Don’t be fooled by his band’s name, Stu McLamb’s music is not sentimental. Instead he would tell you they sound like “Ella Fitzgerald kicking heroin.”

“I was just reading an article about her and it just seems fitting because she has so much soul to her voice,” McLamb explains. “I’m not trying to say I sing like that, but you know I feel like there are sort of redemptive qualities to belting your heart out.”

After going through, not exactly heroin, but vodka, you understand McLamb’s need to belt things out.

The North Carolina native was kicked out of his band, The Capulets, for drunkenly breaking into the band’s practice space and trashing it. Then he moved in with the girl who would become the inspiration for his song “Lalita” explaining they had “unhealthy tendencies like throwing beer bottles at the wall” when they fought. Needless to say the two broke up and he decided to drink a fifth of Aristocrat landing himself in jail, shackles and all.

“Actually it was a good thing it was a padded cell, because when I came to I was banging my head on a wall, not knowing where I was. It was awesome,” McLamb laughs.

Needless to say McLamb cleaned up and has no interest in reliving his bio, which is every crazy (and true) thing that led up to the making of the album. “I don’t want to be known as this bad boy, it’s a lot more about the music,” he says.

Although McLamb has recruited a band for live shows, everything you hear on the record was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by him and him alone. He got himself a digital recorder off of Craigslist and started playing some songs, but he had no plans to make an album. Instead it was about the cathartic experience of creating. He’s the first to admit it took him a while (nearly 2 years) to write the 9 songs that would become Love Language’s self-titled debut.

With little money, he rented a storage space, bought a very cheap bass, borrowed some drums and started recording the album with a 4-track, allowing him to attain the lo-fi, gritty style he had always admired. “I think 'Nocturne' was the first song I tried to do a real version of. It was a rough version, and I thought ‘Cool, I can’t do this much better," he says."Then the label guy was like, ‘These sound like shit, in a good way!’”

And it's true, Love Language has more of a refreshing DIY feel then most other lo-fi projects with little ineptities giving it its charm. "It's not meticulous, but more about me not knowing how to work a microphone," he admits. "I didn’t understand frequenicies or which knobs to turn."

Before McLamb knew it his little CD-R had found its way into the hands of fellow North Carolinia band The Rosebuds and they were asking him to open up for them. Knowing he couldn't reporduce the album the way he wanted alone, McLamb recruited some musical friends. “We kind of put a band together in a week and worked our ass off,” McLamb says.

Love Language was never really a solo act instead it was McLamb’s chance to make something that was all him, no compromising. Even if he did do some compromising when it came to the drumming. "I am not a drummer so I did cheat a little bit, especially when it comes to drum fills," McLamb explains. "You'll hear a lot of tambourine in place of cymbals."

For the next album, McLamb plans to incorporate his 7-piece touring band, which includes his brother, Jordan on acoustic guitar, but don’t expect a complete 180. "There’s definitely some things I want to bring out," McLamb says again referring to the percussion aspect. "We don't want to polish it, just want to make it what we want it to be.”

While his band's name isn't sentimental ("Just an inside joke with an ex-girlfriend"), McLamb isn't a robot and knows he's come a long way from drunken break-ins and padded cells. “We were in Pittsburgh and I saw the whole band singing along and I realized this is everyone’s, it isn’t just me, they’re not just backing up my songs. They’re part of the band,” McLamb says earnestly. “I’m a pain and the ass to deal with, but it’s working.”

-Shannon Carlin

myspace.com/lovelanguage

It’s been three years since his gold certified album, Youth, was all the buzz in 2006. So yes, a chunk of time spent out of the headlines has gone by, but all hasn’t been quiet on the Matisyahu front.

The reggae/hip-hop artist, known for his devotion to Orthodox Judaism, has been touring hard all summer with his comrades from Dub Trio to promote his latest studio effort, Light. The album shows us a new side of Matisyahu’s artistry—music that’s less exclusively influenced by reggae and less dependent on a Hasidic rapper image for novelty marketing.

“It’s quite a bit different than previous stuff I’ve done,” Matis says of Light. “This record is more audible, it comes from a broader spectrum of influences. It has more dynamics and shifts in energy.”

And that broader spectrum of influences that Matis speaks of, it stretches well beyond the bounds of music. The album was in part inspired by a quasi-psychedelic Jewish fairytale, “The Seven Beggars.”

