THE VISIBLE MEN
Dan Schmid - Bass
Dustin Lanker - Piano, Vocals
Tony Figoli - Drums
Tim Donahue - Drums
Jordan Glen - Drums
Ryan Sumner - Drums
Too often art is wielded like a hammer. Harder, louder, faster. On their stunning debut album, [+]THE VISIBLE MEN
Dan Schmid - Bass
Dustin Lanker - Piano, Vocals
Tony Figoli - Drums
Tim Donahue - Drums
Jordan Glen - Drums
Ryan Sumner - Drums
Too often art is wielded like a hammer. Harder, louder, faster. On their stunning debut album, The Visible Men have more than proven that powerful music needn't attack you as though it were a skinhead with a barstool in one hand, and a broken bottle in the other. Released on Eugene, Oregon's Leisure King Records, it was mixed and engineered by Billy Barnett, The Visible Men and Scott McLean, at Gung Ho Recording. This record is full of beautifully tense and well-crafted songs. Lanker's haunting piano melodies, combined with Schmid's bass lines, as rich and polished as old wood, are woven together in a way that evokes the songwriting caliber of Elvis Costello, Squeeze, and XTC.
Dan Schmid has been a lanky, yet formidable figure in the Eugene, Oregon music scene for nearly twenty years. Schmid was a founding member of the seminal punk rock-pretty-boy band, The Jazz Greats; he also played bass in Saint Huck, Snakepit and, most recently, Mood Area 52 and The Cherry Poppin' Daddies.
Dustin Lanker, known as Lord Vargas Trilby in parts of Eastern Europe, began playing the piano as a child, a savant, one might say. Dustin has left his mark in Eugene's musical history as well, as a pianist in Spank, The Monastery of Swing, and The Burning Members. Not to mention having played three weeks worth of shows in Europe with Great Britain's founding fathers of Ska, The Specials.
Ask any songwriter worth their weight in salt, and they'll tell you it's hard to write a song about how things haven't worked out, without sounding like a whiny dumb ass. Dustin Lanker's lyrics tell personal stories of shortfall, missed chances, and regret that don't ask for sympathy. As the opening lines of the song "Pokerface" reveal; "It can't be true, no, I won't listen to you, you're lying and your pokerface is bad. You act so fake as though there's nothing at stake, but the ante is all I ever had."
The quiet intensity of the arrangements, lyrics, and musicianship on this album is astounding.
The Visible Men will be touring extensively in the spring and summer of 2002 in support of this album.
VISIT US ON THE WEB AT WWW.L
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