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Though they describe themselves as "Folk, New Wave, Trip Hop," Eureka Gold's music is uplifting in the way of early 1960s Brit rock was and humble like early American folk. The track below, "Peter Oh," is a cymbal-shimmering summer pleasure, laced with "la la las" and mellifluous lines like " The Sun's just another star." You'll hear the The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel influences, and easily align these folks with contemporaries like The Explorer's Club or Fanfarlo. Perfect soundtrack to sunny lazy days in the park. Keep an eye out on an upcoming album from these kids.
-Faith-Ann Young - RCRDLBL.com
Sometimes playful and other times wistful, local quintet Eureka Gold blend the stylings of The Flaming Lips and The Kinks to craft clever and brightly colored indie-pop gems. - The Nashville Scene
This year’s stellar local debut wasn’t released on any of our burgeoning local rock labels. Instead, it was done the way all the cool kids are doing it these days—by themselves. Eureka Gold’s self-titled debut is filled with sprightly, quirky, ’60s-influenced pop. From the opening acoustic jaunt of “Belly Full of Wine,” it’s clear that this quartet have a refined sense of identity well beyond their limited catalog. Pretty, catchy and idiosyncratic, songs such as the head-nodding “Peter Oh” shimmer with pop gloss. Well-executed vocal harmonies, such as the doo-wop influenced background cooing of “Come Back,” add another layer of richness to their already-plush palette. Some songs also feature a nice little vintage rock shimmy, picking up the pace and showcasing these newcomers’ promising range. —LEE STABERT - The Nashville Scene
Eureka Gold
As the story goes, Archimedes leaped from the bath and ran naked down the street shouting “Eureka!” because he’d figured out how to figure out whether a crown made for the king was really solid gold. As it turns out, this story is probably not true. But if the old fable is at all instructive when listening to local rockers Eureka Gold, we can rule out mathematics, at least where the “math rock” designation is concerned: their driving, melodic style is more ’60s California than calculus. And if “eureka” means “I found it,” then the name certainly fits—with melodies soaked in sunshine, Eureka Gold are definitely on to something. On their recent eponymous album, there’s a palpable, freewheeling energy that runs through from the opening track, “Belly Full of Wine,” which sounds almost like a less-blue Blue Cheer, to the languid rim-shot shuffle of “Duncan and Apelonia,” which closes the proceedings. In between, the band sends pop-rock postcards from all sorts of stylistic landmarks. The rollicking “Do It With My Right” recalls Flake Music (the band that later became The Shins) in its condensation of Pavement-esque quirkiness into a concentrated pop concoction that brings you back to those gold sounds, replete with Beach Boys-style vocal accoutrements. There is much to enjoy in these songs, this is a band with an engaging rhythmic and melodic sense, as next and as big as anything going on in the Nashville indie scene right now—the kind of band that may yet make a splash, so to speak. 8 p.m. at Cannery Ballroom —STEVE HARUCH
- The Nashville Scene
Eureka Gold, celebrating its CD-release, was incredibly catchy. The band is preparing to relocate from Boston to Nashville, and given their sound, it’s understandable. They enchanted the crowd with their twangy, slightly alt-country and slightly synth-pop version of modern indie rock. If one can imagine a proper marriage of The Cars, The Talking Heads and the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, one might get a good idea of what this band has created.
-Kimberly Abruzzo - Northeast Performer Magazine
MONDAY, 21ST
EUREKA GOLD @ THE SPRINGWATER
It seems Nashville’s new-band dossier grows by degrees every day, but it’s the depth and quality rather than mere numbers that impress. Local quintet Eureka Gold work from an extensive palette of harmony-laden folk-pop, classic-rock pastiche and power-pop with a few quirky flourishes of new wave synth thrown in. Much like De Novo Dahl, they reach into different genres and their own city’s roots without delving into Ween-like schizophrenia, pulling their three-part harmonies into crisp pop melodies.
—ANDREW J. SMITHSON - The Nashville Scene
Great production with wise instrumentation! For folks looking for music along the lines of Paul Simon, The Beatles, Saggy Bottom Boys, The Ocean Blue, maybe even Crowded House, Simple Minds and The Beach Boys, you may have found your new fave album!
