Music
Press
“At the Spine's great album barely hints at their live power: The band exults madly all over the room with a performance to banish all jadedness. This band is so strong and fresh that watching them, I can't help but imagine…” (The Stranger, Seattle, WA) - The Stranger, Seattle, WA
“Blissfully impervious to whatever fad his indie-rock peers are currently into. Even after a few listens, the album keeps on revealing quirky new hooks, new layers.” - Time Out NY (NYC, NY)
“…furious riffing and searing guitar lines bedded in melodic foundations. Songs throb and snarl but hooks and choruses lift the music beyond any sort of thrashy morass… If Zorro was in a band it could sound like this.” - Americana UK
At the Spine leader Mike Toschi is a folk singer at heart. What he’s doing with this project is, to my ears, an extension of what Bob Dylan did in the mid-60’s, when he “went electric.” As was the case on their debut, 2003’s excellent The Curriculum is Never Neutral, the tunes on First Day of Spring are really just honest populist folk songs- filtered through the grunge, garage, indie rock, and new wave that Toschi undoubtedly grew up hearing. Comparisons can be made to the Wipers, Mudhoney, the Pixies, early Uncle Tupelo, and so on, but name dropping doesn’t really do this music justice. If you like those bands, you’ll like this, but At the Spine is really its own unique blend of rock ‘n’ roll. (Ari Joffe, Punk Planet, Chicago, Issue 69, September/October 2005).
- Punk Planet, Chicago, IL
"…They've been called it all: the next Pixies, just like early Fugazi, early Guided by Voices, early Neil Young. The comparisons are plentiful — and all overboard, if you ask me. Because after checking out their sophomore album, First Day of Spring, I can say that these guys stand on their own feet. Comparisons aren't really necessary..." - Inlander Weekly, Spokane, WA
Discography
At the Spine- Vita July 2008 (US), Oct 2008 (EU)
At the Spine- Sonic Resistance 2007
At the Spine- First Day of Spring 2005/2006
At the Spine- The Curriculum is Never Neutral 2003
All album have recieved airplay on
Photos
Bio
During the last five years ATS (and it’s earlier incarnation) have played with acts such as: The Murder City Devils, The Cops, The Blakes, Chiodos, The Whore Moans, Ice Age Cobra, The Ruby Doe, The Valley, The Hands, 31 Knots, The Femurs, The DT’s, Fernando, Chiodos, Retisonic (ex Blue Tips/Swiz) and mellower acts such as Damien Jurado, Tim Seely, Vince Mira, Pete Krebs (Hazel), Joel RL Phelps (Silkworm), and of course a lot of great less well known bands.
We are often compared in press to numerous other bands (Fugazi, Built to Spill, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Husker Du, Clash, Uncle Tupelo, early Neil Young, etc.), but really we aim to do our own hybrid thing while always putting on energetic and sincere live performances.
We have received press in Time Out NY, The Seattle Times, The Seattle P.I., The Stranger, The Portland Mercury, Sound Magazine, The Seattle Weekly, The Houston Chronicle, Americana UK, and numerous other outlets.
We have received decent airplay for our first three albums on KEXP (last album went to #40 on the general chart and #9 on NW chart on 5/3/07) and other college radio stations around the country, played numerous in-studios sessions, and played over 150 shows across the country in the last few years. We were also nominated in the category of best indie rock/garage rock by the Seattle Weekly in 2006 (but we were in the EU) and had a song selected by Go Kart Records in Germany for use on a compilation that pressed over 20,000 copies.
We have also had our music used in the upcoming gay/horror film Cthulhu (with Jason Cottle and a freaky/naughty Tori Spelling), on NPR’s Marketplace, used on the Movieset.com site for footage of the film Battle in Seattle with Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta, etc., and by the folks at Creative Media Alliance in a snowboard video of the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom and a charity hockey event for the Ronald McDonald House.
We have done this all on shoe-string budgets. We love to rock and we take live performances very seriously.
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