The Brickyard, Carlisle
11th March 2006
...The most electric band of the night, Capulet mixes post rock with surprisingly cheery melodies. They played a very energetic show, to the delight of the crowd, and were a nice twist on your average post rock band.
The band members were all on top form and played the night out on a definite high. Having fun while also helping out Oxfam, what more could you ask for in a night out ?
- Sarah Johnson
pennyblackmusic.co.uk
June 2006
creativereview.co.uk
Not ones to bow to the common industry demands of 3 minute pop structures, Capulet offer up ten-minute stripped-down art-rock epics in this mesmerizing 5 track EP. Recalling the sprawling instrumentals of Canadian alt-musos Do Make Say Think, sprinkled with downbeat cyber touches of label mates Skoud, ‘The World…’ combines lightly tripping guitars and beautifully languid analogue beats. Occasionally, their sleepy vignettes rocket into the noisy echelons worthy of Mogwai, spinning wall-to-wall guitar cacophonies and flailing drums in their titanic crescendos. Unmemorable title aside, this EP offers a lastingly haunting experience.
- Amy McGill
twenty4-seven.co.uk
Henry's, Edinburgh
4th July 2006
Touring in support of their wordy release ‘The World Is A Tragic Place, But There Is Grace All Around Us, So Attend To The Grace' on motivesounds, Capulet roll into town to offer their post-rock wares to the Edinburgh public. Fans of the genre do not leave disappointed. Affecting, poignant guitars? Yip. Reverb-ridden progressions? Plenty. Pumped-up distortion fed climaxes? By the book. The traditional ingredients of post-rock are pulled off with the eerily perfect efficiency of a band who know their influences explicitly. The band rarely become animated on stage, save for the thrilling crescendos where Steve Hodson’s feverish scatter drums implore kinetic bursts of animation. Though their shoe-gazing movements require an attentive ear, they innovate little in this mode: the rewards of patience truly make Capulet shine. They slip with minimum fuss into grippingly tight time signatures and...
skinnymag.co.uk
Editor's Pick
Wow what a mouthful their album title is! This Shakespearean outfit performs sparse shoegazing ambient rock very well. Building up to a crescendo with light waves of sound percolated with fantastic nods in the direction of Explosions In the Sky, Capulet deliver incredibly complex arrangements though one may be surprised to think that upon an initial listen. Yes it’s sparse and spares us from the traditional trappings that so many indie bands fall into. But that’s exactly why you will love this band. The lyrics and vocals are few and far between, so Capulet instead relies on the moods that their atmospheric music creates. A must-have.
- J-Sin
smother.net
Retro Bar, Manchester
12th July 2006
Stepping down into the basement of Retro Bar, I notice a distinct lack of people. There’s room enough to swing a lion let alone a cat. Yet as the very name ‘Capulet’ is announced, people seem to creep out of the woodwork and materialise in front of the stage area - which means that only the first row could probably see them. Even through the forest of nodding heads and the odd flailing limb, the music is enough to make me take notice. A hint of a guitar being strummed peeps out of the amps with an obvious connection to bands such as Mogwai and 65 Days of Static. The lack of a vocalist leaves the musicians plenty of room to bend and break the instruments as melody and rhythm fold over each other in delicious swathes. Their music is beautifully thoughtful and also jarringly intelligent - Obviously a band in its youth, hopefully even more stage presence will arrive with their experience.
- Sorrell Waldie
manchestermusic.co.uk
Capulet are like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Junior, but seem to be growing out of their pull-ups.
Capulet make music that is ambitious, expansive, climactic, and dramatic. So does Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And, as you guessed from the title of the disc, Capulet does take a cue from Godspeed and Explosions in the Sky. However, there is a difference.
Where GYBE is cynical and apocalyptic, Capulet is sincere and romantic. One listen to “No Time Spoke the Clouds” will let you know that the scripture-esque album title is not meant to be ironic. Capulet invites you in, instead of keeping you at a distance with cryptic charts and nonsense phrases. They even sing on one song.
All this may have to do with the fact that they are named Capulet; you’d expect a band that got their name from Romeo and Juliet to play emo. Capulet is genuinely post-rock, but methinks they’re smuggling in some emo influence. After all, the climactic buildups with...
cdreviews.com
The mastery of understatement is incredibly hard. To create a subtlety that doesn't immediately invite pretension is equally difficult. Capulet has achieved something quite wonderful in their new release 'The World Is A Tragic World, But There Is Grace, So, Attend To The Grace' because it segues the listener into a beautiful lull, a melancholy of gracefully bitten structure. Teeth marks scattered around a shining-seed apple core.
The press release itself sites Slint as an influence and you can see why; the scapes built by Capulet are sparse and rolling, tender like a lover's hand but full of a tragedy. The title is apt if long. Its arrhythmia of beats are neither disconcerting nor comforting and the waves of guitar are like fitful dreams. Its chord changes in the later songs are fretful and angry, sharp and at odds with its gentility. But only for a moment. The lover's argument ends and the band continue to dream. Albeit a dream that is not wholly happy.
