05/09/13 - Click here to download Leaves Leaves EP.

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.

05/09/13 - I definitely need to step it up.

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.

05/09/13 - DROWNING POOL with guests TBD at the ASYLUM - 121 Center Street, Portland, ME

Event Date :: Sunday, June 16, 2013

9:00 PM | $16.00 GA adv / $19.00 DOS | 18+

Tickets on sale :: Friday, May 10, 2013 @ 10:00am

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.

05/09/13 - Info from the publicist:

Anyone looking for an all-encompassing statement-of-purpose for SOFT, the hyper-caffeinated new record from Rathborne will find it in the first line of the second song when Luke Rathborne – chief songwriter and principle persona – hiccups, "Heard you gotta get it in motion."  From that moment on, SOFT never stops moving bounding from one jagged-edged neo-New Wave song to the next, marrying the fast-and-loose ethos of The Ramones with the coiled neurosis of early Devo and the melodic ease of classic R.E.M. and Big Star.  "The feeling  of the record is incredible energy," says Rathborne. "Youthfulness, lust -- the feeling of breaking out of yourself, unchaining yourself, forcing yourself to be free."

That same spirit of optimism and restlessness also characterizes Rathborne's career to date. He learned how to play guitar at age 12, when a stranger who was passing through the small town in Northern Maine where Rathborne lived left the instrument at his house ("There was a lot of freewheelin' types passing through my house when we were kids," he chuckles).  Inspired by the DIY spirit of punk rock, he recorded his first album, After Dark, when he was just 16 years old, sneaking into the recording studio of his local college late at night and teaching himself how to use the equipment. "I guess ambition when you're young is really unusual," Rathborne says, "But I just couldn't really find a place in high school." Rathborne relocated to New York when he was just 18, where he connected with famed Tin Pan Alley producer Joey Levine. From there, Rathborne began steadily honing his skills, booking himself a weeklong UK tour, netting a slot opening for The Strokes at SXSW and recording the EP I Can Be One/Dog Years, which earned him an appearance on the BBC's 6 Music. "In the course of making those records," he says, "I've gone from being a 16-year-old kid to being an adult."

That maturity is evident throughout SOFT, a story of heartbreak and redemption that told in spit-shined Buddy Holly vocal melodies. Produced by Rathborne and Emery Dobyns (Antony & the Johnsons, Battles, Noah & the Whale), with mixing and co-production by Gus Oberg and The Strokes' Albert Hammond, Jr., the record nestles honey-sweet hooks inside tangles of guitar and Darren Will's percolating bass. "Some of the punk bands I had been in as a teenager sounded like this, "Rathborne says, "So it's a 'return to punk' for me in some ways."

That comes through in songs like "Wanna Be You," where Rathborne sighs and pines over a whistling synth line and a taut cluster of guitar that recalls vintage Nick Lowe. "That's really a song about identity," Rathborne explains. "It's about figuring out why people love each other, why they want to be each other, and when that crosses the line."  "Last Forgiven," which Rathborne says is about "redemption and yearning," cruises and dips like a roller coaster going half-speed.

Despair and hope co-mingle in "So Long NYC," a speed-racing, Guided By Voices-style power-pop number in which Rathborne flips the mythologizing associated with New York on its head. "It's like the antithesis of a Frank Sinatra song," he says. "There was a point for about a year where I was crashing between peoples' apartments, walking around feeling hungry. I would work in a bar near Union Square and then walk around the streets after it was dark. Wandering through New York City late at night when everyone else was asleep, It made me feel like I had stumbled onto something secret."

That contradictory impulse – romanticism and cynicism, energy and exhaustion, is what powers SOFT, and what dusts its cotton candy melodies with a fine layer of grit.  "As you get older, the feeling of being drawn between love and cynicism grows exponentially – almost like someone in medieval times being stretched out on a rack," Rathborne says. "Art is about making a connection between those things." That's what Rathborne does throughout SOFT, and the results are as infectious as they are complex. "There's something hidden in there for everyone," Rathborne explains. "We're all reaching for something, and art helps people deal with those things.  I hope people realize the album is about something deeper than what's on the surface. It's a record about hope and redemption and energy and possibility. And hopefully, it can be a record about people's lives."

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.

05/09/13 - Info from the publicist:

Rosco Bandana is thrilled to premiere the new video for "Woe Is Me" across multiple Country Music Television platforms including CMT EDGE, on-air at CMT PURE, online and more. Directed by John Deeb and produced by Deeb studios, "Woe Is Me" is the newest video release from Rosco Bandana's debut LP Time To Begin out now on Hard Rock Records. Head over to CMT.com now to watch the premiere of "Woe Is Me" and help vote Rosco Bandana into CMT PURE’s 12-Pack Countdown and don't miss "Woe Is Me" on air this Thursday 5/9 on CMT PURE during the 11am, 5pm, and 3am hours (all times Eastern).

The Mississippi septet Rosco Bandana are the product of teenage rebellion and its consequences; of lost love, false starts and, above all, lasting friendship. They're what happens when a group of kids take a chance on a long shot and – against all odds – it pays off.  There's also a Blur cover thrown in for good measure.

The group began – spiritually, if not specifically – when principle songwriter Jason Sanford, at that time acting in open and active defiance to his strict Christian upbringing, wandered into a tobacco store in a Gulfport mall to buy smokes and struck up a conversation with the kid working behind the counter. "He was like this real cool, hip, indie sorta character," Sanford explains, "and he ended up turning me on to people like Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Iron and Wine, Neutral Milk Hotel. That's kind of how it all started." His parents were wary of encouraging their son's budding interest. "They wanted to keep me in this tiny bubble," Sanford explains.

