Bowery Ballroom

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Augustana

Wild Sweet Orange / David Ford

Wed 5/21

18+

Doors 8pm

$20

Augustana

http://www.myspace.com/augustana
http://www.augustanamusic.com/
Augustana are a heartland equivalent of Coldplay and Keane, with a touch of mid-'90s adult alternative throwback (think Counting Crows or the Wallflowers) also peppering their mellow, piano-based music. Although based in California, the band formed in southern Illinois in 2002, while singer/keyboardist Dan Layus and guitarist Josiah Rosen were studying contemporary Christian music at Greenville College. The band's original lineup also included bassist Simeon Lohrmann, second keyboardist David Lamoureaux, and drummer Kyle Baker. This lineup released a pair of self-distributed CDs -- the full-length Midwest Skies and Sleepless Mondays and the EP Mayfield -- in 2003, but the conservative climate of Greenville College proved to be too confining for the band's founders. Choosing music over academia, Layus and Rosen left Greenville for Los Angeles in 2004, jettisoning the rest of the band and reforming with a new lineup that included keyboardist John Vincent, bassist Jared Palomar, and drummer Justin South. The reformulated Augustana signed with Epic Records in 2005 and released their major-label debut, All the Stars and Boulevards, in September of that year. A slow starter, the album gradually rose to national attention on the strength of "Boston", a heartfelt ballad that was featured on an episode of Scrubs in early 2006. To encourage the accompanying increase in Augustana's popularity, a limited-edition reissue of the album (with extra songs and video content) was released in September 2006. By the following year, All the Stars and Boulevards had finally made its way into the Billboard Top 40 -- a whopping 19 months after its initial release. Augustana then returned in 2008 with a new lineup (Josiah Rosen had left the band for a solo career in early 2006, only to be replaced by guitarist/mandolin player Chris Sachtleben) and a new album, Can't Love, Can't Hurt.
--by Andrew Leahey & Stewart Mason

Wild Sweet Orange

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=20662975
http://www.canvasbackmusic.com/
Upon first listen to Wild Sweet Orange, there probably are lots of cities that come to mind if you try to guess where the Preston Livinggood-led indie band calls home.

No, Birmingham, Alabama didn't even enter my first 25 cities, but fortunately Alabama has rubbed WSO the right way because this quintet (Matt Parsons and Taylor Shaw â€” guitar, Garrett Kelly â€” bass, Chip Kilpatrick â€” drums) carries both rural charm and southern sweetness to its music. WSO describes their music as being "fun for the whole family" (press release).

There's an overarching laid-back casualness throughout this EP. Even with the opening uptempo "Wrestle With God" (mp3 here), underneath the slight frustration and uncertainty, there's a longing for peace and calm ("Sometimes at night on dark highways / I pull the car over and listen for trains"), which the song's Pink Floyd-esque denouement accentuates. - BC Music Review

David Ford

http://www.myspace.com/davidford
http://davidford.mu
“Simultaneously lacerating and tender” **** Q “One foot in David Gray’s camp and one in Kurt Cobain’s… in between is a life lived.” WORD “Continues to show how this “sensitive singer songwriter” thing should really be done” – SUNDAY TIMES “as full of romantic doom as anything you’ll hear this year. One to watch.” UNCUT “like a hurricane in a nursery” TORONTO STAR “doesn’t get any grander than this” NEW YORK TIMES “after the first song we mumbled, "is this for real...?" It was simply mesmerizing” TRIPWIRE