It's an uncompromising and experimental construct...
bigcityredneck.co.uk
As the name suggests, Capulet screams emo. Although, the screaming itself is kept to a minimum, and delicate, intricate harmonies take over what would normally be Gerard Way’s groaning yelps. Capulet are then, more of a true post-rock, climatic band with the melodies themselves taking the listener through one story to the next. From soothing waves to crescendo’s of swelled energy in almost an instant, the ambitious songs (generally in both length and build-up) demand concentration to feel the drama, a feat that often eclipses other bands and four-minute songs completely. But Capulet do it well. Very well in fact, making ‘The World Is Tragic…’ an album to be listened to in its entirety.
The bold ending of ‘Champ’ fluctuates from intense distortion to gentle strumming in a way which leaves the song resonating around the room and the mind, and the climax of ‘F#’, which pulls the mass of every instrument and riff into a brand of heavy-metal meets structure and shows the experimental...
disordermagazine.com
The independent english label motivesounds recordings has produced again another interesting album in the wide and different british music panorama. The name Capulet is undoubtedly unkown to the italian audience. The band is a four piece playing post-rock music and having as a drummer the bass player of Oceansize.
For sure Capulet wins the award for longest album title of the year, a quite common feature in this music genre, where the titles have endless lengths. However even though being similar to other groups the band has been able to differentiate itself from the crowded post-rock world.
The tracks don´t follow the classical quiet-loud-quiet structure. They never propose foreseen melodies, they are always searching for a balance often unstable like medioeval alchemists busy in creating the phiolosopher’s stone. The song’s building up appears extremely well crafted and at each new spin the listener is capable of picking up a sound, a detail not noticed previously. The four...
kronic.it
Five songs of suitably atmospheric post-rock time shifting and neatly executed guitar explosions, the lengthily named but impressive sounding THE WORLD IS A TRAGIC PLACE, BUT THERE IS GRACE ALL AROUND US, SO ATTEND TO THE GRACE is the first musical snapshot of post-rockers Capulet. Made up of former members of bands such as Rebeka and Lets Not Lose Mars To The Commies, Capulet perform sublime works of graceful guitar excursions that marry the complexity of math-rock to the graceful beauty of post-rock.
Amongst the highlights on offer here include the lengthy BOYS VS GIRLS and NO TIME SPOKE THE CLOCKS, songs that shimmer and explode in a by now patented post-rock manner. Though, by now the formula may be showing its age a little and the guitar explosions losing a little of their shock value and surprise, its still a formula that continues to delight and entertain.
When the fragile vocals suddenly enter seven minutes...
ukmusicsearch.co.uk
Capulet ask that you leave your Godspeed! comparisons at the door cause it's time to check out a new brand of heavy on their pretentiously titled debut, The World Is A Tragic Place, But There Is Grace All Around Us, So Attend to the Grace.
It's true that both bands have a penchant for silly album titles and a knack for creating lengthy and often, epic instrumental suites, but that's about where the comparisons should stop. In fact, it becomes evident after a few listens that Capulet is still growing into the wings that may one day lift them to scrape the sky.
In the beginning, Capulet rose from the ashes of two other bands, Let's Not Lose Mars to the Commies and Rebekah. Since then, this UK four piece has evolved from a more traditional, verse chorus verse approach into the complex dual guitar attack and playful instrumentation that you hear on 'The World Is A Tragic Place...'. Somewhere in the band's evolution, the vocals became expendable and their style shifted to a more wide open sound with an equal...
indieworkshop.com
The juxtaposition of quiet ambience and full-on guitar drones is beautifully demonstrated on “The World is A Tragic Place, But There Is Grace All Around Us, So Attend To The Grace”, the latest album from capulet. The Gentle drift of opening track “Die Die Disco Death” gives nothing away, and “F#” maintains the delicate feel until five minutes in, when some crashing waves of guitar pour over the song before quickly fading again into a gentle mist of notes. Next up “Boys Vs Girls” has more of a rock feel, with added drums and an upbeat feel, that is slowly overwhelmed by the waves of guitar that appear as the song progresses. On “No Time Spoke The Clocks” the sound becomes slower and more expansive, building towards that familiar guitar sting, the tension rising, the journey seemingly taking forever until the storm finally breaks, rolling over us, leaving strange electricity in the air, before a second storm crashes unexpectedly overhead.
- Simon Lewis
terrascope.co.uk
Capulet seem to be getting many comparisons to bands such as Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai, but this band seem too important to simply be bandied off with such straightforward comparisons. Too many bands seem to be jumping on the dirty rock and roll bandwagon that new bands are forgetting that lo-fi can still make for some kick ass music, and it’s good to know that people aren’t abandoning this less popular medium.
Now, although these comparisons with Godspeed and Mogwai are based on some semblance of truth, they are not alike in terms of content or drive. Capulet seem somehow poetic about their music in a way that these other bands haven’t quite achieved. These others rely a lot on some kind of noveau art/ rock template, like they are somehow trying to outwit and challenge their own audience, while Capulet merely seem to want to engage theirs. It simply means a lot more (to me at least) that there are some bands out there willing to take the risk and go with this more...
myvillage.com
December 2006
loewygroup.com
March 2007
creativereview.co.uk
June 2007
die-gestalten.de
February 2008
idnworld.com
April 2008
rock-sound.net
