Tilly And The Wall Release New Album
by Staff | 00.00.0000

“Sometimes you just can’t hold back the river.”

So goes one of the refrains on the very first song found on Tilly and the Wall’s newest album, Bottoms of Barrels, the follow-up to 2004’s critically-acclaimed Wild Like Children. In nearly two years since Wild Like Children’s release, it has been inevitable that a band as unique as Tilly and the Wall, like that old aforementioned river, would charge forth towards greatness, turning frowns upside down and winning legions of fans along the way. Bottoms of Barrels is the culmination of such a journey – a gushing, sparkling tour de force of energy, excitement and a million sounds rushing to greet you all at once. Yes, it seems Tilly and the Wall has certainly arrived and we’re thrilled to have them back.

Recorded with AJ Mogis over three weeks in their hometown of Omaha, NE, the songs on Bottoms of Barrels pick up where Wild Like Children left off. There’s more tapping, more voices, more hand claps, more exuberance, more harmonies, more, more, more.

The band spent 2004 and the bulk of 2005 on the road with the likes of Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, The Go! Team and more, stirring up melody fragments along the way. The songs finally became whole while the band spent summer ‘05 in a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, one of the leading artist-in-residence centers in the country. In honor of the band’s tradition of doing things their own way, it’s fitting that Tilly and the Wall were the first band to ever be accepted into the program. Once the songs were written and studio-ready, the band found a wider variety of instruments than ever before at their nimble fingertips, and began to experiment. The result is a mixture of guitars, keyboards, trumpets, cellos, percussion, xylophones, a choir from University of Nebraska called Trip the Light Fantastic, drums and, of course, the sound of percussionist Jamie Williams’ feet tap-tap-tapping away.

Check out Bottoms of Barrels when it is released May 23 on Team Love.