Frontier Ruckus

小簡(jiǎn)介
Though Matthew Milia is technically a native to the vast and vaguely defined expanse known as Metro Detroit, he has somehow mythologized a residence of his own creation--a singular and dusky world called Orion Town.
Amid a map where towns blur into each other by the dozen, Milia's geography survives as a connection of psychic landmarks, containers of boundless amounts of obsessive memory. And the memory is not even all his own--it begins with the Detroit of his mother's childhood, as exhibited in "Rosemont." Out from this place of crippled fairgrounds that border cemeteries the fascination progresses northward--through a nighttime system of backyards that seem to kiss and connect endlessly, as graphically depicted in the "The Deep-Yard Dream." It is in this enormous suburban landscape that Milia's tropes, motifs, and infatuated iconography seem to linger the most--it is where we find the north frozen landfill, the canal bleached in moonlight, the frozen shoulders of I-75, the guilt of "The Blood," the young sexuality of "Mount Marcy," the grayed-out winter of "Animals Need Animals," and the bittersweet treatment of home-life seen in "Dark Autumn Hour" and "What You Are."
For Milia, Orion Town is what exists just north of all of this. It is where the grid blurs into nothing and is yet the one and only container that blends and holds every fixture of the metropolis at once. It is the "nothing...something...the Heaven-King" for him. The antitheses are faded together as they exist in Detroit's actual gradations of connection--the urban to the rural, the past to the present, the south to the north, the joy to the sorrow.
And perhaps Orion Town is where he safely buries the body of the young love that seems to permeate each song--a grave of imagery, piles of nothing but language. This is the final and most abundant dichotomy that finds unification: love and remorse.
After the obvious anxiety experienced under such overwhelming weight, The Orion Songbook--the national debut from Frontier Ruckus--seems to be the answer regarding what to do with it all.
Not entirely fictional, the municipality of Orion, MI (pronounced 'OR-ee-un', not 'oh-RY-un') does exist on the Metro area's northern fringe. It was in these parts that Milia began Frontier Ruckus with his longtime friend and consummate banjo player, David Winston Jones. The rise and fall of spidery, melodic banjo lines seem to act at points as seamless continuations where lyrical lines end, prominently in "The Latter Days," for example.
As for the rest of the band--whether it be the indispensable, often plaintive harmonies of Anna Burch, the swelling trumpet melodies and singing-saw of Zachary Nichols, or the incredibly versatile and innovative rhythm of Ryan Etzcorn--the musicality displayed is truly impressive and raw, emanating from individuals still youthful enough to utilize these gifts with unadulterated zeal.
A natural follow-up and extension of the band's first EP I Am The Water You Are Pumping (2007), The Orion Songbook was recorded and mixed by Michigan's own Jim Roll (New West) and mastered by Roger Seibel (Modest Mouse, Decemberists, Elliott Smith, Built to Spill) to help draw the beauty out of these14 intense looks into what you can find in the glowing windows of night-houses.
Its unwavering honesty demands your attention.
It will see its proper release via Quite Scientific records on November 6th.
Please, come and visit the mysterious world of Orion Town.