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Urban Barnyard only sings songs about animals in the city. Considering this restriction, their oeuvre betrays a remarkable breadth! Their sound ranges from the anthemic to the sentimental. If their stylistic variety doesn't satisfy you, then watch in wonder as they trade instruments on virtually every song, regardless of which instruments they actually know how to play.
It all started when Phoebe Kreutz, Dibson Hoffweiler, and Dashan Coram wrote "Horsies in the City," about horsies in the city. The band was born, and adopted fellow anti-folkers Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Casey Holford to add sik rhythms to Urban Barnyard's otherwise-twee demeanor. Soon enough, the band stopped sounding like a big joke, and started sounding pretty freaking awesome, so Dashan fired himself in protest.
Since then, the Urban Barnyard quartet has surprised everyone by becoming New York Anti-Folk's tightest indie-rock ensemble since...okay, so NYAF has never boasted any particularly tight indie-rock bands. But between scene-alumns The Moldy Peaches and Regina Spektor, Urban Barnyard's shockingly fascinating songs about the metropolitan crises of the modern non-human animal stand out as epic accomplishments of sensitivity and weirdo-ism. Fans of wit, rock, and a playful spirit - look no further for your daily jamz. Urban Barnyard is here to milk your soul. (written by Dan Fishback)
Urban Barnyard has two collections of songs, Nay! Whoa! Let's Go! and That's The Idea. As we prioritize playing rock music over acquiring this mysterious thing called "distribution," the way to get a CD is to contact us directly, by sending us a message on myspace, preferably in some kind of human language instead of barks or squawking. We are currently working on our next full-length CD, Scream Like Human Beings, twelve songs made exclusively by, for, and all about animals.
"Various antifolk scenesters singing twee junkyard pop songs about animals living in New York City (like that tiger they found in that guy's apartment in Harlem). It's almost unbearably adorable-- almost. Maybe the zoo could hire them to play ..."
-Village Voice
New Reviews for the That's The Idea EP!
"Songs about monkeys are marvelous, and songs about monkeys that fall sonically somewhere between R.E.M. and the Violent Femmes are even better than marvelous."
-Delusions of Adequacy
"I had no doubt that I’d like Urban Barnyard... But I had no idea that I’d freakin’ want to marry the band! ... Fun, uplifting indie pop-rock tunes that you just want to share with your neighbor, strangers, and the world all at once. If tomorrow is a good day, I’m going to go on a drive with the windows rolled down blaring “That’s the Idea”. You should too."
-Smother.net
"The lyrical approach is generally to humanize the animals in question, or maybe to animalize the humans... Though Urban Barnyard's focus is solely animal songs, they find a way to make their five selections musically eclectic. From the surf-abilly of "Surfin' Sewer Rat" to the rootsiness of "Duck a l'Orange" to the power-pop of "Baby Pigeon," the group never fails to surprise ... In a nutshell, five songs is not enough; Urban Barnyard needs to enter Magnetic Fields territory and deliver their 69 Duck Songs, or something like that."
-Urban Folk
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