Breaking Benjamin, Injected and Switchfoot.
Visit EyesAround.com ",
"Passion. It's not only the reason so many musicians strive to make a career of their art, but it's the inherent drive to keep aspirations alive and running. It's what pushes a band through the loss of two separate singers and on to a third with hopeful optimism. It's the ingredient that views skeptics as motivation and trials as inspiration. And ultimately, it's what has set Further Seems Forever apart from the pack.
For a band constantly tested by obstacles, this devotion is what has led them through their six-year existence. Begun in their hometown of Pompano Beach, Florida, the group was formed fusing the intense and intricate stylings of hardcore (crafted so skillfully by these former Strongarm and Shai Hulud members) with delicate melodies, creating a grand juxtaposition of sound that flows naturally.
Though their sound and quality for musical composition have remained consistent over the years, one thing that has been anything but is the band's front-man position. In their impressive and critically acclaimed debut release, \"The Moon is Down,\"the band featured Chris Carrabba on vocals. But that line-up quickly altered with Carrabba departed to pursue his solo career, Dashboard Confessional, full-time. A skeptical audience soon watched Jason Gleason step in to the role with a vengeance for the band's follow-up sophomore release, \"How to Start a Fire.\"Whereas Carrabba's vocals showcased the frailty and vulnerability of human emotion, Gleason's more intense style, combined with the band's continuing evolution, led listeners through a confection of aggressions, victories, and defeats equally as emphatic as delicate when set to music.
But just as fans were growing accustomed to the member change and Further Seems Forever's third release was entering the preliminary stages of recording, Gleason announced he too would be departing the group. Stirring up controversial posts online, it seemed every FSF fan was choosing a side while the remaining members were contemplating their decision to continue on as a group.
\"I think we stayed together because the music that is created by the rest of us is as much at the forefont of this band as the vocals are,\" explains FSF drummer Steve Kleisath of their decision to continue. \"As long as we keep pushing our limits and progress in the writing of the music, then why should we call it quits because somebody else didn't want to be a team player with us?\"
It was at the coaxing of their road manager that Jon Bunch entered the picture. Bunch, whose own renowned band, Sense Field had just disbanded after a career of over 10 years, was suddenly without a band for the first time since he was 15 years old. But it was his experience that created the seamless transition into his new vocal position.
\"I would have to say it was all the years writing and playing music that prepared me for this record and this band,\" Bunch comments. \"Of course I'm hoping FSF fans accept me, but I'll have to let the music speak for itself at this point. Judging from the emails from the fans, they are just so happy the band decided to continue and they want to be supportive which made me feel accepted from day one.\"
With a fusion more natural than the band has ever previously encountered, fans will get the chance to hear the collaboration of these groundbreaking musicians as one in their August 24th release, \"Hide Nothing.\" Rejuvenating both parties through its conception, the group now displays their passion through the album's 10 tracks of compelling rock.
\"I think our sound has definitely evolved into what we always wanted it to be,\" Kleisath elaborates, \"and that is great melodic music with variety. Jon is the icing on the cake to say the least.\"
Visit FurtherSeemsForever.com",
"A Life Once Lost is the latest musical inferno to blaze brightly from yet another creative spark out of the crackling ember that blackens and burns the dark underbelly of Philadelphia's extreme counterculture.
There's something in the air, in the ground, in the water perhaps, within the Northeastern United States that continually gives birth to the most progressively pulverizing metallic hardcore behemoths the world has ever known, from the erratic, calculating mathematics of Dillinger Escape Plan, the psychotic poetry of Deadguy, the slow-burn hypnosis of Isis and the self-torturing artisans in Converge.
A Life Once Lost proudly holds that banner aloft, charging forward with the brutal angst of their peers, but themselves uniquely informed by a mesmerizing combination of the cornerstone groove of Sabbath, the staccato punch of Meshuggah and the punishing vocal sensibilities of lamented Midwestern sons Coalesce.
\"We've always looked up to bands that are doing things that are unique and not carbon-copied, that push limits,\" proclaims vocalist Robert Meadows. \"We want to be in that place with those bands, right up there with them. And we feel like we can do that.\"
And they are about to stake their claim.
