4/29: Alcoholic Faith Mission / Revival Times / Yellowbirds
ALCOHOLIC FAITH MISSION
alcoholicfaithmission.com // http://www.myspace.com/alcoholicfaithmission
The name of the band is more of an ironic corruption of “apostolic faith mission,” than a nod to the over-indulgence it implies. It’s from a neon sign in Brooklyn from which Thorben Seierø Jensen and Sune Sølund set off on their search for a musical road less-traveled.
The momentum behind those beginnings might have come from the so-called straightjackets that the two Danes cloak themselves in to compose. Rules? For the first album, there was a dire regimen of late-night recordings in the bedroom of a tiny Copenhagen flat lit only by candlelight. Other essentials included improvised percussion instruments and a drinking requirement.
From the smallness of that space the substance of Alcoholic Faith Mission took shape in their first album, Misery Loves Company. Variously encompassed as a self-indulgent, melancholy, acoustic outreach, Misery made a modest splash that fueled a tour of
Denmark, and occasioned the band’s evolution from a varied collective with a core of two, into the five constituents including Kristine Permild, Gustav Rasmussen and Laurids Smedegaard that make AFM today. It also brought forth PonyRec, the band’s European label and management firm.
The second album was the result of a half year immersion in an old factory loft nestled in the heart of Hasidic Brooklyn. For this outing, the dogma confined them to using only the things they found within the four walls of the flat to compose and frame every track.
Named for the address, 421 Wythe Avenue was heard by many and written about by a good number of bloggers and journalists. The reviews have ranged from mild intrigue to utter adoration.
Three tours of Europe followed, as did label deals in Japan and the U.S. The proverbial icing on the cake came from Canadian indie film, Point Traverse that put four songs from 421 on its soundtrack.
Alcoholic Faith Mission’s third release, cumbersomely titled Let This Be the Last Night We Care, will be available for general consumption in April of 2010. The band will be touring the U.S. and Japan along with an extensive showing in Europe, including a coming out in England.
REVIVAL TIMES
http://www.myspace.com/revivaltime
From the mountainous regions of Brooklyn, NY- just above the United North East’s largest oil spill, Revival Times forge a motorik American sound from within the walls of an old school house. The five members of Revival Times reacquainted and converged in the summer of 2007 expanding on the then current stable of songs composed by songwriter Gary Tedder on the eponymous Revival Times EP recorded in Austin, TX by Douglas Ferguson. In addition to Gary, the current lineup of the band includes Matt Houston on bass, Joseph Noll on trap set, Hunter Bowen on guitar, and Paul Lara on percussion, each adding harmonizing backup vocals throughout the set. Sites, sounds, and smells that have influenced their work include carnitas tacos, Hawkwind, Robert Rauschenberg, Leonard Cohen, Brooklyn nightlife, The Band, the Appalachian Mountain trail, Piel’s, the 13th Floor Elevators, John Fahey, glaciers, Neil Young, and Master and Margarita. The bands first EP was recorded at the Still in Austin, TX September 24th with Douglas Ferguson, Valerie Klatt, and Joseph Noll. Matt Houston and Paul Lara are currently engineering the band’s first full length album of new material to be mixed by Matt Boyton at Vacation Island.
YELLOWBIRDS
Sam Cohen, AKA Yellowbirds, is a Texan living in New York. While the Texas of his teens may be the home of Enron, Dallas, Big Oil, and grey Houston Astros jerseys, he prefers to think of it as the home of Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, the Space Program, and orange Astros jerseys. It stands to reason, then, that the New York he resides in must be the mythical Empire City – the Rocky Mountains of Architecture, Epicenter of Modern Art, and Home of the Velvet Underground. Admittedly, there is no shortage of romanticism in this outlook. Indeed, there is none in this music. Even a song entitled ‘Pulaski Bridge’ (a pastoral daydream formed staring at the retractable bridge between Brooklyn and Queens from an apartment window) somehow seems to transport the listener 200 years in any direction, and the other songs only get more universal in scope. As a collection, the music is marked by unpredictable forms, natural imagery, and cowboy-esque melodies, cut with double-speed auto-harp glissandos, glowing backwards pedal steel and echo guitars that harken to the synth sequenced soundtracks of late seventies educational films. It is hard to believe, in fact, that most of the “electronic” sounds in this music come from stringed instruments. These disparate elements coupled with a recording process that combines studio and home recordings of widely varying fidelity intentionally create the recorded effect of a sonic collage. While crafting these recordings can be something of an insular process, seeing Yellowbirds Live is an experience memorable for it’s raw spontaneity and bombast. The band, comprised of crack Brooklyn musicians, possess an energy that must be seen to be believed, especially in the moments when Cohen, who has been described as “…the most underrated guitarist in America today” (jambase.com) indulges in massive hollow-body solos that teeter on the edge of breath-taking beauty and structural meltdown. Sam is also a member of Apollo Sunshine, the Boston born psychedelic trio who have been performing since 2001 and have released three critically acclaimed albums, most recently 2008’s Shall Noise Upon. Yellowbirds is his solo debut.