The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Late Show

Midnight Spin
11:30
The Grates
10:30

Akudama
9:30

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Fri 7/09
Notes:
21+
Doors: 9:30 PM / Show: 9:30 PM
$10
Tickets
Midnight Spin
myspace
In late 2008, Midnight Spin played a show standing ankle-deep in water inside a flooding Brooklyn venue’s basement. By early 2010, the band found itself performing with legends Guns ‘N Roses at the former CBGB during New York City’s Fashion Week. From risking fatal electrocution to sharing a green room with Axl Rose, their high-energy guitar rock is turning heads across the country.

Brooklyn-based Midnight Spin was named NYC's Best Emerging Artist of 2009 in the Deli Magazine's Readers' Poll, and recently played their Best of NYC Festival in Brooklyn, NY. Fresh off releasing their debut music video, the band has been touring rock clubs and colleges around the country promoting their debut EP "Through the Mojo Wire" produced by Nic Hard (The Bravery). The video for "In the Air (Revival)" will be featured on MTV and FUSE TV On Demand in July 2010.

Recently, Midnight Spin made its national TV debut on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning, and was tracked alongside Slash, Pink Floyd, and Keith Richards in the March issue/cover-mount compilation CD of Classic Rock Magazine (UK). So far this month, they have also been featured on ESPN's Baseball Tonight and Jim Rome's nationally syndicated radio show. The band will be kicking off a 14 city US tour in late July.

Melodic and frenzied, Midnight Spin packs each new venue they play with fans that shake the dance floor while demanding an encore. These guys will break down your door and sleep on your couch.
The Grates
official website
myspace
For The Grates’ debut album Gravity Won’t Get You High (2006, Interscope Records), their signature animal was a giraffe. It was a fitting match: that year, the album towered over all beasts in their native Australia, made mammoth strides, and won the affection of the people, both at home and abroad. Three years later, The Grates present second album, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won: an entirely different animal altogether.

“If Teeth Lost, Hearts Won was a beast, I imagine it’d be like something from Where The Wild Things Are,” lead singer and front woman Patience says. “They’re big and scary. But they’ve also got this sensitivity, and pick up the little kid and protect him.” Drummer Alana thinks, “Or maybe the griffin in Alice In Wonderland,” she says. “He’s like a lion and eagle together, but a really gentle creature.

NEW DIRECTIONS

Upon its release in Australia, Gravity Won’t Get You High immediately shot to the ARIA top-ten, was nominated for awards, and quickly went Gold. The trio slogged it out for two years straight, with sold-out Australian tours, shows in the UK, US and Canada, and garnered gushing press coverage in NME, Rolling Stone, Spin and Filter, amongst others.

Then suddenly: after all the noise, Patience, John (guitars) and Alana found themselves back in their hometown of Brisbane. In contrast to the concert halls and festival stages they’d grown used to, their bedrooms were dead quiet. At first, John found it disconcerting. “It was a huge shift,” John says. “Coming home and having nothing to do except write.”

Instead of deciding their new direction on the spot, the trio opted to churn out song after song, until they struck gold. Luckily, they didn’t have to wait long. Tracks like “Two Kinds of Right” and “Milk Eyes” soon announced themselves as the new yardsticks, and suggested a major evolution. “We wrote a bunch of songs that week,” John says. “And right there was the direction of the new album.” Patience interjects sweetly: “We blew our creative load during that period.”

NEW SKILLS

With Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, The Grates faced a new challenge in the studio: being their own co-producers for the very first time. While producer/engineer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) joined the ride this time, The Grates were alongside him closely at the producer’s desk at Tarquin Studios, a gutted-out attic in Connecticut.

Initially, taking the production helm - occasionally by themselves - scared them. For six weeks, John had stomach pains, expecting something bad was going to happen. “On the first night, we were up having secret band meetings,” he says. “We were saying, ‘How are we going to deal with this?’ But then we decided, we’ve got to suck it up! In the end, taking the role of co-producers proved to be essential for the band’s development.

