Harlem showed up in Austin a couple of months ago and has been taking the city by storm ever since. There’s something scampish about the trio that makes them incredibly charming, unloading garage pop with a cathartic energy that seems to combine the best elements of local favorites White Denim and the Strange Boys into one roguish blitz of infectious melody and scruffy guitars. Since forming in Tennessee a year ago behind Michael Coomers and Curtis O’Mara, and eventually adding John Hostetter, Harlem has been traveling the country (spending time in Tucson and California) and recording in various studios to produce their freshly released debut album, Free Drugs;-). We can’t recommend highly enough that you catch the trio before they head out on tour next month - they will taking on the Hole in the Wall this Friday, July 18 with a great bill that includes the Black and the Strange Boys.
Profile: Harlem
Year Formed:
we started in nashville a year ago. (although we were banned from every club so our first show had to be in Chattanooga)
Members/Instruments played:
most of time john plays bass and curtis and coomers pay guitar and drums but tomorrow is a new day.
Former Bands/Side Projects:
a lot of them but highlights might be; smart pussy, meowigator, and nasty summer.
Albums:
free drugs;-) released a few weeks ago on female fantasy records
Influences:
our records duh, free drink tickets, shitty jobs, beautiful people, sunsets,and gay majik
Strangest comment or comparison ever made about your music:
“HARLEM (the industrial wastelands of Los Angeles)
A small, nomadic band of super-cute urban street orphans, frighteningly similar to the “Wild Boys” — the Lord of the Flies style, homosexually oriented, tribal street gangs that proliferated in Weimar-Era Berlin, who are quite understandably hoping that 2012 holds a Utopian future.” don bolles drummer of the germs
Favorite local bands:
i saw this pretty weird band on local access that had some teen girl singing torch songs with a backing band of some wizard looking dude and probably her family. she leaned against the wall when she was singing it was the best stage move i have ever seen.
Favorite local venue:
any house with crazy kids and tons of free booze
Upcoming shows scheduled:
the 18th of july at hole in the wall. and we are setting up our tour across the nation.
Shows over the next month that you’re excited to see:
snoop dogg and billy bob thorton (i wonder what kind of sling blade motherfuckers he has as a backing band)
Some of your favorite albums from the past year:
lil wayne and live through this by hole
Ideal band (past or present) to open for on a national tour:
nirvana, seriously
Austin Sound questions:
What brought you guys to Austin and how has the city been treating you so far?
this town has been awesome. all our friends are the best. beerland has been very nice to us. we have been having barbecues all summer courtesy of the texas food stamp office.
So what are Harlem’s free drugs of choice?
the album free drugs;-) isn’t really about drug drugs. we used to go swimming at venice beach all the time and it was how we described the feeling after you swim all day and you still feel the waves after you get out.
Song Introduction:
the yin and yang of love in the form of “beautiful and very smart” and “south of france” both true stories
Sound Off:
“I make your ovaries incandescent” henry miller, tropic of cancer
Mp3s:
South of France
Beautiful and Very Smart
Website:
Myspace
I saw these dudes by a train track once in Tucson photographing a suicide attempt. Good band. Curtis owes me $5 for drugs, freedom ain’t free red.
Heard this from a post on Gorilla and Bear - not only a solid band but a good blog to boot. Hope they’ll see some future success and here is to the brooklyn show.
And Bobby - support your local musicians man, $5 is the price of rock and roll.
also came up on this via gorilla vs. bear, really solid.
i don’t know what they are saying all of the time, or some of the time. it might be something cool, or it might not be. either way, they are definitely saying something in the songs, just can’t figure it out for self. i think they might be special or something, but that is pretty effing cool if you wan tto know the truth.
[...] Lipsynchsuck New and old releases cherry-picked « Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks (Live) Harlem - South of France January 18, 2009 “… garage pop with a cathartic energy that seems to combine the best elements of local favorites White Denim and the Strange Boys into one roguish blitz of infectious melody and scruffy guitars…” Read more on Austin Sound [...]