Elizabeth & The Catapult New Release The Other Side of Zero

The Other Side of Zero is the follow-up to Elizabeth & The Catapult's debut album Taller Children and set to hit stores October 25th. "If I had to compare our albums," says Elizabeth Ziman, "I'd say Taller Children has the sarcastic lightness of a Woody Allen film, and the new record's more like Kubrick or Lynch- a little darker, a little more tongue-in-cheek."

The first noticeable aspect is that unlike Taller Children, this new album doesn't seem to have any stand-out pop tracks that scream "radio play." Taller Children had the fun, catchy, hook-laden earworms of "Taller Children," "Momma's Boy" and "Race You" primed to get stuck in your head, but The Other Size of Zero lacks this air of simplicity. This isn't a compilation of simple fun indie pop songs - this album has mature sturdy tracks, more complex in construction and meaning. That's not to say the album isn't radio-friendly, on the contrary, many tracks could be easily singled. At the moment, the swaggering "The Horse & The Missing Cart" is the single on the airwaves, but "(Time) We All Fall Down," "You & Me," and "Julian, Darling" would equally suit. But it's not the same sort of pop single sound we've heard before. These tracks are more enigmatic, rhythmic and unnerving.

There are tracks I simply did not expect from usually upbeat Elizabeth & The Catapult. Much of the album incorporates slower Rufus Wainwright-esque ballads, like "Open Book," "The Other Size of Zero," and the excellent snide melancholy "Thank You For Nothing," where Elizabeth sings, "Thank you loving me, thank you for leaving/ Thank you for promising and then promptly forgetting." This is a far cry from Taller Children's "Race You." It seems we've fast-forward from the giggles and fun of a budding relationship and gone straight to the cold and hurtful breakup process. The remarkably beautiful closer "Do Not Hang Your Head," sounds like a lost song from Sarah McLachlan's Afterglow album with spacious resonating vocals, pensive reverberating piano and a message of rebirth.

The stark difference between this album and their peppy debut works in Elizabeth & the Catapult's favor and signifies growth. It's greatest trait is that even the upbeat songs come across as somewhat distressing and regretful - "Thank goodness for that," Elizabeth says, "Ultimately that's the only way I'd feel comfortable singing them." The Other Size of Zero is chock-full of interesting pieces, sometimes obviously choleric or solemn and other times veiling its note of distaste, but each and every track has weight, purpose and, most importantly, meaning.

Standout tracks: Thank You For Nothing, Julian Darling, Open Book, The Horse & The Missing Cart, Do Not Hang Your Head

Previously: GFP interviews Elizabeth

Emanuel & the Fear's album release show

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending Emanuel & the Fear's album release show at the Gramercy theater.

Opening for them was Elizabeth Ziman (of Elizabeth & the Catapult) and Jeff Taylor. At every one of Elizabeth's shows that I've seen, Jeff has come up and performed a song or two with her, but it was cool to see them perform a whole set together. In fact, no offense to Elizabeth's band but I think I liked it better just the two of them. They're both immensely talented songwriters with incredibly nice, very natural voices that complement each other very well and they seem to energize each other and play off of each other in a really great way. Plus I think the combination of Elizabeth's playfulness and Jeff's folkiness makes for a really great pairing. They just light up when playing with each other and it looked like they were having so much fun the whole time. I highly enjoyed their set, although I will say that I thought it was cut quite short (they had to skip something like four or five new songs and I think they only played for about half an hour), and that made me sad.

Emanuel and the Fear, already a huge 12-piece band as it is, took the stage with the NYU symphony orchestra behind them (or at least part of it - there were maybe 25ish or so additional musicians. I tried counting but I couldn't see them all, there were so many people). It was quite the sight and I'm surprised they managed to fit so many people on that stage. It was to celebrate the release of their debut full-length album, Listen. Emanuel came out dressed in a red suit (according to him, Ru Paul owns the same one) and had everything a frontman should - high energy, memorable hair (oh that hair) and clothing, a unique voice, an eccentric poet MC to introduce him, plenty of rockness, and lots and lots of talent. He's a multi-instrumentalist whose songs seem to be influenced by so many genres that it's easy to lose count and his in-between song banter was simultaneously self-assured and self-deprecating, so it was a great show all around.

