Here We Go Magic

Here We Go Magic is an American indie rock band based in Brooklyn, New York. Formerly the moniker of folk singer Luke Temple. Temple signed to Western Vinyl in 2008, followed in 2009 by the five-piece group’s signing to Secretly Canadian.

After previously releasing two folk albums under his own name in the mid-2000s, Luke Temple released a self-titled album as Here We Go Magic in February 2009 on Western Vinyl, described by Pitchfork Media as «hazy electronic textures, endlessly-spiraling lyrical loops, occasional forays into extended sections of ambience and noise». Temple recorded the album at home on a 4-track recorder, describing the recording: «I just had one tom, one microphone, a synth and an acoustic guitar. I didn’t have a full drum kit or normal bass, it was just all synth stuff that I did myself.»
Temple has since expanded the project into a band with musicians Kristina Lieberson (keyboards), Michael Bloch (guitar), Jennifer Turner (bass guitar), and Peter Hale (drums), and they were signed by Secretly Canadian in September 2009. They toured in 2009 with Grizzly Bear and The Walkmen. The second album Pigeons is set for release on June 8, 2010. The first single off Pigeons, «Collector», was rated «Best New Music» by Pitchfork Media on March 18, 2010. The band performed at the SXSW festival in 2009 and again in March 2010, and just completed tours of North America with White Rabbits and Europe with The New Pornographers. In summer 2010 the band played at multiple major festivals including PrimaveraSound, Bonnaroo, Pitchfork, The Great Escape, Latitude, Bestival, and Glastonbury, where Thom Yorke said they were his favorite act of the festival. They ended the year 2010 touring with the Canadian band Broken Social Scene.

The first album, recorded by Temple on a 4-track recorder, has been described as «stream-of-conscious lyrics and swirls of psychedelic, lo-fi noise», and «insistently repetitive grooves and densely layered loops». NPR Music stated that its «colorful swirl of synthesizers and guitars ranges from electronic folk to psychedelia to lo-fi acoustic». Erik Adams, writing for The A.V. Club, saw it as an album of two distinct sides, «one full of hummable, groove-inflected bedroom folk, and the other populated by cascading waves of ambient white noise». Tim DiGravina, reviewing the album for Allmusic described it as «everything but the kitchen sink, stream of conscious composition…taking on a couple different and somewhat incongruous genres, from Afro-beat pop to freak folk to outright noise collages».
The expanded line-up has been described as «psychedelic electro-folk» and walking «the line between ambient hypnotica and melodic indie rock». The Independent, reviewing «Collector» also identified a krautrock influence, stating that the band «channel propulsive krautrock and 1980s indie rock to great effect». Allmusic writer Jason Thurston described the band’s sound as an «ethereal collage of indie folk, Baroque pop, plains country (and whatever else strikes their fancy)».