Death to Anders

(Death To Anders)
Who is Anders and why do they want him dead? That’s what I wanna know. This CD kicks out with a sort of low key indierock vibe against an almost arena sized anthemic overdrive. Delicate and chaotic, pleasant and discordant. Sometimes hitting like some intelligent Dead Milkmen rocking out to Flipper and trying to write Pavement songs but getting caught in old Pixies riffs and then freaking out and trying to get back to listening to the pop by listening to the Donner Party and the Actionslacks, but that doesn’t work, so they break guitars and dance while the singer tells stories that only he understands. All I know is that if Anders has to die for me to be able to listen to this band, then so be it. (www. deathtoanders. com) – Marcel Feldmar
- The Big Takeover: Spring 2008

DEATH TO ANDERS' "Punctuate the Calamities" presents a dark world where savagery prevails. Rob Danson's vocals are strongly unique and add to the bizarre storytelling that the songs put forth. His odd pitch can be soothing like a gentle stream and then suddenly shriek and spook the crap out of me ("Silverlake"). When the songs/album take a more downbeat turn, they become dreamy and beautifully sad, like on the track "Something Wrong With Me" and "Sellout". I like the way in which the album has two distinctive sides to it: an almost country-esque beginning that slowly transitions into a more melodic indie collection. They pull it off effortlessly without seeming like it is too separate.

Also, these guys are also local to the L.A. area, so if you live around here I highly suggest going to see them perform. And special kudos for the packaging. Whoever has to sit around and tie all those string to the front of thecd covers has got to have nothing but love for this band.
Darsonic Symphonic Productions; http://www.deathtoanders.com/

- No-Fi Magazine

01:01 PM PT, Jan 14 2008
Death to Anders isn't the first band to tip-toe in the wide footprints of Sonic Youth, and the L.A. quartet won't be the last. But judging from the guitar squalor and dissonant edge on its new album, "Fictitious Business," frontman Rob Danson and his bandmates mean business.

"With all of today's technology, everything is getting so crystal-clear and overproduced," Danson says. "I think we need some of that gritty noise to bring things back down to earth."

As noisy as Death to Anders' sophomore album is, it's cleaner than 2006's "Punctuate the Calamities," which was home-recorded and self-produced. This time around, Danson, Pete DiBiasio, Nick Ceglio and John Troeckel spent eight days in the studio with producer Dave Newton (the Little Ones). Among the guests on the album are Sara Negahdari of L.A. trio the Happy Hollows.

||| See Death to Anders' album-release show on Tuesday night at Boardner's as part of a Radio Free Silver Lake bill that includes the Monolators and Wait Think Fast. - The Los Angeles Times

Death to Anders
by Jocelyn Hoppa
Death to Anders
Fictitious Business
(self-released, 2008)

Surprise, surprise indeed. In the dead of summer the music release schedule is always slim pickings and usually rather awful in scope, but I’m here to tell you that Death to Anders is the unsung hero of these dog days and, yes, well beyond. The fact that they’ve self-released an ambitious album that is a deliberate nod to classic indie rock makes them all the more intriguing—they were smart enough to present it to critics at a time when they’re generally freed up to listen to “the other pile” that sits on their desk. Well done. If you’re a fan of Pavement, old-school Modest Mouse, and/or Archers of Loaf (and why wouldn’t you be?), then listen up: Silverlake’s buzz band Death to Anders, and their sophomore release Ficticious Business, is for you.

Right from the first tightly-crafted track (“Fictitious Business”) it’s clear this band has a lot to offer as a bevy of sounds coalesce with hooks, harmonies, guitar that’s at first dissonant then grows into intense, delectable squalls and back again… and by the end of the song they’ve shifted from guitars to glockenspiel for a song wholly reminiscent of the Wowee Zowee era. From there, they dive headfirst into the insistent drum scramble and driving guitar rock of “Ghost Rock.” It’s a song that takes enough fast-slow-fast turns through a twisting corridor to suggest that the album being embarked upon is going to offer up a venerable workout for welcoming ears of those old-school indie sounds now actively shifting in new noise-filled directions. They even utilize perfectly-timed screams, which is an all-time favorite musical tool of mine. Did I mention there’s also piano and violin? It’s all very exciting.

