Rare Americans

With a stream of conscious set of lyrics, Rare Americans boast a high energy rock and roll to their soundscape. Opening immediately with “Cats, Dogs & Rats,” it kicks down the door and presents the hook heavy, ear worm styled tune ready to take this Friday to another level. This duo keeps their lively vigor ringing through each progression, never slowing down in the witty “Fuck You World” or frenetic “I Vs I.” This is a record that has to be enjoyed with loud speakers, an infectious smile and plenty of head banging. Take a listen to this exclusive premiere of the self-titled record by Rare Americans. - New Noise Magazine

The duo enjoy and draw inspiration from a diverse collection of artists including the Arctic Monkeys, Modest Mouse, Bad Religion and Run the Jewels. This combination of influences induces cathartic feelings in listeners with the band’s signature use of rowdy chants and spooky guitar riffs in their music.

Rare Americans is a cohesive, honest representation of the band’s true sound. Its raw lyricism coerces the listener to look inward but also outward at the corruption in their own communities. This induced self-reflection makes the Rare Americans listening experience a sobering one, but doesn’t bog the listener down. Rather, the sound of Rare Americans is quite invigorating. - Culture Addicts

Alt. rock trio Rare Americans’ debut release certainly packs a punch, with its growing atmospheric soundscapes and powerfully charged lyrics.

Joining forces with Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, The Shins bassist Yuuki Matthews and White Stripes producer Joe Chiccarelli, the band have recorded the 13-track LP as a look at social and political problems.

Old-school American punk bleeds throughout each track on the album, with scuzzy riffs and boisterous chanting predominant features. Third track Balmoral Hotel introduces melodic female vocals before launching into rap verses that encase swirling synths in the chorus, whereas Cats, Dogs & Rats opens the album on punkier instrumentals with piercing guitar lines.
Although the underlying tones of punk remain present throughout, there’s a journey of genres on this album that is pretty impressive. It’s a bit funky, a bit folky and there’s heavier notes against delicate arrangements, all whilst radiating an early noughties nostalgic rock vibe.

A one for fans of Twenty One Pilots – it’s a double thumbs up from me. - Narc Magazine

Artist: Rare Americans

Song: Cats, Dogs & Rats

Album: Rare Americans

Genre: Alternative, Punk, Pop Punk

According to their bio, the Priestner brothers had never written a song together until a year ago. If that’s true, then the Rare Americans‘ self-titled debut album is a pretty impressive feat. While they give credit to a Slovakian guitar virtuoso named Lubo as well, there’s still a brazen confidence to the Canadian brothers’ gritty and grimy collection of songs.

Single “Cats, Dogs & Rats” is the group at their catchiest. Gloriously messy, the verses are delivered in a rapped/spat manner, calling to mind Say Anything or Twenty One Pilots, but help it all go down with a wallop of sugar on the singalong gang chorus. The song seems to be a rough view about the difficulties and mundanity of modern life, coming to the ending conclusion “Numbers matter. We’re all stats.”

This group deserves to be more than another alternative rock band statistic. Give a listen to the song below. - The Indy Review

Never let it be said that Rare Americans don't look after their fans.

The band - Canadian brothers James and Jared Priestner and guitar virtuoso Lubo Ivan - are working on a new album, a fresh vessel for their biting, infectious indie rock.

Preparing a series of single drops, the group also helped construct videos for each song. 'Cats, Dogs & Rats' is a snappy piece of guitar music, the slight pop edge in the chorus offset by those leering vocals.

Intelligently pieced together, the animated visuals are a sight to behold, building on each lyrical phrase to craft its own universe.

We're able to host the video, and as if that wasn't enough Rare Americans are also giving away the guitar the song was written on.

