Search - The Urgency :: The Urgency

With any new band, you can pretty much use their personal background as a guide to their sound. Knowing that the members grew up in, say, Vermont, or cut their musical teeth in Brooklyn, should clue in you on their musical path; if some of the group ended up studying music in college, that's another sonic clue. Hand-picked by a hot producer to be the next big thing? That offers up more than a few hints. The Urgency, thankfully, do not sound anything like anything their history would suggest. They are not a jam band or an indie-rock group. They are not part of some hot (and soon to be forgotten) music "scene." Their music, far from pretentious or willfully convoluted, takes a fair amount of its influence and energy from post-hardcore bands such as At the Drive-in and Glassjaw (with more affinity for melody), while working in a seductive pop groove. And sure, the vocals of onetime musical theater major Tyler Gurwicz can scale heights, but he keeps the showboating in check. His presence adds a pop strength to the group's ferocious, rhythmic attack. In Gurwicz's impressive pipes, the group found its focus and melodic center. "I've never tried to sound like anyone," the frontman admits, noting that his soaring vocals often get compared to everyone from Sting to Yes's Jon Anderson. "Actually, I've never really listened to a lot of the singers I'm compared to. I just kind of created my own thing." After hooking up with industry veterans Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken (SRP management, who discovered Rihanna), the band serendipitously met producer David Bendeth (Paramore, Breaking Benjamin, Bruce Hornsby). During the initial recordings, the group found themselves locked in what they called "Bendeth Boot Camp," an exacting process where the producer tore down the group musically. It worked. Though diverse, the songs on The Urgency's debut remain consistently powerful and intensely memorable. "Fingertips," the opener and band's first single, is a steamy, sexually charged rocker about seduction. Elsewhere, the group weaves in elements of punk ("Crimes," which starts soft and explodes into a speedy chorus), Police-style rock ("Stop"), contemplative pop ("Memories") and even ventures into the ethereal, as the dreamy, muffled "Lullaby" gently winds down the album. But even as the songs weave in and out, the "groove" that Bendeth and the group wanted is ever-present. After years of jamming around, the little group that started in Vermont has suddenly vaulted forward in the music world, and at a considerable rush. In a way, the band's name is now more apt than ever. "Our name, The Urgency, is really about the circumstances of me joining this family," says Gurwicz. "They had been searching for years for the right singer. Then we met, and it all just clicked into place at once. We just want to keep moving with that same urgent feel."