Marching Banana

MBR-022: New Wives “NEW WIVES EP”

New Wives has existed around our camp for sometime, but the project never totally felt right. Albums being written, albums being delayed, albums being scrapped. It was apparent that as much as the fellas liked writing music together, the project simply wasn’t a fulfilling next step for them musically. But things have a way of working themselves out and sure enough in the cold January of 2013 Matt Anderegg fell into the vacuum of the newest wives. Behind the drums, Matt served as the anchor of the project that Drew Kirby (vocals, guitars) and Zach Gastley (bass) had been struggling to realize for the better part of the past year or two. Things clicked pretty immediately, and their first show was a mere three days after their first practice together.

This EP serves as a snapshot of this developing project, a spot in time where the very idea of being in a functioning band renders the imagination limitless with the possibilities of what’s to come. Of course this is a fallacy, but there’s something convincing about hearing a young group at such an early stage sounding so eager to do something, anything at all that will last. The songs are immediate and executed precisely, they are pop songs with conviction perhaps a bit ahead of craftsmanship. But that’s the very point - like it or not, there’s no denying that with every note they strike, New Wives really really mean it.

More on the way from them real soon. Until then, click the picture above and download the EP for free (or you can pay if you want). Act fast though - bandcamp only allows 200 free downloads per month. We’ll also have physical copies available real soon. Take care friend.

MBR-021: NEW WIVES “Shanana/Smooth Ruins” single 

It’s taken a lot of work for New Wives to get here. Following the production and release of the Mablets’ collection of bedroom pop The Story So Far about 2 years ago, the boys went through two or three different lineup changes trying to figure out exactly where to go from the solo-project-with-a-backing-band to well… a band. Frontman Drew Kirby (hey that’s me) wrote and scrapped an entire concept album after moving to Athens, and generally spent the first year or two here bumming around and recording alone. Granted, Zach (bass) never really left me (it’s cool if i go first person?), but it just didn’t feel right. That is, until we met Matt, who was essentially doing the same thing - bumming around the music scene and well, waiting to fall into a project that felt worth it. 

It seems to be a running theme with this project that I book a show we’re not prepared for and then scramble to piece together a live band that ends up lasting longer than any of us expected. It’s happened two or three times now, and this time was no different - I got asked to play Go Bar in Athens, and figured hey, since Matt and I had discussed playing together drunkenly a few times, I can pressure him into doing it right? So I drove over to Matt’s place one night, and had him sit in my car while I played him a demo of a song called something like “shanananana” that I had written but a day or two before. He liked it, we fleshed it out into an actual song that night, and three days later we were playing our first show at Freeklife (we only played two songs, lol). A week later that Go Bar show went down, and it’s been smooth sailing (or smooth ruins?) since then.

So in a way, this is the song that jumpstarted NEW WIVES in its current form. I had a track that was concise and to the point, with musicians that were dead serious about realizing the track to its full potential. We wrote the entire EP within the course of a couple weeks, with Smooth Ruins being the only exception - we wrote that one a mere one week before bringing it into the studio. Suffice to say it’s been a very swiftly moving three months, and we’re all super happy with how things have gone so far in 2013. Here’s the the summer, here’s to life. 

CLICK THE PICTURE TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD FOR FREE

THE TIME HAS COME. The fellas in NEW WIVES have been hard at work this past month on their debut EP and it is finally ready to be shared with the world. A swift three months have culminated in a 5 song exploration of the possibilities and parameters of pop music, produced by mr. TJ Mimbs at Easy Street Studios - we really couldn’t be more excited to release it. Catch them at any one of these dates - Friday May 3rd will be with England in 1819 and Dana Swimmer, Monday May 6th will be with Futo and Anthony Aparo (of Mr Mustache). Having been some days in preparation, a splendid time is guaranteed for all! 

(OH, and new single coming tomorrow!!! Click the picture to listen to stuff)

NEW WIVES has been hitting it heavy in 2013. Newly conceived in just January of this year, the fellas have been hard at work developing some of the most clean and crisp pop n roll music you’re likely to hear out of this town this year. Songs about girls, songs about friends, songs about girlfriends. Songs that sound like Girls (?) 

NEW WIVES has been recording their debut self-titled EP at Easy Street Productions with TJ Mimbs of The District Attorneys on the boards. He did a record for our good friends in Dana Swimmer so best believe it’s real. This EP will be out in some form on May 3rd hopefully. Fingers crossed. Until then, tide yourself over with their LIVE IN THE LOBBY session that aired last week on WUOG 90.5 FM, a station that recently put a couple of their tracks into rotation. Much love - http://wuogsbestlocalactsmixtapes.bandcamp.com/album/new-wives-live-in-the-lobby 

NEW WIVES is playing all the dates above. They’ve played a bunch in the past month but we forgot to post those. TYBG

NEW WIVES yall. 

FUTO at CINE in Athens, GA. Photo credit to Lauren Schorr. This show was incredible. We’ll let you know what patrick will be up to in the coming months. We’re kinda restructuring here at the bananacamp but none of us are going anywhere and we’re all looking forward to a good summer. hope u r 2222

MBR-020: Shanties “LLC” single

The first time I saw Zach Gastley and Nathan Forsyth play music together, we were in the back of a backyard at some house party and had retreated to a garden for some acoustic guitar “jamming” - though doesn’t that word cheapen the whole thing? When these two play together, they’re not just noodling aimlessly across different chromatic scales: they start in one place, and they collectively push the progressions of the music further and further until a sense of release has been achieved, at the point of which the music falls out, dies down, lulls you back down to reality. I was so impressed and fascinated; “how did yall know to stop at the same time?” Suffice to say the process by which these two make music is incredibly intuitive. They’ve played together for the better part of five or so years, and while they both bring entirely unique flavors to their solo work, they know the ins and outs of each others styles so well it’s enviable. 

So then what do we have here? A recording project, to say the least - really it’s the culmination of years of mutual musical exploration, while at the same time a sidestep away from the solo work these two have been developing to increasingly engaging heights (plug: Nathan’s ASHAMED is on the way this spring). It’s a little bit of musical mishmashing, some genre exploration, “Kind of a place to keep the funk at”. But isn’t it silly for me to try to tell you what it sounds like? It’s music after all, just click the picture and listen to it. To me it sounds like.. waking up on a beautiful morning after some sort of tragic happening the night before. Maybe your woman left you, maybe a friend passed, but sleep has made it better for the time being. But now you snap back into reality in its harshness, but you feel strangely resolute. There’s opportunity ahead, and it ain’t all bad. Click the art for the music, more from these cats real real soon. Take care.

NEW WIVES and FUTO tonight at the GO BAR in Athens Georgia. Pretty much free. Come out for friends and ~vibes~. Also we just broke 100 posts on here, we’re 2 year old babies now, nice.

Click the picture for some new music from NEW WIVES. Just one microphone in the practice space but, all new songs. The boys are gonna be hitting the dates hard this year and will actually have a lot of new material this time. We’re super not lying. Been practicing a bunch. Catch them at GO BAR on March 6th with the big homies in Juna (formerly Argonauts). More shows soon.