BIOGRAPHIC CONTENT:
It is just before twilight, you wait in anticipation for the first glow of the sun to appear over distant hills. Vast, dark plains stretch out on all sides. Empty desert roads wind for miles in all directions to who-the-hell-knows-where. The rhythm of the engine and a misaligned tire and thump in time. They threaten to overpower the lonesome AM signal creeping through your stereo (proof of life out there somewhere). This is the place where reality, daydreams, hallucinations, and memory collide. Fact and Fiction bed down together with Past and Future. Searching souls find solitary peace. Civilization breaks down at the edges and Superstition creeps in. The place between place. Between here and there. Between sleep and awake. This is the place in which Divisadero exists.
It started simply. Two in a room with guitars, trying to sort through the American Dream and the noise in their heads. Twenty-something in Los Angeles. Between youth and adult. Between contemporary and old. Between dreams and expectations. Between mountains and an ocean. Joined by others, the picture was clear, stronger. Sense was more sensible, and behaved herself.
The songs trickled out. First about sound: sometimes just barely heard; sometimes crashing down. Songs about lives, so ordinary but not: the war-torn bare-knuckle boxer, nose broken too many times (but the sense is he was once handsome); the boxer’s daughter, boiling over with her father’s fighting blood; the estranged couple who find understanding only in each other; the last of a family line, lamenting about the future of the family farm; the young man who meets an old recluse who dies alone; a vision of the giant wheel of the apocalypse, pulling us sinners into the sky. These are lives caught in that in-between place. The bleak roads may stretch out miles behind Divisadero, but the Hope and the Promise of Man, God and The Land will always lie ahead.
WHAT OTHERS SAY:
indierocket! New(ish) Noise 09.14.07:
On its MySpace page, Divisadero says it sounds like "Driving through the desert at 4 a.m.," which is a super-astute observation — Divisadero's worn desert-indie-folk sounds like Neil Young (circa Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) filtered Spiritualized, Stereolab and Yo La Tengo. The result: Absolutely perfect gems such as "Black and Blue" and epic, stunning "I Dreamt of the Apocalypse." Gentlemen (and lady), I beseech thee: Come to the Palmetto State.
h MAGAZINE AUGUST 2007 (by Bill Dvorak):
I caught these kids on a whim one night during the few months I lived in LA– and found myself literally floored. I was supposed to see Acid Mothers Temple that night, but for whatever reason I found myself sitting on the floor of Pehrspace instead, drunkenly absorbing the orgy of noisy folk that is Divisadero, and, I must say, I don’t regret skipping Acid Mothers at all. Violin, slide guitar, glockenspiel, and occasional bursts of heavy feedback-laden guitar create an overall atmosphere that owes as much to Spiritualized as it does to Yo La Tengo. I no longer live in LA, so I’m out of luck when it comes to seeing them live (unless they hit the East coast at some point). You, dear reader, can go see them anytime you want, and you should. Check out “Black and Blue,†it should win you over immediately.
L.A. RECORD MARCH 11, 2007 REVIEW:
[Divisadero's] Dinosaur Jr rock and Yo La Tengo sound become very accessible in the intimate barroom setting. Their style and energy fill the room well and the band gathers enough good songs and sonic moments throughout that I stop asking if they’re emo and start accepting that they’re a pretty sweet group.
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