The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers – Cannot Eat Better Not Sleep (David, the Film Trailer (dir. Devin DiMattia / 14:00) : ‘David’ is an original student production of the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Les + anciens d’entres vous se souviennent peut-être de 2 posts successifs publiés ici en avril dernier je crois sur The Prayers & Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers. Eh bien Didier du webzine belge Dérives.net vient d’en faire la 1ère critique francophone ici / HERE. Et Didier n’y va pas par 4 chemins en disant carrément qu’on tient là « notre sacré monstre et prétendant favori jusqu’ici à l’album de l’année » : rien qu’ça. C’est marrant comme les avis se rejoignent sans aucune concertation…Alors pour cause de pause méritée de mi-semaine, je remets les 2 posts que j’avais publié (puis effacé suite aux liens directs mp3′s qu’il fallait que j’enlève sur tous les posts + trop d’images qui commençaient à peser lourd en Mo), histoire d’enfoncer le clou définitivement : je précise que je n’ai toujours pas l’album, juste des mp3′s, mais ça m’avait marqué.

Quelques extraits marquants de la chronique de Dérives.net tout d’abord :

Emouvant sans être larmoyant, mélancolique sans être dépressif, grandiose sans être grandiloquent, très élaboré musicalement, mais tout en conservant le sens de l’essentiel, ‘The Mother of Love Emulates the Shapes of Cynthia’ est un disque absolument brillant et fabuleux (….) des arrangements tous plus sublimes les uns que les autres. Touchant, subtil et pénétrant, se rendant déjà plus indispensable à nos oreilles en deux chansons que beaucoup d’autres chanteurs avec une discographie entière.

(….) Les paroles sont brillantes et celles de “concerning lessons learned from the aliens” se figent déjà en mémoire après quelques écoutes.

(…) Toutes les chansons de cet album semblent de la même façon distiller quelque chose d’indispensable, presque vital. Envie de décrocher le téléphone, de se blottir dans un coin, près de la fenêtre, vue sur le ciel et sur la rue au loin, laisser tristesse et larmes nous submerger pour ne plus faire qu’un avec elles.

(…) C’est beau.

(…) Waouw. Un grand groupe indispensable vient de poser sa première pierre angulaire ici, de celles qui façonnent une vie de fan de musique.

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En février, Blog this Way a parlé de David Karsten Daniels puis de Kapow! du même label Bu Hanan Records, et en allant fouiner sur le site de ce label de Caroline du Nord, j’ai téléchargé à la louche tous ses artistes. Et 2 mois après, The Prayers & Tears… passe dans mes oreilles : et là j’ai encore craqué (bon OK vous allez m’dire que je craque tous les jours, mais vous savez très bien qu’on peut tomber amoureux tous les jours d’une nouvelle fille qu’on croise du regard dans le RER). En fouillant un peu + dans leur bio, nouvelle révélation : l’album « The mother of love emulates the shapes of cynthia » sorti début mars 2005 aux Etats-Unis bénéficie d’un casting de collaborations impressionnantes autour du projet de Perry Wright…Revue d’effectifs : Dale Baker (ex batteur de Sixpence None The Richer !!!!!!! (vous vous souvenez de leur reprise des La’s There she goes et de leur hit-single Kiiiss me + présence B.O série Dawson que j’adorais) et Over the Rhine (ah ben j’ai 2 CD’s d’occas d’Over the Rhine et j’ai jamais su que c’était un ex Sixpence : décidément on en apprend tous les jours sur son voisin de palier) / des membres de Go Machine comme Daniel Hart (Polyphonic Spree), des contributions de James Mc Alister (Ester Drang, Sufjan Stevens!!!, Pedro the Lion!!!) et Heather Mc Entire (Bellafea : connaît pas). L’album a été mastérisé par Chris Colbert (Elf Power, Summer Hymns, Pedro the Lion, The Billions). The Prayers… a tourné dernièrement dans l’Amérique « profonde » (c.à.d plutôt celle de Bush = tour « central » u.s) avec les Mountain Goats, que beaucoup d’entres vous connaissent. A mon avis, le prochain buzz à la Arcade Fire se trouve par là (une sorte de famille musicale d’amis tous diplômés qui gravite autour de The Prayer…, des violons, tout un tas d’instruments, des paroles magnifiques, de la violence quand il faut, un songwriter génial, renfermé et timide comme un Brian Wilson (+ressemblance physique de par les cheveux…))…

Label : Buhanan Records
myspace.com/prayersandtears
Prayersandtears.com
Un Blog local à suivre de très près sur tous les groupes qui tournent autour de Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill en Caroline du Nord : OAKROOM

