A new cup of Soup

Rock quintet Soup has come a long way since forming in 1995. The band took second prize in a national talent contest, received the "People's Choice Award" at the 2000 Atlanta Music Awards and recently the readers of CL choose the band as its favorite local modern-rock band in the Best of Atlanta issue. Meanwhile, they've built a steady following up and down the East Coast as an acoustic/rock band.

Over the last year, however, the band has evolved away from its jam-band leanings and into a songwriting powerhouse, as evidenced on the new EP Soup!, its first studio recording in three years. The band cut back on the number of shows it did and built a studio in drummer Bram Bessoff's home, recording most of the tracks there (as well as at Tree Sound and Butch Walker's studio).

With well over 15 songs added to Soup's repertoire, guitarist/vocalist Erik Rowen explains how the band had a hard time choosing what to release on Soup!. "We have spent countless hours in our studio recording an arsenal of songs, but we wanted to narrow it down to a cohesive group of songs that truly expressed our new sound."

Indeed, the five tracks on Soup! bring the band's recordings up-to-date. Russ-T Cobb and Scott Mikell produced the CD, giving the songs a new polish. They also have an added edge thanks to lead guitarist Kevin Crow, who began writing on the electric guitar this past year. "We didn't want to get into the situation where we were going to be in the studio for a long time," Crow says, "and we wanted to just get in there and get our fans something new that was fairly representative of the evolution that we were taking."

Soup play Fri., Nov. 2, at the Cotton Club.??