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| Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at Roseland Theater |
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(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Indie Rock
Pop
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Matt & Kim
Fang Island
Delta!Bravo
PRESHOW LISTENING PARTY! Each night when doors open, we're having a listening party of our upcoming album SIDEWALKS. (Releases Nov. 2nd) We're excited that people who come support us at shows will get a chance to hear it before anyone else!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Roseland Theater 503-224-2038
8 NW 6th Ave, Portland, OR (MapQuest)
8pm (doors open at 7pm). All Ages.
$16.00 advance tix from TicketsWest.
$20.00 at the door.
ABOUT MATT & KIM---
First off a note of warning: Matt and Kim aren't a typical band and this isn't going to read like your average biography. For example, although Matt and Kim know they met while taking classes at Pratt Institute in New York, Kim's not sure what year she graduated, let alone when they decided to start playing music as a two-piece. What they do know is that when Matt and Kim started out approximately four years ago, they had no idea how to play their respective instruments--a fact that makes the band's success story almost as unique as their distinctive brand of synth-and-drums dance punk.
After being forced to play their first show by a friend months after picking up their instruments, keyboardist/vocalist Matt Johnson and drummer/vocalist Kim Schifino played their first show as Matthew and Kimberly in October of 2004--and after slightly altering their name they spent the next year playing every chance they could get in their home base of Brooklyn. Along the way they also released an EP called To/From and started touring the United States non-stop, burning CDs in the van on the way to their self-booked shows and seemingly playing every art space and basement in the country.
In 2006 the band released their self-titled debut--which was instantly embraced by critics and fans alike--and stayed on the road, performing at high profile events such as The Siren Music Festival and Lollapalooza. Okay, so now that the timeline is out of the way, let's talk about the new album. For starters, Grand was recorded at Matt's parents' house in Vermont that Kim describes as "being near nothing and surrounded by three cow pastures." Or as Matt says, "I had a friend from New York come up once and he was like 'How did you even find out about college?'" In other words, it's pretty desolate.
However, Matt's childhood bedroom--which was still covered with skateboarding posters and show flyers--ultimately turned out to be the ideal environment to record Grand. "While our album is different from our things in the past, it's what I would have always done if we had the time and means to do it, which we did this time around," Matt explains, adding that the band sporadically spent nine months on their new record as opposed to the nine days in which they recorded their debut. After the tracks were laid to tape the band returned to Brooklyn where Matt spent his summer sweating, stressing out and mixing Grand in the duo's apartment." "I would never record our whole album ourselves again," he adds, "but it came out exactly how I wanted it to."
The result is an album that takes the band's musicianship and songwriting to the next level and also serves as a glowing representation of how far Matt and Kim have come since their debut. From the anthemic opener "Daylight" to the harmony-rich, atmospheric ballad "Turn This Boat Around" and demented pop of "I Wanna," Grand is quite literally the sound of the collective discovering their voice. "All of the songs on the last album we wrote the first year we learned how to play our instruments," Matt acknowledges, "but this one is much more diverse and instead of thinking about the songs we thought of the album as a whole, too."
Then there are the band's legendary live shows, which look more like dance parties than traditional concerts and blur the line between musician and listener. "I really believe that a band should be honest when they play," Matt explains. "Kim and I are generally just excited to play; I mean I cannot believe that I can make a living off playing music, which is what I get to do now; it's just so incredible," he continues. "We're excited just to be able to play and we show it, as dorky as that can look."
Lyrically, the band's writing process is just as idiosyncratic, with Kim writing random lines of text and Matt going through them and putting them together until they start to mean something to the duo. Understandably the band's debut admittedly tended to be about "figuring your life out," but this time around the duo have experienced enough to feel comfortable writing about different topics and have expanded their vision into something that's metaphor-rich and a little harder to nail down with one or two sentences on tracks like "Lessons Learned."
In fact, that last statement can be applied not only to Grand as a whole, but to Matt and Kim as a unit--and, amazingly, it seems like they're still just getting started. "Even though we eat rice and beans a lot and live in an eight-foot wide apartment, we're doing what we want to do," Matt summarizes. "It's like when you're watching a movie, you don't want to just see people being content--you need a struggle to make it exciting and fun," he adds. "If you can just enjoy all the little things, that's ultimately what makes for a satisfying experience."
ABOUT FANG ISLAND---
"If this is the arena rock of the future, send me a ticket" - Pitchfork
"A triumphant, heavily riffed, primarily instrumental epic, whiplashing through six minutes of smiling prog jams, and as many tempos as passages, before settling into one last minute of uplifting chants." -- Stereogum
"Life-affirming prog guitar anthems." -- Seattle Stranger
Fang Island describes its sound as "everyone high-fiving everyone." And, the Brooklyn quintet's anthemic and soaring songs make it quite possibly one of few bands befitting such description.
Its finger-tapping guitar lines, chanted vocals, triumphant harmonies and overall perky songs hearken to the sort of "Total Music" of the Fucking Champs, Jay Reatard, Ponytail, Kraftwerk, Marnie Stern, Thin Lizzy, et al. But, perhaps more so, its songs are like the music in your head at that moment when everything feels just right: that first kiss, that high score on the video game, buying your first small nation in cash... you know, good stuff.
Fang Island began, oddly enough, as an art school project while the band members were attending the prodigious Rhode Island School of Design (also the foundation for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Les Savvy Fav, Lightning Bolt, Six Finger Satellite and some band called the Talking Heads.) According to guitarist Jason Bartell, the goal was to "make music for people who like music." That is, music without irony that harnesses its uplifting qualities. Just like a classic rock song or classical symphony can stir us emotionally, Fang Island exists to unlock that spirit.
Fang Island is guitarist Jason Bartell, bassist Michael Jacober, guitarist Chris Georges, guitarist Nicholas Andrew Sadler, and drummer Marc St. Sauveur. They all share collective group vocal harmonies and the occasional hand claps. While Sadler is also known for his role in the debauched rock band Daughters, it is only his fretboard skill that translates between the two groups.
Fang Island begins appropriately with the sound of erupting fireworks on "Dreams of Dreams" leading into a cascading chorus of ringing guitar notes before the group vocal harmonies chime in with the mantra, "they all are within my reach, they are free." The second song, "Careful Crossers" launches in beneath the vocals with a chorus of gleaming guitar harmonies smeared over the marching, syncopated rhythm section. Elsewhere, tracks like "Sideswiper" hearken to the metal-laced positivity of Andrew WK. "Daisy" sounds like a unique collaboration between the Fucking Champs and Jay Reatard. Throughout the album, it's like listening to the cool version of classic rock -- the type of anthemic pop -- without the cheesiness -- that you wished Journey and Boston could've made.
Fang Island's self titled album was released February 23, 2010 via Sargent House.
ABOUT DELTA!BRAVO---
Electro-rock-dance-pop band based in Portland, OR. The band started out of the rekindled friendship of Tom and Joss, who had been in another Portland band together before. Soon after, through the magic of MySpace, Brad and then Ashton joined to round out the line up.
The bands first EP, "Quantum Leap EP", was written and recorded in the Fall of 2009, with a Summer 2010 release.
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