"I'm pretty sure (indie retailers) sold a lot more of my records to fans than Borders or WalMart or Satan..." - Eric Bachmann Crooked Fingers will release their fifth LP, titled Forfeit / Fortune October 7th, 2008 on Red Pig / Constant Artists, Inc.. Produced by Mark Nevers (Andrew Bird, Lambchop, Silver Jews), Alex McManus (The Bruces, Bright Eyes) and Eric Bachmann in Nashville, Denver, and Tucson this past spring, Forfeit / Fortune will be their first release since 2005's Dignity and Shame (Merge).Forfeit / Fortune features the fullest and mo...
Cannot fall into the familiar. Perhaps this phrase, like none other on Poorfolk's upcoming sophomore release best describes the sonic trudge forward of this Montreal-cum-Ottawa quartet.If Poorfolk's first album was a work of classic bedroom rock, these new recordings showcase a different sound entirely: singer-guitarist Jonathan Pearce's personal/political lyrics are still recognizable, but are now bolstered by a muscular rhythm section, frantic, dueling guitar interplay and gang-chanting choruses. So...what happened to that guy-and-a-four-track bedroom rock from the first record? Where did this sweaty indie-rock rave-up come from?For Poorfolk it happened back on fami...
taken from www.hevydevy.com Devin Townsend first came into the public attention in 1993, when at the age of 19 he was picked by Steve Vai to be the Vocalist on his Sex and Religion album and the accompanying world tour. Previous to this Devin was playing the Vancouver metal scene with his band Noisescapes. Noisescapes recorded a demo, which was sent out to several labels including Relativity Records, the label on which Steve Vai was signed. Devin thought that a way to make this demo grab peoples' attention was to mail it wrapped in a pair of his old underwear. This tactic worked, because a copy wound up with Steve Vai, who was impressed with Devin's vocal abilities and decided to include him in his latest project. ...
Frequenting the strange Broker Inn on the edge of Bouder, CO to see empty late-night jazz shows, Caroline Polachek, Aaron Pfenning and Patrick Wimberly are mystified by the 1980's faux-gothic architecture. The oak-cabinet aquariums, vacant dancefloors, fake trees and muffled velveteen booths provide the 'ideal hypothetical setting' for a new breed of pop music. Thus inspired, Chairlift formed in the summer of 2006, intent on making live music for haunted houses.By 2007, they are Brooklyn based and developing their sound into a hypnotic yet tongue-in-cheek style of synth-pop by drawing further inspiration from their new surroundings and from playing shows around Williamsburg ...
Since their inception in 1998, The Buttless Chaps have played for audiences across the continent and have created six studio albums demonstrating increased breadth and artistry every time. The band places absolutely no limits on their musical wanderings and the result is an imaginative and seamless journey from traditional country to new wave to punk, performed without irony or pretense. Cartography is The Buttless Chaps' fourth release on Mint Records and was recorded at the Hive Studios by Jesse Gander (Pride Tiger, The Pack A.D., Bison). Combining many elements of The Buttless Chaps' ever changing sound, Cartography is packed with acoustic rural and cold war electronic influences blended together in carefully orchestrated songs. Lyric...
Over the last seventeen years, in the 1990s with Bedhead and for the last decade with The New Year, Matt and Bubba Kadane have done all they could to avoid feeling rushed in making a record. Records need time to be coherent, and coherence -- even thin thematic coherence -- is what makes records worth more than a mere collection of songs.The most recent payoff of this approach is The New Year's newest self-titled release, the culmination of four years of song-writing and a year of recording. Lyrically, these ten songs address the interlocked themes of lost time, frustrated desire, and the need for others. ...
There's something irresistibly magical about COMMON REACTION, the debut album from electro-pop duo UH HUH HER. Simply put, the L.A.-based musical pair consisting of singer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Camila Grey and musician/actress Leisha Hailey and have crafted an exciting and seamless modern rock disc. Perfected with the able hands of producer Al Clay (Pixies, Blur, Pink), the eleven song offering captivates the listener from the opening notes of its pulsing debut single ‘Not A Love Song' and effortlessly charms its way through to the evocative piano-touched finale, ‘Dreamer'.Boasting sold out...
