The Inner Banks

The Inner Banks is married couple Caroline Schutz and David Gould and their eclectic group of collaborators (such as long-time drummer Jim Mansfield). Caroline and David began work on their second album, Songs From Disko Bay, in 2006, while Caroline was enduring four months of bed-rest—three in the hospital—pregnant with twin girls.

Prior to this project, Caroline had established herself as the singer and songwriter behind Folksongs For The Afterlife, whose full-length, Put Danger Back In Your Life (originally released by Parasol/Hidden Agenda) and EP (Enraptured UK) had earned the group features in Magnet, Time Out New York and Entertainment Weekly, as well as a song on Arena Rock’s This is Next Year: A Brooklyn-Based Compilation. Caroline is a 3rd-generation singer, after her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother starred in several Broadway musicals in the 1920s. Her mother sang regularly in New York and performed as a USO girl during the Korean War; she also dated Burt Bacharach and “one of the Clancy Brothers” (she doesn’t remember which one).

David joined Caroline’s band as a bass player, and had also since 2000 led and played banjo in The Bootleg Remedy, a highly acclaimed Americana band based in Brooklyn. David plays several instruments and holds a masters degree in Ethnomusicology. He also founded DAG! Records, originally to release the early Bootleg Remedy material; he and Caroline have since re-launched the small label and in 2008, they added to the roster Arliss Parker, whose debut EP Handsome Like a Lion garnered much attention for its provocative blend of experimental folk-rock and electronica.

Songs From Disko Bay contains much more lyrical content than the Inner Banks’ mostly instrumental self-titled first album, and continues to build on the wide-ranging musical influences the group tends to incorporate. In addition to the usual finger-picked guitars and orchestral interludes, the new songs also subtly incorporate field recordings from Coney Island, distressed tape loops, an antique Californian harpsichord, lap steel, and a bit of banjo. Lyrically, the songs draw loosely on imagery from such faraway places as Iceland, Nepal and Mexico City that the Inner Banks has visited.

Caroline and David live in Brooklyn with their now-2-year-old girls.

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