Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers
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Good Morning Beautiful
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I Hope You're Feeling Better Now (EP)
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After a well-received debut album and critically acclaimed follow-up EP, the band Irving now realizes its full potential with Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers. An album of inspired variety and stirring depth, Death In The Garden casts Irving among the strongest rock bands performing today.
Formed initially by members Alex Church (bass), Steven Scott (guitar) and Brian Canning (guitar), Irving began as a thrown-together rock outfit to accompany a friend's art opening. Within a month, Brent Turner (drums) joined, and the group began working in earnest on the songs that would eventually appear on its first album, Good Morning Beautiful. The release of GMB in 2002 showcased the band's penchant for writing witty pop songs with whimsical backup vocals and upbeat melodies.
By the year's end, Aaron Burrows (keyboards) signed on, and the band was back in the studio. The I Hope You're Feeling Better Now EP, released in 2003 to critical acclaim, exhibited Irving's unrelenting willingness to experiment with pop song structures, and highlighted the innate strengths of a band in which all five members are songwriters.
In the two years since the release of the EP, Irving has opened for such notables as Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Polyphonic Spree. The band's songwriting has also taken a noticeably more thoughtful turn. While the innate pop sensibilities continue to stand out above all else, Irving's songwriting has matured--the sounds and structures more intricate, the subject matter more thoroughly realized.
Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers is the result of five musicians and their distinct influences, bound by an uncanny knack for melody and harmony. With production and engineering help from Phil Ek (The Shins, Modest Mouse), as well as Aaron Espinoza (Earlimart) and Jim Fairchild (from Grandaddy), Irving corrals its many distinct influences into a clear vision. From the oblique percussive start of the title track, to the psych-pop chaos of "Situation" to the so-bizarre-it-works background breathing on "I Want To Love You In My Room," the band pulls unforgettable hooks out of the most unlikely places.
With a year's worth of touring planned throughout 2006, including performances at SXSW and the customary summer festivals, the band is determined to spread the news far and wide.
"A remarkably gifted indie pop band with a knack for stealing the best bits from classic (and not so classic) acts of the mid-60s, late 80s, and early 90s and filtering out the annoying or obvious tics that tend to be emulated most often by lesser bands. I knew all of that coming into the show, and yet they still impressed me, playing an extremely well planned and utterly dud-free setlist with an energy and charm that I hadn't been anticipating. Strangely, I had not realized that there were actually three lead singers in the band until seeing them perform in person. This united front only makes me appreciate their commitment to writing lyrics that come off like episodes of a tongue-in-cheek indie soap opera that much more."
- Fluxblog, Irving @ The Knitting Factory 5/10/2006
