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Orson's debut CD, Bright Idea, has arrived!
"Think of your dream power-pop band. Think The Raspberries, Jellyfish, Cheap Trick. Think Orson: a new band from Los Angeles who may well be the missing link between The Rolling Stones and the Scissor Sisters. Sounds unlikely? Play this CD and you'll understand..." -- Paul Elliot, Q/Mojo.
Meet the best new band of 2006… from Hollywood, California. Orson play what their singer Jason Pebworth calls simply "two-guitar power-pop", or, equally simply, "rock and roll that girls can dance to."
The first song that Orson released to the public, No Tomorrow, was the most downloaded iTunes Single Of The Week in Apple's history. Radio 1 played No Tomorrow and hailed Orson as "the missing link between The Rolling Stones and The Scissor Sisters." The UK's biggest-selling music magazine, Q, listed No Tomorrow as one of its top 50 downloads of December 2005, and described the song as "one long hook".
And when Orson made their live debut in the UK at the In The City seminar in Manchester, they were immediately signed to a major publishing deal with Universal.
As Q editor Paul Rees states emphatically, "The reason Orson are a band to make you sit up and take notice is simple: they write great songs."
Orson formed in 2000 around a core of Jason Pebworth and guitarist George Astasio. The group took its name from Hollywood legend Orson Welles. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, they admired the great man's work (Jason: "Orson Welles was a maverick who took a lot of shit and made a lot of enemies yet his art stood the test of time."). Secondly, they saw a sandwich named after him and reckoned that the name just sounded good. Over time, the Orson name has taken on greater significance. Jason explains, "We're having a little fun with the fact that we're based in Hollywood. There are so many bands from Hollywood, and none of them seem to have any sense of being from here. I love the mystique that this place has. That's why we wear hats everywhere, as a nod to the Old Hollywood."
Jason Pebworth is an unconventional rock singer. Before putting Orson together, he performed for several years in various theatre productions. He writes songs on piano, having never learned to play guitar, although he often wishes he had, because, of course, "it's more authentically rock and roll". Growing up in Texas, Jason "absorbed" soft rock - Hall & Oates, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan - plus Memphis and Philly soul. Obsessions with Jeff Buckley's Grace and Radiohead's OK Computer followed. And now… "As a band, we're into Led Zeppelin, Flaming Lips, Beck, Bjork. I'm a huge ELO fan… Basically," Jason confesses, "I've stolen from every human being that ever wrote a song!"
Jason sums up the Orson sound like this: "We play guitar rock but we have that rump-shaking quality to our rhythm section, like an R&B feel. When you listen to Led Zeppelin, for all their rockin', they made you want to dance. And that's what we're aiming for. It's great to see people dancing at a rock and roll show. And if you can get girls into your music, guys will follow…"
