Lucinda Black Bear Plays Live at The Mercury Lounge 1/30

Indie-folk band Lucinda Black Bear will perform live at The Mercury Lounge on Sunday, January 30th at 7:00 PM. Eastern Spurs Records has also announced that it will re-release Knives, the band's sophomore album, on the same day. Due to popular demand, Knives, which was originally released digitally in November, will now be available in stores on CD. The album has been well-received by college and public radio, with airplay on stations across the country punctuated by the band's in-studio guest appearances on local stations including WFMU, Breakthru Radio and WCPR.

NPR Music describes Lucinda Black Bear's music as "carefully written folk rock with stunning sonic arrangements." The follow-up to 2007's critically-acclaimed capo my heart and other bear songs, Knives finds the band fleshing out the indie-folk of its debut, adding more lush, sweeping string arrangements and broader orchestral scope. While capo was praised for its "rich and haunting sonic atmospheres" (Paste) and "dark, country-inflected pop melodies" (Time Out New York), Knives ups the ante with a soulful fusion of cellos, feedback, loops, pianos, drums and oddly-tuned guitars. On tracks suck as "Suffocation Blues" the band pays homage to its alt-country influences, while on the chamber pop-infused lead single, "Knives," LBB's string section gets to show off its classical training.

On Knives, lead singer-songwriter and guitarist Christian Gibbs and bandmates-drummer Kristin Mueller, cellist/string arranger Chad Hammer and bassist Mike Cohen-hone their craftsmanship. (The band is often joined by violinist and string arranger Gillian Rivers for live performances.) Lucinda Black Bear was conceived in the mid-aughts, when Gibbs decided he needed more instrumentation on his piano-guitar based, loop laden songs. He set out to find like-minded musicians in the New York music scene and brought his favorite four together for a rehearsal one night. By all accounts, the band coalesced that first night and was christened Lucinda Black Bear soon thereafter. Ever since then, the four collaborate on all musical arrangements together, producing ethereal, layered sound on Knives.

"If the world were truly utopian, there would be far more bands making music like Lucinda Black Bear. Moreover, if this New York City collective does not turn heads in the next few months, there is something criminally wrong with the status of popular music in America."-AbsolutePunk

"You get the feeling that each of Lucinda Black Bear's songs have been carefully composed and refined after many grueling sessions to ensure that no note, rest, or word is out of place."-Anonymous Aesthetes