Post Paradise are Nick Duarte (guitar/vocals), Josh Freed (bass), Amy Morgan (cello) and Craig Babineau (drums)

As you may know, at Savvant Music we search for music that is polished, with great live shows, awesome original music, well performed musically and ready for discerning listeners, and yet still under the radar of the major labels and major indies.  As such, we don’t usually write up bands that are just forming, but we’re making an exception with Post Paradise, because we’re so impressed with their fantastic song writing, arrangements and musicality of their performance.

Starting off at Hodi’s with Better Off Post Paradise immediately caught us with their full sound and very energetic and professional stage show.  Working through failing microphones and lack of monitor support, front man and composer Nick Duarte handled the challenging situation without batting an eye, pushing through the problems and delivering a great show through it all.

Post Paradise live

Duarte’s compositions use chord progressions and voicings you might not be used to in many rock bands, yet even with a cello instead of a guitar on the instrumental leads, this is unabashed rock music.  The rock steady groove set down by bassist Josh Freed and drummer Craig Babineau provides a rock and roll canvas for the lyrical counterpoint of Duarte’s well sung vocal melodies and the rocking riffs ripping out from the lovely Amy Morgan on the cello.

Another favorite song of mine on Post Pardise’s playlist is the hard hitting irony in A Way With Words in which Duarte rocks back and forth between “A face that screams sincerity” and “The kind of fake that you adore” underlined with an intense and driving counter melody played by Morgan on the cello.

Post Paradise doesn’t yet have any formally released albums, but if you’re lucky you can pick up a free demo CD at one of their upcoming gigs. They’ll be playing on Saturday, April 11th at 6:00pm as part of the Fort Collins Music Experiment (FoCoMX) at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, Colorado on the bill with The Heyday, The Piggies, Common Anomaly, Roe and more. FoCoMX will feature over 100 bands from northern Colorado and is being put on by the Fort Collins Musicians Association (FoCoMa.org).

Note: Post Paradise recordings, songs and lyrics are copyright Post Paradise and are streamed here with permission.

Our evening started with an apparently young band called Black Apples. While this band is still in the early phases of their development, the drummer (Campbell, according to their merch guy) sang lead vocals and had a really impressive voice. I’d like to hear more from this kid.

The next band up was Dualistics out of Denver. While parts of the show weren’t without problems, this group’s songwriting and arrangement was very good, and their vocal harmonies were very good. They mixed up their instrumentation with some nice keyboard work, and switched the lead vocals around which kept us engaged.  Their stage presence and show needs a lot of work, but that seemed to be the theme of the evening…

Checkout their MySpace page (http://myspace.com/dualistics) where you’ll find that their recorded music is excellent.  It’s great to see such high quality recording from a local unsigned band.

Also, you can read a review on the Dualistics from Westword at: http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2007/11/this_weekend_widowers_astropha.php

Savvant Music CFO/money-man Bob Carnahan and I caught just the very end of The Jimi Austin gig at Bohemian Nights this summer, and we really wanted to see more.  Unfortunately, this was something of an off night for The Jimi Austin.  Lead vocalist Chris Anderson was waving at the wind through the whole set trying to get more volume on his vox mic with no success at all.  Apparently the sound guy wasn’t listening either, because Anderson had pretty much lost his voice and was scratchy hoarse by the fourth number. It was obvious that Anderson was either sick or was struggling so much with the sound (or both) that we weren’t going to see this group’s best stuff, or even their usual stuff, so we took off and decided to catch The Jimi Austin another night.

At least The Jimi Austin gave us some interesting showmanship tonight… not necessarily good as bass player Simon Lee fell on his ass and later knocked over a mic stand attempting not to be a shoe-gazer bass player – not really good, but definitely not boring!

The drummer for The Jimi Austin was really terrific.  He plays with an energy that reminds me of Kevin Figueiredo of DramaGods, and plays what’s the song needs without throwing a in a lot of unneeded clutter.

We’ll have to give The Jimi Austin another look when they have decent sound and everybody is healthy.  Our initial impression this summer was very good, but we couldn’t find that spark last Friday with the poor sound and Anderson’s failing voice.