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Foster
Calhoun: vocals
Rich McCulley: guitar, vocals
Todd Herfindal: guitar, vocals
Clint Roth: bass
Adam Aaronson: drums
With a breathtaking blast
of Rock and Roll fury, The Mains have quickly
established themselves as one of this year’s
most undeniably exhilarating new bands.
The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get,
the Los Angeles based group’s Rock
Show Records debut, is electric with cool
new wave thrills, hard core Ziggy Stardust
era guitar theatrics, and epic Beatles inspired
song structures, like the majestic album
closer, “Two in a Million.”
Though The Mains high voltage sonic attack
is fueled by founders’ Rich McCulley's
primal rock riffing and Foster Calhoun's
gorgeous howl, tracks like “I Threw
It All Away” and “By The Way”
are drenched in a beautiful melancholy of
strings, keyboards, and layered harmonies
that sound eerily like some forgotten AM
radio masterpiece. The Higher You Get, The
Higher You Get is a triumphant and heart
breaking song cycle, a celebration of cranked
amplifiers, blown fuses, late nights, young
lovers, excess inspired madness and teen-age
kicks. In short – the stuff of Rock
and Roll legend.
The Mains were born appropriately enough
after an evening of Budweiser induced lunacy.
“Rich and I were sitting around his
place one night doing shots and listening
to Bowie,” remembers Calhoun. “We
started talking about what a drag it is
that no one makes albums like Ziggy Stardust
or Definitely Maybe anymore. I’m not
sure how much we drank, but by the time
I woke up the next afternoon I was in a
new band.” The first song the two
wrote together was the future classic, “California
Death Wish,” a song
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inspired
by equal parts Jesus & Mary Chain feedback worship
and an indie film being produced by mutual friends.
After that, the newly energized duo were off to the
races, raiding their vast record collections and extensive
guitar arsenals for the ammunition to riff out their
first album.
Hanging
out in Nashville of all places, the band hit on a sudden
creative breakthrough. “I was banging out the
lead to a song I was working on, when Foster got this
wild look in his eyes,” recalls McCulley. “He
kept shouting over and over – that’s it,
that’s the Sound." And what a sound –
a little Oasis, a little Roxy Music, a little Thin White
Duke, a little Replacements, a little Beatles and a
whole lot of Marshall Amplifiers. Returning promptly
to Los Angeles, the band recruited a cast of like-minded
characters and set out to make their own personal desert
island disc. “Before every session we’d
throw on a copy of What’s The Story Morning Glory
and just crank it ‘til the windows shook,”
says Calhoun. “We wanted that same huge perfect
sound and we weren’t going to stop until we got
it.”
The
Higher You Get, The Higher You Get features 10 Hi-Watt
arena worthy anthems, ranging from the sleek new wave
thrills of "Tonight" to the Stone Roses induced
dance rock of "The Higher We Get" to the majestic
seven and a half minute guitar epic "Two in a Million."
A chronicle of glittering excess, broken heartened lovers,
and rock n' roll redemption, the tracks segue flawlessly
from one to the next. Taking as their model such classic
albums as Astral Weeks, Siren, and Purple Rain, McCulley
and Calhoun labored to craft a record that was more
than the sum of its parts -- something mysterious, something
that would linger in memory.
From its first thrilling squall to its final haunting
notes, The Higher You Get is a triumph, the sound of
a thousand lost weekends and an endless summer of love,
the kind of album that demands you play it at maximum
volume.
Watch for The Mains on the road this spring and summer
in support of The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get.
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