Thematically, Fictitious Business is no less impressive. Twangy, jangly paranoid, and hypnotically enigmatic, it’s a soundtrack for modern American woes, as the interplay of self-destruction versus self-improvement attract and bounce off of one another like fickle magnets, a place where pain can oftentimes weirdly function as an attractive pleasure. Take “Man of 1000 Regrets”, one of the slower tracks on the album, which starts off as a lullaby to a wearied soul: “Hey love, where you running from? / Or barely getting done? / Stay gone if it’s what you want / Save those sad story songs.” But the song devolves into a sad story of a man full of complaints and regrets of the overriding wish to be let back into someone’s life, and around the middle point snaps into a series of frustrated “goddamns” delivered like Isaac Brock in “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine.” Again, this sort of thing comes off more like an appreciative nod rather than straight biting style. And that’s the thing here with Death to Anders: They're delivering nonconformist music, playing with unconventional song structures, and using these familiar elements to save the music from alienating the listener. Instead, it compels and draws us in further.

Through a few tracks that kick off the second half of Fictitious Business, there’s a sense that perhaps they’ve blown their stack of tricks and it’s all going to end with a yawn. What a shame that would've been. “Doll” is my least favorite track on the record. It’s definitely the most cryptic as lyrics about suicide take the helm of the first verse, but it's creepy, gothic theatrical nonsense stands out from the rest of the album, which is otherwise seamless in its unorthodoxy. But this misstep for me was only that, a misstep, as the middle half of the song takes a new welcomed direction, and besides, the album wraps up with two tracks that are just as impressive as those from the beginning. “Dark Bathrooms”, a dynamic, seven-minute opus, features only these lyrics: “Careful you don’t give away what they don’t want anyway”, a song that traverses a floaty sort of atmosphere that culminates into a spazz-out of noise only to calm back down to nothing more than someone walking away whistling a tune. Final track “Camera Lens” features Sarah Negahdari from the Happy Hollows on backing vocals, and it's one of the more delicious songs on the record, both low-key and anthemic, wrapping up rather perfectly a disarming album full of sardonic storytelling about a world and life gone astray as frontman Rob Danson sings/screams, "Stop thinking all of these thoughts thought thoughts / They bring me down!"

While the gestures toward some of indie’s mainstays are what will draw listeners to Fictitious Business, Death to Anders prove themselves to be more than just a group of imaginative musicians with good taste. The real treat is an album that is seductively surreptitious and winningly radical. - Crawdaddy

Mish Mash Review/Punctuate the Calamities

http://mashmusic.tripod.com/may07.html

What would Fugazi sound like with a Southern accent? Perhaps it would be similar to Death To Anders, a band that wallows in crazed guitar dissonance and wailing vocals that twang even in the midst of their hysteria.
This is not simply a perversion of country music to the extreme, but a heaping helping of Southern Gothic played loud and proud, much like an early R.E.M. with a hell of a lot more aggression. There's plenty of anger and spit, but there's also a soft spirit that creeps in from time to time, creating a dynamic flow that rides in and out throughout the album.
- Mish Mash

