Bailiff

". . . it all comes down to soul, to where you're coming from and where you bring your audience, and there, Bailiff doesn't disappoint: this is good stuff. . . ['Remise' is] playful, groovin' and enjoyable. We think these guys are on the up, and greatly look forward to their next. Recommended." - Ravings of a Mad Music Man

"This is an awesome title for a second album. In fact it is just an awesome second album, period and I am very much looking forward to their third.

Rating: Bad-Ass." - That Music Mag

". . . it always, always comes down to the songs and "Remise" is as good a record I’ve heard all year from anybody." - CBS Radio / WXRT

As Chicago power trio Bailiff climbed the stage, lead singer/guitarist Josh Siegel gently placed a squeeze bottle of honey on his amp before facing the crowd to begin the band's 40-minute set. With red eyes and a clammy complexion, it was hard to tell if he was really stoned, really sick, really nervous, or a bit of all three. Things didn't bode well for the throwback blues rockers right off the bat, as the band's bassist began experiencing technical difficulties mid-song, scrambling behind his stack trying to find out what went wrong. But after a quick blip in the band's first song, the throwback blues rockers slowly wowed the sizable crowd, delivering dexterous, Zappa-esque guitar solos, Les Claypool-ish levels of four-string shredding and soulful rhythms that could even make the Black Keys reconsider their day jobs. Playing only their second show in Toronto, it was hard to understand why we haven't heard more of this virtuosic three-piece. Perhaps it was due to their lack of classification (NXNE's schedule strangely described them as "Interpol meets Red Hot Chili Peppers," which sounds like nightmares come to life). But as the band finished their set, the group offered listeners a mailing list at the merch table to sign up for and people actually lined up to do so, leading one to believe this isn't the last we'll hear from these impressive rock purists. - 8/10 - Exclaim.ca

It didn’t take long for Chicago trio Bailiff to capture the attention of the crowd with their hypnotic blues rock and incredibly tight set. Each song was delivered seamlessly and the momentum and strength of their performance built throughout the performance, leaving everyone wanting more. One of the joys of NXNE is discovering new bands that excite you and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bailiff was that band for a few people this festival. - Stick Magazine

Chicago band, Bailiff has one four-song EP, Mm Hmm, and one spare, more recent, track...but from just that limited output, I'm a fan. Bound Stems/Harvey Danger drummer Evan Sult also agrees. So much in fact that he asked to write the bio for the band on their MySpace profile after overhearing them in their adjoining practice space.

Bailiff's 2008 debut EP, the four-song Mm Hmm, combines bluesy sludge-rock, akin to The Black Keys, with a more polished swaggering pop sound, that hints at a not-so-hidden Interpol fetish. Make sure you check Out Of Bounds though. The band's sonic progress is more than evident. - My Old Kentucky Blog

My personal Bailiff cherry was popped on June 5, 2010, at Do Division Street Fest. My second story apartment faced Leavitt and Division streets. My roommates and friends, friends of friends and the tattooed people we met while waiting in line for the cigarettes and chewing tobacco at the Camel tent and I came back to our place. We all drank “Grandma’s Lemonade,” (mix a case of cheap beer mixed with cheap vodka, and a packet of Country Time lemonade powder) and watched the bands play from the window overlooking the Leavitt Stage. Nobody—in the apartment or in the crowd—paid attention to the bands on stage, as if in a nightclub listening to a nameless and faceless DJ.

After the forgettable dad-rock bands were finished, I found myself grooving to a sick blues rock riff. I realize I’m actually listening to the band by accident and loving it. I look around the room and everyone else is jamming out, too. Some people have even started sluggishly head banging. I sit at the window and watch a crazy dude dressed in all white dance in circles in the sprinkling rain to a band that finally says, “Hey, thanks for being here; we’re called Bailiff.”
One year to the day later, I’m at the bar at Lincoln Hall auditorium waiting for lead guitarist Josh and drummer Ren to finish their dinner before I interview them on the night their new LP, Red Balloon, was released. My photographer Lisa says, “Don’t be nervous. Just talk to them like they’re your best friends; remember what that guy in “Almost Famous” said when talking to the journalist? ‘Here I am telling secrets to the guy you don’t tell secrets to.’”

Inside the green room, the first thing Bailiff and I talked about were band names.

“So, my parents are both lawyers and I don’t know what a bailiff actually is,” I said.

“He’s the guy that says ‘Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Josh answered.

Through the hour-long interview, Bailiff and I talk about embarrassing former band names (like Dahoon Holly and Umber Shone), favorite beers (Delirium for Josh and Unibroue Maudite for Ren), and the age old question: are breakups still the best thing to write about?

“Well, they may not be the best, but probably the easiest,” Josh replied.

