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This
spring will see the return to teenage promises when South
Florida scene veterans, The Agency debut their 10-song
CD, “Turn” on South Florida indie imprint
Perch Records.The
release chronicles love, loss and leaving in heartfelt
vignettes that the Agency has worked at perfecting since
bonding over Rush covers at Miami Sunset Senior High School.
Growing
up in the cohesive, oftentimes incestuous local music
scene, Drummer/vocalist Mike Marsh, (Dashboard Confessional,
Seville) guitarist Klaus Ketelhohn and bass player/vocalist,
Chris Drueke (Seville) have played music together, in
one form or another, for the better part of a decade.
The band sprouted from the same small Petri dish of talent
that included Chris Carrabba, Further Seems Forever, John
Ralston, Seville, the Vacant Andys and others. In the
early years, The Agency played from 1995 until 2001 without
stop before going on hiatus. They continued on as a side-project
for many years with on-again/off-again breaks between
Mike Marsh’s hectic touring schedule with Dashboard
Confessional which including 600 shows in two years time.
The Agency doesn’t operate on a normal timeline
that many bands do and instead has developed organically
when possible. Now, the band is a fully realized endeavor
for all three members. Mike Marsh sums up the band’s
eternal magnetism, “The Agency is going to always
be a band because of friendship and a chemistry that is
hard to stay away from for too long. We have stayed friends
through a lot of bad decisions and made records that we
are proud of through even tougher times."
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Recording,
mixing and working on tracks since late 2004, Turn shows
tremendous growth for all of the Agency’s players.
Tracks bounce in many forms musically, hinting at chant-worthy
power pop, tight and quick-pulsed indie rock, and introspective,
well-versed storytelling in the vein of well-worn Jawbreaker
LPs and Ben Folds.
Carrying
critic’s expectations in tow from the emotive balladeer
quality of Dashboard Confessional, Mike Marsh’s own
songs show just as much heart-on-the-sleeve, sword-in-the-hand
promise. From the opening track, “Walking Disaster”
The celebration of everyday love is shining bright with
imperfections when Mike urges, “Let’s get desperate
again. I want to see everything I’ll be. Let’s
climb the walls for all we haven’t seen. We all want
to be loved without a perfect frame so let’s give
everyone who’s not anyone a name.”
Turn
will be the Agency’s third release following 1997’s
Rock to the Apocalypse and 1999’s Engines on Fiddler
records.
Perhaps
it’s the unlikeliest of tracks that could sum up where
the band is headed next. On “Everything is Mine,”
an ode to stealing quickly becomes words for any band to
live by. “Barely awake for the drive; everyone seems
barely alive. My sweaty hands are combing my hair back to
see the things in front of me. I’m barely thirteen
and I think that everything should be mine.”
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