Corey Landis & The Attacks
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Corey Landis & The Attacks

| INDIE

| INDIE
Band Alternative Singer/Songwriter

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""Get Hip!""

"Corey Landis has got the Antifolk Indie thing down with some Piano flourishes and he probably doesn’t even know it. Pretty cool for an LA Indie artist, huh? Corey would actually fit into a few other musical classifications but who really wants to box artists into one or two Genres when they don’t even do it to themselves? Just accept this is good music that you should be hearing everywhere, and call your local radio station and tell them to get Hip." - RadioMike.com


""Corey Landis joins the ranks of great troubadours like Warren Zevon and Tom Waits with his debut solo full-length.""

"Born on the day Elvis Presley died, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Corey Landis joins the ranks of great troubadours like Warren Zevon and Tom Waits with his debut solo full-length.

All 11 songs were recorded at home, mastered by Landis, and picked up by the Canadian indie label Urban Myth Recordings. The accompaniment consists of keyboards, the occasional guitar, and once in a while some overwrought percussion.

The real instrument is Landis's voice, as he belts out semi-comic lyrics that would be poetry if they didn't rhyme. Well, maybe the hidden track, the "I Will Fuck You" song, wasn't very poetic, but great songwriters are few and far between.

The only real drawbacks to this disc are Landis's own overproduction of some of the songs and a few of the scratchy background noises.

Like troubadours of old, his dark, ironic lyrics work best against a minimal background of the lone piano or a single acoustic guitar. This is an artist who can dominate any small venue and who should be recording gems like this in a much better studio than his living room. -DUG"
- Skratch Magazine Online


""One senses that he is going to be around for a long while yet.""

RARWRITER CD REVIEW MARCH 2007
COREY LANDIS
Corey Landis
(Urban Myth Records - 2007)
Corey Landis’ 2007 album Corey Landis is his third and marks a departure for him, not in style but in scope. The 12-track (plus) release features original compositions by Corey, but this time supported with orchestral arrangements by Joey Newman of the “Newman musical dynasty” (which includes his composer/father Thomas and his uncle Randy, and his father’s father before that). Corey remains an act geared essentially as a solo, and the producing team of Corey, Joey Newman and Greg Hayes didn’t mess with that. The added orchestral instruments, though there are many, are used with a light touch. Corey even goes so far as to add bass, pedal steel and female backing vocals in one instance, but the essential “Coreyness” remains intact. This third CD is an exercise in lounge and barroom piano balanced with deep excursions into his personal inner soundtrack.
“Welcome to the Limbo Lounge,” the opening track on the album, is musically in Randy Newman ragtime territory, if Randy could play faster, until about half way in when it veers toward Tom Waits. Lyrically it is pure Corey. He considers alternatives to improving, or running away from, his personal appeal, with an optimism that boomerangs from hopeful to dissolve into lines like “Maybe I’ll sail away in vomit as the acid dissolves the boat…” Corey, still the transplant from the Midwest, feels in foreign territory and is a little sick about it.
“So Right/So Wrong” brings on the strings, laid thick and traditional, in a way that couches Corey’s voice, which is near perfect on this track. Corey has a rich middle register and vocal dexterity that matches the whip-crack wit in his lyrics, which come in serpentine torrents. This song is filled with longing and sorrow and is affecting. Corey is insecure in the city again, and he has unsteady associates. This is a world-class tune. Beautiful string arrangement.
“Sherriene” is “new-Corey” - a country-inflected, pedal steel saturated bar singer with a song that comes right out of the Gram Parsons songbook. He tells a neo-tragic story of a bar slut. “You’re life’s become nothing but a Lifetime movie scene / Who’s dry humping you now, Sherriene?” Mariana Gillies does a wandering background vocal that is almost a send-up on Emmylou Harris, furthering the whole familiar feel of this track.
Just when you’ve popped a cold one to listen to “Sherriene” being dry humped, “For My Heart (and all the bereft)” pours forth in a bed of strings and oboes and reminds you that Billy Joel was once great. It is almost scary the way Corey Landis channels these guys – Joel, Zevon, Waits - and that is no criticism. A fellow songwriter will listen to Corey’s tunes and feel a kinship in that Corey Landis heard and absorbed the same extraordinary influences that moved a previous generation of writers, but whose stars are really within the reach of only a few, Corey being one. His musical vocabulary is rich, his writer’s senses are keen, and he has vocal talents that occasionally feel staggering. “For My Heart” is truly heart breaking in its marriage of minor figures and wistful lyrical content. Corey has great range and is really sweet in his high register, which he uses sparingly but to great effect. This song is a “Corey Landis” and has odd lyrics - “It’s only thanks to a baboon I’m standing here today…” - but somehow it has the qualities of a Disney movie theme. Great string arrangements, wonderful trumpet.
“’Till The Sun” continues a pattern on this album, lush alternating with stripped down, and here Corey is deep in classic Billy Joel territory again, maybe a little Warren Zevon in there, too. “I’ll watch over you…’till the sun turns blue…” Corey is in caretaker mode here, being the hopeful one. One senses a theme in Corey’s thinking that however uncertain he is of himself, he trusts him more than he trusts them. Another cool tune.
A time out here to note my own tendency to speak of “Corey” as if I know him, which I don’t. I just know these songs and through them I feel I know Corey. Let that sink in for a moment. Isn’t this exactly the kind of impact that separates output from artistry? My experience is that Corey is best appreciated under headphones, where he seems more intimate and accessible. Lyrically he walks a thin line between wit and easy smarts and you need to feel the musical positioning to think the better. But Corey Landis is sometimes able to lift that veil between performer and audience that is the mark of elevation in theatrical communication, and it creates wonder at what may be to come.
Corey Landis did the cover art for his CD jacket and it is rich with comic references (Laurel and Hardy’s piano mover bit) and nods to the masters (Van Gogh) as is his music.
“I’ll have to listen with my ears, like blind people do…”
That line comes from the next track, “Like Blind People Do,” which is another of the “Tom Waits-flavored” tracks on - rarwriter.com


""Powerful lyrics combined with simple, beautiful accompaniment -- mostly piano, but also strings -- this CD is a surprising treat.""

