They have been compared to Neutral Milk Hotel, Bonnie Prince Billy and Belle & Sebastian, and the band cite both punk rock and folk as influences.
Their name is a marriage of the title of one of the band’s favourite films, The Squid and the Whale, and the director of said film’s name (Noah Baumbach). They are also avid fans of the film director Wes Anderson, who helped produce The Squid and the Whale alongside Baumbach; the group’s e-mails, and many of their MySpace blog posts, are signed “Sic Transit Gloria”, a phrase frequently used in Anderson’s film Rushmore.

The band performed on Jeremy Warmsley’s internet television show, Welcome to our TV show, and have made several appearances at festivals including Leeds, Cambridge Folk Festival, Latitude, SXSW, V Festival and Glastonbury. In May 2008, the group’s side-project, The A Sides, performed a one-off show at The Push Club.

The band’s debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays me Down got to Number 5 on the Official UK Album Chart and has received a mainly positive critical response.

From January 2009 onwards, the band started work on their second full length LP, entitled The First Days of Spring. Along with the album release, Charlie Fink has made a film that runs the entire length of the album, also entitled The First Days of Spring. The band decided not to feature female backup vocals on their second LP. The album was released on August 31st 2009, a little over a year after their debut.

“The First Days of Spring” is the first single release from the album of the same name and is available for download from the band’s website. Another second single entitled “Blue Skies” was released in the summer of 2009, after the song got its first airplay on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show on 22nd June 2009.

The band played the 2009 Reading and Leeds Festivals on the main stage, as well as a variety of other venues on their current tour.

On August 28th 2009 Doug Fink, brother of lead singer Charlie Fink, announced he would be leaving the band to pursue a career in medicine. The announcement was made days before the imminent release of their second album ‘The First Days of Spring’. At this same time a new member Fred Abbott was brought in on 2nd guitar/piano and Doug was replaced by former Pull Tiger Tail drummer Jack Hamson.

Their song, “Give a Little Love” was used in an episode of Cougar Town titled “Here Comes My Girl” which first aired on November 25, 2009. Another of their songs, “Blue Skies,” was used in an episode of One Tree Hill titled “Some Roads Lead Nowhere” which first aired on December 7, 2009.

In January 2010, it was announced that Noah and the Whale was to be heading to the recording studio soon to prepare their third album, for which the band is considering the title Old Joy.

They have been compared to Neutral Milk Hotel, Bonnie Prince Billy and Belle & Sebastian, and the band cite both punk rock and folk as influences.
Their name is a marriage of the title of one of the band’s favourite films, The Squid and the Whale, and the director of said film’s name (Noah Baumbach). They are also avid fans of the film director Wes Anderson, who helped produce The Squid and the Whale alongside Baumbach; the group’s e-mails, and many of their MySpace blog posts, are signed “Sic Transit Gloria”, a phrase frequently used in Anderson’s film Rushmore.

The band performed on Jeremy Warmsley’s internet television show, Welcome to our TV show, and have made several appearances at festivals including Leeds, Cambridge Folk Festival, Latitude, SXSW, V Festival and Glastonbury. In May 2008, the group’s side-project, The A Sides, performed a one-off show at The Push Club.

The band’s debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays me Down got to Number 5 on the Official UK Album Chart and has received a mainly positive critical response.

From January 2009 onwards, the band started work on their second full length LP, entitled The First Days of Spring. Along with the album release, Charlie Fink has made a film that runs the entire length of the album, also entitled The First Days of Spring. The band decided not to feature female backup vocals on their second LP. The album was released on August 31st 2009, a little over a year after their debut.

“The First Days of Spring” is the first single release from the album of the same name and is available for download from the band’s website. Another second single entitled “Blue Skies” was released in the summer of 2009, after the song got its first airplay on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show on 22nd June 2009.

The band played the 2009 Reading and Leeds Festivals on the main stage, as well as a variety of other venues on their current tour.

On August 28th 2009 Doug Fink, brother of lead singer Charlie Fink, announced he would be leaving the band to pursue a career in medicine. The announcement was made days before the imminent release of their second album ‘The First Days of Spring’. At this same time a new member Fred Abbott was brought in on 2nd guitar/piano and Doug was replaced by former Pull Tiger Tail drummer Jack Hamson.

Their song, “Give a Little Love” was used in an episode of Cougar Town titled “Here Comes My Girl” which first aired on November 25, 2009. Another of their songs, “Blue Skies,” was used in an episode of One Tree Hill titled “Some Roads Lead Nowhere” which first aired on December 7, 2009.

In January 2010, it was announced that Noah and the Whale was to be heading to the recording studio soon to prepare their third album, for which the band is considering the title Old Joy.

