The Ash Lovelies debut album, Ode to Arlington. Founded in 2008 in the Washington, DC metro area, this musical collective was formed by musicians coming together to jam, create pop fusions, and stream of consciousness lyrics.
Lou Black, leader and founder of the band, defines their sound further, “We create ‘Chamber Folk Tangle Pop.’ What else do you call a band that includes viola, oboe, guitars, bass, synthesizers, electronic noise machines, and assorted guest players playing everything from sax to theremin to hammered dulcimer?”
From their pre-2008 beginnings as a bi-monthly acoustic session at DC’s folkie Potters House coffee shop to their epic day long non-stop electronic jams sessions with DC’s underground NoiseHouse project (accompanied by 20 other musicians), The Ash Lovelies deliver music that many fans describe as a pop folktronic mash-up played by the love children of Roy Orbison and Leonard Cohen backed by the Flaming Lips and the Magnetic Fields. Via Craigslist ads, Myspace searching, or old fashion networking, The Ash Lovelies are endlessly recruiting new folks to write songs, diversifying their musical gene pool, and constantly evolving as an eclectic group songwriting collective (“evolution by design…muhahaha”).
Lou Black explains the dynamic of working with so many musicians in one band, “I love working with a large number of musicians, the more the merrier and variety is the spice of life here. When you have the jazz person playing alongside folk rock person who is playing alongside the electronica person (and so on), you really never know what we're going to develop. It’s an on-going songwriting adventure and always very exciting. In addition, we are often introducing each other to artists that we think each other would like. Someone introduces me to Devotchka and I introduce them to Townes Van Zandt.”
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