In 2005 A Life Once Lost will enter the studio to craft 'HUNTER' , their debut album for Ferret, which is sure to capitalize on the dark but urgent promise of \"A Great Artist,\" and will grab ahold of even the cursory onlooker with artwork by the man responsible for Mastadon's album sleeves, Paul Romano.
\"The whole idea behind 'HUNTER' is about going out and taking what it is that you want. It's about not settling with going to school, having a job, having a family. It's about not settling with someone else telling you you're not good enough. It's just about saying 'fuck you' and doing what you want to do,\" Meadows explains. \"It's about going out there and taking it.\"
It is precisely those instincts, that hunger, that has sustained the band since they formed in 1999. Guitarists Douglas Sabolick and Robert Carpenter (who joined in 2001, when \"the band became serious,\" according to Meadows) form A Life Once Lost's musical backbone, with drummer Justin Graves more than holding up his end since he came onboard before the recording of their best known album, \"A Great Artist.\"
A Life Once Lost had released material through hardcore tastemakers Loudnet Records and Robotic Empire before hooking up with Converge singer Jake Bannon's Deathwish imprint, who issued the vinyl for \"The Fourth Plague: Flies\" in addition to their underground breakthrough. It was the strength of the \"A Great Artist\" recording - its size, its scope, its metallic brutality - that won the band the attention of Ferret Music's Carl Severson, who got to know the guys when he'd pass through Philly with his band, Nora.
\"A Great Artist\" also helped get them on the road with a number of likeminded bands, like Breather Resist, Between the Buried and Me, Throwdown, Dead To Fall and God Forbid, taking them all through North America including treks to Mexico and Canada.
When its all said and done what A Life Once Lost sounds simple, though for lesser bands, its often proven to be elusive: \"I want to be remembered for never conforming to any kind of label or fashion,\" Meadows says flatly. \"Nothing has ever slowed us down. We are a band that saw what we wanted and did what we wanted to do. We've never conformed to anything, and we'll never follow any rules.\"
Visit ALifeOnceLost.com",
"\"Forget about the rest of me/There\'s nothing left to know – Fallen Angels\"
Like the Egyptian sun god Ra which gives the band its name, music is a source of life for singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Sahaj, a way to express his primal fears and desires, the fruits of a spiritual journey that began in India 14 years ago.
And while Ra’s second Republic/Universal album, \"Duality\", explores that dark side in songs like the pulsating first single, \"Fallen Angels,\" with its paranoia-inflected imagery reminiscent of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, and the aching despair of \"I Lost Everything,\" the ultimate message is one of redemption and transcendence, as in the adrenaline sexual rush of \"Got Me Going\" and the pure joy expressed in the faithful cover of the Police’s \"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.\"
\"What Ra has always stood for is hope,\" says Sahaj, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and Russian father, who took his current name after a 1992 pilgrimage to India, where he studied Eastern philosophy in an ashram.
That faith has been tested in the three years since the band’s debut, One, which sold more than 20k as an indie release before getting picked up by Republic/Universal and released as From One. It went on to sales of more than 200k on the strength of the Top 10 Active Rock single, \"Do You Call My Name,\" thanks to massive airplay by Boston station WAAF and a breakneck touring schedule of more than 200 dates in less than a year.
Ra recorded, produced and mixed 70% of \"Duality\" in Sahaj’s parents’ Upstate NY home and his own Sun God Rock studios in East Rutherford NJ, four songs of which were collaborations with producer Bob Marlette (Black Sabbath, Seether, Shinedown, Saliva).
\"I kicked my parents out and sent them on vacation for two months,\" he laughs. \"I set up the studio in the living room, with the gear in the basement.\"
The result is \"Duality\", a powerful evocation of many influences, an album with the propulsive power of Metallica and the prog-rock complexity of Yes and Queen as well as current groups like System of a Down, laced with the deceptively transparent melodies and world music textures of the Police and Peter Gabriel.
Divided into two parts, the first labeled \"Fear,\" the second \"Love,\" \"Duality’s\" dialectic covers a wide range of emotions in its journey from despair to hope. The intensity of \"Take Me Away,\" interspersing howling guitars, tribal rhythms and Sting-like vocals, is juxtaposed with the reggae beat of \"I Lost Everything.\" The Middle Eastern flavor and U2 feel of \"The Only One\" segues into the harmonic arena-rock of \"Say You Will,\" while the wrenching distortion of \"Taken\" forms a counterpoint to the lush landscape of \"Swimming Upstream,\" which unflinchingly views an unrequited love with measured regret.
\"We’re not necessarily about playing complex parts with weird time signatures,\" says Sahaj, who cites classical works like Beethoven’s Ninth and Gustav Holst’s \"The Planets\" Suite as inspirations. \"We tried to make things that were complicated sound simple. The new material is much harder to play, but it sounds easier.\"
\"Superman,\" a song he wrote the day he returned from India, is typical of the pull between faith and despair that runs through Sahaj’s writing. On the one hand, it thanks God for \"this great opportunity/to share with you/exactly how I feel,\" only to add, \" I think that I should tell you… I got the raw end of the deal.\"
\"I don’t believe in religion, but I believe in religious-ness,\" says Sahaj, who adds that his mixed cultural background \"cancelled each other out.\" \"I’ve studied science a great deal and, in many ways, its explanation of the universe seems more miraculous and interesting than some bearded guy in the clouds pointing a finger. There are so many things in science that are divine to me.\"
While waiting for \"Duality\" to come out, Ra returned to the road to play several shows with guitarist Ben Carroll who made strong writing contributions to this record, NJ native bassist P.J. Farley, and Massachusetts drummer Andy Ryan. The audience’s positive response inspired them to press onward.
\"It was great to have people freaking out just as much over the new music as the old stuff,\" Ben says. \"It was a vindication of our fans’ belief in this band. At the end of the day, that’s who we write for… the fans. And we’re utterly committed to delivering the goods live. That’s what separates us from many other bands.\"
It is that transcendence, that out-of-body experience, that direct connection with their fans’ energy that drives the band to continue Ra’s odyssey. Even if sometimes they’re removed from the final destination.
\"At a show I feel like the Wizard of Oz,\" Sahaj says. \"The guy standing behind the curtain, moving the levers so everybody else can believe. I lose myself in the drama of the performance, in the idea of reenacting the records on-stage. I’m not as interested in connecting with the music as I am with the audience. I’m immersed in trying to pilot them through the experience. Every show always starts with everyone in the dark. It’s our job to be their Sun.\"
Take notice people. With \"Duality\" Ra will see their dawn.
Visit RaBand.net ",
"In 2003, Mest frontman Tony Lovato fulfilled his childhood dream -- and it almost killed him.
\“As a kid I always said that if I ever played the whole Warped Tour, I could die the next day a happy man,\” Lovato says, who performed on the punk rock summer tour’s stage a few days after having back surgery. As always, Mest gave one hell of a show. \“The next day, which was my birthday, I woke up literally in tears because I couldn’t move my back at all.\”
The dedicated band mustered up the energy and continued through the summer. While delivering one insane set after the next, Lovato numbed himself on a cocktail of meds, trips to the hospital and booze. Over the months, infection set in and Lovato was forced to undergo emergency surgery, later learning that if he had waited just one more week for treatment, he could’ve been left paralyzed or dead.
\“I definitely cheated death,\” Lovato says now. So you’ve got to give the Illinois rock band a little leeway if Mest’s fourth CD for Maverick records, Photographs, covers heavier topics than usual. Suicide, innocence lost, and even nightmares are just some of lyrical inspirations among the chord-driven rock and hooky melodies.
Written while contemplating his physical situation, the blazingly insightful \“ Take me Away (Cried Out to Heaven),\” questions how faithless people find faith when faced with serious trouble in their life. \“Last Kiss,\” a song about a dual suicide gone wrong, has taken on more weight after some of Lovato’s family and friends took their own lives. And even though the album’s title track is one of the most upbeat and bright on the record, it carries a powerful sentiment that’s about cherishing simpler times.
