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It's mildly ironic that I've been in NYC almost two decades and been a pretty obsessed music fan for the duration, yet the bands around town have been pretty uniformly terrible for at least the last five or six years, if not more. The Hold Steady started to turn the tide in the proper direction, and bands like Steve Shiffman and the Land Of No and The Silos are helping to bring things back to a proper equilibrium, but things are still pretty bleak around these parts. And before you start crowing about The Strokes or The Walkmen, take a second and ask where they are now. Then realize that Vampire Weekend will be checking into The Rapture Suite at the No-One-Gives-A-Shit Arms before Winter's over and listen up while the adults are talking.
aldenbarton is another of the good ones. No white belts or Arabic scarves, just three dudes that have played together for years, keeping the dream alive. The band sprang from the ashes of indie darlings Princeton Reverb Colonial and settled in Queens a couple years ago, then got a house and set to giving the local scene a much-needed kick in the ass of their stupid Mom Jeans. They ply their trade in the three-piece format, with a Fender Rhodes handing the chordal end of things. Andrew St. Aubin helms the good ship aldenbarton, tossing hook after hook at you, song after song, until you're forced to either sing along with wild abandon or strangle him for being so damn good. Don't think the rhythm section is going to go easy on you, either. Paul Bates and Jim Wood are lock-step tight all over Exodus Of The Eldest, with bassist Bates providing stellar harmonies to make you feel even worse about your shitty band. That dull clunk you just heard was the bar being raised for bands here in the NYC.
And all over the place. aldenbarton are doing an end-run on crappy labels and lazy distros by getting Exodus of the Eldest out into the digital realm. It's out today on I-tunes. Get it here, and realize it's not the only Apple connection you're going to get for your digital dollar. If you liked the Elephant Six stuff or maybe Head Of Femur, this is right up your alley. If it's not, it should be. Check out the aldenbarton web presence here and get your social networking on with them here, here and/or here.
If you don't believe me, aldenbarton are also band of the moment at The Tripwire. Now go and cop that shit. And, yeah, you're welcome.
R - JadedScenesterNYC.blogspot.com
"aldenbarton plays a certain brand of indie power-pop that requires an amount of skill and charm that not every musician is capable of exhibiting, no matter their level of talent. So it’s a good thing these guys are all excellent musicians with skill and charm to burn. Their sometimes/somewhat-retro sound, with its big rhythms and dramatic shifts, is played with a sincerity that stands in stark contrast to much of the ironic tendency seen and heard in many bands today.
www.stereoactivenyc.com - StereoActiveNYC.com
Discography
"Exodus of the Eldest" EP released by The Granite State Recording Co.(Tunecore) in Nov. 08' and available nearly everywhere digital music is sold.
Photos
Bio
When Andrew St. Aubin moved to New York in the summer of 2004, he had a picture in his mind of what he wanted his new world to look like. He’d come of age in New Hampshire on the fringe an accidental music scene; playing in The Princeton Reverbs Colonial, he recorded his first album with The Olivia Tremor Control’s Bill Doss. Athens was no more home than Vegas had been, and California beckoned with promises of sunny new musical projects that were eclectic but scattered. Enter the cacophony of millions: people cramming into train cars at rush hour, prancing down streets singing to themselves, heading alone to crowded bars in the hopes of speaking to one another. St. Aubin’s streamlined notions of New York life began to adapt to the city’s cleverly orchestrated sense of loneliness. While looking for fellow musicians to play with, he sat at his piano and created melodic puzzle pieces, trying to figure out how they would fit together. He began to play solo shows under the name Aldenbarton, using a guitar or keyboard and a backing track to fill in the musical blanks. Eventually, people connect, puzzle pieces begin to fit together, and New York’s individualism gives way to a sense of shared space. The end result is Exodus of the Eldest, a mini-album centered around the strangeness of our everyday lives. As Aldenbarton, St. Aubin captures the sense of displacement between grown and growing siblings, the irreversibility of one’s upbringing, and the explosion of feeling that comes from seeing your favorite band live for the first and final time. Even the simple act of waiting for the morning train is captured here in jubilant song. The result pairs elegant harmonies with rowdy drumrolls, raucous pianos with irresistible melodies, and the general feeling that every ordinary moment is characterized by its unpredictability. These songs change course when you least expect them to, but the path they follow is simply pop at its finest. In a city full of musicians, full of the business of music, and full of its critics, Aldenbarton is a purveyor of the idea that at base, “simply pop” is the best thing we can hope for
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