Totally Tits
PURCHASE APPETIZER SICKNESS OR THE NEW ALBUM THE DANGEROUS SUMMER HERE!!!
REVIEWS FOR THE DANGEROUS SUMMER
Blake Rainey and His Demons
The Dangerous Summer
(Two Sheds Records)
There’s no shortage of tender unshaven singer-songwriters making love to their acoustics, but there are fewer who start where Blake Rainey did. At 17 years old, Rainey started his first serious punk band in his hometown of Cedartown, Georgia (road names include "Mountain Home" and "Booger Hollow"). The thrash was enough to drive him to the cities—Athens and then Atlanta—where he grabbed cred as the lead of The Young Antiques, laying out appropriately angry vocals over power chords and requisite guitar stops.
So in 2003 when Blake released the solo Appetizer Sickness featuring just his six-string and vocal, heads turned trying to figure out where he learned to pick and sing.
And sing he can. This year’s The Dangerous Summer is his second go at a sound wholly removed from his punk era—and the disc shakes with his resonant baritone—complex, emotional and so mature that even punk-lovers might pronounce his earlier voicings a waste of talent. These recent records don’t make this mistake, placing his voice front-and-center, and tastefully underlaid by "his demons" including cello, upright bass, and Robin Najar on flawless harmonies.
No wonder the Atlanta-Constitution Journal is starting to call him Atlanta’s best songwriter. Rainey’s lyrics voice a deep world, and his storytelling is thoughtful but unpretentious—walking us through tears, apathy, and worship in such practical diction that you might miss the rhythmic genius—accessible poetry from all sides. "Sheds in the Hills" is his best track ("hello it’s me/the thrashing goodbye/you left town so fast I lost my mind frequently/into your door a-darkened I stepped"), but it’s tough to choose. Pick this one up and you can do it yourself.
~ Chris Ridgeway, Innocent Words Magazine, 2007.
Blake Rainey’s solo material has previously been mega-upped on Smother. His work alongside his group the Young Antiques has also been thusly heralded. And rightly so. His melancholic vocal delivery almost belies his lyrical intent, which seems bent on righting the twists that pop musicians often forget to weave into their tales. Calm choruses and thoughtful song arrangements pepper this dangerously addictive new album that would have Bright Eyes fans clamoring for more.
- J-Sin, smother.net 2007 Elsewhere less-figured and endearingly open singer-songwriters, like Sufjan Stevens and Devendra Banhart, have gained attention by enveloping the small moments in something entirely genuine, be it delivery or arrangement (or both). Rainey defers to a similar grace with his own soft accounting. "Fields of PA" sounds like a letter read aloud, entreating memories of Paris, London and winter with a gazer's nod: "dreaming really is no different / than a memory that never happened."INDIEWORKSHOP 2005"Haunting yet joyful, resigned yet expectant, everything yet nothing; Appetizer Sickness is, simply, a work of art."
--Aaron Bragg, INDIE-MUSIC.COM"Appetizer Sickness is Raineys debut solo release, but time spent fronting The Young Antiques leaves him with a mature voice and assured writing chops."
-THE BIG TAKEOVER 2005
"Georgian Blake Rainey hits hard with this often mellow but always lovely thirteen-track collection. Like the best songwriters Rainey doesnt just have an ear for music and melodies but also possesses an ear finely tuned to the beauty of language, understanding, as he does, the chasms between certain nouns and verbs and the unparalleled intimacy shared by others. Theres a distant but moving numbness to the intro of the Sunday morning coming down vignette, Like Leaves and an impossible vividness to Fields Of PA, in which Rainey manages to explore the entire geography of the human heart in less than five minutes. In fact, you could say that thats largely what Appetizer Sickness does as a whole. It touches time and time again on the cherished but irreparably stained tablecloths and cracked coffee cups of life, love and the pursuit of the nagging mirages that hover on the horizon of both. Sometimes Rainey does this in brief cloudbursts (the gentle and dreamlike SF, a somewhat less adolescent update of Big Stars Thirteen) and other times in clips that make us travel the spectrum of a summers day (Daydream Fields). These are songs unironic and kind and pieces such as Cold Sunday Blues and Mahogany speak to the joyful sadness of being alive. Appetizer Sickness proves impossible to leave alone, impossible not to love. Jedd Beaudoin."
- COPPER PRESS 2005
BIO OF SORTS:ATL
A regular on the Atlanta and Athens music scenes for the last 6 years, Rainey has been recognized by The Atlanta Journal Constitution, music magazines Flagpole and Stomp & Stammer, and The Creative Loafing as one of Georgia's finest songwriters.
Rainey laid down roots first as front man for the punk and power-pop trio The Young Antiques. He later co-produced Faith Kleppinger's Asleep In the Well with David Barbe, and recently worked double-booked as lead guitarist for The Indicators.
In 2003, the songwriter went solo dropping the raucous intensity of his previous affairs and releasing the quieter, critically acclaimed Appetizer Sickness—13 sparse, articulate 3-minute novellas with time signatures.
"Elsewhere less-figured and endearingly open singer-songwriters, like Sufjan Stevens and Devendra Banhart, have gained attention by enveloping the small moments in something entirely genuine, be it delivery or arrangement (or both). Rainey defers to a similar grace with his own soft accounting. "Fields of PA" sounds like a letter read aloud, entreating memories of Paris, London and winter with a gazer's nod: "Dreaming really is no different / Than a memory that never happened."
Rainey now follows that effort with 2007's The Dangerous Summer, opening wide Appetizer Sickness' bare bones presentation to make room for a backing band. As a whole, the group is called Blake Rainey and His Demons—featuring Joe Foy on stand-up bass, Terry Onstad on cello, Justin Sonfield on guitar, Jeff Dehner on muted, breathy percussion, and Robin Najar providing vocal harmonies in the background.
What Rainey does on The Dangerous Summer is paint a picture in syllables and soundscapes. It's a dark watercolor, washed in the muted grays and peeling plaster tones of a town that time forgot. Listen closely and you'll hear lonely chairs rocking, the deafening silence of a southern winter night, the simmering timbre of melancholy born of the battle between a small town soul and city mind.
Listen closer, and you'll hear Rainey channeling the ballads of Tom Waits while quietly rubbing literate elbows with contemporaries like M. Ward, Bright Eyes, and Colin Meloy of The Decemberists. But see him on his upcoming promotional tour, and The Dangerous Summer comes singularly to life—songs blanketed in raw, sometimes agonizing emotion that tugs gently at you—ear leading mind leading heart through hauntingly articulated narrative.
Look for Blake Rainey and His Demons in the quieter clubs and backroom bars of cities across the nation.