The fairytale was written in the 1800s by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who was known for crafting cryptic stories that were layered with Jewish mysticism. Matis explains that, like many meaningful pieces of art or teaching, Rabbi Nachman’s stories contain “a lot of really beautiful points that you have to dig for, but are worth it when you arrive at them.”

Identifying with a mystic storyteller rabbi would seem off the beaten path for most Orthodox Jews. For Matisyahu though, faith and music—and the psychedelic pathway that, for him, brought the two together—are intrinsically connected.

At sixteen, religiosity and his passion for music first became linked when he became intrigued as to why the Bob Marley songs he loved were quoting the Old Testament. He describes that playing onstage with Trey Anastasio at Bonnaroo in 2005 “felt like destiny,” because almost a decade earlier Matis was tripping on acid at a Phish concert and felt that Anastasio looked at him, communicating that he [Matisyahu] would one day be blessed with the opportunity to do what Anastasio was doing.

Matis elaborates on the connection: “Music and belief in God, they’re both part of my inner world, my struggle,” adding, “to me, God is where you go when you feel constricted by your own limitations—and when you don’t necessarily know how to reach out for that help, music is my voice, the instrument that I use to reach out.”

In a way, his explanation is simple: music and faith both come out of the same place from within him—and maybe this shouldn’t come as such a surprise. It just seems as if audiences don’t know how to react when the music they hear doesn’t “match” the image they have in their heads of
what a reggae or hip-hop musician should look like.

“We don’t live in such a big world anymore. Everyone has access to all kinds of music and art. Artists have the ability to choose what music speaks to their soul.” Matis also adds that although the image he was initially marketed under was “very much Hasidic Jew,” he finds it frustrating when people expect him to don a certain look at all times. “I’ll go into a restaurant or something, wearing jeans and a tee-shirt and a (trucker) hat, and someone will be like, ‘So, what does it feel like to dress in Hasidic garb?’ And I’m like, yeah, I have a beard…but so do half the guys in Brooklyn.”

On top of toning down his Hasidic rapper image, Matis has changed in numerous ways since he released his first album in 2004. As he put it, “I know now much more clearly the sound that I like, and how to get it.” He also explains that he is better able to control “what it is that I want to do with my voice. I’ve spent the last five years just learning vocal technique, and I still see so much room for growth.”

After Light comes out, Matis expects to keep pushing forward and touring with Dub Trio (he “can’t imagine playing with anyone else right now”), and adds: “I’ll continue incorporating my life into the music and vice-versa. I’ll just keep doing this and be content.”

-Erica Block

The British press is notorious for over-hyping their musical prodigies to legendary status in a short—sometimes too short—amount of time. Some bands may take that wave and ride it straight to VH1 and back again, but others opt to let the press be press and themselves be a little more innovative, reserved and perhaps even docile with their music.

Alex Turner and Jamie Cook, two members of Britain’s latest alt-rock phenomenon the Arctic Monkeys, know very well the excitement they’re stirring on both sides of the pond. Forming less than a decade ago, they have already managed to break top industry records by having the fastest selling debut album in UK history.

It’s hard to believe the two guys sitting in the corner of this near-deserted Brooklyn bar on a rainy Wednesday afternoon are part of something many in UK claim to be the biggest and best thing since Oasis. Don’t think that hasn’t caught them by surprise, either.

“I feel that in the past there’s always this sense that we were catching up with ourselves,” says Turner, who is the band’s lead vocalist and part-time guitarist. “Perhaps that was because the first record kind of unexpectedly thrusted us forward into a situation that we were unprepared for to some degree.”

Turner and Cook—alongside band mates Matt Helders (drums) and Nick O’Malley (bass)—are set to drop their third album, Humbug. A little over two years since the release of their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, Turner has felt a certain bloom in the band’s work.

“I truly believe that there’s more of a depth to this [record],” Turner explains. “I feel like now, perhaps, [Humbug] was a lot more considered and it just seems to make a lot more sense. I don’t know; there’s just something about this one that almost feels like we’re like getting somewhere now.”

Turner, however, is hesitant to correlate this growth with a more sedated, blandly ripened record: “I don’t know if it feels more grown up because I always associate that idea with it being less fun or something. And it was more of a scream to make than the others, seemingly. We had a blast making it.”

With recording of Humbug split between producers Josh Homme in Joshua Tree, California, and James Ford in Brooklyn, the boys knew they were headed on the right track.

