Words by Brendan

It’s 2009. My burgeoning interest in indie music leads me all over the internet and, in particular, to eMusic. I quasi-randomly click through the “Similar Artists” links on every page, sampling songs and buying what I like. I come across a band with the somewhat odd but intriguing name of Buildings Breeding. I stream a few samples and am immediately hooked. I buy the only album available there, and later order it on vinyl from their website because it’s that good. Mere months later, the band announces they are breaking up, puts out a free EP as a “farewell record”, and disappears into the ether. I am extremely bummed. But it’s not 2009, is it? It’s November 2011 and here I am writing about this band. This tale is nowhere near finished, friends …

Buildings Breeding / Stacking Up Reasons
Buildings Breeding / Emmawood
Buildings Breeding / Anchor Song

I can still remember hearing the catchy little bass line and warbly surf guitar melody of “Beesting” and feeling like I had to hum/whistle along. You just can’t help it! After the first couple listens, I picked up the words and started to sing along: “Fall from a flat and special height / And it’s alright / Land on my feet and walk destructive lines / And it’s alright”. The same goes for most of their songs—listen and get hooked, sing along soon enough. (I even attempted to put this lyrics wiki page together, but had trouble filling everything in, and then the band found it and did it for me. Hooray!) “Stacking Up Reasons” is the opening track on that self-titled album I bought online and it is a perfect introduction to the Buildings Breeding oeuvre, if you will. The guitar strums, hooky bass melody, handclaps, singalong chorus … it all adds up to something special, beautiful, and endlessly listenable. It seems, though, that for every BB song that makes you want to clap and sing along, there’s a haunting tune whose mood and lyrics reach into your heart and give it a hearty twist and tug. “Emmawood” was the first such tune I really fell for, and I still love it. The stuttered percussion starts it off and carries it through while the acoustic guitar and ethereal keyboard (I think?) notes build an atmosphere of mysterious depression, but it’s the vocals that absolutely make this song work. The way Melanie Glover’s voice rises while pleading “Please don’t go” and then abruptly cuts off … that fucking slays me. Every time. “Youth Is All That’s Left” and “History” hold similar appeal, for me, while “Little Dummer Girl” and “Pitter Patter” satisfy my upbeat indie rock fix.

Buildings Breeding / “History” / In The Key Of Calloused Fingers [Devil In The Woods, 2009]

 
That self-titled album I found was (nay, is) great, even though many of the tracks feel and sound like demos, with some sparse production, although I think that’s part of the appeal. That said, the vinyl album I bought, In The Key Of Calloused Fingers, contains many of those same songs but it sounds much richer, fleshing out some vocals and filling in some sonic spaces. (It even comes on beautiful, rich limey green vinyl with hand-painted artwork! That was one of the best little packages I’ve received. I even have a friend who would always ask me to “play that green record” whenever he came over.) That “farewell EP” I mentioned takes this idea even further. Kite Fire finds the band plugging in all of their guitars and amping up (hah) the kind of richly textured indie rock stylings they had in them all along. It’s a quickish run of 7 songs, but it’s got as many hooky melodies and singalong parts as anything else I’ve heard. “Anchor Song” is one of my faves, with the passionately shouted vocals, and “Death On Tax Day” has a strangely catchy ssolemn/evil vibe to it (not strange given the title, but given the band’s other songs). All in all, the point is that I was disappointed to learn of BB‘s breakup when it happened, but I was pefectly satisfied with the music they had left for the world.

 
Imagine my complete surprise and elation when I saw a Facebook post not much more than a month ago about how the band was playing together and recording new material! I was aware of frontman Christapher Larsen’s ongoing solo project, Flowerss, and thought the kind of ambient dream pop songs he’s making are all well and good, but I’ve been jonesing for some new Buildings Breeding stuff, and now it’s here. They’ve started a “Record Club” wherein they’ll release a new track from their forthcoming album, Mammoth Tusks, every so often as they get put together, “flying by the seat of their pants”. If you like what you hear here, send them an email to join the club. As a preview, stream the first track they’ve shared, entitled “The Flood”, above. Meanwhile, I’m gonna go keep listening to these two prior LPs of theirs,Emmawood and LP 2, that I discovered on their Bandcamp page that just appeared in the last few months. I didn’t know these were out there and I had pretty much given up on hearing more songs of theirs, but here they are, full of hidden gems, demos, early versions of later songs, and just general indie pop awesomeness. I am very excited, and you will not be disappointed, friends. This story is still nowhere near finished …

Buildings Breeding on the web: Facebook / Bandcamp / Twitter / Blog

Filed under: New to Us, New to You?