Atlas Genius
with Pacific Air
: Nashville Sunday Night presented by Lightning 100 & Yuengling

ATLAS GENIUS:

The band’s first release from their new label home, the EP Through The Glass (produced, engineered and mixed by the band), came out in June of 2012. With Through The Glass completed, Atlas Genius then holed up in its studio and worked on writing and recording its first full-length album, while at the same time rehearsing for their first ever tour. The tour started in August 2012 and led to three more tours back to back taking them thru to the end of the year. Thus, their full-length debut was finished up between tour dates and got completed just before Christmas 2012. When It Was Now is set for a US release on February 19th, 2013, with an international release to follow soon after.

The debut captures Atlas Genius’s singular combination of sophisticated musicality and warm, wistful spirit. Infused with a classic sensibility, each of the songs would fit seamlessly if somehow slipped into a long-treasured mixtape. On the shimmering “Symptoms,” for instance, taut keyboard riffs mesh with urgent acoustic strumming before the band bursts into a gently frenetic, guitar-drenched chorus. Meanwhile, “Back Seat” blends its pulsing bass throb with a sweetly infectious beat and tender vocals that alternately soar and sigh. And on “Trojans,” Atlas Genius begins with a restrained guitar melody and vocal (“Take it off, take it in/Take off all the thoughts of what we’ve been”) before giving way to the handclap-accented, harmony-soaked refrain and lush yet kinetic bridge.