Downtown Singapore: Biography

• Overview
• Discography
• Biography
• Related Artists

• My American Heart
• Emery
• The Get Up Kids
• Hidden in Plain View
• My Chemical Romance
• Jets to Brazil
• Thursday

• Jimmy Eat World
• Cave In
• Deftones

Genres:

Rock Music, Alternative Rock Music, Punk and Hardcore Rock Music, Emo

Decades Active:

2000's

Unapologetic about their less than pioneering place in the emo pop scene, Maryland quintet Downtown Singapore closely followed the schematic as laid down by earlier and more successful bands like Jimmy Eat World and the Cave In: local gigs and selfreleased demos, followed by relentless touring and online community building, a buzzbuilding debut EP, and finally a fulllength album overseen by the hot producer of the moment. After all of this, Downtown Singapore then quietly and without fuss disbanded. The first lineup of Downtown Singapore (the name is claimed to have been cribbed from a skating magazine's tourism narrative about the skateboarding scene in that Asian citystate) formed in Waldorf, Maryland in 2001 while its members were in high school. Eventually coalescing into the core group of singer Jerry Scott, guitarists Matt "Spud" Van Gasbeck and Jake Rabadi, bassist Josh Louge and drummer Matt Thorsen, Downtown Singapore signed with the Washington DC indie Dcide Records to release their debut EP, 2005's Understanding A Guarantee. An increased tour schedule, playing with bands like the AllAmerican Rejects and He Is Legend, both solidified the group's streamlined and unabashedly commercial sound and brought them into contact with hot producer Matt Squire, whose work with Panic At the Disco, Cute Is What We Aim For and other hot indie bands of the time informed his work on Downtown Singapore's full length debut, Don't Let Your Guard Down. Released in the spring of 2006, the album featured the first single "Choir Boy," featuring a guest vocal by Larry Soliman, lead singer of another Squire act, My American Heart. Following another tour, Downtown Singapore officially went on hiatus in the fall of 2006.

- Stewart Mason, All Music Guide