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The Wrens
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The Wrens get a call in 1989 off their first demo asking if they want to open for comeback band - The Fixx. The catch is that they must sell 1000 tickets. The Wrens fail to sell even 6 tickets and sadly, the Fixx cancel. The ‘80s draw to a close.

The Wrens get a gig as the house band on the on Cape May/Delaware Ferry. The Wrens later get fired after performing the Pixies’ “debaser” to the mostly senior citizen crowd.

The Wrens move to a house in Secaucus, NJ. (The Wrens will continue to live together and record at home for the next 10 years)

The Wrens make their first 7”, Low (1993), and send a copy to Camille Sciara at Grass records/Dutch East India. She offers a deal over the phone, faxes a contract and they are signed in one day - becoming label mates and friends with Brainiac, Toadies and others....

The Wrens issue first full length, Silver (1994), to surprising and wonderful critical acclaim.

The Wrens’ first tour’s first show is in Omaha, Nebraska playing to an overwhelming five-person crowd that includes Robb, Conor, and Todd of the as-yet-unfounded Saddle Creek label/scene (Conor and Todd of Bright Eyes and the Faint respectively). The Wrens and the creek become friends, and over the next few years play many shows together, have many sleepovers, and later issue a split 7" w/ Park Ave on their Saddle Creek label.

Wrens continue to tour domestically & in Europe through 1995 and begin work on follow-up lp.

Grass records is bought from Dutch East India by insane, grudge-bearing millionaire and Chinese food aficionado, Alan Melzter, to acquire the Wrens - now the label’s flagship band. The Wrens release their second full length, Secaucus (1996), for Meltzer’s revamped Grass to even more wonderful critical review.

Halfway into first tour supporting Secaucus, the Wrens are told that if they do not sign their ‘big buck record contract’ all promotion for Secaucus will be stopped. The Wrens, frowning on strong-arm tactics, do not re-sign and as promised, all promotion (including support for a pending tour of Europe with Brainiac) is pulled. The head of the record company, infuriated, commences layoffs of involved record company personnel and vows that “the next band to walk through that door will be made famous - at any cost”. The next band through the door is Creed. Grass Records becomes Wind Up Records. Creed becomes famous at any cost.

The Wrens ditch their really-way-too-big new york law firm representation and spend second half of 1996 and most of 1997 in hilarious courtship ritual with various labels through new attorney.

In the meantime, the Wrens release an ep, Abbott 1135 (1997) for Camille’s new label, Ten 23, and more critical riches follow. The wren’s music is used in several MTV programs, some independent films and a handful of compilation cd’s. And in 1998, they are asked to perform opening night of 1998 World’s Fair, EXPO ‘98, in Lisbon, Portugal.
Titus Andronicus
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Glen Rock, New Jersey is a small, safe suburban enclave to the west of New York City, supporting almost three square miles and a population of just under 12,000 people. “It’s the kind of town that lots of people claim doesn’t exist anymore – like that movie Pleasantville, postcard-like streets, an actual “Main Street”, lots of support for high school football,” recounts 23-year-old Patrick Stickles, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Titus Andronicus. “It’s a very nice place to grow up.” He was joined by his old Glen Rock friends Ian Graetzer on bass and Andrew Cedermark on guitar, and they became part of a local scene that comprised about 16 bands. This scene provided the backdrop for the formation of Titus Andronicus. The band is now a five-piece, and includes Ian O’Neil on guitar and Eric Harm on drums.

Whatever lessons there are to be learned in the suburbs, Stickles has gleaned. He brings to Titus Andronicus one of the most distinctive voices that we have heard in some time. With breathless fury, he tells stories of life lessons learned that most folks spend their entire lives trying to verbalize – of simple twists of fate with grave consequences, of losing the ability to trust someone close to you, of the futility of life versus the finality of death. These are the stories of his life, stories with which we find common ground, but while most just think it, he’s up front, screaming it out for all it’s worth, behind a band raised in the ‘90s on punk riffs and FM radio.

