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Aversion Stream the new album in full Myspace If That's The Case, Life In The Backseat Music Download Woken By A Kiss, If That's The Case, Misunderstanding (allow popups) vMix If That's The Case, Cold World, Misunderstanding Downloads: SxSW.com If That's The Case L.A. Times - Insound Appropriate Ending Scroll past the interviews for people's thoughts on the album so far... Lots more from the lead up to the release including Tom's thoughts as they recorded it HERE SOUND CHECK Five questions for ESP. MUSIC SNOBBERY Tom: "I think an album should take you on a journey…" PLUG IN MUSIC Tom: "In my opinion it is our most cohesive, accomplished work to date" THE SUN Tom talks to Jacqui Swift about the ups and downs of their career, and explains how their new album No Need To Be Downhearted marks a new start for ESP. Artist Direct 5 Questions with Tom: "The idea that a piece of music can take you on a journey for a few minutes, take you out of the everyday and transport you somewhere - that's what I've always wanted to do with our songs" BBC OXFORD (audio interview with Alex) The album was recorded and produced in Steventon at Truck studios with the help of the Goldrush boys Robin and Garo. It’s not done with a vast sum of cash, in fact the band had to sleep in the barn on the farm where the studio is based during the recording. But it is done with the skill and panache of people who really care about the music they are making. You can listen to me speaking to Alex in the van on the way to Stoke, the first date of their national tour to promote the album. Epoch Times - First Post - Yahoo - Twisted Ear - The Tripwire - Ultimate Guitar - Aversion - Manchester Evening News - Skyline Press - Entertainmentwise THIS IS NOTTINGHAM 4 stars …this third album is a DIY effort from founder members Alex and Tom White. The brothers play almost everything here in addition to engineering and producing the project. The title track makes for a deliberately low-key opener but they get into their stride on the Squeeze-style bounce of Life In The Backseat. Woken By A Kiss is a woozy slice of psychedelic pop and they come up with a copper-bottomed indie dancefloor-filler on the standout If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know. Misunderstanding is classy melodic guitar pop while the perky piano-led Cold World could be by Ben Folds. A very solid collection of indie pop; maybe it’s third time lucky for the boys. THE SUN This week’s hottest albums. Rating ***1/2. Electric Soft Parade have had a bit of an up and down time in the music business… This, their third album, is thankfully nearer the standard of the first. If you’ve never heard the Brighton two-piece then their sound is a bit difficult to explain. Sort of a slightly less camp cross between ELO and The Feeling is a fair stab… bright points include Misunderstanding, If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know and Cold World/Starry Night. If you like your light-rock a bit different then give this a whirl. TIME OUT NY Would the Electric Soft Parade peter out before having a go at the States? Far from it: No Need to Be Downhearted could be the band’s U.S. breakthrough. The excellent, self-produced album maintains ESP’s reverb-heavy, future-folk sound while cycling through angsty rock and mellow balladry, a tension-and-release pattern of struggling with self-doubt. “Someday / You’ll come out of this okay,” Tom White promises himself on the chorus of “Woken by a Kiss,” a sprawler that jumps from sweeping melodies to dreamy interludes. On the explosive single “If That’s the Case, Then I Don’t Know,” everything the Electric Soft Parade does well falls into place: Fuzzed-out guitar riffs balance with bright, jangly ones; vocal harmonies add pop sheen; and the whole thing ends in glorious distortion. Tracks like this will make American listeners glad the band stuck it out. SWEEPING THE NATION ...fuzzily melancholic, psychedelically influenced power-pop and all it earned them was a cancellation of their major label deal. Now with Truck Records and working on a purely DIY basis, the White brothers have produced the spectrally efficient slow-burner No Need To Be Downhearted. STRANGER MAG Peppered with political lyrics, indie irony and massive crescendos it’s a CD for the summer. Tracks like ‘Misunderstanding’ and ‘If That’s The Case Then I Don’t Know’ will drag even the laziest listener into a jive, while the subtler sounds of ‘Come Back’ and ‘Shore Song’ are unashamed growers. ESP’s chug-chug rhythms and laconic lyrics are unique, however you can’t help but draw comparisons to bands like Elbow. Nevertheless it’s a summertime classic and we can only hope it does better than their second album… because it bloody deserves to. THE LINE OF BEST FIT Like all good things, it starts slowly and builds. It begins with the title track (Part 1), which is a gentle piano led piece until the quiet drums and strings join in. A thoughtful song on growing up and how you have to learn to deal with disappointments. This then segues into the processed guitar-pop of Life In The Backseat which rushes through it’s three minutes, all chiming guitars and vocal harmonies, a gently uplifting anthem of optimism. The entire album follows this pattern, acres of jangly guitar pop that’s entwined with fuzzed up noise ring-fenced by passages of quiet reflection. Reminding me of The Kinks and their perverted take on pop music, Woken