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| "Vesper pulls you in with intriguing melodies that blend beautiful poetic lyrics and energetic mysterious glims of darkness. The eccentricity of this blend makes for a unique and distinquished sound. Their crafty melodies will intoxicate and stick with you long after you've shut the player off!"
-FMM-Fronhofer Multimedia |
| The core members of Vesper are Aaron Lewis – a multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer, and Katie Cooper – who also plays several instruments, composes and sings. Vesper's sound is heavy but softened with the use of various Middle Eastern instruments. Both Aaron and Katie pen songs that are haunting and poetic. Vesper's self-titled, three-track maxi-single is in advance of their full-length release that is currently in the works. 'First Frost' is intriguing with its blend of dark vocals and instrumentation juxtaposed with light Middle Eastern melodies and textures. 'Cinders' smolders with fiery bass lines and scorching guitars layered over Katie's sweet but provocative vocals. 'Subway Sonata' combines sound and vocal effects over a concrete rhythm and durable guitar leads. Vesper is a forceful duo creating music that is diverse, dramatic and a sonic boom!
• Recommended Tracks: (All) -by Laura Turner Lynch Kweevak Music Promotion |
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| The Post Star Go - Thursday, August 30th 2007 "Tasty tunes with some jam" - From the Hipster's Vault by CE Skidmore Vesper will rock your world, if you give them a chance. This debut from the Saratoga rock band Vesper has me all hot and bothered. I feel like I just woke up from a heavily sedated dream. This band is rock, punk, harmony that is undeniably tasty but unafraid to plant a boot in your gut. It’s good - like rock used to be before emo cut itself and bled all over the scene. Remember guitar solos? Remember when women held more than a novelty “isn’t that cute” presence in a band? Remember when being a drummer required more than counting to eight? Vesper does. Aaron Lewis, Katie Cooper and Felice Aiello are the smelling salts to an unconscious scene. Tracks you’ll dig: “Lifemare Part One” and “Indian Summer.” If you’re into Vesper, check out: Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Yo La Tengo |
| Saratoga Today Friday, August 24th 2007 Musician's Corner by Mike Ryan Saratoga Springs natives Lewis and Cooper founded Vesper in 2005, but these days the band splits their time between Brooklyn and the Spa City. The hard rock trio considers Queens of the Stone Age, Led Zeppelin, Tool and Rasputina as their chief influences. Known for their powerful live performances, Vesper was named runners-up in WHRL’s “Most Original Band Contest” last year in Albany. In addition to gigs at Caffe Lena, Northern Lights, Revolution Hall and The Knitting Factory in New York City, the outfit has performed at First Night Saratoga for the past three years. For the next few months, Vesper will dedicate themselves to promoting the album and shopping for a label before setting off on a Northeast tour around Christmas time. Although Lewis said it would be nice to sign with a major label, ultimately the group is more interested in being able to make a modest living from their music. “With Autumn I Fell” consists of 13 tracks, one for each week of the season, as well as a hidden song. Vesper will be playing the entire album in sequence as a once-only treat for those in attendance at the City Tavern on August 27th. Quotable Quotes: “We’re hoping people will listen to the CD from start to finish. We want to bring back the idea of an album being something you listen to all the way through,” Lewis said. "The entire album is a thematic performance of paradise lost—the wilting of the flower of youth and hope,” Lewis said of “With Autumn I Fell.” |
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| The Daily Gazette Wednesday, August 22nd 2007 Live in the Clubs - "Vesper's album meant to be heard from beginning to end" by Philip Schwartz At a time when major record labels are more singles-oriented than ever, a Brooklyn band with Saratoga roots is releasing an album with a challenge to its fans: Listen intently to the entire hour's worth of music on "With Autumn I Fell." "It's meant to be put in and listened from beginning to end," Aaron Lewis, Vesper's guitarist and vocalist, said during an interview last week at an Albany cafe. "I think a lot of the music we listen to is like that, like [The Beatles'] 'Abbey Road,' " added bassist/vocalist Katie Cooper, "albums that are an experience from beginning to end." Debut effort Vesper, which also includes Brooklyn drummer Felice Aiello, is on the cusp of releasing its debut after a year-long effort that had the three Brooklynites making the commute to an Albany studio every free moment they had. With a CD release show planned for Monday at Saratoga City Tavern, Vesper is about to step up its efforts with more live gigs now that the self-released "Autumn" is complete. Lewis and Cooper, who both grew up in Saratoga Springs before moving to Brooklyn, don't go so far as to call their "full-album experience" a concept piece. It's more thematic, they say. And after some careful listening, Cooper promises, "a story line emerges." But they wouldn't discuss what that story line is. "We don't want to dictate to listeners what it's about, because that can be a really individual experience," Lewis said. But here's a hint: Autumn plays a key thematic role, with 13 tracks representing the 13 weeks of the season (there's also a hidden track that listeners can hear only by rewinding almost four minutes before track one). It's a dark-sounding, hard rock album that draws from varied, but somehow harmonious, influences such as Led Zeppelin, Tool and Tori Amos. The cello and other classical elements heard on several tracks,! Vesper's flair for the dramatic and the ambitious nature of the album make it hard not to think of progressive rock, too. "We have trouble pinpointing exactly what we sound like," Cooper said, "and though it's different sounding, it's still accessible. We think that's a big strength." Formed in early 2005, Vesper came about after Lewis and Cooper wrapped up their respective tenures in the bands Mournin Dove and K8E. Both songwriters, they found themselves getting together and playing their songs for each other, liking what they heard. Ultimately, the Vesper sound naturally evolved from the merging of both their writing styles. Skip ahead to their debut album's release, both Lewis and Cooper acknowledge that their push to have fans listen to the entirety of "Autumn" is bucking the trend in the iPod age of personalized playlists. Cohesive approach But part of the reason listeners gravitate to single songs, Lewis said, is because there are so many albums with filler material. Vesper's goal, rather, was to have something so cohesive that people will want to follow from beginning to end, without hitting the skip button. "I don't think there's much out there for people to listen that way," Lewis said. Besides, Lewis and Cooper think there are adventurous music fans out there willing to follow and figure out the story on "Autumn." Just look at the success of a band like Tool, Lewis points out. |
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| The Saratogian Friday, September 28th 2007 "Life: Vesper brings Autumn home to Saratoga" by Ted Reinert Vesper, a three piece rock group based in Brooklyn and Saratoga Springs, has discovered a new meaning to the hidden track. With the sequence set on their debut album "...With Autumn I Fell..." -- 13 songs, one for each week of the season -- there was no place for the title track, an instrumental with a bit of an Indian flavor. So Vesper went backwards. The listener has to rewind from track one into negative time code to hear the piece. Singer Aaron Lewis -- no, not the Aaron Lewis from Staind -- said the hidden track is only a quarter of a "Four Seasons" -type instrumental suite which he hopes to bring out eventually. But for now, Vesper is concentrating on the autumn album, released several weeks ago, and regional touring. The band will play a free show 9pm Saturday, Oct. 6th at Backstreet Billiards at 63A Putnam Street (in the alley across from the library). Vesper is led by Spa natives Lewis and Katie Cooper, who play guitar and bass respectively and split singing and songwriting duties roughly equally. Drummer Felice Aiello, originally from Pennsylvania, completes the group. The vocal interplay between Lewis and Cooper is certainly one of the band's strengths. They harmonize well and "...With Autumn I Fell..." is a well produced album of darkly pretty sonic moments. Vesper knows the power of the soft-loud dynamic in emotional hard rock. The "Autumn" album is a thematic group of musical statements according to Lewis, "pun-intended", on the fall of innocence and faith. It begins and ends with a music box. Its children's book-style packaging subtitles the album "A Collection of Misery Rhymes and Lullabies." Lewis said in looking at the seasons, fall seemed the natural starting point with its march toward winter, the beginning of dying, the experience of pain and loss. While Lewis and Cooper hardly break lyrical ground, they are perfectly effective. In the tradition of groups like A Perfect Circle and Stabbing Westward, Vesper wants an arena and a few thousand black-clad teens singing along to every word. They've got chops and radio-ready songs, so don't be surprised if they get what they're looking for. "First Frost," the first single, sung by Lewis, and "Indian Summer," sung by Cooper, are good starting points that can be heard on the band's myspace page (www.myspace.com/vesper). "Ballad of You and I" is one of the album's epics, with the singers trading duties and piano sprinkled through. "Loveless" shows the band rocking out in a more upbeat fashion, while "Wither" shows the influence of Cooper's favorite band Tool. Lewis said one of his favorite places to play in Saratoga was the Parting Glass, where he worked his way up from dishwasher to Entertainment Director. But the band is looking forward to Backstreet Billiards. "That's going to be a new place for us," he said. Who would the band most like to share a stage with? Lewis said Cooper would choose Tool and Aiello would most likely love to go back in time and drum for Frank Sinatra. Lewis' personal choice? Well, Led Zeppelin is reuniting in late November... |
