Comfort isn’t often a term used in discussing rock music. It’s supposed to be rowdy, provocative and rebellious. Rock wears boots, not slippers. The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Radiohead, The Clash—their best work is hardly music you’d listen to while relaxing by the fire.
Without a certain level of comfort, though, it’s hard to make music in the first place—something The Posies discovered while recording their latest album.
– NOW magazine, Toronto
– Metro Times, Detroit
– Sailor Jerry, review & photos from a show last week
– MusicOMH, Philadelphia show review
– Worcester Telegram interview
Also, theposies.net will be doing a Q&A with drummer Darius Minwalla about a week from now – you can post your questions for him in this thread in the forum, or if you don’t want to register, e-mail taylord@theposies.net or post as a reply to this update.
The breakup of the Posies in 1998 carried with it an undeniable sense of finality. There was a farewell album and tour. In addition, a career-capping boxed set of rarities and unreleased material was unveiled in 2000.
But front men Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer have since resurrected the Posies, and they say the band is as strong and vibrant as ever. A reunion album called ‘Every Kind of Light’ was released recently. The band starts a two-month U.S. tour Wednesday at Slim’s in San Francisco.
In a phone interview from his home in Paris, Stringfellow acknowledged that it would have been better if the group had taken a sabbatical rather than announce a full-scale breakup.
Read the full article at MercuryNews.com
As the band re-emerges today, a full 15 years after making its major label debut — with a new album, Every Kind of Light (Ryko), and a U.S. tour that brings the reinvigorated quartet to Slim’s in S.F. on Wed., Sept. 7 — little has changed in the band’s bracing blend of big, crunching guitar chords, complex keyboard ornamentations and sumptuous, alternately smooth and tangy vocal harmonies. But a lot of turbulent water has passed under the bridge.
“We’ve had this amazingly up-and-down relationship over the years,” singer-guitarist Jon Auer said in a phone call earlier this week from Seattle, talking about his partnership with singer-guitarist-keyboardist Ken Stringfellow. “There’s something about what we create when we do work together that just seems to be indestructible. We’ve done things to each other and said things to each other that perhaps would cause most people to not even bother talking to each other ever again. Yet for some reason we feel still drawn to making music together.”
LeftLion caught up with the band in the courtyard of Rescue Rooms on a sunny late afternoon just before the bands gig later in the evening and learnt that you really should check if the batteries are working in your dictaphone before you interview someone. Here, rescued from a fuzzy recording, are The Posies…
So how’s the tour going for you so far?
Matt Harris: It seems to be pretty much on fire these days.
Ken Stringfellow: It seems to be going excellent.
Jon Auer: We spent four days in Ireland previously.
KS: and didn’t have a snip of a drink!
JA: A lot of water tea
Read the full interview here
Jon and Ken appeared on Studio Brussels and played two songs acoustically (‘I Guess You’re Right’ and ‘Solar Sister’) and did a short interview before their set at the Pukkelpop Festival last week in Belgium. Click here to listen to it (mp3 format).
Also, some Finnish press from the magazine Super Sounds, by Maako Haronen. Interivew & a review (both in PDF format).
Jon Auer has had a busy year. He’s currently touring Europe as co-frontman of the Posies, whose first album in seven years was released in June. And as previously reported, he played a major role with “In Space,” the upcoming Rykodisc album by the reunited Big Star.
But don’t blame him if he’s looking ahead a bit, because the veteran artist is also planning to drop his first bona fide solo album, “Songs From the Year of Our Demise,” early in 2006 on Pattern25 Records. The 15-track set represents the past half-decade in Auer’s life.
Read full article on Billboard.com
Love Yoda The Posies Do
August 03, 2005
Not every band has a Jedi Master to hold their guitar picks. But bassist Matt Harris of alternative pop band The Posies has a way with guitar techs picked up from the Dagobah system.
“My bandmates nicknamed me Yoda,” Harris explains. “Probably because I carry a Yoda coin purse on my bass case filled with guitar picks… a Yoda pick caddy!”
Read the entire interview here.
Do you feel that the time away, and the work you and Jon have done with REM, Big Star and your solo stuff has actually grown the reputation of The Posies?
KS: The time off didn’t really harm anything, if anything it made us appreciate what we have, it seems to have made some people appreciate what we do and because we’ve not been that available it gives the air of being something pretty special this time around. We feel quite appreciated now! And I think those old records have a sort of persistance – they’re records that people recommend to each other on a frequent basis. They’re ‘best kept secret’ records. And I was surprised when I saw a recent sales report of ‘Frosting On The Beater’ (the band’s 1993 classic) – it sold quite a lot in those intervening years.
Click here for full interview.
An article from rollingstone.com today:
The mystique of the first three Big Star albums was not on the minds of the band members during the making of In Space. “No one was ever going to recreate the mood and vibe of those early records,” Stringfellow says. “The conditions that generated the first Big Star records were so special, there’s no way they could be repeated.”
With the upcoming release and a possible supporting tour, Stephens is certain about one thing that never happened for Big Star the first time around. “A lot of people will be interested in listening to this record,” he says. “It would be great if it connects.”