The End Of The World

In even the densest urban spaces there are still glimpses of the beyond – fleeting moments that carry an unnamable sense of immense possibility. There are spaces between the buildings that reveal vivid pieces of the horizon. There is wonder for those willing to look. Ecstatic sounds for those willing to listen. The End of the World is a band in pursuit of such sights and sounds. Their music is a voice emerging from silence, two guitars turning to a hundred voices. In an almost hypnotic, sauntering trance, it becomes sound swimming to each corner of a room with a rhythmic pulse always pushing forward. It is music for the searcher, the dogged optimist.

Recorded at the Key Club in Benton Harbor, MI on the very same 24-track console that produced recordings as unquestionably disparate and magical as Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On and Cass McComb’s PREfection, The End of the World’s debut full-length, You’re Making It Come Alive, is a record that documents a focused creative vision, shaped for the better part of the past three years. It’s more than just the sonics that bind The End of the World, though. Bobby Stillman, Benjamin Smith and Stefan Marolachakis might as well be a modern-day band of outsiders in their hometown: New York. They share an ambition to make music grounded in instinct, heart, and a collective sense of urgency in a city too often obsessed with fashion, irony and feigned indifference. To explain better, though, let’s jump back for a moment.

Direct and concise, The End of the World’s debut recording suggested a band on the fast track to conquering the pop song. Released in May 2005, the self-titled EP consisted of four airtight numbers, showcasing melodic refinement amidst dense guitars and propulsive rhythms. After the EP’s release the band did some exploring. They toured throughout the country, took up residence together in a house in Maine for a couple months to live and rehearse and, finally, they recorded on the shores of Lake Michigan. Somewhere amidst all of these adventures things really opened up. The strong sense of melody and rhythm remained intact, but the band began to explore new sonic territory.

You’re Making It Come Alive expresses a sense of gravity without succumbing to melodrama, an earnestness that resists preciousness. The prominence of warm, spacious recordings, nostalgic turns-of-phrase, slide guitars, and tambourines reveal the inspirations the band finds in times past. Even the expressive vocals of Marolachakis, whose voice realls a slowly fading age of great singers, suggest a strong sense of classicism, butc still the band sounds distinctly modern in a way that eludes easy classification. His lyrics convey a world-weariness, but one that never succumbs to pessimism or disdain. There is always a confidence that a better world can be found. In this pursuit The End of the World is ever moving forward, using their music to aid their continuing search.