Posts Tagged ‘Carpark’
At CMJ, No Fast Track to Fame, but Plenty of IRLing
Salome, one of the few metal bands that performed at this year’s CMJ.
For D.C. bands, the takeaway from CMJ seems to have been this: It will not pluck you from obscurity, but it can’t hurt. Also: Don’t believe the hype.
“The myth that you can land the perfect agent or manager at a place like that—I don’t think it pays attention to the reality that you’ve been talking to that person for seven months already,” said Jesse Elliott, whose polymathic alt-country band These United States played a handful of shows during this year’s College Music Journal Music Marathon. The annual industry gathering featured over 1,000 artists, close to 100 venues, and around a dozen acts from the D.C. area.
Elliott’s got a point: Most of the young bands I heard chatter about during the festival—like Florida’s Surfer Blood, New York’s Freelance Whales, and London’s Golden Silvers and Mumford and Sons—had recording contracts, significant blog buzz, or both going in, not to mention full management teams in place. These are not bands whose success lives or dies according to an industry festival.
“Most of the bands at these festivals are already signed,” wrote Todd Hyman, who runs the District-based labels Carpark and Paw Tracks and hosted CMJ showcases for both, in an e-mail. “Though this year there seemed to be a preponderance of unsigned blog bands. Seems folks were complaining about that.”
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Listen: Dan Deacon’s Bromst
Last night, I realized that in my mini-review of Dan Deacon’s now-leaked album, Bromst, I should have posted a few soundclips to give BPB readers a chance to hear some of the Baltimore artist’s epic creations. Well fair-use laws dictate that you will only get to hear a small portion of these lengthy songs. It’s like only reading the first ten pages of Crime and Punishment. Oh well. Here’s samples from two Bromst tracks:
“Surprise Stephanie”
Dan Deacon’s Bromst…Leaks
So Dan Deacon’s upcoming, long-awaited, much discussed, new album, Bromst, leaked yesterday. At least it’s the first day I noticed its appearance in the freebie format. Deacon has said the new album is darker. The album’s first single has already been digested. Deacon told the Baltimore City Paper that he thought of Bromst as more of an album than 2006’s Spiderman of the Rings:
“Unlike Spiderman, which was essentially a one-man, purely electronic piece of music, Bromst was recorded entirely live and written to be performed by a 15 person band.”
Apparently, the album has a narrative, too. Whatever his intentions, Deacon still knows how to build a song. The songs may feel like your walking through a Lucky Charms forest (the chipmunks return) but this time he’s figured out the low end, too. And, well, occasionally unprocessed singing. “Padding Ghost” and album opener,”Build Voice,” are beautiful examples of Deacon’s fresh use of the slow build. “Snookered” is the saddest Wham City nursery rhyme you’ll have ever heard.
“Of the Mountains” finds its footing in skewered poly-rhythms and mournful wordless chants before melting into an (indie) dance floor stomper. Midway in, the song switches up and goes quiet and tribal again as if Deacon’s raided Peter Gabriel’s drum circle. The (indie) club kids are going to lose it over this one.