"I've got myself a new mantra," Ani DiFranco shares on her new studio album. "It says ‘Don't forget to have a good time.'" This attitude has clearly influenced the dozen tunes on Red Letter Year, which celebrate existence, profess love and tackle thorny political issues with an infectious sense of glee. It's one of Ani's most joyous records to date. And it has been a long time coming. Red Letter Year was sculpted over the course of two years, a period in which Ani continued to hone her songwriting, performing and recording skills, all the while balancing her new role as a mom. &...
Sweden's Lykke Li can't stay still. Her life and her career are relentlessly pulled forward by an impatient desire to see what's just around the corner, her music full of ideas about moving on and breaking free. Just eighteen months ago, she was complaining to her mentor, Bjorn "of Peter and John fame" Yttling, that everything had gone wrong because she was twenty and still hadn't released an album. Now twenty-two, she's finding that things are on track: With the release of her debut album in Sweden through her own label, LL Recordings, in January of this year, she's been surprised and maybe a little embarrassed to find that the world is falling at her feet. She's jus...
Warner Bros. Records will release Rachael Yamagata: A Record In Two Parts... Elephants and Teeth Sinking Into Heart on October 7th, 2008.The CD, as its title suggests, contains two parts. The first, Elephants, is the darker and more vulnerable of the two. It plays like a film score, with orchestral transitions that expand as the songs progress. The more guitar-driven Teeth Sinking Into Heart is grittier and more defiantly cynical. Underscored by Rachael's husky alto and expressive piano (and now guitar) playing, the two parts, when taken together, present a snapshot of the emotions that revolve around heartbrea...
"Like Listening to Fripp and Eno in 1973 through a pair of massive speakers that have been slashed with a carving knife" -- Andrew WeatherallFuck Buttons was conceived by Andrew Hung &Benjamin John Power in the winter of 2004. With their electric live performances sealing the notion that the two Fuck Buttons are attempting some kind of transcendence between the listener and the Universe itself, one could easily envisage one's psyches being shaken by the very rumbles of the earth's motions.March 2008 saw the release of their debut album Street Horrrsing, which received widespread acclaim fro...
"CARRIED TO DUST is, at least partially, the story of a writer in Los Angeles around the time of the writers' strike we had a while back in late 2007," CALEXICO's Joey Burns explains. "Our hopper heads out east on a whim and a dry Santa Ana tail wind. Stopping at the Yucca Valley swap meet he buys an old road map with a route already marked with red pen. It leads him to a cabin and from the cabin to a chain of other small town thrift stores, picking up old copies of National Geographic magazines along the way. Stories about snow drops i...
Death Cab for Cutie's rise from small-time solo project to emotive, Grammy-nominated rock quartet is one of indie rock's greatest success stories. Launched in the bayside college town of Bellingham, WA, the group was originally a side project for singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard, an engineering student at Western Washington University who split his time between school and music. Taking a break from his local power pop band, Pinwheel, Gibbard began recording an album's worth of solo material in the summer of 1997. Producer Chris Walla lent his help to the recording sessions, which soon produced an eight-song cassette entitled You Can Play These Songs with Chords. When the tape proved to be a local hit, Gibbard reached into his circle of frien...
Pennsylvania-based mewithoutYou is known for their original vocal style and introspective lyrics of lead vocalist Aaron Weiss, as well as their prominent bass riffs and atmospheric guitar: all which make mewithoutYou hard to classify as any specific genre. mewithoutYou's current popularity can be attributed to their contact with their current record label Tooth And Nail Records and the release of their first two full length albums: A to B: Life and Catch for Us the Foxes. Their third full length album, Brother, Sister, was released on September 26, 2006 by the aforementioned label. They also have an EP titled I Never Said That I Was Brave, which was released in 2001 by Kickstart Audio.The band was originally conceived as a side project. ...