Sanford would stay up late at night, teaching himself how to play the guitar his father had given him. He certainly had plenty to write about. Just a few months earlier, Sanford's relationship with Emily Sholes had come to an end, and the heartbreak of that separation powered most of his early songs. At the same time, a childhood friend of Sanford's, Barry Pribyl Jr., had just moved back to Mississippi from Michigan, and his mother suggested he get in touch with his old friend soon after their return.

"At the time, I was into metal," Pribyl says. "So I went to this open mic night, and Jason was playing this honky-tonk stuff. I remember thinking, 'What the hell is this?'"

But the best friendships are built on compromise and the more Pribyl and Sanford started playing together, the more a specific sound started to emerge – one that blended a ragged bar-rock attitude of bands like Uncle Tupelo with a few mild nods toward the iconoclastic end of contemporary country, like Jamey Johnson. Their core in place, Pribyl and Sanford soon began looking to expand their lineup. "Jason started an open mic night at a wine bar," Pribyl said. "From there, we'd invite 10 or 15 people to come with us out to this abandoned house and we'd just jam. We sort of hand-picked the band from there." In the kind of romantic twist all great rock stories require, one of them was Jason's old flame Emily Sholes. Another was Jennifer Flint, whose fiery vocals serve as a scorching counterbalance to Sanford's down-home croon. "I first met Jason in 2006," says Flint. "He was in one of his first bands, and I honestly just fell in love with the way he wrote." Local attention inspired the band to enroll in a Battle of the Bands contest sponsored by Hard Rock, which they handily won, and they soon flew out to Los Angeles to work on their debut with acclaimed producer Greg Collins (U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt) at The Nook Studio.

The results are spellbinding. They turn Blur's "Tender" into a rousing, gospel-informed hymn, and work similar magic on their own compositions: "Time to Begin," the first song Sanford, Pribyl and Flint wrote together, hip-swivels like something off Exile on Main Street; the trembling, minor-key vocal melody of "El Luna" recalls both Elliott Smith and Abbey Road-era Beatles and "Woe is Me" is a rollicking country stomp in the vein of Steve Earle. "I was trying to write a real Depression Era-style country song," Sanford explains, "and so I tried to put myself in the mindset of what people back then were going through." Though it began as an attempt to channel the loose rootsiness of Old Crow Medicine Show, the result is a barnburner – a big, raucous number with a booming backbeat and deep-fried electric guitar. Whether loud and rowdy or quiet and contemplative, Rosco Bandana balance both extremes perfectly.

"It might sound cliché," Pribyl says, "but we're just these humble, good ol', down-to-earth Mississippi people. And when we play live, you can just see in our faces the joy of music."

"I want people to feel like they know us," says Flint. "I want them to feel like they can relate."

"I hope people get something honest out of our music," says Sanford. "I hope they're able to feel something, and to empathize with it when they hear the lyrics." He pauses, becoming momentarily philosophical. "You know, life and death is in the power of the tongue. And I want to put out music that's going to heal people."

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.

05/09/13 - Click here to listen.

Info from the publicist:

The songs Mike Kinsella writes as Owen have always had rock solid lyrical foundations. And on new album, L'Ami du Peuple, the same can be said for the music. Emphasis on the rock.

Anyone vaguely familiar with Kinsella's musical lineage (Cap'n Jazz, American Football, Owls) knows he's far from a one-note musician. And now, he expands his repertoire as a solo songwriter to include a touch of female vocals, pounding drums, and even dueling electric guitar lines that are the closest thing he’s done in tribute to his 80s hair metal obsession.

The variety of sounds featured on L'Ami du Peuple can largely be attributed to a new approach Kinsella took to the writing and recording process. Rather than locking himself in a room with mostly finished song ideas for a couple of weeks before emerging with a finished album, this time Kinsella involved producer Neil Strauch (Iron & Wine, Bonnie 'Prince’ Billy, Andrew Bird) from the very beginning and spaced out recording over a few month period.

This enabled him to naturally bring a different mood or vibe to the material he was working on every time he entered the studio -- re-evaluating what had been recorded during the previous session and collaborating with Strauch on the direction new songs should take.

As a result, L'Ami du Peuple sounds markedly different than any album Kinsella has released under the Owen moniker.

From the electronic blips and hand claps that punctuate "I Got High," to the ragtime piano melody running through "Where Do I Begin?" each track possesses a unique and surprising identity.

"In the past I've stifled a bunch of my influences and leaned on a couple consistently, but this time I just let each song happen as I heard them and had a lot of fun trying some new things," Kinsella reveals.

The benefits of this "anything goes" mindset are plainly apparent on album centerpiece "Bad Blood" -- a track propelled by a quasi-country stomp that explodes halfway through with an electric guitar solo before dovetailing into a closing crescendo.

"Bad Blood" also affirms that lyrically Kinsella remains as raw and personal as ever. As the title suggests, the song finds Kinsella lamenting his pedigree: "Bad blood / Hereditary law you can't run away from / (Trust me, I've tried)."

This focus on familial relationships occurs often, but with the addition of a new angle on top of those Kinsella has adopted previously  Now the parent of two children, Kinsella finds his perspective on life inevitably shifting from being a "son" to being a "father."

This role reversal adds a new dimension to Kinsella's self-examination of his thoughts and fears. As he explains, "Instead of being a son whose father passed away, I've moved on to being the father afraid of passing."

His anxiety at life passing by too quickly is evident on closing track "Vivid Dreams": "How long have I been sleeping? / I'm a dad and my dad's dead."

The question he poses doesn't come with an easy answer, but for an artist like Kinsella who is constantly evolving and reinventing himself, death is just an opportunity for rebirth.

-Brought to you by Robert Thorn.