Concerning lessons learned from the aliens & Cannot eat better not sleep sur le site de leur label Buhanan Records ICI / HERE + On the occasion of departure & The sun fell on you ICI / HERE
et pleins d’autres extras mp3 (covers, lives, etc) sur leur site rubrique MUSIC (Extra Downloadable Music all for you)

Selected Press (toutes les critiques/chroniques de presse de The Prayer…peuvent être trouvées à cette adresse de leur site)

Chroniques : Pitchforkmedia / The main stage

« With the release of the Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers’ sophomore album, three nascent principles emerge in the Triangle music scene: Perry right is one of its most impressive songwriting talents; producer Alex Lazara is one of its most capable and creative visionaries; and the Bu Hanan records family- hitherto more of a collection of friends making record in Chapel Hill homes- is suddenly an artistic stable worthy of envy. » « The album offers a glimpse at the assorted and burrowed tunnels of a complicated mind, an absorbent, watchful, keen mind capable of compiling theories, theologies, dialogues, parables and paradoxes and funneling them into four-minute considerations worthy of thousand-word elaboration. » The Independent Weekly

« Perry Wright’s gentle singing is emotional, but it makes you sympathize with him, rather than want to bludgeon him with the nearest heavy object to put him out of his misery. » « …as personal and nostalgic as that blanket you’ve had since you were a child, and it will continue to keep you company for as long as you need it. » Foxy Digitalis

« It’s only February, but I’ll be bold and say that this will likely be a heavy contender for top 10 albums of 2005. » « There is so much to say about this band. Perry Wright has created a monster of an album, lush with strings, swirling guitars, electronic bleeps, intimate acoustics and passionate vocals. Even the artwork is beautiful. All in all, this album is paralyzing. » The Black and White Magazine

« The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers have created a tour de force of depth…I cannot help but herald Wright as a true phenom. Wright’s carefully chosen and moving lyrics are wrapped in first-rate song melodies which in turn are spared no expense with the creative kind of production techniques rarely heard on independent releases. » Une review excellente sur le webzine Somewhere cold

« It is almost impossible to do anything else once under the spell of Perry Wright’s magic. » The Seahawk

About the prayers and tears of arthur digby sellers Perry Wright’s neurotic valentine to the dispossessed, is actually a bricolage of contributors from the traditionally rich musical landscape of Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Churning around the songwriting of « the unnervingly brilliant youngster » (yeah, we know), the project unfolds in any number of musical directions while consistently situating itself at the intersection of anxiety and faith.

Cast of Characters (tous ceux qui gravitent autour de The Prayer…)

Alex Lazara (le producteur) rents a house with his only friends and fellow musicians. He is socially underdeveloped and prefers time alone in his room to any kind of human interaction. He plays the accordion, so finding time alone is not hard for him.

Dale Baker may be the only actual member of the band, playing drums and slide guitar. he lives down the street from Perry with his wife, Carole, and his son, Isaac, who are (by a fascinating twist of irony) a butcher and a candlestick maker, respectively. Dale has his own webpage.

David Karsten Daniels is a member of Go machine and has a solo project on Bu Hanan Records. He is thinking about buying a red scooter, and now scours the internet in search of a scooter-ing community that might one day form the lamest gang of drifters that has ever existed. If you see him one day riding down the road, don’t hit him.

James McAlister is a member of Ester Drang, an incredible, yet chronically underappreciated band from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. We really enjoy having them stay with us whenever they are touring anywhere in the area; we also enjoy subsequently forcing James to record on our songs with his golden drumsticks. You would think they would hurt the drums, but they don’t.

Brooks Frith : violoniste apparemment sur la photo

Andy Pardue : Perry and Andy grew up together in Bradenton, florida. Then Andy’s brother married Perry’s first girlfriend. Now Andy works at a studio in Tampa when he is not playing guitar for top 40 divas. The end.

Heather McEntire caught our attention the first time we saw her band Bellafea; Perry was far too neurotic to talk to her, much less ask her to sing with us, so he sent Alex to work his mojo. Thankfully, it worked and she has contributed vocals to several tracks, though Perry remains too scared to talk to her. It’s just another reason to love Alex.

John k. Samson recently mailed Perry a book called They Came from Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema, which begins, “It’s no exaggeration to say that the history of Canadian fiction filmmaking is, in the main, one of catastrophe, neglect and wasted potential.” Needless to say, Perry took it as a veiled slander. John contributed harmony vocals to a forthcoming track on a compilation from Esopus Magazine and plays in his own band called The Weakerthans in the land of Canadian Horror Cinema.

