Interview with BU Today
08.24.09Last summer, about to begin their senior year at BU, the four members of the indie-rock band You Can Be a Wesley spent an intense two weeks recording their debut album in vintage fashion: all-analog, using studio equipment from the 1960s.
A year later, Saara Untracht-Oakner (COM’09), Nick Curran (COM’09), Dan Goldenberg (COM’09), and Winston Macdonald (CAS’09) are ready to release the effort, Heard Like Us, with another throwback aspect: the only physical copies available for purchase will...
(more)Last summer, about to begin their senior year at BU, the four members of the indie-rock band You Can Be a Wesley spent an intense two weeks recording their debut album in vintage fashion: all-analog, using studio equipment from the 1960s.
A year later, Saara Untracht-Oakner (COM’09), Nick Curran (COM’09), Dan Goldenberg (COM’09), and Winston Macdonald (CAS’09) are ready to release the effort, Heard Like Us, with another throwback aspect: the only physical copies available for purchase will be on vinyl.
“We figured nobody really cares for CDs anymore — what do you do with a CD?” says bassist Curran. “Vinyl is a piece of art. It’s big, it’s tangible, you can hold it. I think it’s nice to have something that you can hold. And you get the digital files along with it.”
The band members, who met in West Campus and recorded their first songs in Claflin Hall, collaborated with Pretty & Nice frontman Jeremy Mendicino (the owner of the all-analog studio) on Heard Like Us, which the new music network CMJ calls the “ideal feel-good summertime soundtrack.” Curran says that while fans of the group’s live shows may recognize some tracks, laying them down in the studio under Mendicino’s guidance created a very different sound.
“We’re a lot more streamlined, and it’s a really nice rock ’n’ roll sound,” he says. “Plus, when we went in with Jeremy, he was just brilliant. There would be times when he was down at the mixing board, and Saara would be upstairs singing, and he’d say, ‘No, no, you’ve got to move a foot closer to the mike.’ We were like, ‘How do you know that? You’re three rooms away.’”
The band recently garnered a Best New Act nomination in this year’s Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll and is gearing up for a fall tour with fellow Allston-based rockers Magic Magic.
“I’m beyond psyched,” Curran says.
Link: http://www.bu.edu/today/2009/07/17/remember-vinyl-bu-band-turns-it
Somerville Art Beat Festival Review by Boston Phoenix
08.24.09A review of our outdoor set at the Sommerville Art Beat festival:
http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2009/07/22/out-you-can-be-a-wesley-at-artbeat.aspx
Enough Kareoke with EnoughCowbell.com
08.24.09Here is an absurd night on the town we had with music blog EnoughCowbell.com. Note: not for the faint of heart:
http://enoughcowbell.com/2009/03/04/enough-karaoke-you-can-be-a-wesley/
Live Review by Boston Phoenix
08.24.09If May is the month in which you typically hunt down your hot summer jam — and you’re not big on Auto-Tune — a quartet of Boston University students (just a few weeks shy of graduation) who call themselves You Can Be a Wesley may have the answer. “Creatures,” the set-ending song the foursome played at T.T. the Bear’s on Friday night, incited much drunken dancing, with appreciative yelps and limbs flailing, by what seemed to be the band’s sizable posse. Despite their obvious bias, YCBAW’s into...
(more)If May is the month in which you typically hunt down your hot summer jam — and you’re not big on Auto-Tune — a quartet of Boston University students (just a few weeks shy of graduation) who call themselves You Can Be a Wesley may have the answer. “Creatures,” the set-ending song the foursome played at T.T. the Bear’s on Friday night, incited much drunken dancing, with appreciative yelps and limbs flailing, by what seemed to be the band’s sizable posse. Despite their obvious bias, YCBAW’s intoxicated pals were onto something: “Creatures” is a hook-fraught love letter to the guitar-heavy, indie-rock greats of the early ’90s (Pavement et al.), but not in a tired way. The song builds up momentum via lead singer Saara Untracht-Oakner’s anthemic chorus, then slows down at the bridge, just before she erupts in a burst of wails.
