Parade of Lights

“[Parade of Lights] is being discussed by A&R weasels everywhere.” - Future Sounds

"Impressive new songs." - RM64 Blog

Chosen as one of the next 100 artists to watch for 2010. - URB

Parade of Light's debut EP was chosen as one of the top 15 releases for the year, along with Phoenix, the Big Pink, GIRLS, Fever Ray, the Horrors, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, et al. - URB.COM

Chosen in the 40 songs of LA based artists for 2009, for their track 'Cityscape.' - Buzzbands.LA (Kevin Bronson of LA Times)

Parade of Lights are a barely born four-piece that channels power-pop’s most respected names (Weezer, Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World) with a grandiose, wall-of-sound approach rivaling Joshua Tree’s audacity and—with a little luck—its success, too. I say “barely born” because the band formed mere months ago, when singer and guitarist Ryan Daly teamed up with bassist Randy Schute during Daly’s time off from playing guitar in OC pop heavyweights hellogoodbye. But in fact all of the members are established musicians, too: keyboardist Matt Frey also plays in 30 Seconds to Mars, and Mike Nielsen drums in Long Beach’s own Valley Arena.
Luckily for Parade of Lights and their ever-expanding fan base, these other bands haven’t been commanding their undivided attention lately, allowing the band to record a debut EP (due this summer) and play dozens of shows in and around Long Beach, the band’s humble hometown. The District Weekly caught Daly on the phone at home, where he was fighting off a bad cold.
The District Weekly: WHAT CAME FIRST, THE LINE IN THE SONG ‘CITYSCAPE’ WHERE YOU SING ‘PARADE OF LIGHTS’ OR THE BAND’S NAME?
Ryan Daly: The line in ‘Cityscape’ came first. I wrote that song before the band even had started, really. I just heard that phrase in the song and I was like, ‘Oh that’s a rad name, I wish I didn’t write it in the song.’ After a while we got to the point that we were just like, ‘Fuck it!’ I think we had a list of some names, and none of them were even close. ‘Parade of Lights’ might’ve been the first thing that sounded remotely cool to us. Maybe we would’ve come up with something better in the long run, oh well!
HOW STRONG OF AN IMPACT HAS U2 HAD ON THE BAND?
Ah, dude! A huge one! Everybody in the band loves U2. I mean, obviously they’re just a good band—a lot of people would disagree with that, I guess—but we just think they’re rad because they just write pop songs. And it isn’t like, ‘Oh these guys sound like that one band,’ either: They set out to do something new and original, and they changed the world because of it. They have so many fans around the world, too! They write songs that create like this implausibility, something everyone tries to do. Like you can tell that Bruce Springsteen is trying hard to connect with people, and everyone likes Trent Reznor because he shows people that he’s pissed . . . U2 does all that! They write these awesome pop anthems, a lot of them are happy, and then there are other ones like “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” that are way darker. They really influence our songwriting—probably a lot of people’s songwriting, too.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THEIR MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED SONG?
The thing that sucks is my all-time favorite U2 song is actually ‘With or Without You.’ I can’t help it! But another real good song by U2 is that song ‘Acrobat,’ it’s like a super rad, kind of a dark song with this amazing guitar playing. I hadn’t heard anything like that before. The Edge just has so much great stuff. I don’t feel guilty at all incorporating some of his stuff into my work—he’s so original!
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DELAY PEDAL?
Easily the Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, I put it on everything. It’s my favorite ever; I love how warm it sounds! There’s this real cool vibrato thing that you can do—it just makes it perfect. And if you totally kill the vibrato, that’s cool too, but when you turn that up, it has this signature sound that I’ve never heard anywhere else, nothing sounds like that pedal. I think The Edge uses it a lot, too!

