April Smith and the Great Picture Show

“I could take a great big bite out of you…I’m out for blood baby I’m vicious,” snarls April
Smith over a slightly dark strummed guitar, carnival organ, and blasts of warm vintage guitar fuzz. She’s tiny. She stands somewhere around 5’2”, but she belts her lyrics like a woman two times her size on new tracks like “Wow and Flutter” and “Colors.”

Since releasing her 2006 debut album loveletterbombs, April has been on the road nonstop playing shows with her band The Great Picture Show - including a Jeff Buckley Tribute show in Chicago. She strapped on a straightjacket in the video for her track “Bright White Jackets,” and had her music featured in two hit shows on MTV: The Hills and Newport Harbor. In the middle of all this madness, April found inspiration, and geared up to write a new album.

Fresh out of the studio with producers Dan Romer (Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs) and Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne), April has a brand new batch of songs that may very well be her best yet.

April has an exceedingly clear vision for her new music: She wants to take her classic retro pop sound and let it happen more simply, allowing a little Tom Waits-styled imperfection to take hold. April explains, “When things sound too perfect, it’s too contrived for me. You need a little dirt, a little fuck up that puts you in that moment.”

This chaos-friendly aesthetic is something April picked up while listening to Mr. Waits during her musically charged youth. She grew up the youngest in a very musical home in Tom’s River, New Jersey - the kind of place where Brian May solos were heard more often than rings from the telephone. With music all around her, it was only natural that April created her own - with her equally talented siblings, impromptu talent shows were commonplace in the Smith household.

As a youth, icons like The Andrews Sisters, Queen, John Lennon, and Robert Plant figured into April’s life in a very meaningful way - so much to the point that when she was growing up she believed John Lennon was God and Robert Plant was Jesus - a pretty good indication of the reverence for music she has held ever since.

Now April is using this as motivation to cultivate new tracks in the studio. As an artist who likes to let things happen naturally, she is not interested in forcing some persona onto her fans. The self proclaimed “girl who goes through life with her skirt tucked into her underwear” isn’t interested in being anything but.

Her sly wit, cheeky attitude, sticky cadences, and profound lyrics will be well reflected in her new material, now wrapped up in an appealing sheen of imperfection - like the kind of dirt and dents that make antiques look cool, and even more valuable. A jangly, suitcase-beating spirit infects her music and loosens up topics like heartbreak and longing that in the hands of anyone else might seem stiff, but in April’s sounds nothing but new and genuine. Think of sing-along love songs brought to life in a swaying sea-shanty by one of the coolest girls you know.