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| Hometown | San Francisco, CA |
| Genres | Synth Pop, Indie Rock |
| Band Members | THE NEW UP is:<br/>ES Pitcher: vocals, guitar<br/>Noah ... » more |
| Achievements |
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| Upcoming Shows | None |
| Contact Information: | |
| # Years Experience Performing Live: | 4 |
| Market Draw: | Home Market: 251-300 |
| Performing Rights Society: | ASCAP |
The New Up’s music has been described in many ways, but NBC said it best when they called it "A clear standout... [this] San Francisco five-piece specializes in dark, dreamy rock with gorgeous female vocals", or perhaps Flagpole hit it on the head when...
The New Up’s music has been described in many ways, but NBC said it best when they called it "A clear standout... [this] San Francisco five-piece specializes in dark, dreamy rock with gorgeous female vocals", or perhaps Flagpole hit it on the head when they coined the band’s music as, "striking, exotic and brashly coherent indie pop that feel[s] like the sonic equivalent of a thrill ride". However you describe it, The New Up’s music promises to integrate catchy and interesting vocal melodies, ethereal vocal harmonies, powerful lyrical themes and beats that make you wanna move.
In their San Francisco artist pad known as the Pleasure Pad, they have spent the last twelve months intensively writing and crafting their upcoming release. With a heavier helping of electronics being served up on this newest effort, The New Up is incorporating the sleek electropop feel into their music that has so long mesmerized them in the works of some of their influences. This new direction continues a long tradition of artistry in their song craft that inspired Performer Magazine to refer to their music as “creating an artful sonic balance that’s miles beyond the typical indie-rock release... smooth, elegant vocals... and expert pop arrangements." and prompting Behind the Hype to call them, "Metric with a touch of The Rolling Stones, with a front woman with an addictive, classy, lingering voice."
By creating these new tracks in their home studio by building around the electronic parts of the songs, they’ve evaded any confines of the band’s prior standard formula of guitar, bass, drums, flute and electronics; bringing their sound smack dab into the center of contemporary electro rock. Featuring ES Pitcher on vocals and guitar, Noah Reid on guitar and vocals, Hawk West on flute and automation, Erik Lekas on bass and Aaron Xavier on drums, the band has gained a reputation for their energetic and performance-based live shows. However, with the exception of a couple of national and international festival appearances in 2011, The New Up has largely been locked in the sonic “laboratory”, away from the lights, costumes and crowds of the stage. Having previously spent much of their time on the road, with three National tours and countless regional tours under their belt, this is the greatest amount of time the band has spent strictly in the studio.
The New Up released their fourth studio effort, Gold, the final in a series of three EPs, at the end of 2010. Broken Machine, the first critically-lauded EP in the series, charted on the CMJ Top 200. The second EP in the series, Better Off, garnered extensive national airplay and earned positive reviews from numerous critics. The Athens Banner-Herald observed that Better Off "bears a song craft light years ahead of many contemporaries," while Blogcritics said the EP "exemplifies how The New Up has not only grown as a band over the years, but why they can't be boxed into any particular genre" and "proves The New Up is getting better at what they do all the time". The band has been featured on MTV2 countless times and was crowned #1 Bay Area Break Out Band by fans on MTV2 and Ourstage.
Instrumentation
ES Pitcher - Vocals, and Guitar
Noah Reid - Guitar, and Vocals
Hawk West - flute, and Automation
Erik Lekas - Bass
Aaron Xavier - Drums, and percussion
Discography
"Gold" - CD released 10/26/10 (11/11/10 in the EU)
"Better Off" - EP released 8/18/09
"Broken Machine" - EP released 8/26/08
"Palace of Industrial Hope" - CD released in 2007
All albums available in stores all over the United States and European Union.
Streaming Tracks on iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, Pandora, Jango, Rdio, Spotify and hundreds of other digital sites through IRIS Distribution.
