"Head of Femur's pop-prog approach is alive and well on "Leader and the Falcon", a mini-suite that changes gears a couple of times in its four and a half minutes. There are plenty of bleeping keyboards and chorused lead guitar parts and more stacked vocals harmonies than ever before. In fact, it opens with a big bed of harmonies and a twinkly little Bruce Springsteen piano part before it jumps into its riff-stuffed first section. The song's most exciting passage is the sudden tempo change in the middle that precedes a gradual acceleration to a guitar-drenched bridge. It's stuffed full of instruments from front to back, but it's not overbearing or bloated, just fat and happy."
COMING SOON:
The new full-length: ’GREAT PLAINS’
Greyday Records
Release Date: 3-25-07
OUT NOW:
’LEADER AND THE FALCON’ The Extant Label
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HEAD OF FEMUR is the willfully weird orchestral pop brainchild of pop auteurs Mike Elsener and former Bright Eyes drummer Matt Focht.
GREAT PLAINS (release date: 3-25-08, Greyday Records) is the band’s third chapter in the journey, which started on the brittle badlands of Nebraska, continuing in the urban jungle of Chicago, transforming the band from a wieldy pop collective into a tight-knit rock band. With GREAT PLAINS, Head of Femur sheds the excessive glory of past efforts and focuses on immediate melodies and whip-smart song structures to produce the band’s best set of songs to date.
As much as it represents a major leap forward, GREAT PLAINS is also a return home: to Portland’s Greyday Records, home of Head of Femur’s 2003 critically-acclaimed debut album RINGODOM OR PROCTOR, which Billboard called “fresh, fun and original.”
When that album became an immediate underground hit, receiving rave reviews by tastemaker’s like Magnet, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and Pitchfork, Head of Femur hit the ground running, launching U.S. tours with Wilco, Bright Eyes, Dr. Dog and others, as well as releasing their sophomore album on SpinART, 2005’s HYSTERICAL STARS.
Rapid recording sessions in the spring of 2006 resulted in LEADER AND THE FALCON, a 6-song EP self-released in the fall of 2007. Pitchfork called it “a musical equivalent of what Dorothy might have felt like when first stepping out of her house into Oz”. (Joe Tangari)
Yet despite the raves, the EP turned out to be a swan song for Head of Femur’s former self. As a massive pop collective known at times to include 20-plus musicians, Focht and Elsener wanted change. GREAT PLAINS is the ultimate turnaround, a stripped-down, dance-heavy record featuring Head of Femur’s core players, who reinvented their approach to songwriting while still staying true to their ambitious trademark sound.
Head of Femur formed in 2001 in Chicago after 3 of the 5 current members moved to the Chicago from Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. The lineup now includes lead singer and rhythm guitarist Matt Focht, lead guitarist and vocalist Mike Elsener, keyboardist Eathan Janney, drummer Colby Starck and enigmatic-named bassist The Chancellor (the only band member who still lives in Nebraska.)
Lacing together art-rock sensibilities reflective of Talking Heads and the homegrown comfort of Neil Young and The Band, GREAT PLAINS follows lyrical snapshots from his home state, set to music that gives them flight. Rhythmically complex yet immediately catchy, Head of Femur faces a new year where change is good.
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"Ambitiously weird, but still gloriously accessible...chamber-pop suites full of left turns and music box explosions full of melody."
-PITCHFORK
"Not since Brian Eno took Tiger Mountain by strategy has left-of-center pop rock sounded as silly, and at the same time as sophisticated as this.”
-CONCERTLIVEWIRE.COM
"A frantic mix of confessionals, character studies, chldhood reminiscences and refelections on art are both endearing and smart." -THE NEW YORK TIMES
"A spastic thrill ride." -VENUS ZINE
“Not self-consciously quirky, but marked by everything from horns to snippets of antique electronics, the band make for a fine display of how to make chaos work.”
-THE STRANGER
“The vocals smack of Elvis Costello, but can’t be firmly categorized, as the harmonies are silky smooth with dashes of The Beach Boys and Roxy Music,
mixed with a fun and funky sound.”
-GLIDE MAGAZINE
"There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror. " ----John Coltrane
Thanks for requesting me! I can't wait to hear the new one. Any time you dudes wanna Jam with an aging punk 3 fingered Bass player, Let me know....I'll rock your lilly pad...
hey dudes, it's been a long time! it's heather mc, cello player from that orchestral bright eyes tour a hundred years ago. just thinkin fondly of y'all. hopin you are well. hollah, hollah, hollah at me sometime!
COMING SOON:
The new full-length: ’GREAT PLAINS’ 
