Thee More Shallows

MySpace ("The Dutch Fist," "Night at the Knight School")
Official site
Hometown: San Francisco
Next local show: 5/3, Amoeba Music San Francisco
Recent release: Book of Bad Breaks, 2007

Thee More Shallows is a band NASCENT's been wanting to cover for quite some time; we were just waiting for the right moment. With the quirky San Francisco indie-pop group's third album -- and anticon Records debut -- out last week, now is definitely the time. (more >>)

anticon fans will recognize whisps of Why? in the new record, particularly in Dee Kesler's vocals. There are also overtones of Grandaddy, the Flaming Lips, and even a little Bowie. Anyone familiar with these four artists' catalogs knows they are fine company, yet Thee More Shallows' proximity seems to be more organic than calculated, as if TMS stumbled upon the realization themselves only after finishing the album: "Hey, this sounds a bit like the Lips!" The six-year-old band seems to have absorbed many of the same influences and impulses as its labelmate and big brothers -- krautrock, neo-psychedelia, instrumental and experimental rock, art-pop -- and arrived at basically the same place.

Thee More Shallows' liason with Oakland-based artists' collective anticon evolved just as naturally: when Kesler learned that anticon artist Odd Nosdam was a neighbor of his, the two realized they shared common musical interests and began to collaborate on projects such as a remix (with Why?) on TMS' 2006 EP Monkey vs. Shark, a Boards of Canada remix, and joint contributions to both Nosdam's 2005 release Burner and Why?'s 2005 LP Elephant Eyelash. Multi-instrumentalists Chavo Fraser and Jason Gonzales round off the TMS palette, and on Book of Bad Breaks the trio sounds right at home at the esteemed, yet perpetually underground anticon. Perhaps that'll change a bit with Bad Breaks; besides being Thee More Shallows' finest moment yet and a stab at the sound the band seems to have been approaching all along, it also rivals the best releases in the label's nine-year history.

WHAT'S IN A NAME:
-Thee More Shallows are known -- by us, at least -- for using very creative names on their records.
-The band's nicely named releases include A History of Sport Fishing, More Deep Cuts, Monkey Vs. Shark, and Book of Bad Breaks.
-Thee More Shallows actually began as Thee Shallows, but changed after receiving a cease and desist order from another local artist using a similar name. Around the time they printed the inserts for their first CD, the group heard from a San Francisco musician named Brian Gregory, who was already performing as The Shallows (with one 'e'). The group was at first reluctant to change the name, but they were hardly invested in it (beyond a grand or so spent on the inserts), and a legal order from Gregory convinced them to find a new name. After auditioning a few possibilities (Thee Original Shallows, Shallows Jr., etc.), they settled on Thee More Shallows.

DOWNLOAD CENTER:

Download "Night At the Knight School" (mp3)
from "Book of Bad Breaks"
by Thee More Shallows
anticon

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