Lions In The Street: Lions In The Street

By Michael Toland

http://www.bigtakeover.com/reviews/lions-in-the-street-s-t-hand-to-mouth

     We’ve heard it a million times: rock & roll is dead. The idea of using three or four chords to bash out feel-good riffola with lyrics that commemorate sex, hard times, triumph and heartbreak is so passé it makes skiffle seem revelatory. The pundits who endlessly push this notion point to the charts for support – if the almost sublimely derivative JET is all we’ve got to prove the form’s vitality, we are indeed in deep tiger poop.

Friends,

Get thee, and thee, and thee over to www.lionsinthestreet.com and order a copy of our debut full-length album (self-titled).

This record comes after four years of trouble -- it's a true blue collar record that took 'Blood, Sweat, and Years' (eat your heart out TVT).

Special thanks to Shawn Cole (producer/engineer/mixer extraordinaire: second to none) and Rob Darch (Mushroom Studios), who made impossible things possible.

Lions

Here's the first review, from HeroHill.com

http://www.herohill.com/2009/09/reviews-lions-in-street-self-titled.htm

Without launching into another pointless debate on the value of art, musicians today aren’t pushed on pedestals like they once were. With bloggers dissecting records to lukewarm levels before they even get released and the simple fact that going to a rock show isn’t the life changing experience it once was, it’s hard for any act to gain the cache needed to become legendary. It’s funny, but on Metric’s new record when Haines wonders if you’d rather be the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, it’s painfully obvious that the statement holds much more weight than someone asking ten years from now if we’d rather be Metric or Nickelback... or U2 or Coldplay or Radiohead.

It’s easy to assume that cheap recording techniques makes it easier for bands to put out shitty music and downloading and has made it easier to find new bands (and easier to dismiss them), but for me what’s gone is the freedom people got from listening to songs decades ago. Rock n roll used to be loud and hopeful, or beautiful and sad. Irony and self-pity weren’t the dominating themes, so music was often the only escape from the constricts of life, love, or war. Good songs got played on the radio, were popular and artists weren't ashamed of that.

Which I guess is why it’s so perfect that Lions in the Street play music my parents could have loved – not now (jesus, don’t get my dad started on the state of music if Fucked Up can win anything), I mean twenty years ago. The Vancouver band has escaped the chains and shackles of a terrible record contract with TVT and long since forgotten the big studios they were pushed into and now record in more gritty locations more suited to who they are. Their EP – Cats Got Your Tongue (review) – was recorded in a basement, and channeled the sounds of The Stones and The Allmans perfectly, plus they threw in a healthy dose of R & B for good measure. It was the type of 5-song affair that reminded you that rock wasn’t dead, and proved that not all rock revivalists were simply rehashing classic sounds.

Flash forward to their new self-titled record, and happily all I need to say is that the sound remains the same. They boys aren’t afraid to melt your face off with huge riffs and intricate guitar work, but never jump into the dangerous realm of wankery. No, the band just bangs out classic rock jam after classic rock jam. If the huge guitar, sing-along chorus and harmonica that explode out of the gate on Moving Along don’t wake you up, I’m not sure anything will, but after opening on such a high, you'd expect some sort of slip. When it comes to Lions in the Street it’s the consistency that's most remarkable and why it's damn near impossible to turn the record off.

I’ve heard 14 songs from the band, and not one is a throw away. The banged out piano that duels the guitar on Gold Pour Down or supercharged, road ready anthem Already Gone power you through the first third of the record before you have a chance to breath. Luckily, they hit you with the morning after balladry of Lady Blue, a song that could be fused into countless Cameron Crowe movies if the film maker every stumbles upon LITS.

You can’t help but think of barbeque, muscle cars, juke box favorites and high school nights when you sink into this record. The killer harmonies on Walking Back to You oozes a swagger and confidence that most bands don’t have the chops or the balls to pull off. They launch into a full on jam for the last half of the song and your head starts nodding and that little white man’s overbite takes over your face. They keep the pedal grounded on the single, Hey Hey Arlene, another scorcher that benefits from classic rock n roll guitar work and Jerry Lee Lewis piano work.

I could go on and on – in fact I already have – because every song on this record takes you to a time where music mattered and musicians were people you wanted to hang out with, not a bunch of pasty faced, sad bastards trying to drag you down to their melancholic realm. No, even when LITS slows it down and gets runover by love (All Because of You), they splice in some beautiful, subtle steel to peak your attention. I know the boys from Vancouver had their one brush with celebrity and the results almost ruined them, but if they keep hammering out classics, they aren’t going to have a choice in the matter. Gigs will be packed, drinks will be guzzled and for a few brief hours, they will make us all feel alive again.