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| Greenline - North Brooklyn News November 2007 "Greenpoint band VESPER debuts With Autumn I Fell" by Miriam Beyer As the music industry focuses more and more on the single - on securing listeners’ attentions for the shortest amount of time possible - Greenpoint band Vesper has stood forth confidently with their debut album “...With Autumn I Fell...,” where each song is a continuation of the one before, where there’s a story being told throughout, and where they’d like you to listen from beginning to end. “If I give you a single, I feel like I’m giving you a piece of a painting,” vocalist and guitarist Aaron Lewis said recently, in an interview at Enid’s on Manhattan Ave. “And who wants a piece of a painting? I want to give you the whole thing.” [A year and a half] in the making, “Autumn” is a dark exploration of the pain of love, the loss of innocence and identity, and the tragic comfort in the way life and the elements of life shut down around you. The 13 tracks echo the 13 weeks of the season, and each track is like a chapter of a Grimm’s fairy tale. The album arcs in concept and theme, building in the middle and closing down with a soft shudder at the end, the last track “Goodnight/Lifemare part three” readying you for winter. Although dark and darkly real, “Autumn” is consoling, like being read to before bed (the album’s packaging, in fact, is like a leather-bound book). Vesper plans to make three additional albums dedicated to each of the seasons. The idea for “Autumn” started with Lewis, a native of Saratoga Springs, NY. Lewis had been playing with bands in Seattle, and when they disbanded he returned to Saratoga Springs and got together with Katie Cooper, also a native of Saratoga Springs and also recently freed from bands that had broken up. “Aaron had told me about this album idea when we started playing together, and after a few weeks I thought, ‘Now is the time to do this.’ We started exploring it together and writing, and the concept grew and expanded in ways we couldn’t have imagined, which was extremely satisfying,” Cooper said. Cooper took up the bass, which she now plays in Vesper with authority, strength, and cool force. She also sings, and her voice, as skilled and beautiful as Tori Amos’ (listen to “Indian Summer”) is a perfect compliment to Lewis’ powerful and powerfully rich singing, which even in the context of hard rock remains eloquent (listen to “First Frost”). Drummer Felice Aiello provides the spine, experimenting with moody rhythms and time signatures. “Autumn” is balanced, the intensity of the rock tempered by classical interludes (there are both cello and piano on the album), hard and fast songs followed by softer ones, melody and dissonance playing hide-and-seek. “We are a band with a rock vibe and a classical edge,” Lewis said. Vesper would like to be signed, but major label attention is not their goal. “We don’t need, or even really want, the glamour of a major label, which can sometimes be overblown,” Aiello said. “We’d just like a framework, so we can distribute our album and promote it more, and tour and perform it.” “We are an extremely dedicated and hard-working band,” Lewis agreed. Vesper embraces their identity as a Greenpoint band (Lewis wrote the song “Subway Sonata” while waiting for the G train). They performed recently at Luna Lounge on Metropolitan Ave, and they will be performing at Club Europa on Meserole Ave on Thursday, December 20th as part of an evening of Greenpoint bands. |
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| Greenpoint Courier
24 Seven Section December 14th, 2007 "Local Music on Point with Vesper " by Michele De Meglio Williamsburg isn’t the only rockin’ nabe in northern Brooklyn - Greenpoint is ready for its time in the spotlight. The hood’s 15 minutes of fame will begin on December 20th with the Greenpoint Local Music Showcase at Club Europa, 98 Meserole Ave. Offering a taste of Greenpoint’s varied music scene, the show will feature the soulful sounds of Hello Tokyo, Abraham Van’s acoustic blues, the hardcore punk of APPLE, Aloke’s pop rock tunes, and the rock band Vesper, which is organizing the showcase. “The bands are playing a variety of music,” explained Aaron Lewis, singer and guitarist for Vesper. “That shows the diversity of the neighborhood itself.” Greenpoint has been ready to steal a piece of Williamsburg’s reputation as one of the city’s hottest artistic communities since musician’s switched to the Point for its prime rehearsal space. “Williamsburg was