the octagon

Open-ended, unrequited love



A rock and roll band with bass/drums/guitar/vox



Founded 2003



PRE-ORDER OUR NEW RECORD WARM LOVE AND COOL DREAMS FOREVER @ Serious Business Records

Download "Cross Tops"



Purchase/Download @ Serious Business Records:



Arm Brain Heart and Liver [SBR37]



Nothing But Change [SBR14]



'Love Will Turn You Around' b/w 'Birdman' 7-inch [SBR10]



Purchase/Download @ iTunes:



Nothing But Change [SBR 14]



'Love Will Turn You Around' b/w 'Birdman' 7-inch [SBR10]



Stark Magazine online

The Octagon channel all the best parts of the post-punk sound. Their songs are melodic, well written, and executed with taste and restraint. While referencing greats like Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. The Octagon's music doesn't sound stale or knocked off. Their new EP has enough lo-fi swagger and modern sensibility to place them at the forefront of the current crop of break-out bands. Certainly a band to watch this fall heading into what promises to be another over-saturated CMJ season.

Hank Shteamer, TONY

The Octagon's new free digital EP (http://bit.ly/8fA2o) is a great listen. As usual, the band sounds gritty, poetic, sad, real.

TIME OUT NEW YORK

Rough-edged local outfit the Octagon seems to have a limitless supply of memorable and crazily efficient (read: really, really short) indie-pop gems at its fingertips. Its new one, Nothing but Change—on the refreshingly unpretentious local indie Serious Business—is crammed with the kind of tunes you want to put on mixtapes for your best friends; song after song, the disc is brisk, clever, fiery and bravely poignant.

SAID THE GRAMOPHONE



"The Octagon's "The Narrow Road to Oku" [i]s a little disoriented, this sandy rock-song. It went wandering into the desert with a bottle of red wine, a Pavement album, and a few hours later is like: what the fuck? Whoever it was supposed to meet with didn't show up; whichever stars it was expecting to see didn't make an appearance. And now its shoes are tied in unfamiliar knots, its hair is filled with grains of unfamiliar minerals, and it's got a catchy song in its head - something it found in a dune, burnished and hopeful and even a little buddhist. Whereever the hell it came from, The Octagon's gonna carry it around for a while."

Record Release Review

Time Out

".[The Octagon] re-imagines tight British pop (the Jam and the Libertines both come to mind) as vivacious New York punk. The band's best songs lump vocals together, finding strength in the collective."

Jenyk.com Review

Jasper Coolidge

"Like everything you've ever heard aplombingly played in a way you've never heard - like dropping your fave pop records in a juicer and serving in a rocks glass."

Eight Sides Live

The New Haven Advocate

"They're based in NYC, but the Octagon kicks 'em out in a style area rockers will recognize as very New Haventuneful, punky guitar-rock songs, not too jokey but far from self-serious, that strike and get out without overstaying their welcome"

THE SKINNY

Rock that's both sloppy and strung-out, shades of Pavement and The Minutemen, with hooks that fall stumbling out of an alleyway before you realised they were coming. You don't expect a song like this to be so catchy: it's more intuition than craft, more accident than design.