MP3: Grooms – “Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover)”
Grooms are three friends in Brooklyn who play a structurally mutilated brand of noise-pop featuring blissful interplay, sonic experimentation, and song destruction. The band (formerly known as Muggabears) is rooted in the Death By Audio collective, a fertile ground for the band’s expansive, forward-looking catchiness. With moods that swing from the gloomy to the gleaming, Grooms craft songs filled with beauty, gloom, and irony-free whimsy.
Travis Johnson, guitarist and lead vocalist, began recording in his bedroom under the moniker Muggabears when he was a 19-year-old living in suburban Texas. After graduating college, he moved to New York in 2004 and began collaborating with Emily Ambruso, bassist and vocalist. The pair played with a series of drummers, recorded two EPs (Teenage Cop and Night Choreography), and played shows with the likes of Wavves, Crystal Stilts, Ponytail, Abe Vigoda, Tyvek, Dead Milkmen and countless other great bands. After finding skins basher, Jim Sykes (Marnie Stern, Parts and Labor), the band rechristened themselves Grooms in anticipation of their upcoming debut record, Rejoicer, which showcases sounds from broken noise-surf to campfire-seance drone. The album finds the trio having evolved into a band completely comfortable with themselves, but never afraid to challenge their own, or listeners’, perceptions of what they are. Stacks of Moogs pitted against auxiliary percussion, scream-choirs, warm pedal steel, and a whole host of other ideas collide on Rejoicer, and the collision is a jarring and soothing 35 minute ride through what this exciting band is capable of. Rejoicer will be released in October 2009 on Death By Audio Records.
GROOMS
09/17 Brooklyn, NY Death By Audio (Maze Exhibit)
10/10 Philadelphia, PA Pilam
10/14 Nashville, TN The Pilot Light
10/15 Brooklyn, NY The Knitting Factory (CD Release Show) #
10/16 Charlottesville, VA Tea Bazaar
10/17 Baltimore, MD Hexagon
10/20 New York, NY Cake Shop (Pop Tarts Suck Toasted CMJ Day Party)
10/24 Brooklyn, NY Death By Audio (CMJ)
# = w/ Titus Andronicus and the So-So Glo’s
Grooms
Rejoicer
(Death By Audio)
Street Date: Oct. 13, 2009
1 – Dreamsucker
2 – Thumbs
3 – At the Pool
4 – Fag Feels Good
5 – Acid King of Hell (Guitar Feelings)
6 – Ghost Cat
7 – She-Bears
8 – C.J.
9 – Kier
10 – The Nights Were Walls (We Climbed Them All)
GROOMS LINKS:
Label Page – deathbyaudiorecords.blogspot.com
MySpace – www.myspace.com/groomsmusic