Citay - Self Titled - CD

Out of San Francisco, Citay is a new project by Ezra Feinberg, formerly of Piano Magic (4AD), in collaboration with Tim Green from The Fucking Champs (Drag City).

Citay, named for the way the word "city" is often sung, is a powerful, elegiac blend of seemingly disparate musical elements. Taking its cue from the dramatic song structures of 1970s AM rock, Citay combines Led Zeppelin acoustic guitars and organs with soaring guitar harmonies and lush, choral voices. The influences of the early records of Mike Oldfield, Roy Harper, John Fahey, and more recently the Japanese band Ghost can be heard as well. Certain moments sound like the long, baroque intros of Metallica songs (before the metal takes over) while other moments unleash themselves in triumphant builds and emotional landings. The sound is rounded out by breezy, distinctly psych-ed vocal harmonies of The Byrds and The Beach Boys, adding a blissed-out flavor to the blend. The result is something entirely new. With smoking Thin Lizzy dual leads and California vocal harmonies, Citay will soon be enchanting the kids from the city to the country and back again.

After spending 6 years in the indie rat race of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ezra Feinberg moved to San Francisco to record with Tim Green of The Fucking Champs, a veteran of the SF scene who moved to the Bay Area after time in Washington, D.C. as a member of that city's seminal punk band The Nation Of Ulysses. Feinberg and Green had been friends for a while and enjoyed a mutual love of old psychedelic and proto-metal records. Tired of asymmetrical haircuts and hipsters talking about Gang Of Four all the time, Feinberg arrived to the West Coast searching for those moments of rock history that had fallen off the radar. Work on Citay began in the Fall of 2004.

Accoring to Feinberg:

"When Citay started I had been thinking of acoustic Led Zep and the first 2 Heart albums (Dreamboat Annie and Little Queen). Also the drama throughout Queen II, and the trippy/spooky Black Sabbath bongo songs where Ozzy's voice has tons of chorus to make it kind of watery and lava-lamp-y. Led Zep, Heart, and Sabbath are not really known for their acoustic moments, and I hadn't heard anyone taking a cue from that stuff and I felt like it was time someone tried to do something new with those ideas.... "

Citay is produced by Tim Green who has produced albums by Sleater-Kinney, Comets On Fire, The Melvins, The Donnas, Bikini Kill, Trans Am, and many others.