Alec Ounsworth Announces First Headlining Tour
Anti-Records is proud to announce Alec Ounsworth's first headlining tour ever. The dates will be in support of his critically acclaimed new albums: Mo Beauty and Flashy Python's Skin and Bones. The tour begins with five shows opening for Cold War Kids and then Ounsworth and his band will do 18 headlining dates across the country. About the band's debut performance at 2009's CMJ, Jon Pareles of the NY Times wrote that they "set aside the brittle Talking Heads tinges of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for slightly more old-school approaches -- meaty electric-piano funk with a New Orleans mambo flavor, bounding Rolling Stone guitar rock, and, from his band, guitar solos straddling blues jabs and post-punk dissoance."
Ounsworth's band is Matt Sutton, Peter Modavis, Brian Ashby and Jonas Oesterle. They will be playing songs from Mo Beauty, Skin and Bones as well as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's catalog. Mo Beauty was recorded deep in the heart of musical New Orleans with an ensemble of local heavyweights including George Porter Jr. of the Meters and drummer Stanton Moore of Galactic, and was guided by veteran producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, Replacements). The album is a stunning union of powerful rhythms and imaginative arrangements in the service of evocative literary songwriting.
Praise for Mo Beauty has been strong:
"This sound is voluptuous and muscular, and it suits him well."- Pitchfork
"Spindly guitars with crispy syncopation...baroque." - Rolling Stone
"Wonderful new album." - Wall Street Journal
"The Sharpest arrangements and best songwriting of his short career: Almost every tune on Mo Beauty equals or betters those on CYHSY's lauded 2005 debut." - Spin
"The album is well conceived with articulate themes running throughout...Mo Beauty is an album full of idiosyncracies, but Ounsworth's consummate eye to its construction turns dissonance into harmony." - Paste
"Ounsworth has crafted an album that transitions seamlessly from ballads to more frenetic tracks with a straightforward sound that lets the songwriting and hooks resonate without being over-produced." - Filter
"Strikingly compelling" - Relix