Bio: Born in the small coastal Australian town of Angourie, Ry grew up with a surfboard under one arm and his Dad’s record collection under the other. He quickly developed a love for many different styles of music from Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder to The Beatles and The Police. His voracious appetite for music grew while his wide and varied tastes began to mold the sound and style that is uniquely Ry Cuming.
Armed with an acoustic guitar and undeniably soulful voice, Ry’s professional music career began to take shape as an 18 year-old traveler and surfer in Costa Rica. One fateful afternoon while playing in the hallway of a hotel for some female pro surfers (Ry is an avid surfer himself), Ry met a young film producer from LA who was taken by his talent and happened to have some very good connections. He became the catalyst for Ry’s journey into the LA music scene, introducing him to a network of musicians that were starting to gain momentum in the area at the time…namely Maroon 5, Phantom Planet, and Rooney. Ry was now in the very good musical company he deserved. He was quickly noticed by major label JIVE records, where he recently signed an exclusive recording contract. To be clear, Ry is no rookie. He has already won two of Australia’s Dolphin Awards for Best Pop Song and Best New Artist, was recently featured on NBC’s EXTRA and MTV’s LAGUNA BEACH: The Real OC, has been seen in the pages of Vogue Magazine, AND been featured in two films including a Quicksilver production about the Mentawai Islands, and alongside Maroon 5 and Jimmy Buffett in the motion picture HOOT. Look for two songs from his debut album to be featured in the upcoming film “Beautiful Boy,” starring Michael Sheen (The Queen) and Maria Bello (History of Violence). He has collaborated with LA-based musicians from Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals, to Incubus, Maroon 5, Rooney, and Phantom Planet. He tours regularly as a solo artist as well as in support of such major acts as Maroon 5 and One Republic. In short, this is an artist poised to break, with talent and experience well beyond his 22 years. Sarah Bareilles and Jessie of Maroon 5 appear as special guests on his Jive Records debut album, with production by the legendary John Alagia (Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews, Mandy Moore, Ben Folds Five) and all songs penned by Ry himself. Look and listen for it in spring 2010. Ry Cuming is about to make some BIG waves in the US and around the world!!!
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on one pretty sweet music video. This duo’s beginnings have been described as a modern day fairytale. What began as a hobby of two friends – fooling around on GarageBand and uploading the tracks to MySpace – has now launched Dave Schmitt and Kyle Even’s career as Breathe Carolina. The video above is for the title track off their debut album Hello Fascination. Enjoy!
Bio: Remember the Blondies, the Pat Benatars, the NYC dance-rock girls who walked that line between exquisitely pretty and totally hardcore? That’s what Hesta Prynn’s new music is like, an intersection of glam and street born of the bowels of Manhattan. The New York Post describes Hesta Prynn as “M.I.A. and Miike Snow’s Lovechild” and says “Hesta Prynn is now rocking a solo moniker — and it’s the best move I’ve seen since Timberlake said “Bye-Bye-Bye” to those other four.
Time Out NY Describes the music as having death-disco guitar scratch, thumping beats and disembodied, echoing vocals.” The way she clashes up girlie vocals with ‘90s guitars and icy beats, you’d never know this is the same lady who spit rhymes about boys and parties in hip-hop group Northern State. But it is. Same character, different movie. And the soundtrack is slick yet rough, a glossed-up kind of raw like you’ve never heard before.
With her pal Sara Quin (Tegan and Sara) in the director’s chair, Hesta has an army of talent around her, including Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav and Eric Gardner of Gnarls Barkley. Chuck Brody and Jon Siebels are on the console, and the result is post-hipster punk-noir post-pop for the new decade.
Hesta’s whole life has been leading up to this one musical moment, but the real trajectory started circa 2001, when Ms. Prynn, neé Julie Potash, got together with her friends at a party and came up with an idea. Let’s start a rap group, they said, us three white girls from the suburbs. It’ll be hilar! They did, and Northern State was born. Record labels came knocking, Rick Rubin’s name came up, and a big-time record deal led to quality time at strip clubs with DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill. By 2008, after a long, surreal trek through the music world, Northern State’s third album was out on Mike Patton’s Ipecac label and Hesta Prynn had finally learned what was really real.
While on a European tour, our heroine found herself in a McDonald’s in Paris, where a Frenchman asked about her origin. “Oh, New York?” he said. “50 Cent!” Indeed, the New York hip-hop tradition had been good to Hesta, but she had a little something cooking on the side. She had ruled the party, acted the fool, had a laugh. And now, she has an attitude. Can you handle it?