Of course, the whole band (and the back up orchestra) were all quite good, but there's so many of them that I don't really have time to comment on each of their individual performances. They played a nice long set, about an hour and a half including the encore (which they couldn't get off stage for and back on so Emanuel pretended to walk away for a second and then came right back. It was awkward but funny). All in all a very strong set and a solid album.

Dear Friend [mp3] - (iTunes)

More pictures here:

Emanuel & the Fear Album Release Show

Best Albums of 2009

As you might be able to tell by our lack of posting, we were hard at work over the holidays putting together our end of the year lists. Today is the first of three lists - our Best Albums of 2009 list. So in no particular order, we present them to you:
 

The Antlers - Hospice
This intensely beautiful, heart-wrenching album is full of more tragedy than we would hope any one person would experience in a lifetime, much less a person of front man and writer Pete Silberman's young age. Hospice launched The Antlers to indie fame this year, and deservedly so. The haunting melodies strike us deeply in our cores and stay with us long after we've listened to them. Not that it's ever that long between listens, since the album has pretty much been on repeat on our playlists since it first came out in March.
Sylvia [mp3] - (iTunes)

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

This anticipated album encompassed ingenious songcraft, never-ending unwinding textural and melodic flourishes, languid beatuy and sweeping rhythmic cavorts that cut to the center of any listener's ear. With painstaking attention to detail, Veckatimest soared above any fears of overproduction and swooped right into the land of absolute prowess.

Passion Pit - Manners
In a year stockpiled with celebrity deaths, who anticipated that Stanley Kubrick would be resurrected to orchestrate the best indie-pop album of 2009? Every moment of Manners contains a purposely placed hook - Kids singing! Catchy synth lines! A horn section! - but the album would amount to nothing more than a dizzying Go Team! disciple if not for the pitch-perfect layering of Michael Angelakos' heartfelt falsetto. Without it, Manners - and Passion Pit by proxy - would be an indistinguishable novelty act instead of a polished pop catharsis.
The Reeling [mp3] - (iTunes)

Matt Jones - The Black Path

We wrote about this album back in 2008, but it didn't technically come out until 2009, so we're going to write about it again because it's that good. Simply put, Matt Jones is a one-of-a-kind genius and this orchestral folk album is full of gorgeous, rich instrumentation and complex, deeply expressive lyrics. Matt Jones' music and unique voice are truly mesmerizing.

Waltzing With Lady Dawn [mp3] - (iTunes)

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
While they've been on the music scene for a while, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was the album that really put French band Phoenix on the map. With catchy hits like "Lisztomania" and "1901," they rocketed through the indie masses alongside the album's vivid revivalist melodies and danceable indie-pop beats. A small smear of brit-pop shoegaze added for fun and the love for the film Breakfast Club that was reignited made this album a clear standout in 2009.

Metric - Fantasies

Emily Haines always manages to create songs that are simultaneously melancholy or nostalgic and yet are awesome dance songs. You can rock out, yet feel an incredible emotional pull, and the songs are so catchy that they'll stay in your head for hours. Fantasies is no exception to this rule, and "Help I'm Alive" has not-so-slowly risen to be one of our most-played songs this year.

St. Vincent - Actor
St. Vincent's sophomore album, inspired, she says, by Prince, can take a little warming up to at first. Her songs are complex and many of them can't truly be appreciated on the first listen. But the more you listen to it, the more masterful layers you discover and the more you appreciate this virtuoso. Rocking guitar harmonics burst forth from fluttering wind instruments and St. Vincent integrates these two contrasting sounds flawlessly, even within the same song.

White Rabbits - It's Frightening

This percussion-driven band became a sensation this year with their aptly named, explosive "Percussion Gun." But these are no one hit wonders - their album was full of other good, very catchy, rumbling, crashing, banging, tapping songs. And while it might be easy for a band with such a focus on percussion to get in a rut where all their music sounds the same, they've managed to utilize a nice variety of sounds and genres, while still maintaining a cohesiveness over the entire album.

