From Performer Mag West Coast Edition

Much like the Bay Area where this five-member indie rock band hails, Good City Lie Still's sound is ambient most times, thunderous at appropriate times, and highly eclectic at all times. The band touches on a similar echoey vocal reverb of fellow Santa Rosans The Velvet Teen, though doing without the electro infusions to produce a more natural and spacious sound. Their self-titled album keeps it melodically graceful with piano-laden ballads and sonic evolutions. And with expansive instrumentals and buildups throughout that coat closed eyes with vivid reverie, it's as visual as it is auditory.
The record approaches with "The City Rests Its Dying Soul" where Ross Giffen's tender vocals dance delicately with his keys, then strengthen and grow just as drummer Terrance Fleming picks up speed. Throughout the album, Giffen's voice ebbs and flows with a haunting elegance that ascribes the band's sound with a signature mood.

"The Bay'll Getcha" starts slow and steady then unveils a rocking force. Significant to this track is the warning "Look out" that begins and closes it. The lyric dresses the cut with an artistic flair as the "k" of each "look" is exaggerated with a heavily pronounced click that serves as a rhythmic heartbeat to the song.

As the album's most vast and varied tune, "Sonar" is a well-chosen final track. It floods with driving guitars and trembling vocal ranges, leaving a lingering trance long after it fades away. (Self-released)
www.myspace.com/goodcityliestill
-Robbie Salapuddin



From: The Big Takeover, by Jack Rabid
GOOD CITY LIE STILL
Good City Lie Still
(Good City Lie Still)
This report is tardy, but I only found out about the Santa Rosa, CA fivesome when this debut album was released, catching them opening for fabulous Fresno shoegazers SLEEPOVER DISASTER at San Francisco's Club Retox basement in November (at earthshaking volume). GSLS singer/pianist ROSS GIFFEN is the brother of Sleepover Disaster frontman LUKE GIFFEN, but any similar dreampop proclivities are supplanted by more from prog rock, mood rock, and even ambient rock. The younger, more assertive Giffen sounds little like Luke vocally, too, with a dramatic, deeper soar that's equal quarters Peter Gabriel, Rob Dickinson of Catherine Wheel, Damon Albarn, and especially Elbow's Guy Garvey. (What happened to them?) All seven lengthy, lugubriously lashing songs throb with an unexpected, undisguised menace, using post-punk time-stretching signatures, assured, tight playing, and, distinctively, Giffen's persistent piano—which prowls and circles the billowing, angry alterna guitars and rolling bass 'n' drums like a turf fight between cats, backs and tails up. One wonders what milieu this mélange of unyielding, sonically dense music might attract? Whatever, this big speakers-filling sound kicks impressively.


Thanks to both magazines for the positive reviews, and for the exposure! And thank you for reading. Be sure to check out both of these great music magazines!!!

www.performermag.com
www.bigtakeover.com