It’s no coincidence that Le Rev is a Los Angeles band. With its theatrical lyrics and guttural guitar riffs, Le Rev dances a fine line between Hollywood histrionics and indie eastside aesthetics. As lead singer, C.C. Sheffield can downshift from whisper to scream in a drumbeat, alternately channeling personas as varied as a French chanteuse, larger-than-life diva and little girl lost to belt out emotionally-charged stories over Nico Chiotellis’s anthemic/angular guitar work. Equal parts heartbreak and pop hooks, Lev Rev’s studio debut “Tales of Running Away,†is a bloody valentine with introspective lovelorn lyrics pitted against a blaring sonic soundscape.
Le Rev is the brainchild of vocalist C.C. Sheffield and guitarist Nico Chiotellis, who penned all the songs together and coined a unique sound that’s been described as Blondie meets Blonde Redhead. The band recently locked up for ten days at “The Hearse†in Northern California with producer Jeff Saltzman (The Killers, The Sounds, Fisherspooner) to capture their definitive recording, “Tales of Running Away.â€
The album’s a scrapbook culmination of the four years since Sheffield and Chiotellis started collaborating. As Sheffield explains “I grew up in Tucson, Arizona and worked at a music venue so I was always involved in music but I never had a band because I was raised super religious and girls were supposed to just get married. I ran away at 17 and I moved to L.A. when I was 18 living in a hostel, then in my van in Echo Park. Nico met me when I first got my apartment in Echo Parkâ€. As
Chiotellis explains “ Shortly after I moved to LA I was at a bar and this crazy girl runs up and up pulls me from the booth to the dancefloor, then disappears. Four months later we met again and wrote 3 songs. A few days after that we saw a painting named Le Rev. There was never a question.â€
The two began playing raw acoustic shows at open mike nights around the Los Angeles and were quickly recruited to be something of a house band for the Standard Hotel. With their sound expanding to include Mick Becker on keyboards and Jaime Vavra on drums, Le Rev became a staple on the city’s music scene, playing venues like Spaceland, The Viper Room and Dim Mak’s Cinespace Tuesdays and garnering a notorious reputation for shows as high-energy as they were unpredictable.
Tales of Running Away serves not only as a history book of the band but the promise of what the band has in store for its fans.
Here is our new video for Escape Me - Directed by C.C. Shot by Jordan Levy
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