Album Title: Fun and Laughter EP & Some are Lakes
Featured Tracks: “May You Never” & “Some Are Lakes”
Record Label: Saddle-Creek
Website: www.myspace.com/landoftalk
Bio: Land of Talk arrive with Some Are Lakes, the much-anticipated debut full-length and their first recording for Saddle Creek. Led by singer/guitarist Elizabeth Powell, Some Are Lakes was recorded in the band’s hometown of Montreal with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and is the follow up to their acclaimed 2006 EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss (Rebel Group). Some Are Lakes continues to showcase Powell’s vocal convictions, which Time Out NY called “a voice that flits between come-hither and go-fuck-yourself.” Powell’s voice and roaring guitars take center-stage alongside bassist Chris McCarron and drummer Andrew Barr (The Slip). The album is born of an artistic sensibility that digs its heels into the present, and yet is entirely tied to the ashtray fumes of its past and the jet turbine whine of its future. Some Are Lakes is as much an album about where Land of Talk have been, and where they will be, as it can ever be about where they are now.
That’s right ladies & gents, our current favorite and last week’s download of the week, The Soft Pack will be playing the Sunday date of this years Coachella. Don’t miss your chance to see these kids play live. I had the opportunity to see them play in January during one of their 10 CD release shows across Los Angeles. They managed to blow me away while playing in someone’s garage in Venice. Awesome show, we suggest you don’t miss out on this one!
Bio: The Federals are a force to be reckoned with we reckon. “Take It From Me” is a rough edgy anthem in the making! Proper thrashy, rowdy, fuzziness. The earliest brattishness of The Who dragged helplessly kicking & screaming into the 21st Century!
And don’t forget it! Click the image above to watch a video for La Roux’s “I’m Not Your Toy.” The song is bound to be stuck in your once you see this vid! Enjoyyy
Bio: For a band whose lineup has only really been cemented this year, The Soft
Pack – formerly known as the Muslims – have already accomplished a breathtaking amount. Born and bred in San Diego but currently based in LA, the quartet, which features Matt Lamkin on vocals, co-founder Matty
McLoughlin on guitar, David Lantzman on bass and Brian Hill on drums, create a fresh, razor-sharp, no-frills sound that draws in influences from acts as varied as the Stooges, Jonathan Richman, Wire and The Velvet Underground, resulting in fiercely infectious, stripped-down songs which have eagle-eyed A&R types and critics alike falling over themselves with praise. Proof that the band have well and truly arrived was their frenzied reception at this year’s CMJ, as they played 11 packed out shows at a range of venues, from intimate places like Pianos and Don Pedro’s to larger venues like Williamsburg Music Hall and the Bowery Ballroom. Adulatory pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Fader and Billboard quickly followed suit, as did hotly coveted support slots with the likes of the Last Shadow Puppets and the Breeders this fall.
In addition, their untitled 12-inch debut EP (which came in one of a kind
jackets with bullet holes shot through by the father of a friend, a former
NYC cop) sold out almost immediately and is being re-pressed this year,
complete with brand new tracks, hand typed inserts and silk screened
sleeves. And excitingly enough, the UK will get their first blast of the Soft Pack’s potent rock and roll when their double A-side, “Nightlife/Bright Side” is released through Caspian Records in February 2009, with their debut UK shows to follow; the very first of which, in fact, is for the famed NME Brats. The perfect opportunity to listen to these perfectly formed mini-classics in waiting and get acquainted with the sound of the Soft Pack before the rest of the world inevitably does…
Bio: More than clever verses and catchy choruses, truly timeless albums offer listeners the keys to another world; they catapult you into another frame of mind and jostle your soul a little bit along the way. Broken Side of Time, Alberta Cross’ ATO Records debut, is one of those albums.
A cathartic, kaleidoscope of influences, from Depeche Mode to The Band, it’s also the sound of Alberta Cross’ two principals—frontman/guitarist-vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee and bassist Terry Wolfers—going for broke and stumbling across the sound of their dreams in the process.
Broken Side of Time took root in an April 2008 jam session, Stakee and Wolfers’ first with three players they would quickly enlist—guitarist Sam Kearney, drummer Austin Beede and keyboardist Alec Higgins. With the aid of a little drink and a little smoke, the five jammed on a group of Stakee’s then-new songs, giving birth to Alberta Cross’ second incarnation almost immediately: “I remember thinking that night, ‘This is gonna be insane,’” remembers Stakee.
