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Self Against City
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HQ: Sacramento, CA NOW PLAYING: Telling Secrets To Strangers (RUSHMORE/DRIVE-THRU; drivethrurecords.com) WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: Self Against City have toured the country with bands like Quietdrive and Houston Calls, inked a record contract with one of the most beloved indie labels and do more than whine about the girls who broke their hearts. YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: Acceptance / the Starting Line / Midtown Don't let Self Against City's fairy-tale record deal fool you; just because the Sacramento quintet were signed to Rushmore Records (a subsidiary of Drive-Thru) a mere few months after their inception in early 2004 doesn't mean the pop-rock band haven't undergone their share of drama to get to where they are today. "We've had so many things go wrong in the last two years and we've still figured out a way to fix everything," says SAC singer Jonathan Temkin of the obstacles the band overcame to make Telling Secrets To Strangers. "The drummer and the bass player who recorded on our album quit the band right after we recorded. [Before that,] our bass player had a brain tumor so he had to get that removed six weeks before we recorded our EP. There's definitely a [VH1] Behind The Music story in the making here." Fortunately, the band-Temkin, guitarist Jack Matranga, dummer Justin Barnes, bassist Hunter MacDonald and guitarist Jeff LaTour-turned near tragedy to triumph as they penned the tracks on their debut, like "Ready And Willing" and "Even The Strong Won't Survive," proving that love isn't the only fodder for song. "On the first release that we did [2005's Take It How You Want It EP], all [those songs were] inspired by relationships," Temkin says. "But with our new album, we wanted tell a story about all the stuff that had been happening in our own lives. We wanted to write about something nobody else could write about. So with our album we've gone on a lyrical mission and each song is a chapter in a story. We try to tackle big issues and have them apply to what's going on in our own lives but are ambiguous enough that people can apply them to themselves and take something from it." -Emily Zemler |
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