with gratitude and debts to former members:
steve, alex, ty, tom and rob, andrew and sterling pants yell, and especially: casey major stars, ben windy smiles/reports, alex ponies in the surf, and martin reports. also the mobius band/gentlemen callers.
a soltero fan wrote a band bio for amazon that has breached the top 100 guides on the site. read it here and vote whether or not it was useful to you, the info-hungry fan.
Influences
the pogues and "how deep is your love"
Sounds Like
take the solo on "dogs" and times it by ten or twenty, and turn up the volume by like twenty
Record Label
la societe expeditionairre, messie murders, 3-ring
Tim is back from Central America and living in NYC, still writing songs, and piecemealing together something like a band. There's a whole bunch of new songs that need to get delivered. Did you hear the most recent album? It's called You're No Dream and you can order it, the physical or the digital, at La Societe Expeditionnaire (USA). For France, the album is available through Differ-Ant Distribution and Messie Murders Records.
"Awash in lo-fi charm, riddled with the beats of a broken hand drum, and cradling Howard's even-keeled vocals (think Dave Berman of the Silver Jews) You're No Dream comes together as a collection of ragtag nursery rhymes" - L Magazine (Brooklyn)
"The title You're No Dream itself seems like an uneasy self-reassurance that the current condition of the songwriter is in fact real, and not the result of some sort of murky dream. The album dances between these two places—waking life and sleep—in a way that doesn't feel completely comfortable in either state. It is a dark and stunningly subtle record..." - James Burns, Treble
"The soundtrack to wandering around a city you've never visited, to road trips through the South, to lying in bed wishing you were doing all of the above...there is a depth in Soltero's music that transcends genres and time periods, leaving you with a fantastic record and your dreams." — Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson, On Tap Magazine
"You're No Dream could be the soundtrack of a hallucinatory, psychedelic movie—and that's a compliment." - Celine Keating, AcousticGuitar.com
"The whole album lasts just more than 38 minutes, but it's nearly bursting with intimacy and mystery. "Fete du Feu," a piano instrumental with wailing sounds that move in the background like ghosts, is one mystery tucked in with Howard's signature pop; it sounds like it was recorded in secret from down a cavernous, echoing hallway almost by accident. But there aren't many accidents here, and the consistency of Howard’s tones and textures hints at just how thoughtfully they were crafted." - Danielle Capalbo, Boston Globe
"...totalement intemporel, définitivement apaisant, simplement sublime." - La Savoie
"Faussement lo-fi, les compositions sont en vérité des merveilles d'équilibre où les petits détails qui ornent la mélodie centrale ont autant d'importance que celle-ci..." - Pinsac, Noise
"En dépit d'une décontraction de façade, c'est un vrai travail d'orfèvre que Tim Howard propose avec ce nouvel album : l'air de rien, mieux qu'un rêve, un miracle." - Guillaume Sautereau, POPNews
"Un disque quasi miraculeux où les moments de grâce stellaire ne manquent pas." - Concertandco.com
The Tongues You Have Tied and Hell Train should be available through Three Ring Records. You're probably out of luck for physical copies of Science Will Figure You Out and Defrocked and Kicking the Habit, though both are available on iTunes.
Science Will Figure You Out (Kentuckyland) 2001 "[Soltero's] first full-length, Science Will Figure You Out, is absolutely stunning. It's an album of someone in transition, with a three-song opener that surpasses anything I've heard this year... Sure, anyone can write about unrequited love, but how many can really make you care about their pain?"
- Northeast Performer (October 2001)
Defrocked and Kicking the Habit (Handsome Records) 2002 "The news may be bad, but the way Howard tells it often evokes a smile amid the tears. Without those few light touches, mostly lyrical in nature, Defrocked might have been too heavy for even the hardest cynics to endure. With them, Howard reminds us that a sense of humor is the best survival tool for life's myriad disappointments -- some good songs don't exactly hurt, either."
AMG rating = 4 stars
- John Schacht, All Music Guide
The Tongues You Have Tied (Three Ring Records) 2003 "Tim Howard writes songs that possess the mortal weight of old folk ballads, but are delivered with the regal melodies and vocal style of [Ray] Davies.... Tongues is a quiet, beautiful, and sometimes self-deprecating collection of songs.... the title track sounds like Stephen Merritt collaborating with Elliott Smith."
- Zeth Lundy, PopMatters (August 2004)
Hell Train (Kip Kip Traw + Three Ring Records) 2005 "Doing the solo singer/songwriter thing well is hard to pull off. You've got to offer the breathy brilliance of an Elliott Smith, the homespun wit of a Loudon Wainwright, the poetic audacity of a Joni Mitchell -- or in the case of Tim Howard, aka Soltero , a bit of all three."
- Dan Strachota, SF Weekly (December 2005)
"Hell Train is a record to which I'll keep coming back."
- Alistair Fitchett, Plan B (UK) (July 2005)
Tim! I just made a Soltero mix for our big tour coming up. Picked all your best. You're in NY now? We end the tour there in November. Hope to see you sometime. Let's get you back to Boston for a show.
Well, I think it'd totally be worth it! Also, I don't know if it is of any interest to you, but I recorded covers of two of your songs at YouTube.com/ditchthecoast. Hopefully you approve of what I did with them. -andy
AMAZING SONGS! Though Communist Love Song is my fave, From the Station is a close second! Where do you get your inspiration?(if you don't mind me asking!)
Super, dass du Deutsch lernst! Eigentlich fliege ich Samstag nach Deutschland. Es gibt eine drei-wochige "Meisterklasse" in Marbach (ganz in der Nähe von meinem Geburtsort - Stuttgart). Maybe when I'm back we can manage a multi-lingual coffee in nyc or phl. Best of luck with your German CDs!