“I think the [song] choice came from the first session we did out in Joshua Tree with Josh Homme,” Turner adds. “It really sort of set the blueprint for the rest of the record.”

In the end, however, it was a delicate mix of fate and intuition that made the record: “Even this time, whilst we tried to perhaps hatch a plan to start with, I don’t think it sort of really worked. I think we just had to try stuff out and in the end kind of trap and channel it into a finished project. There’s something about those ten tunes that made sense. There was a feel that we were really fond of and didn’t want to mess too much with by putting in other tracks. It kind of became clear.”

Through it all, Turner and Cook seem to have their heads on straight. The band’s fan base is rapidly spreading around the world, especially in both the UK and the US. The fire has even fanned its flames on a few famous followers, most notably rapper Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs. Surprisingly, even when one of the most influential players in the media world wants to be the fifth member of their band, Cook and the rest of the gang have taken to the idea rather lightly.

“It was more Matt and James Ford,” says Cook, guitarist. “James is in a band called Simian Mobile Disco and they played a dance thing in Miami. They played at P. Diddy’s party and we were like, ‘Oh yeah it’d be funny if you tried to get your picture took.’”

“Yeah and we were like ‘Say hello to Diddy for us,’ you know, joking around,” adds Turner.

But Helders got more than just photo op. What came instead was an all-out love confession from Combs in the form of a viral video which soon hit the web and infected the entire internet. However, the guys from Sheffield refuse to make too much fuss over all the pressure and attention placed on them. In fact, they’ve decided to have a bit of fun with it—starting with a part fabricated, over-the-top press release sent out to industry journalists.

Turner denies speculations that the release was presented as a deliberate media ploy: “A friend, an associate of ours, wrote this thing and then I think the label gravitated toward it and was like ‘Oh yeah, that’d be a good press release.’” says Turner. “We checked with it and it was pretty funny but it doesn’t work so well in Germany and some other places.”

“Yeah, it’s tough with the translation,” Cook adds.

The release was issued for the band’s upcoming album and tour, but goes farther than the facts and further discusses what each band member has “been up to lately.” Items include discovering rare spices and anteaters in the jungle to developing an unhealthy obsession with zippers to coining the term “chillax.”

“It gets hard when they’re asking you about some club you’ve built in the London or Manhattan tubes,” Turner jokes. “So then you’re like,
shall I just pretend that I’ve got it or do I try and explain it?”

The pair also insists that their rise in popularity through the help of social page phenomenon Myspace was merely coincidental, not planned or prospected as “groundbreaking.”

“Yeah and the thing with the internet, I suppose was really accidental,” says Turner. “We were just playing shows and making little disks and making, you know, artwork for it and whatever and then they fell into the hands of people that perhaps were a bit more savvy in that department and then it sort of bled into that.”

In fact, they’re neither afraid to admit that they’re actually pretty terrible when it comes to the internet nor that they’re really not that into it at all. “We can manage an email but that’s about it,” Cook laughs.

Something the guys in the band do find interest in, however, is heading over to Brooklyn’s own Barcade for a game of some old-school Marble Madness.

“It’d be great to go now where it’d be quiet and you can play as much Marble Madness as you’d like,” says Turner. “But then on, like, weekends it’s fucking packed and you can’t get near Marble Madness and then there are people who are like high-fiving and reaching over you and, like shouting at each other.”

Turner, Cook and the other boys of Arctic Monkeys won’t find time for any Marble Madness in the near future, however. Since their recent appearance at Lollapalooza the band has hit the ground running on a world tour that is set to take them all over Europe, North America and even a bit into Asia clear through the month of November.

From tales of anteaters and rare spices to partying up with P. Diddy in Miami, the boys of the Arctic Monkeys have taken the internet by storm and are on a mission to take both sides of the Atlantic along with it. They may just be another group of 20-something alt-rockers individually, but as a band they inherently possess something that musicians all over the world would die for and search out their entire careers: “It.”

-Matthew Anderson

For a full list of tour dates, album updates or to see what other crazy things the boys of the Arctic Monkeys have been up to, check out their page at www.arcticmonkeys.com.