Stickles wrote The Airing Of Grievances between his senior year of high school and junior year of college – a particularly crucial time in any young person’s life. He launches his insights across a wall of defiant, triumphant rock anthems, which have earned Titus Andronicus comparisons to such iconoclasts as Bruce Springsteen, the Pogues, and The Replacements. Moreover, the band paints a picture of desperation offset by the sheer wonder of life; its music basks in the struggle. And the kicker – it’s all autobiographical. “I don’t know why you would say something that you don’t mean,” Stickles remarks on his method of writing lyrics. “People these days are too into being ironic, not actually caring about stuff, joking around about it. People will make a mixtape and it’ll be all like songs like ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe. I really want people to know that we weren’t kidding when we made this record.”

Recorded at Marcata Recording in New Paltz, NY in the second half of 2007, The Airing of Grievances is Titus Andronicus’s debut album, following a pair of seven-inch singles and an early EP. The album received plenty of praise from places like Spin Magazine, Pitchfork and a plethora of blogs upon it’s initial release in May of 2008. This new XL Recordings version has been newly mastered, and will be released digitally in November, and physically in January.

What does Titus Andronicus want people to walk away with after experiencing The Airing of Grievances? “Just that we’re humans, like them,” Stickles says. “That we’re every bit as imperfect and flawed and weak as they are. People always used to talk about Led Zeppelin, and how they were, like, gods onstage. I want people to look at us and see humans onstage, reveling in their humanity. We’re just regular guys from New Jersey, with the same wants and needs and desires and anxieties and disappointments that everybody else has.”
We Were Promised Jetpacks
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Following closely in the footsteps of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks are yet another hugely talented young scottish band added to the FatCat roster. The 4-piece came to our attention when listening to some of the friends on the Frightened Rabbit Myspace page. Though recent months has seen the band tour the UK with their aforementioned friends, the four preceding years have consisted of local gigs in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, allowing WWPJ to find their sound and hone their live performance.

Assembled in Edinburgh as high school friends in 2003, their first ever gig saw them winning their school's battle of the bands competition. Proceeding shows were after school performances around the city of Edinburgh which were well attended and fuelled the band with a hunger and ambition. If the nascent WWPJ aural template embraced light-footed compositions – few effects pedals, traditional song structures, clear-cut guitars - succeeding years have seen WWPJ soar aural heights and mine emotional depths in every sense: the band you will encounter now are a cacophonous tour de force: louder, wilder, avidly literate; fiercely melodic, yet eagerly restrained. Lyrics and vocal melodies come courtesy of Adam Thompson, everything else arises from the full group; Adam Thompson (Guitar/Vocals), Michael Palmer (Guitar), Sean Smith (Bass) and Darren Lackie (Drums).

Before even releasing a single, WWPJ have laid claim to some recent successes which bode well for the future of the band. A well recorded three-track demo was circulated and managed to pick up a KEXP track of the day over the pond, and plays on national stations in the UK were popping up on XFM, BBC and Q radio. Before the announcement of WWPJ signing to FatCat Records, a strong hint was sitting on the shelves across the UK in the form of inclusion on a recent FatCat sampler, mounted onto Plan B magazine.

A tour through September 2008 as main support for Frightened Rabbit garnered some great reviews for WWPJ. This being their first jaunt into England, healthy crowds arrived early on each evening due to the huge buzz in Scotland now filtering down south of the border. You could loosely pin some reference points onto WWPJ; the vocals reminiscent of Morrisy or Paul Banks (Interpol), clever guitar interplay similar to something you’d hear on a Billy Mahonie track, dynamically you could compare them to Mogwai, and generally Futureheads/Hot Club De Paris/Postcard/Fire Engine are all good markers.

With an album scheduled for May 2009, and singles around this, the forthcoming year of releases and touring is set to be a busy one for We Were Promised Jetpacks.
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