http://obscuresound.com/?p=1736

Death to Anders’ Futuristic Camera Lens
Posted on Tuesday 5 February 2008

In art, period pieces have long given spectators a taste of what life was like in the past, regardless of whether the work was a film created in the early 1900s, an Elizabethan tragedy in the 1500s, or a mere thousand-year-old drawing on the walls of a cave. So, hundreds of years from now, one can wonder what will be considered the most commonplace “period piece” of our time. Forms of art and sculpture have been used as such for thousands of years, but recent technologically enabled forms of art like film and music have been emerging as forms of art that have the ability to hold just as much historical importance. The four members of Death to Anders echo this sentiment in their musical output, with their songs representing a form of intricate veneration for the era that they work and progress in. Their sophomore album, Fictitious Business, is a self-proclaimed “surreal and cryptic look at life in the 21st century”; it is certainly a daunting task to chronicle the early beginnings of a century through audible representation alone, though the LA-based four-piece do not appear intimidated at all. Their intelligent utilization of a satirically invigorating story-led lyrical delivery provides for an entertaining scope into the modernistic age we are all familiar with. Yeah, it usually takes a lot to make the contemporary working class appear as dramatically appealing, but Death to Anders seemingly have to the ability to do it with ease.
The beginnings of Death to Anders can be traced back to Musicians Institute, a music college in Hollywood that has graduated the likes of Rivers Cuomo, John Frusciante, and Jeff Buckley. Attending students Rob Danson and Nicholas Ceglio met and initially bonded over their love for early ’90s indie-rock, with names like the Pixies, Pavement, and Sonic Youth being a common topic of conversation between the two. The duo later came across bassist Peter DiBiasio and drummer John Broeckel, both joining the band after finding symmetrical musical intentions. Broeckel had previously played in the local LA band Crooner with Nikki Monninger and and Christopher Guanlao, now both members of the increasingly popular Silversun Pickups. Death to Anders’ finalized lineup began playing shows in late 2005, finding a thriving fan base in the Silverlake and Echo Park areas of Los Angeles. Hot off playing several shows at a handful of reputable LA venues, the four-piece released their debut album, Punctuate the Calamities, in January of 2007. Engineered, mixed, and produced by the members themselves, the independently released debut was a true DIY effort, building upon the group’s already steady reputation in LA. As stated on their web site, Death to Anders’ goal is “to bring vitality, originality, and most of all hope, back to LA’s music scene.” So far, so good.

Likening a camera lens to a pair of paranoid eyes, Death to Anders’ attempt to audibly chronicle a concise look at life in the 21st century comes across as generally successful, even if the melodic charm occasionally overshadows the group’s coordinated lyrical wit. Their sophomore album, Fictitious Business, does justice in exposing the grittiness of authentic human emotion as individuals learn to cope to circumstances that are futuristic, unpredictable, and consumingly unfamiliar. From self-destruction and self-improvement to superficial lust and inherent beauty, the range of presented human emotions of Fictitious Business is broadly impressive. In an age where technology attempts to manipulate all human processes, it also proves to be quite fascinating. This lage scope of lyrical ambitiousness is additionally done entirely through an enjoyable music formula that likens the group’s influences of early ’90s indie-rock, with groups like the Pixies, Pavement, and even Modest Mouse being too vital to overlook. Vocalist Rob Danson possesses vocals that appear fantastically suitable for the band’s alternative style. Like his past influences, one can easily hear shades of Isaac Brock and Stephen Malkmus in Danson’s delivery, with his range impressively stretching from moments of squealing intensity to subdued murmurs of sincere ardency. This is done over an equally impressive instrumental approach, with a wide array of guitars, keys, strings, and an exceptionally tight rhythm section providing for numerous moments of lasting durability.
The album’s first single, “Camera Lens”, appears to be a good choice, being the most accessible and infectious track on the album. The initial moments provide as Danson croons traditionally over the strums of an acoustic guitar and the lucid beat of a snare. “Ink blot real time endings, endings with no middle, endings with no end,” he sings, once again emphasizing the time and period as significant contributing factors. The song’s presentation of folk-pop is enjoyable as a verse, but the chorus is ev - Obscure Sound

DEATH TO ANDERS
By Katherine Hoffert
Photo by Zoe Ruth Erwin

Death to Anders remember what it was like to buy an album — a whole album — for just one or two songs. The rest of the songs, though unfamiliar, were in turn discovered, not discarded. While the members of the Silver Lake-based indie rock foursome — Rob Danson (guitar, vocals), Nick Ceglio (guitar, vocals, synth, piano, glock), Pete DiBiasio (bass) and John Broeckel (drums) — appreciate the freedoms that the current digital wave has afforded today’s musicians, they still think there’s no substitute for the full package — be it a compact disc or a (full album) digital download.