With goals like "immediately grabbing your attention and getting to your emotions," Explosions in the Sky have proven successful over the years, garnering attention ranging from small cult followings to full-blown exposure on the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. Originally called Breaker Morant, Explosions in the Sky was formed in Austin, Texas in 1999. Drummer Chris Hrasky is from Rockford, Illinois, and the rest of the band hails from Midland, Texas. The new name of "Explosions in the Sky" came from a comment Hrasky made in reference to the noise or sight of fireworks when they left KVRX on the night they played their first set and recorded their first track, "Remember Me as a Time of Day&qu...
David Vandervelde dropped out of the sky in early 2007 with the well-received indie classic The Moonstation House Band. That album more than lived up to its title's potential, providing a healthy slab of cosmic, primal rock boogie. While this debut was the product of Vandervelde being isolated in the studio, being allowed to follow his every musical whim, Waiting For The Sunrise is a product of a new sort of isolation. After relocating from Chicago to Brooklyn, Vandervelde struggled to find his place in the new musical community. This seclusion led t...
Often described as one of Canada's best up-and-coming talents, Hey Ocean is a young band with a remarkable talent for blending various musical styles into a brand of infectious pop that is uniquely their own. The beautiful melodies and clever lyrics of singers Ashleigh Ball and David Beckingham have been described as both poetic and thought provoking, however it is apparent that these two play off each other effortlessly. The duo - who have had a long-standing musical relationship - are joined by the wildly energetic David Vertesi on bass and the groove-obsessed Daniel Klenner on drums. Together, they have created a musical repertoire that cannot be ignored.What began...
Mike Patton is many things to many people, but regardless of whether he's singing, scatting, acting, growling or swearing, he's a Renaissance man in the truest sense of the word. From his teens spent with genre-defying alternatives acts like Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, his various collaborations with avant-garde musicians, the deconstructed-pop music he created with Peeping Tom and currently cultivating a career as a film composer while simultaneously launching Crudo (an urban-skewed duo also featuring Dan The Automator) and Mondo Cane (an Italian language, orchestra driven pop standard project), there seems to be no limit to what Patton can do-and while his expansive care...
Quick: Name an accomplished drummer whose playing, without any other clues or context, you can recognize within a few measures of any given song. John Bonham? Keith Moon? Dave Lombardo? Elvin Jones? Point taken-but anyone familiar with Zach Hill's rabbit-footed, expressionistic approach to the kit would have to add the Sacramento, California-based drummer, songwriter and visual artist to that rarified list. Now, with his first solo album, Astrological Straits, Hill is proving that he's as recognizable in the conductor's chair as he is on the drum stool.Though Hill earned his stripes as co-founder of the Sacramento-born duo-turned-quintet Hella, with whom he's recorded four a...
Started in 1997 by Erik Rutan of Morbid Angel and Ripping Corpse fame, Hate Eternal quickly became one of the most talked about extreme metal bands on the scene due to the band's ability to create exceptional albums, tons of touring, and live shows that left fans hungering for more. Almost three years after the brutal extreme metal masterpiece, I, Monarch, Hate Eternal are back with a new record and a new home on Metal Blade Records. Fury and Flames, the bands' fourth studio album, marks the...
Nearly 15 years into their career, Denmark's RAUNCHY have just released their fourth album Wasteland Discotheque on Lifeforce Records. Formed back in 1992 in their hometown of Copenhagen, high school mates Morten Toft Hansen on drums, bassist Jesper Kvist and Jesper Tilsted on guitar/synth, connected together by jamming on tunes by Slayer and Metallica, and eventually deciding to call this band RAUNCHY. With the addition of Lars Christensen on guitar and first vocalist Lars Vognstrup the band is complete and begin working on their own original material. After a number of demos and independent releases, most notably 2002s Velvet Noise (Nuclear...
“The Ks represent the undeniable bliss of superior song-craft executed brilliantly. The guitars and horns rumble with an old school accessibility that almost never belies the ingenuity behind the arrangements. Monumental.”-Jacob Bartelby, Smart Magazine The Ks embody the sounds of the letter K, crunching and crying out songs of work, heartbreak and lust. They focus like no one playing today and sound at times like James Brown meeting Pavement (more accurately, Stephen Malkmus fronting the JBs); late period Elvis Presley and The New Pornographers, Tom Waits and the Clash, The Beatles and The Pixies. While brewing a po...
