About the Artist
Where We Come From:

Careen comes from the N.W. United States, Portland, Oregon. Members spent their childhoods in Harbin, China, Cote D'Ivoire West Africa, and Portland, Oregon. They played music and sports and were child stage actors; destiny led them here. Careen is a Pop/Rock band. Careen is an American rock band. Taste the candy, choke, and revel. Three, I mean four, genres collide to make Careen's music: rock from Foo Fighters and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, sugar from The Cars and Fountains of Wayne, Brit-ness from The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, or The Cure singles, and Americana from Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, and R.E.M.

These guys will take all takers for a ride with a vision driven by conscience and heart. You don't even know. Think of the last band you heard that had confidence, then take off the laziness and add songs you actually cared about after you broke up with the bass player.

The guys began in 2002. Singer/guitarist, Drew Grow wrote a lot of songs that winter, and good buddy, guitarist Patrick Tetreault, agreed to record them. By the fall, Matthew Kronbach(bass guitar), Graeme Enkelis(keyboards, Midi), and Andy Uppendahl(drums) had joined the scrappy, bourgeoning group, and with the release of their first demos("Dangerously In The Red", 11/02) the band was born. Originally appearing under the names "Ping!" and "The Marching Hearts", the band eventually settled on "Careen"(from an early song lyric). Naming a band is hard, but ours still sounds pretty good to us--not like "Staind" or "12 Stone Altar" or "Duck Butter". Patrick played violin as a child, one of those classically trained orchestral geniuses, now he is our guitarist. Matt is bilingual, he speaks West African French. Graeme wins every time he plays Encore (that parlor game where it helps if you know the lyrics and melodies of obscure songs). I was a quite successful gymnast. I bet you don't even know a male gymnast. That's how much you don't even know what is so cool about Careen.

I tried that whole hipster "cool-club" thing where every riff I uttered was "Radiohead-esque" or "Flaming Lips-ish", and it sucked. Now we are Careen and cooler than ever(even though I still like those bands).

Then I had the big idea for us to become a Real Band so last spring we went on our so-called "60-Shows-in-60-Days Tour". That was when we started working our asses off. We played some really cool places, like The Troubadour in Hollywood, and we were shit-grinned to share the Fillmore Theatre in San Francisco with Modest Mouse and The Shins. At 2 years old, Careen is coming along A-OK.

OK, our brand new record is called "Crash Couture". Joe Chiccarelli was our producer. Because he had worked with so many people we respect, like Beck, U2, Etta James, the Wilco boys, and Frank Zappa, we felt lucky and happy when he agreed to work with us also. Joe knows what sounds good. "Crash Couture" is a big sounding record-- not like your daddy's indie record... I know, I know, we would be cooler if it did. Anyway, the songs are short and sweet. We used acoustic and electric guitars and all types of keyboards. If you like songs, you will like this. If you like bands with gerbils being juggled by a guy with a fake eye-patch, you might still like it. Maybe. If you like bands with laptops, just because they have laptops, you probably won't like it. If you like Weezer, or that one song John Cusack plays on his saxophone to his French exchange student girlfriend at the end of "Better Off Dead", try it out. Even my friend Todd likes it, and he's into bad metal.

Everything about our band is effortless except continuing to exist, that's the hard part. But we do none-the-less. "Crash Couture" will arrive this February(2005), and we will be driving our van to you to make it easier for you to come try Careen. Thank you, goodnight. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.