THE CHECKS

Young veterans announcesecond NZ tour of 2009 for AliceBy The Moon

On the back of their acclaimed chart album Alice By The Moon and new single ‘TillThe Dance Is Over’, September and October sees The Checks set to undertake their second national jaunt of theyear, playing the country’s main centres in the company of kindred spirits Bang Bang Eche and Knives at Noon.

That the band’s last NZ tour was asrecently as July should come as no surprise: since their inception, The Checks haveclocked up more road miles and stage time than most bands could hope to managein decades.

Within a year of leaving high school, TheChecks had toured with REM and Oasis, and played the 2005 NME New Music Touralongside The Cribs, The Rakes and MaximoPark. The band has unleashedtheir maximum r’n’r across New Zealand countless times, taking in all thenation’s most important festivals; played Australia with both Muse and Jet; traversedthe clubs of Europe; and rocked NYC.

In 2007 alone, the band toured the UK no less than seven times with their debutalbum Hunting Whales, which had beenproduced at London’sRAK Studios with Ian “Kingbird” Broudie (Lightning Seeds, Terry Hall, Echo andthe Bunnymen) at the controls.

Their second album Alice By The Moon – self-produced and self-released – bears thefruit of the band’s relentless pounding-of-the-boards, with prescientsongwriting bearing the unmistakeable marks of high energy, sweat-drenched nocturnalkicks.

Acclaim has been widespread: the album hasbeen deemed “intoxicating, raucous andbeautifully distorted…” (New Zealand Herald); possessing a “…pulse-pounding energy and nothing less…” (InYour Speakers); and represents “…amidpoint between late 60s melodic psychedelic rock and the density of SonicYouth…think Fleetwood Mac's Albatross conceived by Syd Barrett in ThurstonMoore’s cement mixer” (Graham Reid, Elsewhere).

Joining TheChecks for this tour are Bang! Bang! Eche!, theChristchurch-spawned group whose colourful upward trajectory has seen them becomethe toast of this year’s SXSW, and whose similarly voracious appetite for thelive experience has taken them through NZ and Australia, the USA, UK andbeyond.

Tickets on sale from Undertheradar

THE CHECKS

w/ Bang! Bang! Eche! and Knives at Noon

Fri Sep 25 - Wellington – Bodega
Fri Oct 2 - Hamilton - Flow
Sat Oct 3 - Auckland - Monte Cristo
Thu Oct 8 - Christchurch - Al's Bar
Fri Oct 9 - Dunedin - 10 Bar

http://www.myspace.com/thechecks 

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