Capital Cities (dubbed the best band in LA by personality Perez Hilton) have established one of the breakout alternative radio hits of the past year with “Safe and Sound,” and are poised to grow all the more while they spend the summer touring internationally in support of their June 4th major label debut, In A Tidal Wave of Mystery. IATU will be present to cover all the action at the Columbus stop, where the duo will be sure to ham it up in every inch of the tiny venue known as The Basement. Local favorites Kid Runner will warm up the crowd with their brand of warm electronic pop/rock. Expect an appearance of their single “Move,” which has the distinct of X-Games commercial placement. To further enlighten yourself on these guys, check out the Q&A Sebu graciously filled out for I Am Tuned Up:

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Flyleaf featuring Sonny Sandoval from P.O.D. – “Something Better”

Flyleaf have gone through one of the hardest transitions a band can go through – the passing of the torch from one lead vocalist to another. When Lacey Sturm yielded her frontwoman duties to Kristen May, many wondered if the band could survive. This track, “Something Better” (which you can listen to at Noisecreep, for the time being), is evidence that Flyleaf has entered a new season, and it is likely gonna be a good one. Sonny’s vocals add support to the entire song, not just in the bridge (as is common for guest vocalists). May’s vocals, while definitely NOT Sturm’s, aren’t so much of a deviation that fans will be alienated.  The song isn’t the strongest, but will fit well into the Flyleaf catalog and transition well into a live staple.

-Ryan Getz

Witness featuring Garrett Rapp of The Color Morale – “The Loyal Ones”

“The Loyal Ones” is the first single off of Witness’upcoming EP/album Beacons and it features Garret Rapp, the lead singer of The Color Morale. Instrumentally, this song is very tight – especially the guitars. Vocally Ben Ault the lead singer did a great job mixing up his pitches and keeping his screams under control. I felt the lyrics didn’t reflect the feelings that were meant to be conveyed by the title. Also, I also felt that Garrets part was way too short. I hope for the rest of the upcoming music things start to get a bit heavier. I give the song itself a 4/5.

-Jamarr Stokes

This two piece is unknown, even by Columbus standards, but they have a big work ethic and even bigger aspirations. These brothers, known as Hundos, will officially kick off the evening at Columbus’ third Worst Kept Secret Fest, an event that spotlights indie music and seeks to break down barriers between music cliques in Columbus. The guys play a unique brand of tunes they describe as “psychedelic post-wave”…driven by “bass loops and drum grooves.” The guys were gracious enough to give IATU a little insight into what makes them tick. Check out the below interview:

Ryan Getz (IATU): If Hundos were a beverage, what would you be?
Kevin (Hundos): Acidic, lime Isa
Sean (Hundos): More accurately, a batch of zesty, homemade ginger brew
 
RG: What makes your live show unique?
Kevin: The improvisational aspect.
Sean: It adds spontaneity and vulnerability.  I think of it like a film: the sets are graphed, like the plot, but the acting is improvised. Ironically, both are well rehearsed.
 
RG: What are the hotspots of Hundos in Columbus?
Kevin: Our hideaway studio (secret location) and coffee shops.
Sean:  I like to sneak away to movie theaters, too.
 
RG: What’s dominating your music playlist(s) as of late?
Kevin: Gamelan Cudamani and an album called Solo Extrano by Omar Rodriguez (no one else at the moment)
Sean: Solo Extrano, also. Wax Idols’ album “Discipline & Desire” and Brian Eno. Always, always Brian Eno.
 
RG: If Hundos had a mission statement, what would it be?
Kevin: Expand people’s minds through sine waves and pitch delay.
Sean: Hard work is the only thing that gets it done.
 
RG: What’s good and bad about being a musician trying to break out in today’s industry? What’s a trend we should look out for?
Kevin: At times, if feels hard to get most people to understand or even care. There’s not really an industry for our sound, but we strive to find the few people who get it.
Sean And then do our best to keep those few interested.
 
RG: Who would play your dream show? Both if you were on the lineup, or watching.
Kevin: Bosnian Rainbows.
Sean: Definitively.

