The Triangle

Issue date: 5/29/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Except After Sea

Except After Sea will hold a release party at World Café Live June 3 at 8 p.m. for its latest album "Asleep at the Wheel." The album became available online this week and the sound is all its own. Guitarists TJ Sanders and Pete Hill blend homophonic acoustic rock with electric driving pop, all grounded in the rhythms of drummer Brandon Ginsberg, yielding 13 tracks that are easy on the ears. The band experiments with mixing professional and improvised recording methods as well as interesting instrumental voicing, such as that found in "Young and the Company Lake, I Wish." Some of the heavier songs like "Good Times Come, Good Times Go" offer a wall-of-sound reminiscent almost shoe-gaze quality. The band's smooth riffs and lyrical word play make the new album a worthwhile listen for any rock enthusiast. I was able to meet the three band mates one recent fated night…

So how did you guys start playing?

Brandon: It was actually an accident! But no, we all grew up in the same area.

TJ: We met at a girls' formal school in Eastern Europe. Our parents sent us there because we had behavioral problems - well, Pete was there for the harp lessons, but he was also a little on the schizophrenic side.

TJ: Brandon and I came on a student internship.

Pete: A boat.

TJ: The boat was called the student internship.

Pete: It was the student internship boat.

TJ : The S.S. Studentintern Ship.

What port were you sailing for?

TJ: We were just sailing for a dream, just to have the wind in your hair. But it turned out the three of us met up in a courtyard somewhere, may or may not have been singing with the girls' choir at the time. Next question?

So how did your ship end up in Philly?

Pete: We've been playing with each other for a number of years, we've known each other for a number of years. If you looked up Except After Sea in like 2003 then you probably would've found a MySpace site MP3 dot-com era, perhaps some PureVolume downloads. I guess we were playing what I would like to call post hardcore Nintendo Spanish jazz screams. But it's a lot from then to now, then we played together for like a year and TJ didn't even play an instrument, he just kind of yelped, and sang about stuff, and wrote lyrics. Then we wrote some stuff together before I moved for a while, and some other people went on to write some other songs and we kind of went in a pop direction.

Continued...

Page 1 of 4 next >

Article Tools