agent ribbons

“Free shows are the best shows!” announced Natalie Ribbons, mastermind behind Agent Ribbons who headlined an all girl showcase at the Uptown last Wednesday. Amen to that. Originally from Sacramento, these ladies moved to Austin a few years back. It is our loss and their gain. Their time in Austin has paid off with yet more energy and confidence. The set began with an acapella song complete with a cooperative hand clapping game. One song featured masks, another left Natalie lying on the ground, and all brought infectious, barefoot, pogo action. They played a great deal from their brand new 2nd CD/LP, Chateau Crone, just released on Oakland’s very own Antenna Farm Records. They closed with “Birds and Bees” from their 2006 CD/LP Time Travel and Romance, a surprise encore and special request from some very excited friends in the front row. - The Bay Bridged

Typically running in minimalist two girl set, Natalie Gordon (vocals/guitar) and Lauren Hess (drums/accordion) croon out songs reminiscent of the Velvet Underground and with a heavy- hand from The Zombies. Don’t get me wrong, there is something very raw and modern about the band, but with the same vocal fortitude as Fionna Apple, if Apple was drinking a cocktail spiked with an upper in a grungy bar replete with bright red hair.
Vocalists and songwriter Natalie is a coquettish performer you’d expect in the underground of Paris circa the 1920’s, but despite the theatricality of her sets she could easily scrap it and ride off her tongue-in-cheek lyrics and vocals alone, but why bother, the fishnets and little patched together frocks are sexy.

Agent Ribbons, for all their spectacle (they occasionally throw in some vaudeville skits complete with a black veil), have songs are lyrically lush with humor with an emphasis on lost loves, some lacking a pulse, “I need a man to keep my head spinning ’round and ’round/ I’m craving love and none of that death ’till do us part honey if you’re dead, then give me your heart,” from the song Obituary off their second LP Chateau Crone. - B Sides

Happy Valentines Day!

We chose this adorable video of the day, Agent Ribbons’s Oh, La La from their new album, Chateau Crone, to celebrate the Holiday of love and candy hearts.

Austin girl group Agent Ribbons, with their whimsical and versatile musical stylings, which range anywhere from powerful, theatrical punk rock to melodious sea shanties, has definitely captured our attention, and our hearts.

Let Oh, La La transport you, so you too can frolic through this Technicolor meadow, a pastoral daydream indeed.

So even if you’re anti-all-things-Valentine, or if you just want to add a little extra to your surely champagne and chocolate-covered-cherry festooned V-Day celebration, enjoy this little bit of revelry! - Bust Magazine

Texan two-piece Agent Ribbons are the band of your dreams. A little bit of 50s doo wop style, a whole lot of passion, a truck-load of genius harmonies, a smattering of Gothic ennui and a voice to call down the ghost of Johnny Ray with. Home-made. Hand-knit. Intimate. They tour vigilante-style in a Chevy Astro. They like to play dress-up. They love The Boswell Sisters and The Shaggs. They write songs about Pinocchio (‘The Boy With The Wooden Lips’). They swoon like Clara Bow. Dame Darcy draws their covers.

- Collapse Board

Whatever the title Chateau Crone suggests, transplanted local duo Agent Ribbons have fashioned a classic meet market. Their lush, girl group vocals twine dark allure from cabaret jaunt ("Oh La La!," "Grey Gardens") to the bottom rock of Cramps-meet-Beatles on "I'm Alright." No one else is singing, "Catholic girls with golden tickets come out grinning from the thickets," so why not go for baroque? - Austin Chronicle

http://www. performermag. com/wcp. spot01. 0804. php. - Performer Magazine

www.lulamag.com - Lula Magazine

For Sacramento musicians Natalie Gordon and Lauren Hess, their band's moniker, Agent Ribbons, doesn't really mean anything.

Yet somehow, it manages to perfectly convey their creative and musical aesthetic.

Evoking the image of a team of femme fetales armed with bits of lace and satin trim, the name--just like their band--is "sweet, but tough," Hess says.

Certainly the pair's style is reflected in everything from their choice of retro-cool pop songs to the individual handcrafted CD covers for their debut album, "On Time Travel and Romance."

"Sorry about the mess," says Gordon, 22, recently, digging into an afternoon snack of a Nerf-size Fuji apple, washed down with a quart of soy milk. She picks her way through a chaotic sprawl of yellowed photographs, fading magazine clippings and vintage fabric swatches.

