The New Amsterdams-At The Foot Of My Rival-(Reissue)-2008-404

The New Amsterdams-At The Foot Of My Rival-(Reissue)-2008-404 rapidshare

Description:


ARTiST: The New Amsterdams

ALBUM: At The Foot Of My Rival

BiTRATE: 187kbps avg

QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz

LABEL: Arctic Rodeo Recordings

GENRE: Indie

SiZE: 71.45 megs

PLAYTiME: 0h 50min 29sec total

RiP DATE: 2008-05-09

STORE DATE: 2008-05-09



Track List:

--------

01. Revenge 1:46

02. Wait 3:03

03. Fountain Of Youth 2:57

04. This Day Is Done 3:02

05. Without A Sound (Eleanor) 3:22

06. Silverlake 3:08

07. Lost Long Shot 2:55

08. Hughes 3:13

09. A Beacon In Beige 2:45

10. Story Like A Scar 3:15

11. Fortunate Fool 2:50

12. Lay On The Rails 4:18

13. Drunk Or Dead 3:04

14. The Blood On The Floor 2:55

15. Ex抯 & Oh抯 3:26

16. A Mile In Your Shoes 2:27

17. Guitarkansas 2:03



Release Notes:

--------

At the Foot of My Rival is the sixth album from THE NEW AMSTERDAMS, but for

frontman Matt Pryor, it抯 a milestone. "This album represents something I抳e

been working toward for a long time," he says.

Story Like a Scar, from 2006, sounded like home, but At the Foot of My Rival was

actually written and recorded at home, "underneath middle western moons," as

Pryor sings in his affecting regular-guy tenor on Lay on the Rails. "Over the

past couple of years I抳e been changing, trying to find out who I want to be,"

he reveals.

The star-maker machinery behind pop music would have you believe that the only

family rock stars have are their bands and that a wild life on the road is the

ultimate goal. Pryor, however, has purposely removed himself from the artifice

that attends life in the star-fucking meccas of N.Y. and L.A. (see track 11,

Silverlake); he抯 settled down in Lawrence, Kansas, with his wife and kids and

bandmates Dustin Kinsey (guitar), Eric McCann (bass) and Bill Belzer (drums),

"trying to be away less, trying to find balance," no longer the "prodigal son by

trade" he calls himself in Lost Long Shot. "Trying to capitalize on something

you used to be ?an adult pretending to be a kid for the money ?would mean

failure to me," he says.

Lyrically, much of At the Foot of My Rival feels like a man shedding

circumstances, relationships and illusions that no longer fit. The song Hughes,

which sounds like it抯 being played on a ramshackle veranda as the sun sets and

the fireflies rise, takes to task the director of such classics as Sixteen

Candles and Pretty in Pink, lamenting, "Hughes, you ruined me/ You promised me

make-believe."

In short order, though, the doors of this hushed, front-porch elegy are kicked

in by A Beacon in Beige?and Story Like a Scar, which reiterate Pryor抯

status as a writer of sticky pop hooks and recall the tumbling urgency of The

Get Up Kids, which he co-founded as a teen and with whom he toured for a decade.

Story Like a Scar ?yes, there was no song called Story Like a Scar on the album

Story Like a Scar, but there is one on Rival ?remembers "a friend who抯 gone."

"Someone who begins to drift, doesn抰 return phone calls, and then one day, no

one can find them. It can make you angry that you抳e been so easily forgotten.

It抯 a hard thing to come to terms with. But at the same time, you can抰 chase

them down ?you have to let go."

At the Foot of My Rival was recorded in his living room, with Revenge, Hughes

and the junkestra underpinning Lost Long Shot sounding particularly homemade

(full disclosure: the latter, actually a space heater and the chain on a

trash-can lid, was devised in Pryor抯 garage, which used to be a practice space

and has become a studio since Rival was recorded). The disc was produced and

engineered by Pryor and Colin Mahoney, a veteran New Ams collaborator and

Lawrence local who also mixed. By contrast, Story Like a Scar was recorded in

Nashville by Roger Moutenot (best known for his work with Yo La Tengo.)

As hearth-warmed and rootsy as Rival is, however, The New Ams have a deceptively

sophisticated sense of sonic architecture. Bassist Eric McCann, for example, has

emerged as a gifted arranger (note how he ramps up the intensity of Dead or

Drunk with strings and horns.) Likewise, Pryor understands how more can be less

when transmitting the intimacy of a song like Revenge, which is a demo recording

he made with "the crappy little talk microphone on my laptop."

And though Pryor is content in his home studio, writing material for The New

Ams, his band The Terrible Twos, as well as producing songs by other artists and

seeing to his own label (Elmar, named for his son Elliott Marshall), he抯

certainly not immune from those dark thoughts that come in the night and refuse

to leave.

Lay on the Rails, Drunk or Dead and The Blood on the Floor all address

mortality. "This vested trust/ Beyond us/ So show me then/ I抦 waiting," he

sings, almost chanting, in a chorus of reverb-soaked four-part harmony on Rails.

"I guess it抯 kind of a conversation with God," he confides, saying, "I抳e lost

this person and I don抰 understand why. It抯 not fair. I抦 supposed to believe

that everything抯 going to be okay, but I need some kind of sign. Where is it?"

Nor is he blind to the Red State politics that surround the relatively liberal

confines of the college town he calls home. "What if the world抯 gone back to

the darkness before the enlightenment?" he wonders in Wait. A Beacon in Beige,

meanwhile, finds him reflecting on human rights of all sorts, singing, "Do you

love all your brothers? Do you? Or did you miss the light?"

Pryor even concedes that, left to his own devices, he tends to dwell on the

downside and that he forced himself to write a happy song for At the Foot of My

Rival. The result, Fountain of Youth, is nonetheless much more than that; it

also suggests the easy musical and personal camaraderie he enjoys with Kinsey,

McCann and Belzer (who are also his conspirators in the aforementioned Terrible

Twos).

It抯 telling that this idyll has nothing to do with fame or fortune or status or

power or the other things deemed essential in our pursuit of happiness. To the

contrary, the scene is simply one of friends hanging out by the water on a

summer day, sharing a case of beer, having a laugh, living in the moment.

"We spent three months on the road touring for Story Like a Scar, but that was

over the course of a whole year," Pryor says. "We love playing shows and seeing

our fans ?we know how lucky we are that people come to see us, but that抯 not

real life; real life is home, and home is now the center of what we do."

 

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