Eighteen Individual Eyes

Eighteen Individual Eyes are playing The Comet Tavern this Saturday, June 30th to celebrate the release of Crybaby studios' new compilation album. Themed around the earth's apocalypse, the unique collection of songs features twelve bands.

The band, made up of guitarists/singers Irene Barber and Jamie Aaron, bassist Samantha Wood, and drummer Andy King, put out their debut record Unnovae Nights back in March. Ten songs in all, the LP reflects a foursome swimming through a nebulous world of dreams and reality. Opening track "Unnovae Nights" is dynamic and pensive, illumined by the singer's crystal clear voice over intermittent swells of distortion.

"Rosebud Youth" is a standout, with the guitar interplay slowly building as the drums pound out an assertive, rolling beat a la Helms Alee. The ferocity of the instrumentals also recalls the sounds of defunct group These Arms Are Snakes. The vocals are as powerful as they are airy; you can hear a trace of St. Vincent in there.

Elements of psychedelic rock, post-hardcore, and alternative seep out of their songs. Listening to the album in full is a journey worth traversing. On top of their impressive songwriting, producer and recording engineer Matt Bayles makes every track crisp and decisive; they speak to your ears with genuine authority.

Eighteen Individual Eyes are as authentic as they come - check them out at The Comet this Saturday for $7 as they headline alongside Royal Eyes, Murals and Nightmare Forest. They are also playing the Capitol Hill Block Party on July 20th. You may stream or purchase Unnovae Nights over at their bandcamp.

- Cameron LaFlam - The Deli Magazine

by Robin Hilton

This is a simple exercise, but might take some thinking. What album name best sums up your life?

I was going through a stack of newly arrived CDs yesterday and came across one from a band called Eighteen Individual Eyes. The group's new EP (which is worth checking out) is Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy. It immediately struck me that the title completely sums up my entire life.

I asked All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen what album name sums up his life and he offered Saucerful of Secrets by Pink Floyd or Hunky Dory by David Bowie.

So what is it for you? Green Day's American Idiot? My Bloody Valentine's Loveless? Tell us in the comments section below.
- NPR All Songs Considered Blog

“I’ll make you my beast: I’ll make you my prize.”

When Irene Barber–lead singer of Eighteen Individual Eyes–utters those words on “Octogirl”, the second track from the band’s great debut full-length Unnovae Nights, she delivers them with a siren’s allure. The clarion beauty of her voice provides the darkly-tinctured honey that sweetens the angry passions pulsing within those lyrics, and within the Seattle quartet’s instrumental attack. It’s a hungry kiss, delivered with a sharp bite that draws blood.

That exquisite tension runs restlessly all over Unnovae Nights. Cliff’s-edge romanticism, surreal nightmare imagery, and sucker-punch forcefulness intertwine so unpredictably that when Barber sings, “I like the way you dance/I like the way you twist,” you don’t know whether she’s referring to the seductive movements of a lover, or a body swinging on a noose.

Call EIE’s sound gothic math rock. Jamie Aaron’s guitar shifts between swirling goth textures and choppy post-punk riffing, alternately slow-dancing with and scraping against Barber’s voice. Bassist Samantha Wood and drummer Andy King, meantime, form a muscular and unpredictable rhythm section (it’s impossible not to love King’s skittering rimwork and Wood’s urgent low end on “Strawberry Cemetery”). And Barber’s a terrific lyricist, deftly balancing the surreal and poetic with a vein of coital directness. The net result reconciles dreamy shoe-gazer swooning with jagged fury so brilliantly, you wonder why more bands haven’t forged a similar path.

Ironically, one of the album’s biggest assets–the visceral work of producer Matt Bayles–occasionally becomes a liability. Bayles knows how to bring punch and rawness to a band’s sound (he’s done similar honors for Cursive and local boys Minus the Bear), but a few of the tracks might’ve benefited from a slightly lighter touch. Fortunately, even when Bayles mixes King’s drumming to almost overbearing heaviness, Aaron’s lush wall of guitar atmospherics and Barber’s soaring voice emerge to save the day.

