The prolific and chameleon-like modern rock quintet Transcendence recorded this bold and beautiful collection of post-modern garage rockers and lush seventies-style piano ballads that the band in their garage studio in 2004. It just may be their best effort to date. And that says a lot coming from the very prolific and experimental group that features the impassioned vocals of Ed Hale and the guitar histrionics of their well known and much respected guitarist Fernando Perdomo. Nothing is Cohesive, the band’s third CD, is raw, unrefined, and surges with an honest musical sensuality that is breathtaking at times. It mixes a variety of classic and modern rock styles in a surprisingly cohesive listen for how far-out the band was willing to travel in their sonic explorations to achieve something completely different from last years Sleep with you. Transcendence has been enjoying major radio success across the country with their hit single “Superhero Girl,” while bridging the gap between passionate new-rock with an old-school melodic seventies rock. While their over the top electrifying live performances have been taking indie-music audiences by storm, there has been a slow-brewing flurry of anticipation over their soon to be released new CD entitled Nothing is Cohesive. The album’s off the cuff schizophrenia has been described as “Radiohead meets Lou Reed or somewhere in between.” The new CD, which the band recorded in a garage studio with no producer on-hand, may be their most honest work to date.
Nothing is Cohesive, the band’s 2005 release that earned them 5 star reviews and A+ reviews from coast to coast.
At first listen The City of Lost Children could be, more than anything else, a testament to how much great talent we have been lucky enough to work with over the last eight years in TRANSCENDENCE. From musicians to songwriters, producers, engineers and singers, we have been very lucky and truly honored by all the brilliant hearts and minds that have worked and played with us. TRANSCENDENCE has always been more of a community rather than simply a band of five guys. It’s a community of music, about music, founded on music, flowing out of music. Music was from the start the spark that ignited the formation of TRANSCENDENCE. We came together as strangers attracted to one another because of our shared love and passion for music. Music of all shapes and sizes and styles. We stay together for the same reason. Over the years we have been blessed almost divinely to be open to anyone who wanted to stop by the studios, say hello and talk shop, and ultimately lay down something of their own on whatever project we happened to be working on. This album perhaps owes more to this idea than anything else we have ever released simply because it pulls together 14 songs from various phases of our working together as a group and spans a period of over 8 years.
Stylistically the Lost Children collection also bears witness to the fact that those pesky critics may be more accurate in their assertion that TRANSCENDENCE has been all over the map than we ever cared to admit; hence the Nothing is Cohesive album title but where has it ever been written that artists of any medium are supposed to stick with the same style throughout their careers or even within the context of one work? TRANSCENDENCE has always gotten off on exploring different musical territories as a group. In fact the more diverse and eclectic our musical explorations are the more stimulated we as individuals become. Truth be told, writing and recording a song such as Whenever I’m with you, a song which at first listen might appear to be far removed and light years away from “our usual sound,†was no more difficult or challenging than one of our more typical indie rock or brit-pop styled songs. With a few more listens it gets easier and easier to recognize the same five guys in that song. This collection of songs, as disjointed as it may be when gathered all under one roof, does run the gamut from R&B to straight ahead alt-rock to Brasilian pop to avant-garde experiments in sound, and yes it may seem odd that the same group and various other stragglers and fellow explorers found it so appropriate and commonplace to try our hands at so many different styles of music. But luckily for all of us we never questioned this aspect of ourselves. We just forged onwards, critics be damned, and did whatever we wanted to in order to get ourselves off and maintain that high and inspiration that compelled us to come together in the first place.
Because of the general over the top eccentric nature of each member of the band, I have noticed that we have actually found it more difficult to create straight ahead commercially accessible pop and rock at times compared to the more esoteric and experimental stuff that has managed to make its way onto our albums. But that’s TRANSCENDENCE. At times this yearning to branch out and cover as many bases as possible has created problems for the band. With producers, with engineers, with record labels, distributors, DJs especially, critics, other musicians, and perhaps even with fans. Over the years we have had to make sacrifices artistically and cut certain tracks off of albums in order to make them more cohesive and streamlined. Even if we were madly in love with those tracks. At other times it was more of a question of just space or just having too many songs for one disc. And occasionally a single or two has gotten recorded and for whatever reason never found a home and made it to an album.
So more than anything else for us as a group these various reasons make The City of Lost Children a very special album indeed. It was an idea we had been harboring for years and just never had the time to see through. It may seem odd, and perhaps even strategically impractical, to release an album such as this when we have two new albums coming out in the same year. Most artists and labels save projects like this for dormant periods in between recording sessions or when the band is on tour. But as trite as it sounds because so many musicians say the exact same thing about their songs, almost every song we birth and take the time to explore and record as a group does have a very special place in our hearts regardless of whether or not it ever gets released. This makes The City of Lost Children a very very special project to each of us. For the first time we were able to sit down and reflect and reclaim all of our lost children and pool them all together so they had a permanent home and were lost no more. Compiling this album gave us all a sincere feeling of relief and satisfaction and completion. For music fans we hope that some get as much pleasure from being able to have access to all of these rarities for the first time under one roof as we did in putting the album together. As always thank you for listening.
The new album from multi-faceted singer/songwriter Ed Hale of the indie rock/power pop outfit Transcendence is entitled Ballad On Third Avenue and is a melodic feast that should appeal to the same audience that loves the music of Wes Anderson films, the Garden State soundtrack, Simon & Garfunkel, Nick Drake, Bright Eyes, or Coldplay. Known for being unabashedly willing to take risks on and off stage, on his first solo outing in years, Hale cranked down the volume and slowed things down, way down with Ballad. Not one electric guitar was used on the album. Instead Hale and producer and fellow Transcendence bandmate Fernando Perdomo (of Dreaming In Stereo) crafted a moving and delicate acoustic pop record that features a sparse but lush arrangement of pianos, a variety of acoustic guitars, cellos, flutes, organs, mellotron, tambourine, and handclaps that serve as the perfect backdrop to the most personal and intimate lyrics Hale has ever recorded. Another surprising twist, five of the album’s eleven songs were cowritten with up and comer lyricist Tyler Bejoian. Ballad On Third Avenue just might increase Ed Hale’s brand name recognition in the national spotlight more than any of the prior eight albums he has released over the last ten years owing to the fact that the album still feels and sounds comfortably edgy and independent – so should easily please long-time fans in the indie world; “Hello My Dove,” the title track “Beautiful Losers,” and “Incompatible,” are classic Ed Hale melody and over the top high drama and passion. But Ballad also sounds surprisingly commercial at some points. The first song on the album “Scene In San Francisco” could be James Blunt, Five For Fighting, or David Gray. The second song and first single “I Walk Alone” will be the first Ed Hale song, with or without Transcendence, to ever go to commercial Top 40 hit radio. Other standout tracks on the album are the Irresistibly catchy “It Feels Too Good” and “Architect’s Daughter,” as well as the six-plus minute political flame-thrower “New Orleans Dreams.”
