"The whole concept was a reactionary thing," explains Perry Serpa, leading
man/head warbler/tunesmith/ivory tickler in NYC's symphonic pop ensemble,
The Sharp Things. "It was 'anti-rock band,' kinda punk in its own way.
Instead of getting up in front of a microphone and screaming like a jackass,
I suddenly realized that I wanted to write real songs."

And so it began.

The monolith, as it has inarguably become, started as most do: very, very
small. A seed, if you will, back in 1995, hardly foreshadowing the massive
and nearly-impossible-to-manage sprawl that it is today. The genesis
scenario being Serpa and one Steve Gonzalez, drummer and the man who has
spent the most time around Perry without wanting to kill him (30 years, to
be almost exact). The two made a demo and took to the streets of Manhattan,
within earshot of where they grew up together in Queens. Serpa played an
acoustic guitar (badly), sweating through protest songs of love and trains
as Gonzalez labored against his warped sense of timing. Ah, yes, it was
quite a thing back then.

Today, it's a whole different ball o' wax.

Having soon after its inception recruited crackerjack guitarist Jim Santo,
then of noize pop locals Jenifer Convertible, The Sharp Things would become
a band complete with a handful of gigs, an agenda, creative differences, a
van, and...oh, Jesus. Here we go again.

"Really, it's all about the songs. And I'm lucky and honored to have these
people actually willing to play them with me," says Serpa without a hint of
irony. The next few years would see a revolving door of NYC musicians,
including Janet Treadaway (ex-Fluffer) who actually stayed on for three of
those years playing bass, flute and backing vocals. There was also Dawn Hui,
violinist extraordinaire; cellist Shanda Marsh Wooley; and horn blower Brian
McWhorter, among many others, as well as a cast of one-off honoraries, far
too many to mention here-most of whom will slip back into the fold for a
recording session or a gig or two.

These days, a core group of twelve (give or take) call themselves official
Sharp Things and crowd stages like New York's Bowery Ballroom and Joe's Pub
and Montreal's Cabaret, opening for artists and groups as diverse as Tahiti
80, Tindersticks, Broken Social Scene and Evan Dando.

For all its sonic sophistication, much of the band's debut record, Here
Comes the Sharp Things, was recorded in just two sessions a few years prior,
and mixed by Santo and Serpa in a basement studio. Released stateside on
Dive Records in 2003 and in the UK on Setanta Records in 2004, the disc
received a big thumbs-up by the press on both sides of the Atlantic, Flaunt
calling Serpa "a balladeer with Nick Cave's sense of drama and Jarvis
Cocker's world-weariness," and the New Musical Express proclaiming, "Your
summer album has arrived!"

The songs on Here Comes evolved like small, sensual pop symphonies, accented
by the delicate sweep of strings, complex horn arrangements and Serpa's own
unabashedly vulnerable vocals. Like Elvis Costello or Belle and Sebastian's
Stuart Murdoch, he found a way to make cynicism and heartbreak sound
disturbingly-and seductively-benign and beguiling (not to mention funny,
sometimes).

Such is certainly the case with the collective's new offering: a chronicle
of ambition and audacity entitled Foxes & Hounds. "Serpa and company
continue their excavation of classic pop, Bacharach and David style, in 14
songs of string, piano, and horn brilliance," wrote Under The Radar of their
latest opus.

Unlike its largely homemade predecessor, Foxes & Hounds was recorded
"properly" over 18 months with the help of a half dozen very patient and
loving engineers. The CD is self-produced and, dare we say it, much more of
a "band" effort than the last. It shall see the light of day this spring,
this time through the good will of much-loved Hoboken-based outpost Bar/None
Records.

The songs on Foxes & Hounds take The Sharp Things' penchant for mood
variation to new heights. Take the upbeat tune "The Suicide Bombers";
sporting a lyric about self-destructive Hollywood screenwriters, the song
will have you doing the Electric Slide on the first pass. "Homeless"
harnesses the band's classic grandiose melancholia, while "She Left With The
Sun" conjures up a Motown collision with Traffic and perhaps the Left Banke.
"50 Heads Over High Street" reminds us that the band can still rock out when
they want to (note Santo's masterful guitar work here)-but not without a
blissful string arrangement.

Then there's the album's opener, "There Will Be Violins," which tells the
strange but true story of Serpa's unsettling encounter with a flame-haired,
transsexual fortuneteller, who a decade ago looked at the hard-rocking
twentysomething and saw violins in his future.

"Back then, I thought that violins were the last thing I wanted in my
music!" says Serpa. I've since learned to embrace them. But arranging for
all of these instruments can be challenging."

And then, of course, there's the ongoing challenge of fitting everyone onto
the stage.

For more information, please contact Perry Serpa (himself) at Good Cop
Public Relations. Phone (212) 229-1862 or e-mail: perry@goodcoppr.com. You
can also visit the band's web site at http://www.thesharpthings.com.

Bar/None Records
http://www.bar-none.com

The Sharp Things
http://www.thesharpthings.com/
E-mail contact:
info@thesharpthings.com