The Damnwells tour dates for 2009

"After all the touring we had done I feel like when we got in the studio to make Air Stereo, it was like, 'Here we are. This is what we are, and this is where we are.'" Alex Dezen, the singer/guitarist of The Damnwells, shoots straight about taking on new sonic challenges for their new album, Air Stereo, that ultimately expanded the pop sensibility which had always been an essential component to the band's approach to both songwriting and recording. "It was a great experience to have people coming in to play horns and strings," Dezen says of such tracks as "Keep A Little Organ" and "Kung Fu Grip Kiss," before acknowledging with a laugh. "Listening to the guys take these songs that I had written and make them into something unique and special was really exhilarating." The Damnwells are guitarist David Chernis, drummer Steven Terry (ex-Whiskeytown), and Dezen's former Bard College classmate Ted Hudson on bass, as well as a cast of friends and strangers that allowed the band to realize their vision for a lush and full collection of songs while stepping outside the more standard insurgent roots rock of their previous album, Bastards of the Beat. The opening, "I've Got You", sets that tone of limitless possibility as Dezen drops a number of references to 80s classics against an accidental guitar solo that just happened to fit the song perfectly. "I was playing and I had the amp loud and my headphones off, they didn't even tell me they were rolling," Chernis recalls. "I went in the booth and they were like, 'That was amazing' it ended up lining up perfectly. I was kind of pissed at first but then I just laughed." Some would say it's better to be lucky than good but if you can be both, as well as fearless with a batch of great songs that you're willing to turn inside out to get to someplace special, you just might be on to something. Making Air Stereo, The Damnwells were willing to take chances and ultimately let the songs determine in which direction they should go. "When we made this record it was made in a studio with the purpose of making a record," Dezen explains. "When we made Bastards of the Beat we had been making recordings for a while and realized we had a bunch of stuff that we could make into a record. The nature of this project was different from the conception." That difference included extended sessions spread between Brooklyn Recording in Cobble Hill and Mission Sound in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with the band sharing production duties with Wes Kidd and John Kaplan. "The last one was just a long labor of love," Terry recalls. "This was an opportunity to go in and make a more cohesive piece of work." Hudson agrees, even making a comparison to Dezen's and his shared alma mater. "Bastards of the Beat was very DIY, punk rock and as a result we got raw sounds and a sort of desperate energy. This one felt like the difference between going to an Ivy League school, which is traditional and is what you envision as college in your mind, and a wacky non-traditional school like where I went, Bard." In the case of "You Don't Have To Like Me To Love Me" and "Kung Fu Grip Kiss" the winning element was horns, while "Keep A Little Organ" and "Graceless" embrace strings. Backing singers add a smooth moodiness to "Golden Days" and on cuts such as "Louisville" and "Shiny Bruise" with the poignant lyrical lament, "For every time I doubted you, I give myself a shiny bruise," the benefit comes from laying back and giving the song room to breathe. If "You Don't Have To Like Me To Love Me," a tale of the search for temporary companionship, showcases the band's playfulness, then the equally haunting and ferocious "God Bless America," with such evocative visions as "...mountains and prairies to the prisons and malls, I've got a bible and a Barbie doll. God bless America and her kodachrome flag."