It was a time of upheaval for Stakee and Wolfers, ex-pat Brits living in Brooklyn. They had moved to a new, tough city, lost the major-label record deal they had moved there with, and were in the midst of reinventing both their band and their sound, while sleeping on friends’ couches. Their well-received debut EP, 2007’s The Thief & the Heartbreaker, was a modest, folk-minded, acoustic-based disc that garnered glowing reviews. But, for Stakee and Wolfers, it was a baby step.
Broken Side of Time, meanwhile, is a giant stride ahead, one that marks the band’s official introduction to America. Grand in volume and vast in vision, it’s an inspired set of electric songs that finds the intersection of The Verve, My Morning Jacket and Neil Young (with or without Crazy Horse). Recorded in Austin, produced by the band with Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Dead Confederate, Heartless Bastards) and mixed by John O’Mahony (Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Kasabian) at Electric Lady Studios, the album melds propulsive, throbbing bass lines and crashing waves of guitar to a haunting, impassioned voice that can sound ancient and Appalachian.
Something of an about-face from The Thief & the Heartbreaker, the album, says Stakee, bears the influence of years of frustration logged in the shadow of Manhattan: “It’s kind of a desperation album, a darker album; it’s definitely angrier. We’ve been in a crazy place during the whole album, and you can hear that.” Appropriately, Stakee was listening to Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and the grimmer, gospel songs of Depeche Mode while writing the songs of Broken Side of Time. On songs like “Rise From the Shadows” and “Ghost of City Life” he speaks directly of their situation and surroundings.
Despite any struggles, Wolfers and Stakee in many ways have had a charmed career thus far. Born in Sweden—where he spent a childhood on tour and in studios with his musician father before moving to London in his late teens—Stakee and Wolfers—a Brit charmed by everyone from Prince and My Bloody Valentine to Metallica and Ride as a teen—were playing in a guitar-rock band in London’s east end some four years ago, when Stakee brought some new songs and ideas to the band. When all were roundly rejected, Wolfers invited his bandmate to record those humble, acoustic songs on the makeshift equipment in his apartment.
“Right then and there I instantly realized that he was an extremely talented fellow,” Wolfers says. “That’s when I realized I had found someone who I could create some really great music with—after just jamming on a few things.” Those demos would become The Thief & The Heartbreaker—featuring Petter’s brother, John Alexander Ericson, on keyboards—released via Fiction in the U.K. and re-released by popular demand on the bands new U.K. label, Ark Recordings
Bored with the scene in London and in need of a burst of energy, Stakee and Wolfers moved to New York, where they immediately created a buzz, playing spellbinding acoustic shows at venues like The Living Room, en route to capturing a new deal with ATO Records. Seeking to create more of a band vibe—“and we wanted it to be a family,” says Wolfers—they added Beede, Higgins and Kearney and a louder, grittier sound was born. “We had a show at The Mercury Lounge [in New York] like two days after that first jam,” says Wolfers, “and, without really any real time to rehearse, I remember being onstage that night thinking, ‘This is the best I’ve heard the material.’”
Alberta Cross has toured extensively through the U.K., sharing the stage with Oasis, The Shins, Bat for Lashes and Simian Mobile Disco, among others. “If we weren’t playing for people every night, we would be going mad.” Stakee says. Adds Wolfers, “We do it, because we have to.”
“I remember going to see The Verve on the Storm in Heaven tour, and I stood right in front of [guitarist] Nick McCabe the whole night,” the bassist continues. “I remember walking out of that show feeling like I had just seen a group of people pour their heart and soul out, and I felt it. It changed my life. And that’s what we want to do: We want to give people something honest, and move them, make them feel.”
Echoes Stakee, “We’re trying to give people truly soulful music, which is hopefully inspirational. I want to ease their minds and give them a little break from reality.”
Bio: Queens Club, formed in 2008 by ex-members of The Chariot, are unashamedly accessible, with a dash of attitude. Ok, more than a dash. A ton of attitude. In fact, one can’t help but call to mind the energy found in bands like Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party upon listening, but comparisons aside, QUEENS CLUB brings plenty of originality to the table. With Nightmarer (the band’s debut EP with Tooth & Nail Records), QUEENS CLUB are destined heirs to the rock throne and are ready to rule the hearts of music lovers worldwide.
Skeptical? When the full length releases in 2010 you can borrow my extra pair of dancing shoes. Fans who have already had a chance to hear the band know exactly what I’m talking about, and those who don’t will most assuredly join the Club.
April 28, 2010
