We glanced at our 25 most played tracks in ITunes, noted that Volcano, I'm Still Excited's amazing "In Green" is holding strong at #8 after almost three years, and realized a lot of folks may not know about the band. Sure, The Machine of Hype shows three other blogs have posted about the band, one as recently as August. But humor us, this song is awesome. The defunct trio Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! was primarily the musical vehicle of one Mark Duplass, who took up keys after being sidelined from guitar playing by a serious struggle with tendonitis. At the onset of 2004 the band issued its eponymous debut on Polyvinyl and then fairly promptly disappeared. We reviewed the set for Junkmedia here when it came out and said, among other things, that "the smartest and most clumsily monikered act to hit the touring circuit in a while" was "the first pleasant surprise of 2004." The whereabouts of the various members are detailed pretty well in the comments to this I Guess I'm Floating item from August, which we'll summarize: Mr. Duplass went on to work at his brother's film production company and released the feature "The Puffy Chair" into theaters this past June; guitarist Craig Montoro plays trumpet with a certain Mr. Stevens the kids are ga-ga about; and drummer John Thomas Robinette III plays in a clutch of indie bands based in Brooklyn. Nowadays the band's web site is dead (although the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has scores of cached versions here), but you can still dig up information over at Polyvinyl here. One thing we didn't know until doing the research for this piece was that there is also a video for the tune. It's a tad underwhelming, considering the emotional punch of the song, but the slice of pizza totally makes it all worth while. Check it out here.
Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! -- "In Green" -- Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!
[right click and save as / stream the entire record via Rhapsody here]
[Buy Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! from Polyvinyl here]
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