Georgia’s Evan Andree continues to wade through various bodies of water in the proverbial music sea, never being content to tread water in one genre for too long. For an artist flying way below the radar, such a strategy is both a positive and a negative – negative because people just discovering you won’t know what your identity is, but positive because darnit, you’re independent and you have no one’s expectations to cater to. Its this freedom whose benefits outweigh the marketing appeal though – Andree  seems fond of this freedom, and rightly so.

Ancient/Eternal meanders through pensive auras. It is not a happy record. Nor it is it so full of despair that you never want to hear it again. “Tonight (For Fantine)” for instance is most certainly alluding to lost love while “Naked” carries a vibe that’s downright eerie, and dark. “Atomic Bombs” is a rehashed old tune that carries a wistful feeling and “This Photo of You” gets the closest to upbeat territory so far, while “This Road, Again” finally brings us into optimistic territory with a straightforward, acoustic pop song.

Ancient/Eternal is a record that starts off odd but ends in a familiar place, almost as if to bring as full circle to Andree’s pop-rock roots. Ancient/Eternal is solid, but Flags Pt III still has it beat in my book. If you want folk-infused indie pop to caress you, get this.

Score: 3/5

Evan Andree: Facebook | iTunes

By Sean Huncherick

Have you ever gone to a show and seen an opener that sounded like they were out of place? Imagine seeing a spoken-word poet at a hardcore show or a folk singer at a rap show. They’re talented and the crowd seems to enjoy their music, but it feels a bit different.

That’s exactly how I see Buffalo, NY’s indie-pop trio, Lemuria. Their new album The Distance is so Big fits in with the new wave of indie-pop bands the world has seen in the last three years, but their tour life shows that of a punk band. A quick look at their Facebook pages shows that instead of playing countless indie shows, they have been playing with some of well-known and well-respected punk bands including Anti-flag, Against Me!, The Queers, and the Screaming Females. Cool.

At first listen, The Distance is so Big is just another fun and catchy indie album. Imagine taking Best Coast and Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World and putting them together on one album. It has the energy of punk mixed with the calmness of 90s indie. To put it simply, Lemuria mix two of the catchiest genres together.

The more I listened, the more I got a bit of a punk-vibe. My personal favorite track, Dream Eater, almost even sounds like a lighter, female Ramones song at times. It has a catchy chorus, simple lyrics, and is awfully quick. Brilliant Dancer is another excellent track. The only problem I have is that about half the album sounded like it was made up of filler tracks. I’d highly recommend checking out the first half of the album, but would skip the rest unless you desperately want more.

Score: 3.5/5

Lemuria: Facebook | iTunes

This EP was somewhat of a surprise for me. In my limited due diligence of Lost Orchards, I assumed this project of Ron Freeman (mastermind of the Listen to Friends blog) and friends would fall in line with the neo-folk scene of Columbus. This EP rocks though. The production and instrumentation is quite simply in a larger sounding rock genre than I expected. Well, if you’ve been reading IATU for any length of time you might surmise that surprising this editor is a good thing – usually. Don’t worry, for Lost Orchards it is a good thing.

So, if it isn’t neo-folk what exactly is the sound of Lost Orchards? Based on the four songs (well, technically five) on the Deaf Kids EP alone, it seems like the sort of indie rock that the NPR crowd would dig. Not so “indie” that outsiders would scoff at them being “hipster” (that’s a worn out term by now anyway). This music doesn’t contain mass appeal either, however. Lost Orchards plainly writes what they want to write, regardless of where it gets them, darn it! Creativity in song structure stands out most in “Map of Heaven,” with its diversity in percussion and sunny vocals that contrast with the more monotone but still in tune leads. “Crash Your Car” has a tasty lick in the intro that’s just intriguing enough to catch my interest. This is important – a friend once told me he had a rule that if he got through the first fifteen seconds of a song, he would finish it. “Heroin Skinny” is a straightforward folk tinged rock tune that works well plugged in or stripped down (the latter format creates the sort-of-fifth-song on the EP). I prefer the stripped down version with the female leads, personally (thank you, Savannah Freeman). “Rock n’Roll Saves Lives” admittedly isn’t the most memorable at first but a cool break roughly three minutes in redeems the song and solidifies the EP as being worth checking out.

