The Span of a Life
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
OHMPARK
“As the name of their band would imply, Nerd Parade aren’t concerned with their style being hip, their just busy making good music. Usually it is hard for me to dig into conservative leaning music like this, employing pop music and rock ‘n’ roll from every corner of the late 20th century, but this band just puts it all together masterfully. Their newest record, The Span Of A Life, is ridiculously dynamic, bouncing around between so many different influences and styles while Abby Wren and Randy Garcia trade vocal duties when they aren’t both differing to extended instrumental jam outs. What is also striking about the album, is how seamlessly it all flows together. It is all one colossal composition, and it’s been an integral part of my summer soundtrack.”
Review By Davy Minor
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
PERFORMER MAGAZINE
“Nerd Parade’s most recent album, The Span of a Life is a fair representation of the band’s talent. If there is any band that can defy genre, it’s them. They’ve managed to combine elements from all over the musical map to create a sound they can call their own. This alternative indie pop-rock band is on a journey to bring rock’n'roll back.
While definitions themselves can seem constraining, so can an overhaul of style. It can become overwhelming when there is too much going on in a song and it can work against the band, shining the light away from the album’s most reputable tracks. The third song on the album, “Yay, Yeah, Uh-huh!” is a perfect example. While it has parts and pieces that are soulful, it mostly finds itself sounding contrived.
On the contrary, the two opening tracks of the album “Sixty-Eight Reasons” and “The Span of a Life” are spectacular. They combine the bands strongest suits: dual vocal harmonies, a sweet mixture of acoustic and heavy electric guitars and epic theatrics. In its entirety, the album begins strong, finds itself again in the middle and ends beautifully.
It’s a striking record, with an inclusion of elements that is smart, sweet and playful. The simpler parts outshine the rest, making The Span of a Life incredibly interesting. Technically simple, the music has an element for everyone. It is an album to be listened to start-tofinish and not any other way”
Review by Amanda Macchia
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
POP UNDERGROUND
“Nerd Parade – The Span of a Life – *** – Interesting album from this band. Melding several influences, from atmospheric, harmonic, mid-tempo pop, hard guitars, etc. It makes for a familiar, but unique sound. Nice balance of male and female voices as well.”
Review by K.W.
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
QRO MAGAZINE
“In 2007, Miami’s Randy Garcia put together A Delicate Bashing as leader of The Nerd Parade. Reaching all over the place, Bashing was an accomplished collection of indietronica, diva, country, disco, and more. For the follow-up, Garcia has pulled things together a little bit on Span of a Life, making for a record curiously both less ambitious and more.
Whereas Bashing felt like a crazy paella, Span is definitely a record meant to be listened to from start-to-finish. But records like that are actually quite varied (think Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade), because if all the pieces sounded similar, listening beginning-to-end would only reveal that one-note fact. Thankfully, The Nerd Parade still keep a lot of different things in the mix, but most notable on the new record is the shift towards guitar-jam. From the founder of electronica label NoPhi, it’s rather surprising that Garcia has moved to the axe-jam, but that is a style that lends itself to stretching without breaking, musically.
And Garcia has kept the best aspect of Bashing, singer Abby Wren’s diva-like voice. If anything, it feels more prominent on Span, from the catchy & brightening “Circles (Love Eternal)” to the following sad, carrying epic “We Are Not Sleeping”. There’s also the diva-press “Yr Drunken Holiday” near the end, and the straight-out funk-jam “Yay, Yeah, Uh-huh!” – a piece has to be pretty enjoyable to pull off that title, and The Nerd Parade can.
Sometimes, the jam gets too much on Span, like the instrumental jams “Sixty-Eight Reasons” and “The Rockness Monster” (though the latter is an awesome name…). And “One Million Wooden Acres” seems to exceed that, only to feel a little indulgent with the guitar solo. But then there’s the surf guitar-meets-southwestern epic (guess that would be Baja California…) “Dead Air & Denial”, which nicely throws into a story-jam.
The only really indietronica piece on Span of a Life is closer “Imagineland”, a dark coda with memorable melody. Shifting to the guitar-jam has given The Nerd Parade a bit more cohesion, if taken a little too far that way and away from the neat ‘tronic effects of A Delicate Bashing. And it’s still accomplishment, across it’s whole Span.”
Review by Ted Chase
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
NERDLES.COM
“OK, so its safe to say that if you send ‘em, I’ll check ‘em out, and likely write something about them in the columns at some point or another. So when our column editor forwarded me a link to a band that had been in touch and asked us to check them out, I was worries. I just hoped for something interesting. Most likely I would think it was shit and write just that, creating a little animosity between 4 angsty teenagers somewhere in the middle of Butt-F&*k, Nowhere and…well, me, here at the Nerdles cyber tribe.
No point in writing about it unless I feel something about it, good or bad, right? Right, but how happy was I to find that the first user requested review was actually quite an interesting find.
Hailing from Altlanta, Georgia in the US, The Nerd Parade, who clearly found us Googling themselves, claim indie/rock/electronica as their genre span, or at least they do on myspace. Not sure whether that really serves as the best description but it’s certainly heading in that direction. First off, I like it, quite a lot actually.
