January 21-March 31st – Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power tour continues.
January 26th – The New Yorker profiles of Montreal.
January 27th – Jon Brion remixes of Montreal for the EP of “An Eluardian Instance.” He tells LAist, “I love of Montreal…I feel like [Kevin Barnes’] records are the recorded equivalent of my live show in terms of someone acquiescing to their subconscious completely. When he’s making records by himself, I feel like he’s emptying out his subconscious and it’s some of the most honest and direct writing I’ve heard. When you see somebody being themselves, and getting away with it, it has a powerful effect, because we all inherently feel we’re only going to be understood a little bit. He’s in the midst of some great work. I wish my friends who are more inclined toward Hank Williams were listening to Kevin, because I feel like he has the same directness.”
February 10-March 7th – After the Holiday Surprise Tour and the Christmas caroling tour, Julian Koster finally provides a formal Music Tapes tour, as the band travels through the U.S. with Nana Grizol and Brian Dewan. Brian shows a filmstrip, and Julian, in many cities, plays a special game with the audience following the Music Tapes performance.
February 17th – Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine, a children’s album by Robert Schneider, is released and featured on ABC’s Good Morning America. It’s also announced that the character of Robbert Bobbert is being developed for an animated children’s show. The album’s art is by, cartoonist and musician Todd Webb, who has his own band worth checking out, Seamonster.
February 21st – AUX 3 is held in Athens, featuring another performance of “Bill Doss and the Flashcard Orchestra,” plus Icy Demons, Howling Jelly, Dark Meat, and more.
February 23rd – Randy Bewley (Pylon, Supercluster, and Sound Houses) passes away from a heart attack. Kay Stanton of Supercluster and Casper & the Cookies: “He made it easy to forget that he was an icon by being so down to earth and just an all around sweet person. Randy would crack this quirky little smile that just made you think he knew a little more about everything than you possibly could, and that he knew that, too, but that it was absolutely cool. I was always amazed at how good his ear was. His guitar tuning was atypical, but when Supercluster would start to jam, he’d jump in there with some amazing lick or texture that really made the whole thing gel. And for anyone who’s ever seen him on stage with Pylon, they know how great he was. I don’t know if he really thought about just how much he influenced musicians everywhere. He influenced people who probably don’t even realize they were influenced by him. It’s so easy not to notice, because in Athens, even giants are demure.”
March – The High Water Marks: Arivar Sullimer three-song cassette (previously released as a CD-R sold at live shows).
March 10th – Madeline: White Flag.
March 11th – The Apples in Stereo and Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power perform in a tribute concert to R.E.M. at Carnegie Hall.
April 2-23rd – A Hawk and a Hacksaw tour with Andrew Bird and Wilco.
April 7th – SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers features The Apples in Stereo covering Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot-Flowers Pt.3.”
April 21st – Still Flyin’: Never Gonna Touch the Ground.
April 29th – Kelly Ruberto relaunches the long-dormant Elephant 6.com. On the U.S. American Idol, the finalists (“The American Idols”) perform a cover of The Apples in Stereo’s “Energy” in a Ford Fusion Hybrid commercial.
April 30th – Julian Koster writes on behalf of Neutral Milk Hotel:
The Paragon Carousel is a beautiful machine that has been my dear neighbor for many moons. Now 81 years old, it is in need of a little love and attention in order for it to survive. It is my sincere wish for the Paragon Carousel to be a part of the magic of long seaside summer afternoons for many years to come. But it might not get to. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the great whirling contraptions of mechanical music and light are not as profitable to operate as other things, and carousels are worth much more taken apart and sold in pieces to museums, where one must pay to look at them behind glass, rather than having them simply existing in the world that we now all share. I spoke with Jeff and Scott and Jeremy about this and they agreed that I should, on behalf of Neutral Milk Hotel, make an appeal to the good people who might have enjoyed the music made over the years, because we think you’d understand especially, and want to help. We humbly ask you to vote! The Paragon Carousel is competing with 24 other historic Massachussettes buildings for a grant of $100,000. The historic site with the most votes wins, and anyone anywhere can vote. We would love it if by our collective effort we could ensure the continuation of this grand place. It only takes a moment and you can do so here. You are allowed to vote once a day until May 17th . Your vote means a great deal to all of us at Elephant Six. Places like this are so special. They deserve to exist in the same world that we do. So we can visit them with our bodies, not just our memories and dreams. We’d like to thank you for your help and for spreading the word.
Votes flood in, and the Paragon Carousel wins the grant. The President of the Friends of the Paragon Carousel writes, “[We] are elated to have won this Grant Prize from Partners in Preservation. It is a true honor to have received the support from so many supporters both locally and globally.”