During the show, the crowd was widely diverse and strangely energetic. They came out to “Crickets,” the ominous slide guitar intro to Red Balloon, and there was a guy with scissors tattooed on his neck screaming in the front row. Right behind him there was a 60-year-old lady that looked like a former hippy who had a pink streak dyed into her greying hair. There wasn’t a divide between these two at the show; in fact, Bailiff brought them together.

As Bailiff played, the crowd fed off their energy. When I first saw Bailiff, they were strictly a three-piece band with your typical bass, drums and guitar. But during this show, they had up to five people playing at once.

“We definitely tried to make our live performance mirror a lot of the recordings, so that has a lot to do with the instrumentation. We wanted to include it so we have someone doing percussion and keys, and we could probably strip everything down and perform as three—but that wouldn’t make the live performance mirror the record,” Ren said.
This shows through in the new songs on Red Balloon. The album is a huge step forward from their older material. The new album has a dynamic flow from start to finish. It isn’t just 15 tracks slapped together from the best of the recording sessions.

Red Balloon shows Bailiff’s strongest and newest songwriting talents when compared to earlier material. The new songs will have you tapping your feet and singing along, and then humming the vocal hooks and choruses long after you listen to the album. Both Ren and Josh admitted they were much more into dirty blues while recording their first EP, but were listening to a lot more pop while they were writing and recording Red Balloon.

“I realized one day that just because a song is catchy doesn’t mean it is a bad thing. When you get over that, you realize that pop is not such a scary word anymore,” Josh said.
If you haven’t already, go check out Bailiff’s Red Balloon and preview four tracks on their bandcamp website. If you’ve been craving some hard rock that does more for you than the Kings of Leon, Bailiff will do the trick. - Pop'Stache

Big and getting bigger, so stand back! - Chicago Tribune

Bailiff is a band worth tracking down. Bound Stems/Harvey Danger drummer Evan Sult attests to this fact in the bio he wrote for the band after inadvertently hearing it through the walls of its practice space and immediately becoming obsessed with the local trio. Bailiff's debut EP, the four-song Mm Hmm, is a hybrid of sludge-rock and polished swaggering pop, sort of like Interpol with a harder edge. Given the sweeping 20 minutes of released material and handful of awe-inspiring shows the band has played so far, Bailiff is shaping up to be a Chicago band to watch—track the group down while it's still in our same area code. A full-length debut is reportedly in the works. - The AV Club

Seeing Bailiff at work is nothing short of face-melting, a term that gets overused, but definitely applies to the Chicagoans’ signature enticing sludge rock. Siegel’s guitar work was mesmerizing, with Matthew’s drums and a spare bass drum player providing a steady pulse that shook the Subterranean. Support from the rhythm guitar, bass, and keys created an aural gem that’s rare in live sets these days. That second-floor wraparound balcony funneled Bailiff’s drive to the upper level, fighting to break through the roof. - Consequence of Sound

By Andy Downing

When Bailiff played its first show on a snowy Wednesday night in April, the trio expected the venue to be half empty. Instead, the Beat Kitchen was jampacked for its six-song set, a turn of events that left the band members shaken and its frontman considering an early retirement.

"I just remember not being able to hear anything," says singer/guitarist Josh Siegel. "I felt like I couldn't hear my voice. I couldn't hear the drums even though they were extremely loud. I remember thinking, 'This is the way it's going to be forever?' At that point, I didn't know if I could do this music thing."

Fortunately, Siegel's anxieties faded after the first performance; Bailiff has now played more than a dozen local gigs and is primed for its Saturday return to the Beat Kitchen in celebration of the release of its first EP, "Mm Hmm." Evan Sult, drummer for Bound Stems and Harvey Danger, was one of those in attendance for that first show. In a testimonial posted to the band's MySpace site, Sult offers the three-piece his unabashed praise: "There's no one jumping around slinging sweat and drawing a lot of attention, but they're somehow mesmerizing."

"Mm Hmm" continues that effect, sounding at once effortless and scary intense. The band works tension and release to perfection on songs such as "Even I Know the Rain" and "What I Was," building from a spectral chime to a thunderous, foundation-rattling groove on the latter. All four EP cuts have roots in the blues -- the three bandmates are fans of Buddy Guy's "Sweet Tea" -- but the crew frequently stretches this influence until it's distorted and unrecognizable. The droning "Emptied Out," for one, is primal space rock, more akin to the Secret Machines than Robert Johnson.

Working with engineer Brian Zeiske at Gallery of Carpet Studio, the band concentrated on recreating its live sound (listeners can hear the wooden rattle of Ren Mathew's drumsticks at the onset of "Even I Know the Rain"), preferring to record to 2-inch tape rather than use digital equipment. It was, says bassist Marc Bonadies, an effort to preserve the raw feel of the songs.

