bowery beasts

so gazelles and gamines!  dandies and rockers!  pretty people, bright young things!  oh, you pretty things!
listen to bowery beasts.  if it were my say they'd be on KCRW, or a stage near you!  they were at El Cid last sunday and i was too busy crying into my facebook wall to get off the internet (just kidding) to go.  no i don't know what i was doing, writing emails to the entire city i think about my damn school and my visions of utopia.  i found this CD and cracked it open and have been listening to it all day.  it is so good to hear the studio version of nick maybury soooo tricked out with such an awesome band with such a vision of happy dreams!

and hey ben is so stylish and confidentally in touch with his masculine and feminine side, it is ultra-sexy when a man can wear long hair and slinky leggings and be totally secure with his falsetto!
ben is so gracious, so loving and his film-maker video-making guru genius friend Abby is so charming and kind and darling sweet . . .  they put you back in touch with alternate universes.
ben as a vocalist is so courageous.  he pours his voice into the bowery beasts sound and careens through highs and lows.  he  captures a nostalgia and joie de vivre that is both retro and contemporary.

i used to listen to jethro tull and graham parsons.  donovan. and by default, growing up in the eighties, lots of bon jovi, poison, and then awesome judas priest and guns and roses.

bowery beasts captures an emotionality that resolves in the melody.  a way of life, of words, of kindness, or way of seeing the world.  a way of giving into the emotion that society tells you to repress.

i've been negligent about blogging music lately.  but really not much moves me.  nick maybury for sure, for always. his sound is so uniquely irreplicable and eerie, so emotional, and lush.  he adds incomparable value to any band lucky enough to seduce his skill.

but the bowery beasts have such richness going on.  vocally, sonically, the songs, the voice.
i'm not going to maim it anymore with my words.  but suggest you get up on their myspace and listen, or illegally download some, or play their CD, or book them to your festival, or throw yourself a party and dance around your lonely apartment by yourself and remember happier days . . .

check out the gorgeous art design of their album, the mandolin . . .and "realms of fancy" my favorite song