Tuesday, October 2, 2012

10/10 - PLANTS AND ANIMALS / TAMARIN @ BAR

Free shows at BAR every Wednesday is a good thing. This Wednesday they got Plants and Animals, as well as Tamarin for your listening pleasure!


Plants and Animals
Plants and Animals have been playing together for 10 years. They began as an instrumental group. They recorded a self-titled record in 2002 with 15-minute songs. They played around Montreal for years, no vocals, heavy on the improvising. Warren started singing with other people, and soon enough he just couldn’t contain himself. Silence became oooohs, oooohs became words.

In 2008, a project two years in the making became Parc Avenue and they stepped out onto the circuit for the first time. It had guitars and drums and vocals, and orchestration out the wazoo. It was nominated for one Polaris prize, two Junos and three GAMIQs. They opened for Grizzly Bear in Montreal, and did their first tour with Wolf Parade. Danger Mouse got his paws on it and invited them to open for Gnarls Barkley, and later Broken Bells. The National invited them to open for them in Central Park. They headlined stages across North America and Europe.

In 2010, they released La La Land, a heavier, darker departure from Parc Avenue that has become a veritable cult favourite. They played over 100 shows that year, including a long US tour with Frightened Rabbit. To the Pitchfork Festival appearance the summer before, they added to the list such notables as Primavera in Barcelona, Bumbershoot in Seattle, End of the Road in the English countryside, a marquee spot at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and many more.

In 2012, The End of That was released, a bold, honest, straightforward record confronting the space we inhabit between being a kid and growing up, between a crisis and a pretty good time. They toured extensively, from the desert to the sea.

If Plants and Animals were a person, Parc Avenue is that person around eight years old—excited, wide-eyed, scatterbrained and innocent. La La Land is that person in adolescence—the body changing in exciting and confusing ways, cocky and insecure, bold and volatile, oily. The End of That marks the 20s—confident in a new, unmasked way, young, excited, going through some shit, will be at the party tonight.
 


Tamarin (feat ex mem of Kiss Kiss/Quark) 
Philadelphia's Tamarin makes unique and introspective Indie / Folk / Pop with heart-sleeve lyrics, bittersweet vocal harmonies, a raw terrain of meter shifts, and an in-the-pocket rhythm section. Their debut full length Shake The Ghost is haunted by displacement, loss, and yearning as much as it is a cathartic shedding of such hopeless apparitions. Tamarin's approach to songwriting is empathetic, genuine, collaborative, and delivered with conviction.

In the summer of '08, songwriter Alex Malamy spent time on a Tuscan farmstead with a borrowed guitar, penning the words of sleepless nights, worlds-apart longing, and an uncertain future. These were the first sketches of what would become Shake The Ghost and inspire the band to coalesce. Upon return to NYC, Malamy connected with Patrick Lamothe, James Blinstrub, and Page Foster for weekly congregations. After a year of playing shows in and around NYC, the band relocated to Philadelphia with Foster heading west. They remained connected by community and intent.

Shake The Ghost was recorded throughout 2011 with a cast of supportive guest musicians in both Upstate NY and Philadelphia. John Cipriano joined the band, adding the album's signature density and warmth with keys and pedal steel guitar. What began as solitary songs first sung for quiet fields and empty places had grown wildly and was tended by five friends who embraced its unpredictable and spectral shape. Shake The Ghost is the configuration.





Free / 21+
@ BAR
254 Crown St, New Haven

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