Rock and Roll matters. All of it. At least to Parklife. The band sounds like a radio station programmed by guys who know that Johnny Cash is more punk rock than Blink 182. Parklife fuses U2, Wilco, Supergrass and Kerouac to create its relentlessly engaging sound, and plays every note with a reckless abandon that reveals a band desperately clinging to the belief that popular music should be more about communal experience than test marketing.
Vocalist/bassist Rob Clay, guitarist Sam Clowney and drummer Jason Bone built Parklife around relentlessly energetic live shows throughout the southeast, melding a unique, genre-bending sound that early on caught the ears of a growing legion of fans, as well as famed musician/producer Mitch Easter and Grammy nominated producer Jon Custer, who recorded the band's debut EP "Lonely Eyes and Amsterdam" and full length "Songs from the Imperial Hotel", which includes the single "Someday Lovesong", a 2005 John Lennon Songwriting Contest finalist.
Parklife Bio
Rock and Roll matters. All of it. At least to Parklife. The band sounds like a radio station programmed by guys who know that Johnny Cash is more punk rock than Blink 182. Parklife fuses U2, Wilco, Supergrass and Kerouac to create its relentlessly engaging sound, and plays every note with a reckless abandon that reveals a band desperately clinging to the belief that popular music should be more about communal experience than test marketing.
Parklife formed in 2002 when longtime friends Rob Clay and Sam Clowney took a few days off from their constant touring with other bands to jam on some new songs the two had been writing. Drawn to the fire of pursuing their own sounds and ideas, Clay and Clowney dropped their sideman gigs, brought good friend and former Connells drummer Peele Wimberley on board, and committed full time to Parklife. The young band's relentlessly energetic delivery of its unique, genre-bending sound at an early show grabbed the attention of Grammy-nominated producer John Custer (DAG, Corrosion of Conformity, Chris Whitley), who immediately took the band into Raleigh's fabled JAG Studios to record Parklife's debut EP, “Lonely Eyes and Amsterdam.” From the driving, melodic rock of "Butterflies and Hurricanes" to the lush sonic landscapes of "San Jacinto", "Amsterdam's" four songs captured on record the bold sound the band had been developing in its live shows: Clay's engaging, honest vocals; soaring guitars seamlessly blending and updating Hendrix, U2, the Cocteau Twins, Miles Davis, Wilco and Sonic Youth; powerful, melodic bass lines owing as much to Mingus as McCartney, John Paul Jones and Joy Division; and compelling songwriting that hinted at what the Replacements might have sounded like had Westerberg grown up in 1980's Manchester rather than 1970's Minnesota.
Having sold out the initial pressing of "Amsterdam" through constant touring and Internet distribution channels such as CDBaby, Parklife set up shop in the summer of 2003 in Mitch Easter's (R.E.M., Pavement, Let's Active) famed Fidelitorium and Low Watt studio in Raleigh to record what would become the band's full length debut, "Songs From the Imperial Hotel." During the "Amsterdam" tour, Wimberley had moved to Los Angeles to pursue his love of electronic music, so Parklife enlisted the wide-ranging talents of drummer Jason Bone to help push the band's sound in new directions on the record. On "Imperial Hotel", the band turns the melodic Brit-rock of "Amsterdam" on its head, pushing the sonic boundaries, deconstructing and rebuilding songs, exploring quiet subtleties as well as bombast singalong choruses, and just generally liberating the music. The album's opening track "Memphis" explores longing through two minutes of Gram Parsons-influenced acoustic folk which builds into a crescendo of feedback and pounding drums that echo the struggle to find a sense of self and place in a chaotic modern world. From there the band moves directly into the strutting pop of the album's first single "Someday Lovesong", a melodic rave up whose darkly seductive verses give way to a stomping chorus that is less about answers and resolution than reveling in the sheer joy of rock and roll. And ultimately rock and roll is what "Songs From the Imperial Hotel" is all about. Not 90's or 60's or any hyphenated rock, but rock and roll in all its glorious rebellions and ambitions. The members of Parklife grew up hearing R.E.M alongside Led Zeppelin, the Smiths back to back with Dylan, U2 and the Beatles, Public Enemy and Nina Simone, so it is only fitting that the band make records that sound like everything and nothing you've ever heard all at once. On "Imperial Hotel", Parklife evolves as a band not by abandoning its influences but by absorbing and refining them into a unique, twenty-first century rock and roll sound.