ARTIST: The 1900s
TITLE: Cold & Kind
LABEL: Parasol Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 237 kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 39min total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-10-02
RIP DATE: 2007-09-12
Track List
----------
1. No Delay 1:50
2. Georgia 2:23
3. When I Say Go 3:21
4. Cold & Kind 4:40
5. City Water 3:45
6. Acutiplantar Dude 4:19
7. When We Lay Down 0:53
8. Two Ways 3:17
9. The Medium Way 5:05
10. Supernatural 3:47
11. Wool Of The Lamb 4:53
12. Hidden Track 1:43
Release Notes:
http://www.the-1900s.com
http://myspace.com/1900s
"Edward Anderson had big plans for the debut album by his Chicago septet, the
1900s. A grand "psychedelic Motown" opus, he said in the promising summer of
2006, tongue only partially in cheek. Then things got out of hand.
"At the start, it all felt like it was not going to be a problem. I had a real
clear idea of what I wanted to do with the songs," Anderson says. "But it got to
a real raw end point, and I lost all perspective on it."
"Cold & Kind" (Parasol) coldly took the band's money and time, and nearly their
sanity. It shredded their modest budget and took seven months to record,
re-record and mix multiple times, with the band working weekends and nights in
between day jobs.
"Only in the last few weeks did I finally get to the point where I started to
feel happy with the end result," says singer Jeanine O'Toole.
At least from the listeners' perspective, the angst was worth it. "Cold & Kind,"
due out Oct. 2, is one of the year's best albums, and more than fulfills the
promise of the group's widely lauded 2006 debut EP, "Plume Delivery." With its
sumptuous arrangements, outfitted with horns and strings, and soaring harmony
vocals, the disc is a pop masterwork: dense yet not heavy-handed, with rapturous
arrangements sweeping the melodies off their feet. Yet beneath the heady
surface, the songs explore notions of risk, death and redemption in a loose
narrative. The characters sometimes go too far, and the turmoil they encounter
stands in stark contrast to the sun-kissed music.
The album's centerpiece, "Acultiplantar Dude," is an elegy of sorts to a friend
who died of a drug overdose. The song's closing refrain -- "If I died I would
live again in your body" -- was written before the tragedy. A few months later,
it was discovered that the dead man's girlfriend was pregnant with his child. It
made the line seem eerily prescient, another layer of subtext to an album
already swimming in drama.
"Words can be pretty ferocious," O'Toole says. "It's pretty emotional to sing
some of them, because our lives all changed while we were making this record."
Those personal travails raised the stakes for the album, and the band --
Anderson, O'Toole, vocalist Caroline Donovan, drummer Tim Minnick, keyboardist
Mike Jasinski, bassist Charlie Ransford and violinist Andra Kulans -- didn't
back off. Every note mattered, which is why the album went through several
incarnations before all the band members could embrace it.
Even though albums aren't the coin of the musical realm anymore in the MP3 era,
O'Toole still holds them dear. "An album is like a great novel, and I wouldn't
want to read just one chapter of a novel," she says. "Albums are a beautiful
piece of art, and I want to keep making them."
Anderson aims to oblige. He's readying a solo album and says he's already making
headway on the next 1900s release. "The next one is going to be a little more
stripped down," he says with a laugh. "A little looser to make. At least I hope
so."
-Chicago Tribune