Lost Orchards carry a vibe that is surprisingly muscular. The band is indie to the core, but craft a sound that will take up every inch of the small rooms they play.

Score: 3.5/5

Lost Orchards: Facebook | bandcamp

Abandon Kansas, is, uh, a band from Kansas. But a darn good one. IATU caught up with frontman Jeremy Spring recently on the things that matter in AK’s world. Hopefully you’ll gain some insight into this newly independent band and be motivated to support them.

Ryan Getz (IATU): It took me a while to pick up on the pun that is your band name. Are there any memorable misinterpretations of your band name that stand out? What were some band name rejects before you landed on Abandon Kansas?
Jeremy Spring (Abandon Kansas): I remember showing up to a venue, I forget the state, and the marquee said “Kansas”. We didn’t cover Dust In The Wind but then I just wanted to learn that Carry On riff. A few names that got rejected; Almost There and Jacketweather.

RG: AK publicity has suggested a deviation from the CCM market for the band. Besides leaving Gotee records and re-achieving independent status, what does this mean for the band?
JS: We’ve always been ourselves; our fans know that, they aren’t confused. We’ve spent the last 5 years on the road growing up right in front of our fans, they have seen us at our best and our worst. From the outside, everywhere we go people have different expectations in mind as to how we’re supposed to act. I have a beer in my hand or say “shit” from stage and someone goes “oh I thought you guys were a Christian band” as if those actions disqualify my faith. Then we spend time in prayer with a couple fans after the show or share about our mission trips on stage and someone else says, “oh I didn’t know you guys were a Christian band” as if that disqualifies the music. People can call it what they want, that’s fine. We’re not going to be writing songs for Christian radio any more and we have been playing very few churches, mostly because we’re just not what a church wants out of a band and our shows are goofy inside a sanctuary. Otherwise not much is going to change, we’ll share our music with anyone that wants to hear and our faith is always going to come through on how we operate our business and treat people. To me being a Christian has a lot less to do with language and a lot more to do with action, and we’ve gone out of our way to be honest with people and follow through with our promises. We’ve been burned by a lot of people in this business, so just showing them grace and forgiving them with no hard feelings is Christ inspired.

RG: As a Columbus resident, I feel obligated to ask you if any Columbus locals have stood out to you while passing through our city on tour!
JS: House of Heroes are our brothers and what a great freaking band. Fever Fever is awesome too. We played with Twenty One Pilots in Newark at Refuel a couple years back, I had never heard them before but we knew Josh from his stint with House of Heroes, and they had a really radical set even in that little place.

RG: This question is for Jeremy – when push comes to shove, full band tour or house shows?
JS: Definitely full band tour. The living room tour is a blast but it takes a lot out of me and I much prefer to play the songs full band, loud, sweating with a room full of people.

RG: From your point of you, describe one positive and one negative aspect of navigating today’s music industry?
JS: I like Spotify, I think subscription music services are the future but I wish it was more artist friendly financially. There’s lots of negative things in this industry but I think the biggest joke is radio. Maybe that’s cause we’ve had very little radio success, but the whole system is jacked.

RG: What currently active artists would be your dream to tour with? Watch?
JS: I’d love to see AK tour with Paper Route, Walk The Moon, Imagine Dragons, Two Door Cinema Club and other bands like that, we’ve never had a chance to support a big tour. Some bucket list bands I have yet to see; Radiohead, Coldplay, Paul,

