Doing a trawl of other blog sites, I was left astounded by how under represented Dolorean seem to be in this community.
Inhabiting a space somewhere between Damien Jurado, Richmond Fontaine, Great Lake Swimmers, 'Sister Lovers' period Big Star and early Elliott Smith, Dolorean's introspective and literate output often transcends the alt. county label it is given.
The band formed in Silverton, OR, in 1999, when guitarist/vocalist and primary songwriter Al James invited friend Jay Clarke to play keyboards on some home recordings he was working on. The two hit it off and began working on material for their first album. Bolstered by the addition of friends Ben Nugent, Jeff Saltzman and Skip Vonkuske to the band, Dolorean released the album 'Sudden Oak' on their own label.
After re-locating to Portland the band started work on their next album 'Not Exotic' with the help of engineer Tony Lash (Heatmiser/Elliott Smith), distributing copies of the finished work locally around Portland around mid-2002. It was around this time that the recordings drew the attention of the record label Yep Roc who gave 'Not Exotic' and official release in November 2003.
After another slight line up change Dolorean made 'Violence in the Snowy Fields', which saw the band take a huge leap forward both sonically and in terms of the fabric of the song Al James was writing. The band sounded more like 'a band' than on previous recordings, the arrangements more dynamic , the production tighter, the songs more complete.
After a three year sabbatical Dolorean released their fourth album 'You Can't Win' in 2007. For the most part recorded over a single weekend, 'You Can't Win' is album of quiet confidence, which saw the band develop their sound further with new attention on harmony work as well as bolder experimentation with instrumentation. The cover art for the album is a partially distorted photograph of Al James taken by filmmaker Gus Van Sant.
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Dolorean on Myspace
Support The Artist. Buy. Buy. Buy.
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