Jacco Gardner

2013 was the year of Jacco Gardner. After releasing his debut album “Cabinet of Curiosities” in February 2013, the now 25 year old dutchman has been taking Europe and the USA by storm.

It’s a hard realization to discover that the world may not be as magical and wondrous as you once believed, & reconciling ones loss of innocence and sense of naïveté is a theme that reoccurs often in art, music and literature. From ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to ‘God Only Knows’ the best articulations of lost youth can have a very visceral impact. The twelve tracks that make up the debut album “Cabinet of Curiosities” from Dutch multi-instrumentalist and producer Jacco Gardner deftly explore this territory in a far more accomplished and mature way than you would expect from a (then) 24 year old.

Jacco’s melodic palette colors music with a more U.K.-sensibility, where minor chords & plush harmonies brush up against strings, mellotrons, harpsichords & an occasional squeezebox. The overall feel is more Zombies than Left Banke and more Nirvana (UK) & Billy Nicholls than Beach Boys & Van Dyke Parks.

After releasing “Cabinet of Curiosities” Jacco Gardner and his band went on what became seemingly an endless tour. That took them to both coasts of the USA multipal times and included dates at SXSW, west coast dates with the Allah-Las and headlining shows at Chicago’s Empty Bottle and NYC’s Mercury Lounge.

Over in Europe the huge critical acclaim and relentless touring resulted in playing summer festivals from La Route Du Rock (France), Green Man (UK) and Lowlands (NL).

In the fall of 2013 Jacco Gardner came out with a new single, The End of August, again on the label that released Cabinet of Curiosites, Trouble in Mind. And also he contributed an exclusive song to the compilation that was put out to accompany his show at Liverpool Psych Fest 2013.

After another full US and EU tour in october and november of 2013. Gardner got a European Breaking Borders Award out of the hands of Jools Holland. An award that honours young EU artists succes abroad their home country and was given in the past to artists such as Adele, Mumford & Sons and Damien Rice.

2014 will se Jacco Garder taking some time off to write new songs and also will het attend Austin Psych Fest in May followed by a short west coast tour.
Calvin Love
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Calvin Love
Unafraid to play the tease, Calvin Love walks amidst a realm of conflicting dualism. His creative demeanor blending gritty exploration and an effortlessly cool croon. He’s hot and cold, twisted and beautiful and reels in your cozying affection through wistful verse, entrancing rhythms and weighty synthesized pleas. He strings you along. A thrust and a swoon, a lover lost, he asks you to come back to him. And you do. And then he leaves, with cigarette smoke marking his trail.

Through such casual flirtation, this Canadian bedroom punk out of Edmonton delivers suave and demented tunes, nostalgic and spun through otherworldly calculations. He’s a stranded space captain locked in his cockpit recording his final thoughts, or a madman explorer roaming the bush with mismatched socks, good luck charms in his pocket and a rucksack of illicit findings.

Since the press widely dubbed him an “artist to watch” in 2012 with his debut New Radar LP, thanks largely to his casual knack for pop hooks and wild child experimentalism, Love returns with the “Cool” single with some new tricks in his bag. Expanding his operation with a full band, there’s a new freedom that’s becoming on him with charismatic certitude to his delivery. Pucker up. He’s a dreary rebel of David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch’s making, wrapping you around his finger like a space-lounge James Brown. Over Latin bongo beats and a soul breakdown, he hoots, It can get so cold at night. Wonder be what keeps us warm.