valentine's day Band of the Week: All the Saints

valentine's day Band: All the Saints
From: Atlanta, GA
Sound: Soaring, crashing - all the while buzzing - reverb-drenched rock
Similar Artists: The Stone Roses, Alice In Chains, Black Sabbath, Dead Confederate
Listen Now: "Sheffield"

What is it about Atlanta bands that make them so loud (Mastodon), frenetic (Black Lips, Mastodon again), bizarre (Deerhunter, Black Lips again) and pretty much impossible to pin down (all of the above)?

Best to confer with an expert on the subject...fellow Atlantans (by way of Alabama) All the Saints are well familiar with this phenomenon, displaying more than enough of the above traits to have carved out their own place in the city's impressive music scene.

"Suffice it to say any Atlanta band you find will have more grit than most," All the Saints' Titus told EF back in March. "Honesty too. And this eerie basement trend, where everyone practices and hibernates. Marinating in the dirty-dirty if you will."

So, blame it on the dirty-dirty? Well, if we're to take his band as a case study, the argument makes perfect sense. By fighting the notoriously stifling humidity of Atlanta through the cooler climes of marathon basement jams, All the Saints - Titus, Jim, and Matt (they go by first name only) - have crafted their own indelible sound in the process, the very approximation of what swampy humidity and blasting heat sounds like when channeled through a dark, cavernous cellar. In other words, pretty awesome.

And it's not very often that you cross paths with a band at the exact moment in which the once-distant promise for big things suddenly comes perfectly within reach (and right before your very eyes)...Since we first started corresponding with the band a few months back, they've managed to link up with Dead Confederate on their upcoming tour and also just signed a deal - as in the ink is still drying - with Killer Pimp Records (A Place To Bury Strangers, Blood Money), who will be releasing their debut album Fire on Corridor X on May 27th.

Listening to the album, it's no wonder why great things "suddenly" seem to be coming All the Saints' way. Fire on Corridor X is a remarkably consistent and cohesive album, ten tracks cradled within a dense fog of reverb to create a hypnotic ebb and flow in all the right places. One minute you're floating in the delicate patches of "Hornett" only to be pummeled moments later by its Alice In Chains Facelift-era refrain. Staggered and woozy, it's best to just allow each successive track to wash over and gradually disarm you with the incredible rawness that runs throughout the record.

And if you feel the dark shadows of Sabbath or Zeppelin in the chugging riffs or the exposed-nerve fury of Nirvana's Bleach in the howled vocals, you may be right; or you may be dead wrong. Titus will never tell. "Some people strive for something more, but most are content to rehash the same ideas they or someone else already tried," he said. "Not to say we don't steal either. It's embarrassing sometimes, but no one seems to notice. It's all reinvention, just make it a reinvention of yourself."

Case in point: the origin of the band's name, which - according to Titus - sprang from both "a phrase in an old Dylan hymn and the title of a Verbena song. It stuck nicely too." Indeed, and it was also further reinvented by the band's incorporation of Biblical imagery onstage, as they often perform from behind a large fleur-de-lis statue.

Luckily for us Northerners, All the Saints will be bringing this riotous rock reinvention to our backyards later this month. And never ones to abandon the basements from whence they came, plans for the next album may rely heavily on such temperate locales.

"Anyone can record shit in their room and post it on MySpace, but the ones who care will take the time to do it right. I'd love to do a whole album in our basement and believe it can be done, but for us at this time, the studio was the best way to go."

Judging by the results, we're not one to argue.

Listen:
"Sheffield"
"Fire On Corridor X"

See All the Saints Live:
09 May - Athens, GA @ Caledonia Lounge
10 May - Cabbage Town, GA @ Soundlab 84
28 May - Washington, DC @ DC9
29 May - New York, NY @ Pianos
30 May - Asbury Park, NJ @ The Saint
31 May - Philadelphia, PA @ The Khyber
1 June - Cambridge, MA @ TT The Bears
2 June - Brooklyn, NY @ TBD
3 June - Baltimore, MD @ The Talking Head Club
4 June - Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
5 June - Asheville, NC @ The Rocket
6 June - Nashville, TN @ Barley's
7 June - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl

Visit All the Saints on MySpace.
--
In the recent past, the following bands have been featured as EAR FARM's Band of the Week:
I'm From Barcelona
Bombadil
Tapes 'n Tapes
White Hinterland
Man Man
We Barbarians
The Dodos
Hey Hey My My

See the entire list of bands featured as EAR FARM's Band of the Week HERE.