Music
Press
For some bands the impetus is politics, for others it’s sex or drugs, but Urban Barnyard draws its inspiration from a different muse. There’s a good-natured goofiness to the antifolky outfit’s new one, Scream Like Human Beings!, but the coed frontpersons wring a disarming amount of poignancy out of zoo stories such as “Seeing Eye Dogs” and “Macaque Attack.” - Time Out New York
The artist and singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis is a whip-smart native New Yorker who makes “low-budget documentaries,” narrated and illustrated set pieces, accompanied by ramshackle garage folk—about Communism, the English cult musician Mark E. Smith and his band the Fall, Barack Obama, and other disparate subjects. He’s headlining a bill of some of the finest acts from New York’s anti-folk scene. The first is Urban Barnyard, which plays nothing but songs about animals in New York City, from gay penguins at the Central Park Zoo to drug-addicted squirrels in Tompkins Square Park. The four-piece band switches instruments, singers, and styles for just about every song. - The New Yorker
Various antifolk scenesters singing twee junkyard pop songs about animals living in New York City (like that tiger they found in that guy's apartment in Harlem). It's almost unbearably adorable—almost. Maybe the zoo could hire them to play... - The Village Voice
Songs about monkeys are marvelous, and songs about monkeys that fall sonically somewhere between R.E.M. and the Violent Femmes are even better than marvelous. - Delusions of Adequacy
I had no doubt that I’d like Urban Barnyard... But I had no idea that I’d freakin’ want to marry the band! ... Fun, uplifting indie pop-rock tunes that you just want to share with your neighbor, strangers, and the world all at once. If tomorrow is a good day, I’m going to go on a drive with the windows rolled down blaring “That’s the Idea”. You should too. - Smother
The lyrical approach is generally to humanize the animals in question, or maybe to animalize the humans... Though Urban Barnyard's focus is solely animal songs, they find a way to make their five selections musically eclectic. From the surf-abilly of "Surfin' Sewer Rat" to the rootsiness of "Duck a l'Orange" to the power-pop of "Baby Pigeon," the group never fails to surprise... In a nutshell, five songs is not enough; Urban Barnyard needs to enter Magnetic Fields territory and deliver their 69 Duck Songs, or something like that. - Urban Folk
Discography
SCREAM LIKE HUMAN BEINGS! (LP), 2008
Blurb from Time Out New York: "For some bands the impetus is politics, for others it’s sex or drugs, but Urban Barnyard draws its inspiration from a different muse. There’s a good-natured goofiness to the antifolky outfit’s new one, Scream Like Human Beings!, but the coed frontpersons wring a disarming amount of poignancy out of zoo stories such as 'Seeing Eye Dogs' and 'Macaque Attack.'”
THAT'S THE IDEA (EP), 2006
Blurb from Delusions of Adequacy: "Songs about monkeys are marvelous, and songs about monkeys that fall sonically somewhere between R.E.M. and the Violent Femmes are even better than marvelous."
NAY. WHOA. LET'S GO! (LP), 2004
Blurb from the Village Voice: "Various antifolk scenesters singing twee junkyard pop songs about animals living in New York City (like that tiger they found in that guy's apartment in Harlem). It's almost unbearably adorable."
Check out our website and MySpace page for streaming tracks from all three releases.
Photos
Bio
Urban Barnyard only sings songs about animals in the city. Considering this restriction, their oeuvre betrays a remarkable breadth! Their sound ranges from the anthemic to the sentimental. If their stylistic variety doesn't satisfy you, then watch in wonder as they trade instruments on virtually every song, regardless of which instruments they actually know how to play.
It all started when Phoebe Kreutz, Dibson Hoffweiler, and Dashan Coram wrote "Horsies in the City," about horsies in the city. The band was born, and adopted fellow anti-folkers Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Casey Holford to add rhythms to Urban Barnyard's otherwise-twee demeanor. Soon enough, the band stopped sounding like a big joke, and started sounding pretty freaking awesome, so Dashan fired himself in protest.
Since then, the Urban Barnyard quartet has surprised everyone by becoming New York Anti-Folk's tightest indie-rock ensemble since...okay, so NYAF has never boasted any particularly tight indie-rock bands. But between scene-alumns The Moldy Peaches and Regina Spektor, Urban Barnyard's shockingly fascinating songs about the metropolitan crises of the modern non-human animal stand out as epic accomplishments of sensitivity and weirdo-ism. Fans of wit, rock, and a playful spirit, Urban Barnyard is here to milk your soul.
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