Bottle Up & Go 'Until The Day I Die' album

The latest release from Wesleyan alumni (classmates with Bear Hands, Das Racist, and MGMT) and naturalized Brooklynites is a blend of uncaged blues rock with a touch of pop sensibilities. "Until The Day I Die" is just a snippet from the full-length debut, set for winter release.

Bottle Up & Go’s brandishing of freak out blues rock is compared to the Black Keys, Monotonix, Morphine, and Dead Weather. Using stripped vocal rawness, soulful rhythm, and crashing drums and guitar, BU&G exude guttural bravado at each show, triggering jackhammer foot stomping and leaving drooling mouths agape.

BOTTLE UP & GO began at the Art School Pop Music Conservatory of Wesleyan University where, in their first performance at a basement talent show, they drove most of the crowd above ground. Their idea of pop music arrived in the form of a mosh pit that lasted 15 minutes for their 15 minute show, where the band was possessed by the spirit of Huddie Ledbetter and began demonically chanting his words fast and without breath, punk and unharmonized. Cult favorite quickly became Take This Hammer, way way before The Felice Brothers covered it...

Currently based out of a basement in Bushwick, Brooklyn, wedged between 99-cent wholesale vendors, BU&G consists of Keenan Mitchell (guitar, vocals), Fareed Sajan (drums) and saxophone accompaniment by either Lucas or his twin Andrew Carrico (alto and tenor respectively). The two-and-a-half piece neo primitive garage rock band is known across NYC for their frantic freak outs, described by various press sources as 'neanderthalic' and 'barbaric', often wondering through the crowd and breaking various kinds of alcohol containers.

Having toured the northeast several times, with friends such as Bear Hands, US Royalty, J.A.C.K. almost anywhere possible, BU&G play just as frantically to an empty room. The audience may wonder if they climb on top of their amps to scream when they are practicing alone in Fareed's Bushwick basement. And they do. They seek to conjure the meaning of their lyrics with the movements of their bodies, and every death wish they sing about comes out in the frenetic seizures of movement that accompany their performance, as Keenan shakes like a drunk pentecostal preacher before collapsing to the floor in the middle of the audience.

There is no doubt that BU&G has a slight obsession with death and bones, taxidermy and bootleg whiskey. Keenan writes lyrics that mix the language of the bible with the spirit of ancient blues hollers, western iconography, murder ballads, drunken dreams, morning tremors, hospital visits, jail time--rhythms that are indisputably alive as they call for their own death. They are narratives that mix their own lives with the myths of their blues forefathers, and that emerge as neither, a new blues form that is as much a Leadbelly song as a noise collage. Saxophone lays tortured melodies on top of guitar played with a microphone stand, the drums beat their primal march, and blood drips on the stage from Fareed's hand and Keenan's knees, before easing into a gentle chorus where Keenan sings, relieved and raw throated, "all my trials, lord, will soon be over."

Recently BU&G has been privileged to perform with such touring acts as Crystal Antlers, Man Man, Deer Tick, Dead Meadow, O'death, among others. You can hear their latest on the Jake Aron (recent clients include Yeasayer, Grizzly Bear, Acrylics) produced track Rather Be Dead, featuring percussion heavy driving rhythms, catchy self hating chorus.... The track is a preview from their soon to be released full length, due for a winter release. The band will also be heading to Vermont with Chris Edley (MGMT, Saul Williams) to shoot a music video for the track. In the meantime catch them at Pop Montreal, CMJ, or on their upcoming December tour with D.C. indie band Deleted Scenes....

Bottle Up & Go tour dates
Nov. 13th – Hamden, CT @ The Space at 9pm
Nov. 17th - Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands Whaaatever Blog Party w/ Dinowalrus
Nov. 28th – New York, NY @ Hex Fest at Cakeshop w/ Apache Beat + More
Dec. 1st – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie at 10:30pm w/ Deleted Scenes and Circadian Rhythms
Dec 2nd - Washington DC @ Black Cat w/ Deleted Scenes
Dec 3rd - Middletown, CT @ Wesleyan¹s Eclectic w/ Bear Hands

press quotes
“"Bottle Up And Go" is born and bred to go with Jack Daniels from the bottle (and a gun shoved down one's sock.) It's the most enticing mix of blues mixed with garage band punk we've heard in a while." – RCRD LBL

