After months of pinching pennies and milking that sweet overtime pay, the Press pulled together some cash and hunkered down at The Fort in Bushwick to document their most recent batch of songs. It was only after the final mixes were agreed upon however, that the band realized that the album later to be titled INTEOTWIJTEOAE (pronounced in-tee-aught-whit-e-ay) is, above all, an album of transitions. There are songs of events smoothly overlapping, the old fading casually into the new, while other songs capture the violent, sparking convergence of profound, uninvited change. Thereare stripmalls and subways, security gates and jackhammers, termites and Entenmann’s snacks, volcanoes, jellyfish and thimbles. There are the uncertain words of first dates followed by the rote response of a seasoned spouse. There are no lectures here, however; there is sympathy and reverence for every subject addressed, and every assertion has a qualifying foil, often penned by an alternate band member. Like Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Writer’s Block” or Broken Social Scene’s “You Forgot It In People”, this album is the collective effort of several talented songwriters that have pooled their energies and subjugated their egos to forge something that is arrestingly beautiful upon the first listen, and more deeply meaningful upon each subsequent spin. It’s no coincidence that neither of the aforementioned artists are American; there is something thoroughly socialist about The Press’s commitment to collective improvement, and this is suggested in the band’s self-described genre “Byzantine Co-Op Rock.”
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