The immensity of New York City and its Brooklyn contention, which acts under the sobriquet of the shit hottest, rock n rollingest place on the planet Earth, creates a habitation that would work even if it were to be severed from all other land. This isn’t a new idea in the least, but the thought of it – of not needing anything else but what may come in by way of the ocean – is one to give considerable thought to when thinking about The Subjects, one of an endless stream of Brooklynites slamming down drinks and making their own original imprints on the new sound. There’s already too much made of location and its effect on the music that one decides to make. It is appropriate to a small degree, but it’s the inner clockwork that gets folded up and moved whenever someone goes off to a new zip code. The White Rabbits are from Ozark Country Missouri, not Brooklyn, but all of the questions they’ll be asked will be shaded by a feeling of, “Aren’t you glad you’re reformed, you got to a REAL city and how has that changed you – because you could have never written Fort Nightly in dismissable Missouri?” What New York giveths in abundance is all the opportunity amateur psychologists need for studious involvement, for letting the concentration of spirits and the seemingly hidden feeling one can experience and believe in while living in a massive city run rampant throughout every soul. What comes of it is a playground for those interested in getting to the touchstone of what circulates the blood and warms the toes and cheeks of more than your peers or the easily empathized with. The Subjects flavor their jangling, bricks and mortar music with lyrics that pull in elements of hyper introspection and assumption based on extensive observation and surely, much of their rich wording can be derived from their adventurous movement and raging across this country, but the decisive load of what they present is an amalgam of the City’s ambiance. They breathe in the stained glass nature of New York life and then exhale it back, though they give something livable, not carbon dioxide. It’s a composite of all of the people and all of their padlocked desires and secreted beliefs. It’s something that is thought to be collected regularly, but the success rate on gleaning anything essential from the process is lowly. The working parts of this foursome are galvanized by the deafening parade of inner thought subsequence and they present those parts for us to see as prisms of discourse, where there’s no stopping their coming or going and where there is no pause.

Intro / Overview

“Our trip to Daytrotter ’07 was a blast. When Dave and I were watching the sun rise over the Chicago skyline from the rooftop of James’ apartment building, it was clear we would not be hitting the road at 10 a.m. As late as it was when we arrived, it was nothing compared to the debacle in ’06, when we sat in traffic behind a horrific accident for six hours on the highway and showed up with an hour to get everything done before the local nightly newscast in the adjacent building. It was great getting to see the Daytrotter gang. What a swell bunch of fellas. It would have been great to gamble on a riverboat casino, but we had to make a flight that afternoon, and that cut our recreating time completely out of the picture.” – Joe Smith, guitar ’07

First song
Saginaw (The Subjects) [3.17MB] [973 downloads]


– original version appears on Wise The Ease Grace Precision And Cleverness Of Human Beings
Dave Sheinkopf — Early on in this wild musical roller coaster, we found ourselves at heavy metal festival in Saginaw, Mich. The event was taking place in a field next to Tony’s, which served bacon in French fry baskets. We decided to go up and bother the promoters until they let us play. We waited around for a few hours and then someone came up to us and said we were playing in 10 minutes. The festival was outside on a beautiful day, and the audience was mostly young kids wearing all black, some with their faces painted white. Many of the other bands
had pyro. The audience reception was incredibly mild.
JS — We have been to Saginaw twice. Matt thinks I saw a ghost at his cousin’s apartment. Maybe I did, I don’t really care. The whole thing really freaked him out, though. It was the middle of February and I walked around the downtown area for about an hour. It was pretty cold.

Second song
The Edge of the Dime (The Subjects) [2.74MB] [975 downloads]


– unreleased
Matty Pickles — Started from me messing up a famous song that I was trying to learn. Once everybody got their hands on it the song changed a lot. I don’t think it sounds like the famous song anymore and probably never did in the first place.
DS — This summer while we were touring with Black Tie Revue we would usually play this song last, and they would always come up on stage and play along. Some shows, the number of people on stage was more than the number of people in the audience.
JS — As a unit of measurement, an edge of a dime is pretty small. This song, however, is bombastic. Usually when we play it live there is a laser-light show and some fireworks at the end. Sometimes when we’re down south, we have stunt men ride across the stage on dirtbikes and do jumps over the drumset.

Third song
Little Mountaintops (The Subjects) [2.03MB] [1012 downloads]


– unreleased
DS — My friend Robert Stillman left me a voice mail of himself playing this song on a Rhodes. I remember walking through Herald Square one night, passing all the closed department stores, and listening to the message over and over on my phone.

Fourth song
Speaking Parts (The Subjects) [3.15MB] [979 downloads]


– original version appears on Wise The Ease Grace Precision And Cleverness Of Human Beings
JS — First song on the debut album. This is our intro to the world. We played it last on this day in Rock Island. Every time I type Rock Island, it reminds me of the Johnny Cash song “Rock Island Line.” I don’t know if he wrote that song, it’s the only version I know. This song has a kind of rolling feel to it, so does “Rock Island Line.” That song is more like a train rolling down the tracks, this one is a little more laid back.

The Subjects Official Site