welcome to roottheband.com.au

Updated July 24 2010
Welcome to the official ROOT! website - www.roottheband.com.au. Keep checking here for tour news, ordering merchandise, reading DC's rants and ROOT! downloads.

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ROOT! hang up their hats

Like tumbleweeds blowing across the nature strip of modern consciousness, Melbourne's own garage-punk poets ROOT! have decided, for now, it's time to ride outta town...

For one last time the boys will don their cowboy hats and sashay through the highlights of ROOT!'s four-year, two-album career, Friday August 20th in a special intimate show. Have a drink, have a laugh, have a cry along with ROOT! live at Yah Yahs, Smith St Collingwood. Buy your tickets online by clicking here.

Is this the end for DC and his canasta partners? Or is there a new project on the way?

All will be revealed soon. Stay tuned.

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SOMEONE needs to hold up a mirror to society and point out that its frosted-tipped trendy reinterpretation of the mullet looks ridiculous. Thankfully, Melbourne cowpunk band Root! considers itself up to the task...there's a philosophy in newspapers that if you can't be first, you should be the best...it's hard to think that Root! is anything but.

Click for full review from www.theaustralian.com.au

ROOT! release a DVD!

In 2009, Melbourne's most infamous unknown band ROOT!, released a preposterously ambitious album, Surface Paradise - a fifteen track song cycle with recurring lyrical and musical leit motifs and a quite nice cover. The album is the second from the band in their two-year career, which has seen them grow into a consistent live attraction with a knack for eliciting superlatives from reviewers.

One of the most uncompromisingly challenging releases of the year, the music scene and the public roundly, but sensibly, ignored it. The album was so traumatic for the band to make that they lost two drummers, a mountain of money, the remains of their collective sanity and their will to live not to mention the respect of their wives though, arguably, they had lost that somewhat earlier anyway.

See the story unfold in a documentary cobbled together from some dodgy footage of the band and of DC banging on about the concept behind the concept album. This DVD is nowhere near as good and nowhere near as interesting as any other rock DVD ever made and is far more likely to be a cynical, desperate attempt to recoup some of the losses from the production of the album!

PLUS the DVD includes the full 15-song album in never heard before demo form! Some of the demo versions are surprisingly different to the finished tracks! There's all this, plus much more including the new ROOT! T shirt and ROOT! stubby holders.

Click here to buy the DVD and more.

spicks and specks - part deux

ROOT! was on Spicks and Specks in July 2009 and now they're back. In the episode where all the Spicks and Specks moments that were too long, too rude or too bizarre to make it to air during the year, ROOT! appeared in the final moments with Dennis Walter on the mic crooning a rendition of 'My Way'. Check it out here.

'surface paradise' out now

DC Root - frontman of "garage punk poets" ROOT! justifies the hype as this country's most original, articulate, angry, funny singer/songwriter/spoken word artist. And ROOT! have just delivered their most ambitious statement yet - their new album Surface Paradise - released on Shock Records, July 24. Coinciding with their appearance on ABC's Spicks and Specks on July 29 and a national tour to follow, Surface Paradise is an epic, hour-long "song cycle" - lyrical themes, chorus lines, riffs, whole musical sections, appear and re-appear through 15 concise blasts of ragged bar-band rock, electro, lush pop, jazz, roots and musique concrete - AND the truly unique vision of DC Root.

ROOT! may not be on Video Hits; they don't have a Pitchfork-approved review tacked to their MySpace; they certainly don't have flopsy fringes and needle-thin black jeans to boost their marketability. But, my friends, they have my vote for 2009 Album of the Year.

Click for full review from www.thedwarf.com.au

Check out the Surface Paradise teaser:

Surface Paradise by ROOT! is distributed by Shock Records. Surface Paradise is now available on Apple's iTunes store with bonus track 'Billy' (also available for individual download). Click here to buy from iTunes.

Click here for information about Surface Paradise and ROOT!'s other releases...

Surface Paradise reaches number 4 on the AIR charts and the 'Mover of the Week' for August 3, 2009. Click here for details.

Whatever DC "was", his new project - in industry speak - "has legs". Despite their trademark cowboy hats, ROOT! have been morphing into a muscular rock band for some time, and now attract a strong following across all the major cities, based on their powerful live reputation and the riveting poetry of DC Root. Surface Paradise finally describes where they are right now.

Click for full review from www.mediasearch.com.au

new video clip

ROOT!'s first video clip from Surface Paradise - My Other Bumper Sticker Is Intelligent - is now available online for your viewing pleasure. Click here to view the new video clip and other ROOT! related media.

Image from the My Other Bumper Sticker Is Intelligent film clip. View clip here.

spicks and specks

ROOT! appeared on ABC's Spicks and Specks on Wednesday July 29th. ROOT! performed five "mystery" cover versions in the "Look What They've Done To My Song" segment (only three were shown though), with DC distractingly ranting over the music and making it very difficult for the judges to guess the songs. Then they re-appeared to play (a shortened version of) I Wish I Was Tex Perkins for the closing credits. Click here to watch the video of ROOT! on Spicks and Specks.