EXILE REPRESENTS ‘EXPANSIVE, SOPHISTICATED, AND STYLISTICALLY DIVERSE’ DEPARTURE FOR BOSTON BUZZ BAND ALOUD ON 3RD INDIE ROCK ALBUM
CLICK IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD HI-REZ JPEG
NEWLY MARRIED BANDLEADERS OPT FOR EXTENDED
MUSICAL HONEYMOON ON COAST-TO-COAST FALL U.S. TOUR
See the new video ‘Old Soldier’ here:
“If this much of a departure in the studio produced such a rich and interesting result,
their always-electric live performance will be all the more memorable.” – The Deli
BOSTON — With a daring new sound that’s quickly brought a whole new wave of hometown media acclaim, dynamic young indie rock band ALOUD is proud to unleash its third full-length album to the rest of the country and bring the Beantown buzz to the rest of the U.S. on the band’s first-ever coast-to-coast tour.
Exile, released October 12, 2010 on Lemon Merchant Records, represents a sea change for ALOUD that the Boston Globe hailed as “their most expansive, sophisticated, and stylistically diverse work to date.” The Boston Phoenix said Exile “(provides) us with the kind of sharp, literary-minded rock passion we’ve come to expect” from ALOUD and called the new album “a stunning, multifaceted opus” from a band that “exudes confidence, and great things are still to come.”
Following a boisterous, sold-out Boston CD release party in which the band’s “harmonious-yet-boisterous psychedelic pop-rock sound was often augmented by the ambient strings of the Exile Orchestra” (Boston Phoenix), ALOUD kicks off its U.S. tour with a pair of CMJ Music Marathon showcases in New York (Oct. 22-23), and finishes two months and over 50 dates later in late December. Along the way, ALOUD will be compiling a tour diary for Performer magazine, which praised the band for its “fiery songwriting” in a December 2009 cover story.
To make it all possible, just-married husband-wife bandleaders Henry Beguiristain and Jen de la Osa cleaned out their apartment and surrender their material possessions to set forth on a musical honeymoon with band members Charles Murphy (bass) and James Willetts (drums) in tow. The tour is being financed in part by the $5150 raised through 98 backers in a Kickstarter campaign designed also to fund the recording of Exile.
Exile is ALOUD’s most sophisticated and experimental album to date, showcasing their new-found love of orchestration, Sgt. Pepper-like production, and rich, lyrical imagery. The new sound was created over a year in the studio after Henry and Jen lost their original rhythm section and with it, the screaming guitars and crashing cymbals that had previously been two of ALOUD’s greatest assets. They’ve been replaced by acoustic and strange sounding guitars, string instruments, horns, pared down drum kit, finger snaps, handclaps and sound effects. Many tempos are much slower, revealing a previously unheard of intimacy and vulnerability, especially in Henry and Jen’s opulent vocal harmonies. Exile is a beautiful and strange collection of songs, featuring often-unfulfilled, complex characters coming to terms with bleak circumstances, while searching for hope and relief in unlikely places.
The mid-tempo single “Old Soldier” starts with a whisper and grows into a brilliant, psychedelic explosion of sound and lush instrumentation, including marching drums, euphonium, trumpets, strings and mandolin, and Henry and Jen’s opulent vocal harmonies. In the love-turned-death ballad, “To Die At Sea”, Jen sings longingly over an acoustic guitar and lush string quartet. Title track “Exile In The Night” is dominated by a Latin-tinged rhythm, ghostly soundscapes and a haunting melody. The song was heavily influenced by the music of Feist and the memoirs of Reinaldo Arenas (the celebrated, exiled Cuban poet).
ALOUD UPCOMING CONCERT DATES:
10/22/10 – Beast of the Northeast, CMJ Day Party @ Arlene’s Grocery, NYC
10/23/10 – Official CMJ Showcase @ Lit, NYC
10/24/10 – Howler’s Coyote Café, Pittsburgh, PA
10/25/10 – Barley’s Pub, Youngstown, OH
10/26/10 – Double Door, Chicago, IL
10/27/10 – The Frequency, Madison, WI
10/28/10 – The Lift, Dubuque, IA
10/29/10 – Pizza Shoppe Collective, Omaha, NE
10/30/10 – Coffee Rules, Hays, KS
11/2/10 – Front Range Community College, Westminster, CO
11/2/10 – Astroland, Boulder, CO
11/3/10 – Moe’s, Denver, CO
11/5/10 – The Woodshed, Salt Lake City, UT
11/6/10 – First National Bar, Pocatello, ID
11/8/10 – Reef, Boise, ID
11/10/10 – Wenatchee Valley College, Wenatchee, WA
11/11/10 – Café Venus, Seattle, WA
11/12/10 – Backspace, Portland, OR
11/13/10 – Diablo Lounge, Eugene, OR
11/16/10 – The Mint, Los Angeles, CA
11/17/10 – Blue Cafe, Huntington Beach, CA
11/18/10 – San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
11/19/10 – Mr. Rick’s, Avila Beach, CA
11/20/10 – The Bunkhouse, Las Vegas, NV
11/27/10 – Cowgirl, Santa Fe, NM
11/28/10 – The 806, Amarillo, TX
12/2/10 – Stafford Main Street, Bryan, TX