"Swimming not Treading" EP available for pre-order on www.smartpunk.com now. check out www.facingnewyork.com for streaming sound and tour dates. indie prog rock goods. Currently #35 out of the top 100 sales on Smartpunk. Peace.

thegoods:
HOW DO YOU write a history for a band that has none? Facing New York—a group of five young San Francisco Bay Area musicians—are the perfect test subject. A few months ago they found themselves in a vehicle together. This wasn’t your standard vehicle (wheels and metal and such)… no, this was a vehicle of a different design, a vehicle for making music. It was a product of circumstance: two of them roommates, two of them childhood friends, two of them playing together for years (overlapping circumstance, if you do the math). Now the vehicle is moving forward, quickly, and it’s carrying them with it.

By aspiring to the greatness of their forebears, and creating something wholly their own, Facing New York are speeding forward to take their place among the frontrunners—those defining the ever-shifting musical landscape of tomorrow. It’s like that SUV commercial with the car going through all seasons at once and making its own road. But not at all, and much better. The band’s debut EP, Swimming Not Treading, is a premature marvel. They went into the studio with producer Chris Fudurich (RxBandits, Nada Surf, Finch, Simple Minds), and came out with a 25-minute moodpiece slyly ageless and unapologetically modern.

The first song on Swimming is “Claim/Subclaim,” a sprawling, energetic, and altogether threatening beginning. It’s a thesis statement not only for the record, but for a group of likely bent minds trying to tear free from structure. FNY take the listener through the tale of a hopeless optimist who has to burn all he knows to see truth and art and love and dirt. He trades a charred smile for clear eyes, and it’s this newfound vision that guides the listener through the rest of the album. By the opening notes of “You Might Not Feel It At All,” there’s a near-tangible sense of rebirth, forward movement, and experiment-gone-right.

Facing New York approach the experimental energy of the Dismemberment Plan, TV On The Radio, or 90 Day Men with an ear for tense beauty that could place them on tour with the Police circa Outlandos d’Amour. That is, if Jimmy Page was sharing songwriting credits with Sting. And Bonham was drumming. All of which is to say, Swimming Not Treading is a healthy mix of prog proficiency, punk sensibility and pure indefinable goodness. Listening to this album, it’s clear that even with their penchant for velocity, Facing New York are fueled up for the long drag. It’s a fine vehicle indeed.

So how do you write a history of a band that has none? Well, it’s not all that different from making great music. You nod to the past, look to the future, and just assume that it’ll all make sense in the end. And if it doesn’t, fuck ‘em. A self-booked Western U.S. tour is scheduled for late March through mid-May, to be followed up in June by a full national campaign.
www.facingnewyork.com