Artist description Creatures of Habit - Lo-fi indie pop with psychedelic leanings. Starboy - surrealist indie pop The Finger - Heavy electric lo-fi blues

Music Style Indie-pop

Musical Influences Guided by Voices, The Beatles, The Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, Sparklehorse, XTC, The Hollies, The Shoes, Marshal Crenshaw, Nick Lowe

Similar Artists Guided by Voices, The Beatles, The Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, Sparklehorse, XTC

Artist History Creatures of Habit has been around since 1991. Starboy has been around since 2000 The Finger has been around since 2001

Group Members CoH is solely Tery Daly on recordings, The live version of CoH usually is: Tery Daly - Lead Vocals/Lead Guitar Bunk Nesbit - Bass JP Cyr - Drums Mike Ingenthron or Jason Locke - Rhythm Guitar/Vocals Starboy is Tery Daly - Guitar, Bass, Vocals Steve Wells - Drums Dave Kimborough - Guitar The Finger is: Tery Daly - All instruments

Instruments Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboards

Albums CoH: Selling Off The Bees, Schizophrenic Sandwich, Here Comes Nothing (coming in later 2001) - Starboy: Drinks For Everyone (Coming in later 2001)

Press Reviews CREATURES OF HABIT * SCHIZOPHRENIC SANDWICH The Bombardier Recording Company * 2000 Creatures of Habit’s lone habitant, Tery Daly, makes no secret of his abiding love for all things Guided by Voices, and much of what’s fine about his new CD, Schizophrenic Sandwich, shares some of GBV’s giddy pop gamesmanship. But the real glad tidings here are what Daly subtracts from his idols. Part of the glory of Bob Pollard and company is the way they twist the elves-&-fairies-prancing-down-on-the-farm cosmology of 60s British guitar popsters like The Move, The Kinks, and The Pretty Things into pure postmodern, basement studio spleen. At heart, one guesses, Pollard is a bitter man and, while his lyrics and music beat around in rarefied space for long beautiful plateaus, they usually grip you while tumbling down into the arroyo wrapped in tractor rape chain. Daly is no such misanthrope. One hopes he isn’t trying to be. In fact, most of Schizophrenic Sandwich is as blithe as the name suggests. Daly’s attitude is closer to that of Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, The Shoes and, often, Nick Lowe and Marshall Crenshaw, if lo-fi had been the vogue in 1980. More playful than petulant, Daly is as restless as a mustang in a carport with the freedom his home studio provides. And he doesn’t exactly take his time moving from idea to idea. The shifts in tone and sonic temper jet by so fast and with such peels of fractured, unkempt instrumentation that the CD requires more than a casual listen to sort the anthems from the solid experiments. Every song has something to recommend it. The giant, slippery guitars of the opener, "Universal Sky Box" surrender to vocals that might as well be one long, unbridled sigh ending just before you feel up to sighing along. "Alien Boy" has a high end rattlesnake shake that adds dangerous hoodoo to an otherwise innocuous ditty. "Fear" starts out sounding like GBV, minus the savagery and rancor, and then becomes pure George Harrison, replete with stuttery, slightly exotic guitar figures. "Pilots on Parade" is twee psych-pop, picture-made for the Ptolemaic Terrascope crowd. "Lemon Lime World’s" buzzing, jagged guitar leads us into XTC, also the touchstone for "Get That Girl" and several other cuts. If all this sounds as if Daly is, predictably, less than the sum of his various influences, you’d be just about three quarters right. But what influences! And the sheer energy and delirium with which he races to epitomize and freeze the essence of his heroes is really quite exhilarating. Schizophrenic Sandwich is a charm bracelet: The Beatles, Sparklehorse (Daly shares recording tastes with Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous—a shimmery, hissy high end submerging gentle, serpentine vocals), Status Quo, The Turtles, Simon and Garfunkel ("My Depression" manages to channel the two latter groups at once), all jangle about sweetly on this truly extraordinary CD. You’re not going to be blown away by the originality or urgency of Creatures of Habit, and the slightly malevolent undercurrent of Pollard and GBV doesn’t threaten here at all, but if you’re into the sound of a home studio coming unhinged in the wild-maned pursuit of perfect pop, Schizophrenic Sandwich is a funhouse of dizzying, eccentric puzzles.

Location Lincoln, NE - USA

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