indie pop
Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and su ...
EP, ''Trust'', followed in November 2010. Their second full-length album, ''Actor-Caster'', was released on March 29, 2011.Generationals Facebook. Retrieved on 2013-04-08. The band's third album, ''Heza'', was released April 2, 2013 (their debut for
Polyvinyl Records
In polymer chemistry, vinyl polymers are a group of polymers derived from substituted vinyl () monomers. Their backbone is an extended alkane chain . In popular usage, "vinyl" refers only to polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Examples
Vinyl polymers are ...
).
Biography
Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer were co-founders of The Eames Era, a
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of countie ...
-based indie rock band whose song "Could Be Anything" was featured on the ''
Grey's Anatomy
''Grey's Anatomy'' is an American medical drama television series that premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The series focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they develop into ...
'' soundtrack.
The band broke up when three members decided they no longer wanted to pursue careers as musicians. The remaining members, Joyner and Widmer, formed a new band called the Generationals, so named because as they often watched CNN's coverage of the 2008 presidential election as they recorded, the pair noticed that nearly every issue was dubbed a generational issue.
Generationals released their debut album, ''Con Law'', in July 2009 on the Park the Van label. Joyner and Widmer wrote the music and recorded the album with studio manager Dan Black.
Mark Deming of
Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...
said the album's songs "are good enough to not suffer in comparison to the vintage acts they so clearly love, and that's why this debut is worthwhile, even if you're not nostalgic for the era of the sideways haircut."
Andy Gensler of '' T: The New York Times Style Magazine'' called the album a "delectable debut" that "shimmers with the music of the
British Invasion
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States and significant to the rising "counterculture" on ...
,
Stax
Streaming API for XML (StAX) is an application programming interface ( API) to read and write XML documents, originating from the Java programming language community.
Traditionally, XML APIs are either:
* DOM based - the entire document is read i ...
soul,
Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound (also called the Spector Sound) is a music production formula developed by American record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios, in the 1960s, with assistance from engineer Larry Levine and the conglomerate of sessio ...
production, 1950s
doo-wop
Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chica ...
and California-dreaming jangle filtered through a contemporary indie-rock lens."''Spin'''s Jon Young said that although the duo's "cheery facade ultimately doesn't overcome the gnawing desperation, ''Con Law'' is good, neurotic fun."
In a review of the band's song "When They Fight, They Fight," Zach Kelly of
Pitchfork Media
''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog.
Schreiber started Pitchfork while working ...
said of the band's style: "It comes as kind of a pleasant surprise to hear a band from N.O. sound this bright and enraptured in life's simple joys. But man, does this thing flirt with overdoing it."
"When They Fight, They Fight" was featured in a 2009 Bloomingdales holiday commercial. Another song, "Faces in the Dark," was featured on a season 3 episode of ''
Chuck
Chuck is a masculine given name or a nickname for Charles or Charlie. It may refer to:
People
Arts and entertainment
* Chuck Alaimo, American saxophonist, leader of the Chuck Alaimo Quartet
* Chuck Barris (1929–2017), American TV producer
* ...
''. "Exterior Street Day" was featured in a television commercial for
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are an American candy consisting of a chocolate cup filled with peanut butter, marketed by The Hershey Company. They were created on November 15, 1928, by H. B. Reese, a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for ...
at the end of 2010.
Non-album track "Either Way" was featured as the opening credit song during the 2010 comedy film '' Going the Distance''. The pair have completed several tours covering much of the U.S., and have opened for such bands as
Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock band, a musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew (vocals, guitar) and Brendan Canning (vocals, bass) in 1999. Alongside Drew and Canning, the othe ...
and
Two Door Cinema Club
Two Door Cinema Club are a band from Bangor, Northern Ireland. The band formed in 2007 and is composed of three members: Alex Trimble (vocals, rhythm guitar, beats, synths), Sam Halliday (lead guitar, backing vocals), and Kevin Baird (bass, syn ...
.
Generationals released an
extended play
An extended play record, usually referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record.
titled ''Trust'' in November 2010. The title track was featured as a "Pick of the Week" by
Starbucks Coffee
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 cou ...
in January 2011. The track "When They Fight, They Fight" is featured in the
Farrelly brothers
Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, collectively referred to as the Farrelly brothers, are American screenwriters and directors. They have made eleven films together, including '' Dumb and Dumber'', '' Outside Providence'', and '' There's Somethi ...
movie ''
Hall Pass
''Hall Pass'' is a 2011 American comedy film produced and directed by the Farrelly brothers and co-written by them along with Pete Jones, the writer/director of ''Stolen Summer''. It stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis.
Rick and Fred, two hus ...
'' in 2011 and also in a 2012 episode of '' Suits''.
The song was used for an advert for the
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Stor ...
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
.
The duo's second full-length album, ''Actor-Caster'', was released in March 2011.
Members
* Ted Joyner –
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or witho ...
,
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...