History

Originally formed in 2003 while the members attended SUNY Purchase, the band— with Jamie on guitar and vocals, Gabe Darling on banjo, David Rogers-Berry on drums, Jesse Newman on bass, and Bob Pycior on fiddle—played a series of shows at the now defunct Apocalypse Lounge in NYC, and quickly began building a fanbase with their reverently twisted take on Americana filtered through a wealth of musical influences as divergent as Bill Monroe, Prince, Neil Young, The Microphones, and The Misfits. For these shows, O’Death put together a very raw, 10-track CD-R, entitled Carl Nemelka Family Photographs, to sell to concert-goers.
As O’Death worked on new material for their second, self-released LP, Head Home, the five-piece perfected their stage show. They played over 100 shows in 2006[citation needed], and took the stage alongside acts including Battles, Dr. Dog, Art Brut, Langhorne Slim, The Big Sleep, and Old Time Relijun.

The band’s nonstop touring caught the attention of the New York-based Ernest Jenning Record Co., who re-released Head Home in June 2007. Later that Summer, UK-based label City Slang released Head Home in Europe.

O’Death continued to tour the US and Europe throughout 2007, putting out a limited edition (500 copies) vinyl version of Head Home on Ernest Jenning Record Co./City Slang, followed by a 7” single of two new songs, “Low Tide” and “I Think I’m Fine,” as well as a cover of The Pixies’ “Nimrod’s Son” as an internet bonus track. Head Home was nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Prize.

On February 5, 2008, Gigantic Music released a new 7”, which features songs “Spider Home” and “Silk Hole”.
The band also participated on Vincent Moon’s The Take-Away Shows and a Ukulele Session for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, recorded by Noahm in their studio (New York).

Band Members

Bob Pycior (fiddle)
Gabe Darling (banjo, ukulele)
Greg Jamie (vocals, guitar)
David Rogers-Berry (drums)
Jesse Newman (bass)
Dan Sager

History

Often recognized by their trademark ties, Rob (yellow-vocals/guitar), Zubin (blue-vocals/bass), Ross (grey-percussion), Joe (red-vocals/guitar), and Andrew (green-vocals/keys) make up Tally Hall which began in 2002 when Andrew met Rob through friends. Andrew, the only member not originally from Michigan, began writing songs when he was eight years old and eventually headed to the University of Michigan to study composition. There he met Rob, who attended high school with Zubin and joined Joe’s film production group. When Tally Hall’s original drummer left the band, they recruited Ross, who went to high school with Joe.

Tally Hall was the name of an indoor shopping plaza on Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, the arcade whose name shares the title of their debut album, is all that remains.

The band toured promoting their album, with shows mostly featuring tracks from the album. However, their live concerts often feature a couple cover songs such as “Free Bird”, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”, “Blinded by the Light”, “Who Loves The Sun”, “Praise You”, “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”, and “To Be with You”, but they’re probably best known for their cover of Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend”, which they used to end every set with. As of 2008, it was said to be “retired” from their set but they will still perform it from time to time. A live version of Just a Friend can be found on The Pingry EP. In 2006, a studio version was recorded and is now considered a bonus song provided by Atlantic Records and distributed via download codes handed out at live shows and through the hiddeninthesand.com Twitter account.

The band has received an amount of national media attention, performing their song “Good Day” on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on August 2, 2006 as well as appearing in MTV’s segment You Hear It First in September 2006. The band appeared at the 2007 South by Southwest Music Festival. On August 3 2008, Tally Hall was a performer on the BMI stage at Lollapalooza.

Tally Hall was invited back by The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on September 16 to help promote the launch of Tally Hall’s Internet Show. They performed “Welcome to Tally Hall” in newly donned black vests over top of their traditional colored ties, white shirts, and black pants.

The band worked on several projects after the completion of “Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum”, including covering the song “Smile Like You Mean It” by The Killers for the sixth The O.C. soundtrack: Music from the OC: Mix 6.

The band re-released Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum on April 1, 2008 with their new record label, Atlantic Records after some re-recording and re-mixing was done.

The band is managed by The Hornblow Group, who also manages They Might Be Giants, OK Go, and Oppenheimer.

