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tungsten
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I've always thought Tennis would be good tour buddies with Eisley or Sucre. They seem like real mellow, nice people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b7Y2WeHfpk
Joined: 03 Jun 2008 | Posts: 258 | 
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wilsmith
Vintage Newbie


After we went to the Sucre' show a friend played I'm Calling by Tennis for me. I like the song you posted a bit more in reference to an Eisley tour pairing though. This one would make more sense with MGMT or Charlie XCX etc. http://youtu.be/Sq8I7hKbPlI

I need to check out some full albums to be a better sense of everything I do. I would love Eisley to find great tours that build their fan base, but I'll be the one to say it now:

After seeing full-band Merriment and The Honey Trees open for Sucre, Eisley has dine a great job finding tourmates in-house. Those two acts are all they need to fill the bill when they headline. No others need apply.

I saw My Brightest Diamond a few weeks back and she and band were great. I remember expecting a turnout that was close to the one I saw for Kevin Devine on the Concrete & Clouds tour or St. Vincent on the 2011 tour. Eisley played their on the Mild Mild Midwest tour. My Brightest Diamond seems to get more press and exposure amongst my friends and this latest album got good coverage, but the turnout was not as big as I had expected. I think that would be the case with most bands I would want to see tour with Eisley, they might be a good fit style wise, but their draw might not add much to the equation, if anything.

I am honestly AMAZED, that David Gray could fill a theater off the merit of one hit and steady releases and touring (a friend asked me along because they had a spare ticket) but limited coverage in any of the media a follow. He put on a great show, and was supported by an ensemble of great and notable musicians. Of note: the opener was David Kitt, an award winning Irish singer songwriter I'd never heard of, who doubles as guitar/keys/vocals in David Gray's band. Kept cost downs and guaranteed Gray & Co. are received well.

Anyways, I tried to figure out how is it that David Gray could do so well at this stage. I skimmed some of his albums and recognized I heard nothing that would compel me to anything beyond that. His live show cherry picked the most dramatic and cathartic songs from a wide array of releases, and he thankfully refused to play Babylon as it was popularized, and did it acoustic. I really didn't like the original. I'll assume he feels the same way now. But, that song made his current situation possible.

So that begs the question: who, of the bands Eisley could tour with, has that David Gray-like following? If no one, who could?

At this point I think it's fair to say that Say Anything does. Their shows sell out all over. Mutemath has a very dedicated base as well. I'm sure for most neither band is ideally the tourmate they'd envision for Eisley. Is it just that much harder for... Dare I say it... Feminine band based music to gain/ maintain traction?

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tungsten
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Echoing your thoughts on David Gray. I saw him at the Greek Theater, he played on a double bill with Ray Lamontagne. Gray's set seemed a little lackluster after Ray's (this was the excellent God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise material, not the very disappointing Supernova recent stuff). Tift Merritt opened w/ only a piano, it occurred to me that she was perhaps the bravest woman of all time to play and sing so sparingly in such a big venue (it actually really worked).

Bands like Tennis, The Pierces, Diane Birch or Sixpence None the Richer have always seemed like excellent choices to me for tour mates. Because hey, if you like one band with female lead singers that make pretty music, odds are you might like another. I'm sure it is all much more complicated than that, but it makes more sense to me than the Eisley/Say Anything pairing (I really don't see/hear any similarities and frankly, can't stand to listen to Say Anything for very long). If you were pairing them with a non-female driven band, I've always thought Eisley's music settled in very nicely with Keane (so much piano/keyboards, and very melody/vocal centered). Remember a critic (think it was Allmusic or Billboard) saying that 'Watch it Die' was Keane-like.
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wilsmith
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I think their influences pull from a lot of British bands that feature prominent keys and pianos, do Keane, early Radiohead, Coldplay, all of those follow that logic. More directly they have worked with Sleeping at Last and Jeremy Larson who are the Midwestern analogs for that type of male tenor piano based orchestral chamber pop-rock thing.

Now, since they toured with Coldplay in 03' and the Fray (basically the rocky mountain manifestation of that vibe) you've honed in on something. I think the downside of touring with those larger acts is being at the mercy of their schedules. Some of those bands stay on the road via booking overseas tours or covering the whole continent in a tour leg instead of parts in bunches. The demands of that, in costs both financial and personal, is exhausting. Also, management can influence who gets picked to tour with who. Those are factors.

One of the things that is more of an issue now is that bands are less solid, and beyond the normal short life of bands before breaking up, they take longer hiatuses of not touring so schedules are even harder to coordinate when groups don't have albums out they need to support. Because of that keeping things in-house works much easier because you can schedule releases and tours in tandem to skip a lot of those complications that would otherwise suspend or cancel a tour.

We live in an era where releasing an album is no longer heralded by months of hype, it is either preambles by crowd funding which is not guaranteed to succeed, or rushed out as a surprise, both scenarios making planning with people outside the band and management very hard to do.

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tungsten
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Ahhh yes, when bands pull a Beyonce and surprise fans. I can never tell when that happens anymore, I usually just assume it was off my radar. For example, I had no idea Copeland had regrouped and put out new material.
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wilsmith
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In Copeland's case they announced the reunion on April Fool's Day. That was especially cruel. Then they announced the preorder not much later. There was a 6 month period where they recorded, worked out a conventional release through tooth and nail and scheduled some tour dates. They have had issues with getting vinyl printed and materials for a special alternate 2cd version of the album shipped so preorder fans are still waiting on stuff (me included).

I would say that the Sucre' ep was one of those rapid releases judging by how quick the announcement came followed by the tour announcement, and the delay getting the CDs while they were on the road. Again, logistics is so tricky.

We call it a Beyonce, but isn't it a Radiohead? In Rainbows was the first rapid release by a major band I recall, though a few other bands abruptly put albums online for fans to download with little fanfare before then. I forget when Harvey Danger did that with their 3rd album. Beyonce was the first to do it such that she got 100% profit by putting it on iTunes. She made it a money maker instead of a gamble.

Foo Fighters took the other route by building their album over months and they have booked their tour nearly a year in advance. They are an industry cash cow band at this point. Stylistically they may not be U2 but this is definitely their crack Rattle & Hum ubiquity.

That's the standard in this marketplace 10 years after Room Noises. Eisley has outlived most if their contemporaries commercially, with only 1 line-up change. They are an exceptional exception. Every so often they make an inroads towards broadening their fan base a little more with a Day trotter appearance here, an endorsement their, but thankfully for us, they have matured into the indie band they were always touted as being, even when on a major.

The more like-minded collaborators and tour mates they can fine, the more the merrier. Merriment begets longevity.

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inorbit
Laughing Citizen


Don't know them well, but saw them at ACL a couple of years ago. They sounded like the sort of thing I *should* like, stylistically, but it seemed to be missing whatever would have made it interesting. Found them pretty dull, actually. I'm not sure I'd like to see any of the Dupree ecosystem projects opening for them- maybe the other way around.
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tungsten
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they have grown a lot since their first release. The track I posted definitely isn't dull (their playing is too tight for that to occur!)
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