Alina Simone

b i o :  Alina Simone was born in Kharkov, Ukraine and came to the U.S. at a young age as the daughter of political refugees after her father refused recruitment by the KGB and was blacklisted for ‘refusal to cooperate.’ Raised in the suburbs of Massachusetts, Alina moved to Austin, Texas after graduating from art school in Boston. It was there that she first started singing in public, in the doorway of an abandoned bar on Sixth Street. Simone quickly became known for her sparse instrumentation and raw and powerful delivery. After the release of her first EP, Prettier in the Dark (2005), and her debut album, Placelessness (2007, 54º 40′ or Fight!), Simone earned both national airplay and critical acclaim.  

    In 2008, Simone released her Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware, which covers the music of Siberian punk-folk singer and Russian cult icon, Yanka Dyagileva.  Sung entirely in Russian, the album both echoes the lo-fi samizdat quality of Yanka’s recordings and subverts it with lush arrangements and intricately textured layers of trumpet, cello and guitars. The album received widespread critical acclaim from major national and international outlets including The New Yorker, BBC’s “The World,” Billboard Magazine, Spin Magazine, New York Magazine, NPR, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Pitchfork. Alina Simone was named one of the ‘Top People of 2008’ by USA Today’s Pop Candy and listed in the ‘Top 12 Bands to See’ at SXSW 2008 by Billboard Magazine.

    Most recently, Simone landed a book deal with the prestigious publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her collection of essays about Russia, family and the tragic-comic struggle to make it in indie rock is scheduled for publication in 2010. She also penned a piece on the Russian ‘Chanson’ scene for the cult music travel guide Museyon (to be published September 2009). A second original full-length album is also on the way.  Make Your Own Danger was produced by Steve Revitte (Yeasayer, Liars, Black Dice) and recorded in Brooklyn. This album promises to be Simone’s most lush and fully realized work to date, with a larger cast of musicians and exotic touches that include flute, autoharp, horns, Brazilian drumming and vocal loops.

    Over the past five years, Simone has toured the U.S., Europe and Russia, and has shared the stage with Final Fantasy, Loney Dear, The Dodos, Fiery Furnaces, Castanets, Dead Meadow and Franz Ferdinand among others.