Florence and the Machine - Lungs
Florence's powerful, rich voice and epically dramatic music make her debut album Lungs a force to reckon with, alternating between dark and stormy, with drums booming and her imposing vocals, and then flowery and romantic with plucky harps. But no matter what the style, the album never loses the dramatic flare that hooks you within the first few bars.

Discovery - LP

The brainchild of Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot's Wes Miles, this debut album, which was recorded over the course of three and a half years, makes for an unique and pleasantly intriguing experience. Inventive beats, playful rhythms and slick rushes of harmonious vocals dapple throughout this album, producing indie electro-pop at its finest.

Fanfarlo - Reservoir
Reservoir is a package full of odds and ends that takes a while to unpack. The British sextet has created a well-crafted propulsive album that will make you laugh, cry, dance, sway or stand still in total revelry all within the same album. Their music has a warmth to it that is downright lovely. The exquisite instrumentation and lead singer Simon's distinct, cozy voice is enough to warrant more than a couple rounds of continuous listens.

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

It's perplexing that an album translating to "Please Killer Whale" would lead Brooklyn's experimental class into the pop realm this year (along with Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear). Differentiating this effort from its Yale-crested musical-composition predecessors are the hooks. That's right: hooks. "Stillness is the Move" is an outright jam - not just by Dirty Projectors' standards, but by Left Eye Lopez (R.I.P.) standards. It might have been the track of 2009 that best defined the shift (for those aforementioned bands) from strictly creating songs principled in deconstructionist methodology towards a welcomed practice of lavishing in mind-bending indie hymnals, i.e., running the musical gamut - in styles, genres, tempos, key/time signatures - during every featured track on the album.

The XX - XX
This debut album blew everyone away, with many describing it as downright perfect or fantastically innovative. Pitchfork called it "so fully formed and thoughtful that it feels like three or four lesser, noisier records should have preceded it." Indeed, it was a perfectly executed product from the London band of 20-somethings, with quiet instrumentation full of purpose and lyrics riddled with poignancy.

Elizabeth and the Catapult - Taller Children

Elizabeth & the Catapult's sassy debut album that juxtaposes the freedoms of youth and the responsibilities of growing up is a delightful listen from beginning to end - with bubbly, bouncy child-like songs such as "Race You" to the serious Leonard Cohen cover of "Everybody Knows," it's a well-rounded album and a very solid debut indeed.

Momma's Boy [mp3] - (iTunes)

Monsters of Folk - Monsters of Folk
Comprised of star players like M. Ward (She & Him), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes), Monsters of Folk ventures into lands of varied and weathered styles, delivering quality and seamless song-work amongst the loose sea of rock-folk acoustic guitars and lush harmonies. Conor Oberst pens GFP writer Diana's favorite lyric of the year in "Temazcal," summing up a relationship that was never meant to be in less than 10 words: "love we made at gunpoint wasn't love at all."

CMJ wrap up - Beast and Young and Hungry Party

Ok, yes, I'm way behind. So here's a quick CMJ wrap up. On Friday of CMJ, I saw Canadian trip hop band Beast at the Studio at Webster Hall. They put on a good (albeit rather short) show that had the audiences rocking out, although they played a lot of their darker, more electronic stuff (as opposed to my favorites which have influences more from funk or gospel). My friend and I were also really excited about the keybass (see below), which we spent much of the show trying to guess the name of (my favorite of our guesses were "basskeboard" - pronounced kinda like basketball - and "keyass," but alas it is just called a keybass, and apparently the bass player made it himself and is now working on a second generation keybass).

