Big Hassle Media NY
44 Wall ST FL 22
New York, NY 10005
P 212.619.1360
F 212.619.1669
Big Hassle Media LA
5566 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
P 323.456.3490
JOHN GOLD
A Flower In Your Head
Los Angeles native john gold is a singer/songwriter — or, as he puts it, “writer/songsinger” — who should be a poster child for DIY. With a little help from his friends, his songs have found their way from a small Hollywood apartment to the ears of the masses on shows like Weeds (Showtime) and the successful indie film Mean Creak (Paramount), not to mention Nike and Levi’s spots. Fans have started to notice the lovable underdog, and after having self-released two full-length albums (These Are Color Days in 2002, and The Eastside Shake in 2005), john gold is preparing to unveil his third proper release, entitled a flower in your head, via Vagrant Records in June 2011.
Recorded and co-produced by drummer/producer Scott Seiver (Pete Yorn) and mixed by Shawn Everett (Weezer, Phantom Planet, Simon Dawes), a flower in your head is complete with ten shimmering pop songs, each serving as a sunny manifestation of the trials and tribulations that make up what we all like to call “life”. “It’s become my own personal manifesto,” notes john. “In the past few years I’ve sort of changed the way I think about things. I’ve decided that if I’m gonna sing the same things over and over for years, better to reach for the good that is now and will be tomorrow rather than report on the past.” As implied in the title, a flower in your head is gold’s way of planting that seed into listeners’ minds with his lyrics and melodies, and hopefully changing some minds for the better, if only for a moment. “And that’s the magic of music, isn’t it?”
From start to finish, a flower in your head offers something for everyone, roping in 60’s and 70′s Southern California rock enthusiasts with tracks like ‘Skyscraper’ and ‘Baby, it’s Your Life’ with pop hooks, piano leads and tambourine shakes that make it nearly impossible to contain your sing-along instincts on those long summer drives.
Mid-album, gold asks the age-old question, pondering life-after-death with the track ‘Augusta Vail.’ Written (at the time unknowingly) about an early 20th Century spiritual leader in Los Angeles, ‘Augusta Vail’ shows gold asking Augusta for a little guidance. “I saw Augusta’s name on a tombstone at the Hollywood Forever Mausoleum and her name struck a chord. At the time, I knew nothing about her,” gold comments. “It was as if I was resurrecting her by singing her name over and over again for a couple years, and wondering if that was even possible to connect with a spirit or if she might have been the kind of person who believed in that. So after a couple trips to the Central Library in downtown L.A., it turns out that she was a spiritual guide with an office right there downtown in the early 1900’s. She used to hold séances and give personal psychic readings, so she absolutely believed in the afterlife. Now I think of her and that experience as a sort of guide for me.” Haunting violins open the song and flow from beginning to end, weaving in and out of calming drum beats and triumphant horns, a perfectly eerie and beautiful setting for the song’s lyrical content.
The violins return on the album’s closer, ‘The Vampire’s Kiss,’ but this time with a big backbeat to anchor them. We hear john gold pin his heart to his sleeve with hopeful words about lovers lost and those yet to come, and “not biting people even if we’ve been bitten” — a perfect summation of the entire album’s underlying tone of optimism. The last line of the album might be most optimistic one of all: “Your sun is coming up and you’re still alive.”
a flower in your head fuses the harmony of West Coast icons like Fleetwood Mac while still encompassing a modern alternative edge. The album is comprised of ten polished and exquisite tracks that each stand on their own, building upon each other to create something grander. “After two years from start to finish I still like listening to this album. It was a labor of love for everyone involved. Lyrically every line is true to me and I can always go back to it whenever I forget about that seed of inspiration.”
john gold and Vagrant Records are preparing to unveil a flower in your head on June 14th, 2011.
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A Flower In Your Head - Album Art
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