Fulton Read is one of those bands that want it all- your attention, your respect, your mind and maybe your heart- with the hope that you will realize those timeless moments music brings are priceless. This free spirit reaches back to their early years when they sang, "How the music made us feel, it’s worth nothing they can steal." Now full circle, Fulton Read has embraced their childhood values.
After five years of recording, promoting, releasing and playing, Fulton Read has turned its back on music business as usual and determined themselves to release all their new music for FREE.
Their newest EP release “Synchronize” epitomizes this mentality. The first single, “A Better Way” is a multi-contextual examination of our human experience and simultaneously their free music manifesto. Another theme that runs through Fulton Read’s recent work has been what singer-pianist Anthony Erickson calls “post-apocaloptimism”- saying with a smile, “our world might be coming to end, but cooler, we might actually get to see it!” then imagining “a new world and the new values and perspectives that our apocalypse would afford us.”
The title track “Synchronize” further explores these themes and questions our concepts of time, proposing what could happen if we could only synchronize our cultural values-spiritual and scientific, subjective and objective, beginning and end, even mind and matter - a unification of polarities that could truly behold us creating our own realities. It is this perspective that drives Fulton Read forward.
Pummeling drummer Stephen Duffy begins the final track, “I Want It All” with a roll- announcing the grandiose orchestration that is Fulton Read. Here the two foundational members find themselves most aligned- in their will to succeed.
A 3-song EP of A-side singles that range from beautifully epic vocal melodies a la Coldplay to the harsh trill of Trent Reznor, “Synchronize” musically provides the jazzy via classical musicianship of Ben Folds, a raucous rhythm section reminiscent of Cream or Zeppelin and even the spaced out textures of Radiohead.
As a writing, producing and jamming duo- Duffy and Erickson found each other enraptured in the musical experience, jamming together as teens and rekindling the fire in their 20’s to complete Fulton Read’s psychedelic piano power pop sound in early 2006.
They have assembled a top-notch cast of Austin musicians to back them up including- Justin Von Kennel on guitar; Ryan Gilmore on bass; backup soul singer Candi Sanders; first class horns from Greg Williams, Josh Davies, and Javier Stuppard; and also occasionally Joshua Ello on electric violin - creating a sonically diverse live show to complement their already catchy songs.
Fulton Read has learned well from their Texas roots- GO BIG or GO HOME- be it the live orchestra collaboration they pulled off while still in high school, their self-run Texas tours or singer/songwriter Anthony Erickson making the "irresponsible" move by selling his newly inherited 2007 Saturn Ion to do more recording, make more merch, go on more tours and study music business at Berklee.
Now with a forward-thinking, 21st century music business model, Fulton Read is poised to prove that a free music model can work for the modern musician, to push us forward into a new climate of creation and collaboration, and declare that there is indeed A Better Way.