May 5th – Three Nesey Gallons are released from Hurrah for Karamazov Records: Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago, Two Bicycles, and Somewhere We Both Walk (with a short story booklet included). Later in the year Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago is released on vinyl. Nesey, interviewed by Pure Pop:
[The cover of Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago is] one eye of a stereoscopic card. I found in New York State in a box under a tarp. In the woods. It was around when I first started writing the songs. I knew it would be called ‘Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago‘ before I found the card or wrote any of the songs. There was a song called ’I Remember Eyes’ that existed already (that isn’t on the album)…the funny thing about the card is it’s like an eye exam. You look through the stereoscope and see how far back you can see where the dot is…top bottom left right…so the album title has an unintended/accidental humorous aspect to go along with its real meaning…the back cover was ripped out of a library book. It’s a classroom of kids looking through stereoscopes. …I never meant to write songs. It just started happening. I never meant to be a musician…it also just kind of happened. It’s also an accident that I’m any good at it. I liked making sound recordings. Beginning when I was a little kid. It was really the Olivia records that helped connect the idea of songs and sound world coming together. It was the first thing I heard that was like my soundworld, but they had wonderful songs living in it.
May 7-9th – Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls helps oversee “With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart,” a play based upon (and featuring the music of) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and performed by the drama club of the school Palmer once attended, Lexington High in Massachusetts. From NPR’s feature on the play: “The students at Lexington High School say they haven’t just written a play based on this album, or a play about Anne Frank. It’s about art and music coming out of terrible things. And it’s about being transformed by that process of creation. A junior, whose parents did not want her identified, found herself transformed. ‘There was one rehearsal where we were using the music a lot, and I just remembered this thing that I had forgotten, which is that there were two Nazis in my family,’ one Lexington student says. ‘And I just had this realization that I had to make reparations, I had this just huge debt all of a sudden, which I had forgotten I had. And after that day everything’s been heavier and also lighter at the same time and I feel like the music just like draws things out of weird places that you didn’t know were there.’”
May 12th – Casper & the Cookies release their magnum pop opus, Modern Silence. The final track, “I Am Gone,” is a psychedelic suite mixed by Jason NeSmith and featuring contributions from Robert Schneider, Bryan Poole, Bill Doss & Pete Erchick, Vanessa Briscoe Hay & Hannah Jones, Elekibass, Keith John Adams, The Lolligags, The Shut-Ups, and many, many more…everyone, it seems, except the Cookies themselves. A very complicated diagram accompanies the liner notes. Retro LowFi: “It’s not just an early contender for that coveted ‘album of the year’ title, but it’s a late entry into the ‘album of the decade’ contest. Seriously.”
May 18th – A Hawk and a Hacksaw release Délivrance. The single, “Foni Tu Argile,” is a 78RPM record with packaging to resemble the shellac records of the pre-vinyl days. Three promotional short films are made for the album by Tristan Love and James Longmire.
May 20th – Robert Schneider receives a gift from custom-guitar designers Blindworm Guitars, the “Elephant 6 Guitar.” He tells Optical Atlas, “It is the coolest guitar I have ever played! The inlaid Elephant 6 logo is made of meteorite dust, and on the headstock, the elephant’s eyes are made of dinosaur bones. It feels like I am holding a living creature, and plays great– I used it at the most recent American Revolution show, and played extra psychedelic.”
May 21st – In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on the upcoming Circulatory System album, Will Hart drops that he’s been recording again with Bill Doss, and “We’ve got two songs for the next Olivia record, in my opinion…They’re on Bill’s hard drive…We’re really proud of it…We’re working toward something. I’m not sure that we know, even.” A short while later he elaborates upon these comments, in Pitchfork: “Well, to be honest, I’ve got MS. I found out that I have multiple sclerosis, blah blah blah, and I was drinking heavily. And Bill [Doss] was like, ‘Man, you gotta stop drinking. What is the deal?’ And, well, you know the deal with wine. And he was like, ‘Stop, man. Just stop doing that. If you will, start taking the shots.’ Like, I have to take a shot every other day. That’s actually why. I mean, I wish there was some other cool reason. But we love to play together. When we get together, we all agree it’s really fun. Music is fun. This is fun for us… We had fun on that reunion [tour in 2005]. It was great. But, you know, you got me totally honest. It makes total sense what Eric [Harris] said. He’s like, ‘I don’t just wanna go out. I wanna do new stuff, if we’re gonna do something.’ [Laughs] Thank you! Exactly! I mean, we felt the same way. He was like, ‘We’ll start doing stuff every Sunday, make stuff up.’ So we started doing this stuff every Sunday. It was awesome. Because I hate Sundays here…But it’s exciting because it feels just like it was before, I swear to God. There’s no fucking difference. Really. No fucking difference.”
