The Bowery Presents

Terminal 5 upcoming shows

The Grates

Savoir Adore / Dappled Cities

Venue:
Brooklyn Bowl
Date:
Sat 3/27
Notes:
21+
Doors: 6:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
$5 Advance / $5 Day Of Show
Tickets
The Grates
official website
myspace
For The Grates’ debut album Gravity Won’t Get You High (2006, Interscope Records), their signature animal was a giraffe. It was a fitting match: that year, the album towered over all beasts in their native Australia, made mammoth strides, and won the affection of the people, both at home and abroad. Three years later, The Grates present second album, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won: an entirely different animal altogether.

“If Teeth Lost, Hearts Won was a beast, I imagine it’d be like something from Where The Wild Things Are,” lead singer and front woman Patience says. “They’re big and scary. But they’ve also got this sensitivity, and pick up the little kid and protect him.” Drummer Alana thinks, “Or maybe the griffin in Alice In Wonderland,” she says. “He’s like a lion and eagle together, but a really gentle creature.

NEW DIRECTIONS

Upon its release in Australia, Gravity Won’t Get You High immediately shot to the ARIA top-ten, was nominated for awards, and quickly went Gold. The trio slogged it out for two years straight, with sold-out Australian tours, shows in the UK, US and Canada, and garnered gushing press coverage in NME, Rolling Stone, Spin and Filter, amongst others.

Then suddenly: after all the noise, Patience, John (guitars) and Alana found themselves back in their hometown of Brisbane. In contrast to the concert halls and festival stages they’d grown used to, their bedrooms were dead quiet. At first, John found it disconcerting. “It was a huge shift,” John says. “Coming home and having nothing to do except write.”

Instead of deciding their new direction on the spot, the trio opted to churn out song after song, until they struck gold. Luckily, they didn’t have to wait long. Tracks like “Two Kinds of Right” and “Milk Eyes” soon announced themselves as the new yardsticks, and suggested a major evolution. “We wrote a bunch of songs that week,” John says. “And right there was the direction of the new album.” Patience interjects sweetly: “We blew our creative load during that period.”

NEW SKILLS

With Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, The Grates faced a new challenge in the studio: being their own co-producers for the very first time. While producer/engineer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) joined the ride this time, The Grates were alongside him closely at the producer’s desk at Tarquin Studios, a gutted-out attic in Connecticut.

Initially, taking the production helm - occasionally by themselves - scared them. For six weeks, John had stomach pains, expecting something bad was going to happen. “On the first night, we were up having secret band meetings,” he says. “We were saying, ‘How are we going to deal with this?’ But then we decided, we’ve got to suck it up! In the end, taking the role of co-producers proved to be essential for the band’s development.

NEW SONGS

Needless to say, the band’s newfound musical smarts have paid-off. This batch of songs is more sophisticated and punch-in-the-guts catchy than anything they’ve done before. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping first single “Burn Bridges” is a good indicator of The Grates’ new musical direction, but also provides a handy manifesto. “Burn all them bridges down to the ground,” Patience squeals, “cause I won’t be coming this way again.”

“The first album was a bit of a party album,” John says. “With this one, we wanted more guts, something people could hold closer to their hearts and treasure.” Don’t worry, though, The Grates are still as infectiously raucous as ever.

All three nominate slick pop shoe-shuffler “Two Kinds of Right” as a firm favorite. Elsewhere, “Aw Yeah” is a fist-raising rally anthem. “Storms and Fevers” is a rousing, emotional number that swells the throat, moistens the eyes, and makes your collar seem suddenly tight. It’s a no-holds-barred, introspective side of The Grates, rarely seen until now.

NEW FRIENDS

New songs warrant new friends. On the infectious, bubble-gum pop of “Milk Eyes,” you’ll hear Kori Gardner of Mates of State on backing vocals. A mother of two, Gardner has become a poster-child of indie-pop moms. So it’s fitting that “Milk Eyes” was written during Patience’s baby-obsession phase. “Everyone - including some of our managers - were having babies,” she says. “I got super clucky.”

Elsewhere, the rich, hillbilly twang of Brooklyn-based folkie Tim Fite appears on “Not Today,” a demented, whiskey-soured waltz. The Grates had been obsessed with Fite’s cult albums when, by sheer coincidence, they found out that Peter Katis had earlier produced on of his band’s albums. All it took was a phone call, and Tim came on board.

AMERICA

The American release of Teeth Lost, Hearts Won (Thirty Tigers/Dew Process) follows a highly successful trip to the U.S. for the SXSW Music Festival in March 2009. While in Austin, the band played five buzzed about shows in four days and gained a massive amount of recognition for their highly energetic performances. USA Today named the band one of ten favorite performances during the entire festival while also receiving accolades from everyone from the Los Angeles Times to popular websites such as My Old Kentucky Blog. In preparation of the release of the album, the band has relocated for the time being to Brooklyn, NY in order to make American touring easier and much more frequent than in the past.

OOMPH

The Teeth Lost, Hearts Won album retains The Grates’ trademark shambolic fun, but injects new layers and grunt into the proceedings. This time, Patience, Alana and John come armed with sharpened technical chops, killer arrangements and newfound songwriting oomph. Boasting the combined force of John’s rough-and-tumble guitars, Patience’s signature banshee yelps, and Alana’s churning drums, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won might be a griffin, it might be a Where The Wild Things Are monster. But either way, it’s the sound of a band unafraid to bite.
Savoir Adore
official website
myspace
Even in a scene as vibrant as the current one in Brooklyn, Savoir Adore bring something entirely unique and exciting to the table with their addictively lush slant on pop. In the Wooded Forest, their exuberant debut album, showcases the many strengths of this exciting, young band. Soaring melodies. Infectious beats. This album demands repeat listens and will have your friends asking "What is this?!" From the high-octane pop of "Bodies" to meditatively gorgeous closer "The Garden", Savoir Adore display a potent combination of raw talent and musical maturity that is extremely rare in a debut release. With their unique blend of indie influences and infectious dance beats, its no wonder the group has garnered comparisons to such great artists as Phoenix, Jens Lekman and Bishop Allen.

Savoir Adore's first release, The Adventures of Professor Pumpernickel and the Girl with Animals in Her Throat, is full of fresh ideas—so full, in fact, that they manage to cover dozens of feelings and styles in the process. Perhaps the open, free-range moods of their work is due to the fact that the duo wrote and recorded the entirety of the EP over the course of just one weekend.
Dappled Cities
official website
myspace
Australian quintet Dappled Cities blend the playful grandiosity of the Flaming Lips and Grandaddy with the chillier sonic explorations of Sigur Rós, for a sound that at times recalls the mixture of pop song smarts and progressive pomp that both Genesis and their former leader Peter Gabriel perfected around the turn of the '80s. The band's roots are in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, where teenage school friends Tim Derricourt (guitar and vocals), Dave Rennick (keyboards, guitar, and vocals), Alex Moore (bass), and Hugh Boyce (drums) formed a quartet called Periwinkle that played neighborhood all-ages shows and school functions. Once the bandmembers were all of legal age in 2001, the group moved into Sydney's competitive club circuit, changing its name to the deliberately silly and pretentious Dappled Cities Fly. Following their 2004 album, several changes took place within the band: adjunct touring keyboardist Ned Cooke was promoted to a full member of the band, the group signed to the Australian label Speak and Spell Records, and the bandmembers shortened their name to the somewhat less affected Dappled Cities. - Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
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