The Main Drag is an indie pop/indie rock band local to Boston, Massachusetts. The group incorporates elements as diverse as folk-pop to orchestrated electronica together with their occasionally oblique lyrics. The band releases albums on their own imprint, Reasonable People's League (RPL Audio).
The band currently consists of Matt Boch (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboard, trumpet), Dan Cardinal (bass, engineering), Jon Carter (guitar, bass, vocals, keyboard) and John Drake (drums, sampler, vocals). Adam Arrigo and Matt Levitt, both original band members, eventually left the band - Levitt after the release of the second album, and Arrigo after the release of the third. Boch, Carter, and Drake are also members of the post-punk band Blanks. The band has released three albums to date, the latest being You Are Underwater, which was released by RPL Audio in December 2009.
History
Formation and Simmer in Your Hotseat (2003–2006)
The Main Drag originally began as a collaboration between Arrigo and Levitt in early 2003. Arrigo has stated that the band name could be interpreted as a Death Cab for Cutie lyric, or it could simply be referring to the main drag of a town. With the help of local musicians and producers, Arrigo was able to begin recording and producing what would become the band's first album. Simmer in Your Hotseat was released in 2004 on Boston-based indie label Endless Recordings. The first album received a positive reception, and earned the band an opening gig for the Arcade Fire shortly after its release. Live shows were played with friends of Arrigo and Levitt who had helped record the album.
Arrigo went on to meet the members of post-punk band Blanks. through his friend Long Le-Khac, who was their bass player at the time. Arrigo and Le-Khac originally met in high school and were briefly part of a band called "The Neon Wilderness", which was named after the song "Neon Wilderness" by The Verve. Arrigo helped produce the Blanks. EP Infinite Lives in early 2006. After the release of the Blanks. EP, Dan Cardinal and three members of Blanks. - Matt Boch, John Drake and Jon Carter - ended up joining Arrigo and Levitt, and they began working on The Main Drag's follow-up to Simmer In Your Hotseat.
Yours as Fast as Mine (2007–2008)
Prior to the release of Yours as Fast as Mine, the band put up several demos of songs on the website GarageBand.com, receiving positive acclaim and winning several "Track of the Day" awards and more.
The band went on to win Salon.com's National Song Search Contest in 2006 for their song "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter", gaining the $5,000 grand prize. This allowed them to finance their critically lauded album Yours As Fast As Mine which was released digitally in June 2007, and physical copies were self-released by the band shortly after. The album was issued through the band's own imprint, Reasonable People's League (RPL Audio). Levitt departed from being a full-time member of the band after the release of Yours As Fast As Mine.
In February 2007, before the release of their second album, the song "Goodnight Technologist" was included as part of Knocks From The Underground: The Best of Underplayed Boston, a compilation CD of indie bands local to Boston. In late 2007, the band was asked to create a cover of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" for the Cokemachineglow Fantasy Covers Podcast 2007. The cover gained attention across various music blogs. The song "Love During Wartime" was included on Paste magazine's CD sampler in February 2008.
They garnered additional fame in late 2008 with the inclusion of their song "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter" in the on-disc track-list for Rock Band 2 as well as a nationally-aired Target commercial promoting the game. All members of the band (with the exception of Cardinal) work for Harmonix Music Systems, creators of the Rock Band series of video games, and the band's track made it onto the game due to Harmonix's tradition to release the company's songs as bonus tracks in their video games.
You Are Underwater and Rock Band Network (2009–present)