By A Kiss swirls between cranked up guitars and whimsical fair music whilst If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know has guitars and keyboards that sear through the hazy backdrop, creating one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in years. Then there’s the gentle, almost Badly Drawn Boy, groove of Shore Song / Surfacing which is all sunshine-tinged acoustic guitars before it descends into the sound of a thousand twinkling stars falling from the clear night sky. There’s not at bad moment on it, the record swings between these passages of slow and beautiful meandering’s and guitar charged pop anthems. Who’d have thought they had it in them! An unlikely comeback then, but one that should be praised and cherished. A very British band that’s come back from the brink and rediscovered their lust for life and music. This could easily become the soundtrack to the promisingly sunny summer; the power pop anthems for the evenings and the blissed out come downs for the morning after. NEW NOISE (click link to read) Ultimately No Need To Be Downhearted proves two points. Firstly, it is possible for a young band, full of the joys of spring and the awe of messing about and playing music for a living, to progress into producing something truly unusual and intelligent. Secondly, it is also possible to defy the system and go it alone, with the White brothers taking full control of every element of this offering, quite honestly making it all the better for it. AUSTINIST The group is unable to choose between three possible identities; one of Smiths-inspired Brit pop, another caught in experimental, lo-fi doldrums and a third all about the dance-able angular guitars that made so many fall in love with the first Bloc Party record. However, in this case it's the last identity that’s the most agreeable, and If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know is a prime example. It comes equipped with hooky guitar riffs, dance party-worthy beats and even the occasional keyboard blip. RANT MAGAZINE A Mercury Music Prize nomination can often be a curse rather than a blessing. Shortlisted in 2002 for their outstanding independent debut Holes In The Wall, The Electric Soft Parade were swiftly signed to B** and presented with Q Magazine's best new band award. However, after struggling to convert critical acclaim into mainstream success with 2003's The American Adventure, the Brighton-based duo parted company with their major label backers. 2007 sees the White brothers back on familiar territory with the release of No Need To Be Downhearted on Truck Records. Written and produced by the band, this new LP sees Tom and Alex regain total control of their musical vision with staggering success. With their inventive, experimental pop the Electric Soft Parade aren't afraid of musical reinvention. Refusing to be pigeonholed, No Need To Be Downhearted sees the band explore a myriad of musical styles, each with the same attention to detail and ear for melody. Embracing Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys (Woken By A Kiss), modern indie-disco (If That's The Case Then I Don't Know) and sparse acoustic folk (Secrets), the Electric Soft Parade continue to make hugely enjoyable, intellectually stimulating pop music. Intelligent songwriters with a strong grasp of arrangement and production, the brothers White remain at the forefront of the British independent scene. A DIY release in the purest sense, No Need To Be Downhearted is one of the finest albums of the year so far. THE FIRE NOTE Fire Note Says: ESP have not lost a step and return with some new tricks! The Electric Soft Parade had it all after their debut album Holes In The Wall [2002], with a Mercury Music Prize nomination and critical acclaim but like so many others their sophomore effort was met with some criticism. Harnessing that criticism into positive motivation, The Electric Soft Parade are back with No Need To Be Downhearted, which is an album that finds them reinventing their sound and showing off why they were so loved in the first place. I believe that with some of the pressure gone, brothers Tom and Alex White were able to completely make the album they wanted to make. No Need To Be Downhearted is an appropriate title because the album is full of catchy memorable upbeat pop songs that have a nice balance of their old sound with an infused reborn British spirit. The album stands the test of repeat listens and definitely grows on the listener because you cannot catch all the little musical elements that hide within their music in one passing. The Electric Soft Parade sound very current, fresh and energized on No Need To Be Downhearted and it is a perfect album to win back their old fans and create many new ones. Key Tracks: If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know, Life In The Back Seat, Appropriate Ending. ANGRY APE What does the term indie mean, nowadays? It is a question that many bands who are often put under this umbrella, struggle to answer in interviews. Two Brighton musos answer the question in actions, not words. Tom and Alex White, whose multi-instrumental interplay and vocal labouring forms the fulcrum of Electric Soft Parade, have always done it their own way. Lately, they have provided the fire and thrust to the quirky, blitz rock engine of Brakes, giving a hint as to why it might have taken four years for this third album to hit the public domain. Whatever they have done in the