Red Fox Grey Fox

Crafted with genuine emotion and beauty, Red Fox Grey Fox have created a masterpiece of sound, texture, and beauty with their newest release From the Land of Bears, Ice and Rock. Most importantly, Red Fox Grey Fox crafted an album that demands attention. With so many bands overcrowding myspace, radio, podcasts and car commercials, it’s rare that a band comes a long head-and-shoulders above the current trends.



Red Fox Grey Fox brought me back to the time when I first discovered bands like The Appleseed Cast, Mineral, Sunny Day Real Estate, Sigur Ros and even Radiohead. Lead singer Pete Miller’s vocals bring a genuine honesty to each song and blends in perfectly with intricate and delicate guitar work, percussion and keys. The result is a mix of emotional intensity, creativity and sheer beauty. All this works together for a fresh and welcomed sound. There are so many layers to From the Land of Bears, Ice and Rock. that it is an album worth an immediate re-listen.

- Indie Uprising

Hey, new-schoolers: You think Anthony Green's pipes can't be beat? Psh. But old-schoolers, take note: Jeremy Enigk isn't untouchable, either, as proven by Peter Miller, the balding, bearded, bespectacled frontman of Minnesota indie-pop quartet Red Fox Grey Fox....RFGF's music is quintessentially Midwestern, with intertwining guitars, chiming keys and pulsating rhythms. Two mittened thumbs up - Alternative Press Magazine

The band's inarguable facet is Peter Miller's androgynously
deceiving falsetto, especially when he wails on some of the more prolonged
notes. In fact, the effect works sublimely, as does everything else Red Fox
Grey Fox attempt on this commendable debut. - The Big Takeover Magazine

Before I actually listened to Red Fox Grey Fox, I checked out the band's picture on the internet: one, two, three, four members, all dudes. But after I slipped From the Land of Bears, Ice, and Rock into my car stereo, I was so certain I heard a girl's voice coming out of the speakers that I ejected the disc to make sure the friend I borrowed it from hadn't accidentally given me the wrong album.

Nope. It turns out that Red Fox singer Peter Miller's voice is just really high for a boy's—and thin, so thin that at times it becomes somehow shiny, like the membrane of a soap bubble. His featherweight falsetto floats over multiple guitar lines that weave speedily in and out of each other. Hasty 16th notes race over rock drum beats, interlocking and replicating themselves until they form a spider web that captures pop warmth and emo angst and rocks them in a swaying wind.

"I have a hard time singing in what is mid-range for most males," explains Miller, whose speaking voice is also an octave above what you might expect by looking at his solid frame. Our conversation takes place after a midsummer cloudburst has left the world slick with perspiration, and the seats of our clothes become slightly damp as we sit in the backlot of the Firewall, an all-ages venue in Stillwater.

Miller carries himself with his shoulders rounded over, as if cowering just a tiny bit. There's an uncertainty about him, but with a lift of lightly worn happiness—when he sings, he rolls his weight forward onto the ball of his left foot and bounces his body on it in time to the music. "I hope it doesn't sound too forced," he says of his unusual voice.

And it doesn't sound forced. It sounds a little tense, maybe, but that tension somehow suits the endless flow of notes that run under it. Red Fox songs are lush with guitar melodies and keyboard parts that ripple outward as they repeat and spatially expand. The air seems to shimmer and vibrate with the introspective energy of the sound. Without the contrast of Miller's voice, it might come off as too hypnotically repetitive. But his voice isn't the only possible source of tension in the band.

Either God or Jesus is thanked in the liner notes on From the Land of Bears by every member of the band—except for Miller. He seems to be the group's only nonbeliever. Yet he is the frontman, and the sole lyricist. How did a man with doubts come to lead the faithful?

"I came from a Midwestern, evangelical Christian background," Miller says quietly. "All of us went to Bethel, which is an evangelical school, so we all have deep roots." But the only Bethel graduate in the band (the two teenaged members of the group, Stephen Lindquist and Jeremiah Satterthwaite, are still at Bethel, but bassist Benjamin Pien transferred to art school, and then to Century College) couldn't discount his lack of first-person connection with the divine.

"I don't like to make claims about what's true and what's not true," he explains. "I think a lot of religious belief is based on subjective experience, and I haven't really experienced that," Miller says cautiously. Listening to him, I get the feeling that he probably put more soul-searching into leaving the church than most people put into belonging to it.

His fellow Foxes seem respectful of this. Guitarist Satterthwaite, his sun-whitened blond hair falling into his eyes, explains how he thinks about the difference. "Pete's songs are more challenging of Christianity. The dynamic of the band is to challenge each other—I see it as a challenge to Christianity."

Ben Pien, the eldest and most reserved member of the band, admits, "Even being a Christian, I feel there are a lot of problems with it."

"We've all played in worship bands at one time, but I don't feel like it's a call to ministry," Satterwaite points out. "I like making music."

Boyish, playful drummer Linquist confirms that the band's agenda isn't really religious. "We see it, like, it's art."

And yet you get the sense that the whole band, Miller included, is still searching open-eyed, expecting that if they keep trying, they can coax some grace out of the universe. - The City Pages

This old gutted house/ Became my cell

This line, from the opening track of Red Fox Grey Fox’s follow-up to 2009’s brilliant full-length From the Land of Bears, Ice, and Rocks, fits. It just feels right. Listening to A Snake. A Scoundrel. This Man is Cursed. is a bit like tip-toeing through an abandoned building. Here and there, massive, crumbling walls teeter over expertly placed chords and thumping percussion. Quiet riffs peek out into the empty spaces like twisted steel girders and the floating light of Peter Miller’s atmospheric vocals fills in the cracks, diffusing a decadent glow across the scene. There are rough edges, but they’re exposed and honest and completely natural. They just fit.

A matching pair of picked guitar lines cast their shadows over the beginning measures of “Nathan Thinks I Accidentally Prayed,” pausing to allow Miller’s voice to join them before cymbals and bells bloom into view. The track builds as the guitars and percussion pick up in intensity and the vocals soar into the track’s conclusion as Miller cries “I’m not here/ I’m not here/ I’m not here/This house is finally falling/ Apart.” The second track, “Confidence/Competence,” lives up to its title, wasting no time in getting to the point. A few seconds in and the song is already rocking as melodic drones hum behind crunching riffs. All the while, drums pulse and shout while Miller’s melodies climb and his vocal chords rend. It’s not quite screaming, not quite yelling, and not quite singing, yet it works. It just fits.

“When Bad People Happen to Good Things” continues the trend, constructing a pastiche of riffs, percussion, keys, soft falsetto, and strained suspensions. Architecturally, this is the EPs strongest point, as it transitions seamlessly from emotion to emotion, confession to confession. Every instrument plays a part, pushing and pulling the song in new and unexpected directions. The title track places bells at the fore and Miller finally gets some help when gang vocals join him mid-way through. The final two minutes of the tune are some of the most explosive as the guitars are let loose in luscious layers. It’s far denser than the rest of the EP, but it works. It just fits.

A Snake. A Scoundrel. This Man is Cursed. spans the distance between a fantastic full-length and a new album scheduled for a 2010 release. Like an abandoned building, it might not grab your attention at first glance, but a quick walk through reveals a compelling and strangely beautiful setting. On its own, it’s quite good, and as a bridge between records, it works. Really, it just fits. - Absolute Punk