It’s “catchy as hell” according to Brad Searles, who helms the Allston-based music blog Bradley’s Almanac, and who hand-picked YCBAW to play this Almanac-hosted show. Searles started the Almanac back in 2001, in the days before a tsunami of music blogs flooded the Internet, and he’s been dutifully posting live concert MP3s and show recommendations ever since, becoming a quiet force on Boston’s music scene along the way. Despite the fact that he’s been chronicling his music obsession for nine years, this was only the second show he’s hosted; the first was a Film School show at T.T.’s last year. The occasion for this second ’Nac-fest — which included another Boston-based band, the Hush Now, an acoustic duo from Vermont called Let’s Whisper, and a Minneapolis band called Now, Now Every Children headlining — was “pretty straightforward,” Searles wrote on his blog. “I just want to see these bands play their songs for me. And for you.”
That sort of earnestness characterized the scene at T.T.’s, where Searles set up a table of free CDs and mini-cupcakes, YCBAW offered handmade, stuffed “Wesleys” they’d crafted in their tour van while traveling last summer, and Now, Now Every Children advertised free hugs. No surprise, the mini-cupcakes disappeared first. Now, Now are evidently very young (with black-markered X’s on their hands, and talk of their first-ever tour), but their music — electro-pop twee held together by the vocals of Cacie Dalager — was anything but juvenile. Dalager even calls the Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson to mind. Engaging as Now, Now were, by their final song, the crowed had dwindled, and the increasingly unavoidable Electric Six (playing the Middle East downstairs underneath us) rumbled us out the doors.
-- Caitlin E. Curran
Link: http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2009/05/06/review-you-can-be-a-wesley-and-now-now-every-children.aspx
Audio Slideshow from Bostonist.com
08.24.09http://bostonist.com/2009/07/24/you_can_be_a_wesley_audio_slideshow.php
CMJ Review
08.24.09The warm, vintage sounds on Boston-based quartet You Can Be A Wesley's debut full-length were recorded straight to two-inch tape last summer by Jeremy Mendicino of fellow Beantown locals (and Hardly Art signees) Pretty And Nice. Finally set for a vinyl-only self-release on July 20, Heard Like Us presents the ideal feel-good summertime soundtrack.
Though poppy hooks, whimsical imagery, handclaps and tambourines shimmer throughout, the record is not overly sweet. It features Joanna Newsome-e...
(more)The warm, vintage sounds on Boston-based quartet You Can Be A Wesley's debut full-length were recorded straight to two-inch tape last summer by Jeremy Mendicino of fellow Beantown locals (and Hardly Art signees) Pretty And Nice. Finally set for a vinyl-only self-release on July 20, Heard Like Us presents the ideal feel-good summertime soundtrack.
Though poppy hooks, whimsical imagery, handclaps and tambourines shimmer throughout, the record is not overly sweet. It features Joanna Newsome-esque vocals and memorable sing-along choruses while also presenting clear rock 'n' roll sensibilities. Straightforward, repetitive guitar riffs, Pixies-inspired bass lines and aggressive drum beats see-saw perfectly against the lighter, lovable notes, all of which are wrapped up in a surfy analog haze.
The eight-song collection opens with "6/8 Tengo," a vocal-free minute and forty-eight seconds of hazy guitars mixing with airy cymbals, and continues with the high-energy “Stuck In a Battle,” with its group-chant opening and clear, articulate lyrics.
"Kiddie Pool" offers endearing bits of nostalgia as frontwoman Saara Untracht-Oakner sings, "Kiddie pool with a popsicle/Fell off and you laughed and it made me cry." In "Wildlife," her enchanting vocals shift between dreamy verses and sporadic "ooh"s and "aah"s before she urgently wonders, "Why'd you have to mess things up? Why'd you have to mess things up?" The album's best moment is its lead single, "Creatures," which is equal parts early Jenny Lewis (via its vocals) and early Kim Deal (with its bass lines).
You Can Be A Wesley's habits of changing tempo and building crescendos keep the entire record danceable—whether the listener is swaying their body to its slower numbers or bopping their head to the guitar-heavy, up-tempo tracks. Energy builds slowly into surprising explosions of guitar and huge refrains, making each track on the album catchy, infectious and bound to be stuck in your head all summer.
By Liz Pelly
Link: http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=131048068
Interview with BU Today
08.24.09Last summer, about to begin their senior year at BU, the four members of the indie-rock band You Can Be a Wesley spent an intense two weeks recording their debut album in vintage fashion: all-analog, using studio equipment from the 1960s.