There’s plenty of competition for the best cut on Unnovae Nights, but right now the one that’s embedded itself in my brain most insistently is “Rosebud Youth.” Aaron’s guitars veer between shrieking noise and ragged beauty; Barber and Aaron belt out their most intoxicating vocal harmonies (they sound like an indie-rock Cocteau Twins here); and King and Wood pound out a rhythm that throbs like an accelerated, love-struck heartbeat. It’s the exhilarating, slightly scary sound of every all-or-nothing crush you’ve ever felt, replete with the faintest taste of blood at the corner of a bitten lip. And it rocks. - The Sun Break

One of the more interesting recent exports from Seattle is the all-female quartet Eighteen Individual Eyes. Part Sonic Youth, part Fleetwood Mac, and all sexy, nocturnal rock music, these gals angle toward the classics and away from genre restrictions. If you recall early ’90s Seattle group Mavis Piggott, there are some charming similarities to be heard. NATHAN CARSON - Willamette Week, Portland, OR

* Eighteen Individual Eyes, Unnovae Nights (3/6, self-released, eighteenindividualeyes.com): The opening and title track from EIE's first full-length pulses with feverish melodies, thick, buzzy guitars, and Irene Barber's luxuriant vocals. Happily, the rest of the album keeps to the same uniquely beautiful and compelling blueprint. ERIN K. THOMPSON (* = recommended) - Seattle Weekly

Eighteen Individual Eyes are a highly under-appreciated group of locals and they managed to produce some of the more well-crafted rock songs of the year. Produced by Matt Bayles (of Minus the Bear), Unnovae Nights is a refreshingly different type of rock record. It focuses on melodies and vocals but also has an edge of aggression and loudness. - Guerrilla Candy

Eighteen Individual Eyes are a highly under-appreciated group of locals and they managed to produce some of the more well-crafted rock songs of the year. Produced by Matt Bayles (of Minus the Bear), Unnovae Nights is a refreshingly different type of rock record. It focuses on melodies and vocals but also has an edge of aggression and loudness. - Guerrilla Candy

"It all started when Sam [Wood] decided to watch a black hole documentary. How else do album titles come about?" says Eighteen Individual Eyes singer Irene Barber, explaining where the band's new full-length record title, Unnovae Nights, comes from. "Unnovae is a term to describe the possibility of a star simply vanishing, fizzling out to its death," she continues. "This is the opposite of a supernova, when a star dies with a bang. We felt the term fit the mood of our songs—a beautiful yet unsettling scene."


Upon first listen, it's easy to get captivated by Barber's elegant vocals, which are reminiscent of Annie Clark of St. Vincent. But if you allow yourself to fall a little deeper into the songs of Nights, it reveals an even more hypnotic and haunting tapestry of fuzzed guitar, jagged beats, and angular rhythms, and soon the fluid and sexy textures paint a picture that's more doomed than you first imagined.

In "Strawberry Cemetery," Barber snaps off lines about wanting the best for someone. She may be sincere, but she's not happy about it. Songs like "Octogirl" and "Four Poses" also deliver with equal parts loveliness and prickliness. Song after song, EIE prove to be a band that will lure you in for a kiss and then bite your lip.

Based on a positive result from recording the single "Luck of the Elephants," the band—rounded out by Jamie Aaron on guitar, Samantha Wood on bass, and newcomer Andy King on drums—again tapped prolific Seattle producer Matt Bayles (Isis, Russian Circles, tons more) to capture their delicately balanced dynamics on record. "He took what we already thought was good and helped us fully realize it while keeping our existing essence, existing edge," says Barber.

Furthermore, she says they're excited to bring in King, who's previously worked with Lovesick Empire and See Me River, on drums. "He interprets the songs with a good balance of oomph and style. The CD release will be our first live show with Andy, and we're excited to present what we think is a stronger, more focused EIE." - The Stranger

As March rolled in and slowly began granting Seattle more hours of sunshine, Eighteen Individual Eyes made sure the city still had a tantalizing taste of darkness. The Seattle quartet’s new album Unnovae Nights sounds like Wild Flag-meets-atmospheric art rock with a dash of nightmarish imagery.

Something sinister seems to be lurking around every corner of Unnovae Nights, but front woman Irene Barber’s alluringly smooth vocals help soothe the potential in a way that harkens to St. Vincent. While the album is packed with song titles like “Octogirl” and lines like “Love for fate. The place and time of death addressed and kept away,” the album avoids being dark in a cheesy way. This isn’t horror punk hokeyness. The interaction between Barber and guitarist Jamie Aaron gives the album a real identity. The coy interplay between their guitar lines on songs like “Tree Farm in the Darkness” builds each song’s tension, and Aaron also provides spot-on background harmonies.