A superb opportunity for fans, you can get involved in the competition HERE. - Clash Magazine

Up-and-coming pop-punk band Rare Americans just dropped their new song “I Vs I.” With fun, energetic riffs, the track delves into the idea of being at war with oneself and not being concrete in one’s decisions. The video also touches on heavy subjects, such as bullying and mental health. - Alternative Press

Rare Americans release their new music video, “Cats, Dogs, & Rats” today. The video makes use of a colorful, low-fi animation style (courtesy of Harry Tietelman, who animated Killer Mike of Run The Jewels video for “Reagan,” seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU), and traces the life of a criminal cat who winds up serving time in a prison of dogs. Watch here
Rare Americans enjoy and draws inspiration from the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Modest Mouse, Bad Religion and Run the Jewels. Stylistic elements from these artists are evident in the unique blend of indie and alternative sound from Rare Americans.
“Cats, Dogs, & Rats” is a truly unique video pushing the traditional visual boundaries of an punk influenced alt-indie group like Rare Americans. The video is available for viewing on YouTube and Rare Americans’ social media profiles. - Vents Magazine

Rare Americans, rare, possibly because they’re from Canada, are one of those bands who seem too good to be true; who have already nailed their sound so thoroughly that you aren’t so much looking for bands to compare them to but are already using them as the yardstick by which all others must be judged.

Take the video for starters. This is the kind of animated video a Grammy-stuffed rock band produce 20 years into their career (and this isn’t meant in a negative way). It’s thrillingly slick, yet hits all the contrary punk notes along the way: like the track itself, it’s stridently confident, with blatant disregard for critics and naysayers – this is fun rock music for people who live their lives eating and drinking the stuff.

When their former band, The Lunas, dissembled, front man James Priestner and guitarist Lubo Ivan didn’t have to look far for a new recruit. During a family holiday in The Caribbean, front man James uncovered a song writing chemistry with his brother, Jared. Now based in Vancouver, churning out a seemingly endless stream of acoustic punk-pop bullets, Rare Americans are the real deal and are here for the long game.

Though the Canadian upstarts cite The Strokes, Rancid, and Bad Religion among their influences, it’s an early Beastie Boys dynamic that really defines them, from attitude to style to sound. Their genre-bending anthems are topped off by gang vocals from friends that were available on the days of vocal tracking, underscoring the recording process as a truly inclusive and DIY process.

“We like to write songs about the underbelly of society. I find we often have all sorts of crazy characters in our songs dealing with a multitude of different problems that life presents us all.”

The album was mastered by producer Joe Chiccarelli (White Stripes, The Strokes), while drummer Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, The Shins) and bassist Yukki Matthews (The Shins) aided backing duties in the studio. The animated video is courtesy of Brooklyn-based artist Harry Tietelman (Adult Swim/Killer Mike’s “Reagan” video). - Sonic News

Rare Americans formed in August 2018. More than a few other bands probably did as well. None of these has their branding together as brilliantly as Rare Americans does.

Only months out of the gate, the band comprised of brothers Jared and James Priester and guitarist Lubo Ivan delivered a promotional kit to the newspaper office that rivalled — heck, eclipsed — any other artists who have submitted an album for consideration in 2018. In fact, it’s been well over a decade since any band put this much invention and creativity in trying to get its music mentioned. That this story exists proves they got it right.

The custom tin lunch box has the group’s album-cover logo of a stoner horse chilling on the couch embossed on it. Open it up and there is practically everything to enhance the listening experience or at least the tools to get there. One large bartender-weight bottle opener, one plastic cannabis grinder, squares of chocolate, a deck of weird playing cards (more on those later) and some minty fresh gum are all included. There are also two printed cards in the container. One with FAQs on one side and captured comments from listeners commenting on the band’s songs on its Facebook site. The other has a band bio — genre: Alt Pop Punk — and a photo of James Priester and Ivan. Jared is the behind-the-scenes fella.

Everything has the group’s logo on it. And the rareamericans.com website gets pitched to you on everything as well. This isn’t what you usually get from beginner indie-rock acts. In fact, even megastar crews don’t usually manage this level of marketing.

