You could say The Albertans are from Vancouver, Canada, and in a limited way you wouldn't be wrong. You could also say they lay claim to a creative pedigree from the Brooklyn autoclave and expect only one retort: Right you are. Musical polyglot and songwriter Joel Bravo, a native of Milwaukee, and bassist Ian Everall, Albertan by birth, met while members of New York's Bravo Silva. When that outfit ended they, along with a large and talented rotating cast of players, began playing in New York City under the name Sex with an Angel. They played CMJ in 2007, they moved to Vancouver in 2008, took up the name The Albertans and, along with a few new fellow travelers, took on the challenges of realizing a pop vision.
The Albertans, though, are not about place or pedigree. It is passage, the extremis of transmitting real bodies across the tangled wires and abstracted networks of space and person, that comes through when they play. Their songs are a cartography of North America mapped on the trail of human footsteps fading heat signatures. It is traveling music, and they sing their songs in search of a road through territory made uncertain by love, dreams, and strange frustrations, the few directions to be heard tuned in dubiously on the last working AM radio.
The Albertans Live!
6.25.09 Brooklyn, NY Rooftop Films at BAM
6.27.09 Manchester, MD Farm Festival
7.3.09 Washington, DC Velvet Lounge
7.11.09 New Haven, CT The Gypsy w/ Nouvellas
7.12.09 Philadelphia, PA North Star Bar w/ Nouvellas
+ More dates coming soon!
you never saw them in ‘07 when they were performing as Sex with an Angel, it's a great introduction to the band's storytelling style and the wistful bombast Joel Bravo's lyricism inspires in the musicians. If you had seen them in a previous incarnation, you'd hear this new recording's desperate edges in the loud guitar wash all the more sharply. - Impose Magazine
The Albertans build songs from the ground up, adding layer upon layer of rich orchestration while never muddling the sound or being over the top. They're all about clean instruments and spot-on pop sensibility. Noise punk is so last week; you need to hear these guys now. - The L Mag
No comments:
Post a Comment