Up From Below

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 14, 2009)
• Original Release Date: May 21, 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Vagrant Records
• ASIN: B002AOWXQ8
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #867 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

201 of 209 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They play like innocent kids. And make you want to., December 14, 2009

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Up From Below (Audio CD)

When it's time to name the Song of the Year, list-makers who don't put "Home" in their Top Five may come to feel...sheepish.

That's because there's a medicine show coming your way, guaranteed to cure whatever ails you. And the best service someone like me can provide is to prepare you for it. That's simple: you're going to dance. Pretty much from minute one. With whomever you're with. With strangers. And with a massive, how-did-this happen grin on your face.

Maybe you could know a bit more. Like: there is no "Edward Sharpe" in the 9-to12-member band that that calls itself Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Alex Ebert. the lead singer, looks like a guy who's just back from an ashram in India: underfed, long hair up in a bun, loose white shirt and pants, and bare feet. The female lead singer is so enthusiastic and awake --- a knockout in a thrift-shop dress, cardigan sweater and running shoes --- that you can't take your eyes off her. "A beautiful woman," Proust wrote, "is an invitation to a happiness she alone can fulfill." That is Jade Castrinos.

I love everything about this crew --- its large cast, its back story, and, most of all, its simple formula for happiness.

Okay, so the lyrics are mostly unabashed cornball ("Alabama, Arkansas/ I do love my Ma and Pa/ But not as much as I do love you"). I love how the song starts with a whistled echo of an Ennio Morricone theme from a Clint Eastwood western. I love the band and its soloists. Most of all, I'm a sucker for the refrain: "Home, let me come home/ Home is wherever I'm with you."

I have read the reviews, and it's the same deal in every city --- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros are a traveling Woodstock, a throwback to the great lost days when bands thought of themselves as families and concerts were foaming whirlpools of joy.

Who are they? How did they happen? What do they mean?

Pass the peace pipe, kids, and I'll tell you a story that may make you --- depending on your age --- nostalgic or jealous.

We start with Alex Ebert, lead singer of a band called Ima Robot. He is cynical and negative, drunk on a daily basis. Desperate to be someone else, he breaks up the band, leaves his girlfriend for a small apartment with a blow-up mattress and joins Alcoholics Anonymous. A year later, Ebert has written many pages about Edward Sharpe, who was "sent down to Earth to heal and save mankind --- but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love."

Then, in downtown Los Angeles, he meets Jade Castrinos. They "hit it off and made a run for freedom." They start writing songs. They acquire a school bus and a band.

Want yet another reason to mourn Heath Ledger? He gives the band seed money to record a CD. Which they do --- using a 24-track tape machine from 1979 and bargain-basement reels of 2-inch tape." In July of 2009, the launch party for "Up from Below" was, unsurprisingly a benefit, with the money going to help the Gulu Widows Group of Uganda start a farm to sustain their community. And then they went on the road....

The young `uns and the folks who missed it first time around know hippies only as caricatures. Ebert's much closer to the real deal: "If we go to your town, I can imagine a time when we're rolling up to a parking lot and parking the bus and setting up the stage and the bleed from the audience to us, it's just not even there. It's like a river, you know?"

Audiences do know. And they jump in. Ebert: "The night I went into the crowd [at the Echo] and everybody was singing, you could almost feel their hearts."
That's pretty much any night for this band. Because what it offers is not being sold anywhere else --- a reversion to childhood. He's a child and she's a child, and they have a childish belief that their love will last forever, and the band feels the same way. That's a lot of permission on one stage.

Enduring love, a family of friends, a place that felt like home --- when I stumbled out of college into the Real World, I craved nothing more. Escapism? Maybe. But also a recognition that the Real World isn't the only one, that there's a door over here, and all you have to do is open it to feel the freedom you had as a kid.
See Edward Sharp, if you can. But for the sake of your soul, at least spend a buck on the MP3 download of "Home" and keep it near you. Because there's always a psychic emergency ahead. And if there's a better First Aid kit, I don't know it.

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Freight train that loses steam, January 13, 2010

By 

A. Chizmar "Chizmonaut" (The Moon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Up From Below (Audio CD)

I heard the song "Home" on a mix tape and really liked it. It was fun and sweet and had an intricate simplicity I really enjoyed. I got the full album and it starts off amazing. Lots of interesting and catchy tunes. About half way through though, this album loses all steam. It gets thin and boring and somber. The happiness that made me pick the album up disappeared. I found myself wondering how much longer the songs were because they were just dragging on forever. To me, this would be a great album if it was cut in half. It feels like the first chunk is fun and original, and the latter is just unneeded filler.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So happy!, March 3, 2011

By 

AnnSydney - See all my reviews

This review is from: Up From Below (Audio CD)

This album makes me so happy. I can't help but bounce and smile to all of this album. The happiness that come to you through the album is really infectious! Great sunny day music! I've never seen them live but I'm going to at Electric Forest Festival this July. I can't wait! I've heard they are amazing live. I hope they are as good live as they are on the album!