The album’s lead single, \"Kiss Me, Kill Me,\” penned and sung by guitarist/vocalist Jeremiah Rangel, follows a tumultuous relationship. Another of Photographs’ songs written and sung by Rangel is the eerily forceful \“Graveyard,\” which is literally based on one of his dreams and draws the picture of an apocalypse populated by the walking dead. ",
"The year was 1995, and there was a battle of the bands brewing somewhere between the Wisconsin and Illinois state lines. In the middle of it all was Davey vonBohlen - forced to choose between his guitar stint for future punk heroes Cap\'n Jazz and his status as the frontman for a burgeoning, though wholly unestablished The Promise Ring. As history would have it, the answer was obvious: The Promise Ring were toast.
Of course, final hurrahs were sometimes meant to be, and since The Promise Ring had yet to see theirs, Davey agreed to a final nine-day trek across the country with his dearly departed side project. When the band landed back home in Milwaukee, vonBohlen unpacked his gear and expressed a deep sigh of relief. And then he quit Cap\'n Jazz.
Such is the inception of a band who have outlived almost all of their peers, while surviving horrid van wrecks, personal medical emergencies, and the rise and fall of a genre they somehow managed to inspire without ever really figuring out what it was in the first place. After signing with Jade Tree in 1996, The Promise Ring went on to release a slew of EPs and full-length albums that have seen accolades everywhere from the well-respected pages of The New York Times to the uber-groovy Teen People. But don\'t let that fool you: The real acclaim is in the captured hearts of a fanbase that have kept this Milwaukee unit up-and-running for the more-than-six-years after that fateful \"final\" tour.
After many happy years together and 8 releases, The Promise Ring departed Jade Tree for the Anti- label, a division of Epitaph, in October 2001.",
"Maxxfemm balances the best of pop-dance music: Hot and heartfelt lyrics over masterfully produced, retro-futuristic soundscapes.
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Paul and Lara Layton (bro/sis) have been making music together for almost 10 years. Seamlessly referencing an array of new-wave, rock, electronic and disco influences, Paul writes and produces the music, while Lara provides the lead vocals.
Spending the better part of summer '05 locked away in the studio, the duo finished their first collection of highly stylized dance pop gems, resulting in their first E.P., entitled Weak Condition. As initial copies of the E.P. began to circulate, the group was surprised to find themselves a Featured Artist on MySpace for a full week. 100,000 song streams ensued and a deluge of rave reactions poured in. Needless to say, the band made many fast-friends.
Off the internet superhighway and onto Interstate-5, Maxxfemm has been delivering their dynamic, multi-media live show up & down the coast of California...and beyond—most recently completing a month long residency at Spaceland in Los Angeles in the fall of '06.
It's remarkable to think that the duo was born from a single song...
\"Hope's all there is\", an album cut from Paul's 2004 solo album (Grand Design on Leftwing Recordings/BMG), was a standout collaboration involving Lara as lead vocalist. Though they had completed an LP together in 2000 as paul&lara, this track reaffirmed their potent combination.
Grand Design received critical praise from L.A. Alternative Press & The Los Angeles Times, in addition to many ecstatic online reviews. And it was \"Hope's all there is\" that caught the spark. Lara's smooth vocal delivery (reminiscent of Debra Harry & Souxsie Sioux), plays perfectly over heavy dance rhythms and walls of fuzzed-out, electro-synth riffs.
It was quickly picked up by San Diego tastemaker, D.J. Anya Marina, who played the track repeatedly. Back in Los Angeles, a remix of the track was put into heavy rotation on Jason Bentley's Metropolis program on KCRW. To top it off, the track was licensed for use in the indie-film Oh, in Ohio—a smart comedy, boasting an impressive cast.
Taking a nod from the public reaction to the song, the Laytons set out to create an entirely new project inspired from the sound and feel of this recording. And Maxxfemm was born. With an EP under their belt, the band is currently in the studio creating their debut full length album.
",
"In making their second full-length, Seattle-area indie rockers Daphne Loves Derby turned to the past to pave their own forward-looking musical path. After returning home from several months of the road life, the foursome opted to immerse themselves with a variety of albums from respected artists like Frank Sinatra, The Eagles, Janis Ian and The Cardigans. It was in these classic albums that the members of Daphne Loves Derby discovered inspiration to forge ahead into crafting its own future.
