Comments:
ARTiST: The New Amsterdams<br />
ALBUM: At The Foot Of My Rival<br />
BiTRATE: 187kbps avg<br />
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz<br />
LABEL: Arctic Rodeo Recordings<br />
GENRE: Indie<br />
SiZE: 71.45 megs<br />
PLAYTiME: 0h 50min 29sec total<br />
RiP DATE: 2008-05-09<br />
STORE DATE: 2008-05-09<br />
<br />
Track List:<br />
--------<br />
01. Revenge 1:46<br />
02. Wait 3:03<br />
03. Fountain Of Youth 2:57<br />
04. This Day Is Done 3:02<br />
05. Without A Sound (Eleanor) 3:22<br />
06. Silverlake 3:08<br />
07. Lost Long Shot 2:55<br />
08. Hughes 3:13<br />
09. A Beacon In Beige 2:45<br />
10. Story Like A Scar 3:15<br />
11. Fortunate Fool 2:50<br />
12. Lay On The Rails 4:18<br />
13. Drunk Or Dead 3:04<br />
14. The Blood On The Floor 2:55<br />
15. Ex?s & Oh?s 3:26<br />
16. A Mile In Your Shoes 2:27<br />
17. Guitarkansas 2:03<br />
<br />
Release Notes:<br />
--------<br />
At the Foot of My Rival is the sixth album from THE NEW AMSTERDAMS, but for<br />
frontman Matt Pryor, it?s a milestone. "This album represents something I?ve<br />
been working toward for a long time," he says.<br />
Story Like a Scar, from 2006, sounded like home, but At the Foot of My Rival was<br />
actually written and recorded at home, "underneath middle western moons," as<br />
Pryor sings in his affecting regular-guy tenor on Lay on the Rails. "Over the<br />
past couple of years I?ve been changing, trying to find out who I want to be,"<br />
he reveals.<br />
The star-maker machinery behind pop music would have you believe that the only<br />
family rock stars have are their bands and that a wild life on the road is the<br />
ultimate goal. Pryor, however, has purposely removed himself from the artifice<br />
that attends life in the star-fucking meccas of N.Y. and L.A. (see track 11,<br />
Silverlake); he?s settled down in Lawrence, Kansas, with his wife and kids and<br />
bandmates Dustin Kinsey (guitar), Eric McCann (bass) and Bill Belzer (drums),<br />
"trying to be away less, trying to find balance," no longer the "prodigal son by<br />
trade" he calls himself in Lost Long Shot. "Trying to capitalize on something<br />
you used to be ? an adult pretending to be a kid for the money ? would mean<br />
failure to me," he says.<br />
Lyrically, much of At the Foot of My Rival feels like a man shedding<br />
circumstances, relationships and illusions that no longer fit. The song Hughes,<br />
which sounds like it?s being played on a ramshackle veranda as the sun sets and<br />
the fireflies rise, takes to task the director of such classics as Sixteen<br />
Candles and Pretty in Pink, lamenting, "Hughes, you ruined me/ You promised me<br />
make-believe."<br />
In short order, though, the doors of this hushed, front-porch elegy are kicked<br />
in by A Beacon in Beige? and [i]Story Like a Scar, which reiterate Pryor?s<br />
status as a writer of sticky pop hooks and recall the tumbling urgency of The<br />
Get Up Kids, which he co-founded as a teen and with whom he toured for a decade.<br />
Story Like a Scar ? yes, there was no song called Story Like a Scar on the album<br />
Story Like a Scar, but there is one on Rival ? remembers "a friend who?s gone."<br />
"Someone who begins to drift, doesn?t return phone calls, and then one day, no<br />
one can find them. It can make you angry that you?ve been so easily forgotten.<br />
It?s a hard thing to come to terms with. But at the same time, you can?t chase<br />
them down ? you have to let go."<br />
At the Foot of My Rival was recorded in his living room, with Revenge, Hughes<br />
and the junkestra underpinning Lost Long Shot sounding particularly homemade<br />
(full disclosure: the latter, actually a space heater and the chain on a<br />
trash-can lid, was devised in Pryor?s garage, which used to be a practice space<br />
and has become a studio since Rival was recorded). The disc was produced and<br />
engineered by Pryor and Colin Mahoney, a veteran New Ams collaborator and<br />
Lawrence local who also mixed. By contrast, Story Like a Scar was recorded in<br />
Nashville by Roger Moutenot (best known for his work with Yo La Tengo.)<br />
As hearth-warmed and rootsy as Rival is, however, The New Ams have a deceptively<br />
sophisticated sense of sonic architecture. Bassist Eric McCann, for example, has<br />
emerged as a gifted arranger (note how he ramps up the intensity of Dead or<br />
Drunk with strings and horns.) Likewise, Pryor understands how more can be less<br />
when transmitting the intimacy of a song like Revenge, which is a demo recording<br />
he made with "the crappy little talk microphone on my laptop."<br />
And though Pryor is content in his home studio, writing material for The New<br />
Ams, his band The Terrible Twos, as well as producing songs by other artists and<br />
seeing to his own label (Elmar, named for his son Elliott Marshall), he?s<br />
certainly not immune from those dark thoughts that come in the night and refuse<br />
to leave.<br />
Lay on the Rails, Drunk or Dead and The Blood on the Floor all address<br />
mortality. "This vested trust/ Beyond us/ So show me then/ I?m waiting," he<br />
sings, almost chanting, in a chorus of reverb-soaked four-part harmony on Rails.<br />
"I guess it?s kind of a conversation with God," he confides, saying, "I?ve lost<br />
this person and I don?t understand why. It?s not fair. I?m supposed to believe<br />
that everything?s going to be okay, but I need some kind of sign. Where is it?"<br />
Nor is he blind to the Red State politics that surround the relatively liberal<br />
confines of the college town he calls home. "What if the world?s gone back to<br />
the darkness before the enlightenment?" he wonders in Wait. A Beacon in Beige,<br />
meanwhile, finds him reflecting on human rights of all sorts, singing, "Do you<br />
love all your brothers? Do you? Or did you miss the light?"<br />
Pryor even concedes that, left to his own devices, he tends to dwell on the<br />
downside and that he forced himself to write a happy song for At the Foot of My<br />
Rival. The result, [i]Fountain of Youth, is nonetheless much more than that; it<br />
also suggests the easy musical and personal camaraderie he enjoys with Kinsey,<br />
McCann and Belzer (who are also his conspirators in the aforementioned Terrible<br />
Twos).<br />
It?s telling that this idyll has nothing to do with fame or fortune or status or<br />
power or the other things deemed essential in our pursuit of happiness. To the<br />
contrary, the scene is simply one of friends hanging out by the water on a<br />
summer day, sharing a case of beer, having a laugh, living in the moment.<br />
"We spent three months on the road touring for Story Like a Scar, but that was<br />
over the course of a whole year," Pryor says. "We love playing shows and seeing<br />
our fans ? we know how lucky we are that people come to see us, but that?s not<br />
real life; real life is home, and home is now the center of what we do."
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