“Lubo and I were in another band before called the Lunas that toured Canada a few times and was going along really well and had recorded an EP,” said James Priester. “Then I took a trip to the Caribbean with my brother Jared and joked I would bring along my guitar so we could drink a few beers and write a song or two together. He’d never written a song before and we’d never written together, but we sat down and wrote an entire album.”

The music that emerged was of a very different style than the Lunas, far less groovy and much more punk-influenced. But the 15 tunes hit the right notes with the siblings and with guitar virtuoso Ivan. Six months later, the group was contacting 10-time Grammy Award-winning producer Joe Chiccarelli (The White Stripes, Arkells, Spoon) and hiring drummer Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, The Shins, Cold War Kids) to record the self-titled debut. It took 3 1/2 weeks at Bear Creek Studios in Seattle to arrive at a finished album.

“From there, we knew that we had to do something more unique with the brand marketing to get attention because there is a lot of noise out there,” said James Priester. “So we designed the packages and sourced producers in China to make them up, shipped off about 500 of them and it worked really well for us getting onto radio. In the States we charted on the NACC (North American College & Community Radio Chart) radio.”

Rare Americans also put its main emphasis on producing videos. James runs a production company in Vancouver so he was up on how to concept a video. The band steadily built its online profile with high-quality clips for songs such as Balmoral Hotel and the Barry Tielman (Run the Jewels, others) animated piece for Cats, Dogs & Rats. Along with a goofy chat segment with James and Lubo sipping coffee and telling stories, this approach has netted the group claims over six million YouTube views. They plan on using the same director for another video to come off of the second album, which they’re already working on.

This group is a well-oiled machine, and getting the results they wanted below the border. At home, it’s a different story.

“It’s almost all-American airplay, with Canada being a lot more difficult,” he said. “It’s often really hard to break into America, so we’re not complaining, but it’s like working in reverse. We had a bit of play on the Zone in Victoria, a little bit in Saskatoon, Calgary and recently we’ve been picked up at the rock station in Humboldt (Sask.).”

With a sound that is compared in the band’s own literature with chart-toppers Twenty One Pilots and groups such as the Offspring and Cake, Rare Americans’ music certainly seems ripe for the Canadian market. But that has never been an easy one to break into for an indie artist. At this stage, the group is going to keep at it by themselves.

It’s not inexpensive to produce the promotional kits such as this, but the members seem to be keeping costs low and not transferring them to their fans. The complete lunch-box kit with a band T-shirt retails for $50 at the store on the band’s website, which is a standard price for just a shirt at any arena show. As James says, they’re trying to go after it hard using all of the skill set they possess to do it. The Priester brothers grew up working in the family company called Go Auto, dealing with all aspects of the car business and learned plenty about marketing in the process.

“We didn’t want to play small ball, so we’re going after it any way we can,” said James. “Jared, Lubo and I write the songs and then Lubo and I are in the performing group with bassist Jeff Quinn and some others. We’re putting all of our efforts into building the brand up and developing a solid online following so that we can tour hard in 2019.”

A U.K. tour is in the works, followed by major markets in North America. There will be a second album by then as well. James says that they keep a close eye on their internet numbers to see where the people are and to plan carefully on how to reinforce those relationships, as well as build new ones. He doesn’t think that being so organized runs counter to the rock ‘n’ roll spirit either.

“I think you have to be organized and thinking ahead,” he said. “We did a business plan, spent a lot of time with the analytics and just tried advertising on Spotify for the first time recently. You can’t fly by the seat of your pants anymore, there is just way too much noise out there to drown your listeners out.”

Acting as their own label, distribution and marketing team takes a lot of time. But James says that the margins are far too low to bring any one else into the business at this stage. Nothing happens overnight, but Rare Americans sees the path its following clearly.

The band hasn’t played a single show yet. - Vancouver Sun