BRAIDS
Braids is: Raphaelle Standell-Preston: lead vocals, guitar :: Austin Tufts: drums, vocals :: Katie Lee: keys, vocals :: Taylor Smith: bass, guitar, drums, vocals
BRAIDS’ was formed by four best friends in their last year of High School in Calgary, Alberta. Convincing one another to skip university, they stayed in the garage all year and practiced obsessively, even while their fingers froze during the cold prairie winters. Then, at only 18 years old, they took the bold step of moving across the country together to Montreal, where they began crafting their self recorded/self produced debut album Native Speaker.
Oscillating between density and spaciousness, BRAIDS’ sound is not easy to define. The four members construct music which is ample and rolling, perhaps alluding to the landscapes of their youth, but filled with radical texture and startling immediacy, an influence of their more recent surroundings. Delicate layering gives their experimental pop epics just enough breath to playfully explore the depth of ambient melody. Though BRAIDS dives into moments of deep obscurity and sonic experimentation, there remains embedded within the music the hypnosis of an unforgettable pop tune.
Native Speaker, is the accumulation of months of meticulous craft-work to properly capture the band’s entrancing live performance. The albums’ songs were tested and shaped through numerous performances and lyrical massages, resulting in work that is brilliant in detail and structure. Averaging over 6 minutes and never coming in under 4, the tracks on Native Speaker maintain a deep seeded focus.
BRAIDS has an unusually collaborative dynamic, generating all of their sweeping sounds live in a synergistic maelstrom. Even their name, BRAIDS, evokes a feeling of something continuous and progressive, yet lush and intertwining. It implies the interweaving of all four members’ musical ideas, favoring collective and equal input.
On January 18, 2011 BRAIDS is putting forth their debut album Native Speaker, a reflection of coming of age for the four intricately linked musicians. It captures a period of innocence and a period of change, yet comes off as strikingly mature beyond their years. Most importantly, it displays a yearning and striving to break through, an ambitious debut for a young band just getting started.
- NY Times
“It starts with swirls of keyboards, bubbling aquatically, before Raphaelle Standell-Preston begins whispering naughty, wounded vocals. By the time the chorus first arrives…her voice has swelled to a forceful kick.”
- Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands of 2010
“Amid the pianos, guitars, keyboards, extended pulsations, and ambient breaks and build….a couple of the album’s seven tracks are above eight minutes – but as a testament to their pop crafts, it never feels overdone.”
- Exclaim!
“Braids may become especially well-known for their lyrics, which have the potential to sashay from vulnerable to cheeky.”
- Time Out NY
“Braids, a collective of sub-21 Montreal indie-rockers, plays knotty, dense pop songs that feel like reimaginings of Feels-era Animal Collective songs spruced up with shimmering female vocals. But oh, those vocals!”
- Montreal Mirror
“Contemporary classic Calgary-bred quartet Braids make Montreal their own and self-produce a stellar debut album, Native Speaker”
- Brooklyn Vegan
“Braids use their voices more as another instrument than a conveyor of lyrics. There are points during their set when the harmonies meld with the band’s stretched out grooves to achieve ethereal bliss worthy of The Cocteau Twins.”