That's not to say that the band is ignorant of music's ongoing digital revolution. Siegel notes that CDs and digital music files are becoming more-or-less promotional tools -- aural advertisements designed to get listeners out for the live performances. With that in mind, the trio is planning to spend as much of 2008 as possible crammed in a van, crisscrossing the country.

"It's the reason we're all in this band," says the newly confident frontman. "Now we're ready to get out there and do the work." - Chicago Tribune

Blues with this much fire might just ignite your hair. - The Redeye

Even with the dozens of new recordings from Chicago bands I receive on a weekly basis, it’s rare for me to think “Hmm. There’s some serious commercial potential here”. That’s not to slag anybody’s talent. Obviously there are many, many excellent bands in town. They just happen to make music that decidedly appeals to a limited number of fans. Bailiff, on the other hand, touch on a lot of potentially popular points.

To wit: well recorded, interesting and memorable songcraft as found on their new disc “Red Balloon”. Combine that with a fresh but somehow familiar sound and the fact that they perform well live and look confident doing so and you’ve got the makings of…I dunno. Potential popularity? Potentially. Hear what the boys in the band have to say about that and more on this week’s Local Anesthetic, Sunday night 7:30 here on XRT. - WXRT - Richard Milne

Bailiff's Red Balloon has been a long time coming. It was back in 2008 that the Chicago band released their introductory EP Mm Hmm, a four-track set of slow-burning indie rock with a raw, bluesy edge that, combined with their tight live shows, succeeded in getting plenty of people interested. After such a long gap from EP to full-length any band would have to deliver something extra special to make the wait pay off, and Bailiff don't disappoint on Red Balloon. Having spent most of 2010 working with engineer Beau Sorenson (Sparkle Horse, Death Cab for Cutie) and producer Jon Alvin (Wax on Radio, Dr Manhattan), the band didn't just create an extended version of Mm Hmm; the bluesy burn is still there, but the basic sound has been built upon and fleshed out into something that's even better.

The instrumental "Crickets" lets us know immediately that we're in for something stretching beyond what we might have expected. It's a dramatic, two-minute track introducing an exotic flair that runs through some of what follows, including the superb "In the Reverie" and "Everyday Fire." These songs have a cool hypnotic groove that combines with the tribal percussion of Ren Mathew and solid hooks for what could be the band's strongest material to date - or at least their most accessible. "Eventually" is another highlight early in the album, standing out by suddenly bringing in a great, memorable second melody during its final two minutes.

One of Mm Hmm's tracks, "Emptied Out," has been given new life here; it sounds cleaner than its previous incarnation, but its propulsive beat and intense atmosphere haven't lost any power. They have actually been made more captivating. Later, rollicking stomper "When I Leave You Will Stay" comes in as a very welcome surprise that doesn't sound like anything else on the record; it's perfect for belting along to with frontman Josh Siegel (whose vocal performance should be noted; it's really strong throughout the entire album - something else that didn't stand out as much to me before). Red Balloon ends with the low-key, acoustic "Little by Little." Here, they expand their sound even further by dialing it back in a direction that works well in closing out the record.

Sometimes taking your time pays off. Red Balloon is proof of that. Anyone who got on the Bailiff train early on will likely find themselves wanting to champion the band even more after hearing this LP, and anyone who has yet to check them out shouldn't waste any time diving in. - Windy City Rock

Although Chicago is home of the blues, the city's indie rock and blues sounds typically dwell in very different worlds. Local band Bailiff is an exception. By building off a gritty, bluesy foundation and fleshing it out with a variety of rock and roll influences to create an original style, the band has already built a devoted following thanks to their tight, captivating live shows. - Windy City Rock

Indie rock slant to a raucously syncopated Chicago blues aesthetic, all tied together with some of the tightest composition you'll hear on any side of the Mississippi.
- Center Stage Chicago

"While EDM, pop, and hip-hop may be dominating the charts right now, there will always be a place in the world for rock and roll. Thankfully for the listener, in times when rock's popularity subsides, only the really good stuff has a chance to shine through and be heard.

Chicago rockers Bailiff are one of the most exciting up-and-coming rock groups the world has seen in a while, and it doesn't take an expert to understand why. Their new EP "Remise ll" (available tomorrow) eases you into their signature, yet familiar, style of rock. Opening track "Golden Hour" sounds like a perfect mix of Foo Fighters (try "These Days") and Kings of Leon -- a massive success just waiting to explode if I've ever heard one.

From there, the EP keeps its edge while touching on everything from blues to southern rock. The band is a no-frills, exceptionally talented group, one that prove that rock is alive and kicking." - Huffington Post