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Artist...: I Am The Avalanche
Album....: I Am The Avalanche
Genre....: Rock
Label....: Drive-Thru
Lang.....: English
Year.....: 2005
Source...: CDDA
Rip.date.: 08-04-2017
St.date..: 09-27-2005
Encoder..: FLAC 1.3.1
Quality..: 975 kbps Avg 44.1kHz 2 channels
---- + Track List + ---------------------------------------
01 Dead And Gone 3:41
02 New Disaster 3:46
03 Murderous 3:57
04 Green Eyes 4:40
05 I Took A Beating 2:22
06 Wasted 4:34
07 Always 3:42
08 This Is Dungeon Music 2:45
09 Symphony 4:16
10 Emergency 3:56
11 Clean Up 3:47
12 My Second Restraining Order 5:04
Total Size.: 12 Files/339.8MB/46:30 min
---- + Release Note + -------------------------------------
A second-generation post-hardcore act, I Am the Avalanche
features members of several earlier emo and screamo outfits.
Singer and songwriter Vinnie Caruana was the leader of the
Movielife, guitarist Brandon Swanson was in Further Seems
Forever, and bassist Kellen Robson is a former member of Scraps
and Heart Attacks. Formed in Brooklyn by Caruana in 2004 after
the Movielife broke up (and following an abortive stint with the
nascent Head Automatica), I Am the Avalanche was --
unsurprisingly, for an emo band -- first inspired by a bad
breakup. After writing a number of songs about the failed
relationship, Caruana enlisted Swanson, Robson, second guitarist
Michael Ireland, and drummer Brett "Ratt" Romnes to perform
them, taking the band name from a line in one of those songs.
(In the band's official bio, Caruana claims no prior knowledge
of the fact that "I am the avalanche" is a key line in Stephen
Dobyns' autobiographical poem "Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast
Associate," from his collection Pallbearers Envying the One Who
Rides.) Signing with the indie label Drive-Thru Records in 2005,
I Am the Avalanche debuted on half of a split CD single with
their labelmates the Early November, previewing their debut
album with two early demos. Produced by Barrett Jones (Foo
Fighters), who also adds keyboards, I Am the Avalanche was
released in September 2005.
Touring in a band can be eye-opening, engendering a greater
sense of self and the world. In the six years Vinnie Caruana
sang with The Movielife, he learned how to write songs, win over
audiences and survive living with the same guys for months at a
time. But it was the 18 months after The Movielife's 2003
breakup that prompted the greatest personal and creative growth.
"I went through some of the worst stuff I've ever had to deal
with and some of the best stuff, too" Caruana says. "It really
woke me up to a lot of things and it was humbling, too. The
Movielife got off the stage in front of 3,000 kids, and then two
days later I was working construction in Crown Heights,
Brooklyn. So, my whole life and perspective changed
dramatically."
When Caruana finally decided to play music again, he had plenty
of material from which to draw. I Am The Avalanche, the
self-titled debut by his new band, is energized, melodic,
turbulent, scathing and vulnerable, reflecting the frustration,
instability and hope of its creator and resonating with the
twists and turns of an artist coming to grips with the
situations he has faced and overcome.
"I wanted to write about the things that were really affecting
me emotionally and were basically just killing me," Caruana
says. "I had a huge, long amazing relationship with someone, who
I pretty much thought I was gonna marry. Then that ended in the
worst way possible. And, I had to deal with the really severe
drug problems of some people, and that put a huge brand on me.
But while I was away from music, I got to spend time with
friends and family for the first time in years. And that was
really great, so those kinds of beautiful feelings are on the
new record, too."
Indeed, I Am The Avalanche covers a broad spectrum of sound and
emotion. "Dead and Gone" features clawing guitars, bobbing bass
lines and a dreamy, harmony-laden chorus, "Murderous" is colored
with a reggae-tinged rhythm and an infectious power pop riff.
"Green Eyes" starts with an aching guitar line wrapped around a
bare vocal and evolves into a chugging rocker with an incredible
refrain, and "I Took a Beating" is a fist-to-the-face track
charged with attitude and anguish.
