Artist Photo | Album Cover |

Third Culture Records | It's tempting to call MAN/MIRACLE a band, but they're more than just guys with instruments: they're four guys with musical instruments. Speaking precisely, they're really more of a group of musicians who write and perform music together-- a "band," if you will. In this configuration, they create the sort of intricate, resplendent, wooly guitar pop to which many adjectives-- including totally inapplicable ones, like "wooly"-- might be applied.

The nucleus of the thing emerged from the inconsequential burg of Los Osos, CA, where singer/guitarist Dylan "Swimp" Travis and drummer Tyler Corelitz grew up. "We've been playing music since high school," quoth Swimp. "There's no music scene in Los Osos, but we played anyway." After a long mystical sojourn during which both men found their spirit animals, the pair reconvened in Santa Cruz and teamed up with lead guitarist Ian Benedetti and bassist Brian Kennedy to form the lively beat collective we know today.

Soon, they had captivated a local following due to their naively ambitious performance schedule. "We didn't know how to be in a band, really, so we were just playing as many shows as possible," relates Swimp; I didn't have the heart to tell him, but it turns out that's basically what being in a band is.

But then, tragedy struck: Swimp broke his back, and the band was on hiatus for months because he had to wear this thing around his thorax that looked like a big plastic urinal. It was during his long, Vicodin-leaned recovery that Swimp and the boys recorded their first EP, which came out all spacey due to the pills. Swimp eventually pulled through, and his triumph over adversity is exactly the kind of heartwarming story you'd want to read about in a press kit.

Seeking a shittier living situation, the boys then left the pastoral splendor of Santa Cruz behind and moved to Oakland, where Ian and Swimp rented the sort of squalid shanty you also love to read about in press kits: "It was basically this terrible, cockroach-infested hellhole that was falling apart, but it had a basement and we could play down there... it was moldy and we were sick all the time," Swimp reminisces, coughing a mist of tuberculous blood into his handkerchief.

Though the roaches eventually won and forced the boys out, the situation formed the aesthetic fundament that undergirds their new effort, The Shape of Things. "I think a lot of the album is about that experience-- the cover is a picture of the Ryugyong Hotel, which is this building in North Korea that's falling apart but has been under construction since 1987. It's about living in this space that's both crumbling and full of life."

And that's The Shape of Things-- a hoarder's hovel with treasure under the trash. A daydream of a better place, with photogenic guitar vistas. Grody messes of genius congealing in the sink. A little bit of hollering once in a while.

David Thorpe

The Boston Phoenix

Albums

• The Shape of Things

  Third Culture Records

On Tour

• March 18, 2010 | Austin, TX Man/Miracle @ The Beauty Bar - Bay Area Take Over (SXSW)
• March 19, 2010 | Austin, TX Man/Miracle @ Music Gym - Neon Reverb Party (SXSW)
• March 24, 2010 | San Diego, CA Man/Miracle @ Tin Can Ale House
• March 25, 2010 | San Luis Obispo, CA Man/Miracle @ SLO Art Center
• April 01, 2010 | San Francisco, CA Man/Miracle @ Milk
• April 07, 2010 | Santa Cruz, CA Man/Miracle @ Rio Theatre
• April 09, 2010 | Portland, OR Man/Miracle @ The Wonder Ballroom
• April 10, 2010 | Seattle, WA Man/Miracle @ Neumo's
• April 11, 2010 | Boise, ID Man/Miracle @ The Red Room
• April 13, 2010 | Boulder, CO Man/Miracle @ Fox Theatre
• April 14, 2010 | Lawrence, KS Man/Miracle @ The Bottleneck
• April 15, 2010 | Minneapolis, MN Man/Miracle @ The Fine Line Cafe
• April 16, 2010 | Madison, WI Man/Miracle @ The High Noon Saloon
• April 17, 2010 | Chicago, IL Man/Miracle @ Lincoln Hall
• April 18, 2010 | Bloomington, IN Man/Miracle @ The Bluebird
• April 20, 2010 | Columbia, MO Man/Miracle @ Mojo's
• April 21, 2010 | Tulsa, OK Man/Miracle @ Cain's Ballroom
• April 24, 2010 | Tucson, AZ Man/Miracle @ Club Congress
• April 27, 2010 | Solana Beach, CA Man/Miracle @ The Belly Up Tavern
• April 29, 2010 | Los Angeles, CA Man/Miracle @ El Rey
• April 30, 2010 | San Francisco, CA Man/Miracle @ The Fillmore