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Audio By Carbonatix
The very existence of Eisley and its rapid ascent to the forefront of the early aughts indie pop landscape now seems like a fairytale.
It’s a comparison the DuPree relatives-Sherri DuPree-Bemis, Stacy DuPree-King, Chauntelle DuPree D’Agostino, Weston DuPree and Garron DuPree-would likely approve of. Of this quintet, only Sherri and Garron are currently affiliated with the band.
After all, that sort of fantastical air permeates the Tyler-bred band’s major label debut, Room Noises, which marks its 20th anniversary this year. The 12-track collection, shepherded by a small army of top-shelf producers, including Rob Schnapf, Rob Cavallo and John Shanks, is a dazzling showcase for the winsome, devastatingly melodic vocal stylings of Sherri and Stacy, whose sweet sopranos wind through gorgeous cuts like “I Wasn’t Prepared,” “Golly Sandra” or “Telescope Eyes.”
Eisley arrived at its major label moment thanks, in part, to a string of equally dazzling EPs, the first of which arrived in 2000, followed in close succession by three more. It was after 2003’s Laughing City that the Observer tagged Eisley as best new act, and the late Zac Crain, as was his gift, succinctly described why this band mattered at all.
“Thing is, one plus one never equals two when you’re talking about the music Eisley makes,” Crain wrote in 2003. “You can take a picture of sunlight streaming through a bank of clouds, but it doesn’t make you feel the same way as when you saw it and felt it and smelled it, and the same goes for seeing Eisley live.
“There are plenty of things I can say about how Sherri and Stacy’s voices wrap together like a hand holding another one, how Chauntelle is the first real guitar heroine I can think of, how [former bassist Jonathan] Wilson and Weston’s rhythm section often could be its own song. But they wouldn’t do the group justice. I will say this: It’s staggering to think where they can go from here.”
Less than two years later, Eisley was on Reprise Records, and that ineffable quality was preserved, more or less intact. What’s striking about listening back to Room Noises two decades later is how the group anticipated the polished blend of fanciful and melodious, which is so omnipresent in our current social media-driven musical landscape.
The facility with which swooping, soaring harmonies are laid against straightforward pop-rock compositions is a hallmark of just about every Eisley project. Still, Room Noises afforded the band, which cut its teeth in clubs and venues across Dallas in the early aughts, its largest audience to date.
Critics outside North Texas swooned: “One listen and you can’t keep yourself from surrendering – the disc sounds so serenely beautiful, so unusually assured that it’s difficult to believe the group’s oldest member, guitarist Chauntelle DuPree, is only 22,” wrote Paste Magazine in 2003.
Eisley’s time on a major label was relatively short-lived. After its sophomore album, Combinations, in 2007, the band, which had been frustrated by its experiences in the business, opted to leave Reprise’s parent company, Warner Brothers, and strike out on its own (indie label Equal Vision released 2011’s The Valley, along with its subsequent follow-ups, including 2017’s I’m Only Dreaming, Eisley’s most recent LP as of this writing).
“We’re way more thankful than pissed,” wrote Boyd DuPree, the band’s manager, in a February 2010 blog post on Eisley’s website. “Business is business. Sometimes things go wrong. The industry basically crashed, burned and began rebuilding during the time Eisley was on WB. And let’s be honest … there was a lot that went right. The same thing would have happened anywhere … on any label.”
It’s fitting that a record full of such singular moments was, itself, a product of a specific moment in time for the music business. Eisley was ready for its window when it opened, and Room Noises is a dozen, deeply beautiful examples of that old adage about luck being when preparation meets opportunity.