Lyrically, the album is equally powerful, addressing Caruana's
most personal fears and dreams with the candor of a diary. "Dead
and Gone," for instance, puts closure on his relationship with
the girl he thought he'd spend the rest of his life with. "It
starts out with me floating on the bottom of a swimming pool
with my eyes open looking around for something," he says. "I'm
on this quest to find the girl that hurt me so badly. I'm on a
search to find the other her, the one I was so in love with
because she's been gone for so long. And finally I figure out
that she's dead and gone and that chapter of my life is over and
I have to move on and get on with what I'm supposed to be doing,
which is this band."
Then there's "New Disaster," the mission statement of a Murphy's
law adherent who's always waiting for the floor to fall out.
"I'm so used to disappointment that I'm always ready for it," he
explains. "The song is about knowing a person so well and just
waiting for them to ruin something else, just waiting for that
next train wreck."
Caruana started writing songs for I Am The Avalanche on acoustic
guitar after he moved from New York to San Francisco to work
with Head Automatica. He entered the studio and cut a batch of
demos last year, still unsure if he would use the songs in a new
band. "I just think my vision was shot of what's good or even if
what I'm doing is still relevant," he says. "So I played them
for some friends and they were like, 'Dude, these are the best
songs you've ever written.' So, that restored my confidence and
when I moved back to New York, I decided to put a band together
and do it for real."
He called ex-Further Seems Forever guitarist Brandon Swanson and
convinced him to relocate to New York. Then he hired bassist
Kellen Robson, who used to be in the Long Island hardcore band
Scraps And Heart Attacks, with whom The Movielife once toured.
Next came guitarist Michael Ireland, who Caruana met in Virginia
Beach and eventually moved in with when Ireland moved to
Brooklyn.
"He was a Movielife fan and we had met and kept in touch
throughout the late 90s. When I saw him again, he came up to me
and said, 'I just moved to Brooklyn and I definitely want to
check out your new stuff,'" Caruana says. "So, I went to his
place and there was an empty bedroom there. I had just moved out
of my parents' house, so I moved in with Mike, and he was living
with Brett, who turned out to be a drummer in a band called
Reservoir. He filled in for us and after our first practice we
were like, 'Dude, quit your other band, please. This is so, so
good.' Fortunately, he did"
Caruana named the band I Am The Avalanche after one of the first
lyrics he wrote for the group. Not only does the name sum up the
tumbling vibe of the music, it represents the landslide effect
the past two years have had on the singer. "When I was starting
the band, I listed all of the things I was feeling at the time
and all the things I felt I was," he says. "And one of the
things I wrote was, 'I am an avalanche,' I was feeling like it
was completely time for me to come back and write songs again
and get all this stuff off my chest. I was completely
overflowing and this stuff was just spilling out of me."
I Am The Avalanche flew to Seattle in April 2005 and spent a
month working with producer Barrett Jones (Nirvana, Foo
Fighters, Melvins, Jesus Lizard). They recorded in three
different studios and employed unconventional techniques that
yielded stunning results. "Barrett made us turn down our amps
all the way to the point where everyone could barely hear one
another," Caruana says. "We usually practice on 11, so that was
really different, but he did that so he could listen to the
actual songs without any of the noise. Then, we sorted out a lot
of the songs and made them better. I felt so lucky to be able to
work with someone of Barrett's caliber."
Like most recording sessions, there were ups and downs --
moments of anxiety when it looked like the album might never get
finished and periods of elation when everything was running like
a new stock car engine. But the moment of reckoning came when
the band finished its last bit of tracking and Barrett played a
rough mix of the album through the studio soundboard.
"We got some lunch and listened to the whole thing for the first
time, and we were just freaking out," Caruana says. "Some of our
friends from Seattle were there hanging out with us and we were
all so stoked. We were like, 'Holy shit, we just did that.'
That's when I really knew that this was for real."
Url: http://www.iamtheavalanchenyc.com/
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