really the hot place for the longest time. But Greenpoint is just a little bit farther away with a little bit cheaper rent so a lot of them just came over here,” Lewis said. To draw attention to Greenpoint’s growing music scene and the upcoming showcase, Lewis is taking the old-school approach, which he says best represents what Brooklyn is all about. “Greenpoint is the only area that you have to hang up flyers,” he said. “In the East Village, why bother hanging up posters for a show in Greenpoint?” The down-home, community-feel setting Brooklyn apart from the big city is what has helped fuel Lewis’ music. “Enid’s on Driggs and Manhattan Ave - it’s nice to have a bite to eat and a pint and write in the corner,” he said. The musician also creates his best tunes in local parks, like the legendary McCarren. “They’re wonderful places to go and just take a slow walk and sit on a bench and write,” he said. The songs on Vesper’s debut album, “With Autumn I Fell,” were penned during these sessions. Focused on life and love, the album offers a dramatic, melancholy look at the transition from childhood to adulthood by using the fall season as a backdrop. “It’s got 13 tracks [representing] the 13 weeks of the autumn season. The songs tie in to each other,” Lewis explained. “A lot of songs deal with the fall of faith and innocence.” With this album set in autumn (leaves are falling, get it?), Vesper plans to continue the 12-month flow with albums finding symbolism in winter, spring and summer. “It’s a thematic piece because eventually I’m hoping to do an album on winter. So this is a predecessor,” Lewis said. “As a child you’re getting older and it is that fall in life, whether it be friends, or family or faith itself. Then you go into your own winter, which is a growth period, and eventually you go into reconciling again, which is where spring and summer would go.” When performing songs from the album, Vesper, rounded out by singer-bassist Katie Cooper and drummer Felice Aiello, receives much response from the gothic rocker “First Frost.” Maybe it’s the lingeringly dark lyrics - “Come to my room fallen angel/ I won’t hurt you more than you already do/ Lay your nakedness down beside me/ Reveal no truths but tell no lies/ She tastes much better, cynical and bitter.” “‘First Frost’ is definitely one of our bigger ones that we seem to be getting a lot of reaction to,” Lewis said. Currently at work to “fine-tune ourselves as a live band,” Vesper plans to return to the studio to begin a winter album. But in the meantime, it’s all about the gigs, and getting people down to the showcase at Club Europa. “We’re playing all around New York City, and it’s a big, big city,” Lewis said. “We rehearse here in Greenpoint and we made some friends with Greenpoint people. So to do a show in our neighborhood and invite local bands makes the city feel small again.” |
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| Target Audience Magazine Summer Issue, 2008 by Ellen E. Aldridge Vesper's EPK www.sonicbids.com/vesper starts out catalyzed by chords and marching bass drum, with a beautifully tragic metaphor comparing winter's "first frost" with a withering relationship. The haunting repetition of "it snowed today" mellows out the hard rock quality of the music and forges lyrics which speak about common themes in uncommon ways. The seven tracks included in the EPK tease listeners into wanting the whole 13-track album, With Autumn I Fell. This four-piece band includes two cellists and a mix of violin, guitar and sitar. Stringed instruments which pull new ideas and visions from the mundane art of normal life. "Subway Sonata" shows the poetic beauty contained within a single Vesper song with a wonderful comparison to subway graffiti and a daily horoscope. "Waiting for a train that'll never come/ Take the PATH, but not the one that we strayed from/ Like blood we flow to and from the trains/ Down under through the cities veins" It takes a poet to translate every day life into music which not only speaks to audiences, but rocks them into shedding the frustration of life during a live show. Vesper is no cliché, rock band. They drive through every track with melody and while one could possibly "dance" to it, most would push and surf over fans at a show. The lyrics truly make Vesper a band which stands out. "The Ballad of You and I" speaks, "please wake up/ Love's slept in/ And its time to move on/ I'll pack the memories/ Grab your faith from the floor" Target Audience Magazine recommends Vesper's With Autumn I Fell even for fans of writing who never listen to music. Read the lyrics to inspire poetic ways of viewing the world. Watch them live to feel the sound of a difference in the world. Vesper is one band to watch and anyone in the New York area should try to catch them live. They have an upcoming show in Brooklyn at Matchless September 5, 2008 at 7:00. Visit www.vespermusic.net for more upcoming shows and a video soon to be released. |
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