Current members

Rob Cantor (Yellow tie) – Guitar and vocals
Ross Federman (Grey tie) – Drums (2004-present)
Joe Hawley (Red tie) – Guitar and vocals
Andrew Horowitz (Green tie) – Keyboards and vocals
Zubin Sedghi (Blue tie) – Bass and vocals

Past members

Steve Gallagher (Grey tie) – Drums (2002-2004)

Biography

Good Old War is made up of Keith Goodwin, Daniel Schwartz, and Tim Arnold. The band was started after Days Away (former band of Keith and Tim) went on hiatus; Schwartz previously played in Unlikely Cowboy. They recorded some demos for free in a late night session at a recording studio. They have played with Anthony Green on a short stint of dates along the east coast and also at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Texas, as Anthony’s backing band. They are currently on Sargent House, a label which also serves as a management company whose roster includes: RX Bandits, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, These Arms Are Snakes, Maps & Atlases, Daughters, Love You Moon, Red Sparowes, Tera Melos and Russian Circles. The band recorded their debut album in May 2008 in Los Angeles, with producer Rick Parker who also produced the final EP from Days Away entitled Ear Candy for the Headphone Trippers. Good Old War recorded Anthony Green’s album Avalon with him as his band, and will be performing as his band in addition to playing direct support as Good Old War, with Person L (a project featuring Kenny Vasoli of the Starting Line) for a nationwide headlining tour that begins August 6th through September 14th, 2008. Anthony Green makes a guest vocal appearance on the track “Weak Man”, along with Dave Davison from the band Maps & Atlases who plays a guest guitar solo, also on “Weak Man”.

Members

Keith Goodwin – Guitar/keyboard/ Vocals
Tim Arnold – Drums/keyboard /Vocals
Dan Schwartz – Guitar/ Vocals

That level of excitement is only going to increase with the band’s SideOneDummy debut, THE ‘59 SOUND. Whereas last year’s full-length SINK OR SWIM (XOXO Records) was recorded in under two weeks, for THE ‘59 SOUND the band—which also features bassist Alex Levine, drummer Benny Horowitz and guitarist Alex Rosamilia—spent six weeks in the studio with producer and former Flogging Molly guitarist Ted Hutt (Chuck Ragan, The Bouncing Souls) to craft an album that reconciles the band’s love for classic rock and soul icons such as Bruce Springsteen, Otis Redding and Tom Petty with their New Jersey punk roots to create a unique musical amalgam that transcends genres and stereotypes. “Making this record was a completely different recording process than anything we’ve ever done before,” Horowitz explains. “It’s the first time we ever worked with a producer and I think we all had to get used to that, but it allowed us to do a ton of stuff that we wouldn’t have tried before.”

However, despite the professional set-up that went into making THE ‘59 SOUND, the disc retains the band’s dynamic and youthful live energy, which has become a hallmark of the band’s performance style. “We tried to make these songs feel as alive as possible and approach it like we were writing a set list,” Fallon describes. “Instead of thinking about it like writing a record, we just wanted to write the coolest live songs that we could. We wrote this record with the intention of playing it live and it’s really a preview of seeing us onstage,” he adds. The result is an album that is so timeless that it could have been recorded in 1978 or 2008, eschewing distorted guitars and endless layering in favor of carefully arranged tracks that were painstakingly thought out and flawlessly executed.

Correspondingly, from the anthemic rallying cry of title track “The ’59 Sound” and the arena-ready syncopated rocker “Miles Davis & The Cool,” to stripped-down ballads such as “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” and the neo-soul crooner “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues,” THE ‘59 SOUND is far and away the most adventurous release in the band’s short but prolific career, picking up exactly where the band’s recent Señor And The Queen EP left off. “When I was a little kid listening to Springsteen I remember thinking these aren’t songs, these are gigantic rides you went on—and I thought if I could even attempt to do that that would be excellent, so that’s what we tried to do this time around,” Fallon says, noting that aside from The Boss, The Gaslight Anthem were highly influenced by classic soul artists like Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke, each of whom are directly referenced in the mythology of THE ‘59 SOUND.

Lyrically, Fallon isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his tattooed sleeves, and his growth as a songwriter is evident in the way he’s been able to step outside of himself on THE ‘59 SOUND. “I’m actually telling a few stories about some of my friends this time around because it fits in with this theme of growing up and stepping into adulthood,” Fallon explains. “Some of my friends are having kids, some are getting married, some are getting divorced,” he says, adding that like many songwriters, when he writes in the first-person it isn’t necessarily about him. “This was the first time any of us had gone through these things in life and I kept talking to them on the phone and all these things came out. I felt like I should tell their stories instead of just my own, because after you write so many songs you get bored writing about yourself.”

This summer the band has already completed headline tours of Europe and Australia, as well as a string of Warped Tour dates. September 2008 will see them headlining around the Eastern US, followed by joining Rise Against, Alkaline Trio and Thrice on an extensive tour of North America throughout October and November.