Saturday I went to the Young and Hungry party at The Delancey. Unfortunately I missed half the show (including Emmanuel and the Fear, who I really wanted to see) thanks to the MTA. However, I did still manage to catch two acts that I adore - Drink Up Buttercup and Elizabeth and the Catapult. Drink Up Buttercup did a semi-acoustic set, which means they sang at the top of their lungs without much help from microphones and mostly just banged on things (it's a miracle that they could sing over that too). They did use their keyboard once or twice, but mostly it was pretty acoustic. But when I say "mostly just banged on things" I mean, they made sweet sweet music out of trash can tops, tool boxes, maracas, cymbals, and basically anything that makes percussive sounds and it was awesome. Granted, they always use these things in their acts, but it was interesting to see how strong they still were "unplugged."

Elizabeth and the Catapult did not go the accoustic route (except for one bluesy song with her friend Jeff, who sang with her for a song or two when I saw them at Southpaw a while back), but they still played a great set too. Elizabeth is so adorable and she has such a lovely, natural voice. I have to say I was surprised/disappointed that they didn't play "Taller Children," which is one of their more well known songs, but it was still a fun, strong set and I suppose they also had to play a shorter set than usual due to the number of bands that played that day. For those of you who didn't get to catch them during CMJ, they're playing tonight at the Etsy Craft Fair at the Etsy Labs in Dumbo or tomorrow night at Webster Hall.

Mr. Hurricane [mp3] - Beast - (iTunes)

Gods & Gentlemen [mp3] - Drink Up Buttercup - (iTunes)

Race You [mp3] - Elizabeth & the Catapult - (iTunes)

Taller Children Video

Remember when we posted about Elizabeth & the Catapult's song "Taller Children"? Well they made a music video for it. And it's kinda adorable.

Elizabeth & The Catapult :: TALLER CHILDREN



Read GFP's interview with Elizabeth here.

Exclusive Interview with Elizabeth & the Catapult!

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the adorable Elizabeth Ziman of Elizabeth & The Catapult. Here's what she had to say.

Where does the band name come from? The Elizabeth part is obvious but I'm sensing a story behind the "and the Catapult"... I just wanted to incorporate something whimsical and a little off kilter- and I really liked the image of a little girl with a slingshot wandering around looking for trouble.

How does it feel to be releasing your first full-length album? And what has it been like to watch your fanbase grow and expand? Please talk about your "rise to fame" so to speak and what that's been like to experience...
It makes me a little sleepy thinking about it, but it's a wonderful feeling. We're all super grateful. We only had an EP floating around for sometime there, so it's nice to know our fans can finally sit down and enjoy a bit more than just 25 minutes of The Catapult....

You said this album was for adults who just never quite figured out how to grow up. Do you think that growing up in NYC, where people simultaneously grow up too fast and don't grow up at all, was a heavy influence for you when you created this album? NYC is a very odd and unpredictable monster. I've been here so long I don't even notice how much it's hot headed temperament creeps into the music....but it really does. There's just so much zany material to go on! When I'm in a good mood I idealize the city, the energy, the amazing people, the opportunities. When I'm in a so-so mood I lock myself in the house, close the window shades and sit down to write a song like "Taller Children".

Elizabeth, how do you feel your classical background has influenced your current sound? Do you try to incorporate classical music into your life/work still?
It's really plays a huge influence on what I do. When I was a kid my favorite "artists" were Ravel, Debussy and Chopin. So whether I like it or not, it's deeply imbedded in the harmonic character of the songwriting. I always try to build an element of surprise or ambiguity in the music, so that it's not always your basic 4 5 1 chords. Although, once in a while, the lyrics will really call for that too:) We had a demo up on myspace recently of a Chopin spinning song that I had set some lyrics too--- I basically took the left hand of the piece and started improvising over it---weaving in and out of the original song. Some people like to improvise over Ellington, I like Chopin.

On your myspace blog, you wrote that some demos posted wouldn't probably make the final album. What is it like to have to cut your own songs? How difficult is that?
It was really difficult. But a great problem to have. We tried not to deliberate too much about the song choice before we recorded with Mike Mogis- but after the sessions there was one song that never made it to the album that was a real heartbreaker...luckily there's always our sophomore attempt!

What's the best/most important thing you've learned on your journey so far?
To keep your music close and your inspiration closer.

