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ECHO HELSTROM, the "orchestral rock band." It's the violin and upright bass added to the usual rock array that makes them so. That, plus adventuresome arrangements and songs that run the gamut from chamber music to punk rock with much else in between. Echo Helstrom is "a combination of raw emotional power with sophisticated melodic beauty (Joseph Gallivan)," it's "Kurt Cobain meets Leonard Bernstein (The Oregonian)". Echo Helstrom, not quite straight-ahead rock nor top 40 pop. It's unique, original, and word is spreading fast about the "dreamy yet observational songwriting [with] surprising flashes of rock aggression (The Oregonian)."
The influences are worn in the heart not on the sleeve, they're internalized, digested, transformed. Critics have noted anything from Radiohead and Coldplay to Neil Finn and Ireland's Donal Lunny. The songwriting is "poetic without lapsing into obscurity (Portland Tribune)." It's "rock enough for the parents currently subjected to their children's emo band of the week, indie enough for the kids tired of hearing their 40-something parents blasting Wilco on NPR (Rebel X)."
Echo Helstrom's unsigned "The Veil" is already being playlisted in New York, Washington, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, South Carolina, Alabama, Montana, Tennessee, Vermont, Pennsylvania -- with more stations being added weekly. All this without major label push.
Simply put: "Only two records deep into Echo Helstrom's career, The Veil leaves behind genre and enters the realm of simply good music. Welcome. Please stay awhile (Lord Randall Jones)."
ECHO HELSTROM is featured in Jan/Feb issue of MOTHER JONES MAGAZINE
THE OREGONIAN
by Marty Hughley; Friday, November 03, 2006
Echo Helstrom delivers
Influences: Neil Finn, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Coldplay
Sounds Like: Somebody please tell us what we sound like! -- From the MySpace page of the band Echo Helstrom.
Presumably, the members of Echo Helstrom know what they sound like, so we'll assume that (joking?) plea is not really about sound, but description -- something that musicians as often as not would prefer to leave aside.
In any case, they'll find no pithy assistance here. We could take note of Will Amend's deft acoustic bass playing and the cool wash of Alessandra Dinu's violin and call this a chamber-pop group. Or we might focus on singer/guitarist Ross Seligman's dreamy yet observational songwriting, the surprising flashes of rock aggression that jut out of the calm here and there and of course the Radiohead cover (a lovely, tender reading of "True Love Waits"), and file it all under indie-rock progressivism. We could even grab at passing straws of suggestion and tie them together, as did whoever thought to describe the sound as "Kurt Cobain meets Leonard Bernstein." (But we know better.)
Best to let the music have its space, and let listeners choose their own frame for the swirls of color and shape the band delivers on its new album, "The Veil."
The elements are numerous and varied -- from country-rock shuffles by the rhythm section to unison pizzicato passages by the strings to urgent electric guitar riffs to sweetly folksy vocal harmonies by Seligman and Tahlia Harrison, and so on. The band indulges its artier influences without sounding precious, and when it surprises us with greater volume or an agitated mood it never sounds as if it's straining for its rock bona fides. ("We're just a bunch of classical- and jazz- trained musicians from Portland, Oregon, simulating a rock band," their MySpace profile says; and in fact, Seligman has a side gig at the moment playing for the Portland Center Stage run of "West Side Story.")
If the band still is straining to find the right description, consider that a good thing.
Decoy Music: 10 Bands You Should Know
ECHO HELSTROM
This Portland, Oregon quintet includes a completely jazz or classically trained lineup, who, by their own words, "simulate a rock band." Don't let the band's humbleness decieve you: Echo Helstom is a real, talented rock band. Giving influential nods to Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and Radiohead, Echo Helstrom's sound accurately falls somewhere between all three via guitar, upright and electric bass, violin, drums, and two vocalists – one male, one female. Even though it's remarkable that the band has just finished recording their debut album, The Veil, what's even more remarkable is that Echo Helstrom has done so without any label support; that's right ladies, gents, and record labels: Echo Helstrom is unsigned, so pull out those checkbooks and contracts, support this band, and watch them because they're going to make waves in the indie-rock world:
RIYL: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Murder by Death, A Whisper in the Noise, Clann Zu
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