Little Brazil
Omaha, Nebraska, United States | INDIE
Music
Press
“Son sounds like if Josh Caterer from Smoking Popes listened to a shit-ton of Cursive, the Promise Ring and Hey Mercedes and decided to crank the amps to about 13 or 14 without losing lyrical sincerity... I highly recommend this record.” - Alternative Press - Alternative Press
“Over a backdrop of pop-punky riffing The Replacements, Hedges melodically covers unrequited love, broken relationships, divorce and parental abandonment... The bogged down sentiments are kept afloat by Son’s toe-tapping musicality, though, making all the cathartic pain-spilling a strangely joyful, liberating experience; quite a feat indeed.” - College Times - College Times
“this album is genius... Son is an album that translates nearly perfect to the stage. Between the refreshingly honest and sometimes cavalier nature of Landon [Hedges] and the light airy rock sound that resonated from the stage, it was a truly great show.” - AllAboutTheMusic.net - www.AllAboutMusic.net
“[Little Brazil] does early Death Cab for Cutie better than Death Cab did” - San Diego Reader - San Diego Reader
"The four-piece, flat-out rock'n'roll act provokes dancing, eyes-closed head swaying and fans who belt out the powerful lyrics as though tthe songs are the anthems of their lives. With occasionally brooding and consistently exhilarating material, if Little Brazil doesn't suck you in, check your pulse." - Layne Gabriel - The Omaha Reader
"Now," has a simple chord progression, a swaying 6/8 beat and lots of sighing-then-screaming mood changes: by the time you're finished figuring out whether you like it, the song's already over and more likely than not, already stuck in your head" - Sanneh - New York Times
"Landon Hedges face is already familiar to those with a hankering for all things Saddle Creek (which, judging by the numbers, must be some 75 percent of current college rock afficionados), as he's logged time as a touring member in both Conor Oberst's spaz-rock band Desaparecidos and Tim Kasher's Cure acolytes the Good Life. Now he's setting out to conquer the young and earnest masses with his own band, Little Brazil. Judging by the strength of the three songs on his band's debut EP, he's got a good shot at pulling it off. Mixing a pleasant low-key singing voice with both Prom-styled piano pop and more visceral tuneage in the vein of Nebraskan forebears like Cursive it seem there's plenty to look forward to on the debut full-length, You & Me, due out early next year." - Rob Van Alstyne - Pulse Of The Twin Cities
“Hedges' songwriting skills have grown since the band's early days... [and producer A.J.] Mogis' hand elevates the production to new heights, with majestic-sounding guitars that carry the standout tracks "Nicholas" and "Gold."” - Billboard Magazine - Billboard Magazine
Discography
Little Brazil EP - (2004 Mt. Fuji Records)
You and Me - (2005 Mt. Fuji Records)
Tighten the Noose - (2007 Mt. Fuji Records)
Son - (2009 Anodyne Records)
Singles:
You & Me - (2005 Mt. Fuji Records)
Shades - (2007 Mt. Fuji Records)
Son - (2009 Anodyne Records)
Multiple streaming tracks on; Pandora, XM, Sirius, Napster, Live365, LastFM, NPR, AOL Music & many, many more.
Photos
Bio
Omaha, NE’s Little Brazil have peeled away layers of themselves: elation, desperation, tenderness, hope, sorrow and pain and found the tempestuous core of their shared experience—a series of narratives that make up their new album “Son” bound by the common thread of family dysfunction and tragedy. Tracing the arc of a relationship from it’s wonderful, romantic beginning through an ending that is all too familiar to the children of broken homes, songwriter Landon Hedges eschews the hackneyed boy/girl adolescent, melodrama of six-million inferior records and plows head-on into divorce, adultery, custody battles, parental alienation, abandonment, suicide and a child’s search for self. The type of grown up shit that would make Hedges’ former Saddle Creek Records band-mates proud, and even envious. With “Son”, Hedges firmly puts himself in the pantheon of great Omaha songwriters.
But Little Brazil is even more than the sum of its songwriting talent. A rock-solid rhythm section of Oliver Morgan and Danny Maxwell turning in workman-like performances, the sublime backing guitar work of Greg Edds and the masterful production work of AJ Mogis (Cursive, Bright Eyes, The Faint, Criteria, Tilly & The Wall, Rilo Kiley, etc.) of ARC Studios in Omaha.
Friends since childhood, Landon Hedges and Danny Maxwell grew up playing music that mimicked their older brothers’ Replacements and Superchunk records. Many high-school bands later, Landon had caught the attention of renowned Omaha natives Conor Oberst and Tim Kasher who recruited him for turns in their respective bands Desaparecidos and The Good Life. In 2002 while on a break from his duties as a sideman to these two venerable Midwestern indie institutions, Landon organized what would soon become the earliest lineup of Little Brazil. By 2004 Little Brazil had already released the first of two albums on Mt. Fuji Records and the additions of Oliver Morgan and Greg Edds to the lineup, were primed to up the ante on an already impressive level of creative output and poised live performances.
Drawing from a pool of shared influences including Dinosaur Jr, Pavement, Brendan Benson, Built To Spill and Guided By Voices- the new lineup was already crafting new songs within the first 60 minutes of their first rehearsal together.
Since 2004, Little Brazil has toured relentlessly, opening for such acts as Tegan & Sara, Nada Surf, Tapes N’ Tapes, Har Mar Superstar, Bettie Serveert, Cursive, Mike Watt, The Appleseed Cast, The Stills, The Go! Team, Grant Hart (Husker Du), Black Kids, and many others.
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