Radio airplay: "Broken Machine" debuted and spent several weeks in the CMJ Top 200. Tracks from The New Up's four studio releases have been played on KFOG San Francisco, KUT Austin, Sophie Radio San Diego, WXAV Chicago, KSLU St. Louis, WMSE Milwaukee, CIUT Toronto, CKUT Montreal, KALX and KPFA Berkeley, KPFK Los Angeles, KDUP and KBOO Portland, KVMR Nevada City, WPPJ Pittsburgh, KFAI Minneapolis, WORT Madison, WRUV Burlington, KHUM and KUSP in Humboldt County, KZSC Santa Cruz, WBOI Fort Wayne, KOPN Columbia, MO and much, much more.
Photos
Videos
Photos
Videos
Front woman ES Pitcher mixes seduction and menacewith gothic grace in the New Up's smoldering,post-punk-brushed dance-rock.
Veering towards the new wave side of rock, San Francisco’s The New Up (as in “down is the new up”) has further spit-shined its sound with third release, Broken Machine. Jaimeson Durr, who helmed...
Front woman ES Pitcher mixes seduction and menace with gothic grace in the New Up's smoldering, post-punk-brushed dance-rock.
Veering towards the new wave side of rock, San Francisco’s The New Up (as in “down is the new up”) has further spit-shined its sound with third release, Broken Machine. Jaimeson Durr, who helmed the band’s Palace of Industrial Hope full length (not to mention his work on sessions with Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and other big-timers), has given this five-song EP maximum punch, creating an artful sonic balance that’s miles beyond the typical indie-rock release and closer to something one might expect from a major label with money to spend. Of course, this sound has just as much to do with the rock-steady rhythm section of drummer Jack McFadden and bassist Dain Dizazzo, flanked by lead vocalist/guitarist ES Pitcher, guitarist/vocalist Noah Reid and, the cherry on top, ornamentalist Hawk West on flute and “automation” (read: laptop). No, the flute never does take a lead role in The New Up’s sound, but rather it slides snugly into the mix, most effectively realized on “Just Because.” Though Pitcher’s smooth, elegant vocals are well suited for upbeat numbers, the songs on Broken Machine follow a more serious path. Typical of the EP’s overall tone is “Libations,” which is less of a celebratory drink and more of an expression of disappointment: “A fading space that once was mine / a never changing point of view.” The music, however, tempers the words with slow-moving vocal lines and expert pop arrangements. Yet this is actually a double-edged sword that cuts the whole EP – the messages carried by the vocals tend to get lost amidst the music’s infectiousness. This would be fine for a band that writes silly lyrics simply for their musicality, but for a band like The New Up, whose music has been described as “an ontological Molotov cocktail for modern primitives,” they can easily afford to be more hard-hitting and emphatic with their vocal lines. -Michael Fortes
[title track] 'Broken Machine' is set against a heavy bass line, a flurry of distorted guitars, and an occasional sprinkling of keys, with ES Pitcher's sultry vocals enhancing the sensuous display of alt-rock and post-punk. Most music of the genre tends to be gritty and instrumentally disoriented, but 'Broken Machine' emits an unconventional tone of polished anguish and melancholy; it is one of the several components that are responsible for the song's success... rarely do you come across an EP where the majority of tracks are even better than a preceding album that was impressive in itself.
The New Up decorate their trippy new wave with fetishisized guitar play - gentle wah-wah abuse and the kind of noodling that evokes Neal Schon, back when Journey was a guitar-geek band - held together by frontwoman ES Pitcher, whose thick voice has the irresistible presence of a Glace Slick or Deborah Iyall. They laid all this down in their self-titled, self-released debut album, and it looks like their follow-up is going to be a gem: the tracks move with a seething, aggressive kind of dream logic.
