composer, singer, songwriter

Less Famous Than You (2006)

Corey’s debut solo album released in May, 2006, on Use Your Teeth records (London).

Listen/Purchase:

New York based composer/performer Corey Dargel releases Less Famous Than You, a collection of songs about falling in love with famous (or semi-famous) people.

Trained at the renowned Oberlin Conservatory, Dargel creates deceptively simple and achingly vulnerable art-pop. Even though it’s not new for a classical musician to embrace the use of a laptop, drum machines, and synthesizers, it is rare for one to embrace the pop song with such unabashed intensity.

Dargel’s gentle assault on the pop idiom creates a tension which pervades the music: Deadpan and detached vocals reveal heartbreaking intimacies, awkward and obtrusive drum patterns struggle against fragile harmonies, vocals and music uneasily opposing each other as songs stumble to their ends.

Emotional and intelligent, Less Famous Than You evokes the fragility of Antony & The Johnsons and The Hidden Cameras, the electronic works of the late Macon Sumerlin, and the avant-pop approaches of Mark Amerika and Arthur Russell.

Voted one of Time Out New York’s ‘Top 25 People To Watch In 2006,’ Dargel’s live performances have received glowing reviews in the New York Times and the Village Voice. He visits the UK in May for live performances and to record a radio session for John Kennedy’s Xposure show on XFM.

Live Dates

  • May 7, 2006 w/Young People, Drowsy at THE LUMINAIRE London, England
  • May 10, 2006 w/Final Fantasy, Grizzly Bear, Simon Bookish at THE LUMINAIRE London, England
  • May 11, 2006 w/Final Fantasy at THE SOCIAL Nottingham, England
  • May 13, 2006 w/Final Fantasy at THE CIRCLE CLUB Manchester, England
  • May 22, 2006 at CORNELIA STREET CAFÉ, New York, NY

Track Listing:

  1. Glasses
  2. I’ll Drown
  3. Gay Cowboys
  4. I Don’t Remember
  5. Withdrawal
  6. The News
  7. How Much You’re Worth
  8. Boy Detective
  9. Global World View
  10. Change the World
  11. Like a Ghost
  12. Every Word Means So Much to Me

Credits:

  • Words and Music by Corey Dargel
  • All instruments and vocals by Corey Dargel
  • Mastering by Shawn Hatfield at Audible Oddities, San Francisco, CA
  • Album Artwork by Yvan Greenberg