Loud and proud, Portland, OR based Lovers is a band of emotional intensity and complexity. Their last album Dark Light begins with singer Carolyn Berk’s confession, “every time the music starts, I can feel my aching, shaking heart,” and from there, Lovers embark on a spiritual journey of inspired three-part harmonies, deep introspection, and next-wave humor. That album received rave reviews and led to sold-out shows for the threesome. Back In 2006, when Carolyn Berk lived in Athens, GA, she recorded a series of songs that would later become the basis of her 2009 album I Am The West. These songs are the beginnings of the shift from acoustic singer-songwriter to the blend of electronics, drums and guitar that are the background of Lovers current sound. Badman Recording Co. is releasing this collection of early recordings – which includes four previously unreleased tracks, on December 5th via digital download only.
Since 2001 songwriter Carolyn Berk has established her unique voice as Lovers with five acclaimed, haunted and heart-broken previous albums. Lovers (celebrated lyricist Berk, synth-programmer and performance artist Kerby Ferris, and sequencer and percussionist Emily Kingan) craft an intimate portrait of female friendship, sexuality, and evolution as an infinite process.
The three first encountered in 2002 after Berk’s near-fatal van explosion while on tour with an earlier incarnation of the band. Emily Kingan, then on tour with classic Portland feminist hardcore band The Haggard, invited Berk to join the bill. Ferris was their roadie. Years later, Kingan organized a meeting for her two friends and future band-mates in South America, where Berk was traveling and Ferris was living at the time, performing in various experimental electronic projects in São Paulo’s thriving music scene. The result was sisterly love at second site, and prophetic premonitions of the creative collaborations to come. Says Berk about Lovers presently: “We are like sisters. We are sisters.”
I Was The East is a collection of songs recorded in Athens, GA in 2006. Many of the songs were revised and re-recorded in Portland, Oregon a few years later for the release of 2009’s I Am The West. Singer Carolyn Berk reveals, “with this work, I basically took late-twenties heartbreak and chronicled it in the form of a catchy teen pop record.” Four of the songs were never released.