Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros | Format: MP3 Music

Product Details

• Original Release Date: July 14, 2009
• Release Date: July 14, 2009
• Label: Vagrant Records
• Copyright: (C) 2009 Community Records/Fairfax Recordings
• Record Company Required Metadata: Music file metadata contains unique purchase identifier. Learn more.
• Total Length: 56:48
• Genres:
  • Alternative Rock
• ASIN: B002G6902U
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (129 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #739 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

255 of 264 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 TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format: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. Read more ›

69 of 78 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's like a koala bear crapped a rainbow in my brain! August 12, 2009

By Banjolero

Format:MP3 Music

I heard "Home" on the radio yesterday and couldn't wipe the smile off my face. That track is an instant all time fave of mine, and the album is great.

40 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars instant fun streaming out of your speakers August 18, 2009

By D. Hoffman

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

How to describe this sound - rich, dynamic, eclectic: mix one part Arcade Fire, one part Johnny Cash (sprinkled with a pinch of June Carter), toss in some Sgt. Peppers era Beatles, oh and don't forget the AM GOLD. I am just in love with this album.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not really my taste, but I like it. December 12, 2009

By yowza3

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

After stumbling upon "Home" on hypem, I saw their album was just $5 on Amazon. After listening to previews of the other songs on the album, I went ahead and bought it. I don't usually listen to this genre of music but I actually am liking the CD so far. "Home" is already a favorite, as well as Jade, Janglin', and a few others. Their music is different from what I usually listen to, but the purchase was well worth it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Record February 21, 2010

By Keith M. Crossley

Format:Audio CD

This is an incredibly good record.

I hesitated to buy it. How can a band produce something like "Home" and not have the rest of the record sound like repitition or duds? "Home" sounds like a perfect candidate for a "one-hit wonder" band.

But that is not the case.

This record is full of invention and wonder; originality combined with allusions to other masters. I hear so many sounds that make me go "who is that like?" and if I remember I think "no - it is reminiscent, but not a copy". And they just layer it all on you, over and over, track after track. Creating their own original experience.

Incredible. Thanks, Brooke, for turning me onto this.

Oh - and the car radio or YouTube or little things stuck in your ears do not do justice. You need to hear it play (loud) where the drum pounds through your chest and the piano rings in your ears and the horns blare in your face and you dance and smile.

29 of 40 people found the following review helpful

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

By A. Chizmar

Format: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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars "Home" had me hopeful, but in the end, I'm not as impressed as I thought I might have been. August 30, 2011

By M. Wolfe

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

I heard "Home" while in the car on the local radio station, WTTS, one day in late July. I was instantly drawn to it. Both voices in this particular track, the more and more I hear it, are so intense and melodic that I have to rank it as one of my top tracks of the year. The lyrics are even equally intense for this track, and probably tugged at my heartstrings a bit. And this bit of information is the sole reason I am giving this record 3 stars, instead of 2. I've listened to this album a few times now, and I just don't feel it. "Home," to me, is the only track I feel through my bones. Every other track, lyrically and musically, has done nothing for me. Alex Ebert's voice constantly throughout the entire record reminded me of Bob Dylan's... I just kept flashing back to that era. This is an extreme compliment, as I think Dylan owned one of the best voices in music history. Which is why with each track, I was hopeful. However, I just don't feel it. I am obviously in the minority here. I will continue to listen to this album on occasion, and hope it grows on me.