RG: I recently came across some criticism of AK on your alleged indecisiveness on your musical identity. How would you respond? How would you describe your niche of rock and roll, if you had to?
JS: I understand the criticism; we put out a couple songs last year that would work for Christian radio. I think they are good songs, but sure, they are a little less interesting musically and lot more directly Christian lyrically, and I can see why that would throw some people off. But at the same time, are there any rules? People don’t know what they want. Fans want a band to keep sounding like the album they fell in love with first, but then they complain if everything sounds the same. In an ideal scenario, fans get behind an artist because of their creative vision as a whole, which leaves room for awkward phases or experimentation. I care what people think of the songs when they are finished, but when we’re writing and recording we can’t care that much, or we’ll over think it and stop listening to our gut. We wrote some pop songs hoping to build a bridge for a much wider audience to get introduced to the rest of our catalogue. I want to make music and write songs for a long time so we tried cooperating with the beast that is Christian radio for a couple tracks. Apparently there wasn’t room for a band like ours on those charts, or maybe our label just didn’t have enough money to feed into the machine, or I’m willing to admit maybe we just didn’t have a strong enough song. Regardless, we’re going to make a record we absolutely love every aspect of this year, and I’m thrilled to have that on the horizon.

RG: What summer pastimes will AK seek out on their off days this summer tour? Any summer blockbusters you guys are stoked about in particular?
JS: I think the new Superman looks sick; we’re planning on seeing that one some afternoon on this tour. We play disc golf on the road some. We love walking around downtown in big cities, thrifting clothes or looking through vintage shops and record stores where we can’t afford to buy anything anyway. Honestly there isn’t a lot of free time. We drive and load in and play and pack up and crash and drive and so on. We do Redbox a lot of movies and watch them on the screens in our van.

RG: To date, what has been your favorite music video to be a part of? I really enjoy “Close Your Eyes” and am crossing my fingers for a set appearance down the line
JS: Close Your Eyes was our first video, so that one sticks out because we’d never done anything like that before. We had a lot of laughs on the Like It Or Not video shoot because the Showbread guys directed it and they are weirdos, in a great way. The video for Marching Around Me was by far the most demanding shoot, and one of the most challenging weekends of my life. It wasn’t necessarily fun the whole time, but it broke my spirit in half and put it back together. I got really into the concept and felt really attached to what Isaac Deitz was doing with the story.  It’s a metaphor for our band and really anyone that has worked hard to find the place for their passion.

RG: What upcoming music releases are you most excited about (other than your own)? Who’s dominating your music playlist(s) these days?
JS: We are loving the new albums from Alt J, Leagues, Civil Twilight, Jim James, Phoenix, Daft Punk, Kendrick Lamar, James Blake, and Tame Impala. Looking forward to new ones this year from Kings of Leon, The Royal Concept, and Franz Ferdinand, Washed Out, and a bunch of others.

RG: Leave us with a short mission statement for Abandon Kansas (if you were to have one) and what to expect at your live shows, in a sentence or two.
JS: That’s funny you ask. To be transparent we’re going through so many changes we’re formulating our “why” all over again. We know what we’re doing, and how to do it, but we’ve lost a little bit of focus on the why. It’s not as simple as some Sunday school motto for us. With the lineup change, leaving the label, and starting a new record we’ve been having a lot of conversations inside our camp about why we’re doing this. Regardless we still have hope for the future of this record and feel like the story could connect with a lot of people.

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Check out their new A Midwest Summer EP on their bandcamp and be on the lookout for them on tour!

Although CD102.5’s Low Dough Show wasn’t a sell out, when Japandroids took Newport Music Hall’s stage last Wednesday the crowd was anything but scarce. From the moment singer and guitarist Brian King strummed his first chord, the audience up front broke into a set-long mosh pit. Despite their two-piece set up, Japandroids still managed to leave my ears ringing – and if that wasn’t enough, the crowd was shouting along to every song. When he wasn’t singing, King was back and forth across the stage, and you hardly could remember that this stage usually held bands much larger in size. There was one point during “Continuous Thunder”, the “low-key” closer of Celebration Rock, where King was perched on Prowse’s bass drum with red strobe lights flickering that was particularly incredible. I don’t think there was one moment, aside from being shoved around, where the two members didn’t have the audiences’ full attention.