The New Up give modern rock a good name. Watching them sweat and shimmer in the smoke of the Bottom of the Hill stage one felt compelled forward, thrust – no, that's not the right word - coerced into the beckoning arms of what's next, a tomorrow that's scary and hopeful and full of unknown things. This young, highly precocious S.F. band reminds us of bright possibilities even as they ruminate on today's bog water mess, and this national tour kick-off and EP release show did so in a most visceral way. Outside of a spot of spread leg, cock rock stage antics from hirsute guitarist-singer Noah Reid (who also dropped a Cheap Trick At Budokan reference, though he probably picked it up from the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head), there's nothing backward leaning about The New Up, no genuflecting before the clichés of yesteryear. It didn't take a whole song to pick up on their current bent – a puckish roughness in service of really catchy songs – and it didn't take two songs before one wondered why this band isn't already all over video games, diet soda commercials and Gossip Girl montages. None of which is to say they court the mainstream but there's a slinky coolness to what they do that only requires more ears, more exposure in order to woo way more fans. There's plenty of music I adore that has zero chance of commercial success. What I dig about the Up is how they sacrifice nothing artistically in their popish streamlining. Awash in their glandular surf, I couldn't help but think of early Roxy Music, middle period Sioxsie and even Joy Division – all greats that put art before commerce but still managed to make music with broad appeal. A mixture of ad hoc stage outfits – Reid's lounge singer, chest exposing dress shirt, lead singer E.S. Pitcher's $8 dollar thrift store dress that she made work like vintage Debbie Harry – and post-modern Motown bodily interpretations, The New Up are a blast to watch, always interesting and full of neat angles. They put on a show in addition to being quite serious musicians, and in terms of pure entertainment they'll give just about anybody a run for their money. The mixture of technical concentration and slightly wild-eyed enjoyment on the faces of Dain Dizazzo (bass), Jack McFadden (drums) and Hawk West (flute, electronics, keys) was nearly as alluring as the more extrovert appeal of Pitcher and Reid, who admittedly are hard to take your eyes off of. Charisma, you just can't manufacture it. They launched with "Benny Hinn" from their last full length, Palace of Industrial Hope, a blur of grungy guitars and snare snap that sends your head spinning, raw gold like P.J. Harvey before she sat down at the piano. And while they could just ride their new wave chooglin' and leave it at that, "Hinn" is peppered with odd digressions, ideally placed open air pockets that clear the steam away to reveal cool, green grass in your mind, and then back into rock with a decidedly dancey undercurrent. The crucial rhythm team and West's well-placed complications made sure even the most obvious "rock" moments shimmied a bit, generating an off-kilter, lighted dance floor with earthquake uncertainty. Hinn" was followed by the entirety of their brand new EP, Broken Machine (see JamBase's review here), played in sequence. From "Ginger Tea," which could be a nightclub hit in the time of Blade Runner (they love this one in the off world colonies...), to the gunfire percussion crack and flute dappled hardness of the title cut to the standing-on-your-own-two-legs anthem "Just Because," the band played with a sense of live possession, overtaken by forces greater than five musicians, shining a light that comes from the invisible world behind all our surfaces. They tacked on three more in their short set, finishing with a tune that sounded like "Foxy Lady" slipped some synthetic muscle relaxer and angried up with strobe flashes and snorting guitar bursts, while Dizazzo and McFadden kicked it John Paul Jones/John Bonham style behind Pitcher's kitten purr and bottleneck slide. Taken together it was enough to make one downright hungry, and it's only decorum that kept me from taking a friendly nibble. Another smitten fellow had earlier shouted, "I want to have your baby!" to which Pitcher replied, "I'll think it over." With a sneer John Lydon would appreciate and a sound Blondie wishes they could make today, The New Up are a fleshy, fantastic thoroughbred that reminds us to "pump up the jam/ your life's in your hands," and does so without irony or gutless disco intent. For them, shimmy and roar rest in their double bed and grind beautifully.
