Foyer Red - Murray A. Lightburn - Tomten
Brooklyn’s Foyer Red makes sweet yet abrasive songs that careen into delightfully unexpected places. The group’s potent art rock embodies a spirit of collaborative exploration, as a seemingly endless supply of ideas accrue and collide as part of a spirited musical conversation between the band’s members, a sensation that is heightened by the often literal conversation occurring between their three principle vocalists. The band started as a trio with singer and clarinetist Elana Riordan, drummer Marco Ocampo, and singer/guitarist Mitch Myers.
The three would email each other song ideas and record the ones that stuck. In 2021, they started playing music together in the same room and immediately came out with the Zigzag Wombat EP, which earned high praise from outlets like Stereogum, BrooklynVegan and Pitchfork. Though they had been a band for only a few months, their self-recorded and charming debut proved that they had hit the ground running almost fully formed with a distinct, tongue-in-cheek, de-constructive take on indie rock.
Instead of sticking to their guns and re-treading similar ground, Foyer Red reinvented itself as a five-piece, adding singer and guitarist Kristina Moore and bassist Eric Jaso, and became a fixture of the NYC scene in 2022, sharing stages with artists like Cola, Empath, Babehoven, Why Bonnie, Peaer, Momma, Mamalarky, and Diane Coffee.
In December, the band announced their signing to Carpark Records (The Beths, Cloud Nothings) and today Foyer Red have returned to announce their debut LP Yarn The Hours Away, which will be released on the label on May 19th. To mark the announce the band have shared the first single from the record, a track called "Plumbers Unite!"
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Murray A. Lightburn, the longtime frontman of Montreal’s acclaimed The Dears, will release his deeply personal new album 'Once Upon A Time In Montreal’ on 31 March via Dangerbird Records. Ahead of that Murray is pleased to share the title-track single, along with a video created by the production team at 4-VU.
Lightburn lightheartedly jokes that 'Once Upon A Time In Montreal' is an audio version of a biopic, inspired by the passing of his father - a jazz musician from Belize who moved to Montreal via New York to reconnect with his teenage sweetheart.
Discussing the new single and album title-track, Murray says: "After getting an education in Jamaica and England, my mom got a job in Montreal as a nurse. My father was living in New York. They had dated back in Belize and reconnected years later in New York. My father didn’t really want to leave for Montreal, but he did. And it was hard for him: the harsh winters, the language barrier, the colour of his skin.
He was a skilled musician but that was barely going to keep the lights on — never mind feed a growing family. His lack of formal education, and his lack of French, limited his opportunities. Nevertheless, he just wanted to be with her. So he figured out a way, and that’s what his life was mostly about, I think — what I’ve deduced. Maybe there’s way more to it and that’s the romantic version, but it’s a version at least I can understand. Nothing else computes. My parents stayed married for 56 years.”
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Tomten are a baroque pop quartet based out of Seattle, Washington. Brian Noyes (vocals, keys, guitar) and Lena Simon (bass, vocals) (Kairos Creature Club, formerly of La Luz) met in 2008 and began demoing each other’s songs at Cornish College of The Arts.
Tomten started playing shows and rearranging their sound and lineup by 2010, after Gregg Belisle-Chi (guitar) and Jake Brady (drums) joined the band. Tomten‘s debut, Wednesday’s Children arrived in Summer of 2012 shortly before Belisle-Chi left the band. Tomten recorded their sophomore record The Farewell Party (2014) with Jason Quever of Papercuts in San Francisco and Sacramento, CA. Dillon Sturtevant (bass) joined the band as Lena departed.
The Unknown recording studio in Anacortes, WA started by Nicholas Wilbur and Phil Elverum (Mt. Eerie) has become the go to spot for the band’s more recent recordings – the lush piano driven Cremation Songs (2017), and Synth Pop informed Viva Draconia (2018). Tomten‘s newest album Artichoke (out April 28) is a collaborative foray into psych folk, power-pop, and glam country, a balance between songs by Noyes, Sturtevant, and two co-written with Brady.
Artichoke is a warm pastoral daydream, with inspirations drawn from the Madcap folk rock of the Incredible String Band, to the syrup soul of The Delfonics, the country tinge of Happy End or Gene Clark, with the gentle guitar picking of John Martyn or Bridget St. John.
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