Brandon Forbes is a member of Durham’s Sandra Lou. He studied theology and postmodern philosophy with Perry and now they occasionally go out for drinks and talk about things and stuff.

Lara Kent : Sometimes you have acquaintances for a long time before you learn the most vital things about them; it turns out that Lara plays the cello. She plays it quite well, actually. But before we knew that, she was our instant messenger buddy. LOL.

Servus k. Tintinfisch : Known to some by his slave name, Zach Gresham, Servus recently left his rather excellent band, Eyes to Space, to participate in the farce called “graduate school”. Sucker.

Allyson Shaffer is addicted to candy. especially bottlecaps, pez, york peppermint patties and candy cigarettes – the good kind, the sort of dusty kind. She’s realized she has a problem, but is not interested in getting help. She drinks a lot of water and a lot of coffee and sometimes a lot of Coronas. She’s been known to swear that « you really can’t go wrong with Coronas because not only are they tasty, but they’re actually quite lovely, not unlike the trees in the fire swamp ».

Josh Snyder is the most crucial new addition to things around the Bu Hanan house. Apart from being our new friend, he plays drums with Prayers and Tears, Kapow!Music, and David Daniels. Like most recently-graduated English majors, he is a temp and lives at home with his parents while he figures things out. Most importantly, he brings a youthful rock to Perry’s increasingly wimpy songwriting.

Carole Baker has a masters degree in theology. She sings, too. Oh, and she is a butcher. Well, she played soccer in high school, so she’s butcher than Perry. Oh, ho ho. Play on words!

Daniel Hart is one of the three members of Go machine. He splits his time between go machine’s Busy Schedule and playing violin in the Polyphonic Spree on their tours. Trivia: Daniel Hart and David Daniels share a birthday. It’s august 20, so send a card.

Mysha Sissine lives in Chicago, where she works as the flea and tick expert for mcgruff the crime dog. It’s the dog equivalent of a personal assistant. Mysha gave extemporaneous replies to obnoxious questions for our recording of Will Oldham’s Raining in Darling because she has a « hottt » voice.

Jennifer Skinner‘s band, Early Morning Swim, has only been in existence for a few months and has already had a showcase at the largest venue in Chapel Hill. We are lucky to have some of her vocals on our songs before she explodes and forgets who we are. Maybe explodes is not the right image to convey. Finds success.

John Ribo records in the Bu Hanan collective under the moniker Kapow!Music. A recent transplant to Chapel Hill from Austin, Texas, John is in graduate school for comparative literature. John a je crois vécu à Lyon pendant ses études de littérature comparée en 1999, d’où son album son « A Texan in Europe Revisited ». (d’après Blog this Way)

Lara Khalil handles all public relations for Bu Hanan Records (c’est elle qui prend les photos); she also sings when we make her. She lives in Durham, NC, where she runs the healthy kids, healthy communities initiative for Durham public schools and red lights. Only once.

David Ferring will tell you what “the real crime is.” Possibilities for “the real crime” include codependent dogsitting and the night we made him clap on beats two and four for more than half and hour. David lives in our nation’s capitol, where he works as a Washington fat cat.

Lalitree Darnielle believes in the progress of science. She lives down the street from Perry, but when she lived in Iowa, she was in a band called You Almighty that will one day reunite for world domination. Where will your precious science be on that day, Lalitree?

Perry White : Editor of the Daily Planet. Born in Metropolis’s Suicide Slum area, Perry grew up with a father missing after going to fight overseas. He became a copy boy at the Daily Planet beginning his lifetime career that would make him a successful reporter, and eventually the Planet’s managing editor. Perry joined Prayers and Tears for our album release; his many press contacts have been very helpful. So helpful, in fact, that Pitchfork Media mentioned him by name.

Erin Wright gets to be in the band because she is Perry’s sister, despite the fact that she is a very talented songwriter and performer who could do better… and because mom and dad always liked her best. She is in graduate school in Chapel Hill for school counseling and will one day fix us all.

David Crawford is a scholar in word origins, but also a talented songwriter and drummer. David appears on several of the tracks on psalterie, where he played under extreme duress. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

Jeremy Portwood : Nostalgically remembered as “the fourth beatle,” Jeremy is a onetime member of Go machine. He lives in New York City, where he… what is Portwood up to, anyway?

nine : Also known as “the ogre slayer,” +nine is Bu Hanan’s vice president in charge of remixing songs for world distribution through Dance Dance Revolution arcade machines.

15:35 Publié dans Attention TALENT! $$$ , Pays : USA , TOP ALBUMS 2005 | Lien permanent | Envoyer cette note