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Giant Snail CD review

Frequency of the Month - June 2006

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Tuesday, March 7, at Mike's Tavern (8 p.m. matinee)
By Mike Warren
Article Published Mar 2, 2006

Nirvana-like has become shorthand for any band both noisy and melodic. The word fits Kansas City's Bodisartha (born in the wilds of Springfield, that name can't be an accident), especially with singer Josh Thomas' ragged screams and shattershot guitar chords.

Shoot, there are songs on the group's debut, Find Yourself Getting Lost -- "Is It a Gay" or "Like a Virus" come to mind -- that are better than those last few fossils turned up for Nirvana's recent rarities box.

The band finds its own unexplored mountain ranges of loud and catchy bits. It won't be long till Frances Bean is um dating, so maybe a band inspired by her dad's songs (important note: not imitating them) is something we can pay attention to again.

The article in The Pitch

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A review by The Giant Snail

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
~Henry David Thoreau

I am a knowledge addict. Every time I hear a name, it rings a bell, and it won't stop ringing until I know where I'd heard it (or imagined I'd heard it). Wringing my brains, googling, wiki'ing, and urban dictionarying for a good fifteen minutes convinced me that I've probably never heard the name Bodisartha. It fits in my brain right between Boanerges and Boethius.

And that's a good place for them, too. They are Boanerges, sons of thunder, flashes of light and silence followed by roaring guitar lines and vocals. But there's also something of the resigned philosopher in them- lines like "REVOLUTION PLEASE" show that the band is so frustrated and suffocated by the society we live in, that they are ready, willing, and able... to ask someone else for a revolution.

That said, the tame lion doth still roar in good health. They're quick to point out their similarity to Nirvana, and I'll grant them that- although (for now, at least) it's the early Nirvana, suffering from some of the same production quirks: tin can acoustics, too-sweet choruses, the infamous double vocal track. They do break out of the mold with varying success- Leave That Over There comes out like a droning shoegazer abortion, and when their throats aren't bleeding, tracks like Disagree smack of late nineties rockers like Miranda Sex Garden.

The weakest point is their lyrical reluctance. They seem to pull their punches, self-conscious of their own shortcomings- after all, "if you wouldn't mind i can fix you / but of course by me i just mean you"
But their rebellion should be much more manifest if they espouse the spirit of Henry David Thoreau. The catch phrase is "Fuck You, Robot," and not gently.

But I'm really pretty proud of them- their release is available at no charge through their website http://www.bodisartha.com , in a gesture of acceptance of the new paradigm which many, many, crappier bands *cough*Metallica*cough* are reluctant to lend a finger, although most of us have already taken the arm. It definitely merits a listen, especially if your ears lost their virginity to the post-punk movement.

Apologies if I sound too Pitchforky- I'm just trying to be honest.

~The Giant Snail

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Frequency of the Month
Bodisartha - June 2006
Marlena Hayes - Journalist

Bodisartha are a mysterious trio, indeed. New to Kansas City, the Springfield, Mo. natives are gaining momentum and attention thanks to their melodic, heavy rock sound, nice guy personalities, and of course, their unusual name.

Bodisartha, pronounced “BO-dee-SAR-tha,” came onto the scene in 2003 after vocalist/guitarist Josh Thomas and drummer/vocalist Justin Piatt parted ways with their former band, GrassCannon, and convinced friend and fellow musician Bret Steil to jump in on bass. The trio began playing shows late last year.

The first and most obvious question to fans is usually about what Bodisartha actually means. Thomas gladly fields the question with a vague answer that encourages fans to look up the terms.

“Bodisartha is a mixture of two Hindi words - Bodhisattva and Siddhartha,” Thomas said. “That\'s all I will say about it.”

The band has a variety of influences, but they say the most noticeable are Nirvana, The Pixies, Deftones, The Beatles, Queens of the Stoneage, and Velvet Underground.

Due to embark on a six-show mini-tour in June, Bodisartha is in what they call “PR whore mode” to promote their latest album, Find Yourself, Getting Lost.

The album is available for full download on bodisartha.com. The trio admits that offering their album for free on the website has been a gamble because it makes the album harder to sell. However, they say that ideally it will expose more people to their sound and get them to come to the live shows. They welcome donations for the downloads and encourage people to order the album.

“To us, it has always been about having as many people as possible exposed to our music,” Thomas said. “Major labels and bigger Indie labels can do that, but we would be very picky about who we went with. If you get on a label that blows money like crazy, you can end up having to sell a million albums and tour for a year just to break even. We would rather keep the costs low, record ourselves with help from our friends, and drive our own vehicles.”

The band said that they are looking for a public relations representative, a booking agent with connections and perhaps a manager.

