EPs
The Same Heart *Split with Jason Sposa* (heartphone, 2009)
On Goldwire (CLLCT, 2009)
A Football Fields: Battery Home EP (heartphone, 2008)
Resplendent/Downey: Respondent EP (heartphone/mixxtape, 2007)
Dead Spy EP (A Bunch of Beatniks Riding A Rocket, 2006)
Press Erasing Clouds Kicking Gas for Laughs is a lark of an album. It has a lovable looseness to it, keeping traits of his best songwriting – a dual directness/ambiguity, great pop melodies – while playing around with new sounds. [It] is an album with its own sound and a great feeling to it, a spirit of excitement.
Hold Horses is driven by textures as much as melody and emotion. The atmosphere is pretty but also lonely, and it still rocks in its own way. ...there’s rock guitar but also synths, and it’s all been messed around with. That could be his credence perhaps. He’s always doing his own thing, without care for commerce even, which in music is always something to celebrate.
*Hold Horses ranked number 8 of the Top Ten Indie Pop Albums of 2008*
His sense for melody and knack for writing memorable songs about his own life has only improved over time. His music has a sense of freedom about it, bolstered by his willingness to throw crazy sounds into the mix as it pleases him. But it also comes straight from whatever place—mental, emotional or geographical—that he’s in at the time. The songs on Hold Horses are memorably descriptive about the world through Downey’s eyes. The music itself is just as descriptive, filled with small, impressive touches.
Pitchfork
[Spring by Resplendent/Downey is] basically a pop song about the season of renewal in a dirty, lonely city, complete with an absurdly catchy chorus, but it's not recorded like a pop song. Lenzi's buzzing synth and textural guitar mesh with the snapping, well-ornamented beat to create a humid, twitching wall of sound whose texture shifts constantly through the song-- hardening here, going all mushy and woozy there-- to draw you along with him through the city to the lakeshore. There's a bit of mixing and editing from Mike Downey, who's made it available as part of a free EP on his website-- not a bad price for something so creative and fresh.
Here is the complete discography of all of my previous bands and projects (1994 - 2004).