Unlike a lot of today’s rock sensations, The Gaslight Anthem aren’t going to take a single second of their ride for granted. “We’re not that young and we’ve already had our hands in the real world, working terrible jobs,” Horowitz explains, adding that The Gaslight Anthem’s line-up has never changed, and that there’s a bond between all of them that’s difficult to describe. “We didn’t go straight from underground music to this fantasy world of being a professional musician, we all did the other side and didn’t like it,” he summarizes, sounding palpably excited. “If this is in front of us and this is actually possible, well that’s the best thing in the world, you know,” he adds with a grin, “and we’ll smile every time we play, that’s a fact.”

The first several years after the band’s formation were spent in relative obscurity; however, they began to see a drastic spike in popularity between 2003 and 2006 thanks in large part to very favorable reviews from prominent music publications such as NME and Pitchfork Media. They were also the subject of an episode of the MTV2 documentary series This Is Our Music in 2006. The song “Collarbone” has been featured in ads for both Jaguar’s 2007 “Gorgeous” campaign as well as Miller Lite’s “Bar Stool” directed by Tarsem Singh.

The current members of the band are:

Steve Lewis (Fujiya): 2000–present (synths, beats, programming and backing vocals)
David Best (Miyagi): 2000–present (vocals and guitar)
Matt Hainsby (Ampersand): 2005–present (bass guitar and backing vocals)
Lee Adams: 2008–present (drums)

The story of how they met and formed the band variously reports a mutual hero-worship of world heavyweight wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, and a shared interest in krautrock and early-nineties electronica discovered while warming the subs bench during Sunday league football.

Fujiya & Miyagi recorded the track Butterfingers with Bomb the Bass for the latter’s 2008 album, Future Chaos. The song was Bomb the Bass’ second single from the longplayer, released on 12″ vinyl and in download stores on 3 November (or 25 November in the USA) through !K7 Records. The song’s video, which features a puppet keyboard, had been released onto the internet many months before the single release, and had in February 2009 been viewed over 500,000 times on Youtube.

History

Originally formed in 2003 while the members attended SUNY Purchase, the band— with Jamie on guitar and vocals, Gabe Darling on banjo, David Rogers-Berry on drums, Jesse Newman on bass, and Bob Pycior on fiddle—played a series of shows at the now defunct Apocalypse Lounge in NYC, and quickly began building a fanbase with their reverently twisted take on Americana filtered through a wealth of musical influences as divergent as Bill Monroe, Prince, Neil Young, The Microphones, and The Misfits. For these shows, O’Death put together a very raw, 10-track CD-R, entitled Carl Nemelka Family Photographs, to sell to concert-goers.
As O’Death worked on new material for their second, self-released LP, Head Home, the five-piece perfected their stage show. They played over 100 shows in 2006[citation needed], and took the stage alongside acts including Battles, Dr. Dog, Art Brut, Langhorne Slim, The Big Sleep, and Old Time Relijun.

The band’s nonstop touring caught the attention of the New York-based Ernest Jenning Record Co., who re-released Head Home in June 2007. Later that Summer, UK-based label City Slang released Head Home in Europe.

O’Death continued to tour the US and Europe throughout 2007, putting out a limited edition (500 copies) vinyl version of Head Home on Ernest Jenning Record Co./City Slang, followed by a 7” single of two new songs, “Low Tide” and “I Think I’m Fine,” as well as a cover of The Pixies’ “Nimrod’s Son” as an internet bonus track. Head Home was nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Prize.

On February 5, 2008, Gigantic Music released a new 7”, which features songs “Spider Home” and “Silk Hole”.
The band also participated on Vincent Moon’s The Take-Away Shows and a Ukulele Session for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, recorded by Noahm in their studio (New York).

Band Members

Bob Pycior (fiddle)
Gabe Darling (banjo, ukulele)
Greg Jamie (vocals, guitar)
David Rogers-Berry (drums)
Jesse Newman (bass)
Dan Sager

“The rhythm is what our band is about,” Bernard enthuses. “We write with rhythm and dancing in mind.” Launched with the “The Plank,” an ode to meeting one’s maker, The DMT’s infectious amalgam of styles talks the talk and it walks the walk right out of the starting gate.
jimmy

From the outfit’s badass, backporch blues ode “Ten Feet Tall” – which is alive with three-part harmonies – to “Shades,” a wry look at barstool hugging daytime drunks, Pete, Lucia and Cooper create music that is pleasingly dissimilar to most other bands in modern music. Early critical praise of its self-produced recorded entry has earned comparisons to the likes of The Violent Femmes, Steve Earle and The White Stripes.

