Even if you don't follow this band, you've probably at least heard this song:
The band's enigmatic hipster-meets-hippie-looking frontman is 34-year-old Alex Ebert, who founded this ragtag group of country/folk fusioneers after departing his former band, electronic-pop act Ima Robot. After Ima Robot, the hard-partying Ebert had to get sober – he enrolled himself in a rehab program, where he dedicated a lot of his detox time crafting cathartic prose, much of which laid the foundation for the Edward Sharpe story. See, there is no Edward Sharpe in this band – that's actually the name of a messianic figure that Ebert created. He describes Sharpe as “[a man] sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind ... but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love."
Sounds a little twee, we know, but it works for the Zeros.
Armed with a sober mind and stacks of sing-along-worthy songs, Ebert and company – a dozen musucians, in all – took to the road in a renovated school bus between 2009 and 2011 in tireless support of their debut Up From Below and they earned a loyal following that has helped propel them from neo-hippie songsters with a gimmicky backstory to a legit musical act with staying power. Despite describing them as "a hippie version of Arcade Fire with 10 members and a dreadlocked, frequently shirtless frontman," a reviewer for NPR was won over by the Zeros' energy, saying what watching their breakaway singalong "Home" was "enough to make even the tiniest heart grow three sizes."
In 2012, the band unveiled their second album, Here, and it squashed any speculation that the Zeros would suffer from sophomore slump. The album, which debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 Chart, is a magnanimous cavalcade of trumpets, banjos, piano and an undeniably catchy spread of harmonized song story.
We’d tell you to go check out the band on Sunday night when they play the Beacham this weekend with Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, but the show is sold out, according to the Beacham's website. If you don’t mind paying premium price, and you act fast, there were still three tickets for sale on StubHub as of Saturday morning.
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