Fleet Foxes delights fans at 7th Street show
Briefly: There were two opening acts Sunday night, the nicely quiet Yer Cronies, a folk quartet most graciously described as nascent, and the shrill Duchess and the Duke, whose set was unenjoyable at best.  -John Shipley 

Vita.MN
January 8, 2009

YER CRONIES
This quartet of Apple Valley childhood pals got a big boost in the spring when Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses recommended them to his Sub Pop labelmates Fleet Foxes for an opening act. It was a good fit for YC's echoey, reverb-soaked, dramatic but not weepy brand of Radiohead-meets-Neil Young rock, as heard on their startlingly clean, self-released, electrifying debut CD, "When I Grow Up." -Chris Riemenschneider

12/18/08

Yer Cronies’ A Chrony Christmas
Seventh Street Entry, 8pm, $6, 18+

Local indie-rock quartet Yer Cronies play music that is both dreamy and tightly wound, incorporating folk, rock, and Radiohead-like abstractions. Their debut, When I Grow Up, came out in August, and the band has slowly been gaining fans through their many live shows. This week, they put a seasonally appropriate slant on their live shows, about which bassist Michael Brown quips “it’s all going to be classy, so everyone’s got to dress really nicely.” Tuxes, everyone! Check Decider.com for our interview with the band. Joining Yer Cronies are freewheeling country/blues combo A Night In The Box, Joey Ryan & The Inks, and The Floorbirds.

Yer Cronies: The Radioheadesque locals trim the proverbial tree at the Entry for their Crony Christmas show.

If local indie-rock quartet Yer Cronies seem remarkably cohesive for such a new band, perhaps it’s because the quartet have been cronies and musical collaborators since eighth grade, though the current project and its dreamy and tightly wound sound only came together in 2007. Yer Cronies’ debut record, When I Grow Up, which incorporates folk, rock, and Radiohead-like abstractions, came out in August, and the band has slowly been gaining fans through their many live shows. This week, they deck the halls of the 7th Street Entry with their “Crony Christmas” show on Dec. 20, with openers A Night In The Box, Joey Ryan And The Inks, and The Floorbirds. Decider sat down with the band for a Q&A.

Decider: How does your songwriting process work?
Greg Reese, guitarist/singer: We’re all songwriters, so sometimes somebody has something that they made on their own time and brought to be finished by everyone, and sometimes we just make up stuff in the room.
Michael Brown, bassist: There’s times when we’ve been practicing and someone will play a little part, and we’ll just work off of that and end up writing a complete song. And other times, someone will bring in a song front to back, and we’ll just arrange it or simplify it. I think we all do a pretty good job at listening to each other.
Jared Isabella, drummer: And I think that’s kind easy for us, just because we’ve been playing music over the years for so long, and we know how the other person writes or what they’re going for, so it’s easier to tune in on that.
D: You recorded this in a bedroom at Jared’s house in northeast Minneapolis. Did those surroundings affect how it ultimately sounds?
MB: Yeah. With all of us being friends, hanging out, there wasn’t a ton of pressure, recording-wise in each session. The other three would be hanging out, watching Frasier or something. [Laughs.] So it was a relaxed environment.
Casey Garvey, guitarist/singer: I remember watching Wild playoff games on mute, and trying not to be loud. And we had someone recording the Rhodes while two people were sitting on the other end of the couch, watching a TV that that person couldn’t see, on mute.
D: The CD has a, for lack of a better word, “jammy” feel to it. Is that a deliberate contrast, to have that looseness but also have a tight structure in each song?
GR: You’re not the first person that’s said that, that it sounds sort of improvisational. But it’s weird to me, because we’re very much aware of what we’re playing, and it’s very written.
CG: I feel like we’re actually, for the first time, trying to write really structured rock ‘n’ roll songs. It’s really strange that people think there’s a jammy aspect to it.
D: There are a lot of quiet and loud moments on this record, often in the same song.
CG: We like songs that make you want to do a jump-kick, but then we also like songs that put you to sleep, so why not put it in the same song? We all kind of have our own variations of ADD—especially Jared [laughs]—and American culture is becoming more ADD, so let’s just go through all these styles in one song instead of taking ten songs to do it.
D: What happens next for you?
CG: Play out of town, to get our music out of just the Twin Cities. As much as we love it here, obviously, we have goals to get it elsewhere.
GR: There’s still a lot to be done here, but we definitely want to start moving around a little bit. We’re all very serious about [our music], but we want to be taken seriously at the same time. So getting more people to hear it, and getting more cities to recognize that we exist is a big step for that. And we’re writing music all the time; we have a bunch of new songs right now, and we’re just going to make more music.
MB: We still dig this record enough to promote it and support it. It’s only available at one record shop [Treehouse Records] right now, so there’s plenty more to do with this record before we keep going. [But] like Casey said, there’s a lot of ADD, so we can’t just keep playing the same songs and not write new stuff when we’re thinking of it.
D: Where did the idea for a Christmas show come from?
MB: “Christmas” just flows together with “Crony”. And every band has to play at least one Christmas or holiday song.
CG: There will also be formal attire. Blacks, whites, and greens.
MB: The night starts with an acoustic duo and keeps getting more rocking. And it’s all going to be classy, so everyone’s got to dress really nicely.
GR: I’d pay six dollars to see any one of those bands.
MB: I’d pay six dollars to dress classy.

-David Brusie

Crony Christmas

'

Tis the season to be with your loved ones—Yer Cronies, if you will.

Yer Cronies give a very merry holiday performance at the 7th Street Entry. Yer Cronies, along with their cronies, A Night in the Box, Joey Ryan & The Inks and The Floorbirds, celebrate the season in the spirit of friendship, as they always do.

Yer Cronies have a way of taking a regular-ish indie rock song and making it sound like it belongs on a bigger stage. They combine a Radiohead-like drone with the melancholy sensitivity of bands like Gomez, all washed over with their simple love for the music. Their debut album, When I Grow Up, came out last summer and has helped them make friends with a whole lot of critics in local radio, the blogosphere and beyond.

The opening bands have been similarly well received and, with a solid neo-folk, indie rock billing like this one, 'tis likely to be a magical night of music for you and yers. -Annie D'Souza

Yer Cronies - Apollo

I interviewed Yer Cronies last night in their womb-like rehearsal space, surrounded by the bashing and clatter of lesser bands. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing I brought up a few times was the way the songs on their record When I Grow Up seem to fluctuate between looseness and intense focus. They kind of bristled at this thought, and reasonably so - what sounds like looseness is actually meticulously arranged; I think it's that majestic reverb that makes things sound dreamier than they are.

Aside from some accolades - most notably, City Pages' Picked To Click poll - Yer Cronies have yet to make much of a splash in the Twin Cities. I think that's a shame, and hopefully it will change after their Crony Christmas show at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis on Dec. 20, a show that also includes Joe Ryan & The Inks, The Floorbirds, and the great A Night In The Box.

Hit up the band via MySpace to get a copy of When I Grow Up. You won't be disappointed.  -David B

I'm staring at Casey Garvey, waiting for him to elaborate. He rubs his hand over his trendy mop of brown hair as the seconds tick by awkwardly. Nothing. I look beseechingly at the other three members of Yer Cronies, who are nursing Rolling Rocks and PBRs on the back patio of a ramshackle northeast Minneapolis triplex. Silence.

It was a simple enough request, your typical music critic question: "Tell me what this song is about?" The song, "Sacramentosauras," is the fifth song on Yer Cronies' gorgeous, brooding, proggy, and anxious debut release, When I Grow Up.

With a name like "Sacramentosauras," how do you not ask what it's about? Yet I never do get an explanation. It's almost as if it has never occurred to these four friends that they might actually have to explain what their music means to someone else...or to each other for that matter. It would be like explaining it to yourself. They seem to just "know." The way four guys who have known each other since middle school just "know." It definitely doesn't make for the best interview, but it does provide an enticing glimpse into that rare band in which there appear to be no egos, no individual ambitions.

I know. I know. The whole "We're like brothers, man. We're in this thing together till the end!" thing could not be anymore tiresome and clichéd. But the sentiment seems genuine with Yer Cronies.

