In this episode we feature a band from New York, (The States) We feature several tracks from their upcoming new album "The Path of Least Resistance". It is due out on August 14th so be sure to check out their website for more updates and tour info.
Band: The States Website: www.thestatesonline.com Albums: "Multiply Not Divide" 2006 "The Path of Least Resistance" Aug 14th, 2007
Bio: Halfway through the performance of a new song, “Charm Offensive,” Chris Snyder, the frontman of The States, a New York-based rock act, lets go of his guitar and reaches out past the microphone, as if seeking a deeper connection to the crowd. It is a Wednesday night and the hour is nearing eleven—not the best hour to be onstage for an up-and-coming band. Given the circumstances, you’d expect him to be gesturing towards an empty room. Yet the first thing you notice during the band’s recent show at The Annex, a venue on the Lower East Side, is the size of the crowd - the room is packed. Quickly, however, it becomes apparent why The States might attract a larger-than-average audience. Their sound is tight and focused. Songs are full, breakneck affairs, packed with melodic and rhythmic ideas, yet refined by an uncommon discipline, catchy and intelligent in equal measure. You hear some classical influences alongside more expected forbearers such as Joy Division and U2. In a blistering, forty-five-minute set full of delicate melodies and thrashing choruses, The States unpack the richly produced songs from their new CD, The Path of Least Resistance, into a vibrant, gritty live show. The States, who recently appeared at this year’s South by Southwest festival, haven’t played New York in months, the consequence of spending a long winter putting together their sophomore effort. “It’s a painstaking process, a truly collective process,” says Snyder of the band’s songwriting. “It can take us a month or more to finish a song.” Snyder, along with the bassist Previn Warren, who also turned in piano and keyboard parts for the record, represent the band’s braintrust and the source of its perfectionist ethic. They met at Harvard in 2002; both relocated to New York after graduating in 2004. Having lost their original stickman in the transition, they hired Joe Stroll, a dexterously talented drummer of the classic eight-armed variety who places special emphasis on muscle and volume. (He used to hit the drums with the fat end of the stick to create a louder sound.) Creative tension has long been the fuel for good bands; The States are no exception. Snyder’s precise aesthetic sensibilities collide with the rougher strike pad of Stroll’s obvious punk influences; small fires burn everywhere in the band’s catalog. On The Path of Least Resistance, these competing elements produce surprising, satisfying arrangements. As Stroll says, “We spend a lot of time jamming on one idea and being unsatisfied or frustrated that no one’s on the same page, but then something small changes, and it becomes a great idea—it’s a pretty magical moment when that happens.”
The band’s first release, Multiply Not Divide (2006), showed signs of the band’s emerging sound. It was, by any definition, a D.I.Y. affair. Recorded during three sleepless days and subsequently mixed in Snyder’s cramped Brooklyn apartment, it revealed three young and idealistic musicians, confident that they’d latched onto a rare musical concoction of intellect, power, and melodic instinct, beginning to experiment with its chemistry. The Path of Least Resistance displays a brash new confidence. The band’s sonic palette has expanded dramatically: piano interludes and choiresque backing vocals slide into synthy bass hooks and startling walls of distorted guitars. It is a stunning leap forward that points towards a promising career.
Lyrically, the band has also refined its vision. The new songs are very much in tune with their political moment. “We knew we wanted to write a political record,” says Snyder, and many songs on the new album do have a distinctly political edge: “The Architect” (nation-building), “Black Jack” (lobbyists), and “New Land” (gentrification). But this isn’t the typical rock and roll protest record. Rather, The States exude a comfort with ambiguity and nuance often lacking in politically charged music. “We spend a lot of time in the van talking about the things that preoccupy us, and politics is one of those things,” says Snyder. “But,” he continues, “we hardly ever agree. We write songs about this stuff because that’s what’s on our minds, not because we have one towering political statement to make.”
Beneath the politics runs the album’s deeper theme, self-deception. The album’s songs are replete with lying and liars—warmongers and lobbyists, in addition to that garden-variety deceiver, the ambivalent lover. Not surprisingly, then, the band has produced a much darker record. But the songs on The Path of Least Resistance never succumb to hopelessness. Rather, the band writes in an exuberant sonic mode—its talent is for room-filling swoops of guitar, fist-pumping eruptions of bass and drums, a sound full of joy, kicks, life. “Our message is bigger than politics,” says Snyder. “I think if we had one thing to say, it would be, care about the world you live in. Think about what’s going on in your community and your country and the world. Think about what matters to you. Speak up.”
Track List: 1. CCTV (I'm a Star) 2. Charm Offensive 3. Black Jack 4. Be Good Tonight 5. All the Salt in the Sea
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