—- Shok
www.te-er.com - Last.fm
EUREKA GOLD @ THE MERCY LOUNGE For a band full of Berklee-trained musicians, Eureka Gold are surprisingly laissez-faire with their musical approach. Like a technically sound finger-painting, their full-length debut boasts masterful moments of harmony-layered folk-rock without losing the fun, experimental quality often squashed by technical talent. The band makes everything seem deceptively easy. Songwriters Jordan Lehning and Buddy Hughen’s lyrics mix the poetic plainness of Paul Simon with the earthy freedom of Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow” or “Into White.” Despite the fact that their album is only distributed free at live shows, these Boston transplants have quickly moved from notable newcomers to key local players. Plus they have a host of brand new songs, and are markedly tighter and more confident than just a year ago.
—JEREMY RUSH - The Nashville Scene
The first self-titled album from Nashville band Eureka Gold is as colorful and energetic as their name suggests. The band is mainly composed of Boston transplants who attended Berklee, which is evident in the musical maturity of all fifteen tracks on the album.
Stylistic influences are not hidden but rather presented and spun on their heads. These masters of alchemy channel legends such as Paul Simon on the opening track "Belly Full of Wine" and doo-wop era Beatles on the tracks "Rest in the Dew" and "Come Back." Bluegrass and straight up pop music are amalgamated into some kind of frantic musical stew on "Oh My Heart And Soul." Originality runs rampant throughout the album, taking something seemingly familiar and constructing a well-orchestrated landslide that envelops the listener.
The whole album is beautiful. It has extremely well placed sour notes, it’s somber, it’s triumphant, it’s masterfully executed. What else can I say? Buy it, burn it, twist it, bop it. Don’t get obsessed too quickly. -Andrew Brassell - The Deli Magazine - Nashville
Nashville quintet Eureka Gold write smart and catchy indie rock that's rough-hewn, but sweetly melodic. The band's songs mix elements of folk, new wave, and classic rock. - Stereogum
Discography
Eureka Gold - S/T LP 2006
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Bio
Eureka Gold may be a tough band to classify, but they're easy to describe.
Is it indie? FOlk? Country? New Wave? Sure, all of that and more.
That's not how I put it when I sing their praises and spread the work.
I must say they’re good. Really Good.
If I must be permitted an unfortunate pun as a way of introduction to Eureka Gold, I must say they don’t glitter. I mean that, of course, as the highest complement. It’s not often that you hear a new band with so much substance and so little fuss.
I could care less about shiny things. If you’re like me, you look at the bejeweled with bewilderment. But there is a reason gold has value in every civilization, and it’s not just because it’s soft on the eyes. Gold is an incorruptible substance. It doesn’t rust, it doesn’t rot, and no matter how many times, how many ways you cast it, it maintains its allure.
Eureka Gold is aptly named in this sense. They’ve survived a transplant from the chilly, bookish climes of Boston to the decidedly different landscape of Nashville, TN. Unsurprisingly, they’ve prospered. After only a few months, they’ve already earned a reputation as a reliably fantastic live band, building a following even faster than they did in Boston. And that’s saying something.
In another sense, with such incredible raw materials, great tunes are foregone conclusion in any form. Boasting an intuitive songwriting duo of Jordan Lehning and Buddy Hughen, Eureka Gold sound delightfully out-of-place among today’s self-serious indie-elite. Their debut album, Eureka Gold, may be self-titled, self-recorded, self-released, and self-promoted and, most of all, self-assured, but self-serious it ain’t. Though the record is overflowing with catchy hooks and smart choices, you can tell the band hasn’t spent all they’ve got in the bank. They’re not afraid cast their songs playfully, and there’s an inviting sense of fun and experimentation behind the spectacular melodies.
WIth dexterous and sympathetic support from bassist Zack Matthews, keymaster Adam White and drum-buddy Adam Gold, Hughen and Lehning have a lot of room for bold arrangements. An operatic vocal interlude doesn’t squash the lovely “Rest in the Dew” while “My Heart and Soul” rattles and creaks the way a hootenanny oughta. Neither sounds out of place next to the warped new-wave of “Just North” or the expansive Stars Wield.” Anything goes, and goes well.
As students of songcraft and musical history, they’ve read widely. Wary of genre worship and hipster sacred cows, Eureka Gold are songsmiths first and foremost, as hard to classify as they are easy to like. Twisted echoes of everything from the Kinks and Simon and Garfunkel to Joy Division and XTC pop up o their self-recorded debut, but the powerfully catchy songs often manage to conceal the alternately morbid and mordant lyrics.
Eureka Gold, as it turns out, are an exceedingly generous bunch. Their songs have smarts, depth, hooks and style (sometimes a couple of them), and they don’t stop giving after one listen. Eureka Gold doesn’t always dress up their songs in gossamer and rosewater. Sometimes the socks doesn't match. But for a debut album by a young band, Eureka Gold gleams with a very rare substance indeed-promise.
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