Young Guns
Wind-up Records
Young Guns

Over the course of the past few years, the London-based YOUNG GUNS have emerged as one of the UK's most electrifying new bands, garnering heavy radio play and UK chart success, while playing to packed-house crowds all across Europe, including a main stage performance at the Reading Festival, where they tore up the stage as part of a lineup that included Arcade Fire, Queens of the Stone Age, Guns N' Roses and Modest Mouse.

New album BONES has already achieved critical acclaim overseas, with Q Magazine and Kerrang! each giving it four stars and the latter writing that the album sees the band "giving themselves the best shot possible of taking on all comers and winning." BONES and its title track were also nominated for "Best Album" and "Best Single" as part of this year's 2012 Kerrang! Awards.

"We've written something that I feel happy describing as 'brave,'" says Young Guns frontman Gustav Wood, "and it will challenge a lot of people's preconceptions about what sort of band we are. It's an ambitious record, and we have the ambition to match the sound." Written over a number of months in places ranging from Thailand to Spain to a shed in the band's hometown of High Wycombe, UK, BONES marks Young Guns' transition from a band packed with potential to bonafide contenders for the title of Britain's best. It's a stirring album full of contradictions – it speaks of strength and vulnerability, friendship and loss, energetic youth and heavy-hearted experience – that proudly displays Wood, John Taylor (guitar), Fraser Taylor (guitar), Simon Mitchell (bass) and Ben Jolliffe (drums)'s skyscraping vision and style. "When you're writing an album you need to believe that what you're doing is the most important thing in the world," continues Gustav.

Having formed from the ashes of a variety of local bands, Young Guns' first release was the striking Mirrors EP in June 2009. But it wasn't until debut album All Our Kings Are Dead, unveiled in July 2010, that they began to really show what they were capable of. Backed by a groundswell of popular support, the band hit magazine covers, headlined the HMV Forum in London, toured Australia and played the Main Stage at Reading and Leeds Festivals; in the backs of their minds, though, they knew they could do better.

And they were right. Taken at face value, BONES feels effortless, but the work that went into it – the long hours, the nudging back of immutable deadlines, the worry, the sheer grind that comes with a genuinely democratic writing process – mirrors the band's career to date. This is a story of victory by inches, not of instant boom (and inevitable, sad bust). Young Guns backed themselves into a corner with their drive to comprehensively outdo All Our Kings Are Dead. After a handful of fruitless writing sessions, Gustav, Fraser and John spent a night in the studio with a couple of bottles of vodka and the desire to write a song their heroes would be proud of; when morning eventually came, they had the skeleton of "Dearly Departed," a song that, once they'd taken it to the rest of the band and let them work their magic, would sit as one of the keystones of BONES. "Once we wrote that song, we knew we could really make a mark with this album," says Wood. The title track itself is another standout moment, a pure rock anthem in the most heroic sense. "When you do something you know is good, that you know stands up... it's bliss. Elation. We worked so hard on this album, and there were times when the stress was horrendous. When I finished tracking the vocals for 'Bones' and we stood back and cranked it on the stereo at 4am, listening to what I knew would be a single that would do big things for us, that was overwhelming." From then on, the songs flowed: the title track, a howl of defiance; stunning opener "I Was Born, I Have Lived, I Will Surely Die," a fearless statement of intent; lead single "Learn My Lesson," a calling-card that's as dynamic as it is catchy. "It feels like I want to just kick people's heads off," smiles Gustav. "It sounds stupid but I just want to get out there and make a mark – it keeps me up at night, thinking about how much I want to do."

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Zera Marvel
In Spades Music
Zera Marvel

I moved around quite a bit growing up. I call Newport, Rhode Island “home” because I lived there consistently for the longest amount of time. I bought my first guitar when I was seventeen. I was inspired by local bands like Throwing Muses and Belly.

In 1997 I wound up in Charleston, South Carolina – where I met Graig Markel, who was in town on tour with his band. Our love affair began where all great romances start…in a bar. Soon after, I took a Greyhound bus to Seattle so we could be together. We formed a band, Tagging Satellites.

Over the next six years Tagging Satellites released two EPs and three full-length albums. We had a few line-up changes over the years, but Graig and I remained the consistent thread that held the band together…until we couldn’t. It nearly cost us our relationship but instead of becoming another rock and roll casualty, we broke up the band and got married.

Graig started a new project called, The Animals At Night, and I started recording some of my own songs. Graig and I are also involved with Seattle’s indie-electronic band Head Like A Kite.

My live band includes: Jon Hyde (pedal steel), Greg Panto (banjo), Doran Bastin (bass), and Joe Patterson (drums). Along with Graig recording and producing my first solo album at The Recovery Room here in Seattle, he also joins me on stage playing guitar. We have shared the stage with: Jesse Sykes, J. Tillman and Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), Micah P. Hinson and many others.

“Birds And Bullets Fly” is my first solo release. I hope you enjoy the songs.

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Zeus
ARTS & CRAFTS MUSIC
Zeus

Zeus was born from the musical friendship of Mike O'Brien and Carlin Nicholson. The two Toronto-based musicians have been living on the road for the past few years as the backing band for singer/songwriter and Broken Social Scene member Jason Collett. With a lineup rounded out by longtime friends and musical compatriots Rob Drake and Neil Quin, Zeus draws upon classic influences to craft timeless songs, complete with fuzzed out guitars and shimmering three-part harmonies; classic rock n'roll with a touch of twang. An EP, entitled Sounds Like Zeus, was released this past summer to widespread critical acclaim, garnering near-perfect reviews and creating a stir with the band's brilliant recreation of the Genesis hit, "That's All." Say Us expands upon the ideas put forth with Sounds Like Zeus, showing even greater range and diversity. The first single, "Marching Through Your Head" has already been declared "a strong contender for pop song of the year" by Exclaim Magazine. Say Us was recorded and produced by Mike O'Brien and Carlin Nicholson in their Toronto studio and mixed by Robbie Lackritz (Feist). As astute students of the history of rock n' roll and purveyors of a sound that cross-references the British Invasion with '70s southern U.S. rock, Zeus' debut album demonstrates a band with an innate ability to create powerful and infectious music and do so as though it's an entirely natural process. Say Us is an album for the ages.

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