Famed Seattleite producer Matt Bayles has his fingerprints all over Unnovae Nights. He knows how to make a rhythm section (drummer Andy King and bassist Samantha Wood) pop without burying the guitars in the mix (see: Mastadon, Minus the Bear, et al.). Some of the ripping lead guitar tones Eighteen Individual Eyes employ are also instantly familiar for fans of Bayles’s production. While tracks often show glances of math rock influence, they’re never tied down in technicality. These songs have solid cores that would still sound full even stripped down to Barber’s vocals and a single acoustic guitar.

Unnovae Nights is, appropriately, one of those albums that one can hardly imagine listening to in the day. Eighteen Individual Eyes are here to satisfy our nocturnal listening needs. Maybe those extra hours of daylight weren’t so great after all.

UPDATED 4/25/12. Eighteen Individual Eyes will play Neumos on April 26, and has joined the Capitol Hill Block Party lineup. - Seattle Met Magazine

Ahhh... the sweet, sweaty siren song of the old Comet Tavern! Can you hear it? CAN YOU? It's calling us, yes, again, my darling 'mos, luring us to our delicious ruin. (Holy faggin' moly. It's safe to declare a small victory in the gay land-rights war, I think. Time to redecorate!) Tonight our Cometing is all about some seriously awesome lezbosexual banditas called Eighteen Individual Eyes, the self-proclaimed #2 Lezbo Band in Seattle. (The #1 Lezbo Band in Seattle? Any guesses? Anyone?) I've mentioned this luverly lezband before—a looong, long time ago, so if you forgot, what you need to know is that they are a group of wimmin-lurving-wimmin, draped in talent, festooned with instruments, and dripping in warm delicious AWESOME SAUCE. With Agent Ribbons (all the way from Austin, T—forgive them) and Slow Skate. Comet, 9 pm, $7, 21+. - The Stranger

May 9th, 2011

Music fills up space in my life, an enormous space. It’s mostly the playing of it (even now I pause to pluck a few notes of a song called “I Might Be Wrong”), but there’s recording too, listening, and yes, writing about it. It is a force, a connection to the spirit world. I visited a friend of mine in L.A. last fall, and we discussed the things we fear about getting older. She’s a screenwriter but also has MS, thus the possibility of blindness is quite real, and for someone who loves movies that is indeed something to fear. For me of course, the great fear is going deaf, not being able to hear a D chord cranked to eleven, having to imagine it, wondering if I was getting it right or forgetting it altogether. It would create a great empty space in my life, the loss of music. Perhaps that’s why I see so many bands now. I’m stocking up, preparing for the possible emergency, the empty space.

I found myself then at the Comet last Friday for Eighteen Individual Eyes. They are the third all female band I’ve seen this year. And they win hands down. The band takes its name from a modified line from the Sylvia Plath novel The Bell Jar, and I must say it’s an interesting name. Before I learned the origin of it, I wondered about such a name and the possible euphemism it might be, the sexual connotations it might have. I wanted to see a band with such a name so I found their Facebook page and looked at the song titles. “Treefarm in Darkness” caught my eye so I listened. I liked the song. I decided to email them and write about them, and of course just as Ólöf Arnalds did with her song “Surrender” (my absolute favorite of hers), they did not play “Treefarm in Darkness” at the Comet.

I was a little worried before the show when speaking with the drummer, Jamie Hellgate, because she said she’d been a guitar player before and that she switched to drums because she wanted to play in a band with EIE members and guitarists Irene Barber and Chrysti Harrison. It’s an interesting choice for a guitar player to choose drums rather than bass for such a switch so I feared what the quality might be because I’d experienced it recently, a band that switched instruments nearly every song and lacked any energy for it. I must admit that I worried the night might go in a similar direction.

EIE started their show with a song called “Mares” from their EP. It began with some sparse notes, some noise that sought all parts of the room. A drum groove came in with a simple bass line over it, something a little reminiscent of a Radiohead kind of groove. And I smiled. I love Radiohead, and Ms. Hellgate didn’t hold back on the drums. There was no hesitation in what she played or the force with which she played it. She’d made the change. The song built thus. It was a little trippy and filled the gut as Barber sang, “It’s terrible such a pretty love turned hideous.” And then everything dropped to only guitar notes, some of them delayed, some toms in and out. Spacey. Nice. “No never us, this is not us.” Someone in the audience was blowing bubbles, the guitars built, “No never us, this is not us.” And then there was that groove again with a kind of solo that wasn’t a solo, just big chords and notes. It was noise, but in the good sense of the term.

