Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Harvey Girls...



The Harvey Girls - Hazy Heat

The Harvey Girls - Your Evil Man

For the start of this post I'm just going to steal a paragraph from The Harvey Girls website as an introduction....

"Melissa Rodenbeek and Hiram Lucke formed The Harvey Girls in August of 2003 in Lawrence, Kansas. The group, named after the waitresses who served travelers in the American West from the late 19th to the mid 20th centuries along the AT&SF railways, combine the melodies of bubblegum pop with experimentation in sound. Their music stands as a cross between Prince Paul's production work and the songs of the Shangri-Las (that's what we're sticking with; feel free to come up with your own description)."

I'd go along with that wholeheartedly.

Since 2003 they have pretty much worked alone, playing and recording everything themselves, but for their soon to be completed album The Wild Farewell they have asked a couple of friends to do a bit of scratching and drumming here and there, enter DJ Sku and Brent Piepergerdes, and Brent also fills in on the drum stool for the live shows.

The album is a semi-autobiographical account of Melissa's move from Brooklyn to rural Kansas, which is mirrored in the musical style of the album that's split into the two sections, these two tracks are from the New York section, and the Kansas section has a more straight forward countryesque and classic rock feel...
Not that The Harvey Girls really do straight forward, there's always something wonderfully strange going on somewhere.

Anyway, up until the Album is released we'll just have to do with these two tracks and their back catalogue (which is all available for download in higher bitrates than here on their site... don't forget to leave a donation though.), and what a back catalogue, there really are some superbly strange songs, as well as the wonderfully infectious pop songs....
Like this....

The Harvey Girls - Good Morning, Bubblegum

Which was very high amongst my favourite songs from last year...
And here's what I wrote about it back in November...

It's so fantastically upbeat and jolly, not generally my preferred listening style I have to be honest,
but it's so damn catchy, I swear you'll end up whistling along to the Good Morning line too...
This is the opening track from The Harvey Girls second album "Blabber And Smoke", the title was the first thing that caught my eye...
It's a Captain Beefheart song... Bonus points for that.
Also bonus points for making me smile...
Bonus points too for writing an infectious song that reminds me of some of the Velvets more upbeat moments...

And then there's also this Alan Parsons Project cover from their The Biggest Book You'll Never Read release...

The Harvey Girls - Don't Answer Me

This can also be found on their The Harvey Girls compilation...
In their own words...
Not the most inspired title, we admit, but it was better than "Greatest Misses" or "50,000 people have never heard of this band"

It may not be the most inspired title, but it chokka full of inspired music that can make you smile one minute and wonder what the hell is going on the next.

You really should go and check out more of their songs, I just love all the tiny little touches that have gone into the recording of them, every single track has something a little strange about it, whether it be in the melody or in the way it was recorded, and add to that the fact that they are great songs too, just makes them all a joy to go back to again and again and find something new in there every time....

Wonderful.



Visit - The Harvey Girls
Visit - Imaginary Albums to download The Harvey Girls - The Harvey Girls

Simon
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