Biography
Look, there's no question...Ida are incredible musicians. Dan can hear a song once and play it back note-perfect, and with finesse. Liz can sing circles around most people, and Michael can like someone who's been playing five times as long as his two year tenure with sticks in hand. And to be honest, they are twice as sexy and stylish as any of the airbrushed rockers on the covers of those mainstream rock cemetery publications. But all that's secondary to Ida's real gift. Ida have an original, nakedly sincere voice and they resignedly show it. No small task for a band that lives in the middle of New York City where flash, attitude and publicists make up the bulk of rocker content. But Ida's trump card is an honest recognizable voice--the core of what makes any artist historically great. It's the core in my definition of "new."
Ida are one of the only bands we know that can take the numbingly complicated emotional content of daily life and somehow distill it to its most simple lyric essence, while at the same time not diminishing its complexity of meaning. No one who's suffered the little resentments and miscommunications of a long-term relationship should be immune to lyrics like
"little things pile up and turn into bigger things
and I want you to notice, and I want you to try."
When you listen to Liz sing of lost friendship as a
"perfect and graceful fading" or of
"scraping love from the dust that covers you fingerprints"
in Thank You, you are left with an image and a sensation of loss, not a description or a conclusion. Ida leave the wound open in description. They do not summarize and stereotype. They do not reduce for consumption or closure. They show, they do not tell.
Musically, they're doing a similar thing on I Know About You, building the backdrop and strengthening the content. The instruments and melodies exist not to catch the ear with a hook or jingle, they are the walls around the room where the action takes place. It's the scenery on a long walk, the beautiful familiar couch on which you have the conversation. This record it is ten times the record we hoped they would one day make. Every line resonates, is quotable, generous, bittersweet and hopeful. We hope you enjoy it.
Between 1985 and 1989 Dan was a member of the seminal Annapolis punk
band The Hated. Since their breakup in '89 Dan has played in a
number of bands, including Three Shades of Dirty, Choke, and Slack
(with Jenny Toomey). Dan is currently a guitar player and singer in the
trio Liquorice (also with Jenny Toomey), who released their critically
acclaimed debut CD/LP Listening Cap on 4AD last July.
Before meeting Dan in 1992, Liz had been performing in New York and Providence,
mostly in an acoustic duo with Lisa Loeb, whose song on the Reality
Bites soundtrack "Stay" catapulted her into the limelight. In fact,
if you listen carefully you can hear Dan and Liz playing guitar and singing
in the background.
Michael has also played in Baltimore's Hassassins, as well as with
New York City's Containe.
Dan and Liz, notoriously generous with their talent, have also collaborated and performed with numerous other musicians. They have just come off a summer tour of the United States performing with Elaine Ahn, cellist and Coedine's Steve Immerwahr on bass. Liz is working on a side project with Tim Thomas (Babe the Blue Ox), and Dan played some drums and guitars on Danielle Howle's full-length, About to Burst.There are also rumors of a split single featuring Liz's solo recordings and The Secret Stars
