While SXSW steals the majority of the music world’s attention for five days, the rest of the country reaps the benefits in terms of the tour aftermath that follows the conclusion of the festival. Even though San Francisco is at the end of the earth, we stand to gain some great shows after the fest. This week’s boon comes from Seattle-based Ivan & Alyosha. You may know them from their very popular 2009 single, “Easy To Love,” which the guys performed at one of Bob Boilen’s Tiny Desk Concerts on NPR Music.
Ivan & Alyosha have been branded as folk-pop and compared to a combination of Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons. I can vaguely hear the similarities in the building group vocals and melodic hooks, but I also hear the rich and raw talent found in bands such as Middle Brother, and Delta Spirit, grounded in the The Kinks. Ivan & Alyosha is the answer to indie pop. They have the songwriting capabilities to blow every Top 40 song out of the water, and the emotional pull to stay for good.
After wrapping up their time at SXSW they headed west to play a few shows before arriving in San Francisco. I spoke with lead singer and one of the core members of the band, Tim Wilson, somewhere between Texas and Flagstaff, “somewhere mountainous” to be specific. Their first full-length album, All the Times We Had came out just a few weeks ago on Dualtone Records and was featured on NPR’s First Listen.
Ivan & Alyosha didn’t take the traditional track when it came to releasing an album on a record label. It took them nearly four years to release an LP after their first single. 2009’s EP, The Verse, the Chorus yielded them a fair amount of attention. 2011’s, Fathers Be Kind kept them out on the road. Their sound changed into something more appropriately energetic and clean. Wilson mused, “We’re older and maybe a little wiser. We didn’t mean to make everyone wait so long, it just sort of happened that way as we honed our sound out on the road.”