The Graves of Fairmount

I grew up in Northern California listening to all of the Chapel Hill bands. Now I live here and make music. Things have come full circle.
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The Calendars & Casualties EP is in local stores! You can find it at the following places:
CD Alley
405 West Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, NC
919-960-9272
Chaz's Bull City Records
1916 Perry Street
Durham, NC
919-286-9640
Offbeat Music
905 West Main Street
Durham, NC
919-688-7022
And if you aren't from the area, you can purchase it online at CD Baby.
Or you can buy it at iTunes
Or at eMusic!
www.eMusic.com
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Thanks to Jon O'Keefe for designing the EP insert, to Erin Martinez for playing cello on Why I Left Berkeley, and to Andrew Blass for letting me borrow his Korg.
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"Mac McCaughan and Mark Kozelek, high-fiving in springtime."
—Grayson Currin
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Calendars & Casualties chosen as one of 12 best EPs of 2007!
—The Daily Tar Heel, Diversions
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EP review from The Daily Tarheel, Diversions:
Paul O’Keefe is no Chapel Hill native, but the scene should now be proud to call him its own. With Calendars and Casualties, his one-man project, Graves of Fairmount, has arrived in a big way.
As the title suggests, it’s not what one would call a happy record. Even the energetic opener “Ignore the Forecast” sports some pretty heavy lyrics about father-son relationships. It’s still an upbeat number, powered by bright, cascading guitars, but the poignant chorus adds a nice twist.
“Why I Left Berkeley” is a more conventional ballad that benefits from a gorgeous guest cello by Erin Martinez, with lyrics that rail against the college atmosphere. The acoustic flavor of “The Ferris Wheel Will Destroy Us All” captivates with another lyrically interesting chorus (“I’ve been tired for years / just keep the car in gear”). Calendars’ melancholy would get old, but the issues O’Keefe tackles are so universal and well-stated that the atmosphere never wanes.
The EP’s closer, “For Liz,” stands out as the high point and wraps things up perfectly. It starts with a slow, well-written lyrical section that climbs into a brilliant climax of weeping guitar and a heartbreaking final line.
Calendars exhibits nice variety for an EP, swinging smoothly from calming to intense and featuring great lyrics that manage to be affecting without sounding whiny. It’s only available in a few local record stores and online, but any indie rock fan (particularly those who are feeling blue) would find it well worth their time to track down a copy.
—Will Lambeth
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EP Review from J's Indie/Rock Mayhem:
There are a lot of bands in indie-rock that are seen as essential parts of the canon. They are even talked about as being influential, yet sometimes its hard to see their influence show up in really discernible ways. Every so often, wisps of those bands will emerge in music that sounds almost as freshly formed as they did in their heyday. The Graves of Fairmount, the nom de recording of Paul O'Keefe, is an example of one of those emergences. It helps that O'Keefe, though not from there originally, has made the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina his home. If there is a home for indie-rock in the Old North State, it's Chapel Hill and the surrounding areas.
This four song EP does a lot to state O'Keefe's case as an obvious student of the style of indie that hit its stride in the 90s - opener "Ignore the Forecast" recalls Guided By Voices at its most catchy and immediate. A lo-fi sensibility, but without the annoying, distracting factors, permeates the track right down to the occasional missteps in the drumming. The small mistakes are endearing, giving the song's kinetic, burgeoning emotion all the more genuine a feel - as if the energy of the song is too vibrant to be trusted to be right on time at all points. "Why I Left Berkley" waxes reminiscent of late-period Replacements with its bouncy, yet weary, feel and the touches of strings courtesy of the lone other musician on the EP, Erin Martinez.
The closing two songs, "The Ferris Wheel Will Destroy Us All" and "For Liz" are probably the most affective on the record. Though "Ignore the Forecast" stands out as the EP's catchiest, these two songs carry a gravity that has been building in the first two songs. Hazy, shimmering and laced with sparse piano notes, "The Ferris Wheel.."'s closest comparison is the early work of the Red House Painters. I hate to continuously invoke other bands to compare O'Keefe's work with - it's not that I find his work to be unoriginal - exactly the opposite. He seems to be mining parts of the indie-spectrum that haven't been touched often enough for my tastes. Denison Witmer has recorded music similar to this in recent efforts, but hasn't taken the production to the hazy, logical extreme that the Graves of Fairmount hit upon right from the start.
For a debut EP, Calendars & Casualties is a remarkable piece of work. It stands up to and begs for repeated listenings and is an exciting calling card from an artist who hopefully we'll hear a lot more from in the near future.
Rating: E(xceptional)
—J. Neas