".Indeed, it’s in countless alcohol-soaked bars and sweaty basements that Bottle Up And Go have earned their reputation over the last two years. " - Dazed and Confused (UK)

"With the hook-heavy, country-tinged rock thing they’ve got going on (think Two Gallants meets My Morning Jacket), Bottle Up and Go sound like they haven’t left the bar since, well, ever."– L Magazine

"...literally in the crowd, was Bottle Up and Go a guitar/drum two piece with a third wandering Sax player showing up occasionally. Mention must be made of their screeching blues and maniacal playing, giving the feeling of the Black Keys jacked on speed while being kicked in the junk by the MC-5. Sounding at home covering Nick Cave or Leadbelly these guys are worth catching as well." - Glide Magazine

"On their debut EP, the two young livewires of Bottle Up & Go explode like shook-up soda pop, uncorking a maelstrom of moans, squealing guitars and cymbals as they conjure the ghost of Leadbelly with their saxophone-accented-barnburners." - Paste Magazine

"...These Bones isn’t slow dancing with your lady music. Its dragging a random into an empty closet for a filthy romp music." - Hear Ya

"...BU&G may have achieved on one seven-song EP the genre immolation Jon Spencer spent most of the '80s and '90s trying to ignite." - Blurt

"...With a voice similar to Cold War Kids' Nathan Willett on various tracks, Mitchell's voice meanders from screaming to whisky-slurred whispers- while he frets about losing his baby and waking up with a gun in his hand. They're playing CMJ; I'd bring ear plugs and a flask." - RCRD LBL

"While the name Bottle Up & Go gives an immediate nod to their biggest influence, blues badass— Leadbelly it’s the grungy raw quality of their sound, not to mention their age, that gives the music a youthful appeal." - Relix Magazine

"...But the real (Wesleyan) campus darlings are a rollicking blues duo named Bottle Up and Go." - NME Magazine

"...They are still at Wesleyan, apparently can't keep their shirts on, and are the current must have band if you are throwing a good Wesleyan party." - The Huffington Post

"BUAG (as MySpace affectionately calls them) manage that elusive feat of being a couple of young hipsters in love with the blues, without sounding like a couple of young hipsters in love with the blues. In other words, Mitchell and Sajan have avoided Kings of Leon and gone straight for The Black Keys. Well, straight for Leadbelly and Robert Johnson, really." – PopMatters

“Bottle Up and Go has yet to receive a negative review since the July release of These Bones, a stripped-down, liquored-up, punk-cum-alt-country manifesto on how to make a life out of pleasing oneself to death. Credit for this goes to tracks like “All My Trials” with its sparse instrumentation and jagged yet soulful rhythm” – Washington City Paper

"...the guitar player has a slide and he knows how to use it. He also knows how to compensate for the absence of a bass player by filling in the empty spots. Add on one wailing drummer and an unabashed love of drug-tinged blues and you’ve got yourself something worth a listen." - Razorcake

"(Bottle Up & Go) definitely do understand that the dirtier blues is, the more it yells from where wits fell off the end, the easier it is to just drink up and love it." - Detour

"Once in a long while, a record will punch through the fog, grab you by the balls and show you the truth. These Bones is it...Packing supernova potential, they’re one of most promising, cogent talents this underground genre has seen in years." - Flagpole

"The blood-blister yawl of Bottle Up & Go singer Keenan Mitchell is vintage Soundgarden-era Chris Cornell, but the boiling rawk brimstone beneath is electric blooze whiplash napalm: electrified-fence riffage lashed to (and by) crashing drum kit indigestion and face-melting sax squalls." – Paperthinwalls

"...Meanwhile, Bottle Up & Go egg you on with rowdy (and often shirtless) blues rock — think the Black Keys, but faster, louder, and with more whiskey; it’s rough around the edges, but this is one duo you don’t want to smooth out or gloss over." -- Flavorpill

"With the hook-heavy, country-tinged rock thing they’ve got going on (think Two Gallants meets My Morning Jacket), Bottle Up and Go sound like they haven’t left the bar since, well, ever."– L Magazine

“Men on a mission, the duo vomit their music with remarkable deftness, plowing through stripped down, jacked up bluesy anthems with the aura of a wounded pride fighting for redemption. This is a band that has taken on the blues not only with a guitar and a bottle of the good stuff, but also with a never-say-die punk attitude that won’t give up, but just might drink until it doesn’t remember anymore.” - Impose

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Bottle Up & Go - Until The Day I Die