The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Record Release Show!

The Dig
11:30

The Grates
10:30
Casey Shea
9:30
Red Lions
8:30

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Sat 6/05
Notes:
21+
Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
$10
Tickets
The Dig
official website
myspace
Not many bands can claim to have origins in grade school, but in one incarnation or another, some members of The Dig have played music together since they were ten years old.

In Westchester County – just a stone’s throw from New York City, where they now call home – singer/guitarist David Baldwin and singer/bassist Emile Mosseri first met in sixth grade, becoming fast friends and playing in bands. Baldwin and Mosseri met keyboardist/guitarist Erick Eiser at a summer music program in high school, and the three reunited in college in Boston. In 2007, all three relocated to New York City and began writing songs in Baldwin’s basement as The Dig. The relentless, hard-working young band dug their foundation the old-fashioned way: they embraced an indefatigable DIY ethic, playing all over the city regularly and hitting the streets with an endless stream of posters, flyers, and free music. The band released their debut EP Good Luck and Games (produced by Bryce Goggin, who has produced, mixed, or engineered Pavement, Antony & the Johnsons, The Ramones, Bishop Allen) late that year, catching the attention of Popmatters, who wrote in a review, “This is the catchiest, most intriguing power pop band to emerge out of the no-name pile in some time…”

The Dig’s self-booked shows and self-promotion began to pay off by late spring 2008, when the band was booked for three, month-long residencies through the summer at Piano’s in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. With a strong and ever-growing fanbase, late that year esteemed local venues like the Bowery Ballroom and the Music Hall of Williamsburg began to call upon the band consistently to open for national touring bands such as Mission of Burma, The Soft Pack, The Rakes, Longwave, and Rural Alberta Advantage, shows that earned The Dig praise from local blogs such as Music Snobbery: “I have no witty observations or creative writing pull quotes to give you. They are just a damn good band.”

Never resting and looking to expand their base past hometown confines, The Dig began touring in the northeast and southeast in early 2009. Touring over the next six months, the band was profiled in major dailies and weeklies – like the DC Examiner, The Washington Times, The Winston-Salem Journal, and The Asheville Citizen-Times. New drummer Jamie Alegre, a Toronto ex-pat from a family of musicians, joined the band in-between tours in April. Alegre, who moved to NYC four years earlier to pursue a life in music, had gotten to know them through playing the same LES haunts with other bands. With his previous band having just gone on hiatus when The Dig’s first drummer departed, he landed as a perfect fit.

The Dig’s continual touring and dynamic live show caught the attention of noted booking agent Kevin French at the Paradigm Agency, who quickly signed the band in June 2009. Around the same time, the band headed into Brooklyn’s Trout Recording with returning co-producer Goggin to record their full-length debut, Electric Toys. With the album, The Dig has crafted 12 rock songs of various shapes, sizes, and moods, linked by the band’s indelible hooks. Written and arranged by all four members, the songs often tell a story: darkish tales with twisted circumstances and desperate people driven to do bad things. Alternately, there are classical references to girls, love, and the many points in-between. Mosseri and Baldwin alternate lead vocals throughout the album; Mosseri’s soaring, roguish tenor takes lead on the poppier tracks, while Baldwin’s raspy, weathered croon holds court on the guitar-heavy, wall-rattling anthems. Differing in sound, their voices retain a stylistic similarity won by playing, singing, and writing together for the past 14 years.

This similarity grants Electric Toys a seamless flow from track to track, striking a perfect equilibrium between upbeat and moody rockers. The unaccompanied chords of Eiser’s keyboard launch the alternately wistful and roaring album opener “Carry Me Home,” introducing essential atmospherics that, along with his rhythm guitar parts, in many ways help shape the sound of both the album and the band with additional layers of depth and color. Like that first song, the humming, hypnotic “Two Sisters” and the ominous, hot-blooded “She’s Going to Kill That Boy” build to explosive climaxes. In contrast, the jaunty, hand-clapping “You’re Already Gone” and the spry, ebullient beat of “Penitentiary” highlight the band’s strong pop instincts. “For All Your Sins” and “Feel Like Somebody Else,” meanwhile, are dreamy, string-laced ballads. Mosseri and Alegre’s intertwining rhythm section propels each track, while Baldwin’s deft guitar work ranges from a lilt to a shimmer to a howl across the album.
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.
Casey Shea
official website
myspace
Casey Shea spent a handful of years fronting rock bands in Tallahassee and Nashville before setting out for New York City in January of 2004 to focus on a solo career. A gifted performer with undeniable charm, Casey delivers his songs in a unique way that earns him an audience’s devotion…think Bill Murray meets John Lennon. Melody drives diverse songwriting that is at once quirky and heart wrenching, and the result is a rare treat that is both musically gratifying and raucously entertaining.

The charismatic front man for New York’s Lower East Side sensation, The Undisputed Heavyweights, has built a new band around his solo material where influences such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Beck and Tom Petty shine through in an original sound with an uncommon familiarity right off the bat.

Currently, Casey is keeping busy playing around premiere NYC venues as a solo artist. He has recently returned to the studio for a full length, full band follow up to his self recorded solo debut, “Take The Bite.”
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