past, they have always used music as a form of discovery, expression and a show of their independence. The hollow, piano led Duke Special foraging in the musical undergrowth with Badly Drawn Boy pitch and sound of the title track, represents a more searching and subtle mood building step for Electric Soft Parade. A spacey tone follows and contrasts with this for Life In The Backseat, changing the vibe and pace with devilish skill and judgement. There is a certain brooding nature that seeps through the back catalogue and spills over into this foray. It comes out with impunity in the dawdling ballad Secrets. Featuring lyrical snippets that would be well placed next to Murphy's Law in the Oxford English Book of Quotations; "Keep your feelings well hid they will only get trodden on" The wandering blues approach of Come Back Inside, builds in pleading vocals against a backdrop of subtle choral backing and pinging bass-lines to emphasise the points made about emotions and spontaneity. This album projects a variety of feelings, moods, styles and rhythms, rather than the groove maintenance approach that has been prevalent on the past two albums. If it takes four more years for Tom and Alex to produce another offering of musical depth, strength, empiricism and broad range like this, then I don't think too many true indie connoisseurs will be complaining. SMOTHER MAG British pop group that shoves off comparisons to Keane, Travis, or Coldplay despite distinctly similar sounds and deliveries. Piano rock with huge choruses and atmospheric melodies melds to produce No Need to Be Downhearted - an ambitious pop album that some will find completely daunting and others will not even be able to place in the annals of incredible pop. Indie pop-rock that is this fantastic is such a rare commodity that no one truly knows what to do when they first hear dance-rock rhythms mixed with alternative pop and Brit-pop anthems. Perfect. FUZZY THOUGHTS Five Albums Worth a Look: April Edition. With My Morning Jacket finally gaining some popularity thanks to their back-to-back breakthrough albums of It Still Moves and Z, it is now time for The Electric Soft Parade to get their due. You'd be hard pressed to find any of their earlier albums here in the states, but thankfully, No Need to be Downhearted will see a US release on April 24. Wonderfully eclectic, this album boasts such great tracks as "Life in the Backseat" and "Misunderstanding". By far the best track on here, which is a carry over from The Human Body EP, is "Cold World". I can almost guarantee that you'll be addicted to these guys after one listen, so be sure to pick this album up when it hits the stores" GROUND CONTROL (click to read in full) No Need to be Downhearted finds the band concentrating their efforts on a place, an internal location in which brothers Tom and Alex White venture to look from the outside in. As observers of environment, they have created a presence of mood in the construction of lush and ethereal instrumentation on love, life and everything in between. Defined by a gentle soft-spoken quality, the album successfully builds something beautifully uplifting according to a sophisticated code of perceptivity laden in sweeping harmonic layers. And these heavy sheets of resonance parallel the time and effort the band attunes to. The wait between full-length albums has found the group at the helm of their first solo endeavor, with all aspects of production in their hands. No Need to be Downhearted is the most individual of the group’s musical efforts, and the brothers White have learned a lot within the span of half a decade. While The American Adventure looked to analogue, the bridge and solidification between rock and conventional wisdom—that guitar music can be vital and telling—has been cohesively assembled. The Electric Soft Parade has made melancholy appealing, provided by “Woken by a Kiss” and “Misunderstanding,” gorgeously manifested pop songs as well as tender love tracks. “If that’s the case, then I don’t know” and “Secrets” bring to mind a dismal embrace, a “downheartedness” the title so emphatically tries to avoid. But The Electric Soft Parade has made the downtrodden convincingly reassuring. The band may not sound like a London dance trend, however Brighton outfit The Electric Soft Parade has created its own landscape—idyllic, atmospheric derivatives of the seaside, the sonic bliss of the outdoors: the innate difference of providing soul rather than sway. TINY MIX TAPES (click to read in full) For months on end, I shunned the words of people like Twain, Thoreau, and "Author Unknown" in favor of daily doses of uplifting lyrics and music by Misters Alex and Tom White, who go by the cleverer moniker The Electric Soft Parade, to soothe my forever-broken spirit. It did the trick until I wore out my copies of Holes in the Wall and The American Adventure. Last summer's stop-gap EP, The Human Body, was certainly a wonderful surprise. It quelled my loneliness for a brief period, but left me wanting more. On April 24 (US) my days of dread will once again slip away because Better Looking Records will release a new Electric Soft Parade album. By the title alone, No Need to Be Downhearted, I know the band is once again singing directly to me! Be gone blues! COMFORT COMES has the first review of the album (outside the Blogs) and gives it 9.6 The album can be easily compared to Elbow's Leaders Of The Free World in a sense. It has a lot of those big emotion/powerful