Luke Temple
Gig Seeker Pro

Luke Temple

Band Alternative Rock

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Luke Temple Lights Match"

"I'm the king of totally in-limbo," says Luke Temple on the phone from a motel somewhere in Michigan. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter has been touring for weeks in support of his melodic debut, Hold a Match for a Gasoline World, out this week.
The weeks of wandering can't be all that foreign to Temple, who once spent a year living in the Northern California woods and working at a nearby candy store. Eventually, he headed east to become a painter in New York, where he paid the bills by painting murals on the walls of wealthy New Yorkers' apartments. A string of accidental music gigs followed, in Harlem and downtown Manhattan, including stints at the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe, where artists Nellie McKay and Adam Green got their start and Interpol's Paul Banks would take in the scene. "Back then," says Temple, "I probably had, like, ten songs."

Temple quickly caught the bug, and began writing new material. "Music's just more immediate than painting -- such a visceral, momentary thing," he says. "In New York, I'd sit for forty-five minutes with my guitar in the wee hours of the morning before work and write. And I found out that I actually write best under severe time constraints."

Nearly four years' worth of these early morning songs have made their way onto Hold a Match, released by indie startup Mill Pond Records, which lured Temple out to Seattle last year. Scattered between New York, Seattle and Baltimore, his band -- including guitarist Burke Sampson and the End of the World's Rob Stillman on piano, sax and drums -- would receive four-track tapes from Temple through the mail so each could rehearse and help piece the songs together before meeting up in Seattle to record.

The result is a collection of songs that even the most jaded, anti-folk hipster could catch himself humming on the street. The tunes are deceptively simple, with pretty melodies in the vein of Graduate-era Simon and Garfunkel and Temple's sleepy voice suggesting a melancholy just beneath the surface. And it's a serious voice, high-pitched and pitch-perfect, crossing a young Graham Nash with Elliott Smith. It's showcased best on ballads such as "Make Right With You," "Private Shipwreck" and "In the End," with its haunting lyric "It's cold here in Iceland/And the drunks on the street/Tie chains onto misery's gates."

"That guy's fucking great, an amazing songwriter," Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard says of Temple, who once opened up for his band at a college in Idaho. "His voice alone is so damn good -- one of the prettiest voices in all of indie rock, hands down. And he's handsome!" Temple is a lot more reserved about his talents (nevermind his blonde good looks). "Oh, man, to go from singing in my room to singing in front of people still feels like a big leap."

He isn't sure where he fits in, in more ways than one. "A lot of folk musicians are really conscious of coming from a certain lineage and passing a torch, but I'm not concerned with that," he says. "I take pieces of things that I like to listen to and put them together, whether it's folk or jazz. Like lately, I can't stop listening to Duke Ellington's 'Safari Suites,' and Caetano Veloso."

He's also got a bit of a Neil Young complex to contend with. "There's an emotional aspect to his music without being overly sentimental," says Temple. "He walks that line perfectly: He can pour his heart out and not become trite. That's something I'd love to be able to do. I hope I'm doing that." - Rolling Stone Online


"Rolling Stone Album Review"

Seattle singer-songwriter Luke Temple's debut is a collection of songs that even the most jaded anti-folk hipster could catch himself humming on the street. The tunes are deceptively simple, with Simon and Garfunkel-style melodies, and Temple's sleepy vocals belie a melancholy just beneath the surface. His high-pitched voice recalls a young Graham Nash by way of Elliott Smith; it's showcased best on ballads such as "Private Shipwreck" and "In the End," with its spooky lyric "It's cold here in Iceland/And the drunks on the street tie chains onto misery's gates." Culled together from years of early-morning songwriting -- before Temple headed off to paint murals in wealthy people's houses -- Hold a Match has enough understated soul to give Conor Oberst a run for his money.
- Rolling Stone Magazine


"Luke Temple on Spin.com"

Luke Temple could be the latest in a line of Jeff Buckley interpreters. He sustains the same pretty-yet-despondent tenor, and touches on the same subject matter: abandoned lovers, cruel acts of God, unrequited longing. With his sweet voice and acoustic flair, Temple will have to fend off the comparisons to the current canon of suicidal singer-songwriters (Buckley, Elliot Smith, Nick Drake). But Hold A Match For A Gasoline World has moments of pure giddiness that keep it from being fully mired in the doldrums. The first song off the album, “Someone Somewhere,” has the upbeat feeling of Norwegian heartthrob Sondre Lerche’s “Two Way Monologue.” This spring Temple is releasing his first full-length album, Hold A Match For A Gasoline World .