Our debut self-titled album will be available from www.lionsinthestreet.com on October 17th, as a download or mail-order CD.  Vinyl, retail, and iTunes to follow. 

The first 'single', 'Hey Hey Arlene', will be up later this weekend.

The LP release party is in Vancouver on Saturday, October 17th, at the Media Club.

Blood, sweat, and Years to get to this.  Thanks to Lil' Jon and Pitbull for making it happen!

Lions

OK, here's the background on the EP.

Several of the EP tracks are songs that would have been part of our debut LP for TVT Records.   After a crazy producer search (flying to Connecticut to meet with Bob Ezrin; flying to LA, where we stayed at the W Hotel and met with Todd Rundgren; working with AC/DC producer Mike Fraser at Bryan Adams' Warehouse Studio in Vancouver; demoing a song with Gilby Clarke from Guns and Roses at his studio in Los Angeles; working with that Raiders fanactic Matt Hyde at the Armoury in Vancouver), we bunkered down with Dave Cobb at Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles for a six weeks.  Dave is from Georgia, and has produced Shooter Jennings and Jamey Johnson.  He's a first-rate guitarist with killer gear (we used a real '59 Les Paul on a bunch of these, as well as my '58 Tele).  We ended up fighting with TVT (who didn't?) and the record never came out: we couldn't agree on a mixer, and they bailed on plans our then-manager Allen Kovac made to mix with Steve Thompson (Appetite for Destruction, Milk and Honey) in rural Massachussets.

The demo, "Never Make A Fool of Me", chronicles the circumstance related above: watching something you've put everything into fall apart because of professional incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

And the new song, "Shangri-La", is from our upcoming LP, recorded to tape (listen for the tape hiss!) with Shawn Cole at Mushroom in Vancouver.  It's a serious record, with heavy jams and the best songs we've written---from Everly Brothers ballads to James Gang slide guitar rockers---just wait and see. 

http://www.bigtakeover.com/reviews/lions-in-the-street-mixtape-ep-hand-to-mouth


Once known as the Years and signed to the currently bankrupt TVT Records, LIONS IN THE STREET
left behind an onerous deal and a debut LP thrust into limbo for
artistic freedom and a new life as an independent rock & roll unit.
The band put the excellent Cat Got Your Tongue EP out in 2006
on its own Hand to Mouth label; after a couple of years of roadwork and
recording, the Vancouver quartet releases another aperitif as it
readies the new version of its first album.


The Mixtape EP, available as a download from the quartet’s website, combines tunes recorded with producer DAVE COBB
for the aborted TVT album with a demo and a preview of the upcoming
full-length. “Shangri-La,” the latter, is a primo ass-kicker, the kind
of tune the ROLLING STONES haven’t been able to knock out since Exile On Main Street.  The other four songs, whether rocking (“Never Make a Fool Out of Me”), rolling (“Oh Carolina”) or romancing (“Still the Same”), are damn near
as good, especially the brooding ballad “Ruthless.” Worth every megabyte, especially for fans of rock & roll in the style of the Stones and the FACES.


-Michael Toland

Hey, we're off to SXSW again this year.  And in advance of the festival---and in advance of our LP---we've released our 'Mixtape' EP, available by free download from our website.  Lots of mixed bits and pieces: old songs we recorded at Hollywood Sound in LA for TVT, new songs we recorded at Mushroom with Shawn Cole, and a demo. 

If you like them, throw a coin in the busker's hat (Paypal donation button). 

We've got an EP release show on Saturday, February 28, at the Media Club, so come out!

We're releasing another free by donation EP from our website this week.  The songs are now up streaming on our myspace!   Check 'em out! 

A few older tracks we did in LA with Dave Cobb for TVT, a new one, and a demo. 

The full-length will follow.

Tell your friends, and Happy New Year
Lions


Here's the tracklisting, go get it:

Shangri-La

Still the Same

Oh Carolina

Ruthless

Never Make A Fool of Me

Here's how we made the record: 2 days of tracking, 4 guys who can play in a righteous-sounding live room with a Neve, killer mics, and crazy preamps/compressors (Mushroom), one serious engineer/producer (Shawn Cole), one 2' tape machine, one foosball table, a '58 telecaster (for real), a gold top Les Paul (not for real), 60's Ludwig, '67 Fender Jazz, a bunch 'o tweed Fender amps, a mighty Canadian Trayor 50-watter (ssshh...secret weapon!), and a whole bunch of good songs and buddies to help with keys, harp, singing, etc.

The Room:





The 'ProTools' rig:



The Gear:





The 'Champ'?



Buddies:





TCB: