- Artist: The Autumns
- Title: Fake Noise From A Box Of Toys
- Label: Bella Union
- Release Date: Apr 15, 2008
click to download CD cover- Track Listing:
- 1. Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
- 2. Boys: (download)
- 3. Clem: (stream)
- 4. Midnight Knock
- 5. Killer In Drag
- 6. Night Music
- 7. Only Young
- 8. Glass Jaw
- 9. Uncle Slim
- 10. Beautiful Boot
- 11. Adelaide
- 12. Oh My Heart
"Fake Noise from a Box of Toys" is the spectacular new record from one of the most admired cult acts in the US... The Autumns.
Back in the mid-90s, high schoolers Frankie Koroshec and Matthew Kelly began swapping records and exchanging notes on their musical idols. Most prominent among them were the Manchester lot, the Smiths and Stone Roses especially. As aspiring guitarists, Koroshec and Kelly would spend hours untangling Johnny Marr's impossible webs of jangling genius, often to little avail. As any current Autumns listener can detect, however, the exercise played a seminal role in forging the duo's musical mindset.
As with many American youths, college proved a Pandora's box of artistic exposure for Koroshec and Kelly. Among others, the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth were thrown generously into the mix. The two were soon compelled to strike out on their own. They conscripted several musician friends to begin playing shows around Los Angeles. By the late 90s, The Autumns had drawn their various influences together to create a unique and identifiable sound -- one that drew an eclectic mod-to-goth spectrum of twenty-somethings out to LA nightclubs by the hundreds. That year, the budding but ill-fated Risk Records signed the group, releasing an EP (Suicide at Strell Park) and full-length album (The Angel Pool). Both were well received. Flipside deemed The Angel Pool a "hypnotic pop masterpiece" and CMJ called the band "an enlightening unit that knows its past but pushes toward the future." The record eventually generated waves big enough to roll across the Atlantic and brush a figure critical in the band's own development: Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde.
Raymonde heard demos the band had tracked with producer Andy Metcalfe (Squeeze, Soft Boys) and notified Risk of his interest. Naturally, the label had little trouble persuading the band to collaborate with Raymonde. Within a few months, the band were in London to begin work on In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour, the Autumns' second LP. Things were looking good. Upon its release, the album hung at the upper end of the college radio charts for weeks on end. LA's premier "alternative" rock station, KROQ, interviewed the band. The LA Times ran a cover story on them. Even MTV got into the act, turning up at LA's Troubadour to film an Autumns show. Then, without warning, Risk Records collapsed, and with it went Russet Gold.
The Autumns would continue to experiment over the coming years. Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Angela Shelton hired the band to score her movie, Searching for Angela Shelton. The film went on to garner wide praise, taking numerous festival prizes in the process. Soon after this, the band hunkered down in engineer Jamie Seyberth's (Teenage Fanclub, Beachwood Sparks) studio and patiently sculpted an ambitious new full-length. A couple of years later Bella Union released the self-titled album to considerable critical acclaim in 2004. The UK press found it particularly appetizing, as the press quotes below testify...
"this is one glorious album from a band which can produce music that is unutterably beautiful but also hugely powerful."
MOJO - 4 Stars ****
"an A&R man's indie rock wet dream, replete with a lavish phalanx of guitars and singer Matt Kelly's acrobatic falsetto pitched equidistantly between Jeff Buckley and Muse's Matt Bellamy. Impressive stuff."
Q - 4 Stars ****
"Mixing slivery guitar patterns with raging feedback and FX pedals, The Autumns successfully harness shoegazing's euphoric tendencies with Snowpatrol / Keane anthemics. Searing drama rock."
Uncut - 4 Stars ****
"This album has such majestic chutzpah that the epic gene in you will simply surrender"
The Times - 4 Stars ****
After touring the record with label-mates The Dears, the band was eager to return to the writing process and intent on departing from the languorous quality of its earlier material in favour of a sharper and more immediate sound. It is not surprising that The Autumns' forthcoming album - Fake Noise From a Box of Toys - is a radical departure from their earlier work. The songs slice and dice with a frenzied precision, their pummelling pace interrupted only sparingly by the more serene fare of Autumns previous sound. And yet the latter emerge all the more lovely from the record's generally rough relief...
The Autumns are...
Matthew Kelly - voice, guitar
Frankie Koroshec - guitar
Dustin Morgan - bass
Ken Tighe - guitar
Steve Elkins - drums