VIDEO: Grooms – “Dreamsucker” via Stereogum
Grooms are three friends in Brooklyn who play a structurally mutilated brand of noise-pop featuring blissful interplay, sonic experimentation, and song destruction. The band (formerly known as Muggabears) is rooted in the Death By Audio collective, a fertile ground for the band’s expansive, forward-looking catchiness. With moods that swing from the gloomy to the gleaming, Grooms craft songs filled with beauty, gloom, and irony-free whimsy.
Travis Johnson, guitarist and lead vocalist, began recording in his bedroom under the moniker Muggabears when he was a 19-year-old living in suburban Texas. After graduating college, he moved to New York in 2004 and began collaborating with Emily Ambruso, bassist and vocalist. The pair played with a series of drummers, recorded two EPs (Teenage Cop and Night Choreography), and played shows with the likes of Wavves, Crystal Stilts, Ponytail, Abe Vigoda, Tyvek, Dead Milkmen and countless other great bands. After finding skins basher, Jim Sykes (Marnie Stern, Parts and Labor), the band rechristened themselves Grooms in anticipation of their upcoming debut record, Rejoicer, which showcases sounds from broken noise-surf to campfire-seance drone. The album finds the trio having evolved into a band completely comfortable with themselves, but never afraid to challenge their own, or listeners’, perceptions of what they are. Stacks of Moogs pitted against auxiliary percussion, scream-choirs, warm pedal steel, and a whole host of other ideas collide on Rejoicer, and the collision is a jarring and soothing 35 minute ride through what this exciting band is capable of. Rejoicer will be released in October 2009 on Death By Audio Records.
Grooms
Rejoicer
(Death By Audio)
Street Date: Oct. 13, 2009
1 – Dreamsucker
2 – Thumbs
3 – At the Pool
4 – Fag Feels Good
5 – Acid King of Hell (Guitar Feelings)
6 – Ghost Cat
7 – She-Bears
8 – C.J.
9 – Kier
10 – The Nights Were Walls (We Climbed Them All)
GROOMS LINKS:
Label Page – deathbyaudiorecords.blogspot.com
MySpace – www.myspace.com/groomsmusic
GROOMS
10/16 Charlottesville, VA Tea Bazaar
10/17 Baltimore, MD Hexagon
10/19 Washington, DC The Black Cat $
10/20 New York, NY Cake Shop (Pop Tarts Suck Toasted CMJ Party) 3:45pm
10/20 Brooklyn, NY Death By Audio
10/21 New York, NY Pianos (Force Field PR CMJ Day Party) 2:15pm
10/23 New York, NY Littlefield (IN*TANDEM CMJ Showcase) 8:00pm
10/24 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Bowl (After The Jump CMJ Party) 2:00pm
11/05 Danbury, CT Larry’s
11/08 Providence, RI AS220
11/15 Cincinnati, OH Contemporary Space 13
11/16 Bloomington, IN Bishop Bar
11/17 Kansas City, KS Record Bar
11/24 Des Moines, IA Vaudeville Mews
11/25 Chicago, IL Ronny’s
11/28 Madison, WI Project Lodge
12/05 Dallas, TX Handsome Kitten
12/10 Los Angeles, CA Silverlake Lounge
$ = w/ True Womanhood
More dates coming soon!