The Early Hours

There is a more than one band named "The Early Hours": 1. NYC pop band 2. Garage rock band from Perth. Australia 1.) Twisting together the sounds of new wave, hip-hop, and indie rock, The Early Hours make genre-bending music from NYC. Naturally, calling it “pop” music can be misleading given the bastardizing of that term to include studio-fabricated, profit driving Disney characters. But in so much as the word is indicative of creative & infectious fun, be it early Beck, the Cars, or those four lads from Liverpool, TEH are a pop band. The Early Hours began with one Eric James in an otherwise non-descript week of February 2008. As a teenager, James had become immersed in painting, photography, and especially music, the later landing him in NYC in 2007. After a briefly unproductive production stint, James sought to clear his head with something fresh and reflexive to the cityscape around him. Writing and recording one track per day, the resulting songs spoke from the indefinable moment before the events of the past are fully processed and the race of the new day is yet to begin. The result was the poignantly off-the-cuff A Week & A Day EP in March 2008 which, led by standout track “Saturday” (a.k.a “Backseat Lovers”), began accumulating over 100k MySpace plays. But the more Eric wrote, the more a clear problem arose: the beats were getting too big for laptop drum loops to handle. This was going to require someone with some serious percussive chops; cue close friend and percussion virtuoso Matthew Putman (Ester Drang, Lovedrug, Unwed Sailor). Melding Eric’s songs with Matthew’s big beat ideas, the two spent the end of entered Dark Horse Studios in Nashville with engineer/producer Rogers Masson for November/December ’08. Mixed/mastered by Dan Coutant and Alan Douches (Sufjan Stevens, My Morning Jacket), the results are resplendent hi-fi tracks, versed in the indie-ethic, that lift the original concept to a whole new level. For all the gravity of the songs’ subject matter, the essence is beat-laden Brian Wilson fun, fun, fun. Following the warm reception of 'Falling Elevators EP', especially in placements across network and cable television, the full-length album 'Twistification' was released in April 2010. http://www.myspace.com/theearlyhours 2.) The Early Hours began in January 1995 when brothers Kirk and Chet Pohl decided to join forces with school friends Matt Davis and Sean Carthew and form a garage band with the express purposes of writing and recording their favourite style of 60’s influenced pop. The band never intended to perform live and in fact recorded their first album with Tom Thorpe at Bonsai Studio’s before they had ever played a gig together. They were influenced by The Sunnyboys, The Hoodoo Guru’s, Redd Kross, The Stems, The Plimsouls, and The Barracudas. After pressing 500 copies of their self titled debut album, the band decided that gigging was necessary in order to sell and promote their music. Kirk and Chet were working in the mines in Kalgoorlie Western Australia while Sean and Matt were studying and living in Perth some 350 miles away. The band began alternating gigs between Perth and Kalgoorlie and rehearsing whenever Kirk and Chet could make it to Perth. The band sent some copies of their album to Spinning Top Records who solicited the album to their contacts in Europe. After a good response from many pop labels in that region of the world, a deal was struck with the Berlin label ‘Twang’ who released the album on vinyl as The Early Hours Greatest Hits Volume 1. This limited release has become a sought after collectable through out the world and is actually selling second hand at a higher market driven price than it was new. Just prior to signing the deal with Twang, The Early Hours were unearthed in Kalgoorlie by Radio Station Triple J. This lead the band to some high rotation airplay and a much higher profile in Perth and the east coast. All of a sudden they had gig offers coming in from everywhere but Twang had invited them to tour Europe so they set their sights in that direction rather than the east coast.After returning from Europe the band was extremely tight, but emotionally and financially drained. They took about two weeks off to ponder did they want to keep playing. The chance of a You Am I support came up and after that gig moral was high and supports for The Hoodoo Guru’s, Powderfinger, and The Stems reunion show followed. By this time the band had recorded a new album again with Tom Thorpe and began taking to Phantom Music about the possibilities of releasing and developing the band. The Early Hours are now signed to Phantom Music and released their second full length CD, tilted 'Evolution', on the West Australian sub label Rocket, and a vinyl version on Melbourne’s Corduroy label. They head back to Europe in October 1998 with over 40 gigs confirmed, a limited edition double vinyl release in France and a strong following in the region. The band is also beginning to establish a strong following on the East coast of Australia and have toured there twice. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.