Powerful lyrics combined with simple, beautiful accompaniment -- mostly piano, but also strings -- this CD is a surprising treat. One wouldn't figure that the somewhat darker lyrics would match well with the beauty of the instruments chosen to join them, but they do. It is an odd match that happens to work extremely well.

A true songwriter, Landis can capture a thought or a moment with ease. The sound of his voice brings thoughts of Billy Joel on tracks like "Heather's On Fire," and one shouldn't miss "So Right/So Wrong" for the feelings it evokes. You'll uncover a country sound or two on tracks like "Sherriene," but overall this CD is a songwriters triumph.

Twelve tracks is a good amount, enough to satisfy, especially with the depth each track brings to the overall CD. Those who like reflective, innovative lyrics will enjoy this songwriter, but the music is actually very enjoyable on its own as well. Blending the two makes for a very good thing indeed, and one can hear these tracks again and again, finding something new each time. Treat yourself and check this one out. Landis has a wide appeal. - indiemusic.com


Discography

ALBUMS
"Feast of Scraps"
"14 old messages"
"Corey Landis"

NON-ALBUM SINGLES
"Be Nice To Me"
"It Looks Like You Hitched Your Wagon To The Wrong Star"
"Wrong About Me"

Photos

Bio

COREY LANDIS fittingly shares a birthday with Charles Bukowski and a deathday with Elvis Presley.

Whether or not he chooses to admit it, Landis typifies the recent resurgence of gifted twenty-somethings that evoke the "golden" singer-songwriter age of the 70s. The ubiquitous melodies of Elton, Joel, Springsteen, Cohen, Waits, Zevon and Newman hover over Landis' shoulder like older siblings--most tellingly in the dystopian relationship odes of the last three Angelenos.

Destined to relocate to Los Angeles (from Ohio) in 2000, Landis began appearing around LA as a solo performer, accompanying himself on piano at venues such as The Derby, and The Mint, and as the opening act for the comedy troupe Piece of Meat Theater. Landis was soon asked to contribute six original songs to the soundtrack for the indie film "Unreel: A True Hollywood Story" and also supplied the closing track for "Peace", a short film starring "That '70s Show"'s Kurtwood Smith.

His first release, "Feast of Scraps", a singular paean to the emotional mean streets of El Lay, sought to blow some dust and smoke in the right places, in the right amount. Landis' singular mix of melodramatic melodies, razorblade-gargling singing and homemade wall-of-Spector sounded to some "like the fictional soundtrack to a fictional paring of Stanley Kubrick and Sergio Leone... a spaghetti-O western." (Nimbus)

Critical consensus was that Landis was a songwriting force to be reckoned with:

"Great songwriters are few and far between; like troubadours of old, his dark, ironic lyrics work best against a minimal background of the lone piano or a single acoustic guitar. This is an artist who can dominate any small venue and who should be recording gems like this in a much better studio than his living room." (Skratch)

"**** 1/2 (out of five stars) Very real, somber, and humbling. If Bukowski could sing, he'd sound like this. A poet blessed with musical talent. The music is great. He sounds great. I'm afraid of him." (South of Mainstream)

"Darkly moody songs in a drunken manner. Excellent lyrics, interesting musicality, depth and soul... gritty and real. Great lyrics. I will buy him a drink." (Hybrid Magazine)

"14 old messages"--Landis' second release on Urban Myth Recordings--was released in September of 2005. On Landis' ambitious second platter, he sings his black heart out over all sorts of memories, both real and imagined, in musical settings both familiar and disorienting. Landis' self-mocking, mock-solipsistic lyrics and nostalgia-tinged new melodist pop evokes both the alleged golden age of singer-songwriter pathos AND sad-sack contemporaries Oberst, Barzelay, Apple, and Wainwright.

Like "Feast of Scraps", "14 Old Messages" was obsessively overdubbed by Landis in his home studio, with Landis singing and playing each and every note (including trumpet, guitar, and piano). "14 Old Messages" will hold your hair back as you vomit, commiserate as you cry, and laugh at you behind your back. While Corey Landis admittedly doesn't rewrite any rule books of pop songwriting, he clearly loves scribbling in the margins. And as "14 Old Messages"' very first review concurs:

"This kid could become the next great singer/songwriter of our generation." (Smother)

Recently, "New Year" from "Feast of Scraps" was voted a finalist in the 2005 International Songwriting Competition, making it in the top .5% of around 15,000 entrties.

Landis recently completed and released a self-titled record--a tribute, of sorts, to the '70s records of David Forman, Randy Newman, David Ackles, Biff Rose, and the like--which features string arrangements by Joey Newman. Smother.net says: "Supporting deep lyrical content and twisted chords, Landis manages to prove that he’s a worthy songwriter that’s worth more than just a casual listen and cast-off."