Album Notes

Here's some press-

LA TIMES- “Morning Macumba is a collection of gorgeous, fully formed ‘60’s international vocal pop… How such grand, embraceable vocal harmonies have flown so long under the radar is a bit of a mystery.”


AMPLIFIER- “The pop renaissance of the 90’s owes much of its success to talented, young indie artists like Tony Carbone.”


MOJO- “Best stick with Bikeride’s 37 Secrets I Only Told America, creamy Anglophile indie jazz pop, with Moog, Wurlitzer, and Latino beats.”


CMJ- “Satellite photos from high above California have revealed a strange and wonderful new talent with the unlikely, Scorsese-character-like name of Tony Carbone. As leader of the unwieldy Bikeride collective, Carbone’s assembled the latest in a line of uncategorizable Golden State pop masterpieces.”


OC WEEKLY- “Back to Morning Macumba for a sec: this was the album that moved us from "They’re not bad" Bikeride fence-sitters to drooly-faced, bug-eyed, heavy-breathing, pom-pom shaking Bikeride cheerleaders.”


POP MATTERS- “Fakin’ Amnesia is one of 2002’s best songs, really.”


COMFUSION- “Morning Macumba is one of the stangest, most uplifting album of the year.”

IN MUSIC WE TRUST- “Bikeride covers the pop spectrum, a vast undertaking, and somehow makes each song unique and different, while retaining the Bikeride ‘sound’ throughout. I’ll give it an A.”


THE BIG TAKEOVER- “Not everyone can be Brian Wilson or Phil Spector, regardless of how lofty their aspirations may be. So what is a would-be wall-of-sound popsmith to do? Maybe take a lesson or two from Long Beach, CA’s Bikeride.”


NEXTPLANETOVER- “For the past month I’ve been playing a cd by a band called Bikeride so often that my need to hear it probably qualifies as an addiction.”


AVERSION- “Unlike Beck, Fatboy Slim, or most of the other polyester-flag waving retro revivalists, Bikeride approaches its journeys into ‘70’s pop without the affected cooler-than-thou sense of kitsch marking the bulk of its contemporaries’ work.”


EYE- “Regardless of how many goodies the band tosses into the stew, what keeps it so succulent is the never-faltering earnestness of it all.”


SOUND AFFECTS- “What do you get when you throw every dazzling moment from the pop highlights reels of the last 35 years into a blender. Bikeride… If it’s at all possible to actually wear out a CD the way you could wear out the grooves of old LPs, then I’ll be in the market for a new copy of this disc very soon.”


EXCLAIM- “Carbone delivers his own State of the Suburban Union Address in Thirty-Seven Secrets, a frequently wonderful product of low-budget ingenuity and a big, soft heart.”


INDIE SCENE- “Tony Carbone’s voice pulls you in with its distinctive charm. Gutsy, flirty and vaguely childlike, he sounds like the boy version of Gwen Stefani… I can’t overstate the joyful vigor of this album. It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s sharp, it’s bodacious and it’s just a little bit sloppy. In other words, a perfect pop record.”


SPLENDID- “Morning Macumba’s most transcendently melodic moments seem like pure serendipity – one hundred percent luck, zero percent studio trickery. Their successes are exhilarating.”