The Quarter After

THE SECOND FULL LENGTH RECORD- CHANGES NEAR IS AVAILABLE NOW!

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TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT b/w HERE IT COMES (Stone Roses cover)
Here's what some folks had to say about our first record-
The Quarter After “The Quarter After” (Bird Song Recordings 2005)
The name suggests the Three O’Clock, Strawberry Alarm Clock, wake up: it’s time for a psychedelic revival. If like me you discovered the Byrds through the Paisley Underground and if you still retain a fondness for the Rain Parade, the Moving Targets, Bleached Black and others, then you’re going to enjoy this. There’s a moment on ‘A Parting’ that sums it all up: harmony vocals, jangling guitar falling out of tune and then alongside it a long sustained note warping into feedback - that’s the sort of thing that hooked me in the first place and fills me full of nostalgia now. ‘Too Much To Think About’ is a mixture of the Seeds ‘I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night’ and the Long Ryders ‘I Had A Dream’ going further than either into the interior of dreams, the guitars probing the sub-conscious realms with short forays away from the centre of the song prodding synapses until they end up stranded in a vast cavern with everywhere to go and nothing else to do but stop after the 10 minute journey. Tons of fuzzed guitar obscure the melody at the heart of ‘One Trip Later’ like clouds blocking the sun, with sunny bursts of pop climbing 8 miles high to break through before the effects pedals are stomped and the Angels are playing air guitar. There’s an early REM feel about ‘Taken’ in the way that everything is knitted together so that to add or subtract anything would completely change everything - then unlike them the guitars are allowed to chase off after stray notes and five minutes later we’re back to the integrated close harmonies. The closing ‘Everything Again’ is a mildly psychedelic pop song - barely three minutes of harmonies and irresistible chords that jangle courtesy of Roger McGuin and vocals by way of Gene Clark, the same template as followed on the opening ‘So Far To Fall’. So we’ve gone full circle, not heard anything new and yet the journey has got me rooting through my record collection to rediscover half-remembered songs - and more importantly plastered a huge grin across my face.
--David Cowling, AMERICANA-UK.COM
QUARTER AFTER The Quarter After (Bird Song)
This is another combo that likes to indulge themselves a bit, with tracks that clock in at seven, nine and twelve minutes and only four out of ten at under four. Which is probably why, along with the its battery of efx, a mutual friend out west was surprised when I told him I liked this album. Led by the brothers Campanella, Robert and Dominic, with a rhythm section of David Koenig (bass) and Nelson Bragg (drums), all of them seem to have been intimately involved in the internecine L.A., fringe Pop-Rock scene of recent years (from various Rademaker brothers’ projects to Stew to Brian Jonestown Massacree to any number of I.P.O. type bands).
The sound is decidedly Byrdsian, with various chiming guitars amongst the efx, the Campanellas’ airy and dulcet voices, a seeming amalgamation of Clark, Crosby and McGuinn both individually and in harmony -- mucho harmonies -- and the lilting melodies. In the leadoff cut, the peppy "So Far To Fall," you can even spot flecks of "Why" winking in the distance. At least that is all true for most of the putative Side 1. On through the wah-wah/vibrato guitar driven "Your Side Is Mine," the bongo touched "Always Returning" with its rotating singular vocal and harmonized verses and its call-and-response constructed choruses, the mid-tempo lament "A Parting" featuring a trio of female backing vocalists and a keening lead guitar, and the first three minutes of the gauzy, alternating charging and delicate "Too Much To Think About" (after which, for the remaining nine, or so, minutes it concentrates on groove, sound and mood with the help of Mr. Massacree himself, Anton Newcombe, tinkering around with an Echoplex and snatches of whispers courtesy of Campanella père). Up to that point they’re all coruscating nuggets, semi-familiar and enchanting.
