nevada

Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, Nevada include Kevin Stanford, Sean Robbins, Vickie Burick, Hunter Kalman and Rick Shore. Their new album, The Sunlight And The Sound, is a terrific collection of psychedelic pop and guitar-based rock with influences of Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, The Byrds and Galaxie 500. And the boy-girl harmonies make it even sweeter.

- WXPN 88.5 Philadelphia

Jayhawks fans will revel in this new album by Nevada. Its monolithic neo-folk sound is engaging and compelling with churning guitars and majestic melodic vocals. Formed in ’03 in North Carolina, Nevada has a certain The Cure sound about some of their songs. You can also hear aspects to a lesser degree of gothic group Clan of Xymox. Psychedelic pop noodles throughout “The Sunlight and the Sound” making for a post-hippie rock adventure you won’t want to miss out on.

- J-Sin

- Smother Magazine

Nevada with the Hellsayers at Westville Pub; Thursday, Aug. 4: Four Stars

• Genre(s): Indie, Americana

• Be glad you stayed home if: You frown upon Cosmic Country traversing into Radiohead or Spiritualized territory.

• Defining moment: Nevada's "Let It Shine" – the second song in the set – barreled out of the gate, displaying an armada of genres, and quashing any notion of "just another bar band."

I admit I came for the Hellsayers. All I knew about Nevada was that band member Sean Robbins is the brother of the Hellsayers' ethereal poet Wayne Robbins. I was even more taken aback when the Hellsayers came on first. Stripped to a bare trio, Robbins and company still induced the power abundantly evident when they're a full band. My favorite track, "Jesus," silenced the bar rowdies, and was fortified softly by Nevada's Vickie Burick (acoustic guitar, vocals).

I was shocked to find Nevada, a group relegated (for now) to the unknown, to be so damn good. All the members seemed to share a part, with equal acreage in the limelight. Guitarist Kevin Stanford showed traces of Johnny Greenwood, while Burick's warm presence and voice nurtured her bandmates as they explored beyond the boundaries of their numerous influences. They even gave the Beatles' "Rain" a luminous salute.

- Mountain Xpress

Dreamy country-tinged pop debut

The band sits at the Sparklehorse end of the alt-country spectrum as dreamy harmonies float over atmospheric guitar-based landscapes. The sound is also reminiscent of bands like The Underground Lovers, Galaxie 500 and Spiritualized while the more energetic numbers echo Fleetwood Mac. This debut album has been polished up in production with Vickie Burick’s ethereal harmonies floating over the more direct line taken by front man Kevin Stanford. The songs crescendo nicely, particularly on the cello-laden ‘She’s Gone’ and the spacey opener ‘Stars’. ‘In The Light’ is also a catchy pop nugget...these songs stand up very well when taken in isolation and should catch the ear of patient listeners with a bent toward gentle indie pop.

- Nic Fildes

- Americana UK

Local band Nevada’s debut album, “The Sunlight and the Sound” is making waves in the underground music scene. Vickie Burick’s piercing folk-based sound has spun the band into a melodic dream of intense sounds with good vibrations. “I think Vickie is the secret weapon in the band, because she holds it all together with her harmonies,” said Sean Robbins, guitarist and vocalist. “I love her voice. She’s a great singer and she has a great stage presence. That’s why we always put her in the middle when we play.” You can call it dark folk or psychedelic pop with atmospheric guitar sounds, but there really isn’t one way to describe their unique sound. Robbins talks about the band’s sudden rise to underground notoriety.

Question: What’s the chemistry between the band members like?

Answer: “Me, Vickie and (lead-guitarist, vocalist) Kevin (Stanford) come from all different backgrounds. Vickie comes from a folk background and we wanted to turn her into a rock star. My songs kind of have a folk sound to them as well as some pop and rock. Kevin is a huge fan of Spiritualized and The Verve. I think the three different styles we have, when they come together, it really works.

Q: What is your songwriting process?

A: It started out where we would all bring in our own songs to practice, and we would have an idea of a finished song, but the band usually changes and rearranges it, and it changes to something that we didn’t have in mind, and it usually sounds better. A couple of the songs came out of nowhere. We all wrote a song called “Stars.” We would like to take the band in that direction, with more of the songwriting involving the whole band. Everyone’s great with arrangement. When someone has an idea the whole band chimes in on how to write a song.

Q: How did the lineup form with The Green Fields and Night’s Bright Colors for your upcoming show at the Grey Eagle?

A: We are all really good friends, and Chris from The Green Fields played with us for a little bit. Those are our two favorite bands in town. We just thought it was a natural fit for a three-band gig.

Q: Did any surprises come out of making the album, “The Sunlight and the Sound”?

A: We mostly recorded the song live and then added to that. We really tried to make the vocals stand out with a lot of harmonies; we double tracked Vickie’s voice on most of the album. A lot of our reviews say our album is a big album, but we weren’t really going for that. But I guess it kind of turned out that way. We had a blast making it and we can’t wait to go back into the studio again.

Q: How has the band grown since you first started out?

A: We are up to seven people in the band right now. We’ve added Lauren Brown (Grace Cathedral Park, Knives and Daggers) to our live shows. She plays the violin and the cello. These instruments are an added surprise to our sound. We are definitely incorporating these sounds into our new songs. We will hopefully start working on a new album in the fall.

- Mary Snow


- Asheville Citizen Times

Taking cues from the Verve, Galaxie 500, and My Bloody Valentine, Nevada mixes shoegaze and neo-psychedelia into hazy expanses of indie rock. The six-piece band hails from Asheville, North Carolina, a cultural oasis located between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. It’s a picturesque town with a growing music scene, but cofounder Sean Robbins says the group’s name isn’t supposed to downplay his home. “We made posters for our first show using several band names,” he explains, “and ‘Nevada’ looked the best.” It also fits the band’s spacey songs, whose combination of male-and-female harmonies, string sections, multiple guitars, and reverb (lots and lots of reverb) is often as broadly spacious as that vast, lonely state. Nevada is currently supporting The Sunlight and the Sound, the co-ed Carolinians’ full-length debut, with a live show that includes “eight- to ten-minute psychedelic freak-outs” and a lot of instrument switching. Songs range from “In the Light” (which recalls early R.E.M., particularly the Stipe-sounding background vocals) and the vaguely British “Stars” to the lighthearted indie pop strains of “Flier’s Dream.” Asheville is beautiful this time of year, its surrounding hills all ablaze with fall foliage, but those who can’t travel south for a Nevada gig can see what they’re missing at MySpace.

- Andrew Leahey
- AllMusic.com

On their debut album, The Sunlight and the Sound, Asheville neo-folksters Nevada take everything that is good about ‘60s psychedelia—the lush arrangements, richly layered male/female harmonies and pop sensibility—and thoroughly modernize it. Vickie Burick’s sunny vocals float somewhere above front man Kevin Stanford’s indie-tinged croon—making Nevada’s sound heavier than Stevie Nicks era Fleetwood Mac. But there is a pulsing retro backbone to Sunlight, one that evokes the freewheeling hippie era and makes the album sit comfortably somewhere between light and dark. Where Flier’s Dream is a foot-tapping beachy pop gem, She’s Gone is a mournful cello-rock ballad. Opener Stars bridges the gap with an uncanny similarity to Modern English’s I Melt With You. But those similarities aside, Sunlight traverses indie and folk sensibilities with grace in a catchy contemporary fusion.


- Boldlife