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Amateur Hour's new record is called Human Music. Download it free HERE
It’s All Been Done Before: A Biography Of Amateur Hour
It’s 2009 and it’s all been done before. Bands from all corners of the globe have taken music everywhere it can go in an attempt to find a formula for success. Music has been pushed to extremes of speed and volume, of introspection and self-awareness, to pinnacles of irony and sardonic wit. Promises of street cred or punk cred or indie cred have been at the core of artists’ claims of validity, while entire subgenres have spawned simply to blend one style of music with another. Assessing the marketing promise afforded musicians and bands through the internet, one thing is certain: while there have been no transcendent discoveries made, no massive commercial crossovers from garage band to worldwide phenomenon, no lasting contributions to the canon of great pop music, there has certainly been a lot of hype.
Here is Amateur Hour, a band from Washington DC who doesn’t care about being the fastest or the loudest, but when it comes to writing perfectly-crafted three-minute pop songs, they want to be the best.
Started during a blissful Motown-drenched summer, Amateur Hour is the product of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dan Perriello, drummer with popular DC acts Bicycle Thieves and Laura Burhenn. After completing a batch of optimistic and relentlessy poppy songs, Dan enlisted bassist Jeremy Koller and the two recorded Amateur Hour’s sunny debut EP Hold On, Believe, with Dan playing all the instruments and Jeremy serving as engineer and trusted ear. Hold On, Believe received enthusiastic reviews, being hailed as “a hit!” by Indie Pages and praised for its Strokes-y guitar interplay and “great generational songwriting.”
To support the record the group added guitarist Mike Conner, late of alt-country band The Hickories, who brought attitude, great tone and a love for hooky, melodic guitar lines to the fold. Loaded with new material but absent a consistent drummer, the threesome decided to record some more, and with Dan handling drum duties completed a new EP, Human Music, in 2008.
The material on Human Music adds a sharper sonic and lyrical edge to the wistful melodicism of Hold On, Believe. It’s not entirely sunny in Amateur Hour’s world anymore, but the emphasis on air-tight guitar arrangements and classic pop songcraft remains. Two years gigging experience have honed Dan’s voice, and the songs, ranging from the cynical “Chasing Your Tail” to the exuberant “Start Of Something Good,” reflect a confident, mature band with designs on timelessness.
With the addition of driving, dynamic drummer Jerry Carman and with two EP’s worth of great songs to perform, the band is itching to hit the stage and looking forward to establishing Amateur Hour as a great live act. It’s 2009 and it’s all been done before, but Amateur Hour is betting it hasn’t been done this well in a long time.
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