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As Tall As Lions
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HQ: Long Island, NY NOW PLAYING: As Tall As Lions (TRIPLE CROWN; www.triplecrownrecords.com) WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: These Lions don't roar; instead, they lure you to their lair with dreamy, expansive, so-pretty-it-hurts pop. YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: Radiohead / Doves / Ours It's one thing to bowl over audiences with music that's loud and in-your-face; however, it's another thing to seduce them with precious, shoegazing melodies and vocal harmonies delivered in a high, effeminate voice. But that's precisely what As Tall As Lions do on their sprawling, piano driven, self-titled effort. And while the Long Island quartet met in Catholic school, it's the members' artiste tendencies that help craft the subtle layers and ambient sounds heard on songs like "Summer" and "Ghost Of York." "My mother is a painter," says 24-year-old ATAL vocalist Daniel Nigro, who has yet to commission his mom to create album artwork. "My aunt played piano and I took lessons when I was 5." His inspiration to play rock music, though, came from his friends. "When you're a normal white suburban kid, taking classes in Catholic school and rocking out to Pearl Jam and Nirvana with your friends, you become inspired to play rock music. I was following what kids in my grade did." But being in a band was more than a passing phase for Nigro and his crew who eventually all dropped out of college to pursue ATAL. It was the right choice-he thinks. "At one point, I thought it was wrong, but now I feel it was the right decision. Before you do it full-time, you're naïve to what it's like to really be in a band. When you get signed, there are demands and responsibilities," Nigro, who quit Fordham University in his junior year, says. "We went on the road for years, and then took nine months to write the new record. We spent time revising and tightening everything so that it was the best record we could possibly make, and we think we succeeded." -Amy Sciaretto |
