Walking Bicycles - Go?

Artist: Walking Bicycles

Album: Go? (2009)

 

Location is everything. A small coastal town with long rainy days in the heart of the redwood forest led founding members Jocelyn (vocals) and Julius (guitars) to create dark, lonely songs on their self-titled 2005 EP.

That year the two moved from Arcata, California to Chicago, Illinois changing location and band members. They added Jason Leather on bass and in 2006 released their second EP, "Disconnected," which was aptly titled. The songs were dark and edgy but when put together their seemed to be an underlying disconnection to the album. Rightfully so; the band had just moved and wrote the album with three different drummers while they were laying the groundwork for their record label, Highwheel Records. Walking Bicycles felt the discontinuity and decided to play into it, recording half of the album with producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine, Fruitbats) at Engine Studios and the other half with engineer Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana) at Electrical Studio.

In late 2006 Walking Bicycles moved once again. This time from an apartment in the trendy Wicker Park neighborhood to a small three-storey coach house in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, affectionately coined by the band, Old San Juan. They added drummer and native Chicagoan Johnny Mars to the official line up and began to hone their sound. The four, energized by their new surroundings, spent a couple years practicing in their basement creating their next release. They were able to get back to the basics; writing songs inspired by the weird little place that they live.

 

Review

"Since moving to Chicago from the misty verdure of Arcata, California, Walking Bicycles have made themselves at home, in part by starting a label, Highwheel Records, whose roster includes La Scala and Unicycle Loves You. Their hooky, restless postpunk—mightily focused on the 2006 EP Disconnected by the efforts of Brian Deck and Steve Albini—has a sharp big-city bite and savory whiffs of Wire, Pixies, and early Siouxsie. Since that recording, founding members Jocelyn Summers (vocals, percussion) and Julius Moriarty (guitar, vocals) and Chicago addition Jason Leather (bass) have found a permanent drummer, Johnny Mars, for their first full-length, ¿Go? (High wheel), ten tight, spiky, beautifully paced tracks that glow with what sounds like the sheer joy of playing. " - THE CHICAGO READER