New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The collaboration between Gary Louris (The Jayhawks) and Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony) known as Au Pair released their debut album One-Armed Candy Bear today via Sham/Thirty Tigers. It's been a busy week for the duo as they geared up for the release. On Tuesday, Yahoo! Music premiered the full album stream and yesterday, Guitar World revealed an exclusive live performance of the title track while calling the record "a balance between the two performers' songcraft and cheeky experimentation, including body percussion, feedback loops, avant guitar, and Krautrock touches."
WATCH: Au Pair - "One-Armed Candy Bear (Live)" via Guitar World:
"The album goes all over the place stylistically, mostly because it is the product of the two of us bouncing crazy ideas off each other and liking what we hear back," Haskins told Yahoo! Music. "We didn't abandon hooks or song form or anything like that, but we did consciously open the window to some weirder sounds and approaches."
Au Pair strikes a balance between classic songcraft and cheeky experimentation on their debut album, One-Armed Candy Bear. The core of the album consists of the duo singing and playing into a single microphone like a Memphis Sun session. But then they take some strange turns: body percussion, feedback loops, avant guitar, Kraut rock touches, anything goes in the world of Au Pair. This openness was encouraged and enhanced by producer and secret weapon Brian Haran, who recorded the album at his studio in Durham, NC.
Wall Street Journal, Relix, and Huffington Post have all embraced the album as well as Stereogum who premiered the first single "In Every Window" upon the album's announcement and called it a "bright, breezy pop song...its appeal is obvious and immediate."
Gary and Django met in Chicago in 2013 where they were performing as a part of a "Big Star's Third" concert, which celebrated the influential band's music with original drummer Jody Stephens, Mike Mills (REM) and many others. It was a fitting start to a musical friendship, as the Third record similarly takes catchy songs and throws them over the cliff into beautiful weirdness and existential dread. Gary and Django's first song, "King of the Valley," written in a hotel room in North Carolina, tells the story of a football player with a traumatic head injury. "Sullivan's Ghost" takes on the voice of brilliant but curmudgeonly Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, while "One-Eyed Crier" unfolds like a lost Salinger story.
Au Pair began as a happy accident, developed into a laboratory of joyful experimentation, and now with One-Armed Candy Bear you can hear first-hand what happens when two vital songwriters take the odd way home.
Tour Dates:
11/21 - Santa Monica, CA @ Morgan Wixson Theater
01/05 - Decatur, GA @ Eddie's Attic
01/09 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat's Cradle Back Room
01/29 - New York, NY @ Joe's Pub
01/30 - Vienna, VA @ Jammin' Java
02/05 - Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Folk Music
02/06 - St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
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