“I think it’s very important now, especially because of iTunes, for artists to think of a full piece of work as being one entity,” says Danson, Death to Anders frontman. He makes an analogy between the album and the song: “You don’t want the song to be extremely repetitive and stagnant. You want the chorus to be a little bit different than the verse, and then have a bridge, so that the listener keeps an interest. And same thing with the album. An album is basically just a really long song.”

While it’s up to the listener to decide whether or not Death to Anders’ new album, Fictitious Business, is a concept album — Danson says “maybe” — there’s no question that it’s an ambitious accomplishment both in songwriting and production that demands to be listened to in its entirety. A self-described “surreal and cryptic look at life in the 21st century,” the album takes listeners on an intense journey full of abrupt turns through beautiful and paranoid terrain marked by lush walls of sound, rollicking melodies, noisy swells and questioning lyrics. There’s a lot of variety within and between each of the 10 songs, but an ongoing narrative with repeating themes sews it all together.

Another source of the album’s cohesion is producer David Netwon. The former guitarist for The Mighty Lemon Drops, who now records at his own Rollercoaster Recording studio in Burbank, co-produced and mixed the album with the band. “Not only was working with Dave Newton one of the most memorable and amazing experiences that I’ve had in this band, it was probably by far the best business decision we’ve ever made,” says Danson. “He creates this environment that is full of inspiration and positive energy. And the tones and sounds that he gets are fantastic, and he is just extremely efficient and fast.”

Recording 15 tracks in eight days, the band’s own preparedness going into the studio is also worth noting. “We decided to record scratch tracks with a click track for every single song, and then we had our drummer and bass player pretty much rehearse to those scratch tracks so that when they went into the recording studio, there were no surprises,” Danson says. “In the studio, we recorded drums and bass to the scratch track, and then we deleted the scratch track and overdubbed everything else after that.”

The connection to the listener that Death to Anders strive for in their recorded material also extends to other artists in the independent music community, as illustrated by the band’s involvement with the Central Second Collective. A group of like-minded musicians in the Silver Lake/Echo Park area that initially teamed up almost out of necessity to play shows and navigate the scene together, the CSC is “more of a philosophy and a theory now than anything actually solid,” according to Danson. “The idea began to expand outwards to a lot of other bands,” he explains, “so the community is still there, but it’s definitely broadened its reach beyond the collective and the area.”

While they are shifting their sights beyond their immediate community, Death to Anders are dedicated to maintaining the connections they make and relationships they start, be it with fans, venues, bookers or other bands. “I’ve seen bands break up because of touring,” Danson says. “And what a lot of bands don’t necessarily realize is that touring doesn’t always mean going across the United States and playing 30 days in all these different places. What we want to do right now is kind of spiral outside of L.A., hitting up places that, within a month or two, we can return to.”

As they continue to forge connections both at home, on the road and between their songs, Death to Anders find refuge in the modern world, knowing when to use it to their advantage and when to take it with a grain of salt. - West Coast Performer: By Katherine Hoffert

By Travis Woods

Headliners Death to Anders not only ‘played’ their headline set, they deeply embedded themselves within it, giving a performance so deftly cohesive within the musical context of the overall evening that theirs was the lynchpin that drew all of the varied aural stands of the night into a tightly-bound package of full-throated rock ‘n roll.

It was a risky performance—in order to both accommodate and define the tone of the evening, D2A restructured their typical live set to mesh with the music surrounding them. Their new EP, Enigmatic Market, was not represented; instead, more than half of the band’s set consisted of much older Anders material and completely new and unreleased tracks (including Web favorite “Marigold,” which featured a kind dedication to yours truly). Further, the set was structured as one long song: each tune seamlessly bled into the next, creating a thematic and sonic narrative for the night, one that is usually restricted to full-length albums rather than live shows.