But that doesn't mean the act created an album that exclusively nods to yesterday's hit makers. To the contrary, the songs of Good Night, Witness Light are about as current as it gets, rubbing shoulders with the genre's best. Having racked serious mileage and a notable stage tally touring with artists like Copeland, Paulson, House of Fools, Waking Ashland, This Providence and Sherwood, Daphne Loves Derby had undoubtedly found itself surrounded by solid musical companionship, gaining immeasurable experience.
Though the band traces its roots to the earlier part of the decade, Daphne Loves Derby is best known for its 2005 Outlook-released full-length debut, On the Strength of All Convinced. Bolstered by an impressive online presence — which continues to this day (as of this writing, the band had racked nearly 4,000,000 plays on its MySpace page) — On the Strength of All Convinced found many takers and garnered its share of praise from the music media. That's an impressive feat for a few musicians that weren't even of drinking age at the time of its release.
On the Strength of All Convinced also gave the band a well-deserved opportunity to hit the road (with the addition of guitarist Spencer Abbott) across the nation and overseas in Japan — even if Daphne Loves Derby vocalist/guitarist Kenny Choi doesn't think he and his bandmates should've been sharing bills with such high profile and influential acts.
\"I had the time of my life because I got to tour with some of my favorite bands,\" says Choi. \"Copeland, I'm still obsessed with that band, I love everything that they've put out. I couldn't believe I was on tour with them. Jack's Mannequin was one of my favorite bands too. We got really lucky, those are all tours that we shouldn't have gotten yet, but we were lucky enough. It was good because you'd learn so much. Those bands are real experienced, and such good musicians, and we'd watch them every night.\"
Taking into account what they experienced on a nightly basis — as well as the aforementioned listening of albums — Daphne Loves Derby took a break from the touring life during the summer of 2006 and entered the Maryland home studio of production prodigy Matt Squire (Panic! At The Disco).
\"He seemed the most interested in us and we wanted to work with someone that was excited for the project,\" says Choi. \"I'd only heard a couple of his CDs but I liked everything he did on them, plus he had a home that was connected to the studio, so I think it was an amazing idea to live in the studio the entire time. We could be focused on it, away from home.\"
Such focus led to an album process that offered plenty of fresh angles for Daphne Loves Derby, including the ability to spend hours writing parts to incorporate new instrumentation on its tracks. \"We had some friends in the area that could play cello and French horn,\" says Choi. \"We brought them in and we were able to record real instruments on the CD and that made it sound so much deeper and classier than a fake MIDI track. It was a lot of fun and I think it came out well.\"
The marching band intro to \"That's Our Hero Shot\" was inspired by the movie, \"Drumline.\" \"We rented out the marching equipment and Stu stayed up all night one night and wrote out this entire marching band part,\" says Choi. \"We recorded it the next day and it was just a whole lot of fun.\"
The resulting two months in the studio produced an album with an expansive variety of material, from the Radiohead-inspired melodies of \"How's It Going To End?\" to the powerful \"Stranger You And I\" and the acoustic-based \"Cue The Sun.\"
On writing \"Cue The Sun,\" Choi says, \"I didn't think it would end up on the CD but I'm really happy it is now. We really needed a quiet song because all the other songs are dense with instruments. It's about leaving home and not being ready to give up everything in your personal life. You're changing as a person and not enjoying the way you're changing, it's just helplessness, I guess.\"
\"Stranger You And I\" was actually three different songs meshed together. \"I remember writing the chorus for that while we were on tour and it came together when we were in the studio,\" he says. \"We realized we could add other instruments and make parts really simple, but still pretty. It's about a breakup and how it took too long for me to realize that it was my fault.\"
The album's title was inspired by Choi's favorite poem by Robert Frost. \"That poem to me sums up life, growing up and the moments you feel when you're alone,\" says Choi. \"It's complicated, but it's a pretty dark album. And I think a lot of the songs wrap around those ideas.\"
Shortly after the completion of Good Night, Witness Light, longtime bassist Jason Call exited the band on good terms to pursue school and mission work.
With another album under their collective belts, the members of Daphne Loves Derby will head back out on the road, hopefully feeling a bit more deserving of the success and respect of their peers that they've attained. After all, an album like Good Night, Witness Light should be the confidence boost that Daphne Loves Derby needs.",
"You can't \"be\" creative; it just happens-mostly when you're not forcing its hand, and hardly ever on the eve of a deadline. But when the creative process strikes, when everything clicks and your muse suddenly comes into focus, that's when you find the potential for magic-or terror. Either way, the results are usually transcendent.
