Like A Song video

The video for "Like A Song" is finished and you can watch it here. It's a companion piece to "Spaghetti Eastern", and they are funnier when watched in order ("Like A Song" first, obv). Or just watch one of them. It ain't high art. Wow, a lotta posts this month. We must be busy or something.

New EP and a stag and doe

We are playing our dear friends Laura and Brian's Stag and Doe this Friday @ The Irish centre in Brampton. There will be booze and plently of covers. The new full length record is still being worked on. However, we do have a new EP ready of B-sides and covers called Bees & Seas, appropriately (and dumbly) enough. Most of the songs we record that don't end up on the LPs show up on EPs that same year. When that doesn't happen the songs truly become B-sides; they are too old to go on either an LP or EP because they seem so far removed from how we feel currently as a band. The songs become orphans. Nobody wants them. So this new EP solves the problem. Here's the deets:

The Big City Nights Band - Bees & Seas EP - LG29

01 Make Up Your Mind (a catchy but truly idiotic song that may get the full-band treatment soon)
02 Ol' Sour Tooth (Bistro b-side. It drags but has a certain 50s charm - I hope. Ryan's voice sounds great on this one.)
03 Feel It (a really idiotic song. It kind of sounds like that band Swirl 360. They sucked.)
04 Wild Hope (a little too lightweight but some fun guitar work. Recorded right after Champions.)
05 Kerosine Shuffle (Dumb and fun.)
06 Family Affair (James on the chorus vocals and keyboards.)
07 What To Do (A Gob song. I always really liked it.)
08 Encyclopedia Man (A listenable forty seconds of coffeehouse plucking.)
09 Cold Is Coming (Different version than on Bistro. It's got some brio.)
10 How To Wave At People (The last section of a really old song (2005) that sucked, but the ending is OK.)
11 Missing The Ball (Again 2005. A very primitive (read: bad) recording. Good chorus. Lotta guitar wank.)
12 The Littlest Hobo (Great song. I didn't do it justice but how could I?)
13 Stuck In Love (A gospel tune. The "kick drum" is me thumping my electric guitar. It was done for a concept album I wanted to do in early 2007 called A Steamroller Named Desire. Thankfully I came to my senses. Steamroller is now one of my fav albums of ours, and this song got shit-canned. Some good yelling at the end though.)
14 For Bad Arteries (I don't remember how or when or under what circumstances I recorded this song. It's kinda fuckin' creepy. I sound drunk.)
15 I'm Home (One of the first recordings I ever did. Ever. The bottom of the valley as far as the 2005 break-up recordings go. Good ending tune though.)

   Hope y'all dig it. It'll be up on bandcamp for a very limited time later in the week, and then available on CD only by request. We won't be bringing copies to shows.

A not-so-flattering record review

The folks at Halifax's Noisography have reviewed our record Might Minutes. It's not a glowing review, but he doesn't exactly hammer us. I do agree that I'm not the strongest singer. I don't agree that some of the songs should have been welded together, especially his suggestion to merge "Blue Collar Academic" and "In The Back Nine" (the latter being one of my favourite songs on the record). Also, I think "Beach Music" is all the better for its brevity, but I do understand that not everybody likes short songs. I'm glad he likes "Lump In My Throat" though. Everybody likes that one. The link for the review is here: http://noiseography.blogspot.com/2010/09/big-city-nights-might-minutes-lp-review.html , and I've pasted it below.

When I saw that this album was 19 tracks long I got scared.

See, I’m a lazy guy, and 19 tracks is tedious, especially if it turns out that after the third song everything is just starting to sound the same and I’m just dying for it to be over but NOPE there’s still sixteen songs to go. Then I put the album on, and I figured out why there are 19 songs. There are, in fact, very few songs on this record; it’s all just parts.

Now, don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean its bad. The parts are good. Actually, they’re really good. They’re all over the place stylistically, they’re a little raw, but they’re good. I feel like I’m listening to an awesome record that’s 75% done. It just needs a little refinement in two places.

