The Fluoride Program
Gig Seeker Pro

The Fluoride Program

Band Rock Alternative

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"All Music Guide review of Bastion"

"Alternately brash and brooding, The Fluoride Program's debut EP bristles with guitar energy and unadulterated emotion. Drawing upon influences like mid-period Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead (back when they remembered that guitars were meant for playing through huge stacks and not through meandering digital loops), this four-piece's compositions are shoved forward via a combination of Steve Bekkala's propulsive drumming and Justin King's dissonantly beautiful guitar lines, with enigmatic vocalist Dmitri Vada gliding over top of their musical topography with scattered snapshots of his all-encompassing love and others' treacherous jealousy. A uniquely American take on the guitar-driven alienation that Britpop had touched on and then for some reason abandoned, The Fluoride Program never indicates that meeting people is easy. Judging from their music, life is seen through alternately jagged and broken eyeglass lenses, the only respite coming from the few seconds between the punch and the body hitting the ground. The quiet, drifting "Sacred Ground" encapsulates that moment of semi-consciousness, as the head flies back and the imprint of the knuckle is still on the jaw, a perfect clarity is born. A perfect arc toward the pavement and the lulled lapse that is the album's closer "White Sweat," a nine-minute fever dream with meandering guitar presences and mallet-bruising tempo shifts. Bastion is a whip-smart gut punch, rooted in post-punk's gritty spit and muscle, and juiced with the digital age's inherent unease, the group breaks bones and tears heartstrings, often with the same blow." - Zac Johnson, All Music Guide


"All Music Guide review of Roadside Flowers"

"The Fluoride Program's first full-length release builds upon the promise that their 2005 EP Bastion hinted at. The group whispers and screams with a bright tunefulness and a sense of dynamic that is in rare supply in most of their post-rock contemporaries. Ever since Radiohead apparently decided that guitars were old hat, many indie rockers have relied on twiddling electronics to build the walls of their sonic architecture, but on Roadside Flowers, the Fluoride Program injects piano, layers of harmony vocals and even the occasional viola into the scree and wail of guitars and rolling hi-hat to build a textural feel without the overused drone of synthesized sound. This is a real band, playing in time with each other, and pushing sound around a real room. The totemic pulse of the album's highlight "Lucus" puts drummer Steve Bekkala and guitarist Justin King (doing a startling Jonny Greenwood impression, whether he knows it or not) into a locked-horns battle of percussion and distorted strings. The song only reaches climactic conclusion when the tolling bell of Steve Motrinc's bass ushers in Dmitri Vada's empassioned vocals, acting as a divine referee and bringing unification to the song's cinematic conclusion. The abrupt thunderclap that ends "Designs" after a collision of soundscape gives way to another screenplay, this time evoking "The Great Gig in the Sky" as interpreted by The Velvet Teen on "All Is In Working Order." The album peaks in the ten-minute epic "Cowards" which reaches levels of prog indulgance -- shifting time signatures and tempos, offering bright noodling guitar lines in the beginning, only to be obliterated by a stomping factory of unexpected dissonant guitar and Emotional Rescue-era back alley funk. Roadside Flowers is quietly put to bed with the simple "Sundial," a molasses-slow makeout session of Stax soul instrumentation and summertime AM pop. "Quietly we've become older than we care to admit/At sundown we'll meet again." This entire album takes more turns than a game of Othello between two seven year olds, and is equally full of unexpected surprises: just when the whole thing starts to make sense, the colors all flip and the game begins anew." - Zac Johnson, All Music Guide


"Ann Arbor News review of Roadside Flowers"

"A serious, and seriously committed, force on the local rock scene...[Roadside Flowers] swerves from sing-songy pop on songs like 'Designs' to the grand rock of 'Cowards,' which clocks in at more than 10 minutes and, with its wiry guitar tone and dynamics, evokes bands like Television or Wilco or My Morning Jacket. Like those bands, the Fluoride Program – while packing plenty of muscle – is definitely more interested in texture and feel than it is in pure volume. The band's songs are moody and atmospheric, while their lyrics tend toward implications more than statements. Already, the band has found a mature, still-evolving sound that, if perhaps a little schizophrenic at times, can't be faulted for any lack of ambition." - Will Stewart, Ann Arbor News


"Lansing State Journal review of Roadside Flowers"

"On the new album, Roadside Flowers, [The Fluoride Program] have shed their past guitar-heavy grit for poppier sunsets. The album is packed with hooky pop...Think the underground trappings of Sloan or The Velvet Crush." - Anne Erickson, Lansing State Journal


"Columbus Dispatch review of Roadside Flowers"

"...dynamic bursts of skillfully executed soul and rock." - Columbus Dispatch


"Listd.net review of Roadside Flowers"

"The Fluoride Program gives listeners a sound that can best be compared to eating an Altoid after a garlic heavy dinner. The juiciness of their guitar is raw and awakening, and their sound is progressive and refreshing." - Listd.net


Discography

Roadside Flowers (2006)
Bastion (2005)

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

At the beginning of 2005, The Fluoride Program was merely an idea, and a framework for the future.

My, how quickly things can change.

One year, two CDs, and dozens of shows later, The Fluoride Program is much more than an idea: they are a road-seasoned, experienced group of musicians who have booked their own national tour, financed and self-released their own records, and cultivated a burgeoning fan base throughout their home state of Michigan and beyond. And this is only the beginning.

The new album Roadside Flowers (their second release in a mere 6 months) finds The Fluoride Program branching out widely from the grit of stack-heavy guitar rock found on their debut EP, Bastion - this time around, the band revels in all of the glorious elements that each of the four members loves about music. From the Nick Drake bedside manners in "Faster," to the nod in "Designs" to '90s pop-perfectionists Sloan and Matthew Sweet, to the rock explorations of prog-soul in "By Proxy, By Love," the group demonstrates that happiness can also be found beyond the usual avenues than what people might expect out of Detroit. Through alternately hopeful and bittersweet gems like "Coma," "On Your Side," and "Sundial," The Fluoride Program proves that their desire and urgency are full-blooded and earnest.

There are plenty of bands who believe in their own music. The Fluoride Program is one of the few who will get you to believe as well.