Saturday, July 26, 2014

Goldcrush

My friends Matt and Treesa Gold play in an amazing band called Goldrush.  Last week I got to hear them live for the first time, which was a real treat.  They're sound isn't what you'd expect to get from a double bass, violin, guitar, and drum set.  Prabir's songwriting is intelligent and playful.  The guitar work is very good, but understated,  giving plenty of space for the violin and double bass.  The resulting voicing is more sparse than I'm used to, making the actual chords and movements between them less obvious than normal, like some tantalizing harmonic strip-tease.  But when I say "sparse" and "understated", don't think I mean "delicate".  As they play, they control you.  They'll kick you around and you'll like it.

Here's a link to iTunes where you can get their first album, "Greatest Hits".  You're a good person.  You deserve to have their music in your life.  And here's a picture of them doing their thing:


Just like after any good show, I returned home wanting to play.  I started on a cover of their song "The Exit Song", using a very different instrumentation from the original, but the project proved too ambitious for the time I had and I got less than a minute's worth done.  It was fun, though, so I'm posting it anyway.  I made it using a tack piano (piano with metal thumb tacks in the hammers), Hammond organ, fretless electric bass, ukulele, lap steel guitar, cracklebox (one of these things), Shruthi-1 synthesizer, tambourines, and a wooden plank that I slapped with my hands, since I don't have any drums.