It was gamble that paid off, one that allowed the group to mix the crowd-pleasers (the twanged murder ballad “Great Plains States,” the artist anthem “Camera Lens”) with obscuros from their debut LP and tracks like the unhinged flail of “Marigold.” Guitarist/ vocalist Nick Ceglio was brought to the fore much more so than in the past as a handful of his songs helped form the quietly melodic center of the band’s set; while frontman Rob Danson fully displayed his understanding of the opportunities afforded by a residency—if he (or anyone else in the band, for that matter) has played a better show, please send us a boot, we’d like to hear it. Not only did the band set the dangerously high standard for the rest of the month, they pushed crowd expectations even higher, as the remaining lineups will each dictate a radical rearrangement of Anders’ live show to mix conceptually and sonically with the bands around them. - Web in Front (www.webinfront.net)

The California based indie band...Death To Anders has released their 2nd CD...“Fictitious Business”(2008)...and it offers up some tasty, deceptively simple, jangling guitar work that wonderfully foreshadows something much more sinister and complex.
With cryptic lyrics that float over beautifully jarring notes and sounds...one quickly realizes that Death To Anders are intent on presenting the underbelly of what ever may be hiding beneath our beds.
This CD opens with the title track...“Fictitious Business”, a nice introduction to this band...and sets the tone for everything else to come. Rob Danson and Nick Ceglio banter nice guitar work throughout...while they share their unique chili powder vocals to confess...“And our specialty, we found...writing fiction out of sound.” Very catchy with a foreboding undercurrent.

“I'm the only one meant for you...until we're done.” (“Untitled”) allows for a cacophony of terrific percussion (John Broeckel) and stinging bass slap (Peter DiBiasio) that pays off nicely.

And that song leads perfectly into my favorite track...”Dark Bathrooms”. As ominous vocals warn...“Careful you don't give away...what they don't want anyway”. This song allows the band to spread out and jam...with a rather haunting ending.

“Swig Shift” is another great jam about the need to hit the bottle as the band chants...”Distill these days”. And works up a sweat in their convictions.
“That's what we all are...fake entertainers. And all my friends are entertaining starry lights” (“Camera Lens”) is also a great song...one of the best this year.

Overall, Death To Anders captures perfectly all the smoldering sins that pile up in the corners of our lives and has burned them into a terrific CD that demands repeated listens.

Check this gem out:-->"Camera Lens" and then grab DTA's..."Fictitious Business".
Good stuff! - College Crowd Digs Me (http://thecollegecrowddigsme.blogspot.com/search?q=death+to+Anders)

Death To Anders has done it again. They didn’t just meet my high expectations for their sophomore record, Fictitious Business, they surpassed them, putting together a tight, thoughtful album that has harnessed the enormous potential and ability the band showed on their first record, the underrated Punctuate The Calamities.
Right away Death To Anders shows they’ve grown up with the opening title track. It’s a deep, evolving track, starting off fantastically catchy, with dancey rhythms and playful, sing-song vocals and bouncy, mellow tones. Seamlessly, it bursts into savagery, as siren-like guitars rip through the track - tones I haven’t heard since Modest Mouse’s masterpiece The Lonesome Crowded West.

The energy level picks up for the next track, as machine gun drums rocket underneath a monotone, wordy vocal delivery. “Swig Shift” is darker and more somber than the previous tracks, but still holds on to that gorgeous, crunchy sound they’ve concocted in the chorus. “Great Plains States” sounds the most like their first record with its drunken melodies and morose tonality, but it’s much more deliberate and intricate, and doesn’t feel at all derivative. “Man Of 1000 Regrets” showcases their excellent advancement in songwriting, with a dripping, spacey timbre and haunting harmonies.

“Doll” is freakishly bipolar, sounding like They Might Be Giants song in the verse, and a Cursive song in the chorus. “Dark Bathrooms” is this wonderful, epic jam that heightens and builds up to a majestic, rocking ending that resolves as serenely as it began. And while I question Death To Anders’ choice to have the closing track, “Camera Lens”, as their single - since it’s probably the least exciting song off the album - I must concede to enjoying the wound up melodies and the marching, accentuated beats.

Just as I hoped, given a little time and a little more experience, Death To Anders have proven themselves a powerful force in the industry. Fictitious Business is much more restrained, much more melodic, much more sonically varied and is sure to make some heads turn and pay attention. This is an early candidate for my favorite album of the year, no question. It only gets better from here for Death To Anders.


-Matt Cohen
02/13/08 - Delusions of Adequacy (http://www.adequacy.net/review.php?reviewID=8484)