Photo: Hadley Brooks
Every now and then, The Office of Student Engagement and Leadership Education sponsors a TNE to entertain us Camels on evenings that might be otherwise spent indulging in heavy drinking and inevitable debauchery. This week’s act is Take Care, an up-and-coming indie-rock band fronted by Kyle Joseph, `12, and I assure you that they are an absolute must-see.
The band hails from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, where its four members went to high school. The group is composed of Joseph, a philosophy and mathematics double major, his brother Dan “DJ” Joseph, a freshman at Tufts University, Sean St. Germain, a sophomore at Keene State University and Dan Phelan, a senior at the University of Vermont.
Joseph, who writes and arranges the majority of the band’s songs, claims that their main influences are Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Jeff Buckley and The National. When asked to describe the band’s sound, Joseph scrunched up his mouth, ran his hand through his hair and said, “People always tell us that we don’t sound like our influences and I think that’s a good thing. Hopefully it means that we combine the sounds of our influences and our own voices into a new coherent whole.”
Take Care was recently featured alongside Sufjan Stevens and Belle & Sebastian on a list of “Best New Releases” from Indie Rock Cafe (www.indierockcafe.com. Their single “Halfway House” from their newly released demo album garnered such an influx of praise from their fans that the site had to temporarily disable the ability for fans to give feedback at all.
In addition to playing at Cro’s Nest last year, Take Care has also played at outside venues such as Harpers Ferry, where they drew 150 people to the Boston location on a Monday night. The band has played with fellow indie-rockers Elephantom numerous times, and both bands will be playing a show together at Middle East, a venue in Boston, on December 27.
In their two years together, Take Care has recorded one full-length album, Awakenasleep, and one demo album, which will set the stage for their highly anticipated sophomore album. Since Take Care’s members attend college all over the Northeast, they took full advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday to rehearse as much as they could in order to prepare for their TNE on December 2. “We had a great time playing at Conn last year,” said Joseph. “But now that our name has gotten out and our sound has significantly evolved, we couldn’t be more excited to come back. We are doing everything in our power to make sure the second show is something special.”
Take Care will be playing at Cro’s Nest on Thursday, December 2 at 10 PM. For more information about Take Care, check out their website (www.takecareband.com) and download both their debut album and their solo album for free.
