Alter The Press! Presents: Athletics

With one of the most mesmerizing releases of the year with 'Why Aren't I Home' under their belt, New York five-piece Athletics are definitely one of the most promising, if not exciting, bands to emerge in the past 12 months.

Their début full-length has received plenty of praise and saw the band work with Moving Mountains' Greg Dunn. Tracks like 'See You On The Other Side' and 'I Am Withdrawal' are captivating and sees the band pouring all of their emotions and produce a feeling that leaves you astonished and inspired. Despite Athletics still being a hobby for its members, a follow up is akready in the works.


For Fans Of: Explosions In The Sky, Thursday, and Moving Mountains.

Alter The Press: Why should Alter The Press! readers check you out?
Athletics: Athletics is a musical effort between five people with different musical backgrounds coming together and accidentally expressing ourselves through one style of music. We've worked very hard and for a very long time to get this record done, between writing for a year and a half, recording for months, waiting, and waiting some more. The most important thing is that we want other people to feel what we feel when we play our songs. Everything that we write about is very important to us and we want to share it with the world. We're all music lovers, and we wrote a record that we would want to listen to ourselves.

ATP: What's the story behind the band?
Athletics: As far the current members goes: Garrett Yaeger and John Cannon parted ways with the band The Cast Before The Break and Garrett began writing and recording songs for a solo acoustic project he dubbed "Athletics". He moved back to his alma mater's small college town, Oneonta, NY, US after graduating, and began playing some of those songs with Howie Cohen and Jimmy Boyce who were attending the college at the time. He later recruited his cousin and former bandmate, John Cannon on drums. To complete the puzzle, John Luby who lived in the apartment upstairs from Garrett joined on bass. Garrett, Howie, Howie's girlfriend, Brooke, and both Johns now live in a house together in NJ.

Early members and occasional auxiliary members include Adam Moulter, Jordan Fowler, Jeremy Carter, Andrew Notaro, and Ben Paulsen.

ATP: Single highlight as a band so far?
Athletics: We've played so many awesome shows with so many awesome bands and had so much fun, but signing to Deep Elm Records is definitely the highlight of Athletics thus far. There are so many bands that they've worked with past and present that we were already fans of, and it's an honor to be invited into that family.

ATP: What are your plans for the 12 months?
Athletics: Work, tour, write. We plan on doing a short tour in January and hopefully a more extensive tour in the summer. In the meantime, everyone has been writing and bringing ideas to the table and we're working on finding a direction for our next release. Once we find that direction, we'll start working on writing and recording for our next release. Other than that, Jimmy is finishing up school, John Luby works for Verizon Wireless, Garrett works for www.showpopr.com, Howie works for Russo Music in Asbury Park, NJ, and John Cannon works as a barista at a cafe and also does radio promotions.

'Why Aren't I Home' by Athletics is available now on Deep Elm Records.

Athletics on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.