Release Details
pressModern Skirts
Happy 81 EP
(Self-Released)
Release Date: July 6, 2010
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Modern Skirts’ Happy 81 EP marks a stark contrast to their previous records. The band flexed its pop muscle on the debut record, Catalogue of Generous Men, and their sophomore effort, All Of Us In Our Night, found the band starting to push its own boundaries. The Happy 81 EP is a statement of intent, a flag in the ground, claiming a new territory after a long journey. The Happy 81 EP and their forthcoming full length record (due this fall) both have their origins in singer Jay Gulley’s bedroom four track cassette recordings. Through the years, while Modern Skirts was touring and recording their studio albums, hundreds of cassette demos were being recorded in the off time. These songs were purely for enjoyment, never to be heard by anyone outside of the band. Eventually, the band realized that these recordings were bolder and more exciting than anything they had approached before.
The Happy 81 EP was recorded and mixed exclusively by the band at home. The original tape recordings were digitized and mixed and mastered. These recordings are as raw and alive as you can get. The EP sounds like a secret that no one was supposed to hear. The EP looks forward to the full length, which takes these home recordings and adds the sparkle and punch of studio recording to the grit and viscera of the home demos.
Modern Skirts is no longer content creating traditional pop songs. At the heart of this whole project is an ethos, which is something not heard before in a Modern Skirts record. The whole idea about what the band is doing now is to make art, something original, with a distinctive voice, something that challenges the listener and gives them something no other band has before. The story that this EP and the record that it foreshadows tells is the story of a band up against themselves, a band facing dissolution and chaos within itself, a band struggling for air under the weight of years of expectation and disappointment. If a vocal is out of tune or a beat is out of time, it doesn’t matter, as long as those recordings will tell that story honestly and powerfully.
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