thanks to Purely Conversational for writing up one of our recent shows. 

Check it out to watch a vid of us playing "Buzzard Country" & see some pictures.

http://purelyrecreational.blogspot.com/2009/06/ford-fitzroy-pianos-may-20th-2009.html

Ford & Fitzroy were really tight, way tighter than most bands I see, and clearly taking this whole "music thing" seriously. I also enjoyed the tone of the guitars. Spot on. Whenever Mina hit that distortion pedal... it sounded huge! My one critique would be that the lead singer was a little reserved at times, not always matching the intensity of the rest of the band, but that's like just some shitty music snob's opinion. Keep up the RAAWK boys!

Black Seal Music (home of Albert Hammond, Jr?) just wrote a quick write-up of our recent show with Hallelujah the Hills and Cymbals Eat Guitars... which was an AWESOME show to watch from our end...

http://www.blacksealmusic.com/blog/ford-fitzroy-take-over-southpaw


>>>>>>>>>
Last night, Park Slope's Southpaw was packed with an eager audience to see Ford & Fitzroy. Ford & Fitzroy are a local New York band who recently released their first full length "Canyons" through the Cougar Label this past November.  Lead singer Jay Schneider is extremely talented, with a unique voice that permeates the crowd. He sings with emotion, taking rock back to the 90's with callous and conviction. He moves throughout the stage in a droll, while his other bandmates remain stoic, allowing Jay to take control. The band has been playing a lot all over New York and we recommend checking them out.

http://www.nypress.com/blog-4157-shilpa-ray-her-happy-hookers-wednesday-night-piano.html


We just played w/ Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers.  NY Press liked it.  So did we...

Grossly overlooked locals Ford & Fitzroy preceded SR HHH with an incredibly energetic set characterized by playful guitar interplay and Jay Schneider's unique vocal delivery. If you like classic indie rockers like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill and haven't heard these guys, do yourself a favor and get your hands on their debut record

Related content

NYPress Music Survey

Related to:shilpa rayhappy hookerspianosford and fitzroy

Canyons.

check out this review from Hear/Saysee/read:http://www.hearsay.cc/sub_pages/reviews_interviews/12-05-12-08/albums3-ford&fitzroy.htmlFord & FitzroyCanyonsReview By Andy ArgyrakisFort & Fitzroy takes its name from Van Morrison’s golden oldie “Madam George” off his now classic album Astral Weeks, and though the Brooklyn buzz band might be a lot more intense than that veteran, there’s a certain sense of timelessness throughout this full-length debut. In fact, the group already made major waves in the indie scene by performing several shows at this year’s College Music Journal Marathon in the Big Apple, followed by mounds of internet buzz from savvy bloggers of multiple taste making associations.However, the fivesome proves to be more substance than hype from the opening onslaught of “Las Vegas Blush,” which entrances with brooding guitars over front man Jay Schneider’s jittery delivery. “The Sleep Atlas” is additionally hypnotic in its execution, though despite its sluggish title, surges with sputtering chord progressions and piercing percussion. On a straightforward but equally alluring note, “In Search of Canyons” is a Southern-slanted garage rocker, while “Straight-Backed and Undeclared” is an eclectic pop descendent of something The Decembrists might string together.While “My Hands Will Paint Pictures On Your Tsar” and “Mussolini’s Eyes” are a bit abstract at face value, they’re nonetheless stacked with provocative metaphors. The finale “Handbags & Hand Grenades” features the best of both worlds, ingeniously framing the complex issue of war within the context of a movie set that spans over six minutes (filled by several epic swells and tempo shifts). Even if these concepts and soundscapes aren’t destined for commercial radio, the combination is more impressive and cohesive than most of the indie underground.

we are extremely happy and excited to announce that our debut album, canyons, will be released via the cougar label on 11.11.08. we will be playing a cd release show 11.07.08 at the studio at webster hall.

cds are available at insound and digital purchase at itunes, amazon, e-music and all those other places!

the track list is as follows...

las vegas blush
my hands will paint pictures on your tsar
buzzard country
the sleep atlas
mussolini's eyes
in search of canyons
those who would steal the moon
the doppler effect
straight-backed and undeclared
handbags & hand grenades

tris mccall wrote up this great review (mostly about jay) for the star ledger / newjersey.com...