When you're in a struggling rock band, however, you don't always have the luxury of waiting around for your muse to appear. Brazil's Jonathon Newby realized this when, just days after completing a 14-month tour in 2005, he came home to Muncie, Indiana, to resume his day job at a metal shop.
\"We were out with bands like Sparta and Coheed And Cambria,\" Jonathon remembers of the campaign, dates of which also found Brazil supporting Engine Down and Rainer Maria, \"and the next thing I know, I'm back home, working all day at the shop. Coming back into a routine like that, it just gets harder and harder to be creative when you're exhausted and sweaty and covered in mud from, you know, handling glass and aluminum frames all day.\"
But a funny thing happened when Jonathan-who rounds out Brazil with his keyboardist brother Nic, guitarists Aaron Smith and Eric Johnson, bassist Philip Williams and drummer James Sefchek-returned to the daily grind. \"The more uncomfortable I got with my working life outside of the band, the more I needed to write,\" he says. \"That whole period of discomfort gave birth to a lot of new material.\" Soon, the songs started flowing, and the members of Brazil, all of whom were feeling a similar existential tug, just clicked. Sealed off in Jonathon's garage, they began working furiously on the material that would become their second album and Immortal Records debut, The Philosophy Of Velocity. With Jonathon's typically alluring lyrics interweaving characters such as existential steam robots (\"Mr. Mercury\") with manic-depressive submarine captains (\"Captain Mainwaring\"), the new album is a farcical document of the creative process itself, full of odd vignettes and absurdist rabbit holes that eventually lead the listener to the heart of the story. Musically, Velocity burns with fully realized sonic explorations by the band and producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev)-who collectively \"utilized nearly every piece of equipment at our disposal,\" according to Jonathon, including multiple pianos, orchestral percussion, and experimental miking techniques, to create Brazil's most artful and ambitious album yet.
Of course, fans will tell you that creative tension has been central to Brazil's music from day one: In 2000, after the breakup of his unremarkable former group, Jonathon left the U.S. to live in the Arab quarter of a small Belgian town; after months of laboring overseas in warehouses, during which he kept himself sane by formulating plans for a new musical project, he returned to the States, finally settling into the chapel of an abandoned, century-old church. It was here that the nucleus of Brazil (a reference to Terry Gilliam's classic Orwellian-nightmare film of the same name) would arrive.
After recording a handful of demos in the church's dank basement, Brazil started to play out, gaining a small but devoted fanbase throughout the Midwest. In August of 2001, the band hit the road for a three-week, self-booked U.S. tour in a dying minivan-an experience which, if nothing else, \"revealed just how long the human body can survive on peanut butter and multivitamins,\" Jonathon remembers. However, impressed by their near-masochistic drive, Fearless Records offered to release the band's 2002 debut EP, Dasein (it translates roughly to \"existence\") and once more sent them out on the road in support.
Like many debut releases, Dasein was a snapshot of the still-young band's attempts to reconcile their influences with their ambitions; and while the overall response to the EP was mixed, even Brazil's biggest critics recognized the potential within. \"[Dasein] hints that big things may be in Brazil's future,\" wrote Aversion.com. Skratch Magazine concurred, adding, \"Fearless Records has a monster band on their hands.\" And indeed they did-though not even the label was prepared for the album that would follow.
Released by Fearless in April of 2004, A Hostage And The Meaning Of Life was such a quantum leap forward, it might as well have been the work of a different band. The skittering rhythms and cloudy keyboard atmospheres of Dasein had given way to crystalline keyboard figures and a grand, eloquent sense of rhythmic flow that extended all the way up to Jonathon's chilling upper-register pipes. Alternative Press responded right out of the gate with a 5/5 review, calling the band \"mad geniuses.\" Emotionalpunk.com upped the ante to 10/10, proclaiming Brazil to be \"the best-kept secret on Fearless Records...until now.\" And Synthesis magazine concurred, adding, \"[Brazil] effectively transcend the commercial crap of the industry and offer a high-energy alt-rock alternative to the mainstream.\" Don't believe the critics? Hostage is among those exceedingly rare albums on Amazon.com to have a unanimous five-star rating from fans.
