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Troubled Hubble Official Website

With over four years of continuous performing around the Midwest, multiple successful national tours under their belts, and five independent releases, Troubled Hubble are doing it themselves. Hailing from the small town of Elburn, IL, the band cut their teeth at Chicago venues like the Metro, Double Door, and Fireside Bowl. Drawing inspiration from bands such as Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, and Dismemberment Plan, Troubled Hubble has a melodic, pop-rock sound that's powerful and arresting as comfortably as it is playful and disarming. In Music We Trust said of the band's last album, "The songs have that punch, a hard-hitting punk-esque feel to it (courtesy of the rhythm section, most notably the drums), while maintaining a knack for budding hooks." Punknews.org wrote, "Their live show and their music are incredibly fun, even while tackling tricky subjects; they are optimistic about it all. Yet they are not MTV happy-pappy-punk, they maintain the indie edge and originality. The guitars are not heavily distorted, the remain angular and at times intricate, the bass parts are some of the most creative I've heard." Their Lookout Records debut album "Making Beds In A Burning House" was produced by Dismemberment Plan guitarist Jason Caddell and mixed by Jason Carmer (The Donnas, The Explosion).

This is a co-release with LookOut Records.

Troubled Hubble is:
Chris Otepka - sing/guitar / Josh Miller - guitar
Nate Lanthrum - drums / Andrew Lanthrum - bass

Proof that relentless good cheer, mountains of hard work, and a knack for pop hooks don't always lead to disappointment, shattered dreams, and office jobs: Troubled Hubble, the band you've never heard of but that will soon be making you as jitteringly happy as they are. Maybe they already are, if you've pushed "play" on their Lookout debut Making Beds In A Burning House and found "14,000 Things To Be Happy About." If you haven't pushed "play" yet, do so. Thank you.

Troubled Hubble may be coming to you out of nowhere, but maybe their five-year sprint was just too fast to pick up on. So, a brief history lesson before some 2005-styled declarations: Troubled Hubble came together, like lots of wonderful things, almost by accident. After high school, singer/guitarist Chris Otepka wandered away from smalltown Illinois life and into the big city, and tiny little hearts appeared around his head when he found a DIY pop scene centered around a label called The Magic Spot. ("I was absolutely intrigued," he remembers. "These people would record their own music, and spend nights at Kinko's, making tapes to sell at VFW shows and small Chicago venue shows") Band names flowed almost as quickly as songs into his brain, and Otepka released wonderful, home-recorded little chestnuts as Heligoats and You Stay Here I'll Go Get Help.

Troubled Hubble came together on a whim, imagined as a way for Chris to bulk out his songs for a Magic Spot showcase at Chicago's famed punk palace Fireside Bowl in December of '99. There's a teensy bit of regret about the name ("But we do always draw NASA employees out to our shows in D.C., Alabama, and Florida. No lie!"), but mostly love, since the foursome that practiced for a week-high-school chum Nate Lanthrum on drums, his brother Andrew Lanthrum on bass, and Josh Miller on guitar-quickly became everyone's focus. Stints at college eventually gave way to full-time enrollment in the school of hard rocks, with multi-faceted majors in van repair, tour booking, record releasing, and songwriting. In the next two years, Troubled Hubble would release two albums (The Sun Beamed Off The Name Maurice and Broken Airplanes), and tour, tour, tour, bringing smiles to faces across the upper Midwest and beyond.

If those first couple of years were college, the time around third album Penturbia was graduate school. Self-released in late 2002-and re-released by tiny indie Latest Flame in early 2003-the album served as the perfect distillation of everything Troubled Hubble is: Joy and pain (and the pain of joy) played to skitterish-pop perfection, with a shining optimism and joie de vivre unmatched in the rolling hills of Batavia. No one slept in 2003, but it didn't matter, because sleep seems like work when you're having this much fun, riding high on an amazing album and ending every smashing show with a smashing singalong to a song called "I Love My Canoe." College radio noticed, playing "Canoe" and the blindingly brilliant "Nancy." Some press noticed, comparing TH to everyone from The Dismemberment Plan to Clem Snide to Modest Mouse to Built To Spill-all accurate in one way or another, but woefully incomplete. Best of all, people noticed, and they left smiling.

Momentum can sometimes steamroll a band, and the wonder of 2003-hundreds of shows, South By Southwest, and just an unstoppable good vibe-crashed to a halt late in the year, when a blinded-by-the-fun Otepka jumped from a balcony during a particularly heated performance, smashing his ankle to smithereens. Chris recalls: "As my feet reached for the ground, they anticipated the landing to be much sooner than it actually was, and my left foot bones jumped up and chopped the bottom of my tibia off. I tumbled to the ground, rolled around, picked up my guitar, and walked to the stage, thinking I had just pulled some ligaments. I started to lose my mind, and I passed out on stage, apparently stressing to the audience how important it was that they say no to drugs." With help from fans (who bought "ankle fund" t-shirts) and Sweet Relief, he mended, eventually playing the trooper by crutching himself on stage and playing in a chair. Who says rock 'n' roll isn't hard work?

The whole way through that neverending tour, Otepka kept on writing, filling a messy yellow journal with ideas: "I filled every last square millimeter of that notebook with words to pick from for the new record," he says. "I even taped in extra paper in the back to fill more writing in. Alas, the notebook was completely filled just as the new recording session began, and I had about two years to prepare it." It is Making Beds In A Burning House, another album written, recorded, and paid for with the Troubled Hubble DIY spirit: The band saved enough money to hire former Dismemberment Plan guitarist Jason Caddell on as producer and to record at Washington D.C.'s famed Inner Ear Studio.

Though prepared-and willing, and able, and happy-to release the results via Latest Flame and tour their brains out, Troubled Hubble found a bit of fate in New York City, where fate lives. In one serendipitous swoop at one typically energetic and awesome show, the band found both a manager and a booking agent that shared their vision. Producer Jason Carmer (who's worked with Third Eye Blind and The Donnas, among others) was brought in for some remixing, adding a spit-shine to some already glowing songs.

And then, finally, the baby arrived: Hopefully you're cradling Making Beds In A Burning House with your ears right now. In it and on it you'll find a heartfelt vitality and a wise-beyond-its-years voice. You'll find "upbeat tunes about miserable situations," according to the guy who sings them. You'll find a wiry tale of insomnia's upside ("Safe & Sound"), an injection of life into suburbia ("Bees"), a concise twirl around longing ("Even Marathon Runners Need A Nap"), and a song about Otepka's vision problems ("I'm Pretty Sure I Can See Molecules") that manages, like Troubled Hubble's frequently amazing moments, to meld humor and melancholy into a poignant, pointed stew. Remember, sings Otepka in a line that sums up whimsically wonderful band, "When you're nothing, you're still something / You're molecules."