ARTIST: Chin Up Chin Up
TITLE: Chin Up Chin Up
LABEL: Flameshovel
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 217kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 34m total
RELEASE DATE: 2005-08-09
RIP DATE: 2005-08-30
Track List
----------
1. Collide The Tide 4:17
2. Fuck You, Elton John 3:32
3. For All The Tanning Salons In 4:02
Texas
4. The Soccer Mom Gets Her Fix 3:29
5. I'm Not Asking For A Tennis 4:13
Bracelet
6. Pillage The Village 4:08
7. We Should Have Never Lived Like 2:56
We Were Skyscrapers (Stephen
Snydacker Mix)
8. Falconz And Vulcanz 4:16
9. The Architect Has A Gun (Ronald 3:31
Simmons/Gene McDonald Mix)
Release Notes:
Look beyond the steely skyscrapers jutting into Chicago's grey sky, past the
potholed streets and shadowed alleys, and you might be able to find something
beautiful in this scuffed-up metropolis. Something like a cornflower pushing
through a cracked sidewalk, struggling its way toward sunshine. Or the sun
glinting off choppy lake waves at dusk. Or the sounds of Chin Up Chin Up, whose
disarmingly resonant debut album We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were
Skyscrapers is ready to carry you through autumn and beyond.
The band's history reaches back to 2001, when Jeremy Bolen and Nathan Snydacker
formed Chin Up Chin Up (think optimism and perseverance, not exercise). The two
guitarists were joined shortly thereafter by percussionist Chris Dye and bassist
Chris Saathoff. In January 2002, the band released a self-titled EP, which
inspired MOJO's call for readers to "meet your new favourite Chicago art-pop
band." Later joined by keyboard player Greg Sharp, Chin Up Chin Up toured
extensively, playing shows with the likes of the Appleseed Cast, the Mercury
Program, Pedro the Lion, the American Analog Set, Broken Social Scene, Smog, and
Pinback.
Sadly midway through writing their debut full lenght, We Should Have Never Lived
Like We Were Skyscrapers, hours, in fact, after mixing the demos, the band faced
a tragic loss. In February 2004, bassist Chris Saathoff was walking home from a
show at the Empty Bottle when he was struck and killed in a hit-and-run
accident. For months thereafter, the rest of the band mourned the loss of their
good friend. "We all hung out together more than we hung out as a band," Bolen
recalls. "We didn't think about music for a long time." In due time, Chin Up
Chin Up decided to regroup and finish the record. Using three discs' worth of
practices that the band had recorded over the last few years, they pieced
together the record's final six songs, keeping Chris's bass lines as intact as
possible.
Now on the cusp of the release of their self-titled record by hoometown label
Flameshovel, the band revisits the various elements that had brought them
together in the first place. Says Bolen, "I guess we started the band trying to
do something that was not like lots of the music happening in the Midwest. We
love Chicagom but really wanted to step out of our math-rock past into something
more pop," adding, "I don't think we succeed at that exactly per se, but in our
minds at least we wanted to make songs people could sing along to, rather than
trying to be as musically complicated as possible."
The end result aptly demonstrates that duality as lifting riffs play against a
crescendoed bounce, Bolen's hopeful yelp calls out, "there's a fault line
between us and it's all that keeps us stationary, so let's go, let's go, let's
got." And at the end of the day Chin Up Chin Up makes music about hope, about
persevering through tragedy, and the redemption of optimism. Listen and you'll
discover the beauty of old souls dancing like adolescents, their hearts bruised
but beating stronger and louder each day.