Bill Ricchini

"A major songwriting talent." – Magnet Magazine "The genius of Ricchini's homespun pop is not just the pensive guitar, lush orchestration and evocative poetry but his ability to capture a reflective, solitary mood." – Rolling Stone "A master of influences ranging from Brian Wilson to Johnny Marr, Ricchini appears to have such a handle on pop history as to be fully capable and prepared to carve out his own niche within it." – Amplifier "Ricchini’s well-crafted recordings have a soothing atmosphere somewhere between Nick Drake, Belle & Sebastian and a 21st century Pet Sounds." – Performing Songwriter "Songs filled with beauty and low-key charm." – Salon.com Following up his acclaimed home-recorded debut album, Ordinary Time, the first studio offering from Bill Ricchini (pronounced ri-kee-nee) Tonight I Burn Brightly is an expansion of Bill’s commitment to creating thematic song cycles of epic beauty. Growing up in Philadelphia, Bill Ricchini recorded Ordinary Time in his bedroom. After selling it as a limited-edition CD-R in local record stores, Ordinary Time garnered much attention, generating glowing reviews and landing on critics' top ten lists from the likes of The Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly, Amazon.com, Philadelphia Weekly, Amazon.com and Salon, where it was named Best Album Of The Year by an unsigned artist. After signing to indie label Transdreamer (home to Dressy Bessy and The Delgados), Bill moved to NYC’s Lower East Side in the winter of 2004 and began writing his new album, TIBB. He continues his exploration of the perfect pop song but this time with expanded production and vision. What resulted is a album brimming with melody, filled with smartly addictive hooks, shimmering arrangements and confessional lyrics, but with a new maturity. It is at once happy and sad, simple and intricate, lush and raw. TIBB combines a knack for chamber pop orchestrations (The Left Banke, The Beach Boys) full of strings, horns, guitars, pianos and vocal harmonies with a sharp pop songwriting sensibility (Ray Davies, Todd Rundgren). TIBB was produced by Bill Ricchini and Bryce Goggin (Pavement, The Breeders) in Brooklyn and mixed and edited by Britt Myers (Aimee Mann) in NYC. Bill called on a talented group of friends to flesh out the album’s sound –– Lee Wall of Luna on drums, former Spacehog frontman Royston Langdon on bass, Brian Christinzio on piano, Ben Bakshi on cello and Nate Slabaugh on trumpet. And the writing of these 11 songs was an intimate process. It wouldn't be odd to find Bill humming melodies into his answering machine in the middle of the night when inspiration hit, or tapping rhythms on the F Train or scribbling lyrics on a napkin in a downtown bar. As the album began to take shape, themes started to emerge. "On the surface these songs are about romantic loss, but really it’s a record about memory, hope and redemption – the pain of remembering, the cold comfort of forgetting, the need to have faith in people," says Ricchini. "It’s about the way a room feels when someone has left it, the way someone's pillowcase smells. It's filled with ghosts." These songs are all reaching out, searching for something – somewhere between past and the present, night and day. It is this sincerity that drives TIBB making it uniquely earnest. Opening with a bedtime prayer and closing with the hope of a new morning, TIBB works as individual songs or as a thematic whole; with an almost dream- state quality throughout. "In terms of being snapshots, I think there was an effort to approach these songs almost like Raymond Carver or Donald Barthelme stories," says Ricchini. All said, TIBB continues Bill’s evolution as a singer, songwriter, and arranger. It’s an exciting step forward by one today’s most gifted young songwriters. "Too much music is empty – I want to say something true. I want to connect."