MIRACLE
PARADE
Perhaps
what is at once so fragile and haunting about “Hark!…And
Other Lost Transmissions”, the debut album from Miracle
Parade, is that it subtly finds a way into the creeks and cracks
of our everyday experiences. The music is steeped in low-fi
brilliance and rustic ambience, evoking artists that shaped
him: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Neil Young, The Byrds, and Judee
Sill. Woven into each harmony drenched lyric is an undeniable
urgency; each song has a story it is desperate to tell, yet
only has the length of the song to tell it.
Miracle Parade began in 2010 as a studio experiment for The
Everyday Visuals’ front man Christopher Pappas and has
since evolved into a full-fledged alter ego for the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist.
After recording some bedroom demos,
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Miracle
Parade caught the ear of Rilo Kiley’s bassist Pierre de Reeder,
who then signed Miracle Parade to his label, Little Record Company.
Christopher moved to Los Angeles and began working on his label
debut with Pierre at the engineering helm. This debut album, “Hark!…And
Other Lost Transmissions”, is due out on June 21st and features
11 songs all written and performed by Christopher Pappas.
Although Miracle Parade is a fairly new project, Christopher has
been making music for the better part of his life. Born in the woods
of New Hampshire to an artist mother and a musician father, he spent
his youth writing, playing, and recording songs on his father’s
old reel to reel tape machine. Since the days in his parents’
attic, this prolific artist has written countless number of songs,
recorded albums, and toured all over the US. His award winning musical
“Pope! An Epic Musical” has been featured in the New
Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Perhaps
most remarkably, in May of 2010 Christopher made headlines in Boston
when he became the first artist in history to headline the Middle
East Downstairs with a 30- piece
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he assembled. The full orchestra, conducted by Christopher himself,
premiered 3 new orchestral works that he composed.
It is this rich musical history that informs this obsessive artist’s
work today. At his core, Miracle Parade’s Pappas is a storyteller
whose fables explore the choices we make and the things we leave
behind. The physicist who spends his life building a time machine
so he can go back and not waste his life building a time machine
(“The Dying Physicist”), The open letter to the son
he never had because he chose the life of a traveling musician (“Son
Son (Son)”), The love for a girl who refused to let herself
love (“Change of Heart”).
Ultimately, these songs are the recorded histories of our collective
story, as told through the jangled guitars and hushed melodies of
an relentless alchemist who takes the pangs of regret and spins
it into something beautiful. “Hark!…” is a time
capsule created as an apology to all the potential lives left behind
and as a celebration of the one that remains, transmitted to the
universe, calling out: “Is anyone there?”
visit
miracleparade.com |
