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[l to r]:
Andrew Gladstone Drums, vocals, percussion, organ Debbie Silvey Guitar Mark Silvey Bass Jeremy Eade Guitar, vocals, lead guitar, organ |
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1. Intro |
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“The first album was a document of a band strolling around the Auckland streets for three years musing on life and drinking beer,” GARAGELAND’s sharp-witted singer-songwriter Jeremy Eade states about Last Exit To Garageland. Whether this was serious or in jest, this is where it began for the Auckland, New Zealand quartet. “A band making music well under the radar,” says Eade. This was the band’s original testament to youthful freneticism on local indie Flying Nun Records that became embraced at home before finding its way across several continents. The New Zealand Herald called Last Exit To Garageland: “one of the albums of the year,” writing that the band could “turn a twang and a tweek into a golden guitar hook and melodies abound in these fresh well-crafted songs,” while Juice in Australia raved that this is “some of the finest distillation of college rock and 60s pop styles and sounds you’ll ever hear. The arrangements are close to perfection and melody lines are pop at its most excellent.” As time has told, the band may not have changed the world, but it they did make an impact with their clever, noisy and melodically joyous indie pop sound that has since taken the band on a journey across many oceans and seas. After garnering immediate success at college radio down under, the band decided to take on the Brits, and relocated to England for few years in support of this debut effort. “London demands an attitude, like a passport,” says Eade. “But then again we have a lot of strange attitude in this band, so we thought, ‘What the hell, where’s the airport?’” British media including NME, who acclaimed that GARAGELAND had “enough catchiness and sonic adrenaline to incite a teenage riot,” celebrated the band’s music and tenacity. The influential publication praised the band’s “collision of Sonic Youth, Pavement and a massive lorryful of hooks, colorfully heralding GARAGLAND as “half Pixies, half-mass-slaughter-of-oxen…bloody marvelous.” During the band’s messy, chaotic and fun-filled residency in the U.K., Foodchain Records discovered GARAGELAND by chance, from a label friend that had visited New Zealand and returned with the music of her new favorite band. Last Exit To Garageland became the debut release not just for the band, but also for their U.S. label in 1997. GARAGELAND quickly also became a college radio staple in the States. With such memorable tracks as the manic, garage-styled rocker “Fingerpops” and the timeless, hypnotic-pop melody of “Beelines To Heaven,” CMJ called the album “a brilliant peppy, near-flawless pop opus.” Eighteen months of hard touring later saw GARAGELAND play over 300 gigs around the globe. From festivals in Switzerland, Paris, Reading in the UK and the Big Day Out in Australia to clubs in the U.K. and US. Their singles broke into the U.K. Indie Top 10 and the U.S. College and specialty charts. |
[BIO cont'd] GARAGELAND’s Last Exit To Garageland has not been officially distributed in the U.S. for over five years (as a result of the label changing distributors). There are 22-tracks on the reissue album featuring eight bonus tracks including the previously unreleased sing-along worthy Byrds' cover of "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star." The inspired rocker, "Graduation From Frustration," recorded in 1997, has never been released in the U.S., and was discovered by the label on last year's New Zealand release of the retrospective compilation, Under The Influence: 21 Years of Flying Nun Records. The twisted "Underground Nonsense" appeared as a hidden track on the U.S. release six years ago, and is now included in the credits. The remainder of the bonus tracks are rare B-sides that have not been released domestically including such gems as "Bus Stops," "One Shot" and "Shouldn't Matter But It Does." "The 'Last Exit' album back in 1996 was thrown together so quickly from so much material," says Eade. "In 2003 it feels only right we own up to all the songs we forgot to put on it. This is kind of the director's cut." Since forming in 1994, GARAGELAND recorded three albums for Flying Nun in New Zealand: Last Exit To Garageland, Do What You Want, and Scorpio Righting – that were then released in the United States by Foodchain Records. "The band never planned to change the world, we just wanted to visit everywhere once and see who would give us the biggest rider," says Eade. Last Exit To Garageland is a timeless reminder of where GARAGELAND came from in all their noisy, passionate indie-pop glory. Not bad for the original four members who thought the biggest buzz they could get that wouldn’t land them in court took great pride in hearing their first single on local college radio all those years ago. |
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