What has been the funniest/most outrageous moment on your journey so far? We once played a gig at an installation art show in LA called the Black Pussy- we didn't realize what we were walking into at the time, but when we started playing our song "Devil's Calling" suddenly a bunch of women started taking off their clothes. I think I peed my pants on stage from laughing so hard.

Lastly, what is your ultimate "guilt free pleasure"? Haribo Gummy bears. Sooooo good. I can eat a truckload in about a half hour.

And for those of you who didn't catch it, check out the write-up of their performance at the Deli Magazine Best of New York show at Southpaw on Wednesday for a free mp3 of the title track from their new album, Taller Children.

Deli Magazine Show @ Southpaw

Hello from Minneapolis, where I have just arrived to some beautiful weather (suck it New York!)! Last night I had the privilege of attending one of the Deli Magazine Best of NYC Festival shows at South Paw in Brooklyn. It was a pretty phenomenal line-up, I have to say. While I missed most of the first act, Mia Riddle, I liked the little bit that I heard. Gotta love girl-powered folk rock. I'm sad that I didn't get to see more of them, but I'm sure I'll be seeing them around.

City Song [mp3] - (iTunes)

Next up was KaiserCartel, who I am unwittingly seeing twice in 4 days in two different cities. They're the real thing. What I mean by that is that they sound just as beautiful live (if not more) than on their recordings. Those harmonies literally gave me chills. Plus they seem like really down-to-earth, cool people (for their last song they got off the stage and came into the audience to "look into our eyes"). Even completely unplugged and wandering the audience, they sounded spectacular.

Okay [mp3] - (iTunes)

After KaiserCartel was April Smith and the Great Picture Show. I was blown away by her powerful voice and I loved her playful music. It seemed to me like she really had a lot of fun writing and performing it, and her music combined all sorts of genre and time period influences - jazz, waltz, showtunes (seriously, this girl should be on Broadway, I can totally see her in Chicago or something), pop, doo-wop, and more. Plus I really like her style and she seems like a really sweet girl.

Wow and Flutter [mp3] - (iTunes)

The last act I managed to catch (I wanted to stick around for Lowry but it was just too late and I had to get up super early for my flight to Minneapolis) was Elizabeth & the Catapult, who have just come out with their first full-length, label-backed album, Taller Children. On a total tangent, if you google them, their extension on CD baby is "eatcatapult," which makes me giggle. But back to the show. Elizabeth is adorable. Her smile totally lights up the room and she her voice always sounds at ease. She seemed really grateful to be there. She even baked the audience cookies (though they were gone by the time she announced this so I missed out on that... sadness...). And I love Taller Children. It really resonates with me right now, as I am entering the adult world (and dreading it). I think most people can really relate to being in this stage of life that is really a duality. The music reflects this as it alternates between youthful/playful and serious/sober/nostalgic. Check back soon for an exclusive interview with the band!

Taller Children [mp3] - (iTunes)

More pictures HERE.

Elizabeth and the Catapult

Brooklyn delivers yet again, ladies and gents. Elizabeth Ziman is the lead singer of the New York indie group Elizabeth & the Catapult and apparently had my childhood, growing up with a love for the classic composers like Debussy and for the modern greats like the Beatles, an influential combo that eventual lead to the formation of her "Baroque pop" sound. Indeed, Elizabeth & the Catapult switch from indie pop/rock to classical-laced anti-folk with the greatest of ease, ranging from the toe-tapping "Race You" with the triumphant horns to the rich and intricate vocal/piano duo dance in "Variations on Chopin." Its almost as if this group is after my heart, catering to my indie side while delivering a delicious side dish of all the great composers I was raised on. Elizabeth's voice is honeyed and assured, Peter Lalish's guitar is plucky in all the right places, and Dan Molad's drums keep everything moving merrily right along. Their song "Race You" is featured in the movie New In Town and they will also be making the rounds at SXSW this year, so all you lucky folk who get to be in Austin, make sure to catch their act.

Momma's Boy [mp3] (iTunes)