I was sold then. I liked them after one song. The best though was the closer, “Luck of the Elephants”. It was a little beefier but still had the atmospheric sound of “Mares”. There were guitars that doubled the vocal melody, “So who must die? You or I? Feed me that line again”, chordy notey soloey bits that wound themselves up and spread about the room. They weren’t a band for the blistering solo, and I was glad for it. They rather went for textures and subtleties and endings with driving builds and sustained guitars.

As for winning the all female thing, they do so for those textures and those subtleties and those endings. They play well together, have a musical connection with one another, and though it might seem an obvious necessity, not every band has such. And they don’t draw attention to the fact that they’re an all female group. They’re just a band. They play music, and they do it much better than bands I wrote about here and here. They play music. They create space … and they fill space too. - Seattle Subsonic

We asked Seattle's music insiders to tell us what new bands made the biggest impact in 2010.
- City Arts Magazine

Think Blonde Redhead with a healthy side of rock, and just a smidge of late 90's/early 00's mathiness. If any of you out there were ever into Primrosa, you will probably be into Eighteen Individual Eyes -- point is, they're not to be missed.
- Three Imaginary Girls

The Situation It's past midnight on a Sunday at Capitol Hill's Oddfellows, and I'm the fifth wheel on a girls' night out with the chick-rockers of Eighteen Individual Eyes—Irene Barber, Chrysti Harrison, and newlyweds Jamie Hellgate and Samantha Wood.

Intoxication It's a fact that when girls get together for drinks—beers and pear ciders, in our case—we get giddy, and we get giggly. But this is a tame night by Eyes standards.

"We were at the Satellite, we were getting wasted on the usual tequila, we were having lots and lots of shots," says Harrison. "And it just led to Jamie showing us her fire-crotch."

"And then we went to Mama's and I did it again," says Hellgate.

"Mama's had better light," says Barber.

"I think I closed my eyes," says Wood.

How They Got Here The girls practice and socialize at Hellgate and Wood's Greenwood home. The couple celebrated their nuptials last month. "It was at the Georgetown Ballroom. There was a lot of drinking, our friend DJed it. It was like a big pizza party," says Hellgate.

Tonight, they'd all spent the early part of their evening playing Rock Band. "The only song we couldn't beat was [by] Dashboard Confessional," says Hellgate. "It was hard."

Shop Talk After releasing their debut EP, the haunting and valiant Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy, in January, the band put on the brakes a bit. "We took the summer off to write," says Barber. Was it productive? "No," admits Harrison. "We have one new song."

"We spent the summer just brainstorming on all the songs we're going to write this fall and winter," Barber says. "Gaining inspiration, how about that?" For inspiration, she says, "Songs are always about love. Or being in love with the idea of being in love. The tragedies of love. That's all there really is, I think."

BTW: So what's it like being an all-female band in the rock-and-roll boys' club? "I think the advantage is, when we take the stage, people at least stop and pay attention," says Hellgate. "And we get a lot of positive comments from other women."

Plus there are important hygienic advantages.

"The band smells nice. Our practice space always smells nice," says Barber.
- Seattle Weekly

Seattle's Hungry Pines were a promising, guitar-driven post-rock band whose praises I often sang within these pages. It broke my heart when they broke up. Thankfully, the band members softened the blow by moving on to different but still fantastic projects, two of which you can see tonight. Bassist (and sometimes Stranger-contributor) Bryce Shoemaker plays in Bronze Fawn, a fluid and dynamic instrumental act that supplements its live shows with weird vintage-video footage of stuff like chickens hatching. Eighteen Individual Eyes feature two former Hungry Pine players, singer Irene Barber and guitarist Chrysti Harrison. EIE flirt with the same guitar-heavy, melodramatic sound Hungry Pines had, and Barber's gorgeous voice remains the backbone of their songs. Bonus: It's a Noise for the Needy show, so just showing up and paying at the door means you're doing something good. - The Stranger

Maybe it's because Eighteen Individuals is an all-female band, but there's something unexpectedly soft about their brand of ambient prog rock. Even between the dark, droning guitars of "Rosebud Youth," Irene Barber's melodic, lovely vocals are front and center. That song is just one example of the Seattle four-piece's ability to dance delicately between darkness and light. There are some rollicking, bouncy guitars in the middle of "Treeform in Darkness" that would fit right in with doo-wop vocals--but those chords are quickly replaced with fuzzed-out licks. This lightness is clearer on the band's EP, Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy, where the instrumentals find perfect balance and allow Barber's voice clarity. But even then, there's a persistent toughness to EIE's steady drum and distorted guitars. These musicians will toy with traditional femininity, but they'd rather sound interesting than pretty. EIE will push the envelope before being pushed around. - Seattle Weekly

