Nice to Meet You: Kid, You’ll Move Mountains
Dr. Seuss, thank you for writing Oh the Places You’ll Go. Otherwise we wouldn’t have Kid, You’ll Move Mountains
I feel like I write a lot about bands from Chicago and although the band this week comes from the suburbs of Illinois I still feel a trend. Coming out of the fallout of Lookout! Records and their old band Troubled Hubble, brothers Nate and Andrew Lanthrum were a bassist and a drummer out on their own and needed an aggressive ensemble to go well with their personal energy for music. Together they found fellow Midwestern music vets Corey Wills (Inspector Owl) and Jim Hanke (El Oso), and classically-trained pianist Nina Lanthrum. Two years of hard work and songwriting led to the creation of Kid, You’ll Move Mountains and their first album together, Loomings.
Since I received Loomings way back at the beginning of 2009, I’ve been continually impressed by Kid, You’ll Move Mountains’ music and have been an attentive follower. Where I’m not a big fan of female vocalists in general, there’s always been something about the combination of male and female vocals that has caught my attention. Perhaps it’s the combination of a man’s deep timbre with the soft, at times gentle voice of a woman that appeals the most to my ears. Either way, Kid You’ll Move Mountains has it down. Lead singer Hanke and pianist Nina Lanthrum’s voices go so well together it’s like they were born to complement each other in a band. Throughout Loomings the two trade on and off singing about love, anger, folk tales, and other dark and cryptic things. The Lanthrum brothers power through each song as an intense rhythm section and Wills add his own splash of distortion and riffs to color Loomings.
The track that really has Hanke
and Nina Lanthrum’s dueling vocals stand out is “Wives Tale” off
of Loomings. Whether I hear played at one of their shows
or if it comes up on my iPod, it’s guaranteed to be in my head for
at least one week and played five times per day. It’s a barrage
of everything that makes Kid You’ll Move Mountains’ music so enticing
– Hanke and Nina’s wordplay, the Lanthrums’ driving beat, and
Wills’s strange yet appropriate guitar meddling.
If you’re a Chicago native, Kid You’ll Move Mountains will be playing the Metro January 2nd with Picture Books, Venna, and Crayolala. The show is free before 9 pm, so you literally have no excuse not to go. Unless you don’t live in Chicago. Then you have a pretty good excuse.
Posted by Amy Dittmeier on Nov 24, 2009 @ 9:00 am