Earlier this year Showbread announced not only their departure from longtime home Tooth And Nail records (one of the largest independent record labels in the world) but also their intentions to partner with non-profit organization Come&Live! and offer their subsequent album and its supporting tour both as gifts; completely free of charge. Who would fund the album? The fans… and quickly; within one week of Showbread’s 90 day fundraiser the band had raised the entire album budget by offering special pre-order gifts to donors. Before the 90 days ended they had raised several times as much. With absolutely no mainstream popularity and no record label Showbread raised more money than most independent record labels can offer a band of their size to record an album. Times have certainly changed. Singer Josh Dies acknowledges the crumbling state of the music industry but insists the Showbread’s new model wasn’t in the same spirit as, say, Radiohead or Trent Reznor.

“Even considering the sorry state the industry is in, the move wasn’t about reinventing the wheel, it was about believing in a message of hope so sincerely that you’d much rather hand it out as a gift than charge someone for it.”

The message in question comes to full flower both sonically and lyrically on Who Can Know It?: the band’s most sincere and developed sounding effort to date. Teaming once again with long-time production collaborators Sylvia Massy (Prince, Tool, Johnny Cash) and Rich Veltrop (Phantom Planet, Slayer) familiar listeners have come to expect the unexpected, but will they expect a record this unexpected?

Those expecting traces of Showbread’s blistering Refused and Nine Inch Nails influences might be more than a little surprised to find the latest change finds the band sounding like a Raw Rock version of The Eagles and R.E.M. If those same listeners can recover from the initial shock they’ll go on to find the most expanded, earnest, heartbreaking and original music of Showbread’s career; piano driven ballads, haunting vocal melodies, simultaneously dark and uplifting lyrics, dense layers of instrumentation and a notable lack of power chords or screaming vocals. It seems that Raw Rock has developed to a completely unexpected full maturity; Raw Rock is all grown up.

Who Can Know It? will be released as a free download on Comeandlive.com and to traditional online media outlets on November 16th, 2010. Showbread will begin their first completely free tour in early 2011.

For more info on Showbread, visit the JFH Artists Database.