Cure For Gravity

Welcome once again to the Closet Concert Arena fellow progheads!  The search for all things prog continues its westward shuffle as we go all the way to the left coast; more precisely the greater San Francisco Bay area.  This week the Concert Closet checks out the sounds of Cure For Gravity, a relative new comer to the prog garden.  Cure For Gravity recently released their full length debut album while having an earlier EP already on their resume.  Always interesting and enjoyable to check out fresh growth, so let the headphone festivities begin...

Cure For Gravity bill themselves as "...atmospheric Cine-Rock..." so I am expecting a multi-layered, ornate, mind altering  trek of sorts through the prog garden this week.  The band just dropped their eponymous debut in October, so let us step eagerly to the buffet and get this journey started...

The first portion carved from the unveiling is called "Tonight" and there is a bit of a celestial feel to the sound...top notes of Fairport Convention entwined with aromatics of The Strawbs...and all of it encapsulated in a Spock's Beard shell...tasty.  The song isn't dark so much as it is "industrial."  There is a feel to the music as though it is trying to swallow you whole without causing any harm, much like a python soothing you to sleep as it embraces you. The vocals come to the forefront as guitar and keyboards take a step back.  That is not to say they fade--they simply fill the perimeter of your cranium as you take flight...

Moving along the buffet line, I stumble across a healthy slice of "Black Metal."  Closing my eyes as the song opens, I am taken through the eye of the storm ever so quickly as chaos gives way to calm. The guitar work lives up to the description; there is something "otherworldly" about the mood here...
There are aromatics of Radiohead wafting through the air, and perhaps a top note of Psicolorama floating in the headphones as well.  Cure For Gravity can be ornate without weighing so heavily you can't breathe; like the feeling you get from finishing that second burrito--and then catching a glimpse of a banana split in your peripheral vision...you got this!

 Liner Notes...hailing from the Oakland CA area, Cure For Gravity spends time in Berkeley and is comprised of Joe Markert on vocals, keyboards, and guitars, Dave Walcott on guitars and vocals, and Chris Gamper on drums.  There are additional musicians contributing to this album, but Cure For Gravity is ultimately a three-headed beast;  a trio that manages to fill the headphones, and consequently your auditory canals, with sights and sounds that light up the inner lining of your cranium like a pinball machine on tilt.

Cure For Gravity has been a band since 2010 and originally released the EP, "Fallen Stars" in 2012. The next four years saw the band going through line-up changes and defining/fine tuning their sound. Cure For Gravity released their debut full length album this past October--but there is no rest for the weary...Joe, Dave, and Chris are working on album #2 with an anticipated release date sometime in 2018.

Cure For Gravity saunters through the prog garden like a kid walking the aisles at Toys R Us; looking for clues, ideas, and inspiration. Taking all their bushel basket can hold, CFG proceeds to interpret and channel a unique sound that blends top notes ranging from Radiohead to The Clash with a zinger of Atlas Volt blended in just for the intrigue...

My final selection for review has a bit more hitch to the giddyup; "Just Like Candy."  The guitars seem to tease the drums as they dance across the top of the song like Mitch Miller's bouncing ball. Brighter colors spill down the canvas as the mood elevator starts its climb...I get an Ebn Ozn vibe from this tune. Cure For Gravity pulls the curtain back just a bit here, exposing the smooth under belly of simplicity that lies beneath the elaborate trappings of an atmospheric cine-rock exterior...a bit of fun in the science lab...

You can find out more about Cure For Gravity on their website Cure For Gravity and their Facebook page Cure For Gravity FB.  If the sounds you hear meet your approval, please support this--and all the bands I review by purchasing their music.  You can order the album on their Bandcamp site
Cure For Gravity Bandcamp and iTunes at Cure For Gravity iTunes.  You can also follow the band on Twitter, @cfgmusic.

The clip posted below is called "Push."  Perhaps a bit on the melancholy side, this song fills the canvas with soft pastels overcoming clouds of grey...you can feel the emotion rolling off the disc like water droplets falling off rose petals.  There is a touch of Jesse Colin Young floating across the lyrics; the vocals are a bit heavier yet that soft touch while bringing across something deep and thought provoking is almost transcendent...

                     


And once again fellow progheads, a fortnight has come and gone and once again another band has been exposed to the light.  Cure For Gravity may walk the eclectic, atmospheric section of the prog garden, but along the way they discovered the concept of bringing sounds from different sections together and making them sui generis.

Cure For Gravity has started blazing their own path, and the future looks to be bright.  And so too The Concert Closet continues to blaze a trail through the prog garden in search of all things prog...until next time...