Jeff Boller - Vocals, keyboards, drums, bass, guitars, marimba, flute, cello, and many other instruments/noisemakers/electronic gizmos
Influences
Joe Raposo, Brian Wilson, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stephen Sondheim, Stevie Wonder, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Burt Bacharach, Lindsey Buckingham, Rupert Holmes, The Lemonheads, Harry Nilsson, 60s/70s-era A&M Records, b-movies, Marvin Gaye, Astrud Gilberto, cheesy Moog synthesizer albums, Todd Rundgren, thrift stores, Billy Joel, The Trash Can Sinatras, The High Llamas, fake jazz, Electric Light Orchestra, yacht rock, Francis Lai, futuristic architecture
Sounds Like
'70s AM radio, The Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, 70s/80s-era Sesame Street, The Free Design, The Zombies, The Lemonheads, Paul McCartney, The Alan Parsons Project, Gilbert O'Sullivan, XTC, Brian Wilson, Jellyfish, The Carpenters, The Association
"Girls Aliens Food is the best thing that's happened to power pop in a long time." -Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe
"Girls Aliens Food is out of this world!" -Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio
"There's something beautiful going on here. Unless I'm mistaken, Jeff Boller (aka The Simple Carnival) is surely the new heir apparent to the Brian-Wilson-king-of-sunshine-pop crown." -Lobster Quadrille
"A Nilsson for the modern generation." -Russell's Reviews
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The Simple Carnival's debut album, Girls Aliens Food, can be purchased from...
(Only www.simplecarnival.com has autographed CDs, t-shirts, and early Simple Carnival CDs/downloads you can't find anywhere else.)
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The Simple Carnival does not rock. Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Jeff Boller couldn't agree more.
"There are a million musicians who play rock music better than I can, so I don't bother trying," says Boller.
Instead, this Pittsburgh-based recording project excels at something entirely different: writing and recording quirky pop songs coated with a colorful orchestral sheen. These qualities are front and center on The Simple Carnival’s just-released debut album, Girls Aliens Food, available through iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, and www.simplecarnival.com.
Boller describes The Simple Carnival's sound as "what might happen if The Beach Boys and Harry Nilsson collaborated on Sesame Street." Reviewers of The Simple Carnival’s previous EP release, Me and My Arrow, not only agreed, but heaped lavish praise: IndiePages declared every track as "A-side material," Bill’s Music Forum characterized the EP as "infectious," and Russell’s Reviews christened Boller "a Nilsson for the modern generation."
Girls Aliens Food sparkles with a late-seventies AM pop radio feel: sunshine pop-influenced harmonies, soaring melodies, tack piano, handclaps, and vintage keyboards dominate. Jangly guitars make several appearances, but any trace of a fuzz pedal is curiously absent.
Beneath the bubbly songs about college campus alien invasions, lovesick joggers, and the joys of trespassing is a surprising amount of emotional resonance: "I wanted to make an album that was both fun and serious at the same time," Boller says. "I like the idea of something that can be enjoyed for what it is on a surface level, but carries some weight for those willing to dig a little deeper."
The opening track on Girls Aliens Food, "Really Really Weird," has been making the rounds on YouTube with a humorously low-budget animated video, and has been viewed over 6,000 times as of this writing. Boller says: "I used construction paper, glue, and some free computer programs to piece the cartoon together. The reaction to the video has been great, which was a bit of a surprise given the fact that I can’t draw."
While The Simple Carnival's recordings often sound like a live band with orchestral embellishments, in reality Boller plays all thirty or so featured instruments himself, layering their sounds one at a time in his basement studio. Even the party chatter in "Cocktails" is all Boller’s voice.
"I used to create productions for other people where I had technology simulating the sound of live instruments," he explains. "Eventually I realized that most of my favorite records didn't use those techniques, so I sold everything and started over. I began acquiring various instruments and learned to play them so I could match the sounds I was hearing in my head."
The things Boller discovered on his journey to becoming a one-man-band are reflected in his musician-centric blog, Songs and Sonics. "I’ve been fortunate to interview some of my influences, like Sean O’Hagan from The High Llamas, as well as other artists whose work I admire. I get them to talk in-depth about areas of songwriting and recording that most music magazines don’t touch. Their answers are often inspiring to read, so now I have all kinds of ideas I want to try on my next album."
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Hey! Thank you for supporting my music. Check out my web site at www.vanessathompson.net and my music videos at www.youtube.com. One of my youtube videos is below for you to hear. If you like it, feel free to put it on your page and share it with your friends. There are also some banners on my page if you want to use them on your page. If you have Facebook, please add me. Some are putting me in their top friends. The support is really appreciated. Hope you liked the cover on Hollywood Celebrity Magazine. If you like my music, please add it to your play list for others to hear. Thank you :)
My new music video to my song "Heartbreakin Game" should be coming out in the near future. There is also a fanpop page for me that has been set up. If you get a chance visit it at http://lnk.ms/0zvbC . You can also sign up to follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/vanessathompson :)
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