“I grew up listening to a lot of old blues music when I was young,” explains Pete, who was raised in rural Vermont and first befriended McBean in the eighth grade. “He was the only person I knew who was into the same style, although he leaned more toward the country side of things. When we started out playing, we were doing punk and rock.”

Fast forward a decade as The Devil Makes Three took shape in Santa Cruz, California. Pete moved west right out of high school with Cooper soon following suit. After first settling Olympia, Washington and playing in an ill-fated band, McBean – who by now had the name of his home state tattooed across his neck – again joined musical forces with Bernhard. In turn, they later teamed with New Hampshire-native and U.C. Santa Cruz attendee Lucia.

A spiritual fit, her enthusiasm made up of for her initial lack of ability. “Lucia had always wanted to play bass,” says Pete. “Cooper and I had already rented a stand-up bass for the group. And the main reason we were really excited about letting her give it a shot was because she didn’t know how to do anything we didn’t want her to do. And our music is simple, so the last thing that we wanted was someone who was overplaying for fear it would ruin the songs. She wound up learning really quickly, and it wasn’t long before she surpassed us.”

With the goal of being “an acoustic band but to play our shows like a rock show,” the band changed notions of what acoustic music could be. “A lot of it is really calm, and performances are sort of a ‘sit down, don’t talk, don’t move’ kind of an event. Thinking back to the old blues, ragtime and jug band music, it was house music, party music. That was what we wanted to do. And there really aren’t any other bands doing that.”
louie

That festive spirit carries forth to the live favorite “Old Number Seven,” a blistering homage to Jack Daniels Whiskey. “I didn’t set out to write about a particular product, but it just came to me. I had the chord progression, and the next thing you know I was singing.” More cerebral, but no less celebratory is the upbeat “Beneath the Piano.” Written about a New Year’s Party he attended back east, Pete says, “A bunch of people just wound up getting totally wasted and passing out under the piano. And I was one of those people. So that gave the chorus its life.”

If the equally eerie and pensive “Graveyard” is elevated by exquisite finger-picking, and matched by Bernhard’s haunting, soulful delivery of lines like, “Just leanin’ on my shovel in this graveyard of dreams”, “The Bullet” balances a punky feel with a noticeable affinity for Bob Dylan.

“It’s a traditional story-song,” Pete says of the tune, which is loosely based on the idea of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Stagger Lee”. “I wanted to try character writing. While most of my songs come from my experiences, that one doesn’t. But it’s the story of a criminal. I knew a couple of people who had been in jail. Their mentality afterwards was that they never wanted to go back. It didn’t reform them, but made them into more of a die hard, suicidal kind of criminal, who would rather die than end up incarcerated again.”

Speaking of Hurt, his immeasurable influence over the band is fully realized on The Devil Makes Three via one of four new bonus tracks. Of his trio’s forceful rendition of his American Blues staple “Nobody’s Dirty Business,” Bernhard says, “He was one of the great finger-pickers I loved. We were actually lucky enough to have recorded that while we were on tour in France.”

While McBean takes inspiration from folk fixture The Reverend Gary Davis, Doc Watson and axe-wielding guitar gods The Fucking Champs, and Turino counts Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, The Pixies and Gillian Welch, Bernhard was heavily swayed by the art of Lightnin’ Hopkins, the aforementioned Dylan, Tom Waits and Robert Johnson. The end result is genuine blues music that thrives as much in a live setting as it does on The Devil Makes Three.
from thuh back

“We play mainly rock venues where it’s not seated,” Pete explains. “Everybody dances. And except for the instrumentation and the fact that we don’t have a drummer, it’s pretty much like a rock gig. It can get pretty crazy, people are dancing and drinking and yelling. And that’s the way we like it.”

Proof that mayhem can be found without a drummer, Bernhard adds, “Our thinking is, ‘Let’s get people to have a good time and get together and go crazy.’ And they should treat seeing us like going to a punk rock show, even though it’s something that sounds considerably different.”

Different but alluring and undeniable, as evidenced by the ferocious “Dynamite”, which is upheld by what Bernhard calls, “stream of conscience lyrics,” The Devil Makes Three intend to spread its fiendish blues across the fruited plain in support of its first proper album.

“We thought these recordings are the best representation of what we can do,” Pete says. “And the word is spreading to a vast array of music fans, from Deadheads to punk rockers, bluegrass barflies and beyond.

Of their ability to draw a wide spectrum of fans from all genres and ages, Bernhard says, “I’ve never really understood it, but I’ve always been really happy about it.”

“We’re not really a genre-specific band,” he concludes. “I’ve actually had people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t listen to anything but hip-hop, but I love The Devil Makes Three. So I think we’ve always tried to keep it so you can’t really define our band. That always keeps things really exciting.”