what a lovely band

does anybody else find them to be just super. i sure do

their loud sound is very appealing and sort of vines-like but different

ok i'm done

The drummer is ace.

The first time i saw them live i wasnt to sure it was only the drumming that stood out.

The next time they were much better.


I think they are ok.

Yay!

its strange that no one on this forum hardly knows this band so I declare myself their represntative (here)...ooo oo this is kind of twistedly fun

Could you make a little bio of this band?? i'm just listening to them, it's really great

Excellent i'll have to get some stuff together for u, i'll post it later

alright here it is its from mute.com. enjoy

These are dark times for rock'n'roll, brothers and sisters. The chill wind of the zeitgeist has swept in and awarded savage riffs and sussed singers some temporary modicum of cool. In the interim, any number of shallow-hearted Xerox pretenders to some blues/garage/punk-rock throne have snuck through this back door to assail, insult and degrade our beloved noise, until it's little more than a catalogue of pouts and poses that amount to nothing much of anything.
We need bands willing to claw back the magic and mythology of raw rock'n'roll, to give us something we can really sink our teeth into, art that's hot-blooded and literate and impassioned, something deep and tangible that'll stir the spook in our souls. A band like Modey Lemon.

Formed some four years ago in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they originally numbered just two members, singer/guitarist/moogist Phil Boyd and drummer/moogist Paul Quattrone. Jason Kirker, who engineered and mixed their new album, Thunder & Lightning, joined the band this summer when Phil and Paul decided, after those sessions, that Jason was someone with whom they should be playing music.

"Back when we formed, though, we didn't realise there were any other two-pieces on the planet," grins Phil, harking back to a world pre-White Stripes, "Except for all those Fat Possum blues duos. They were our inspiration." The duo met while studying at University Of Pittsburgh, Phil joining a teetering and swollen seven-piece group Paul was drumming for. "I've always loved that jazzier end of rock drumming, Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell," remembers Phil. "That's what I heard in Paul's drumming."

Soon, having tired of the politics of playing in an octet, and finding no bass-player compatible with their music or personalities, the band were recording and playing shows as a duo (the name Modey Lemon, a nonsense-phrase, was originally invented as a satirical snipe on pompously-named emo bands; it stuck). They drew on the blues and the rock'n'roll which sprang from it - Phil's dad sang in a garage-rock act in the 1960s and had a huge record collection for the boys to explore - but also sought further for inspiration: the darkly humourous attack of The Cramps, the poetry of The Doors, the experimental leanings of Silver Apples and Suicide and Sun Ra, and the metaphysical imagery of early mythology. It's this welter of diverse (and not always musical) influences that makes the vicious and electrifying rock'n'roll of Modey Lemon such a rich and rewardingly complex experience.

"Suicide's music was so familiar, but so alien; real savage and crazed and electronic," enthuses a breathless Phil. "We were also influenced by Sun Ra's use of synthesisers and oscillators and random tone generators, real exotic sounds. Early on in the band, a friend of Paul's was getting rid of an old moog, which we adopted and started working into our music. I started writing songs around the synthesiser, weird sci-fi tales; the freaky sounds made me wanna write songs about mad scientists! We've always been into rock music, and into making rock music, but we've never felt we had to stick to any definition of what rock'n'roll is supposed to be."

When not penning such bizarre tales, Phil writes songs about "Love, and whatever" that draw on a timeless tradition of eerie American gothic, be it the growling trashcan rut of 'Jesus Christ (For Dinner)' off 2002's self-titled debut for AF Records, or songs like the feral 'Predator', the skin-crawling 'Tongues (Everybody's Got One)' or the brutal and bloodied 'Enemy' from their new album 'Thunder & Lightning'. These are dark, dank tales of recrimination and rancour, etched in disturbing detail.

"I've always been inspired by nature and the supernatural," explains Phil, with the erudite insight that makes him worth a hundred empty-headed pouting chancers. "Mythology is based upon people who didn't understand the science of the world inventing these tales that personified nature so they could make sense of it. I try and do something similar when I'm writing about Love or whatever; a lot of the stories on our albums have been about the darker side of life, but a lot of people miss the bitter humour that's in there. Songs like 'Electronic Sorceror' and 'Ants In My Hands' aren't wallowing in misery!"

Certainly not. Architects of a most bewitching and turbulent brand of blues-punk, authors of gothic tales of love-gone-wrong that rival Edgar Allen Poe for creepy bitter humour, and artists who put on searing and sweat-drenched displays of overdriven and spooked rock'n'roll every opportunity they got (ask anyone who caught their stint supporting The Von Bondies last year, or their amazing set at this year's South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas), Modey Lemon are a band like no other. Come get stoned by their peculiar and powerful noise.