NEW SONGS

Needless to say, the band’s newfound musical smarts have paid-off. This batch of songs is more sophisticated and punch-in-the-guts catchy than anything they’ve done before. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping first single “Burn Bridges” is a good indicator of The Grates’ new musical direction, but also provides a handy manifesto. “Burn all them bridges down to the ground,” Patience squeals, “cause I won’t be coming this way again.”

“The first album was a bit of a party album,” John says. “With this one, we wanted more guts, something people could hold closer to their hearts and treasure.” Don’t worry, though, The Grates are still as infectiously raucous as ever.

All three nominate slick pop shoe-shuffler “Two Kinds of Right” as a firm favorite. Elsewhere, “Aw Yeah” is a fist-raising rally anthem. “Storms and Fevers” is a rousing, emotional number that swells the throat, moistens the eyes, and makes your collar seem suddenly tight. It’s a no-holds-barred, introspective side of The Grates, rarely seen until now.

NEW FRIENDS

New songs warrant new friends. On the infectious, bubble-gum pop of “Milk Eyes,” you’ll hear Kori Gardner of Mates of State on backing vocals. A mother of two, Gardner has become a poster-child of indie-pop moms. So it’s fitting that “Milk Eyes” was written during Patience’s baby-obsession phase. “Everyone - including some of our managers - were having babies,” she says. “I got super clucky.”

Elsewhere, the rich, hillbilly twang of Brooklyn-based folkie Tim Fite appears on “Not Today,” a demented, whiskey-soured waltz. The Grates had been obsessed with Fite’s cult albums when, by sheer coincidence, they found out that Peter Katis had earlier produced on of his band’s albums. All it took was a phone call, and Tim came on board.

AMERICA

The American release of Teeth Lost, Hearts Won (Thirty Tigers/Dew Process) follows a highly successful trip to the U.S. for the SXSW Music Festival in March 2009. While in Austin, the band played five buzzed about shows in four days and gained a massive amount of recognition for their highly energetic performances. USA Today named the band one of ten favorite performances during the entire festival while also receiving accolades from everyone from the Los Angeles Times to popular websites such as My Old Kentucky Blog. In preparation of the release of the album, the band has relocated for the time being to Brooklyn, NY in order to make American touring easier and much more frequent than in the past.

OOMPH

The Teeth Lost, Hearts Won album retains The Grates’ trademark shambolic fun, but injects new layers and grunt into the proceedings. This time, Patience, Alana and John come armed with sharpened technical chops, killer arrangements and newfound songwriting oomph. Boasting the combined force of John’s rough-and-tumble guitars, Patience’s signature banshee yelps, and Alana’s churning drums, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won might be a griffin, it might be a Where The Wild Things Are monster. But either way, it’s the sound of a band unafraid to bite.
Akudama
official website
myspace
Through growing up together, the boys of AKUDAMA have become masters of creating thoughtful, eclectic & eccentric rock music. Self-taught melodic savant Blake Charleton began writing music with brothers Calvin and Cayce Pia 7 years ago while still attending High School in a small town called Weston, Connecticut. After several years of hiatus spent traveling, learning, and absorbing life’s infinite inspirations, the trio of young-twenty-somethings reunited in 2008 in Brooklyn to reboot the project. With the recent addition of bassist Andrew Pertes, the group has become an active and aggressive force in the NYC indie-rock scene, and has proven to be a strong touring act throughout the Northeast and Midwest. The live show is relentlessly engaging. The band's creative ambition is unlimited, consistently proven with their self-recorded/released “Free EP of the Month” series, which, after 11 months and 11 releases, has resulted in a remarkable catalog of music.

AKUDAMA’s sound is a collage of musical inspiration; the explosiveness of Broken Social Scene, the vivid production of Doves, the lush harmonies of the Zombies, the lyrical depth of old Modest Mouse, the pop-precision of the Shins. The result is a sound that is undeniably their own, focusing on the craft of song, not gimmick. After all, it is about the music— and AKUDAMA makes that abundantly clear. The band has made their entire catalog available for free streaming and purchase at www.akudama.bandcamp.com
American Express — Are you a card member?

© 2010