"We've been working like crazy to get more covers made," she explains.

Stepping past a sewing machine pushed unceremoniously aside, Gordon shows of her handiwork: a piece of paper stitched into an envelope and painted purple. Eventually, this crudely unfinished project will morph into a lovely sleeve, adorned with charms, buttons and fabric.

"The craft station is actually downstairs," chimes in Hess, 25. "We're trying to make 30 (covers) and there's just no organized way to do this."

Yes, Agent Ribbons has a craft station. And talk about efficient -- Gordon and Hess live in the same building, a rambling yellow Victorian triplex at the edge of midtown. Gordon has occupied her upstairs flat for years, while Hess took over a downstairs unit in January.

The arrangement allows for endless cutting and sewing, 2 a.m. band practices and an easy way to build on their shared love for music and kitschy pop culture.

Their friendship, seeded by mutual friends, bloomed after Gordon asked Hess to perform with her -- accompanying her on drums, guitar, accordion, or whatever other instruments she wanted to pick up.

And now, Gordon says, she can't imagine playing alone.

"You are the band," Gordon says, looking at her friend. "None of this clicked before without you."

They do appear to complement each other.

Dressed today in a mustard-yellow top that clashes sweetly with her flame-red bob, Gordon exudes a pixieish energy. Hess, with raven hair and wide-set eyes, seems more like a calming ying to Gordon's firecracker yang.

Hess sees it this way:

"Natalie's like -- pow!. She jumps around and is way more fun than I am."

Gordon vehemently disagrees.

"Lauren's more grounded than I am and knows more about music, but at the same time, (she) always wants to have fun. She brings out an excitement in me."

Plus a musical complexity, she says.

"I've always felt like the things I write are really bare -- Lauren makes them baroque."

Baroque, intensely theatrical and always, simply, romantic.

"On Time Travel and Romance," released in December, for instance, the CD is replete with richly illustrated stories set against a whimsical framework of spare beats, slight guitar melodies and other stray sounds.

Whether crooning saucy lyrics such as "Chelsea, they may whistle when you bend over but I'm the only one coming over," or dipping her voice into a morbidly sultry growl on "Obituary" ("Honey if you're dead, then give me your heart"), Gordon's husky vocals seem summoned from a bygone era.

The album didn't begin with a concept. But with help from friends such as local producers Jim Sandelius and David Houston, its sound -- old-fashioned sentiment edged with a modern sensibility -- slowly emerged.

Houston's help in particular, Gordon says, helped shape the sound as the producer gave them free rein with his collection of vintage guitars and microphones.

"He could see we had no idea what we wanted and he brought out these things to help us figure it out."

For his part, Houston -- on the phone from his south Sacramento home -- knew Gordon and Hess had a vision. Their songs on the CD work, Houston says, because Gordon knew exactly what she wanted.

"She knew she wanted it to be organic, spontaneous," he says. "She has a vision -- she just sometimes needs a little help in figuring out how to make it happen."

And, Houston adds, while Gordon is, arguably, the band's showy center, Hess' presence is essential to the music.

To read more, see Link:

http://www.sacbee.com/122/story/138039.html - The Sacramento Bee (primary local news source)

Ever walk into a venue and have someone immediately tell you that you’d just missed an event whose significance rivals the invention of sliced bread, the crucifixion and the translation of O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It into Klingon? All rolled into one?

On Saturday, promoter Jerry Perry was so impressed with the duo Agent Ribbons’ opening performance at Old Ironsides that he wouldn’t shut up to this latecomer, to a point where I was reduced to a sullen funk for much of the night. Perry was so rippled with enthusiasm he almost body-slammed me into the concession table, demanding that I purchase a handmade copy of Agent Ribbons’ debut CD, On Time Travel and Romance, before they sold out. So I bought the one remaining copy and pocketed it, then watched him and another friend, who also was smitten, chat up a familiar-looking woman whose extreme red dye job placed her somewhere between Strawberry Shortcake and Ronald McDonald.