Despite the success of Celebration Rock, some of the highlights were songs like “Wet Hair” from their first album that found a whole new level of energy live their earlier lowfi recordings never could. The set went on for over a full hour, and it’s a wonder the band or audience didn’t loose any energy sooner. Despite often changing melodies to avoid straining the vocals, the audience never seemed to mind the change and was often singing along to the originals. Some standout tunes from their set were “Nights of Wine and Roses”, “Wet Hair”, “Younger Us” and “House that Heaven Built” and, although never a big fan of their cover “For the Love of Ivy”, it made for an incredibly upbeat closer to a great night. After the long set (for punk at least), the band took off and didn’t even come out for an encore. That’s all right though; no one seemed to mind and I’m not sure anyone had the energy leftover to complain if they did.

Photo credit: Leigh Righton

By Sean Huncherick

Last year the Greek post-rock band Since (Time) put out a seven-song CD that is currently available on their website for free. But at this point, you can find hundreds of free albums legally on sites like Bandcamp and Noisetrade. So the question is, is Since (Time)’s album Voyage to Deconstruction worth taking time to listen to? That depends on how you feel about intense post-rock/post-metal along the lines of Pelican and Russian Circles.

Let me just say that post-rock is a hard genre to sell unless
A. The band is ridiculously unique (Godspeed! You Black Emperor)
B. The band is ridiculously talented (Unwed Sailor)
C. Your fans will eat up anything with a rock beat unless it has lyrics.

For those of you not familiar with the genre, in Since (Time)’s case, just think of instrumental progressive rock only without the solos. Keeping such an album memorable is a challenge because for most people, it’s a song’s chorus or an enunciated lyric that they walk away remembering. For Since (Time) or most other post-rock bands, they don’t have the luxury of lyrics. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of talent on the album. Voyage to Deconstruction displays several different moods and tempos from the heavy and epic “The Realization” to the more melodic “The Collective.” In the end, there really isn’t anything bad about the album. The only problem is that there isn’t too much great about the album either.

The second half of the song “Erinyes” highlights everything great about this band. It’s powerful, strong, and a bit chaotic. This is post-metal done well.

Overall, it really is a good album. I would put it on while studying or writing when I don’t want music to distract me too much. But give it a week and I won’t remember any of it apart from a few highlights.

Score: 3/5

Since (Time): Facebook | Official website (free download!)

Some things I simply must write about. Even if it’s a week later and most people’s minds have moved beyond the event in question. Or not – this show was a marquee event that will stand out in my mind as one of the best live music events of the year. This event was that of the “imaginary, fake kinda band…from parts unknown” (description courtesy of Ben Gibbard) The Postal Service.

A longtime favorite of Gibbard, Advance Base, graced the audience with ambient chillwave tunes, casting over the audience a dreamy ambiance that most didn’t heed too much. Minimalism is cool, but the collective anticipation of the crowd overshadowed anything that was being crafted onstage. A cool opportunity for this unknown artist from the Pacific Northwest, nonetheless.

The Postal Service opened the set at twilight with “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” but the rest of the set would be anything but sleepy. Personal favorite “We Will Become Silhouettes” had Ben Gibbard helming a drum kit for the outro, a role he would reprise a few other times that evening. DJ Jimmy Tamborello used a weird modulator thing (forgive my lack of technical knowledge of these things), which baffled me in a good way at the start of “Be Still My Heart.” “Clark Gable” had a cool guitar solo to open the song – a rave-like environment overtook the audience, complete with a whimsical aura cast by the use of xylophone – probably the only instance where such an instrument would be appropriate for such a mood. Gibbard’s vocal counterpart Jenny Lewis was on point as well – she even took control of the drums at one point, and held her own. Other highlights of the main set included “Such Great Heights” (well, duh) and the following “Natural Anthem,” which got surprisingly intense. The encore closed out the evening on a high note, leaving the crowd riled up with a rousing performance of “Brand New Colony.”

While watching, I couldn’t help but be awed at the sheer amount creativity that went into the live production. People’s urge to create and engage with art stood out in a profound way to me that night, and I was reminded of the Imago Dei, that man is created in God’s image. What a beautiful reflection. 

-Ryan Getz