Sometimes just hanging out with your friends is better than quarreling with them to make things right. Having done the rounds playing in various projects over the years, the members of Torch Singer decided that they had enough of the pressures of chasing the "ideal" and simply wanted to have fun again. Equal parts brown and white skin, the six members create pop melodies for long Midwestern summer drives and cold Chicago nights. The boys and girls of Torch Singer have one aim: to find their way into your ears and hearts.

With a cryptic, mysterious band name like “Elusive Parallelograms,” you’d better have the music and the lyrical content to back it up, and this band of five Midwestern friends has both in abundance roaring out of their amps every time they play – they’ve conjured a potent blend of modern, colorful psychedelic ‘shoe-gazer’ style rock full of great choruses, fast-paced electric guitars, and smartly introspective lyrics that are as fun to interpret as they are to sing along to.

Elusive Parallelograms’ five members (EP for short) – guitarist/singer Andrew Foys, David Schessow on bass, Jonathan Hense on guitar/vocals, drummer Eric Reiter, and guitarist Stefan Dostanic – have brought back loud, rowdy and huge Indie rock on their recently released Modern Splendor album. The 11 songs on Modern Splendor all have a solid ‘EP’ sound running through them, but within the layers of each composition, elements of poppy psychedelia, gritty alternative rock and folky moments all co-exist happily as sonic arrangements without sticking strictly to the old “verse-chorus-verse” method of songwriting.

Based out of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, Elusive Parallelograms was founded several years ago as a basement band playing college parties, and they say they knew early on that they wanted to create some special music together. After recording a couple of early releases, EP came together to record the album and everything changes – what they call “way schizophrenic and short.” One album later, Elusive Parallelograms musically comes in somewhere inside yet far outside the current rock trends of ‘60s revival bands and ‘bedroom electro.’ Modern Splendor is far more lucid and cohesive than the first album as it finds the band reaching a level of professionalism honed after playing hundreds of shows at venues that included CMJ, Summerfest, International Pop Overthrow Festival and MobFest.

They’ve grown together as band members and songwriters creating walls of sound built up around frameworks of individual vignettes – each song can and does stand on its own, but as a whole, their music feels more like a colorful, vibrant living creature – kind of like some newly discovered ultra-rare animal featured on one of those National Geographic specials.
Their sound and style of music stands out, much like their band name –Elusive Parallelograms –but unlike that rarely-seen colorful creature, they’re not bound by some pre-configured form or shape, and they’re not all that elusive… You just have to dig a little deeper into the words and the living walls of sound framing those words to let it fit into some time or situation in your life. Put their music on at some un-Godly loud level, see their colors and feel their vibrations, and wrap yourself around the surreal lyrics.

Feel the pure joy and expression of art these five guys have given you – it’s something special. It’s real music. It’s an essential and powerful element of life.

Elusive Parallelograms is a catharsis – it’s in the ear of the beholder.

Rabbit Children is a five-piece rock band based out of Chicago. Started in 2007 by childhood friends Michael Danaher and Blake Hand, and later joined by college friends Steve Tartaglione, Natalie Catron and hometown rockford-ian noah rotello, the band has recently finished their first record, Thou Shalt Have a Time Machine. The album is available at all our shows and online.

we like playing live and having fun. we love you.

King of Prussia
Transmissions from The Grand Strand

On the 10+ hour drive from Sea Note Studios in Myrtle Beach, S.C. to his home in Clearwater, Fla., something dawned upon Brandon “Burly” Taj Hanick (besides the actual dawn, which was about to have been seen twice in as many days). Nine of the 11 songs on Transmissions from the Grand Strand feature the word “love” in the lyrics, the song title, or both.

“What have I done?!?” asked Burly, excitedly. “I’ve written a…a ‘love album!’” he replied to himself, using his inside voice. True--Transmissions is an album primarily about love, but one wouldn’t necessarily call these songs “love songs”—unless one thought that every song and everything is somehow connected to love. But that’s a bit too hippie, wouldn’t you say?

I mean, some of the songs are sad as hell and some view the world through a psychedelic lens that, at times, rouses paranoia. The songs are darkly colored by spirit voices stirring in haunted bedrooms; the one you can’t have starring in all of your dreams; premonitions that things in general are coming to a close. But the sadness never allows itself to become bitter…nor too sweet. And the paranoia never devolves into dementia. Rather, they look to the sky and at the bright side of the sun and accept the potential consequences of such a daring act. They watch birds (and planes). They go to the races and put pedals on the tracks.

The recording process for these 11 tracks was one that would break the average (white) band up. Instead, making the record actually formed the band. You see, the Sea Note Sessions were anything but average. For starters, the members were scattered about the globe. Tucker and Nathan called Myrtle home, but Brian still lived in Athens, Ga. (the band’s original home base), and Burly had moved from Athens to Barcelona, Spain more than a year earlier. Hans, who hadn’t been on U.S. soil in two years, was rumored to be living in South Korea. To prove it, he brought along a pack of fish-flavored cheese to share with the others. The stars aligned, schedules coincided, and flights and rental cars were booked. The whole crew was able to make it. All members had been closely connected by friendship and various musical projects for years (See: The Drag, The Envelopes, Beijing, Grace Cathedral Park, Fabulous Bird, etc.), but Transmissions from The Grand Strand marks the first time that this particular permutation had put it down together.

In the studio, there was time for making music and each other laugh, but that was it. Sleep was taken for short spurts, if at all--usually on the studio floor with heads next to kick drums and feet tangled up in headphone cables. They sweated. They stunk. They made a great record. They didn’t eat much. They were hungry. Tracking initially took up 16 hours per day, but by the end of the short session, the members were recording in shifts so as to make use of all 24 hours each day had to offer.

And their hard work did not go unrewarded. All their wishes were granted in short order. When they wanted a slide guitar part, Shane emerged, slide guitar in hand. When they asked for a suitable bass guitar, a stand-up bass appeared in the corner of the studio. It’s still not clear to whom the bass belongs. While locked in the studio late one night, Brian began to fiend for one last cig before going to sleep. All he needed was some way to light it. An old pack with one remaining match turned up underneath a stack of papers. When Hans’ presence for the session was predicated on being able to get a ride to see his mother in Atlanta afterwards, two friends announced that they were headed to Athens within days. Close enough.

And so it was with this chapter of the King of Prussia story. The heavens were in alignment and no setback was really a setback at all. They played the songs the way were meant to be played, brilliant parts were later added by other great friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and Jesse Mangum of The Glow Studios then mixed them the way they were meant to be mixed.

A close, wise friend (the one who really brought all the boys together) once made clear what it’s all about:

“What is a band, but a group of people?” he asked rhetorically. “And what does a group of people do? Whatever the fuck they want to do.”