Eighteen Individual Eyes performs at the Sunset tonight before they take their magical space-prog pop on the road for what guitarist/vocalist Irene Barber tells me will be a brief “Girly Fun Tour” — which I am guessing will contain plenty of mind expanding moments such as this. Awesome! If you have yet to hip yourself to EIE and their brand of dreamy-sounds-meet-angular-rhythms rock, tonight’s tour kick-off will be a great introduction - as I know the band is more than oiled and primed for the musical vacation they are about to embark on, further promoting their excellent debut release, Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy. Plus, with wonderful openers Levator and Bone Cave Ballet on the bill, and a measly $6 cover, there is no way you can lose! Do this!

EIE Mini-Tour Dates
3/18 - Sunset - w/Bone Cave Ballet and Levator - Seattle, Washington

3/19 - The Space - Salem, Oregon

3/20 - Black Forest — w/The Dead Americans and Fancy Bandits - Eugene, Oregon

3/22 - El Rio — w/ The Heated and Mama Lion - San Francisco, California

3/23 - Di Piazza Lounge - Long Beach, California

3/24 - The Cat Club - Los Angeles, California

3/25 - DIVEBAR - Las Vegas, Nevada

3/26 - Biggest Little City Club - Reno, Nevada

3/27 - Musichead - Medford, Oregon
- The Stranger Line Out

Our own Eighteen Individual Eyes is going out on a self-funded tour, and they’re kicking it off tonight at The Sunset Tavern. Eighteen Individual Eyes has a lo-fi, garage sound accented by sweet, feminine vocals. Their sound is quite duplicitous. Dark minor tones wrapped in light distortion creates an ominous ambiance while the lead vocalist voice lifts like the morning song of a bird. This could be an awesome band to see live; they’re definitely worth a closer look. Check out their music here, and see them for yourself tonight at The Sunset Tavern. - Seattle Show Gal

On its debut EP, Eighteen Individual Eyes serves up some old-school flavor. The Seattle quartet evokes the dark dreaminess of The Sundays mixed with an angular rock sound that seems particular to the Emerald City. In fact, it's hard not to think of Silkworm (a 1990s Seattle-via-Missoula rock band), especially on "Rosebud Youth," where the minor chords waver with buzzing post-punk.

Eighteen Individual Eyes is comprised of former local Jamie Henkensiefken (aka Jamie Hellgate) formerly of H is for Hellgate, and Irene Barber and Chrysti Harrison of Seattle duo Hungry Pines, plus newly inducted bassist Samantha Wood. Henkensiefken steps back from her usual position as guitarist/singer to play drums, while Barber sings.

And it's quite a change. While Henkensiefken always coupled mathy guitar with burning, powerful vocals, Barber is far more even-keeled and ethereal. And that's fine, but it does cancel out any grittiness. Listening to Barber's vocals is like looking at a perfect butterfly behind glass. Or like floating in a cloudy dream. Not that it's a lifeless recording, but it is distant and with few rough edges to admire. - Missoula Independent

So I was a tad excited that Ramona Falls was playing The Crocodile last Sunday. Opening for them was local all-girl Eighteen Individual Eyes. It was obvious from the start that Eyes is comprised of fantastic musicians. What really makes the group interesting is the composition of their songs. They aren't easy to listen to or short, fun quippy pieces. There's something to be said about crowd-pleasing music, but there's a lot to be said for unadulterated talent. Several of their songs started out with at least a couple minutes of complex instrumental lead-in. It'll take a couple listens of their EP, Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy, to really get it, but I think that's the sign of something really great. I was left feeling a little mixed in the best way possible. - The Sun Break

And if you miss H Is for Hellgate as much as I do, then you'll be happy to hear that singer Jamie Henkensiefken has buddied up with some of the lovely ladies from Hungry Pines (who also broke up! Argh!) to form a beautiful, haunting, and guitar-heavy indie-rock outfit called Eighteen Individual Eyes—and they've already released an EP! Slightly Frightened, Mostly Happy is in stores now. - The Stranger