Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

[SOLD OUT] The Naked and Famous

November 10, 2016 @ 7:00 pm



[SOLD OUT] The Naked and Famous

November 10, 2016 @ 7:00 pm

Dress Code

NONE

Organizer

Bowery Boston
Phone
617-451-7700
Email
info@boweryboston.com
View Organizer Website

Other

with
XYLØ, The Chain Gang of 1974
advance:
$29.50
day of show:
$32

Venue

Royale Nightclub Boston, MA
279 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02116 United States
+ Google Map

Bowery Boston presents

Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm

This event is 18 and over.

This event is SOLD OUT.

***

naked-and-famous-admat

***

The Naked and Famous

TNAFBand_3_SamanthaWest2016

[Website] [Facebook] [Twitter]

In 2010, Auckland, New Zealand’s Thom Powers, Alisa Xayalith, Aaron Short, David Beadle, and Jesse Wood arrived at the forefront of the international indie pop scene with the sweltering The Naked and Famous debut, Passive Me, Aggressive You. Riding on the feverish heights reached by singles like Young Blood, Punching In A Dream and Girls Like You the album thrust the band into the limelight and onto the airwaves.
Touring incessantly, the band settled permanently in Los Angeles to create the follow-up, 2013’s In Rolling Waves. The sophomore effort cast a darker shadow over their sound, straying from the synch-heavy formula that had ripped up radio charts yet patiently showcasing their unique skill, talent, and scope as artists.

TNAF set off to tour In Rolling Waves but after just a few months on the road, there were storm clouds on the horizon. Alisa and Thom’s relationship was the foundation of the band. As they said, “We started writing songs for The Naked and Famous the moment we got together at age 18.” Eight years later, their relationship was in turmoil and soon so was the band.

“It was awful,” says David. “People were unraveling pretty fast. The shows were tight but no-one was in a good space. People were trying to get off the bus, dragging their suitcase down the road in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere! When the tour bus finally stopped, everyone made for the exit and didn’t look back.”

The tour ended, Thom and Alisa separated, and TNAF became a group in ambiguous and painful hiatus. For the next year they barely saw one other. Los Angeles is a big enough place to get lost in.
“We weren’t talking about whether we’d broken up the band because we were so broken as individuals,” says Aaron.

Every band has its leader and source creator. It’s no secret that Thom Powers drives this band.

“I have a constant fear of failure,” he says. “My childhood dream was to be a musician and I’m not about to take this for granted. I feel lucky to have fans. I wake up and feel like any moment that I’m not working is time wasted.”

So in early 2015, it was no real surprise to find a batch of new demos from Thom’s Echo Park home studio in the band dropbox and a first TNAF meet-up in many months was convened.

“The best thing you can learn as a producer and a writer is to stop being precious. To get a grip, to let go and to learn how to embrace other people’s opinions,” says Thom. “We all came to this place with a little more maturity and it felt – tentatively – like we had a new path to follow.”

It was eventually agreed that working on a new album would become a regular Monday through Friday gig, the proper turning point coming in August of 2015 when they secured a small studio in Downtown LA to work in.

Assistance on the album came from only a handful of individuals. Sombear (Brad Hale) has worked on other projects with Thom and contributes production to Higher and My Energy. Carlos de la Garza engineered and Ken Andrews (Paramore) mixed the record. Thom still produces with input only from the other band members.

“We’ve ended up with a bright and very vocal album,” explains Thom. “TNAF has always naturally straddled the line between pop and alternative. Like most acts today though, when we talk about pop we’re only referring to production, arrangement or mixing. The lyrical content comes from a personal place.”

“There’s pain and passion behind this art,” says Alisa, picking up this theme. “Pop techniques are all about maximum impact. And it’s not like this is an album of bangers but it’s the most immediate thing we’ve ever done.”

Thom reveals the album title came from a lyric in the first song that was finished. Within the song Falling, it’s a contradictory statement he says – “We’re made in simple forms.”

“Being a functioning human means living in a constant state of delusion about the simplicity and order of the world. I like summing up the album in this way. There is no singular message. No unity of emotion. The irony also being that an album is a brutally curated collection of ideas.”
And true to the complex and contradictory nature of being in a band, it is not a name they could all agree on. “Simple forms reminds me of the DMV,” says Jesse. “But I get what Thom’s saying.”

Being a band that can fight with and for each other is not so unusual but that doesn’t mean it is not a triumph to produce a record like Simple Forms at this point in TNAF’s career.

“We’re still incredibly self-sufficient,” says Alisa. “We’re lucky to have this. We’re lucky to still have one another.”

***

XYLØ

12080112_931869400213025_7146696459987635383_o

[Website] [Facebook] [Twitter]

***

The Chain Gang of 1974

13086645_10154179482145799_227496735925740642_o

[Website] [Facebook] [Twitter]

“My brothers and I were surrounded by music growing up,” explains Kamtin Mohager, the shape-shifting singer/multi-instrumentalist behind the Chain Gang of 1974. “Not Beatles albums or anything like that; more like the Persian records our parents played all the time. And when we got older, it was up to us to discover everything.” Born in San Jose and raised in Hawaii, Mohager spent his first 13 years obsessing over inline hockey and the idea of being drafted by the NHL one day. A series of life-changing events were set in motion once Mohager’s family moved to Colorado, however. The first of which involved the final scene from Real Genius—quite possibly Val Kilmer’s finest hour—and its penultimate ‘popcorn song’, a.k.a. “Everybody Rules the World.” “I love ‘80s music, but not typical new-wave stuff,” says Mohager. “Like I’m way into Tears For Fears and Talk Talk, the other side of the spectrum, really.” That’s abundantly clear on White Guts, a record that’s nearly as restless as Chain Gang’s previous collection of early recordings, Fantastic Nostalgic. The way Mohager sees it, his first proper release was “all over the place, from a piano ballad to songs that sound like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Primal Scream or Justice.” White Guts, on the other hand, funnels three years of instrument-swapping, sample-splicing experience into a lean, focused listen. So while “Stop!” and the rather epic “Hold On” hint at everything from LCD Soundsystem to Talking Heads, they make perfect sense in the context of deep cuts like the synth-flecked “Don’t Walk Away” and bass-guided “Matter of Time,” shimmering power ballads that could have been on the soundtrack of Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink. What sets the Chain Gang of 1974 apart from other Reagan-era revivalists is Mohager’s innate sense of rhythm, a skill he acquired at an early age. And we’re not just talking about his parents’ punchy, groove-riding record collection. We’re talking about family gatherings and traditions that taught Mohager how to make a crowd of cool kids uncross their arms and dance like there’s pistols pointed at their feet. “Everyone lets loose at our shows,” says Mohager. “It’s a party, man. If only I had a dollar for every time someone bum-rushed the stage or grabbed one of our instruments.” Things are bound to get worse, too, as his live band—a quartet that’s a far cry from Mohager’s original iPod/bass setup—spends the next six months spreading the Chain Gang gospel far beyond its Rocky Mountain beginnings. Or as the man behind every last beat puts it, “I’m letting the music just be, and if something’s meant to happen, it’s meant to happen.”