Get Help

It is with much pride, conceit, vanity, and egotism that we announce our debut album The End of the New Country will be available on the mighty Midriff Records come Oct 14. Much to our astonishment, The End of the New Country was picked up early by the extremely, extremely intelligent and all-around-awesome Robin Hilton at NPR, who gave it a pretty positive review. Thus spake National Public Radio:

September 8, 2008 - A self-proclaimed “supergroup of unknown musicians,” Get Help makes gloomy but thoughtful guitar-rock that would fit comfortably in the post-punk era of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Get Help’s two primary members, Tony Skalicky and Mike Ingenthron, were in elementary school when bands like Joy Division were making music. But on their new CD, The End of the New Country, the duo cribs from post-punk with enough honesty and talent to keep from sounding like a cheap knock-off.

Skalicky and Ingenthron, who write and record in New York, take turns on lead vocals. Skalicky unabashedly channels Joy Division’s Ian Curtis (or Interpol’s Paul Banks), and for some listeners, that might be too much of a turnoff to get through the whole album. But Skalicky’s time at the mic fuels the album’s most compelling and memorable moments.

The End of the New Country opens on a somber note with “Traveler’s Shave Kit.” Plaintive guitar strums, gentle rhythms, a little slide guitar and mellotron set an appropriate tone for an album that scarcely cracks a smile over the course of 15 tracks.

The album’s title cut, like much of the CD, is full of resignation, as Skalicky sings about a world on the brink of collapse, with mobbed streets lined by burning buildings. “I think we’ve reached the end of the new country,” he sings. “And I think we know the rest of its history.” It’s grim, to be sure.

But it could also signal a new beginning: By the end of the album, with the dramatic squalls of feedback on the closer “Growing Circles,” the band seems to say that everything is going to be all right. “I am searching in growing circles,” Skalicky sings. “And I will find you, I am certain.”

Despite its darkness, The End of the New Country isn’t a downer, though it’s undeniably brooding and introspective. But there’s enough inspired beauty in the lyrics — and consistently impressive guitar work — to make the music uplifting at times.

When not working as Get Help, Skalicky is the singer and guitarist for the Boston-based group The Beatings, while Ingenthron is in the New York group Strikes Again. The two collaborated on the songs for The End of the New Country over the Internet, with help from Rob Machold, William Scales, Daniel Parlin, Dennis Grabowski and Gene DiAvolio.

Further readings, also by extraordinarily intelligent and wonderful people:
Clicky Clicky Music
Hard Times
Blogcritics.org

The End of the New Country contains many of the lo-fi doodlings featured on this blog, but we took our skeletal laptop recordings into the studio and rebuilt them from the ground up, recording just about everything over again until we reached a Foo Fighterish plain of production value. We’ve posted some mp3s below, and there some new tracks on our Myspace page, where they shall stream for all eternity.

Now, to make the most of this blessed event, we are performing live several times before we retreat into our dens to hibernate:

Sunday, Sept 28, 9:30, $8
PA’s Lounge
345 Somerville Ave.
Somerville, Mass.
Mike and I will be performing an acoustic set as a duo.

 

 The End of the New Country [2:35m]: Play Now | Download

 

 Red Jacket Orchards [4:15m]: Play Now | Download

Hello, one and all. We have returned from a (gulp) 8-month exile from the blogosphere. ‘Exile’ might be a bit harsh, as it was more of a sabbatical. A sabbatical where, instead of engaging in travel, study, and/or the betterment of ourselves, we recorded an album. Well, two. Sort of. Whatever it was, exactly, that we did do, it prevented us from posting to our beloved blog, a situation we intend to rectify, right quick. We are, after all, a ‘blog band’, and to our bog, we must bland. We have not been sitting idly on our hands these past 7 months, no matter how much fun we actually do find in that activity, and have some mp3s ready for imminent foisting upon ye. We thank you for your patience and for keeping up with the site. Details on the aforementioned recordings will be coming soon, believe you me.

I haven’t shown up in these parts for a few months; treat a post from me at our little page with the same incredulity you would a Sasquatch sighting. But there’s some housecleaning to do…
In this post Tony introduces the new, (and instantly afterwards) latent feature of the Get Help Remix. In the past few months Tony and I have come to the realization that we never play the same version of a song twice. The typical GH track changes too quickly to call it evolution; mutation is a better way of putting it, or better yet, controlled mutation. Take our song All Else Fails; it’s shape-shifted from a demo with a drum loop posted at our myspace page into a stop-you-in-your-tracks guitar-and-organ version, performed at our first podcast as a 3-piece. We’ve performed it live as a 5-piece in Boston, live as a 2-piece in New York, and perhaps as a 4-piece later this month. We’re also working on a new version with live drums, conga loops, and other sonic joys.

So check back occasionally for new versions of old nuggets. Like, in 15-20 minutes.