“St. Van Cortlandt & the 101 brings you a lush and experimental industrial-indie-folk-rock sound that immediately grabs your attention – whether it’s the distinctive vocal style, the unique arrangements, the kitchen-sink variety of instrumentation & production, the clever and heartfelt lyrics, or all of it coming at you at once.  St. Van Cortlandt has his own sound, and it’s one that provides the listener with new layers of discovery upon each listen.” -Phil Cialdella, Wonderlous Music

Lead singer and songwriter of this unsigned indie band, Daniel Van Cortlandt began writing and recording original music in his early teens, recording really strange albums and passing them around on cassette for his classmates to gawk at.  In the years to come he would swear off music, drink, barely graduate university, break hearts, break his jaw, have his own heart broken, get back to music, drink more, escape from California to New York, and write the truest record his fingers would allow. Having come to the conclusion that nothing short of total creative control and isolation would help him find his sound, Van Cortlandt nestled into a studio apartment in the Bronx and set about recording the album on his own.

Resulting from all this are the songs that would come to define him as an artist, culminating in the 11-track “Songs Without Faces, Friends Without Words”.  While one song might be colored with shakers, the sounds of a busy restaurant, and a secretly taped conversation between 4 friends, another song might contain 8 pitched beer bottles, pots, pans, and a kid’s toy piano.  It’s a sound that starts with acoustic guitar, and ends with a shower that someone left running.  Beyond mere experimental sound-designs, these are eleven compelling songs with clever lyrics about loneliness, disillusionment, separation, heartbreak, hypocrisy, and disappointment. They are songs you can enjoy just as easily inside headphone-induced seclusion, as you can amongst a circle of good friends.