Biography Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
Fang Island is an American indie rock band formed in Providence, Rhode Island, and based in Brooklyn, New York. The group consists of guitarists Jason Bartell, Chris Georges and Nicholas Andrew Sadler, bassist Michael Jacober, and drummer Marc St. Sauveur. Their self-titled debut album on Sargent House was released in February 2010.
Biography
Fang Island began in 2005 as an art project with original members, Philip Curcuru, Chris Georges, and Pete Watts, while attending Rhode Island School of Design. They were later joined by Bartell, St Sauveur, Jacober, and guitarist Nick Sadler, who had played in another Providence-based band, Daughters. The band got its name from an article in The Onion. Guitarist Jason Bartell recalled, "I think it was just a funny blip about Donald Rumsfeld having a secret hideaway, and it was on Fang Island. We like how it was sort of this, like, fictional space that we imagined our music was played on". The band describes their sound as "everyone high-fiving everyone" and their goal, according to Bartell, is to "make music for people who like music".
The band independently released Day of the Great Leap in 2007, followed by a second EP, Sky Gardens, in November 2008. Their song "The Absolute Place" was remixed by Chris Keating of Yeasayer in 2009. An unmastered version of the band's forthcoming full-length album leaked in early 2009 and was later named one of the year's top 10 albums by Brian Cook of The Stranger. In December, the group digitally released the album's lead single "Daisy", which features an electro-organ intro and chanted vocals. The song played during a series of commercials promoting the MTV reality show The Buried Life. The band's self-titled debut album was released on February 23, 2010. Adam Pfleider of AbsolutePunk described it as a "wild party" that "listeners will want to relive ... over and over again". Dan Goldin of Decoy Music praised the album for "successfully combining the luster of indie pop music with the technical eccentricities of progressive rock". Pitchfork Media's Ian Cohen called the music on Fang Island "honest and life-affirming and infectious". In March, the band performed at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, and were named by social networking analytics site Next Big Sound as the artists who experienced the fastest growth in online fandom during the festival. While in Austin, the band also recorded three songs for a Daytrotter session. Fang Island entered the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart in April. The band opened for The Flaming Lips at several shows in July.
