Freelance Whales live the American dream, or at least my dream. In early 2009, Judah Dadone, Kevin Read, Doris Cellar, Jake Hyman, and Chuck Criss started playing their neo-folk pop in the streets, abandoned buildings and subways of New York City.
A few months and thirteen new songs later, they began recording their self-released debut LP, Weathervanes. They soon signed to Frenchkiss and re-released Weathervanes on April 13, 2010.
The album swirls "with organic and synthetic textures, interlocking rhythmic patterns, and light harmonic vocals, the record works to tell a simple, pre-adolescent love story: a young male falls in love with a spectral young femme who haunts his childhood home," wrote Frenchkiss reps. "He chases her in his dreams but finds her to be mostly elusive. He imagines her alive, and wonders if someday he’ll take on her responsibilities of ghosting, or if maybe he’ll join her, elsewhere."
The band compares to Arcade Fire (because of their use of unusual instruments like the harmonium, waterphone, banjo, glockenspiel, etc.) and Sufjan Stevens, and say their name both describes their music and lifestyle.
"Freelance Whales have managed to channel something eerie, dreamlike, and seemingly autonomous- the sum of the players being much more than each individual part," wrote Mark Steffen. "These boys have a lot of talent in a lot of different areas. It’s jittery, downplayed, catchy, dreamlike, and imperfect, but it’s all presented in true New Yorker ‘freelance life’ form."
Click here for a May 02, 2010 gig recorded by NPR. Click here for a January 22, 2010 Live Fridays From WXPN set. Click here and here for October 26, 2010 and March 16, 2010 World Café sets also recorded by WXPN. Click here and here for a bunch of videos. Visit the band’s Myspace page here and website here.
Check here to see if Freelance Whales have any gigs scheduled near you.
As always, whenever possible, please buy your music from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like Wal-Mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-Tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand). Incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the United States. That my friend, bites.
Freelance Whales are gonna be huge.
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This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.