姓名: TheRuffledFeathers 英文名:- 性别:男 国籍:- 出生地:- 语言:- 生日:- 星座:- 身高:- 体重:-
The Ruffled Feathers are known for their combination of haunting female vocals, carefully crafted harmonies, multi-instrumentation, and brazen horns. Taking inspiration from the likes of Beirut, The Arcade Fire, and Belle and Sebastian, the band weaves fables of revolution, love stories, and cities away from home. Listeners expecting conventional guitar-driven indie-pop will find themselves swept into complex arrangements of trumpets and mandolins instead.
Formed in 2008 as a collaboration between Charley Wu (Piano, Mandolin, Guitar, and Vocals) and Gina Loes (Vocals, Guitar, and Ukelele), the duo sought out trumpet player Andrew Lee to complete the sound they were looking for. Their first EP titled Lost Cities was recorded that summer from very humble beginnings, relying mostly on borrowed equipment and borrowed time. The album showcased the diversity of the band’s songwriting abilities, featuring intimate guitar ballads (Your Embrace), upbeat piano driven rock (Home), and experimental pop (Paloma).
But then summer ended and the fate of the band looked unclear. Charley moved to Toronto while the band went into hibernation. One year passed, and the members of the band found themselves inexplicably drawn back together. In September of 2010, The Ruffled Feathers was reborn, now with Matty Jeronimo on bass and Sam MacKinnon on drums. Lost Cities was re-mastered and re-released, properly this time. Something must have clicked, because the album soon experienced immense attention on the Internet, reaching over 18,000 plays in one week to listeners from all over the world. In the meantime, new and ambitious songs were being written.
The first single from Oracles, “Blueprints for our Failed Revolution” was recorded in the spring of 2011. At the same time, Charley and filmmaker Geoffrey Vincent began work on a grandiose music video for the song. Money was in short order, but they were rich in enthusiasm and hard work. An antique drafting table was carried by snow-shod feet up a mountain. A piano was burned off of forgotten logging roads in the middle of nowhere. A burned down Juvenile hall on the coast of the Pacific Ocean was transformed into the headquarters of this fictitious revolution. The song and the video were released in May 2011 while the recent events of the Arab Spring were still fresh in everyone’s minds.
In the Summer of 2011, the band went down to Oregon to record the remaining tracks for Oracles. Matty’s parents own and operate a horse farm in Wilsonville, where the band set up their own studio. A Kickstarter campaign was set up to fund the mixing and mastering of the album, while the recording costs were negligible due to the band’s DIY mentality. Oracles was recorded while horses galloped down green Oregonian pastures, and Mount Hood was visible on the horizon. Whereas the band’s debut EP spoke of a journey to another place and time, Oracles speaks of the arrival. The album’s twelve songs stem from an eclectic blend of influences, from Chinese revolutions to personal revelations. They tell stories about love, about mistakes, and ultimately, about change. Oracles is a question we pose to ourselves—who do we look to for guidance? Do we trust the philosophers, our governments, our loved ones… or do we forge our own paths?