While the aforementioned 14-month campaign supporting Hostage found Brazil picking up momentum with each stop, the decidedly unglamorous return to daily life found them wondering what next? And so Jonathon moved into a tiny house back in Indiana, the tinier garage of which would become the Petri dish for Brazil's new material. In March of 2006, after being floored by the new demos, Immortal Records offered the band a deal, and soon afterward, Brazil holed themselves up at Tarbox Road Studios in remote Cassadaga, New York, with aural genius Fridmann to commit The Philosophy Of Velocity to tape. With the band finally having access to the giant canvas their art has always begged for, the result is a blissful, expansive marriage of pure sound that, although right in line with the Brazil of old, weaves together the wombadelic impressionism of My Bloody Valentine with the melodic/harmonic ambitions of Queen and Yes and the wry lyricism of Lou Reed and Nick Cave.
Of course, there's some danger in revealing a band's influences when the work they produce is this next-level-and with The Philosophy Of Velocity, Brazil have moved beyond the obvious into a thrilling new sound that's unbound by genre and indebted to what's come before it only inasmuch as \"rock\" is indebted to, you know, \"music.\" And while it may not seem surprising that none of this could've happened if not for a wandering spirit and a drudgingly unremarkable shift at a metal shop, stop for a moment and ask yourself how many songwriters in similar situations have actually broken free of that grind to create something with universal truth.
Suddenly casts the line \"Don't quit your day job\" in a whole new light, doesn't it?",
"A swirling, dark fusion of sonic grandeur and stripped down pop skeletons, Action Action are the result of a sea change — a chemical reaction in which synthy dark wave collides with guitar-driven indie rock. Killer guitar riffs, feedback walls, dance beats and Mark Thomas Kluepfel's spine-tingling wail paint visceral, haunting images that explore the similarities of divine opposites like life and death or love and war.",
"\"Magnetic poles are a constant but no one can get an entirely accurate reading, they are always off a degree or so. This band is like that, keeping a constant purpose but kind of wandering and stumbling upon new things.\" Vocalist Jay Forrest tries to put into words the impetus behind the title of the band's forthcoming album titled Magnetic North to be released on Trustkill Records on May 15th, 2007. Describing the music itself, Forrest compares it to the last full-length A-Types (2004) juiced up multiple times. \"People loved the last album but I think this new one is more intense, bigger tones, it's trippier but not purely ethereal. There's a lot of weight and heavy parts as well.\" Evidenced on the demo of the song Bird Flu, which appears on the Trustkill Takeover II comp released last year, the band has retained their soaring melodies, spacey guitars and seamless mesh of clean atmospherics with over-driven post-hardcore angst. Heading into the studio with Mike Watts (As Tall As Lions, As Cities Burn) the band spent two months living in the Long Island Vudu studios, literally. \"We would record all day and then sleep there at night. We were all committed 100% to the process sometimes at the cost of our sanity. Watts engineered our last record and when we talked to him about producing, it was clear he had the same dedication in making this as developed as possible. We really experimented with tones, sounds, and even added a little piano and xylophone into the album.\"
Hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina, the band has morphed several times in their history including member shifts. New to the band for this release is Jason Trabue, who was a touring drummer for Dead Poetic & Vedera. The genesis of the band developed in the hardcore and emo scene. Developing into a national touring act, the band was able to promote their own independent release and create their own fan base, though they obviously didn't fit into any pre-conceived sound easily. The group drew the attention of Trustkill Records who released their debut album for the label Satellite Years in 2002. The album drew a watershed of praise from national press and fan alike, allowing the group to tour non-stop for close to two years with such acts as The Ataris, Coheed & Cambria, Killswitch Engage, Snapcase and The Juliana Theory.
The band released A-Types in 2004, which furthered the melodic elements and replaced the aggression with a more mature and calculated attack. Going on to sell over 80,000 albums worldwide as of this writing, the band became a direct support act for touring with such artists as Underoath, Hawthorne Heights and Sugarcult as well as The Vans Warped Tour and The Take Action Tour."
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