A year later, Saara Untracht-Oakner (COM’09), Nick Curran (COM’09), Dan Goldenberg (COM’09), and Winston Macdonald (CAS’09) are ready to release the effort, Heard Like Us, with another throwback aspect: the only physical copies available for purchase will be on vinyl.
“We figured nobody really cares for CDs anymore — what do you do with a CD?” says bassist Curran. “Vinyl is a piece of art. It’s big, it’s tangible, you can hold it. I think it’s nice to have something that you can hold. And you get the digital files along with it.”
The band members, who met in West Campus and recorded their first songs in Claflin Hall, collaborated with Pretty & Nice frontman Jeremy Mendicino (the owner of the all-analog studio) on Heard Like Us, which the new music network CMJ calls the “ideal feel-good summertime soundtrack.” Curran says that while fans of the group’s live shows may recognize some tracks, laying them down in the studio under Mendicino’s guidance created a very different sound.
“We’re a lot more streamlined, and it’s a really nice rock ’n’ roll sound,” he says. “Plus, when we went in with Jeremy, he was just brilliant. There would be times when he was down at the mixing board, and Saara would be upstairs singing, and he’d say, ‘No, no, you’ve got to move a foot closer to the mike.’ We were like, ‘How do you know that? You’re three rooms away.’”
The band recently garnered a Best New Act nomination in this year’s Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll and is gearing up for a fall tour with fellow Allston-based rockers Magic Magic.
“I’m beyond psyched,” Curran says.
Link: http://www.bu.edu/today/2009/07/17/remember-vinyl-bu-band-turns-it
Somerville Art Beat Festival Review by Boston Phoenix
08.24.09A review of our outdoor set at the Sommerville Art Beat festival:
http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2009/07/22/out-you-can-be-a-wesley-at-artbeat.aspx
Enough Kareoke with EnoughCowbell.com
08.24.09Here is an absurd night on the town we had with music blog EnoughCowbell.com. Note: not for the faint of heart:
http://enoughcowbell.com/2009/03/04/enough-karaoke-you-can-be-a-wesley/
Live Review by Boston Phoenix
08.24.09If May is the month in which you typically hunt down your hot summer jam — and you’re not big on Auto-Tune — a quartet of Boston University students (just a few weeks shy of graduation) who call themselves You Can Be a Wesley may have the answer. “Creatures,” the set-ending song the foursome played at T.T. the Bear’s on Friday night, incited much drunken dancing, with appreciative yelps and limbs flailing, by what seemed to be the band’s sizable posse. Despite their obvious bias, YCBAW’s intoxicated pals were onto something: “Creatures” is a hook-fraught love letter to the guitar-heavy, indie-rock greats of the early ’90s (Pavement et al.), but not in a tired way. The song builds up momentum via lead singer Saara Untracht-Oakner’s anthemic chorus, then slows down at the bridge, just before she erupts in a burst of wails.
It’s “catchy as hell” according to Brad Searles, who helms the Allston-based music blog Bradley’s Almanac, and who hand-picked YCBAW to play this Almanac-hosted show. Searles started the Almanac back in 2001, in the days before a tsunami of music blogs flooded the Internet, and he’s been dutifully posting live concert MP3s and show recommendations ever since, becoming a quiet force on Boston’s music scene along the way. Despite the fact that he’s been chronicling his music obsession for nine years, this was only the second show he’s hosted; the first was a Film School show at T.T.’s last year. The occasion for this second ’Nac-fest — which included another Boston-based band, the Hush Now, an acoustic duo from Vermont called Let’s Whisper, and a Minneapolis band called Now, Now Every Children headlining — was “pretty straightforward,” Searles wrote on his blog. “I just want to see these bands play their songs for me. And for you.”
That sort of earnestness characterized the scene at T.T.’s, where Searles set up a table of free CDs and mini-cupcakes, YCBAW offered handmade, stuffed “Wesleys” they’d crafted in their tour van while traveling last summer, and Now, Now Every Children advertised free hugs. No surprise, the mini-cupcakes disappeared first. Now, Now are evidently very young (with black-markered X’s on their hands, and talk of their first-ever tour), but their music — electro-pop twee held together by the vocals of Cacie Dalager — was anything but juvenile. Dalager even calls the Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson to mind. Engaging as Now, Now were, by their final song, the crowed had dwindled, and the increasingly unavoidable Electric Six (playing the Middle East downstairs underneath us) rumbled us out the doors.