‘Dead Air and Denial’ is what would have happened if The Surfari’s turned into vampires at the Titty Twister in the film ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’ and rocked out. It’s a great surf-rock tune that somehow turns in to a long outro that sounds like it should be the music for the closing ceremony for the Olympics or something – not sold on this bit, nevertheless, I like the tune and it’s probably one of the highlights for me, along with ‘The Span of a Life’ that immediately puts me in mind of Queens of the Stone Age, and then somehow relents to reveal a group that cannot get away from the sound of where it lives – there is a certain southern rock/country vibe that seems to underlay most of the tracks, even the more electronic tracks, though not as much. It’s a Southern charm that permeates music rather than influences it – bands like The Black Crowes dish it out in buckets, and a band called Paw, from Texas used to regularly throw it out in the acoustic break downs of their grungy alt-rock, and this band show it too in their breakdowns, intro’s and outro’s, and its something that I like.
All in, The Nerd Parade are well worth a listen. It’s a good mix of many genres and sounds from spiky rock guitars & some sweet harmonies, to blues infused break-beats and many things in-between. The track variation is quite diverse too, so there will be something there that appeals to most people.
Cowpokes on 10 Steers
Oh yeah…this is my twisted score scheme. An out-of 10 score (purely based on my opinion, other peoples opinion may vary and they have every right to do so), mixed with a possibly offensive stereotype based on location, for which I apologize profusely.
Errr…sorry.”
Review by B. Minor
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
ATLANTA MUSIC GUIDE
“Hearkening back to the days when the American South was inextricably tied to rock ‘n’ roll, Nerd Parade’s The Span of a Life contains the kinds of big sounds and inventive daring that rock music should be about. The songs would, in fact, make the perfect soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s next film — gritty, soulful, searing. Their palate is wide-ranging, as though they went into the studio with a big grab bag of ’70s rock and punk sounds, shook it up really good, and then pulled out pieces at will. But it’s also fresh, not so much stuck in the past as acknowledging a little bit of nostalgia, then moving on in unexpected ways.
First, there are the guitars. The lead on the title track noodles along like an Allman Brothers song; paired with lead vocalist Abby Wren singing about “traveling down to an old country town, in a beat up sedan tonight,” this is Southern rock revival at its finest. Next up on the album, “Yay, Yeah, Uh-Huh!” takes it a step farther, cribbing sounds from jazz-influenced blues and rock. But the band can do more than just this. “How Hard We Fall” kicks up the fuzz for a punk rock garage jam, then reigns in the reverb for some thumping bass, before pulling out that huge lead guitar sound again, edging towards Zeppelin-levels of blistering.
Dynamic shifts like this abound on the album. From crescendoing opener “Sixty-Eight Reasons,” with its slightly Eastern, slightly psychedelic sound, to the fade out of the final moments, the tracks almost never do what you might expect them to. For starters, most blend seamlessly into each other, despite sounding nothing alike. It’s a trick that keeps up the tempo of the album as a whole, as well as helping to integrate all their various sounds. “Dead Air & Denial” changes up the game halfway through: it begins with a big, hooky guitar riff (think “Wipeout” as conceived by the session players at Muscle Shoals). The only time the technique falters is on album closer “Imagineland.” After a strong start, acapella vocals joined quickly by chugging guitar, the track goes strangely toothless. Luckily, it picks back up before the end, meaning even the weakest track on the album redeems itself.
For all their musical prowess, the voices of Wren and Randy Garcia are charmingly low-key, unpolished in all the best ways. Wren can belt it out, and she certainly does, but she also restrains herself much of the time. It only adds to the garage rock feel, better combining all those ’70s influences into a homemade, heartfelt album. If this is what’s possible, Southern rock should step out of the arena — and the past — way more often.”
Review by Alexandra Edwards
NERD PARADE – THE SPAN OF A LIFE
BLOG ASHEVILLE
“With the upcoming release of The Span of a Life Nerd Parade has been touring tirelessly trying to spread the word of their epic recipe for the good kind of disaster. One thing is for sure, these kids have a wide appeal and rightfully so, their music is as varied as the best kind of mixed tape/cd: it has a little something for any mood. Tracks like “How Hard We Fall,” with a delicate two minute drone-whisper to a thrashing-guitar-scream instrumental movement at the end, strokes the intense guitar solo desire without being too indulgent, while tracks like “We Are Not Sleeping,” “The Span of a Life,” and “Dead Air and Denial” feature stronger vocals by Randy Garcia ( “Span” and “Denial” ) and Chris Sheldon ( “Sleeping” ), and highlight Abby Wren’s velvety powerhouse harmonies and hooks. On Guitars, Randy Garcia and John Jacobus shine like freaking fireworks, the rhythm section is insanely crushed by Rich Wilson on bass and Chris Sheldon on drums, and Miss Abby Wren acts as the sweet honey that sticks everything together.
Please, have a listen, and enjoy! I do.”
Review by Lydia See
