The New Year

My review of The New Year's album The End is Near appeared in today's edition of Seven Days. Seven Days policy is to review local bands or national bands that are playing at a local venue. So, fans of The New Year may wonder how they wound up in a Burlington paper. Well, bass player, Mike Donofrio now lives in the area which qualifies them as local in our book. This may appear a bit like the US national soccer team claiming David Regis as an American just so he could play left back but I don't care because The New Year is a damn good band. Much better than Regis was at left back.

Back in the mid-90's, a friend in grad school turned me onto Bedhead which featured a pair of brothers from Texas named Matt and Bubba Kadane. I loved their albums WhatFunLifeWas and Beheaded. The wall of fuzz they created was punctured regularly with very addicting melodies. However, I lost track of them towards the end of the millenium and only rediscovered what the Kadane brothers were up to after meeting Mike.

The New Year has a similar sound to Bedhead except the songs are slightly easier to get into. Bedhead showed glimpses of a more approachable side with songs like "Felo de Se" and "Smoke" which can now be heard in tunes like "Gasoline" and "Chinese Handcuffs".

The New Year isn't currently touring but Mike said that the next time The New Year tour on the east coast he is going to try to encourage a Vermont show. You can download a few live tracks on this site.

Also, you can see their video for "Disease" here. The video rivals Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's video for "I Gave You" for the most minimalist video I've seen in the last few years.

The New Year - Gasoline (from their previous album, Newness Ends)
The New Year - Chinese Handcuffs
The New year - Disease