-- Caitlin E. Curran
Link: http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2009/05/06/review-you-can-be-a-wesley-and-now-now-every-children.aspx
Audio Slideshow from Bostonist.com
08.24.09http://bostonist.com/2009/07/24/you_can_be_a_wesley_audio_slideshow.php
CMJ Review
08.24.09The warm, vintage sounds on Boston-based quartet You Can Be A Wesley's debut full-length were recorded straight to two-inch tape last summer by Jeremy Mendicino of fellow Beantown locals (and Hardly Art signees) Pretty And Nice. Finally set for a vinyl-only self-release on July 20, Heard Like Us presents the ideal feel-good summertime soundtrack.
Though poppy hooks, whimsical imagery, handclaps and tambourines shimmer throughout, the record is not overly sweet. It features Joanna Newsome-esque vocals and memorable sing-along choruses while also presenting clear rock 'n' roll sensibilities. Straightforward, repetitive guitar riffs, Pixies-inspired bass lines and aggressive drum beats see-saw perfectly against the lighter, lovable notes, all of which are wrapped up in a surfy analog haze.
The eight-song collection opens with "6/8 Tengo," a vocal-free minute and forty-eight seconds of hazy guitars mixing with airy cymbals, and continues with the high-energy “Stuck In a Battle,” with its group-chant opening and clear, articulate lyrics.
"Kiddie Pool" offers endearing bits of nostalgia as frontwoman Saara Untracht-Oakner sings, "Kiddie pool with a popsicle/Fell off and you laughed and it made me cry." In "Wildlife," her enchanting vocals shift between dreamy verses and sporadic "ooh"s and "aah"s before she urgently wonders, "Why'd you have to mess things up? Why'd you have to mess things up?" The album's best moment is its lead single, "Creatures," which is equal parts early Jenny Lewis (via its vocals) and early Kim Deal (with its bass lines).
You Can Be A Wesley's habits of changing tempo and building crescendos keep the entire record danceable—whether the listener is swaying their body to its slower numbers or bopping their head to the guitar-heavy, up-tempo tracks. Energy builds slowly into surprising explosions of guitar and huge refrains, making each track on the album catchy, infectious and bound to be stuck in your head all summer.
By Liz Pelly
Link: http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=131048068
There are no upcoming shows at the moment
If you're having any problems with your order, or any other website-related issues, please contact You Can Be A Wesley's webmaster at support@musicfloss.com.
Location: Allston, MA, United States
Formed in: 2006
You Can Be A Wesley began, like most good things, in a dimly lit basement. Born of books and boxes, guitars and cheap equipment, the Wesley’s struggled to make their first recordings in the spring of 2006 after meeting at Boston University.
Their story ranges from the appropriately catastrophic to the absurdly hyperbolic. Their first show met its downfall at the hands of an ex-con sound guy, stoned and fresh out of jail. Their back-story involves the creation of existence and their subsequent sonic birth, with them purported to be the dissemination of a divine entity.
In the summer of 2007 the Wesley’s descended into a Northeastern University basement with friend Mike Post to record their Feed the Moon, Starve the Sun EP, a buoyant, poppy affair brimming with the whimsical exuberance of a band newly formed. The tracks resonated within the east-coast surf community, as studio 411 picked the EP’s title track for 2007’s Best Laid Plans surf film and SurfLine.com has since featured several of their songs.
Following Feed the Moon’s release they have gathered a consistent fan base throughout the northeast by playing most of Boston's rock clubs, and touring throughout New England and into New York.
In the following summer of 2008, the Wesley’s once again sought refuge in a basement studio, this time belonging to Jeremy Mendicino of Hardly Art’s Pretty & Nice. With Mendicino helming the expedition (entirely on analog equipment), they recorded eight new songs in three weeks straight to two-inch tape. The recording done, they toured the east coast (playing shows with Passion Pit, Sky Larkin and the Wailers along the way) and left the country in separate directions pursuing studies abroad.
Upon their return they immediately set to work playing sold-out shows at local clubs and preparing for the release of their album Heard Like Us. Initial reactions to the album have garnered the Wesley’s a nomination by the Boston Phoenix as one of the Best New Acts in Boston, as well as shows with Boston notables Hallelujah the Hills, the Bon Savants and indie-heroes Cymbals Eat Guitars.
You Can Be A Wesley plans to tour extensively this fall and support the hell out of Heard Like Us.