Temple was not always just a musician; he started as a visual artist, and once earned his keep as a candy salesman. Before moving to New York and then Seattle to pursue his dream of making music, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, and worked in a candy shop in Northern California. Hold A Match For A Gasoline World, Temple’s debut full-length, was released on April 19th. - Spin.com


"Strip Shined"

"All those ways you might have tried/To keep yourself alive/Build mountains in your mind/Build mountains every time." Those lines are sung majestically by Luke Temple on "Get Deep, Get Close," a song off his debut full-length, Hold a Match for a Gasoline World on Seattle's Mill Pond Records. Temple delivers the survival technique of dreamy resilience in a voice that scales the higher notes with remarkable restraint; he never hits dramatic overdrive. Instead, he taps an older, gentler set of influences including early Paul Simon, Graham Nash, and Tim Buckley. It's a '70s folk-rock vibe informed by pop with complex melodic nods to the Beatles as well as such young contemporaries as Norwegian popster Sondre Lerche.
Hope, wistfulness, and longing create the trinity of Temple's songs on Hold a Match. Those vulnerable concepts are best delivered in the highest register—a man reaching to the stratosphere to get deep—and Temple has the perfect yearning tenor to convey just such emotional complexity. He's airy without being wispy, a little sleepy and conversational—stirring you without turning melodramatic. In other words, it's beautiful but understatedly natural, like the best folk-based pop. "I never give it that much thought because it's just my voice," Temple says matter-of-factly. "It's what I can do."

Of course, the arrival at that easy sense of self came about on a winding artistic path. Temple grew up listening to jazz and was interested in art, coming into songcraft in a circuitous fashion. He ended up playing neither jazz nor art-damaged rock, but sensitive singer-songwriter fare. "Growing up I played informally in a band. I played bass and I wasn't writing songs then," he says. "I was sort of against song structure. I only started writing songs five years ago."

After high school he moved from Salem, Massachusetts to Northern California where he lived a hardscrabble existence, sleeping in the woods and working in a candy store where he washed up in the bathroom. He eventually returned to the East Coast and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A scholarship award for painting was his ticket to New York City where he rediscovered his musical side. "I had a four-track and started recording on it," he says of his humble songwriting origins. "It became addictive." The addiction led Temple deeper into songcraft and the discovery of classic rock. "When I first started writing songs I was obsessed with David Bowie, his chordal movements and melodies," he says. "I was listening to jazz before that and I had to sort of learn the history of rock music." That history included the blues, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, and folk icons Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor.

Temple accumulated 10 songs, home recorded them, and landed his first show at the now-defunct Lower East Side club Baby Jupiter's. He found the immediacy of the songs and the communication of live performance a relief from the solitary rigors of painting. "I started playing music exclusively," he says. "I didn't have room in my brain for both music and painting." Soon his demos garnered the attention of Mike Manning at Mill Pond Records. His record deal led to his relocation to Seattle and a deeper identification of himself as a musician.

"It's been five years since I painted. But writing songs and painting are very similar in many ways," Temple says. "You build something up and you strip it down." That aesthetic of layering and erasure includes masterful fingerpicking influenced by the blues of Leadbelly (and heard on "Get Deep, Get Close" and the stunning "Only a Ghost") and judiciously fleshed-out arrangements. "We were very influenced by the production on the Beatles' White Album—very dry, all to tape. The only digital medium we used was in mastering," Temple says of the sound he and coproducer Troy Tietjen (the Shins, Death Cab for Cutie) captured. "I wanted it to sound very close and simple, for the magic to be in the music." That aesthetic suits the songs, allowing his compelling voice and the tasteful, uncluttered arrangements to carry the emotional heft of the music. "I love complex arrangements," he says, "but in the end it still comes down to the most basic stuff, a voice and a guitar. You can build on it from there." - The Stranger


Discography

Luke Temple self-titled EP, Luke Temple "Hold a Match for a Gasoline World" LP.

Photos

Bio

Currently at a loss for words...