...the songs are excellent examples of grungy, female-fronted alt-rock. ES Pitcher's vocals are deadpan when they need to be and aching otherwise; melodies are strong... and compelling hooks and riffs land in all the right places.
In the luxurious breakroom here at SN&R, right next to the lab experiment-sploched microwave, are piles of books, DVDs and compact discs discarded by various editors who’ve deposited them there after coming up for air by digging themselves out of the mountains of books, DVDs and compact discs piled atop their cubicles. Considering the amount of swag that’s sent here, every day is like Christmas, but every Christmas present is socks. Still, I make it a habit to rummage through the free-stuff pile and give a CD or seven a spin in my computer while dribbling out this drivel you’re reading now, which must go a long way toward explaining all the curse words you’ve been reading lately. On one such sonic journey, I was not ready to drop F-and CS-bombs, however, having been pleasantly taken back years ago, to the first time I heard Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the radio. “Wow,” I thought back then, “Siouxsie Sioux cut a new album." Joke was on me, as it was when I played my breakroom freebie and immediately thought, “Wow, Siouxsie Sioux and Karen O have had a bastard love child. That bastard love child would be ES Pitcher, the singer/songwriter/ guitarist for the San Francisco band The New Up, whose website makes no mention of the obvious product of a Sioux-O coupling, although it does refer to The New Up sound as incorporating “the rocking channel surfing feel of Ween with the pointed female roar of P.J. Harvey and Garbage. Garbage, I doth protesteth. Slide in The New Up’s new release, Palace of Industrial Hope, cue up the third tract, (“Learning to Crawl”) and tell me if the musical intro and Pitcher’s vocals don’t sound like something Ms. Sioux could’ve mp3'd last week. Or that "Chewbacca’s Garden” couldn’t have been cut by a Siouxsie and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs supergroup (or Karen O and the Banshees for that matter). Or that the opener (“Arkansas”) doesn’t sound like the vocals from whatever protoplasm would squirt out of a Siouxsie-Karen O sandwich. And, oooo-eeee–yoooo, all your Siouxsies lie in dust.
The New Up are brazen but keep their cool by matching aggressive songwriting with rocksteady new-wave style on Palace of Industrial Hope, a sleek, sultry work worthy of its mystical name.
On Broken Machine, The New Up bring their moody dance-rock to a boil and keep it there. From the first moments of lead track 'Ginger Tea,' the EP oozes smoky atmosphere, as if Metric and My Bloody Valentine had collaborated on the soundtrack to a David Lynch film... Sounding like the twin sister of former Denali vocalist Maura Davis - particularly on the EP's emotionally-charged title track - and supplying every bit of the sultry, soaring delivery that the comparison implies, ES Pitcher's voice is truly something to behold... Relaxed but rocking, dark but poppy, tempestuous but delicate, moody but playful, the band maintains a careful balance, avoiding tactical errors that turn lesser bands into accidental camp rock.
To hear greatness in its germinal stage is intoxicating. Bookending the festival, San Francisco's The New Up was all prickly erogenous zones and contemporary disquiet. The quintet channels the future-forward zeitgeist of Radiohead, Lake Trout (who they covered), Talking Heads, and TV on the Radio. Singer E.S. Pitcher is a dizzying blur of hips and lips, seductive as memory with the sharp tang of the lash -- a thoroughly modern frontwoman that's actually a woman, and not some whiney little girl. Superb, tight playing fuels a compellingly varied approach broad enough to rope in tweakers, hippies, and library bound indie kids. Subtle electronics and processed flute scuttle predictability, and while their predominantly compact compositions avoid bloated excess, there are enough guitar tangents to appeal to Pavement and Ween fans. Singing about how "lonely machinery distracts us from our lives," there's a sense of giddy desperation in their sound that feels downright prophetic. Cute as hell in a scruffy sort of way, the New Up have the makings of a "Next Big Thing." They're a Luaka Bop band waiting to happen, a tastemaker cooked up from a recipe book of their own design.