http://blog.nj.com/jerseymusic/2008/11/ford_fitzroy_canyons.html

Ford & Fitzroy -- "Canyons"
Posted by Tris McCall November 03, 2008 12:26AM

It has been said, and not without good reason, that the band sounds like Modest Mouse. Maybe they do, and maybe they don't. But sonic resemblances are superficial, and so often they obscure the distinctions that genuinely matter. Mr. Whats-his-face from Modest Mouse is an expansive singer, but if you ask me, much of his hysterical theatricality feels forced. Jay Schneider of Ford & Fitzroy approaches the microphone like a man possessed, and scrawls all over the song like an unruly toddler. Sometimes he screams things like "where is our perspective?" as if he's about to break down in sobs; sometimes he comes charging out of the backwoods with a clutch of haywire prophecies and a diphtheria-sore throat. Now this could all be an act, but his urgency is completely convincing. These performances are as astringent as apple cider vinegar, with a tang just as true. Of course I love it; whether it works for you will depend on your tolerance for sick-cat screeching. What's indisputable is that Schneider has given himself some remarkable stuff to sing: the songs on Canyons are vivid, lucid, staggeringly literate, they contain quotations, conversations, and figures of speech; hell, they've even got subplots. You could pull the lyric booklet from the inside of the sleeve and pore over Schneider's verse the way you'd read a short-story collection. They stand up just fine without the music: they've got the requisite scope and dramatic sweep. For instance, kick-off track "Las Vegas Blush" begins with the sun fading jar-labels, tanning kids in California and baking the tarmac on the New Jersey Turnpike - and that's just the first line. From there, the song settles into a madly romantic, impressionistic reverie of richly-symbolic Americana, and that's pretty much where Canyons hovers for the next forty minutes. Because Schneider's observational eye is so restless and acute, it never feels like a holding pattern - he piles image upon mortared image like an expert mason. He covers territory: Nevada and the canyons of the West, the Black Hills, Texas, 8th Avenue, interstate highways, automobile backseats, and towns glimpsed through rearview mirrors. Much of his poetry has the quality of slo-mo film; images fading into memory even as crucial details linger. Left behind by a girl, Schneider thinks of the Doppler effect, which he then likens the endless recession of a parade: "frequencies that peak and fade", he sings, "shoeless boys, brass trombones, homeless acrobats... you wither, I wave". May your next breakup be so lyrical. I hesitate to make the comparison, because their perspectives and representational strategies are so different, but Jay Schneider's work is perfect for novelistic-rock junkies who are getting a wee bit tired of Will Sheff's endless tales of indie rock semistardom. Certainly Ford & Fitzroy share much with Okkervil River, especially on widescreen ballads like "Straight-Backed And Undeclared". But what else would you expect from a band named after a line in a Van Morrison song? Even if they'd rather make their six-strings do that one-string slot-machine jingle than solo, nobody here is running from classic rock.

read our answers in the NY Press annual best/worst list for NYC...

Ford & Fitzroy
1. Best Local Venue - Bowery Ballroom. people from around the world and new york agree. there's nothing left to say about it.
2. Album of the Year (by local band) - the titus andronicus one was great. the new harlem shakes one will be great.
3. Favorite NYC Record Storewherever zeb finds all those lost albums - i guess old people in bay ridge.
4. Best Unknown NYC Band i really like this album by gates of heaven. i don't know if its released or what, but i was really lucky to get my hands on it via china. weird vocal mash-ups, simple electronic beats, and nice progressions. usually i hate stuff like this, but these guys do it right.
5. Local Band You Wish Would Reunite remember the realistics? i saw them in like 2001, no, maybe spring of 2002 and they were great and got consistently worse after that. i saw them in london, boston, and new york. i would say them, circa 2001.
6. Best Live Band in NYCanything mick barr does. ocrilim, anything.
7. Best Local Record Label matador continues to be amazing. i guess we have to say cougar label, they're great.
8. Best Local Music Blog um, is brooklyn vegan a music blog? I don't really read it, but people seem to like it. oh, no. patrick and ohmyrockness. great guy, helpful service, good writing. ford & fitzroy votes for ohmyrockness.
9. Most Uncomfortable Music Venue To Perform/see shows - unfortunately have to say terminal 5. i love the bowery presents people and everything they do, but that venue makes good music bad. conventional wisdom says its only really worth seeing prince there.
10. Hardest Thing About Working in Music Industrylifting my stupid amp into and out of cars. i'm not very strong.

http://www.nypress.com/21/42/news&columns/feature4.cfm

hey everybody!

