Auxes

I’ve had this post set for a while now, but for whatever reason it kept getting pushed to the back burner. I need to apologize to Auxes for that because this is a record you need to know about.

As a general rule I don’t care much for “indie” bands. A lot of them sound alike. Maybe that’s because a lot of them come from the same two or three geographical areas and they’re all following the same trends. I don’t know – whatever.

That being said, if a band labels themselves as indie, they’re going to need to stand out if they want my attention. And you know how valuable my attention can be....

North Carolina’s Auxes break that mold by virtue of singer Dave Laney’s unique voice. Rather than the whiney, I’ll-steal-your-girlfriend voice I’m hearing so much of recently, Laney has a gruff voice somewhere in the area of Springsteen or Tom Waits. Laney’s vocals on top of music that brings a combination of rock and folk adds a whole new sub-genre to the sub-genre that is “indie music.”

Sunshine is Laney’s first official release since Milemarker’s 2005 Ominosity album. In 2006, family-related issues prompted his relocation from Chicago back to NC where he set up a recording studio and began playing with a cross-section of Chapel Hill’s most creative musicians (including members of Fin Fang Foom, Bellafea, Eagle Bravo, and Sleepytime Trio). When sharing members from other touring bands began to create a musical impasse, Dave began pursuing another angle: Sunshine features Laney playing virtually all of the instruments himself.

“Sunshine wasn’t consciously solo – or rather, I didn’t set out to make a solo record,” Laney said. “The album is the end result of having left an amazing pool of people I’d been playing music with for years (in Chicago) combined with a personal incapacity to not play music while simultaneously having the means and gear to actually record a record. ‘Solo’ has strange connotations to me. This is a rock record, not a solo record. I just happened to play all the music on this one.”

Check these songs; I think you’ll like how this is different from the standard stuff.

Radio! Radio!.mp3
Brother.mp3

Labels: indie, rock

posted by aikin @ 11:56 AM