Peter Bjorn & John are playing a private show at Cake Shop, and the unfortunate part of it is that even though the venue is obviously microscopic compared to the one they played earlier tonight, it is still too big for fans to comfortably fit in the underground space. It’s too long and narrow with limited sightlines, making crowding a problem, especially when the nighttime temperature is still over 80 degrees and the entire cooling system consists of one ineffectual fan next to the bar, whose benefits you can get only by standing directly in front of it, which also puts you squarely in back of the wall-mounted speakers.

Sweat drips off everybody, especially the band. But though the venue isn’t doing us any favors, the band seemed to get what they were after. After all, there was, believe it or not, a time when touring, even with their new wave idols Depeche Mode, wasn’t something they did on a lark.

“It’s a responsibility to go on tour; you must learn to like it,” says bassist Bjorn Yttling, a few months ago during a short stopover for a press event at New York’s W Hotel. “[But] American audiences are the best in the world.”

In fact, this is the band’s first American tour in two years, after a break during which the band directed their attentions to guitarist/vocalist Peter Morén’s solo career, and on the idiosyncratic Seaside Rock, for which they didn’t tour outside of one show in Stockholm. But now that they’ve returned to their favored shores, they find themselves playing to gigantic crowds at arenas like Madison Square Garden.

Yttling, Morén and drummer John Eriksson are lightning quick jokesters, full of the playful and edgy repartee, both with interviewers and with each other, one might expect from the three Swedes whose 2006 pop masterpiece, Writer’s Block, with its organic beats and ringing, audacious hooks makes it look like a likely contender for best album of the decade.

They don’t shy away from metaphor; in fact, one suspects they’ve never shied away from anything. Seaside Rock was “like a Brazilian carnival,” Eriksson lays down his beats “like a chef,” this year’s album Living Thing feels “like a new pair of pants.” The squeaky, unbroken-in feeling probably stems from the band’s newfound association with another superstar, Kanye West, whose hip-hop beats have had more of an influence on the record than anything else. Yttling insists they’re not losing the power-pop mentality that drove them to the top, nor are they dumbing themselves down.

“It’s that hip-hop has gotten better,” jokes Eriksson. It’s also the most popular genre of music today, and these guys are too smart, or maybe too bold, to discount its appeal. They will grow along with it. I ask Eriksson, whose percussion dominates the new record, what’s next, and the pale, diminutive Swede beatboxes for me without hesitation, offering up his vision for the trio’s next great campaign.

But tonight at Cake Shop, certain members of the increasingly damp and malodorous crowd demonstrate an astonishing familiarity with the trio’s back catalog —their pre-hip-hop, pre-Brazilian, pre-Writer’s Block catalog. It’s surprisingly large, and the influences have a kind of reverse-transparency, shaping the night into a sort of backwards time-tunnel.

In fact, the band seemed bent on communicating to the laymen of the crowd that they had a beginning; that they didn’t just drop out of the hatchback of some efficient Scandinavian compact car. Back to when they were concerned mostly with teaching themselves what it takes to make simple, earnest pop with lots of pronouns in the lyrics, and the days when they made most of their bank playing sunset dinner cruises in the Stockholm harbor and Morén was still singing in front of the mirror every night, trying to figure out how to sound more like John Lennon.

After opening with “Start to Melt,” from Writer’s Block, they pointed us in the evening’s direction, reaching way, way back (to 2002, at least) for “I Don’t Know What I Want Us To Do” and “People They Know” from their self-titled debut, and “It Beats Me Every Time,” from 2003’s Falling Out. This is stuff you know the MSG crowd didn’t hear, and as crazy as it must be to open for Depeche Mode, one senses that one of the reasons for this show is that the band has been increasingly unable to interact with the crowd to the extent that they’d like. If that’s a form of starvation for the trio, private shows like this one, then, must serve as a kind of smorgasbord of sociability, from which the band fills their plates.

“This is the most we’ve ever worked,” Yttling says, speaking of the recording of Living Thing. It’s clear that in the future, those hours of dedication will grow, not shrink. There are still ways for the band to get bigger, for the remoteness from the ground to sharpen.

But tonight Yttling lead the crowd in a birthday singalong to his mother, and the trio took time out to good-naturedly insult the crowd in incomprehensible Swedish. They throw in covers of The Nerves and Television Personalities. There are only a few from Living Thing. Morén takes us out with a drawn-out guitar solo on the encore of “Up Against the Wall,” and reaches out, as if literally through glass, to touch somebody.

Words by: Claire Shefchik

Check out the rest of the band’s summer tour dates with Depeche Mode here.