HARPOONER
"Forget earworm; This power pop group of lookers will throw their Harpoon into your primary auditory cortex where it will embed itself so that you are a follower for life. Punchy songs that are inspired by yet not derivative of Harry Nillson, drugged up on touches of psych with a Midwestern twist. The tunes progress conventionally but unpredictably due to frontman Scott Schmadeke's piano-rooted mind and affinity for the major seventh note. You will hear their unmistakably love for the Beatles and their offspring; Emmitt Rhodes and Badfinger. Harpooner's 2014 Speed 7" sounds like someone set the Brill Building on fire.”
-NY TIMES
Two years ago Harpooner migrated to Nashville from Indiana in search of better opportunities and a change of scenery. Since the move they have already shared the stage with Caitlin Rose, Margo Price, Cory Chisel, Water Liars, Future Birds, and Promised Land Sound.
KCRW premiered Harpooner's striking video for "Carolines," proclaiming Harpooner "a new band to watch." You can watch the video HERE. IMPOSE premiered the band's second track "Hush Up," calling it "Five minutes and twenty-six seconds of musical bliss."
Recorded at Blockhouse Studios in Bloomington by frontman Scott Schmadeke and Andy Beargie, Rose Park digs into strange voicing and textures as an homage to the work of artists like Leon Russell's Carny, Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Schmilsson, and Wings' Speed of Sound. Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Benjamin Booker, Natural Child) was enlisted for mastering duties at The Bomb Shelter in East Nashville.
Seated and singing close-up on the microphone, sometimes underneath a brimmed hat, Schmadeke delivers his cosmic awareness with a tenderness toward sensitive issues and big questions—like a Jeff Lynne that grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis in the 90s. On "All I Get Back" and "œBigger Thoughts"€ he weaves the band in and out of sophisticated movements that shimmer and punch right on time—the kind of arrangements traded-in long ago by popular music for high-gain marketing strategies. He grapples with racial inequality on songs like “Carolines†and “Immigration†but not so that the songs become fodder for corporate social campaigns. Many of the songs on the album spring from a small fictitious midwestern town that Schmadeke imagines as a canvas for the ideas he and the band have picked-up along the way.
Schmadeke has quickly built a good reputation in the music scene having toured as pianist for national acts Houndmouth, Diane Coffee, and Andrew Combs.
CARRIERS
DOVE & WOLF
The Dove & the Wolf are led by Paloma Gil and Louise Hayat-Camard, who craft reflective indie rock that seems to fall in the unlikely territory between dream pop and '70s soft rock. The French songwriting team had been playing music together for several years as teens and young adults in Paris before forming the Dove & the Wolf in early 2012. They released a four-track self-titled EP that September. By 2014, the women were touring with acts including Rachael Yamagata and Butch Walker, and they started working on their first album while in the U.S. The duo returned to Paris when their one-year visas expired in mid-2015, expecting the renewals to take just a few weeks. They ended up taking a few months, during which time the November 2015 Paris terrorism attacks took place. The tragedy factored heavily into the resulting five-track EP, I Don't Know What to Feel, which featured two additions to the lineup in bass player Andy Black and drummer Craig Hendrix. Recorded and produced back in Gil and Hayat-Camard's adopted base of Philadelphia by Dave Hartley (the War on Drugs, Nightlands) and Nick Krill (the Spinto Band, Teen Men), the EP was self-released in June 2016. Fat Possum took notice and signed the band. An expanded seven-track, I Don't Know What to Feel, followed in March 2017, marking the Dove & the Wolf's label debut.