Perhaps she looked familiar because I’d seen her before, two years ago at Luna’s, opening for David Houston and Adrian Bourgeois when she was billed as Natalie Gordon, and I was knocked out enough to buy a four-song CD from her then. Agent Ribbons’ new CD plays like a more confident evolution of those first tentative recordings; Gordon’s alto is as world-weary as it gets for someone in her early 20s, and she sounds a bit like Los Angeles singer Eleni Mandell, minus the Tom Waits affinity and plus an early Joni Mitchell vibe--which is not a bad thing. Also, Gordon and bandmate Lauren Hess have a portfolio of nicely realized songs, which may be an old-world conceit in an age of ringtones masquerading as songs, but it provides a leg up in some circles nonetheless. (And big ups to any act that lists wonderful jazz singer Blossom Dearie first on its list of influences, as Agent Ribbons does on its Myspace page at www.myspace.com/agentribbons.)

Fortunately, Agent Ribbons will play the Fox & Goose on Saturday, December 2, with Baby Grand and the Inversions, and the duo has a few other upcoming shows listed, too. All is not lost.

But my night was, at least through the middle set by Social Studies. The black mood continued until the headliner Didley Squat took the stage around midnight. I’d forgotten how great this band is, and luckily the Squat was in rabid effect. What makes Didley Squat so compelling is that the main dynamic axis in the band is between hyperactive singer David Mohr and drummer Casey James, with keyboard player Stuart Nishiyama and guitarist Jacob Barcena adding melodic and textural dressing to Mohr’s and James’ driving sonic assault. Because of this, and because there’s no bassist, what results is the kinetic equivalent of a hooked fish flopping on a dock, desperately trying to find water.

“This guy up where I live calls it Ritalin rock,” said Jeffrey Clark, a founding member of Shiva Burlesque, the precursor to Grant Lee Buffalo, who now lives outside Nevada City. The description isn’t far off: Didley Squat achieves the same kind of aural mayhem that beloved early-1980s English post-punk acts like Gang of Four once unleashed, with enough lyric smarts and original spark to map some new, uncharted territories.


- Sacramento News and Review

May is looking to be the busiest show-going month in a long time for me. Unexpectedly, as if possibly by fate even, I was able to fit in another show this week. It started in the a.m. on my occasional commute from the east side to the west side for work. Stuck in traffic on the 10 I decided NPR wasn't cutting it and switched it over to KXLU cause I had only just remembered that it was Thursday, and on Thursday from 6 to 10 is McCallister's Hostile Makeover. An incredibly awesome radio music show that happened to be the first place several years ago that I was introduced to bands like Irving and the Sharp Ease (r.i.p.). Anyhoo- I switched over and this cute song was playing, and there was this girl's voice belting out "Don't touch me..." among other lyrics and it instantly got stuck in my head. Scenario two: leaving work KXLU was still on (this is actually a rare occurrence that the radio is on instead of a cd playing) and again I recognized the lyrics that I had heard much earlier in the day however this time they were live, in the studio. All this time I kept missing the name of the band, but I did hear "Silver Lake Lounge" and "tonight", which piqued my interest.

Fast forward a few hours and I found myself at the Silver Lake Lounge, finally able to place the "Salvation" bulb sign that I've seen in local live concert photos- I've never been here before.

When we got there, local band Hearts of Palm UK were on stage. I've seen this band name posted all over the place, I'm assuming they're quite popular around these parts but this was the first time I've ever seen them live. They're a duo- two girls with lots of instruments. My notes from last night read "light-folky girl pop, with keyboards". This review can't really do them justice, partially because I got caught up in a conversation and my attention wandered elsewhere, until they closed their set with, I'm pretty sure, a cover of Bryan Ferry's 'More Than This'. That's always entertaining.

So this band that I kept hearing all day... they're called Agent Ribbons, and hail from Sacramento. They were adorable, but they also looked like if you tried to mess with them they'd fuck you up. The line up consisted of two gals, one sang and played guitar and the other played the drums and at one point jumped on an accordion (which somehow became the cool new instrument. I should tell my sister, she played one for years). The music was bluesy-garage-girl pop, and the singers voice reminded me of the girl from Pony Up! and someone else that I can't remember for the life of me and has been driving me crazy since last night; very crackly and deep. There was something very crafty about the two of them; one might expect them to live in a giant pink Victorian house somewhere with a pet pig. When they played they would look back on each other and smile or giggle, like they had some secret they were trying to keep from the audience.

Anyways, they were enjoyable to watch and played the songs I had heard earlier (Don't Touch Me, Birds & Bees) as well as others from the album and some not from the album. It turned out I was the only one in the audience who had heard them perform on KXLU. But really, that station is iffy once you get on the east side. Oh, and if you order an album from them, they'll send you cute things in the mail with it. So do it. - Los Angeles Reivew Blog