PARADE OF LIGHTS WITH EUGENE AND THE 1914 AND LUNA IS HONEY THE QUE SERA | 1923 E SEVENTH ST | LONG BEACH 90813 562.599.6170 | THEQUESERA.COM | SUN 9PM | $5 | MYSPACE.COM/PARADEOFLIGHTS
- The District Weekly

Long Beach quartet Parade of Lights — featuring former members of Polus (before drummer Anthony Improgo departed to play with Metro Station) — is readying its debut five-song EP. This early taste from Ryan Daly, Matt Frey, Randy Schulte and Mike Nielsen features a heartsick anthem, sweetly melodic and deftly arranged, the kind of pop-rock for the night after date night.

||| Download: “Cityscape” - Buzzbands.la (Kevin Bronson of LA Times)

Flower Street Listing spent some time with members of Parade of Lights and their manager Richard Tampa over the past week and we are still wondering-how can a band with a such a sweet sound drink that much whiskey?
By: Lynnsee Pedersen

It's always an experience of some sort. When you get past the view the audience gets and more down to the nitty gritty. I went down and met Ryan Daly front man of Parade of Lights and their manager Richard Tampa for some drinks at Red Room located in Long Beach to get to know the band that Flower Street has not gotten to know as well as the others.

Ryan Daly (vocals, guitar) takes on a less conventional lead singer role. Friendly, full of energy and genuine; he seems to lack a chip on his shoulder. In fact the whole lot is rather friendly and genuine. Rather easy to be good friends with, I got the chance to catch their show at Spaceland as well as Three Clubs, both located in Los Angeles. After a couple parking tickets and a night of being squished on a couch that was falling out from under me, Flower Street has yet again expanded it's friendship circle of local musicians.

Their sound is positive with a trace of "I really really care about you, seriously" That is as far as my experience of describing a band can go. Like I always say, go check them out yourself.



Parade of Lights is releasing their debut EP in November and we have included a couple videos for you all to enjoy until then. - Flowerstreet Listing

Parade of Lights—the OC powerhouse electrifying the scene today - makes good on its name; their 5-song EP, live show, and persona are dizzying and anthemic. You can’t help but to look, listen, and observe.

Sitting on a couch and eagerly listening to a David Byrne LP, I can visually see the excitement that Ryan, Matt and Randy - three of the four creative juices that form Parade of Lights – feel for music.

About 20 minutes in, your correspondent asks the doomed, ever-pigeonholing question—favorite records. The guys exchange looks. Ryan and Randy flash smiles, as if they know what’s coming: U2’s “I Still Haven’t found What I’m Looking For,” holding an eerie likeness to Parade of Light’s “Wish.” “We listen to these records and we get excited about them, Matt says, “when we’re in the practice room or on stage, we want the listeners to feel the same way we felt when we listen to Born to Run or something like that. We’re not out to make a disgusting amount of cash, or get on MTv. If that happens, great, but it’s not our goal.”

RC: What is the goal, then?

Ryan: The whole band is just generally excited—about what we’re doing and music. Matt said it best—we just want to share the excitement with the audience. With everyone!

The band’s live performance is just as engrossing as their 5-song EP; as comfortable in an arena as the basement bar. In between songs you’re likely to hear an ambient loop playing while the guys tune their instruments, but Ryan says something slightly uncomfortable—like an eight year old’s laugh or a Yenta screaming for beans—to fill the last gap of song. Without notice the next song starts—loud, loud, loud. The whole band wails at their instruments. You can literally feel Randy’s bass’s sound waves on your chest. Mike looks like Billy the Butcher maniacally tenderizing slabs of steak.


RC: I don’t really see any experimentation with song structure or anything like that on this EP.

Ryan: Yeah, we knew at the outset we wanted to write pop songs, but still make them our own. As we wrote the songs, the sound of Parade of Lights developed. All of us [Mike included] have gone through so many different phases in music and we’ve listened and learned how the bands that we loved growing up wrote their songs, and how the members wrote together. We try to incorporate what we love about each band into our own sound, and at one point we all said to each other “Yeah, this sounds like Parade of Lights.”

And they’re what they seem—four normal guys who write accessibility into fresh pop songs, wanting to bring that to ears, eyes, and raise hairs on arms and goose-bump your neck. Parade of Lights achieves what some bands spend careers doing: a seed. A seed that’s familiar even though it’s new, songs that earn gold-plating but will last much longer than any precious metal. Instead, they leave a memory, a feeling, an experience that surely will excite.

- OC Music Magazine

+ BEST NEW MUSIC: Featured on Seattle’s 107.7 FM The End as a ‘Pick of the Week’ alongside the Dead Weather & the Arctic Monkeys - Seattle's 107.7 FM The End