THE MIGHTY NARWHALE A Ship Without A Country, A Mast Without A Sail
The Mighty Narwhale is a seven-piece orchestral pop explosion based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The band originally emerged as a two-man, sixteen track recording experiment in the spring of 2005. A few months of passing around a single CD-R (featuring two demo tracks) caused a bit of a stir, and it soon became evident that these songs needed a much larger environment in order to thrive. In October of the same year, seven individuals gathered in a tiny basement to flesh out these tracks.
Almost three years to the day of the first practice The Mighty Narwhale released its first full-length, self-produced album, A Ship Without A Country, A Mast Without A Sail. The current lineup consists of Jon Pataky ( vocals, piano, organ), Collin Bailey (vocals, accordion), Kyle Colter ( vocals, acoustic guitar, trombone, theremin, percussion), William Daniel Eberhardt ( electric guitar), Jef McClimans ( bass), Dustin Meyer (violin), and Rei Robinson (drums).
The album acts as a guided tour through the Narwhale’s successes and failures, their shortcomings, and their quest to find a comfortable place in their lives to sit down and take a breather. Songs such as, ‘ Rosie, I’m Taking You Out,’ and ‘From Here to There, Eventually,’ find them dealing with a dying town and the need to find the nearest escape route; ‘ League of Tusks,’ trudges around like a fictional beast, and delves into the desire to forget a past that won’t be forgotten. The album closer, ‘ The Difference,’ finds them in a state of delusion and paranoia while struggling to decipher fiction from reality.
The band has received several laudatory write-ups in Michigan based publications, including Music Revue Magazine, Real Detroit Weekly, Grand Rapids Magazine, and the Kalamazoo Gazette; and has shown up on college radio programs from Chicago to Ann Arbor. As far as live shows go, the band has played with several notable national acts, such as The Danielson Family, The Rocket Summer, Mason Proper, Knife Skills, The Dodos, Dirty On Purpose, Arrah and the Ferns, Pit Er Pat, The Show Is the Rainbow, and Great Lakes Myth Society.
"[The Mighty Narwhale] deftly mesh orchestral textures and splendid harmonies amid pop sensibility and rock underpinnings, sometimes even creating theatrical passages that you feel like you can almost see while you're giving it a listen."
- The Grand Rapids Press
The Mighty Narwhale accepts Local Spin of the Year award