The Alice Rose

The Alice Rose, Tammany Hall Machine
The Limelight —If you like '60s-era pop rock with lush melodies, cool chord changes and vocal harmonies, you'll love The Alice Rose. The Austin quintet fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist JoDee Purkeypile claims influences ranging from the Beatles to 13th Floor Elevators, and that's a good range, judging by songs "All Over Your Body" and "Slumberella."
-Jim Beal, Jr.



- San Antonio Express-News

Purveyors of fine Pop should be quite overwhelmed with The Alice Rose, an exciting quintet out of Austin, Texas. They have managed to assemble a collection of fresh and bright music with not a trace of filler to be found anywhere. When we say fresh we mean it, The Alice Rose has certainly taken cues from bands like The Beatles, Jellyfish and Squeeze, but they have used these influences to create something original. Phonographic Memory sets the melodic mood from the very start with "Light Up", a guitar-based mid-tempo rocker that mixes Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins with Ed Kowalczyk (Live) sounding vocals. "Ocean" is a smooth Gin Blossoms-meets-Squeeze tune, that's jacked up by a grungy guitar solo backed by ever so tastefully slight harmonies. The album wraps up with the full-on chugging "This Night", a song that could have led off the album much less closed it. It's proof positive that Phonographic Memory is loaded." - Whitsbrain.com

"This is the kind of dream pop I’m into - melancholy vibes, intelligent lyrics with great imagery, and a swirling rock approach...This is an album of beautiful compositions with an intriguing lead vocal that’s rough-edged on the low notes and heavenly on the high ones. Overall, these songs are radio-ready without sounding like anything else that’s already on the radio. This is a complex and mesmerizing album worth losing yourself in." - Jennifer Layton - Indie-Music.com

NPR.org, November 27, 2006 · The masters understand that the key to a great pop song lies in the ability to mine that place in the hippocampus where beloved melodies and the bittersweet moments they memorialize commingle. In this regard, The Alice Rose's Phonographic Memory is one of the most apt titles for a pop album in ages. Think about hearing a classic tune by Squeeze for the first time, and it's easy to understand how special this Austin-based band is: Every song on its debut sounds both strangely familiar and utterly new.

An especially noteworthy example, "West," opens like a modern emo-rocker, but then it dissolves into a simple piano-driven ballad, as if it were a demo tape from Brian Wilson's late-'60s period. With sweetly sincere lyrics -- "Over-hanging memory wilts / The heartbeat began / Tipped gladly in hand over everything I have" -- the song simply blooms, sounding oddly warm and instantly memorable in the process.

-David Brown - National Public Radio

Among the highlights: "Light Up" is an atmospheric rocker with a graceful melody; "Save Me" has a Lennonesque feel, almost as if "Hey Bulldog" was slowed down a notch or two; "Lamplight" is oustanding power pop; "Ocean" has an anthemic Coldplay-like sound; "All Over Your Body" is absolutely Beatlesque; and "West" falls into the Jon Brion/Michael Penn camp. - Absolute Powerpop

From out of the blue comes a band with the intelligent melodic sensibilities of Squeeze, and a subtle Texas accent. Songs of yearning that transcend the saccharine. - KUT 90.5 FM

For music fanatics, there are few greater joys than having a band seemingly burst out of nowhere armed with an album's worth of captivating new music, brimming with enthusiasm and vitality, giving the scene a huge jolt of excitement. The Alice Rose, a quintet out of Austin, TX, is just such a band capturing lightning in a bottle, channeling influences like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Big Star into a tasty new set of melodic rockers that are catchy without sounding derivative. It may share its influences with many bands, but The Alice Rose has a secret weapon in songwriter JoDee Purkeypile (vocals, guitar), who expertly crafts melodic, rollicking rock tracks that capture the melodic joy of the post-Beatles years, avoiding clichéd chord progressions and overly played out boy-girl lyrics. Sounding like a younger, raspier cousin of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Purkeypile, along with co-founders Sean Crooks (bass/vocals) and Chris Sensat (drums) filled out the band with Brendan Rogers (keyboards/background vocals) and Colin Slagle (lead guitar) in late 2005. Within two weeks of their debut album, Phonographic Memory, being released this past November, the song "West" was selected to be NPR's Song of the Day, exposing the band to a giant cross section of listeners across the county. Speaking by phone from his home in Austin, Purkeypile says that the NPR selection was an honor that was the culmination of a lot of hard work.

"We got the NPR gig through David Brown on WKUT, who I believe had heard us on MySpace. And he submitted us to that. I kind of found out about it over the phone. So it was sort of a neat thing because I really hadn't expected that," says Purkypile. "Our record had been out for, I guess, less than a week at that point. So yeah, it was pretty groovy, we enjoyed it. Y'know, it's been a long adventure for us. When we formed back in 2001, we didn't have a fan-base, we didn't have a record, we didn't have anything. So, we're happy that we're starting to build a buzz and an audience."

