Receiver brings its tour to Iowa City

Brothers Casey and Jesse Cooper, who make up the band the Receiver, may be Midwestern guys - they're from Columbus, Ohio to be exact - but they've gone all the way to England to try and get a career that has been stalled back into gear.

After seeing their second album, 'Length of Arms,” essentially come and go without ever getting more than a limited online release, the duo has landed a deal with Kscope Records, an established British label known as home for progressive-leaning rock acts such as Porcupine Tree, Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull fame) and TesseracT. The first release on Kscope, the full-length album 'All Burn,” was released last June.

'It was really important for us to find a label that was actually a label and not just hobbyists,” Casey Cooper said in a mid-February phone interview. 'Our past two records, unfortunately, they were on labels, but they were very, very small, run by one or two people. And that seems a little bit more like a hobby, even though they're working hard. They don't have quite the outreach that a label like Kscope has. They (Kscope) have a full staff. They're doing it full time. They're working with bands every single day. So that was really important for us to be part of a group like that.”

The Cooper brothers are doing their part to help K Scope get the word out on 'All Burn” and this synth-based duo with the kind of tour that shows the duo's dedication to their band. Shows are booked all the way through July so far, with only a couple of breaks along the way. It's a demanding schedule, but after a decade of career stops and starts, the Cooper brothers will take it.

Things got off to a reasonable enough start when the Casey Cooper (vocals/keyboards/bass) and Jesse Cooper (drums/vocals) started out a decade ago. Signed to a small indie label, Stunning Models on Display, they released their debut album, 'Decades,” in 2006 and got to tour and start building a fan base.

Then came the real setback after readying 'Length of Arms”for its 2009 release.

'We were working with a couple of friends,” Cooper said. 'They had never run a label before, and they were an upstart label and they thought they could do a better job than what happened with our first record. So we just went with them, and it sounded promising. The further we got into it, the more we all realized how difficult it really is to compete with all of the other bands and all of the other music that's being put out.”

In 2010, after only being able to get a very limited release of 'Length of Arms,” the Coopers decided to approach a few labels about rereleasing the album. One of those labels was Kscope, which tried to acquire the rights to 'Length of Arms,” but couldn't agree on a purchase price for the master recordings. A second label, Monotreme Records, also explored rereleasing the album, but opted out. Needless to say, Cooper was sorely disappointed at this turn of events.

'I remember at that moment, if I had been in a car, I probably would have driven off a bridge,” Cooper said, joking at the difficult turn of events. 'We needed all the help that we could get.

Then here we were four months later, both contracts were off the table, and it wasn't our fault. It wasn't Jesse's and my fault. We didn't understand why it happened or what went wrong. There was a lot of bitterness, a lot of anger, a lot of disappointment.”

But there was also no question that the brothers would push forward and Casey Cooper soon got back to writing songs, and as time allowed finishing 'All Burn.”

Then, the initial contact with Kscope about 'Length of Arms” came back into play and the label made the Receiver its first signing of an American band.

Compared to the first two Receiver albums, 'All Burn” is a bit more lush and dreamy, but the duo's core blend of highly melodic synthesizer/electronic-based pop remains intact. Highly appealing songs like 'These Days,” 'Transit” and ”April Blades” are built around graceful vocal melodies and have just enough push from the rhythm tracks to keep things from drifting behind their layered sound.

Now the Cooper brothers are out on their marathon tour bringing songs from 'All Burn” and their back catalog to life. Most of the shows will find the Receiver playing concise sets running around 45 minutes, although Cooper said a few shows call for them to play two-hour headlining sets. The shorter sets figure to lean toward the more energetic Receiver material.

'We just try to inject a little more energy live, try to get the bass and the drums a chance to shine a little bit,” Cooper said. 'But when we play the softer songs, that's nice, too, because it changes, I think, the dynamic a little bit and kind of creates a set that's (interesting) for the listener.”

IF YOU GO

Who: The Receiver and Jacey

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Monday

Where: Gabe's, 330 E. Washington St., Iowa City

Cost: Free

Details: This event is 19 and over. For more information, go to www.icgabes.com/