Infinite Shuffle

About two weeks ago, I made my maiden voyage to New York City. I’ll admit that I was a touch intimidated leading up to the trip, but it ended up exceeding my expectations in terms of awesomeness.

In addition to all the great food and drink I consumed and the various interesting sites I checked out, the highlight of my trip was probably discovering a new, great band.

There weren’t too many scheduled events on my itinerary for the week, so my host and I often just came up with things to do on the fly. One night, we figured we’d try to find some live music, which, pleasantly, is not at all difficult to do in NYC.

We ended up finding a cheap show in Park Slope at a great little venue called Union Hall. The main floor is a quaint bar with great seating, nice ambience and a couple of bocce courts. Downstairs is where they put on shows.

Basically the size of someone’s basement, with a stage on end and a bar at the other, Union Hall is the perfect place to discover up-and-coming bands before they get their big break.

While all of the acts were solid in their own right, it was the first group we saw that turned out to be the best.

Car on the Moon is a four-piece band from Brooklyn that comfortably straddles the area between folk and indie-pop. Most of their songs are of the slow, quiet variety and are occasionally accented by louder, more raucous choruses.

At the core of the band is Elias Orling, the lead singer and lyricist, who seems ready-made to front an indie-folk band. Providing some female backing vocals is multi-instrumentalist Sylvia Chen. Along with bassist Steve Ferrara and drummer Danny Festa, the group put out its self-titled, full-length debut in September of last year.

Some of the standout tracks include “Sea of Indians”, “Doctor”, “Love You More”, “The Bridge” and “My Only Drum”.

(Unfortunately, there are no videos online to link to, and I can no longer upload songs.)

To check out all 11 songs from the album, head over to the band’s website.

I got a chance to chat with Orling for a few minutes after his band’s set. He said they’d just finished a stretch in the recording studio, which hopefully means there will be more to come soon. As for touring, he said they’ll try to canvass the greater New York area on weekends, but it’ll probably be a long time before they ever make it to the Midwest.