Knitting Factory Presents
Tue
Oct
9
Savoir Adore
Ghost Beach, Royal Canoe
Knitting Factory Brooklyn
361 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY, 11211
Doors 7:30PM / Show 8:30PM
This event is all ages

On "Dreamers," the dance-laden lullaby and lead single from Savoir Adore's new album Our Nature, Paul Hammer and Deidre Muro invite listeners into a magical dream world. Such worlds are nothing new to the fantasy pop duo, who inadvertently became a fixture of Brooklyn's indie scene as the result of a dare. In 2007, as disheartened solo artists, they whimsically retreated out of the city to a rural studio with two rules: "48 hours. No acoustic guitars." They returned with The Adventures of Mr. Pumpernickel and The Girl with Animals in Her Throat (Cantora), a concept-driven EP set in a fairy tale land that narrates the tragedy of Gloria and her unrequited love. On 2009's full length In The Wooded Forest (Cantora), they expounded on the EP's mythical landscape. But where Savoir Adore's previous releases have surveyed these worlds at a distance, Our Nature zooms in, putting our inner landscapes and relationships at the core of every track. In that vein, the recordings themselves are intentionally more crisp, aurally expansive and intriguing.
Our Nature itself is both a collection of catchy indie pop songs and a dramatic narrative. "Dreamers" functions as its prologue; on it, Muro insists her subject not worry and "keep on sleeping," while Hammer confronts the inevitable transience of dreaming: "Where we are isn't just a place where everything remains." And so Our Nature thrusts into its tenuous drama: the unlikely love story of Girl and Monster ("Loveliest Creature"). At times as fantastical as its premise ("Regalia," "Sea of Gold"), at others as accessible as radio pop ("Sparrow," "Anywhere You Go"), the album seamlessly blends '60s invasion, '80s new wave and '90s alternative with a more contemporary, digital creative process. Others have recognized Savoir Adore's sound as "musically and lyrically brave" (NME) and "irresistibly melodic indie pop" (Nylon). In 2009 and 2010, The L Magazine and The New York Post both named the band to their top bands to watch lists. So now, look no further. After two years of finding inspiration in a wide range of experiences, from neuroscience lectures to tales as old as time, Savoir Adore is back with Our Nature.
Muro and Hammer were both born into musical households. Muro's father is an electronic music writer and performer, her mother an organist, and her brother a composer. Muro herself learned to play the piano and violin and trained as a jazz vocalist while also in her mother's church choir. When she arrived at NYU, she joined a songwriter's club, which is where she met Hammer, who grew up with famed keyboardist and composer Jan Hammer (Mahavishnu Orchestra) as his father. While Savoir Adore often keeps their music playful, it is also serious work akin to keeping up the family business. Nowhere is this reverence more resonant than on ITWF's "Wonderlake" and its complimentary number on Our Nature, "Sea of Gold." On both tracks, Hammer and Muro ask big questions about family history and identity: How did I get here? Who am I now?
As an ambivalent reaction to their years spent in the Greenwich Village songwriter scene, 2007's eccentric and unexpected The Adventures of Mr. Pumpernickel and the Girl with Animals in Her Throat was the beginning of the duo's creative response to these questions about musical identity. After their two-day dare was complete, they posted some tracks to a MySpace page under the hastily forged moniker Savoir Adore, a French phrase that grammatically fails to merge "knowing" and "love." The name stuck and the project gained momentum. Cantora Records released the EP as the band began to work on a full length. With the release of 2009's In The Wooded Forest, the New York music press embraced Savoir Adore and set them on a path to expand their audience nationally and internationally. Band members Tim McCoy (drums), Gary Atturio (bass) and Alex Foote (guitar), who took part in Our Nature's recording process, rounded out the band's live show as Savoir Adore shared the stage with MGMT, Los Campesinos, Oh Land, and Toro Y Moi.
In the summer of 2010, the band toured the UK and France, including shows at Koko/Club NME and The Secret Garden Party. Their songs have been featured in various commercials (Almay, Citi, Yoplait), TV shows (Pretty Little Liars, Drop Dead Diva, Huge) and video games (Kinect Adventurer). During the 2012 Academy Awards, Tide premiered its new Tide Pods campaign featuring Savoir Adore's cover of Men Without Hats' "Pop Goes the World" (available on iTunes).
In late 2011, Savoir Adore offered a sneak peak of Our Nature, releasing "Dreamers" as a 7" on Neon Gold Records. In 2012, Savoir Adore invites lovely creatures the world over to join in their epic saga as they take Our Nature over the river and through the woods, down interstates and beyond!
Ghost Beach are the latest pop pioneers to set the internet ablaze with only a couple singles floating around and without any major label backing. The New York-based duo of Josh Ocean and Eric "Doc" Mendelsohn take their '80s influences one step further with Ghost Beach. Only a few months old, they've already perfected a retro-future aesthetic that sounds like the holy trifecta of The Police, Depeche Mode, and Daft Punk, with a little Passion Pit sprinkled on top for good measure. Josh plays the jilted lover with vocal panache as Eric's soaring synths, guitars and forever young harmonies are plucked right out of Neverland. Ghost Beach is more about a time than a place, and that time is now.
- Andrew Hwang (Neon Gold)
Ghost Beach are seductively good, with endless factors shaping their sound. In parts it sounds like synth-laden ’80s pop, and on others resembles a punk-rock vibe with lengthy guitar solos, like on single “First Time”. Their confused adolescent genre is a result of influences from the likes of Depeche Mode, Daft Punk and The Police. The American pairing are reminiscent of an early Hot Hot Heat, with a semi-fem vocal, unashamedly bathing in a pop bath – and I don’t mean the bubbles. They produced something that’s a lot more grown up. Saying that, they have the fun factor, the nonchalant attitude, and a contagious “let’s not stop partying until we throw up” glitter factor
-Tim Osbourne (Obscure Sound)
Royal Canoe is a group of musicians on a mission to construct ambitious, inventive music. The songs are thick with catchiness, rich in rhythm and are consistently pushing against the boundaries of pop music.
They spend almost every day in a shit-hole rehearsal space writing hooks, singing through effects pedals, scrawling lyrics on scraps of paper, and constructing heavy beats in odd time signatures. They create samples by running conventional sounds through unconventional pieces of gear, drumming on bathtubs and garbage cans, listening to Big Boi and manipulating bits of old records.
The band calls Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada home – the enigmatic prairie city, which has served artists as both an abundant, creative watering hole and a debilitating quagmire. The city's mood swings from euphoric summers spent biking with beers, fence-hopping residential pools and climbing abandoned roof-tops to harsh, bitter winters that are countered first with defiance, then self-loathing, then denial, then "you've got to be fucking kidding me." Royal Canoe's songs are, in part, an effort to make sense of the resentment and romanticism of the city's divergent identities.
Royal Canoe releases their EP, Extended Play, on February 21.
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Savoir Adore with Ghost Beach, Royal Canoe
Tuesday, October 9 · Doors 7:30PM / Show 8:30PM at Knitting Factory Brooklyn