Singer finds wild success with Zeros
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, the wonderfully chaotic 10-piece band, are not particularly conducive to simple description. When asked for some clarity, Alex Ebert, the group’s front man and quasi-spiritual leader, says, “We’re sort of country, Motown, folk, jamboree music.”
Which doesn’t really help clarify anything, except to emphasize the eclectically muddled musical niche the group has filled in its relatively brief but improbably successful existence.
The Los Angeles band’s signature sound is well encapsulated in “Man on Fire,” the opening track of its highly anticipated, soon-to-bereleased second album, “Here.” The song begins with a simple, controlled melody fingerpicked on acoustic guitar. It quickly builds from there, with pronounced finger snapping and deep-throated Gregorian-like chanting that morphs into the whoops and falsettos of a spaghetti Western soundtrack.
Soul-searching lyrics
With a deep, nasal tone reminiscent of a young Leonard Cohen, Ebert launches into his ironically soul-searching lyrics, a set of blatantly dramatic verses that beg to be both scrutinized and taken with a grain of salt. And then the full whirlwind of a charismatic ensemble is unleashed, filled with primal yelps and hollers, unpolished harmonies, frenetic pounding of piano keys, a strummed banjo and the brief appearance of a didgeridoo. The track regains composure only to lose it again moments later.
Over-the-top mess
Bounding haphazardly across musical genres and tempos, “Man on Fire” is an over-the-top mess of a song. It’s like many of the band’s best compositions — eclectic amalgams of ’60s psychedelic rock, trumpetheavy soul and gentle folk melodies. Somehow, though, it congeals as an outburst of uninhibited creativity with a burrlike catchiness.
“I’ve rarely been satisfied just singing in one voice, with one sentiment,” Ebert says. “It’s sort of frowned upon to change up your style. You’re supposed to be one thing, otherwise an artist is considered unfocused, and that’s so infantile because we all have a wide array of feelings and emotions.”
The idea for Edward Sharpe emerged in 2007, after Ebert quit the Los Angeles power-pop group Ima Robot, started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and began creating an enticing alter ego on Myspace. His protagonist was a messianic figure with a “childlike attitude of adventure who was sent down to Earth to kind of heal and save mankind … but kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love.”
In both his songwriting and onstage persona, Ebert, 34, has impressively embodied his creation, generating a cultlike aura and a devoted musical following. Tall, lanky, long-haired and bearded, he performs in a near-ecstatic fashion, often sans shirt and