"We're a band. We don't see ourselves as individuals. There are no credits on the album as far as who does what," says bassist Mike Brown.

"We try to write as one organism," concurs drummer Jared Isabella.

On the band's MySpace page, next to "Sounds Like," it reads "Friendship."

I like what "Friendship" sounds like. It's melancholy but not despondent. It's anxious but not frenetic. It's expansive but still somehow raw. For a band that is just over a year old and recorded its debut album in one of the member's bedrooms, When I Grow Up is an astonishingly mature, thoughtful, restrained when needed, daring when justified, rock n' roll record.

The ease and intuitiveness with which these four 22-year-olds create music can no doubt be attributed to the fact that they've known each other since middle school, cementing their friendship while attending high school at the School of Environmental Studies at the Minnesota Zoo, also known as the "Zoo School." Did studying amid the social systems of snow monkeys and tapirs and Komodo dragons somehow bond these boys in a strange sort of deeply instinctual, animalistic way? Who wouldn't like to think so?

When asked who their influences are, Brown immediately replies, "Each other," matter-of-factly. No doubt that is the case, but for those of us not part of this hyper-symbiotic relationship, comparisons can be made to the Alarmists, My Morning Jacket, and Gomez.

That said, Yer Cronies aren't some embarrassingly derivative copycat band lurching at the latest indie trend. They are their own thing. They demonstrate this beautifully on the haunting, mysterious, and very much their own "Daniel Day," a reference to that most hunky final Mohican (Garvey was a filmmaking major in college). It begins dreamily, swirling with echoing, gritty guitars. The song lopes along, melancholy and lethargic, but with a brooding anger underneath that the band soon expertly releases as Garvey sings in his best Jim Morrison: "We all sit around waiting to get paid, we ain't getting paid/We all sit around waiting to get saved, we ain't getting saved."

Like most every band made up of early 20-somethings, the members of Yer Cronies claim they are hell-bent on making a career out of making music, yet they admit they haven't figured out exactly how to make that happen yet.

"We basically can't not do this," Garvey explains. "We want everyone who is involved with the music to feel part of it, too, not just four guys who are completely detached."

As if to prove the band doesn't take itself too seriously, the five-foot-seven-inch Isabella responds, "Personally, I'd love to play pro basketball."
-Michael L. Walsh

Who's Cronies?

Yer Cronies' big coming-out set was opening for Sub Pop newbies Fleet Foxes at the Entry last month -- a gig reportedly earned through a recommendation by Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell, who has been residing in the Twin Cities in recent months. Not a bad guy to have in your corner (or in your town).

Starting with the pulsating, ethereal opener "'Divi Divi' Tree," YC frontman Casey Garvey immediately stands out as an adept, lonely-guy howler, and the band on the whole balances taut elegance with unbridled electricity. Deeper in, the album flows from the bluesier bouncer "Daniel Day" to the piano-plucked orbital rocker "Apollo" to the haunting, sea-chantey-like outro "On & On." We definitely have a contender for local debut of the year here. CD party is Saturday at 7th Street Entry (9 p.m., $6).  -Chris Riemenschneider

New local band Yer Cronies can claim one heck of an endorsement for their new debut album, "When I Grow Up." Ben Bridwell, the leader of the South Carolina/Seattle group Band of Horses who now lives in Minneapolis, had this to say: "Upon seeing my first Yer Cronies show, I was convinced that this was the best new band in Minneapolis ... (after hearing the record), I'm convinced they're one of the best new bands anywhere." After a few spins of "When I Grow Up," it's easy to figure out what got Bridwell so excited. Yer Cronies exist in the same Neil Young-influenced sphere as Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket. But, like MMJ on their most recent album, they're not afraid to dabble in Radiohead-style experimentalism as well as various strains of '70s AM radio. "When I Grow Up" is all but guaranteed to show up on local year-end lists — you can say you knew them when at their Saturday CD-release show at the Entry, with support from So and So, the Van Gobots and the Floorbirds. -Ross Raihala

Isabella: It was really fun at times and really tedious at times. But the guy who did the recording, we HATE him. (Looks directly at Schimoeller.)

-Jay Boller