Pages tagged “bodies of water”

Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.

Fun Fact: In high school, founding member David Metcalf was in a band called Hitler’s Gay Son.

Why They’re Worth Watching: The prog-meets-gospel-meets-psych pop of the band's second full-length, A Certain Feeling, boasts an enticing mix of rich vocal harmonies, proggy guitar jams and lively horn flourishes.

For Fans Of: Arcade Fire, Yes, Os Mutantes, Polyphonic Spree

Grand, theatrical, multi-part arrangements. Bold group harmonies. The lingering presence of an organ. All of the above created by a set of musicians anchored by a husband-and-wife team.

A couple of issues back, Paste sent out a proclamation that Bodies of Water were one of four bands to watch for the month of September. Well, November's not even through yet, and Bodies of Water have already made good on that two-month old promise by landing distribution for their exhilarating effort, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink. And it's not just any ol' boutique label that's sending the record to stores; it's the mighty Secretly Canadian, home to Paste faves like Jens Lekman and Antony & the Johnsons.

Previously released on the group's Thousand Tongues label, Ears Will Pop will now hit record stores across the United States on Dec. 4 by way of Secretly Canadian. The rest of the world receives the album Jan. 22. The label's press release for the signing also mentions that the group's first SC release "will happen in the Spring of 2008." Sounds like something worth getting riled up for.

In the meantime, Bodies of Water have sprinkled the Internet with lots of goodies for your enjoyment. Foremost among those is a Take Away Show for La Blogotheque. For those unfamiliar with the series, it features beloved indie bands performing in unconventional locations (Arcade Fire in an elevator, Grizzly Bear in a bathroom, etc.). For this session, Bodies of Water take it to the streets of L.A., bewitching the residents of Chinatown with their giddy sound. Thanks to Pitchfork for alerting us to that.

Also, if you're an .mp3 collector, the group has plenty of those, including a cover of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" completed for Stereogum's Drive XV compilation.

Related links:
Bodies of Water on MySpace
Take Away Show archives
Paste: Stereogum celebrates R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Members (L-R): Kyle Gladden, Jessie Conklin, Meredith Metcalf, David Metcalf
Fun fact: The band's website features an annotated list of David's favorite gospel groups.
Why they're worth watching: Angelenos are already familiar with Bodies of Water's epic sound and furious performances, and the band's first tour is about to introduce it to a national audience.
For fans of: The Polyphonic Spree, Arcade Fire, Danielson

Bodies of Water’s extraordinary debut, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, takes about 40 seconds to reveal its myriad pleasures. The four-part harmonies, dense instrumentation, unabashed grandeur and a deep, unguarded sense of spirituality—it’s all there in the first few moments of opening track “Our Friends Appear Like the Dawn.” Ears Will Pop features horns, strings and Brazilian percussion alongside more traditional rock instrumentation. It’s an unexpected (yet somehow coherent) collision of church-revival theatrics and punk-rock immediacy. The sound of all four band members singing together is a signature, though band lyricist and guitarist David Metcalf says this isn’t by design. “Some of this came from hearing phantom melodies that we wanted to use in certain songs,” he says. “We sang them because we couldn’t really play them on our respective instruments.”

Bodies of Water’s music is equally inventive. With a different approach, the album’s instrumental amalgamation could have sounded staged—a hermetically sealed bit of pop theater. But the band was careful to be as organic as possible: “Rather than tracking everything one instrument at a time,” Metcalf says, “we recorded our four instruments live, all in the same room playing together.”

An intense spirituality and a strong sense of mission also pervade the album’s lyrics, with lines such as, “Open the gates / Let heaven’s floodgates open wide.” “Our faith is the definitive influence on how we exist in the world,” Metcalf says. “So our songs are naturally informed by that.” But, as with everything else on Ears Will Pop, big ideas comfortably coexist with spontaneity: “Our only spiritual agenda is to try to make a noise pleasing to the Divine ear, and sometimes that involves screwing around and rocking out.”