For most of the remaining that deflection does battle with their interest in melody. "Know Me When I’m Gone" is an elongated, rolling number, strewn with a liquid guitar. "Taken" is a brisk rocker whose first three minutes, along with the preceding, ringing "One Trip Later," melds in the intermediary point of Chronic Town era R.E.M., but for the next five, or so, minutes goes on a runout at varying tempos and densities, before finding the song again for the closing minute. Back a bit there is the atypical "Mirror To You" with it’s close harmony singing, acoustic guitar, understated pedal steel (courtesy of All Night Radio’s Dave Scher) and cantering, Countryish rhythm. The record ends where it started with the succulent, overt Byrdsian "Everything Again."
--THE BOB MAGAZINE
The Quarter After (Bird Song)
The Quarter After call Los Angeles home, but it's not so much where they're from as when. For the QA's Campanella brothers, the clock is fixed at that moment in the '60s when pop swallowed a potent tab of psychedelia and hallucinated a musical soundtrack to accompany the trip. On their eponymous debut, the QA reference the first-generation psych-pop of the Beatles, the Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield and subsequent devotees like the Three O'Clock, Dream Syndicate and the Brian Jonestown Massacre while pursuing the same success/excess as their forebearers. "So Far to Fall" finds the band clicking on all paisley cylinders, from Rob and Dom Campanella's exquisite brotherly harmonies to their "Day Tripper"-fueled guitar antics, while the 12-minute "Too Much to Think About" spirals out from a Byrdsian psych/folk confection into a droning yet majestic space-rock jam. What makes the Quarter After endearing is their willingness to fine-tune psychedelic pop's grand missteps as well as its sugar-cubed triumphs.
--Brian Baker, HARP MAGAZINE
THE QUARTER AFTER- Self Titled Debut (Bird Song)
How can I not swoon over an album that takes a little of everything in music that I have learned to love since the wee age of a day old? Back in the early 90s, the Stone Roses was one of the first bands that stopped me dead in my tracks. Before that, I was bombarded by the Moody Blues and other British Invasion songs thanks to my father. Now, over 10 years later, another band has stopped me dead in my tracks. The Quarter After takes one part 60s British Invasion psych-pop, one part 70s classic rock, one part 80s drug-induced space-rock, and one part modern fusion of retro melodies and songwriting. On the band's self-titled debut, The Quarter After takes the past 40 years and make it sound just as good, if not better, than those who came before.
On the The Quarter After, you can hear many of the previously listed influences. The bloodlines for the Quarter After are quite exquisite. Guitarist/multi-instumentalist Robert Campanella is an off-and-on member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre as well as a producer and engineer. The band even enlisted Anton Newcombe in help in the recording of the album. The album is also the debut album on Bird Song Recordings, a project a Ric Menck, drummer extraordinaire. The other band members - Rob's brother Dominic (singing, guitars), David Koenig (bass and 12-string guitar), and Nelson Bragg (drums and percussion) - have stylistic, yet ballsy range and chops that hold the album together. I could go on and on with inter-band and -artist relationships, but I have a review to write.
The album starts off with "So Far To Tell," which might as well be a 60s flashback tribute to the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield, complete with melodic ohhhh's and ahhhhs's mixed with girl-inspired lyrics. On two tracks, "Too Much to Think About" and "Taken," the Quarter After jams for at least nine minutes, mixing in some jangly guitar pieces with drones and basslines remisiscent of the Spacemen 3. One of the albums gems is "One Trip Later," a song reminiscent to the Monkees but with fits of a screaming guitar. "A Parting" is a beautiful Neil Young Harvest Moon-era tune. "Always Returning" reminds me of that infamous Blue Oyster Cult skit from Saturday Night Live. Now if only someone could get the band to add more cowbell.
While some might dismiss the Quarter After as flower power all over again, those people might as well go back under the rock where they've been living. The Quarter After has modern pysch-rock sensabilities with much respect to the bands that created the sound. These guys not only perfect this sound, they step it up a notch, kicking it in the balls while simultaneously shaking its hand.
-Jason Wilder, DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY