Matt Menovcik: vocals, guitar, accordion
Lesli Wood: vocals, piano
Bob Smolenski: cello, video projections
Influences
Arvo Part, Nina Simone, 4AD Records, Kranky Records, Jeff Buckley, Kramer, Talk Talk, Charles Mingus, Erik Satie, Thelonious Monk, Simon & Garfunkel, Azure Ray, Shannon Wright, The Smiths, Sigur Ros, Mum, His Name Is Alive, Red House Painters, P. J. Harvey, Leadbelly, Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Rachels, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Labradford, Joy Division, Johann Johansson, Brian Eno, Big Star
Sounds Like
Else Another Light Might Go Out
Released Jan 20, 2009 buy now download
We Are Waiting All For Hope
2004 . in Europe buy at Ghost Records
The new album will be released on Tarnished Records, Jan. 2009. buy now or download
_______ BIO ________
Else Another Light Might Go Out is the fifth album from Saeta, painstakingly recorded and mixed by longtime collaborator Kramer (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi, Palace Brothers, Low).
Saeta features Matt Menovcik on vocals, guitar, and accordion, and Lesli Wood on vocals and piano. With Bob Smolenski ..o, they have created a lush collection of songs for Else Another Light Might Go Out, an hypnotic meditation on paradox and terror steeped in a lovely yet uncanny sense of Other.
Wood (also in Ms. Led) left Detroit for Seattle in 1997 and Menovcik (also in Rope, Inc.) came out a year later. With a name based on a quote from the liner notes for Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain they founded Saeta: "His performance here captures the essence of the saeta - the heart pierced by grief."
Saeta's first album Burn was mixed by Carl Hultgren from spacerockers Windy and Carl. This debut caught the attention of legendary underground experimental-pop producer and performer Kramer, who produced their next two albums, Structure In The Void and Resign To Ideal. For Saeta's fourth album, We Are Waiting All For Hope, the band worked with Steve Albini.
Saeta has toured North America and Europe and shared the stage with Low, Mark Kozelek, DeVotchKa, Damien Jurado, Hem, Rasputina, and The Church.
In 2007, Saeta's "You Fade" was used in the hit Italian film Giorni e Nuvole.
Else Another Light Go Out achingly explores seasoned songwriter Menovcik struggling with very real demons, regarding the painful end of a long-term relationship and other dark circumstances. To transform this pain, Menovcik grasped desperately to the aesthetics of hope, love, and beauty -- creating the songs for Saeta's most recent album. The title is both a reference to a John Steinbeck novel he was reading when things fell apart and a reflection on its meaning. This album is Matt's talisman as he emerged from that dark tunnel. He hopes that it is a source of light to others as well.
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"I rolled on one hip and reached in my side pocket for my razor blades and I felt the lump. Then in wonder I remembered the caressing, stroking hands of the light-bearer. For a moment it resisted coming out of my wet pocket. Then in my hand it gathered every bit of light there was and seemed red – dark red. A surge of wave pushed me against the very back of the Place. And the tempo of the sea speeded up.
I had to fight the water to get out, and I had to get out. I rolled and scrambled and splashed chest deep in the surf and the brisking waves pushed me against the old sea wall. I had to get back – had to return the talisman to its new owner. Else another light might go out."
--John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
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Matt Menovcik on songs from Else Another Light Might Go Out:
"Promise Me Still" is one of my favorites. "When Will You Find Love" I wrote after a really terrible date and during a bad time. I like to think that people will see the positive in it of the 'search' described within. It's the getting there that's sometimes a lot of the beauty of things; this song is about that. "You Will Rise" is also about my hope of making it through a difficult time. I do not like winter and always think every one will be my last, but here it's more a metaphor of getting through anything difficult -- rising above. Finally, "Shine" is yet another one. I wrote this in Italy on tour. It was written for our label guy who was one tour with us and he was just great to us. It's my reminder to myself that there is beauty out there and that I am still alive and can appreciate these things (this is very difficult to remember when you're not in a very good place). I love all of the songs on the album, though, and they all have very special meanings to me.
