• My MixPod

• My Playlists

• Create Playlist

• Browse

• Community

  • Forum

  • Social Playlist

  • Browse People

Depending on who's counting, there are anywhere from 100 to n-frigging-thousand subgenres of rock music a band can slide into for easy categorization. And depending on where you drop the laser on Fair to Midland's debut album, Fables From a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times is True, at least half of those subgenres are being reinvented at once. But to call this Dallas quintet merely eclectic is to sell them way short. No, Fair to Midland are masters of fusing those subgenres into something that's cohesive, intensely focused, and in a bold new category all its own.

Recorded with art-rock super-producer David Bottrill (Tool, Muse, Peter Gabriel), Fables From a Mayfly finds Fair to Midland stretching out even further into the aggression and atmospherics at their core while taking their inherent gift for melody to new levels. Tracks such as "Kyla Cries Cologne," "April Fools and Eggmen," and the gripping first single, "Dance of the Manatee", showcase Fair to Midland's flair for combining progged-out virtuosity with lead-heavy riffs, dynamic tidal waves, and frontman Darroh Sudderth's operatic vocals. Even when the volume lets up--as in the softer, spacier folds of "The Wife, The Kids, and the White Picket Fence" and "Say When"--Fair to Midland create sonic tidal waves big enough to level arenas.

With Fables From a Mayfly, Fair to Midland have truly delivered, capturing the kinetic energy of their live show while harnessing the array of influences that make them impossible to pigeonhole. "For the most part, our musical tastes are completely different," says Sudderth, who rounds out the band with guitarist Cliff Campbell, drummer Brett Stowers, bassist Jon Dicken, and keyboardist/electronics manipulator Matt Langley. "We've just gotten better at listening to each other over the years. All of our songs are just us trying to find a happy medium between what everyone in the band listens to--and I think that actually being able to do that is what makes us so different from a lot of other `rock' bands today."