New to You: The Umbrella Sequence

Happy Monday, loyal fans! I'm back in action after a weekend of hardcore, nonstop, unbridled awesomeness. I've brought with me today some grey-market mp3s from a local band that i'm a tad ooooooh ahhhh over. See, they are grey market because they are posted on their website in mp3 form, but it takes a little cunning trickery to actually get them from-ah them to-ah yous. I will guide you past the smoke and mirrors and I will set this music free. They wanted it to be liberated but I'm sure some record label somewhere convinced them it would be a better idea to make them difficult to obtain and obscure the beauty with the frosted glaze of an embedded windows media player, sigh.

The Umbrella Sequence played one of it's first shows at the YMCA blocks from my house in the middle of an incredibly suburban st. paul suburb. See -- I say I'm from minneapolis, but I'm actually not quite there. (Ahem, shut your mouth, minneappleheads -- I'm damn well close enough by my estimations.) Alas, I did not make it to this show because I wasn't 13 and it was "teen-night" at above-mentioned YMCA. I did, by chance, catch them as they opened for Kid Dakota several weeks later at the Uptowner. Now, I've seen The Kid umpteen times and his opening bands are usually snoozers. Umbrella Sequence just absolutely brought it that night, however. They sold me their cd. They could have sold me 10 copies. I was so fricken' impressed.

These kids are young, melodious, synthalogue tweaking geniuses. Oh yeah, and they write a decent song on top of it.

I've heard they now tour nationally since they were signed to OHEV Records (Kind of Like Spitting, Hot Hot Heat, some other bands you probably adore) but on their website it just lists a handful of local upcomings:

04.22.2006 - University of Wisconsin with TBA
05.05.2006 - The Triple Rock with TBA
05.06.2006 - Big V's with The Nina, The Pinta and Heros and Liars
05.26.2006 - The Uptown with Colonial Vipers Attack and Story of the Sea
07.07.2006 - The Triple Rock with TBA

Look for me at a show near well uhh.... me. I'll be the one utilizing the fake mustache in an attempt to obscure my blogebrity. I realize dear reader that the above vignette about the YMCA and my love for the Umbrella Sequence has told you very little about their actual music. There's sort of an idea behind that -- you'll find that I don't actually discuss too much music on this site. Music is for listening. So give it a listen. Move past Sufjan. If I post about it on this site, I am offering my personal GUARANTEE that you'll like it or I will proudly offer you eight times your money back.

Fellow music bloggers -- let's keep the incestous love-fest going. Let me know if you're going to post about the Umbrella Sequence and I'll throw be sure to give you a mention in an upcoming post.

• The Umbrella Sequence - Famous Writers
• The Umbrella Sequence - Loop Theory
• The Umbrella Sequence - Penny Blue
• The Umbrella Sequence - So Shine