Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Do you have a friend who always gets lost driving you home late night after a show, but you love the meandering, mystical conversation as she scatters further and further away from your abode? That's the feel of this introduction to The Color Bars.
Having played shows with everyone from Brian Jonestown Massacre to 50 Foot Wave to our own the Long Winters, The Color Bars live here in Seattle now, and are threatening to play out locally at least once every four weeks. NYC must be missing their reportedly fun shows terribly, since their kiss-off at the Mercury Lounge several months ago.
This eight song but goes-by-in-a-lick EP continually twists and turns through delightful distractions with an adorable lack of self-consciousness, and is a good introduction to the endlessly shifting pleasures offered by Gerald Slevin, John English, and David Spelber — who all go giddy, marching with instruments like "Rhodes," alto and tenor saxes, xylophone, maracas, "cigarette pack," trumpet, "Goblin laugh," along with the usual slackin' bass, drums, and guitars, through room-songs of post-apocalypse Georgia O'Keefe-gospel (the sun-slackin' "All Your Kitchen Ghosts"), Steppenwolf-meets-Beach Boys-meets-New Wave ("She Disarmed Me"), candy-riffed 60s trip-pop ("We're A Tag Team"), and ending up on the back porch of the surf-music-for-a-painted-desert "Greetings from Dubai."
If that sounds unpredictably whimsical, it is, and I have the feeling that more time playing and recording since this disc was released will make them a lot of fun to see live, and worth checking out what they record next.
- Chris Estey, Three Imaginary Girls
- Three Imaginary Girls
In the music industry today there is a much needed Brian Wilson Renaissance. After decades of dismissing artistic pop as an oxymoron, the music form is finally getting its due. Artists like Elvis Costello, Steven Malkmus, and the brilliant Wilson himself all realized that pop music was a starting ground for individual voyages. The Color Bars carry on this tradition, blending saccharine-y sweet harmonies, bouncing keyboards, and enough "whoo-hoo-hoos" to captivate any listener. What sets them and their debut EP "Making Playthings" apart, is their willingness and embrace of the experimental. It is rare that one hears a band able to extend in so many directions without ever spreading itself too thin. As good as their debut may be, what remains the best asset of the album is the anticipation the listener has for hearing what can The Color Bars may do on an even broader canvas.
- Pat Mulloy of the Louisville Eccentric Observer
- Louisville Eccentric Observer
The terrific Making Playthings is an EP that feels like the perfect LP. Eight songs here that don't overstay their welcome. This New York City group doesn't crank out the usual garage slop, but goes the other route and turns in a beautiful and fun psychedelic-inspired pop masterpiece that also hits on a great '70s groove. Fans of both The Beatles and Brian Wilson will really tear into this disc. The harmonies are top notch and the playing and arrangements will take your breath away. Tracks like "All Your Kitchen Ghosts" successfully update psychedelia for the new millennium, while other song such as "Eliza" and "We're a Tag Team" strut around in their finest Lennon/McCartney garb. Still other tunes like "The Last Time I Felt Alive" might even bring to mind the likes of Teenage Fanclub at their most delicate and pretty. A must-have release, no doubt about it.
- Jason Thompson, Popmatters
- Popmatters.com
Multi-layered, harmony-loving, fancifully prissy local indie quirk of the GBV/Pet Sounds/Elephant 6 ilk. Their 2004 CD has saxes, organs, cellos, xylophones, tambourines, cigarette packs, and whimsical praying mantis drawings
- Village Voice Pick of the Week
- The Village Voice
Far-out swirling indie psych pop is at the core of The Color Bars' gooey center, while neat-o harmonies are the uber-tasty sprinkles on top. The Color Bars are all fun and excitiement and with their debut album, Making Playthings, the band has started infecting kids everywhere with the sort of happy-go-lucky pop gems that would make even Thom Yorke crack a smile. New York City, better known as the center of the universe to those that live there, has fallen in love with this quirky rock outfit as of late, with every press outlet from the NY Press to the Village Voice to Time Out NY singing their praises.
- SXSW Cornerstone Player Sampler CD
Discography
Making Playthings - LP released in 2004
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
The Color Bars are a Seattle based indie-pop rock band who recently relocated from New York City. Their arrival on the music scene has been described as "a bigger breath of fresh air than an air vent in an underground sewer" (David Adair, Contactmusic.com). As self-described melody addicts, they blend together Wilsonian (Brian, that is) harmonies with their own uniquely "confectious" melodic style to create something new and surprisingly fresh. Their songs range form foreboding laments on love via professional wrestling metaphors to anarcho-syndicalist folk chanties to the kind of glazed-eyed psychadelic soundscapes that even your mother would love. Much like their songs, their live show never disappoints. Every member sings in the band, which makes the already difficult challenge of not singing along practically impossible. Their smart and eclectic brand of indie music is something we've needed for awhile, and they've only just begun.
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