REVIEW:"British music from the U.S.A.? Well, "... as seen on TV...", the E.P. of The Tongues sounds very british, although the band actually is from San Francisco. The 3 guys say that they are influenced by British bands such as The Beatles, The Pixies, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines and Bloc Party. You can hear these influences indeed, but The Tongues' music is more than just a bad copy: The unique voice of the singer Barry Le Baron (great name!) certainly contributes to the fact that their songs remain something independent.There are 5 songs on the E.P., 4 of them you can listen on the band's myspace. Unfortunately The Tongues haven't uploaded "Lost Your Way", my second favourite track of this record. Whenever I listen to it it makes me dance and sing along the funny "na na na na na" part towards the end..."-poptilyoudrop.
chA QUARKY BIO:Pickle, a musical gadfly, mused 'I like hitting drums, truly I do, but I would like, ever so much, to hit them quite, quite harder.
' Playing in large groups such as the pagan lounge ensemble Rosin Coven, and the cartoon jazz quintet Dr. Abacus, he could never avail himself the use of his overdeveloped deltoids.
He pushed out a craiglisting for musician's favoring Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Pixies and the like and peeled through the responses.
Barry, the quintessential artist, coincidently came to the same conclusion : 'I would like Patrick to hit the drums in a manner quite hardish.
' Having worked with Patrick while recording his own Vaudevillian pastiche, Barry, too, wanted to express his much more 'rocken' emotions through his compositions and performance.
Billy responded immediately to the posting, after first listening to Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party to figure out the exact manner in which these young upstarts rocked.
Having grown disillusioned with the vagaries of hedge fund management and an emotional crisis involving landscape maintenance, he yearned for his college and post grad-school days of playing bass in rock bands (501 Spanish Verbs, Slombis) wherein he could lock with a drummer who rocked by hitting his drums hard and, also, in a 'rocken' manner.
The die was cast. In mid-March 2006, the trio first got together in Pickle's living room near Lake Merritt in Oakland. Billy was punctual, Barry, unaccustomedly so. After all equipment was set-up, Barry taught them the changes to 'Flash in The Pan'. It was then that Pickle hit his drums and cymbals hardest of all. And they rocked.
Over the next few months the band practiced at Pickle's place, actually drawing one young woman driving by to stop, exit her car, and dance in the streets to the beat heavy music. They soon transitioned from Pickle's living room to a practice space/recording studio called Third Nut set-up by the band, The Young Has Beens. In this space near International Blvd, they set about recording the basic tracks to what for what was to become their first EP... as seen on TV...These sessions ...
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