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Regarding the other players on Else Another Light Might Go Out:
Jordan Corbin is the woman who sang the opera part at the end of "Can't Imagine The World Without You." Alina To, who's in Grand Hallway and formally with Asahi, played the violin on opening track "Your Ghost, Cosenza."
-----PRESS------
"Strings swell through the choruses, piano dances lightly along the strums of acoustic guitar, while the songs tell stories of longing, empty promises, and other such topics that probably shouldn't sound as pretty as they do. Sigh. Saeta. " -- MEGAN SELING (the stranger)
"...The soundtrack for star-crossed lovers everywhere, it's music that makes heartache and sorrow almost pleasurable. " Venus Magazine
"...their style is part orchestrated beauty, part pop- and rock-based music. It may sound odd on the surface, but it creates a startlingly brilliant sound, beautiful and moving yet upbeat and instantly appealing." Delusions of Adequacy
"...Saeta delves into the quieter sides of angst and emotion with simple acoustic guitar, piano, and cello arrangements that prove once and for all that less can absolutely be more." Performer Mag
"...Subtle production might not leap out at you when you hear Albini's name but Saeta's release is all about subtlety and frail beauty with its gentle cello, sparse acoustic guitar, strong piano, and voice of Matt Menovcik." Left Off the Dial
"...I had to let the fourth Saeta album grow on me; once it started, it took hold, like ivy. ...With the stunningly somber Matt Menovcik and upbeat Lesli Wood trading leads, Saeta has a pleasing low-high, sour-sweet, depression-optimism vocal style."
Tom Scanlon, The Seattle Times
"... has crafted a unique, due to Menovcik's seedy growls and Smolenski's withering strings, sound landing somewhere in between Low and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, contorting enough sneering attitude to keep punks happy while still fully capable of lulling to sleep the craftiest of post-rockers." Christopher J. Ewing The Badger Herald
"...it's not music for snuggling with your honey on the couch, but for staring into space late in the night after that final phone call." Michael Toland, highbias.com
"...There's a unique dynamic between the two vocalists that can't be found anywhere else, and the piano-cello instrumentations are simple yet breathtakingly effective." punkinternational.com
"...Seata quell the passionate fire burning inside all of our souls with their quiet lush orchestrations not meant to be heard low on the volume dial. Smother.net
"...put on the new LP and you'll swear you can see your own breath. The perceptible chill arises from the austerity of the cello, piano, and guitar arrangements, and the emotional nature of Matt Menovcik's lyrics. " SEAN NELSON The Stranger, Seattle
"Two-and-a-half minutes go by on the first track before Matt's voice rises from a slowly freezing water. Another forty-five seconds pass and Lesli Wood's voice rings in like a shot of morphine to remind him of the light one last time before he goes under. Then we lose him, and the wintry musical landscape returns." Samantha Barrow - Copper Press
"Saeta demonstrate the rare ability to be both poets who express their authentic self and master the tools of their trade... in a way almost unheard of in the artistic wasteland of American music." - Message From the Homeland
Charles Dickens began pasting labels on blaking pots. The tragedy of his first love penetrated the depths of his soul, and converted him into one of the world's truly great authors. That tragedy produced, first, David Copperfield, then a succession of other works that made this a richer and better world for all who read his books. Dissappointment over love affairs, generally has the effect of driving men to drink, and women to ruin; and this because most people never never learn the art of transmuting their strongest emotions into dreams of a constructive nature.
Awesome. My Life sucks. I just spent $20 buying a CD I thought was yours and was all happy about it. I go to play, expecting a soothing trio. And all of a sudden Screamo fills my room. I check "Saetia" on myspace, and realise that is not your name. Please send me your real CD. You have decieved me!!! Hehe. I joke. But bummer man. I was excited.
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