First of all the arranging. The tracks rarely have more than 2 parts to them, and instead of developing they just kind of stop. Then the next track starts. I just think part of what makes a good band is being able to take a great part -- a melody, a rhythm, anything -- and play with it and alter it so that it develops, but with a hint of consistency.

“Beach Music” has a really cool rhythm that keeps motoring forward and great guitar work, but it just doesn’t go anywhere. If they were playing it at a live show the crowd would have just started to catch onto it and it would be over. “Sleep Kilometres” is also a minute and thirty-five seconds of great stuff, but there is no development. Some parts could even have been mashed together into one song with a little effort and imagination. “In the Back Nine” could have been a cool bridge for “Blue Collar Academic.” This is an solid 8 song record spread out on 19 separate tracks.

The few songs that do feel complete are awesome. “Lump In My Throat” sounds like Retribution Gospel Choir with a bit more oompf, and “Summer Drummer” is this cool Air-esque break that’s totally unexpected but it fits really well. That’s about it though, the rest is a jumbled mess of puzzle pieces.

My other issue is the vocals. Not the melodies or the notes, but how much they are buried in effects. The rest of the music is fairly cut and dried, but the vocals are basting in reverb. Now, I know that singers who aren’t comfortable with their own voice will drench their tracks in effects to hide it, and in all honesty, if these vocal tracks were loud and straight they would probably sound off, he’s not the strongest singer. However, give him five more months of singing these songs live and record them again, and I bet you would have something different altogether. The power is there, it just lacks the confidence. I’m really interested to hear what the album after the one after this one is going to sound like. Experience is the best training there is.

Take note of this review, because it’s probably the only time I’ll ever complain about a band’s songs not being long enough, but these tracks are just skeletons. It’s time to put some meat on the bones.
- Review by Josh 'Pinky' Pothier

Guitarin'

I'm finished tracking guitar parts for the next record. Just did a bit of lead on the old blues stomper "Go Yell It On The Mountain", so that's it for me. Now comes a bit of keyboardin' ear candy, Ryan's bass, and then we sing. Right now it looks like there will be between 14 and 16 songs on the record. Tunes like "Chinese Highway", "As Near As Now", and "Hokum" are pretty different from anything we've done before, and then there's some redone versions of older songs like "I Hope" and "Round and Round". I can't wait to hear it when it's done.

Spaghetti Eastern

We shot a video yesterday for our song "Spaghetti Eastern", an instrumental track from our most recent record, Might Minutes, which you can download for free right here. You can watch the video right here.
It was fun to make. It's always fun to be out in the strange September sun. We hope you like it.

Zounds!

As you can see, we have a blog now. We'll be posting lyrics and videos and other fun stuff from our life as a band without all the banalities and trivialities that these blog things are known for. Therefore, anytime we post something here, it probably means we have a new song or record or a new video or show coming up. Which we do! A new record is on the way. It's called Under The Overpass and should be out in less than a month. An EP of outtakes and such will also be available for download called Over The Underpass. We have a bandcamp page now which is here: http://thebigcitynightsband.bandcamp.com Very soon all of our records will be up there, as well as a "best of" sort of thing, not to feed our egos or anything, but to maybe introduce the sound of the band to people who maybe don't wanna slog through six full-length records right away. The "best of" will feature songs from Born To Bar Band to Might Minutes in reverse chronological order. It will be available only online, and it's going to be called Minor Carpentry, after a song on Complete Lung Champions that, ironically, won't be on the "best of". We have three shows coming up:

 September 18 @ Good Time Cafe, Brampton
 September 22 @ Rancho Relaxo, Toronto
 September 23 @ The Central, Toronto

Videos for "Like a Song" and "Spaghetti Eastern" are also in the works. We'll post them here as soon as they're done.

 xo