Annuals and Rosebuds Bloom in Research Triangle
Two bands spearhead the region’s pop-rock renaissance

By Jeff Eason

The Research Triangle of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh) routinely goes through trends and phases when it comes to the flavor of its local bands. A few years ago progressive rock was all the rage as bands such as Kingsbury Manx and Shark Quest helped prove that prog was not the sole possession of English bands from the seventies. 15 years ago country rock ruled the day and Triangle bands such as Whiskeytown, the Backsliders, and the Two Dollar Pistols helped put a delinquent slant on the genre that was eventually dubbed Americana.

Flash forward to 2008 and the area has become the hotbed for a new style of pop-rock that borrows from 80s new wave hits, the more psychedelic stylings of 60s pop and modern independent rock. Two of those new bands, Raleigh’s The Annuals and Chapel Hill’s The Rosebuds, have released new albums of unmitigated beauty. Listening to these two masterworks, and poking at the differences between them, is a good way of exploring the new pop-rock movement in North Carolina.

The Annuals’ Such Fun

It is that rare band that dares to make a pop album these days with out marrying it with another genre, resulting in strange hybrids such as country-pop, reggae-pop, synth-pop, etc. The Annuals, on the other hand, bask in the pop genre, creating catchy tunes wrapped in the sonic equivalent of a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Soft, sweet and oh so filling, the songs on the Annuals’ new album, Such Fun, are bombastic yet playful, serious yet funny. Imagine early U2 crossed with Coldplay with the occasional Ben Folds piano trill thrown in for good measure and you start to get an idea of where the Annuals are coming from. Songs like “Always Do” combine the country-baked sound of a pedal steel guitar with the majesty of an orchestral string section. The fantastic album opener “Confessor” sets the table for 11 great original songs, some of them dreamy (“Blue Ridge”) some of them uptempo and rhythmic (“Wake”).

The brainchild of young singer-songwriter Adam Baker, the Annuals consists of Baker on lead vocals, keyboards, drums, percussion, bass, lead guitar and orchestral arrangements, Kenny Florence on guitars, pedal steel, vocals, hammer dulcimer and percussion, Zack Oden on guitars, drums, percussion and vocals, Nick Radford on drums and percussion, Mike Robinson on bass and vocals and Anna Spence on piano, organ, vocals and banjo. For Such Fun, the band gets a considerable amount of help from Daniel Hart who plays violin and arranged the string parts.

In this post MTV music world, artists are experimenting with all sorts of new video formats to help give their tunes exposure. The Annuals have enlisted the help of several animators to create unusual videos put to their music. Animated videos of “Confessor,” “Brother and other Annuals songs can be found on YouTube.

The average age of these musicians is slightly over 20 years. That makes Such Fun a more remarkable achievement than it already is. If this band is making such fully-formed music now, just think what it will do three years from now.

Such Fun is released on the Canvasback/Terpsikhore label. You can find out more about the Annuals at www.annualsmusic.com and www.myspace.com/annuals.

The Rosebuds’ Life Like

Chapel Hill band the Rosebuds have carved out a niche for themselves as the musical chameleons of the Research Triangle. After the synthesizer-driven dance pop of the band’s 2007 album Night of the Furies, the Rosebuds change course in midstream with their latest release, Life Like, the band’s fifth full-length album.

Slower, more deliberate and with distinctive nods to 80s new wave bands such as the Smiths and the Cure, Life Like sounds sparse and echo-y on first listening. After repeated turns on the CD player, however, sly guitar lines, handclaps and quiet keyboards begin to reveal a textural complexity. Some of them, “Bow to the Middle” for example, also feature hooks so intensely catchy that you’ll be hearing them for hours after the CD had ended.

Life Like began life as song sketches made by band members (and husband and wife duo) Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp on a four-track recorder. Happy with the results, the pair called in some of their musical friends including Portastatic’s Matthew McCaughan, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Ashley Stove’s Jim Brantley to help turn the tracks into a finished album. The end result is a complex amalgam of new wave pop, acoustic ballads, and great rock and roll.

Currently the song “Nice Fox” has become the breakout single from the new album with some adult and college radio stations also playing “Bow to the Middle” and “Cape Fear.”

Nearly all of the songs on Life Like have upbeat rhythms accentuated by handclaps and spunky bass parts. It’s only after the melodies have entered your cranium do you realize how heavy and dark some of the lyrics are.

3:The Rosebuds’ Life Like was released last month on Merge Records. You can learn more at www.mergerecords.com.