May McDonough and Co.
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Location
Los Angeles, CA
Genre
Indie Rock, Folk Rock, Rock
Comparison
Tom Waits, Portishead, The Pixies, Jefferson Airplane, PJ Harvey
- Church On Sunday share/download
- Riverside share/download
- Red Tag Nation share/download
- Mama, Drain the Bathtub share/download
- Track from the New Album Spil... share/download
- Podsafe share/download
- New Track share/download
- Website share/download
Quotes
“McDonough and Co.’s melancholic refrains are punctured with mysteriously gritty, yet absolutely fearless instrumentation. Her sound would easily serve as both the raucous soundtrack to a pool hall brawl or a lingering night with a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of heartbreak. However, her beautiful voice is still ominous enough to rattle the bones of the dead.”
Nadia Noir, KROQ.com
“In Spilt Milk, May McDonough has the type of voice and batch of songs that make heartbreak and pain sound like pleasurable things. McDonough sings with a seductive, hot heat hypnotism that's hard to ignore. She carries a certain emotional weight in her voice in much the same way blues singers do. Like a cross between Fiona Apple and Tom Waits, Spilt Milk is an album meant for hot summer nights and lazy Sunday afternoon relaxation, on a porch covered equally by sunlight and shadow. It's an album that can celebrate and mourn, all at once.”
Quinn S., Mixtape Muse
“May McDonough and Co. are something to behold. The sultry singer busts out blues-infused cabaret numbers in a deep, smoky voice. As she strummed her guitar, her piercing eyes scanned the audience, her face occasionally breaking into a playful smirk. She is backed by two percussionists: one is a standard drummer, the other plays a menagerie of found instruments, including a propane tank and a bicycle with a brush attached, which sounds like a rattlesnake.”
Brandon Ferguson, OC Weekly
“May McDonough and Co.’s graceful Tin-Pan Alley flirtation, “Spilt Milk”, is a spiritual affair. It’s an album awash with concerns of sin, the devil, drowning, fantasies, lost relatives, and the dream of ditching a lifeless town…The songwriting is stunning. The lyrics an ambrosia of prolixity set to music as elegant as an arabesque…It’s hardly surprising anymore that there are musicians as good as this out there just waiting to be heard.”
David D. robbins Jr., Their Bated Breath
About May McDonough and Co.
“May McDonough and Co.'s story sounds a little like that abstract French film you saw once in college. You know there is a theme buried somewhere just out of grasp, and yet the bizarre imagery and odd characters leave you feeling a bit confused, a bit cultured, perhaps a bit enlightened, but mostly just exhausted. May McDonough is the first born child of a couple of private investigators who met on the job in the late seventies. May's father started his own private investigations bureau, and May's mother (who was known as Digger around the office) had just left her job taming lions, tigers, and elephants for Hollywood for a more cerebral job in the p.i. field.
Stemming from such unique individuals as these, May was born to be a wild card. And her life is supposedly as intriguingly unique as her parents, if not more so. In her own words 'I seem to be a magnet for strange happenings that no one would ever believe to be true'.
The stories May McDonough and Company tell in their music elude to some of these whimsical tales, ever vaguely and cryptically hinting at various disasters, deaths, bastard siblings, homeless trials, and somewhat bizarre worlds of self-exploration.
May and Company's arrangements are equally as filled with whimsy and charm. Strung out with rich moods and decked with junkyard percussion, their songs instantly warp you in to a specific time and place where no corner of the room goes unpainted. Whether you're thrown back early century evenings at the birdcage theatre, lusting after a burlesque dancer, or you find yourself stumbling down an alley at midnight having just puked out a bottle of Jameson, when you listen to MMC songs you know exactly where you are, exactly how you feel, and you know they wanted it that way.
Now May plays with her ragtag band of junkyard dogs. Her band wales away at led pipes, trashcans, and overturned bicycles, as she sludges through chords and eases through chest-searing vocals that open even the most tightly crossed arms.”
Photos
