New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Grit PR) Rising from the dust of a near-fatal August 2012 van rollover while on tour in California, the band still managed to record the 10-song follow-up to their third release, 2011's, Broken Belts, Broken Bones, in three inspired months over the summer to produce their most robust, captivating and compelling record to date.
https://youtu.be/cVvgAnSDk0g
Led by songwriter
Brandon Decker, the album marks a return to the grittiness of the bedroom-recorded debut, 2009's Long Days, while further honing the epic balladry of the 2010 follow-up, Long as the Night, but with a vastly more psy-chedelic, melodic and eerie sound (think Beck's Sea Change meets The
White Stripes meets The Arcade Fire).
But the album almost never happened.
In the final stages of recording the album, the band had a tire blowout on the I-5 en route to Los Angeles, jackknifing their trailer and catapulting them across the median. When the dust settled they found one of their members, singer
Kelly Cole, had ejected from the vehicle and lay unconscious with a broken bone in her neck. "It was like a war zone, with this helicopter landing and dust and trash blowing everywhere and
Kelly being carried out on a stretcher while we just stared on in a daze trying to process what just happened," said Decker of the accident.
Fortunately for fans of the raw and honest music of decker., the band summoned the courage to forge on with a new-found lease on life and passion to share their music, and Slider is on the way in February with several tours to follow, beginning with two Arizona release shows and a return to Austin for SXSW in March, before setting out across the western US for several months, with most dates to be announced soon.
The music has accumulated a growing number of favorable reviews for their previous releases as well as the notice of news outlets including an interview and performance for CNN at 2012's SXSW, with singer
Brandon also being named Arizona Songwriter of the Year by Phoenix, AZ music blog, Yab Yum
Music & Arts.
For more information, please visit https://deckermusic.org or contact
[email protected].
"The music of
Brandon Decker, who records as decker. has proven to be a pleasant surprise...there's enough grit, creeping unease and lyrical darkness on the record to appeal to fans of Nick Cave and
Leonard Cohen as much as the fans of
The Swell Season or
Damien Rice" - Jason Woodbury, Village Voice Media
"The lasting impression of this CD is some of the most soul-baring songwriting you will ever hear." - Dan Engler,
Kudos AZ
"...his music, which is as romantic, dramatic, intense, primitive and harrowing as a birth in a kitchen in Arizona...Broken Belts, Broken Bones creates its own furrow somewhere in between Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) with mandolins, sparse accompaniment, narcotic tempos and stray harmonies." - Warren McQuiston, Performer Magazine