songs that at times can make you cry. No Need To Be Downhearted is the masterpiece the band was always capable of having in them. The lyrical content of the album can be easily compared with recent sad-opuses by Elbow as previously mentioned and The Wedding Presents Take Fountain but the White brothers go a bit deeper than those records. The album starts off with the soft piano riffs of No Need To Be Downhearted (Part 1). The song is a short little tale but ends on quite a brilliant little lyric "Don't get caught up, be the person and the people that you love, all your life". The next tune is Life In The Backseat, there is something about this song that just hits all the cylinders. The intro is really cool, it sounds like music from a racing video game for the 80s. The hook is huge, and there might be a hint of a xylophone in there as well. The lyrics are quite deep and moving if you think about what they are really singing. Woken By A Kiss is a bit whimsical and magical at times. Shore Song breaks the album up nicely at the half way point with a half ballad/half surreal instrumental. blog.myspace.com/grantpurdum No Need to be Downhearted: A colleague told me this band ruled despite not being distributed in America. I finally heard them last year and was TOTALLY smitten. Great brit-pop with a strangely Strokes-ish feel but cleaner and more refined, plus a much more psych-inflected feel with plenty of effects and other distractions. Can't wait to review this! To form a supergroup when you're still in your twenties? Slightly outrez wouldn't you say? Ok, well it is quite presumptive but if you have the talent to back it up, hell, why not! Kind of what brothers Tom and Alex White of the Electric Soft Parade did when they teamed up with Eamon Hamilton (he of British Sea Power) and Marc Beatty to form indie supergroup Brakes, but it hasn't meant they've been shirking their Soft Parade commitments. They've a new album set for release in April and single from it "If That's The Case Then I Don't Know"... And why not spread their prodigious talents far and wide? These boys can play and write, they can even produce. From their debut album in 2002 Holes In The Wall, which was Mercury nominated, to the futuristic rock of the completely analogue follow-up The American Adventure, to The Human Body EP out at the tail end of 2005. Which brings us to 2007 and No Need To Be Downhearted on which the brothers claim to have appropriated all the sounds and techniques of Abbey Road without going anywhere near the studios, some feat. There's been minimum money and minimum resources spent on the album, it's a real DIY effort with every instrument, all the engineering and production done by the brothers themselves. It's a DIY release in a very pure sense, but, low-fi, we are promised, it ain't. Comfort Comes blog "The new Electric Soft Parade record is really something" chainly77.spaces.live.com/Blog Welcome back, the White Brothers' third album finally is to be released three more years since their last. After being dropped by BMG and devotion for two albums of Brakes, The ESP's own material is to be heard. No Need To Be Downhearted is taken from a lyric of a Fall song, but it isn't affected by The Fall, this is a truly ESP album, although it's not as great as Holes In The Wall, but you must have tired of the punky Brakes, so let's listen to the melodic ESP again. Outstanding tracks: If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know & Have You Ever Felt Like It's Too Late. thosecritics.livejournal.com The Electric Soft Parade is made up primarily by the brother duo of Alex & Tom White, two lads from overseas. I don't know when the UK became such a hotbed for talent, but there's SO many awesome bands like this over there. I'm jealous. But yes, No Need To Be Downhearted is their third release, and it's got some really good songwriting. Imagine if The Strokes wrote more sophisticated chord progressions to supplement their garage band appeal. That's what The Electric Soft Parade does on songs like Cold World, which sounds like a deceptively simple pop song, but takes interesting routes from A to B. The rest of the album pretty much follows that formula as well, never going where you thought it would go musically. From the late night rave feel of If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know, to the energetic Life in the Backseat, this record explores various territories, blending genres and influences at will. Definitely check them out if you get a chance. Rating: 8 (out of 10) Key Tracks: Cold World, Come Back Inside, Have You Ever Felt Like It's Too Late, Life In The Backseat. musicsnobbery.com The big surprise is the new CD from the Electric Soft Parade. It's entitled No Need To Be Downhearted. Mark my words, this will turn a lot of heads. It's a musically diverse extravaganza of garage rock fuss mixed with big stadium vocals and space-age electronic blips and bleeps. I'll have to do a whole post on it because it's a special listen. You heard it here first. THE SUN'S 70 albums for 07 ESP in 61st place: Other exciting prospects from Jem, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, Roisin Murphy, LCD Soundsystem, Super Furry Animals, Doves, The Earlies, Roisin Murphy, Electric Soft Parade, Giant Sand, Linkin Park, Feeder, The Young Knives, Brett Anderson, The Cooper Temple Clause, British Sea Power, The Decemberists and last but not least Leona, the X Factor girl with the golden voice. |