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We are Northern State. Our third album, “Can I Keep This Pen?” which features production by Adrock of the Beastie Boys and Chuck Brody of Shitake Monkey, is currently out on Mike Patton’s label, Ipecac Recordings.
2007 was a pretty awesome year for us –we toured throughout the U.S. and Canada with our friends Tegan and Sara and will be heading to Europe with them in Feb. 2008. Two songs from “Can I Keep This Pen?” were featured on Grey’s Anatomy and a third was featured on the FX series Damages. JD from Le Tigre did a hot remix of our single ‘Better Already’ and we released it on vinyl. We also contributed our take on Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’ to Stereogum’s 10th anniversary tribute to OK Computer.
Northern State is Spero, Hesta Prynn, and Sprout. We grew up together in deep suburban Long Island and we’ve been friends forever. We have now been a band for seven years. “Can I Keep This Pen?” is our third proper album, following “All City” (Columbia Records, 2004), “Dying in Stereo” (Northern State Records/Startime/Wichita UK, 2003), and our 2002 independent EP “Hip Hop You Haven’t Heard”, which was supposed to be our demo.
We got our start playing gigs all over NYC, and we have had the good fortune of sharing the stage in the US and Europe with the Roots, Le Tigre, Talib Kweli, De La Soul, The Gossip, Gym Class Heroes, Tegan and Sara, and Cake.
After “All City” was released, we became increasingly frustrated with the Columbia/SONY machine and left the label. Finally free, we teamed up with Chuck Brody (Wu-Tang Clan, Yoko Ono) and Adrock and independently recorded “Can I Keep This Pen?”, with the help of a few friends like Kaki King and Murray Hill.
This album pushes the limits more than anything we’ve recorded before in terms of what a hip hop song might sound like, what a rock song might sound like, and what Northern State might sound like
We are thrilled to be part of the Ipecac family. “Can I Keep This Pen?” is distributed internationally through Fontana and Southern in Europe and by Entak in Japan
