Music
Press
There's a distinctly psychedelic bent to "Saturday People", too, with lyrical pictures like "a mescaline freak-out in an off-Broadway show/ In the morning," but another part of it is the way his voice curls around the vowels. In the song's fourth quarter, its breaks away from [Sufjan] Stevens comparisons entirely: Where Suf's endings float or soar, Temple throws in a leftfield groove, low and slithery. Cigarette, anyone? - Pitchfork Media
Mr. Temple isn’t part of any particular school — not even that all-purpose new songwriters’ catchall, freak-folk — and his private world is fascinating. - New York Times - Jon Pareles
Luke released his second LP this year to raves, and "Family Vacation" proves it all just... His tenor runs the track with an alluring androgyny, managing to pull the ear despite a busy (and cool) arrangement. Consider the track stamped with our highest approval. - Stereogum
Allow me a few minutes to overcome my enchantment. Luke Temple…shows that he condones any and all melodies, no matter their dimensions or their forecast. He’s a fantastic storyteller with an eye for turning those minute details of a life into little pieces of music that can then become memorable…The first keeper of 2007. There, it’s said - Daytrotter.com
If it were just his songwriting we would be in love with these songs, but there is so much more… - David Dye
I’ll wager that in 12 months this sublime and beautifully crafted work will still be swimming around my head, unleashing its waves of insightful pleasure, sweet pain and achingly gorgeous melodies. - The Irish Times (5/5 stars)
You really gotta hear this for yourself cause he's got a distinctive, eclectic sound that sounds so new yet familiar…Temple's a classy yet uncategorizable singer-songwriter to watch. - Bruce Warren - WXPN
That guy's great, an amazing songwriter. His voice alone is so damn good -- one of the prettiest voices in all of indie rock, hands down. - from Death Cab for Cutie
Luke Temple has one of the most beautiful voices in pop music. - .
He is one of the world's great young songwriters, a superlative that he's earned with next month's Snowbeast, the best album to be released in 2007 - The Portland Mercury
Discography
Luke Temple EP (2004)
Hold A Match For A Gasoline World (2005)
Snowbeast (2007)
Photos
Bio
Luke is not so much concerned with hidden worlds but with the landscape of the one around us. The concrete world is a series of relationships. Form is established by it's relationship to empty space. There will always be tension and release in an unending line as long as there is no border. Life surprises most of us , we can never see its composition, our birth is one side of the frame and our death will be the other. A song is the rise and fall of an empire. Like seeing the world from a plane.
Luke doesn't understand what any of this means but is trying his best to figure it out.
He grew up in Manchester, Mass. He attended the school of the Museum of Fine arts in Boston. He moved to New York and found the visual art world a bit too cloistered for his liking so he started singing, singing for the ones without a fighting chance, for the voiceless, for the unheard... well, not really... Mostly because he could and people seemed to like it. He tells little stories. He only understands some of them. More than anything he loves texture, color and surprise.
He put one record out on Millpond records in Seattle in 2004 called "Hold a Match For a Gasoline World"; it was was also recently released on Fargo in France and the UK. He toured around the U.S. and some in Europe.
Luke has just finished another that he recorded on an old eight track in his bed room in Brooklyn called "Snowbeast". It is his greatest achievement to date. It is scheduled for release on August, 21 2007.
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