ARTIST: French Kicks
TITLE: Swimming
LABEL: Vagrant
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 189kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 48m total
RELEASE DATE: 2008-05-20
RIP DATE: 2008-04-01
Track List
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1. Abandon 3:56
2. Over The World 4:26
3. Carried Away 3:28
4. New Man 4:37
5. Said So What 4:14
6. Atlanta 4:47
7. Love in the Ruins 3:38
8. With the Fishes 3:37
9. The Way You Arrive 4:16
10. All Our Weekends 4:03
11. Sex Tourists 3:27
12. This Could Go Wrong 3:42
Release Notes:
French Kicks are obsessed with possibility. For this band experimentation and
self-discovery are the whole game, and the results of their continued
explorations have set them in a category all their own, and earned them a
dedicated audience. From the time they began as a raucous four piece with a
singing drummer, to the more refined, intricate and subtle experimental pop band
they are today, French Kicks have taken that experimentation always further,
consistently trying to surprise and surpass themselves with each new chapter.
Two Thousand, the bold newest installment in the story, offers a rare collection
of thrills and intrigues, composed of sounds both foreign and familiar. Each
song offers its own logic and its own rewards: masterfully crafted arrangements
that are fun to listen to, but never obvious, with lyrics that resonate with
truth while still being open and suggestive.
Vocalist, keyboardist Nick Stumpf and guitarist Josh Wise wrote the bulk of
material over the course of 2005 while living in New York. As always, they
avoided any repetition from previous efforts by trying new songwriting
techniques, new instruments, and new recordings situations. They then decamped
to Los Angeles, along with the rest of the band, and spent a very, very intense
month in LA with producer Doug Boehm. What emerged is both a departure and a
continuation of the French Kicks oeuvre. Two Thousand taps into the energy and
excitement of their earliest records while adding new sounds and a mastery of
song craft and studio technique.
The founding members of the French Kicks have all known each other forever. Nick
Stumpf and Matt Stinchcomb met nearly two decades ago in grade school and played
in bands together throughout high school and college. Bassist Lawrence Stumpf is
Nicks younger brother. In 1998 Nick and Matt met Alabama native Josh at a party
shortly after moving to Brooklyn. The bond was immediate and they became the
French Kicks quickly thereafter.
Their first two early EPs were recorded as an extension of their live shows?four
friends plugging in and playing. Their debut album One Time Bells was a
ramshackle but brilliant piece of work showing a group chafing at self-imposed
limitations. In 2003, Nick emerged from behind drum kit, brought in drummer
Aaron Thurston and the band begun an evolution from its original incarnation to
something wholly new with Nick and Josh more formally taking over the writing
and recording of Trial of the Century. Trial proved to be their breakthrough
both artistically and commercially. The mature songwriting, sophisticated
arrangements, and coherency of sound and aesthetic wooed critics and granted the
band an audience who, finally, loved the French Kicks for the music they
maderather than the subgenre or scene they were never really a part of.
The emerging dynamic that fueled the artistic success of Trial would test
relations between bandmembers, and before entering the studio to record Two
Thousand , founding member Matt Stinchcomb decided amicably to leave the group.
Reuniting with Trial of the Century producer Doug Boehm, the French Kicks sought
to bring a stable hand to a band whose experimental nature and perfectionism can
lead to a stressful studio environment. According to Nick, however, there was
no element of calm. We all, Doug included, fell quickly into a resigned,
fatalistic doggedness. Both Nick and Josh put an extreme, almost absurd, amount
of pressure on themselves to improve on both the songwriting and production of
Trial. The sessions were long and tense with Doug pushing the band as hard as
they pushed themselves.
The results are some of the finest, most powerful, and also most beautiful songs
by the French Kicks. Two of Josh and Nicks most pop-oriented compositions,
Knee High and Also Ran, have a power recalling their earlier recordings but a
finesse emblematic of their current sound. A highlight of the set is opener So
Far We Are, one of the Kicks mos