Ambassadors define the reason why you should never miss opening bands. After accidentally missing them open for Viva Brother, I looked up their music and my heart was immediately filled with regret. The first song I found by them was an incredible cover of Kelly Rowland’s “Motivation”. Then I found a treasure trove of epic covers on their SoundCloud they recorded after writing and recording enough songs for their own album. Thankfully, my regret won’t last long because after catching up with the lead singer Sam Harris they will be back soon, and I will be on time!
On meeting and deciding to form a band:
My brother (Casey) and I met Noah (our guitar player) in Kindergarten back in Ithaca, NY where we all grew up. The three of us have been playing in bands together since we were in 6th grade. The only reason Noah learned how to play guitar is because i forced him to so i could have both my brother AND best friend in my band. Also i could yell at them a lot and not feel too bad.
The band as it is now has technically been together since 2007 when we recruited Adam on drums whom Noah and I had met Freshman year at New School University. Because of school we weren’t able to get things moving at the pace we wanted until a year ago when we went upstate to record our new record.
On why they settled in Brooklyn:
None of us could afford Manhattan. Not to say that Brooklyn has been any cheaper as of late…
Where you can buy their music:
Nowhere right now, but you can stream all of the songs on any of our websites and “Unconsolable” is available for free download. Recently we’ve gotten some labels interested in putting out this new record so we’re waiting to release it properly.
On when their full length is due out:
We are hoping to release “LITOST” early next year but it may even been as soon as this winter. None of us want to wait too long, so you can 100% expect it within the next 6 months. With or without a label behind it.
Why they created so many incredible covers:
We had finished the album and were starting to build up our team (Management, Booking, Lawyer, PR, etc) and were getting super bored. Just playing shows wasn’t enough, so i had been fucking around with the idea of recording a series of covers and releasing one a week to start building a little hype around the new stuff. You see so many bands these days–for example, Deerhunter, Odd Future– who are constantly putting out new shit for free online. We really wanted to do that too, but we felt weird about writing a whole new record and releasing it before our first one came out. The covers are all songs that we love and respect, but also some of which are super pop-y songs that we saw the potential to be really meaningful and awesome when re-done. During the recording process for our new record, we would drive upstate every morning and listen to Hot 97.1 FM (a major hip-hop station in New York) because our iPod car-adapter was broken. I started to fall in love with mainstream contemporary hip-hop and R&B- I’ve always loved 90s hip-hop and R&B, and listening to the radio so much really got me back listening to the older stuff again. That song “Lets Get Married” by Jagged Edge when we recorded it had that really dark, minor bass-line under it– the song took on a very ominous tone. The contrast is what makes it sound so contemporary to me. That’s what was so exciting: that a song could change that drastically from just adding one small thing. We could make any of these relatively disparate songs all completely our own.
Their plans for the rest of the year:
Right now, things are SUPER busy. We will be playing a bunch of shows in New York next month (Sept 7th and 28th at Mercury Lounge) as well as a ton of regional dates in between (no specifics yet, but we’ll be hitting Philly, Boston, DC, and a few other places on the East Coast as well). October will be CMJ in New York, so we’ll be setting up some sort of tour before and after, so the next couple months are gonna be pretty packed.
We are always writing and working on new material; by the time LITOST comes out, we’ll easily be ready to roll with our next record. In the meantime, we’ll continue to put out new covers. I think now we’ve slowed down to one a month, but who knows. You might see a whole slew of them over the next couple months.
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You can listen to their music on their SoundCloud, follow them on Tumblr and Twitter, and friend them on Facebook and Myspace. They also have a Youtube and BandCamp.
You also have 2 more days to vote for them as Deli Magazine’s Band of the Month!
xx
