Empire

GROUNDERS' new album will be available May 12.

“Where do you go? Waiting around, where do you go from here?” wonders the chorus of “Secret Friend,” the first single from GROUNDERS’ debut self-titled LP. 

With a dreamy, reverb-drenched intro, the song drifts alongside layers of wobbly arpeggiated synth lines and space-age guitar melodies. It’s the opening track, and it’s also a fitting intro to GROUNDERS. It shimmers and gleams, but there’s a scrappy, stripped-back undertone that chips away at any polish. For every catchy hook and lush arrangement throughout the album there’s a woozy counterpoint that keeps things slightly off-kilter. 

Where do you go from here? Into the weird and wonderful pop world of GROUNDERS.  

This spring, the Toronto-based band – Andrew Davis (vocals and guitar), Daniel Busheikin (keyboards), Mike Searle (Bass) and Evan Lewis (guitar) – will release their first full-length album, a collection of dense and intricate pop music under the gauzy veil of krautrock and psychedelia.   In the time between releasing the Wreck of a Smile EP in 2013 and laying demos for their debut album, GROUNDERS rediscovered their love for classic pop music, an appreciation that had waned over the years as they became obsessed with circumventing the conventional. They listened to pop staples like David Bowie and Devo, and revisited old favourites like Velvet Underground, Neu and the Zombies. When GROUNDERS finally came up for air, they had a newfound love for pop and a glut of ideas for a debut LP.  

Meanwhile, Meditation for Dummies and David Lynch’s self-help guide Catching the Big Fish, on transcendental meditation and the creative process, were passed around the van while touring through North America. As Davis’s interest in meditation increased, his lyrics began to reflect his search for serenity and inner peace. 

The album came to life in two distinct spaces: Davis’s bedroom in Toronto’s sleepy High Park neighbourhood; and a spacious two-car garage packed with vintage gear from various pawn shops and second-hand stores across the country. 

After recruiting DIANA’s Kieran Adams to handle drums, the band headed into the studio with longtime pal Marcel Ramagnano (Born Ruffians, Absolutely Free) to record. Months of tracking, tinkering and layering later, GROUNDERS enlisted the incomparable David Newfeld (Broken Social Scene, Holy Fuck) to give each song the bombastic, fried analog treatment he’s become known for.   

First single "Secret Friend" sounds like a bleached and sunbaked Zombies; “Vyvanse,” which yes, is named after the ADHD drug, contains a lilting guitar riff that’ll break your heart; “Pull It Over Me” careens into the dreamy ether courtesy of a wistful cyclical guitar that’s the epitome of a lazy summer’s day; “No Ringer” is a wobbly Silver Apples trance doused in a saxophone freak-out; "Fool's Banquet" sparkles like early Broadcast flooded by constant glistening waves of pleasure.  After cross-country tours, an acclaimed debut EP and a David Lynch-inspired spiritual journey, GROUNDERS have finally come of age.


GROUNDERS - Secret Friend

Produced and recorded by Macks Faulkron @ Rex Studio, London.
Mixed by Jermey Radway

So Far, So Deep

Dun on Life

by Island Boy

contact: islandboyandgirl@gmail.com

facebook: www.facebook.com/islandboyisland

instagram: @islandboyisland

official website: www.islandboyisland.com

Dun on Life

"Anyone Else" off of 'Big Sparks' by Few Bits, out 2016 on PIAS

Anyone Else

Out on Orchid Tapes on October 28th.
Artwork by Brian Vu. Mastered by Emily Lazar.

Pre-order the 10" here: http://shop.orchidtapes.com/product/emily-reo-spell-10

Emily Reo - Spell

Luke Temple - "The Birds of Late December" from 'A Hand Through the Cellar Door' out November 11, 2016 on Secretly Canadian

Pre-Order 'A Hand Through the Cellar Door:' http://smarturl.it/luketemple 

Luke Temple - The Birds of Late December

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MYRROR

Stimuli

Absentee

Pre Order: http://firetalkrecs.com/shop/monteagle

Monteagle is the solo moniker of Justin Giles Wilcox - best know as chief songwriter in Nassau and now defunct Tennessee band Moonlight Bride. The later of which had some early looks, collapsing just on the brink of break out success. Paste Magazine calling Wilcox’s delivery in a “Best of What’s Next” feature “tremulous, bare-souled vocals, which are as haunted and alluring as the caves that riddle the rocky hills of the band’s hometown.”  Monteagle, named for a mountain inside those hills marks a re-birth for the now well seasoned indie rock vet. Expanding on the more ethereal, dreamy inclinations of past work into something closer to the history of those hills. 

Midnight Noon is the project’s first full length album and embodies a collection of songs written about growing up in rural Tennessee, moving to New York City and looking back at the once discarded landscape with a deeper understanding and appreciation of rural America's hidden beauty. The album envelops a slow focus, working in honest observations and simple truths. It's an origin story sonically toying with Americana and Folk and placing it in a more urban, textural context. 

The aim here was to get back to Justin’s roots, to take all of those past experiences and channel them into something both nostalgic and modern. On the album’s title track Wilcox croons “I still can’t erase anything I’ve seen”, and that line speaks to the truths he’s getting at here. We all work hard to grow past our particular upbringing, but sometimes it’s worth reflecting to get at who we truly are in the modern American landscape and to better understand our place in the world. 

The album was written recorded and produced by Justin Giles Wilcox and members of the Monteagle live band in a old church in upstate New York, mixed in Justin’s home studio in Brooklyn and mastered by Doug Van Sloun (Bright Eyes, Songs: Ohia, M. Ward) in Omaha Nebraska. Midnight Noon will see release on November 30th 2018 on Fire Talk Records.

MYRROR

A.L. DAY

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