Modest Mouse was formed in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington and over the last decade has become the indie rock standard and one of the few bands capable of treading the narrow path where massive popularity is possible without sacrificing their longtime fans.The band released their first full-length album, This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About, on the Up label in 1996. With the ...
It's difficult to comprehend how They And The Children can sound so vibrant, intelligent and alive while simultaneously churning out such devastatingly crushing and epic hardcore. At times, their music transmits like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on a particularly nasty day. But Home is exactly those two polar opposites, colliding together to create one wholly engaging, invigorating album.<p>Of course, the Middletown, Connecticut four piece have always been keen on contemporary ideas, novel concepts and thinking outsite the proverbial box. Perhaps that's why this blistering eight song attack hopes to incite powerful emotion as much as it strives to form a dialogue between those who don'...
As their last band neared the end of its career, Ben decided to call Nik. The conversation pretty much went as follows: Ben: "Hey, Nik, you want to start a new band?" Nik: "What? You mean, do the same thing we do after every band quits?" Ben: "Yeah." Nik: "Alright, sounds good." Now, this is what has been created....
Interview with HOUR OF THE SHIPWRECKfeaturing Richie Kohan (vocalist, 12-string guitarist)interviewed by Kevin Sellers for Music EmissionsKevin: Hey Richie, thanks from me and the readers for sitting down and answering some questions for Music Emissions. You and your band Hour Of The Shipwreck's debut album, "The Hour Is Upon Us", certainly begs a fair share of them. So let's just get the thanks out of the way, and let you greet the people how you will; maybe the obligatory band information, etc. Not everyone has your album fall into their lap, after all. Heheh.Richie: Greetings everyone. So, the goal of Hour of the Shipwreck is to create music that bri...
Taken from the official Grave homepage: www.grave.se One of the longest-running Swedish death metal bands, GRAVE has created a sound and style which has been an inspiration on a number of the genre's more promising younger outfits. Started as the band Corpse in 1986, they released loads of demos; before the group's legendary 1991 debut.Into the Grave, established GRAVE as one of death metal's most brutal new hopefuls, a title the act cemented through a host of live performances across Europe and America.1992's You'll Never See...,the band's critically-acclaimed second release, showcased their growing musical talent with a cleaner, stronger sound appealing to a wider audience while retaining the grou...
In the fallen remains of the Resurrected Misfits rose a project that would find its origins through the vision of Guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein. Doyle, the hulking Misfits axeman, with his unmistakable presence and notorious guitar sound began to write songs that would most recently become recorded and released under the banner of the name Gorgeous Frankenstein. The name was decided upon as a way to combine both Doyle and wife Stephanie Bellars (Gorgeous George of WC...wrestling fame) names into one conceptual theme. Doyle originally wrote the first few songs of the Gorgeous Frankenstein project with fo...
Formed in 2003 in São Paulo by a group of friends with an unquenchable thirst for good times and indulgence in all things pop and art, CSS rose to notoriety with the help of a thriving creative community, underground club scene and a little thing called the internet. Pulling together their numerous talents, the band drew legions of international followers entranced by a universally accessible, albeit original and off the wall, look and style.The first South American band to be signed to the label, their debut album Cansei de Ser Sexy (Portuguese for "Tired of Being Sexy" - something Beyoncé Knowles once said she was) was released on Sub Pop in July of...
From August 1991 to November 1998 five friends had an obsession with the music they created as the underground band OVERCAST. Motivated by having fun and playing songs that went against the grain, they stayed true to themselves by writing music they wanted to play ... fashionable or not. Money was never an issue back then mainly because there wasn't any to be had. Sometimes they would play for gas money, most times for far far less. Only through sacrifice and perseverance did they make it work. Firsthand experience and trial and error provided the path. Years and years of weekend warrior tours took OVERCAST places they normally would never have gone or seen.But all things co...