Here are the top twenty bands picked by fans, musicians, and writers by the NY Press. We are not one of them! BUT... we are "destined to one day rule the NYC music scene alongside Sonic Youth"

pretty cool. pretty cool.

...
http://www.nypress.com/21/42/news&columns/feature6.cfm

Not quite there yet, the following 19 bands are destined to one day rule the NYC music scene alongside Sonic Youth (who seems eternal in life):

Jealous Girlfriends, So So Glos, These Are Powers, Crystal Stilts, School of Seven Bells, Ford & Fitzroy, Harlem Shakes, Chairlift, Pela, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, O'Death, Free Blood, The Forms, Oakley Hall, Gang Gang Dance, TK Webb, Blood on the Wall, Religious Knives

jason has written up an awesome review of canyons (our lp) and our show at cakeshop (our show) check it out here w/ pics!

http://7inches.blogspot.com/2008/09/ford-and-fitzroy-at-cakeshop-9-6-08.html

The Cakeshop is the best venue, I can't believe it even exists in the heart of the lower east side. It's monumental, it's a historic place at this point and will be missed like CBGB's. Why am I composing it's epitaph already? It's that unbelievable it exists especially today with every space relocating to hopefully cheaper Williamsburg...why don't any of these places actually save any money to go out and buy a space?

I was describing the band to my friend Matt on the way there, saying the vocals are really specific, the only comparison that came to mind was Issac Brock or Conner Oberst (not that in either of these references he's attempting any kind of impression, it's completely his own style, but it's as unmistakable.) This combined with a solid soaring guitar section, that Explosions in the sky quiet chorus-y echo makes this a perfect combination of stripped away emotion through a near math, intricate song structure filter. It's as catchy and interesting as anything on This is a long drive...' As unobvious, uniquely interesting combination using the familiar rock elements in surprising ways.

Jay Schneider has this great ability to walk that line of abstract vocals that are at the same time so specific to some mysterious universality. You could easily read anything into them, but it doesn't feel intentional, it's a smart prose set to an ever changing rhythmic structure. Musically It's working because it's deceptively simple, the intricate parts are all adding up somehow effortlessly. Like in Las Vegas Blush, there's no way to predict where this intensity is going to end up, when it finally blows, it's epic and you can't wait to hear it again. But of course they know how to use this ferocity and balance it between the quiet breakdowns that doesn't sound conventional.

Capillaries fill like neon lights / rushing red / like murder in the snow
when you fly in your jet plane late at night / can you see / las vagas blush below

This energy continues on Ford and Fitzroy's full length Canyons. There's no predictability in the flow, every song is full of this disparate emotion. Is this overflowing optimism or the last gasp of a terrible tragedy? They can go from that near chaos wall of sound to foot tapping bass driven grove, changing all these great pieces... somehow fitting together... maddenly complex, even when consciously breaking them apart.

The differences live between the studio album are slight....the background vocal additions aren't essential, the at times atmospheric synth isn't missed..if anything a little of the energy feels restrained from the live show. Jay benefits from shouting above the high reaching wall of sound physically fighting with himself to will these emotions out. It still feels natural and not at all a rehearsed act.

I saw this reserved unassuming guy during the soundcheck change to someone completely given in, committed to the sound...at times, desperately screaming doubled over, bouncing up to the soundproofed ceiling...a little surprised at himself when the song was over.

Canyons completely stands up to repeated listens, every track has the same detail in construction and lyric. I find myself turning it up over and over... that's a sign for me of a great album.

Labels: cakeshop, ford and fitzroy

we're going to have a proper release for our debut lp, canyons.

we are really excited about this and will have more info on what/where/when/why/ and most importantly, who very shortly...