The members of Bodisartha have mixed emotions about the Kansas City metro area music scene, but say they fully support local artists. Attendance at shows is their main priority, and Bodisartha said that while there are many great bands around town, there is little exposure and few venues that have not “sold out.”

“The music scene here is really good,” Thomas said. “The problem is that most people do not know about it, so some really good shows are really poorly attended. It is a shame that people would rather sit down in front of a TV all night than come out to a show.”
Photo by Shawna of Novella Photography, www.novellaphotography.com. All writing on Heavy Frequency copyright Heavy Frequency Magazine, 2002-2005. To respond to the author about this feature, e-mail marlena.hayes@heavyfrequency.com.

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During the track “Is It A Gay?” Josh Thomas’ screaming vocal is a dead ringer for the late Kurt Cobain (Nirvana). Bodisartha hardly sounds original, but for some reason, their music is so doggone easy to love.

Much of this CD’s appeal has to do with its crisp and clean production. It may lack a lot of studio sheen, but the guitars are chunky, the drumming is tight, and the vocals are painfully sincere. In some places, such as on “Leave That Over There,” Thomas’s vocals are altered and muddled, almost beyond recognition. Like Nirvana, Bodisartha is also a trio. And sometimes smaller can be better and tighter. I mean, look at The White Stripes. It’s quality, not size, that matters most anyhow.

It isn’t always easy to pick up on what this band is singing about, but some song titles, like “Like A Virus” and “Manufacturing Dissent” at least raise curiosity levels. There is intelligence within these thick, hard rock grooves without a doubt.

Many remember Cobain because of the singer’s tragic death. But Bodisartha shows that the rock sound he pioneered was/is also something truly noteworthy. The music Bodisartha makes is nirvana, indeed.

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Bodisartha | Find Yourself Getting Lost
Written by Jason Green

Bodisartha take the loud-soft transition that Cobain stole from Black Francis to the extreme.

Nirvana or Pearl Jam? The competition over which of those seminal '90s alterna-rockers deserved to take the throne as Grand Poobah of Grunge is close enough that picking an official winner is pointless, but there is one title for which there is no debate: which band gave birth to the worst knockoffs. Kurt Cobain & Co. may have heralded the arrival of a fair amount of mediocre bands in their day, but none that even comes close to the sheer crapitude of, say, Creed.

Setting their sights on the sound of Aberdeen's finest, Springfield, Mo., trio Bodisartha joins a long list of bands to echo Nirvana's loud-soft dynamics and fuzzed out punk. The results sound, by and large, like a lo-fi version of Failure, which is not a bad place to be. Bodisartha take the loud-soft transition that Cobain stole from Black Francis to the extreme, slinging Josh Thomas' thudding electric guitar and blood-curdling scream vocals onto "Revolution" after 90 seconds of acoustic guitar balladry, only to come to float back down in the song's final seconds. "So Nice Being Warm" thrashes like a cross between Nirvana's gibberish classic "Tourette's" and the lighter "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter," and a nice Melvins homage pops up in the murky guitars and Justin Piatt's whip cracking drums on "Is It a Gay?"

It's nice to see a band influenced by Nirvana that chooses to use the rough edges of Bleach and In Utero as their template instead of the well-worn, radio-ready Nevermind, but the one big play that Bodisartha forgot to swipe from Cobain's songbook is the pop hook. Thomas seems to think that the secret to writing a catchy, memorable song is to repeat the same single line of lyrics over and over and call it a chorus, and while that works on some songs (most notably "Disagree" and "Like a Virus," which manages to infect like a, well, you can imagine), it also gets painfully irritating on others ("Is It a Gay?", "Whey").

The good moments outweigh the bad, however, and the familiarity of Bodisartha's sound isn't the distraction it could have been. Find Yourself Getting Lost is a largely enjoyable debut, even if not a largely original one.

RIYL: Failure, The Vines, Nirvana

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Find Youself Getting Lost review
by Brainscab zine

To begin with I am not sure where to take you on this journey with Bodisartha. They are somewhere between Nirvana to the Beatles to a hole in the head. Yes hard to nail down with the twelve songs coming my way right now. I do know that this CD takes a couple of listens to get what is going on. Not that it is very complicated but the depth of the message of the songs being thrown at you. In some ways the structure is of that of the Cowboy Junkies coming at you with a heavy message but not heavy riffs. Its a good listen and worth getting into your collection.

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Review by The Audio Nut

Bodisartha
Find Yourself Getting Lost - 2006

Grade: A

http://www.bodisartha.com

This trio brings some solid rock to the table on this full-length release. Mixing various rock influences and styles that remind me a lot of Nirvana, Bodisartha, has some great songs. They display sheer talent and grace

Be sure to check out the bands website for some information about getting the CD or you can just go ahead and buy it from amazon.com Go ahead, get this disc. I am certain you will love it.