The Sound They Make is the debut album from East Central Illinois duo New Ruins, file under: Small Town Midwestern Gothic. Droney acoustic/electric rock, songs rendered in sepia-tone, awash in rural melancholy, folksy guitar-mantras tinted with martial snares and cooing organs. New Ruins architects Elzie Sexton and J.Caleb have been making music together for a decade and there is an intimacy between the two here that rivals friendship and brotherhood. Compared to: Ugly Casanova, Iron & Wine, Talk Talk, Mojave 3, Silver Jews, and John Fahey.

Elzie Sexton and J. Caleb Means grew up in rural Southern Illinois, and have been playing music together for more than a decade. After a youth spent playing in punk rock bands, they went their separate ways to attend colleges and universities around the Midwest; J. Caleb north to film school, while Elzie went South to study fine arts. In 2004, they formed New Ruins as a long-distance recording project, trading tracks in the mail. During weekends and breaks from their studies the band recorded and self-released a couple EPs and a full-length “collection”, mixed and matched from songs created with plenty of first class postage. In August of 2005, Elzie and J. Caleb moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to work on the live representation. After a year of playing shows as a duo, the band ran across likeminded souls and have welcomed aboard the rhythm section of bassist Paul Chastain (Velvet Crush, Matthew Sweet, Unbunny) and percussion stylist Roy Ewing (Braid, Very Secretary, Unbunny), the tag-team duo who man the mailorder department at Parasol.

New Ruins on MYSPACE.


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ALL MUSIC GUIDE BIO:
Playing dark-hued pop music that strikes a balance between melody-driven pleasure and guitar-fueled malaise, New Ruins started as a two-man recording project featuring Elzie Sexton on vocals, guitars, and keyboards and J. Caleb Means on vocals and guitar. Sexton and Means both grew up in southern Illinois, and became friends in their early teens. Sexton and Means formed a punk rock band together when they were 14, and worked together in a variety of musical projects until they both left town to go to college. Means traveled north and attended film school, while Sexton enrolled in an art college down south; however, the two friends kept in touch, and in addition to getting together to make music during breaks from school, they began sending tapes of works in progress back and forth, collaborating through the mail. After graduating, Sexton and Means both ended up back in Illinois in the Champaign-Urbana area, where Means opened a small recording studio, Boombox Studios. When not busy with clients, Means would work on new music with Sexton, and in 2004 New Ruins were born. After a year in which the duo was strictly a studio project, New Ruins began playing occasional live gigs in the summer of 2005, and before long they added a rhythm section to fill out their sound – bassist Paul Chastian and drummer Roy Ewing. In 2006, New Ruins began recording their first full album, The Sound They Make, which was released by Hidden Agenda Records in the spring of 2007.

AVERSION.COM:
The band's The Sound They Make finds the Illinois outfit shuffling through a series of acoustic and roots elements to arrive at a sound that's steeped in Americana and roots-rock, but without all the sentimental ties to the past. Dabbling with drones and organs behind the lazy melancholy of the duo's electric/acoustic roots-rock doesn't hurt to pull the Sound They Make out of the nostalgia gutter and into a section of heartland all New Ruins' own...

AQUARIUS RECORDS:
Anyone who has lived in a small town long enough has probably felt the inner struggle between the desire to move to an exciting city and the comfort and ease which comes with the affordability of a small town (especially a college town). Couple this struggle with winters that never seem to end and it's no surprise that The Sound They Make's opener "Ships" explodes with anxious guitar riffs and pressing organ lines that crescendo into melancholic vocals recalling roads too often travelled and pitting urgency against somebody's likely kind reminder that "we have the rest of our lives." This apprehensive eagerness paired with two distinctive vocal ranges that could be a perfect octave apart (imagine if Isaac Brock and Doug Marsch formed a dark folk band) make for an impeccable alt-gothic country album that's already garnered comparisons to John Fahey, Iron and Wine, Old 97's, and Grant Lee Buffalo, but still manages to stand alone.

ALL MUSIC GUIDE REVIEW:
New Ruins describe their music as "Small Town Midwestern Gothic," and that summary is good enough that Elzie Sexton and J. Caleb Means, the two musicians who comprise the group, ought to consider rock journalism as a sideline. While New Ruins' first album, The Sound They Make, is brimming with pop hooks and hummable melody lines, an air of malaise permeates these 11 songs, and while this isn't the typical gloom-struck synth wailing one usually associates with the word "goth," the simple organic approach of this music (with acoustic guitars often high in the mix) generates a compelling and evocative unease all its own. Sexton and Means originally launched New Ruins as a home recording project, and there's a modesty to their production and arrangements that suits the songs quite well; the open spaces in the arrangement on "Flowers" allows the refrain of "I've been in this town so long" to take on a weariness it might not have generated otherwise, the low-tech synthesizer on "Records" adds a very real charm as it floats over the simple percussion beds, and the drowsy vocals and insistent guitars of "Attic" suggest Dinosaur Jr. trying to be quiet for the benefit of their neighbors. While the material on The Sound They Make gets a bit samey by the end of the last track, the album also generates a tonal and thematic unity that adds to its power -- New Ruins manage to make music that sounds both sad and pretty without seeming self-indulgent, and their moody palette is both imaginative and absorbing. It's an impressive debut, though one hopes New Ruins have the sense not to stray too far from the concision that makes The Sound They Make so memorable.

EMUSIC FEATURE REVIEW:
A stunning debut of alt-gothic country… It could be argued that the best songs are born of troubled relationships — a fact fully supported by the harrowing debut from the Chicago group New Ruins. Witness: chief Ruiners Elzie Sexton and J. Caleb Means have known each other for over a decade now, first crossing paths at age 15 and together weathering punk phases and folk phases and finally coming out the other side weathered and jaded. New Ruins was born while its members were in college — two different colleges, separated by 600 miles (that's where the "troubled" comes in). Sexton and Means exchanged tapes via the mail and met on breaks to write and record and collaborate, knowing that all good relationships require dedication to overcome problem spots. Fortunately, The Sound They Make was worth the effort it took to create it. In eleven songs of grim, ravaged beauty, New Ruins recall the National and American Music Club and Grant Lee Buffalo without copying any of them outright. Both Sexton and Means have deep, dire baritones, and their songs are invaded by a kind of shadow and sorrow that bleeds into even the up-tempo numbers: "Ships" is propelled by a rocketing tempo and ragged guitars, but the morose vocal keeps repeating "holes in our ships." "Book Lung" rattles like a bum carburetor, cacophonous percussion and a low, groaning cello guiding the song to its ominous concluding refrain: "Your ghost still walks all around these hills." It's that sentiment that best sums up The Sound They Make: snapshots of spirits floating through places in time, half-remembered memories of people loved and forgotten. The record feels like a scrapbook, its minor-key strumming and lowing strings as brittle and yellowed as aging oak pages. And that's where that foundational relationship becomes an asset: Sexton and Means disappear into each other, twin voices that help each other sort out the photographs, piece through the details and create new fictions. Their characters occupy the empty space between desperation and resignation. With friends like these, who needs memories?

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