Throw Me The Statue

Scott Reitherman, a solo multi-instrumentalist, adopted the name Throw Me the Statue from an earlier mixtape and left Half Moon Bay, the modest town south of San Francisco, for New York before settling in Seattle, where he hoped to launch his own independent imprint, Baskerville Hill Records. Drawing from the lo-fi, D.I.Y. approach of K Records, he began issuing CDs in 2004, among them a release by Vassar College classmate Sam Beebe, who records as Black Bear. At roughly the same period he began layering guitars, keyboards, drum machines, melodicas, glockenspiels, and additional instruments to construct a full-length set of jangly indie pop, handling most of the writing and tracking himself yet enlisting contributions from Casey Foubert of Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens’ band. Once the debut album Moonbeams was completed in April 2007, Reitherman formed a live lineup that included Aaron Goldman, Will Cone, Joe Syverson, and Jarred Grimes. Secretly Canadian soon added Throw Me the Statue to its roster, reissued the album, and booked the project as support for Jens Lekman’s early-2008 tour dates. The EP Purpleface surfaced at the start of 2009; that summer the group delivered its second album, Creaturesque, and joined the Brunettes on the road. Occasional shows continued for the next several years until Reitherman declared in 2013 that he was redirecting his focus to a fresh solo outlet called Pillar Point. With Throw Me the Statue placed on indefinite hiatus, the synth-pop project issued its debut LP in early 2014.