When Jordan C. Weinstock’s old band, american poetry club, had moved away and Weinstock was tired of playing solo, they were presented with an opportunity. They had been jamming with Mike Nowotarski of Coffee Nap for months at that point; so when asked to perform again, they said “why not bring together a new band?” Weinstock and Nowotarski texted their friends in the Brooklyn music scene, bringing together Adam Holmes, Anthony Graffigna, Ethan Abelar, Jasen Vest, and Rebecca Lewit to perform the music of american poetry club one last time. If the group hadn’t enjoyed playing together, that would have been it. But as it turns out, they loved playing together.
Rechristened as Here For You, they worked together under a highly collaborative DIY effort, exhibiting a range of influences from the Mountain Goats to Los Campesinos!. You can hear the results on the group’s first album, The First Year.
The First Year offers visions of solidarity through emotive folk and spiky power-pop. The band pleads for time to slow down to accommodate the expanse of love on “Theme Song 2,” and explores the questionable wonders of bioengineered breakfast on “French Toast.” These songs envision a world where grace is the dominant mode of interaction. The shouts of “it doesn’t matter that you lied / I only cared that you bottled it up inside” on “One Big Leap,” and the guitars snaking around one another on “Baking the Cake,” offer space for truth, the sound of seven friends whose aim is true.
- Lillian Weber