Videos

The Silent Years 'Taking Drugs At The Amusement Park'

19th Sep 2009

The Silent Years’ forthcoming single ‘Taking Drugs At The Amusement Park’ will be released on 5th October, 2009. Album ‘The Globe’ follows on 12th October, 2009.

The Silent Years formed in Detroit in late 2005. Like so much great music, theirs is the product of the suburbs – music that dreams of others places. Music that begins in a basement but takes you on a journey far, far away. Music as escape – music as a narrative.

In four short years they have taken the US underground by storm and now look set to do the same in Britain and beyond. The Silent Years are part of that great US underground tradition that every now and again produces innovative bands capable of soundtracking lives and shaping generations – comparisons to Mercury Rev, The Shins, Arcade Fire or Fleet Foxes would not be completely misleading. Nor for that matter would a passing nod to the elemental pastoral vistas of Doves or British Sea Power. Inspiration-wise, The Silent Years don’t mind admitting to drawing inspiration from “the classics – band’s whose music has proven itself to have lasting worth.” That would be people like The Beatles, Beach Boys and Paul Simon and more recently Jeff Buckley and Radiohead. And about a thousand others.

From the band’s formation in 2005 with four core members – their line-up is somewhat fluid and has been known to feature anything up to eighteen musicians on stage – things moved quickly. The Silent Years’ self-titled, self-produced debut album was released in 2006 and by 2007 Spin magazine were voting them ‘Underground artists of the year’. Mixed and produced by Chris Coady (Grizzly Bear, TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) over the course of one intense month, The Globe followed, as did much road work, including a UK tour that was somewhat fraught when a band member had to depart on the first date due to bereavement. But The Silent Years battled through and laid the foundations for their return visit in late 2009.

Bizarre – yes. Boring? Never. That’s The Silent Years.