The Family Crest, Arc Iris

The brainchild of Liam McCormick,  The Family Crest  was started as a recording project in 2009 with co-founder John Seeterlin (bass) to reinvent how music could be created.   Now a seven-piece core band, boasting over 400 “Extended Family” members, The Family Crest infuses pop into complex arrangements from dark, classical romanticism to horn-laden sounds akin to the Roaring 20′s.   Their most recent album  Beneath the Brine  paints sweeping soundscapes complimented by McCormick’s impressive vocal range, all adding up to what  SPIN  describes as “ambition wide enough to swallow you whole.” Arc Iris crystallizes the evolution of composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Jocie Adams, a former core member of renowned indie-folk band The Low Anthem. This is a breakaway moment for Adams, who now takes center stage as composer, lyricist, and lead vocalist.   Embracing her new role as auteur, Adams has created a genre-bend- ing style that often shifts between cabaret-infused jazz, orchestral sophistication, grimy outlaw country, delicate and whimsical harmonies, and big-band exhilaration — sometimes all in the same song. “[Her unique style is an example of] demonstrating how to play without replicating, how to pay tribute without ripping off and how to honor something old by making it something new” (Rolling Stone).   The result is  an all-together different world where fantastical whimsy goes hand in hand with down-to-earth grit, and where rigorous classical training inflects but never softens the visceral rawness of hard-won experience. – See more at: http://www.madisonsquarepark.org/things-to-do/calendar/mad-sq-music-the-family-crest-arc-iris#sthash.3jS2oa4s.dpuf