Although Phonographic Memory was only just recently released, The Alice Rose have actually been around for awhile, featuring the steady trio of Purkeypile, Crooks, and Sensat alongside a rotating cast of additional players. Purkeypile explains that "Sean and Chris and I formed the band in the summer of 2001, after having played together in another group as teenagers. I named us the Alice Rose in a sort of tribute to Sadie Warren, who was a very talented artist and a good friend of a friend of mine. She died in 2000 at the age of 16, and although I only knew her briefly, her influence has stuck with me to this day. So, I named us the Alice Rose after her niece, who I'm sure has no idea, and hopefully she won't find that creepy [chuckles]. The name sort of embodies the kind of songs I began to write at that time, which were worlds away from the kind of crap I'd been writing. And plus it has sort of a surreal quality to it, which I liked…"

The early years of the band were a time of trial and error, as the three musicians went through a number of augmenting players, trying to find the right balance of sound and personalities. Purkeypile states that "…we've always had maybe one other guy who...[just had a hard time] fitting in to the kind of thing that Sean, Chris and I had. So it was always this one outside guy and us. When Brendan and Colin joined in the fall of last year, we became a five-piece, and things really started to get going for us, which had never been the case."

With the lineup complete, The Alice Rose set out to record its full length debut with producer Mark Hallman (Shawn Colvin, Jimmie Vaughan). "The oldest song on there is 'Stop,' which I wrote when I was 18. I've always known…that the first record was really gonna have to be sort of a mix of older material as well as some of the newer stuff," says the songwriter, explaining that he is basically always working on new ideas during his spare time. "It is kind of hard, because I'm still writing constantly, so I've gotten new stuff just ready to go for the next record. I think the most recent song on there is probably 'Wisteria,' and 'All Over Your Body.' That's definitely the path that we're going down at this point, which is more of a Motown kind of trip. The much older stuff, like 'Stop,' is more [influenced by] the Beatles. I'm not sure if you know who they are," he says, chuckling.

Sure enough, there are echoes of the Liverpool legends all over the disc, from the layered acoustic guitars fleshing out the sound on "Saints" to the sheer pop catchiness of "Stop." But the writer manages to throw in curveballs throughout; chords that don't resolve where you think they will, time changes, and funky instrumentation that seems almost too complicated to work - but does. Purkeypile explains that "It's kind of like watching TV: I'm searching for a bit that keeps me interested, but after awhile I'll just get bored, and it has to not only surprise ME, bu - Amplifier Magazine

Great new discovery out of Austin, Texas! The plate is set from Song #1, "Light Up" below, a song that forced the hitting of the repeat button three straight times before moving on out of necessity to get the rest of the album. Thankfully, it continued to deliver the same helping of pop goods. Check out "Save Me`, check them all out. There`s not a duff track here...Extremely Highly Recommended! - Not Lame

Austin songwriter JoDee Purkeypile is as singular as his name. It would be easy to attach the "Beatlesque" tag to the singer and guitarist, who wrote every song on the Alice Rose's debut LP, but as much as Purkeypile toils in the melody mines, he's too ambitious to reach for simple hooks to hammer the hummable into the subconscious. He and the band, which formed in 2001, bury the "yeah, yeah, yeahs" on "Stop," the album's best shot at airplay, and roll out complex pop tunes such as "Wisteria" and "Ocean" that challenge listeners to follow the sound wherever it takes them. Power pop is supposed to be sleek and breezy, but this is what Squeeze would sound like if a young Syd Barrett were a collaborator.

Is this all too artsy for its own good? Perhaps. "Phonographic Memory" won't have major labels salivating. But there's something to be said for bubbling under when the common inclination is to burst out.

The Alice Rose will celebrate its new album's release with a set at Waterloo Records on Friday at 5 p.m. and a show at Ruta Maya later that evening.

— Michael Corcoran

- The Austin American Statesman

"Delicious melodic guitar pop out of Austin, Texas. Led by a talented singer/songwriter by the name of JoDee Purkeypile, the Central Texan quintet eschews any overt stylistic alliance (outside of an obvious fondness for 80s British pop) and simply fills up a cookie sheet’s worth of wonderful songs on Phonographic Memory. “Save Me,” “Light Up” and “Saints” fulfill the daily requirement for near-perfect pop, while “All Over Your Body” and “This Night” stretch out with hip-wiggling rhythms and textural feedback. Good songwriting, good performances, strong production—nothing but good stuff here."

-Michael Toland
- High Bias