Shane Bartell's New Album Is In Stores Now! Click Here To Purchase Too Soon To Say from Amazon.
Shane Bartells voice- easy, impossibly infectious and thick with focus- can drift from vague and otherworldly to intimate and realized within a single breath, flitting effortlessly from throaty to smooth, mellow to scrappy, confident to crestfallen. Ultimately, all that somersaulting makes perfect sense: Bartells Too Soon To Say (Sarathan/Fontana) takes you through the exhilaration, trials and tribulations of a budding relationship. These are seamless sounds, the aural equivalents of deep-stomach butterflies, mystery and promise intertwined. Having earned a reputation for powerful, unpredictable shows, Shane's music and regular touring has gained him a sizable fan base in cities as far-flung as Boston and Portland, Oregon. Effortlessly combining beauty and subtlety, Shanes undeniable live presence is affirmed by Details Magazine, saying, "He's the congenital critical darling, in the best sense of the word. When you see him live, no one need ask, 'Can you feel the love tonight?', the love is self-evident."
Shane Bartell grew up in the Texas Hill Country, surrounded by cowboy boots and snuff - cultural references seemingly erased by his turning-point discovery of The Smiths and The Pixies. Moving to music-mecca Austin in the 90s, he spent several years as the guitarist for the female-fronted band Cling and shared stages with the likes of Oasis and Liz Phair. Cling was a regional favorite, but after several years with the band, Shane decided to focus on his own songwriting. After a year long sabbatical in Portland Oregon primarily spent penning songs, Shane quickly recruited a band and began to develop a local following. Without any recorded material, his audiences swelled, surprising club owners and encouraging Shane, as singalongs became a regular part of the evening. During the 2001 South by Southwest music conference, Marco Werman from the PRI show "The World," named Shane as one of the best 3 showcases that year and helped him get his debut EP, Reference , international airplay. Reference put Shane in the national limelight for the first time. The Austin Chronicle wrote, "He's demonstrated the talent and charisma to pen songs with 'hit' written all over them, and it takes only one listen to the classic pop genius of 'Up for Air' and 'If I Could Only Get My Head Out of the Gutter' to understand what that means.
Shane began recording and perfecting the contents of Too Soon To Say soon after, electing to work with producer Lars Goransson (The Cardigans, Blondie) on his first full-length. The albums song cycle traces the rise and fall of an epic relationship- from its careful, eager origins through an excruciatingly anticlimactic end. Too Soon To Say details all the longing, nostalgia, regret, anger and acceptance inevitably chained to meeting, and then losing a lover. Its a universal sequence, familiar and exhilarating and, remarkably, just spinning Too Soon To Say is enough to make it all feel real again. While Shane Bartell clearly feeds off the same earnest, emotive tendencies as artists like Morrissey, Coldplay and even Badly Drawn Boy, hes careful to avoid ever drifting into dangerously precious territory, consistently eschewing rote sentimentality in favor of sharp, unaffected, pockets-out honesty.
With his trademark blend of tense guitar, spiraling keyboards and twittering drums, Bartells songs are decidedly difficult to pin down, twisting and squirming into new, dynamic shapes, reinventing themselves with each subsequent listen. And after all, one of the great things about music post-90s is that we arent stuck in narrow stylistic tunnels anymore. Artists arent pigeonholed as indie or mainstream, hip hop or techno, mod or rocker. And this is a good thing for Shane Bartell. Its not so much his blending of genres or the fact that he evades the notion of what a pop record should be, as much as it is the ease and skill with which he does these things. These are songs that sound at home in this brave new musical paradigm.
Release date: July 18, 2006
Print Media Inquiries: Perry Serpa ( perry @ goodcoppr.com ) | http://www.goodcoppr.com>
Online Media Inquiries: Jenna LoMonaco ( jenna @ girlie.com ) | http://www.girlieaction.com
Record Label: Sarathan Records http://sarathan.com | http://myspace.com/sarathan
Reviews of Too Soon To Say:
Blender Magazine, 6.28.06
songs:illinois sings the praises of Too Soon To Say, 5.10.06
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