May 26th – Marshmallow Coast’s Phreak Phantasy is the first MC record to feature the Elephant 6 logo. Pre-orders shipped with an original painting by Andy Gonzales. Indieville writes, “All keys and vocals, Phreak Phantasy leaves the listener with an intriguing case of ‘I could do that too’ crossed with a sincere respect for how well the whole thing has been executed. These are strangely infectious synth-pop tunes, seemingly straightforward in their manner yet deceptively infectious. Marshmallow Coast’s Andy Gonzales has been at this for a long time, and is one of the longer-standing members of the Elephant 6 troupe; his experience is evident on these nine songs, which manage rough-around-the-edges brilliance that will have you humming in your sleep.”
June 8th – Matt Jordan at You Ain’t No Picasso interviews Eric Harris about the Major Organ and the Adding Machine film:
Back in the late 90’s we poked around with it quite a bit. Me and Joey Foreman. But we just didn’t have the technology, quite honestly, back then. The things we wanted to do were not available—it didn’t happen to work back then. So we poked around with MIDI and we recorded a bunch of music and it just never happened until we got Final Cut Pro on his computer. And then it was like ‘Hey let’s make a movie.’ He’s always been a great filmmaker. And we just moved into the digital age and all the sudden everything seemed possible…the plot sort of emerged organically. Which was more than we could have hoped for. By the time we got the Fernandes kids involved it was kinda going into [a] place like, ‘Oh, now I understand what the plot of this is.’ It really kinda occurred to us in a backwards way like that. But we still wanted to leave enough open-ended. We didn’t want people to get an easy conclusion out of the movie, and we wanted it to be for kids too.
June 11th – Chris Knox of the Tall Dwarfs suffers a stroke at his home in Grey Lynn, New Zealand.
June 23rd, 25th, and 27th – “Elephant 6 Night at the Movies” at the Athens Ciné, curated by Eric Harris, features the Major Organ and the Adding Machine film as well as Elephant 6-related shorts, live footage, and music videos.
June 24th – Lucas Jensen interviews Will Hart for Aquarium Drunkard:
Well, MS. Yeah, I mean, my mind…in the last 10 years I was, like, what’s the deal? I had all this stuff and I was excited, but a lot of things started changing. I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I was going blind, and I went to the doctor, and so I got the brain scan. And he said, ‘You’ve had it for ten years’ and I said that makes sense. That makes sense. It had been sucking part of my creativity out. It’s like I’m trying, but if you don’t know that, you wonder what is going on. I record every day still, and I have amassed so much stuff personally. It got confusing. Which version do you like? Any of them, Will! Let’s just overdub on the version you like…I hate needles. Everybody says, ‘That doesn’t hurt,’ and I got used to the needles, but it burns going in. It has some enzymes. It’s a drag. My friends are always over here cracking on me when I’m ‘Hey! I’ve gotta do my shot!’ I can’t ever psych myself up. [The medicine is] Rebif. It’s not helping it. It’s just helping it not be worse. The doctor, he saved my eye. I mean, mostly. Because I was blind. I was in that state of ‘What the fuck is going wrong?’ Because I was doing creative stuff, but I couldn’t always get it together. And, by the way, it wasn’t any less creative or any less good. I could feel that in my heart and in my brain and stuff. I don’t know. It’s tough to keep it together.
July – As part of Happy Happy Birthday to Me’s Singles Club Volume II, a 7” is issued featuring vintage E6, pre-Olivia Tremor Control recordings from The Always Red Society (Will Hart) and The Sunshine Fix. Also this month, of Montreal’s cover of Prince’s “Computer Blue” is included in a Purple Rain covers EP for SPIN Magazine.
July 22-26th – XX Merge, celebrating 20 years of Merge Records, is held in Carrboro, NC. Rumors fly of a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion or Jeff Mangum appearance, neither of which happens. The Essex Green, The Ladybug Transistor, and The Music Tapes perform in addition to vast swaths of the Merge roster.
July 26th – of Montreal plays the Hollywood Bowl. From Lyndsey Parker’s review in NME: “This is why Los Angeles rules. It’s a city where almighty disco dominatrix Grace Jones can perform at a classical/orchestral music venue like the Hollywood Bowl (her first L.A. concert in 20 long years), enlist indie space-glam eccentrics of Montreal and Cambodian ’60s psych-pop revivalists Dengue Fever as the opening acts and punk legend-turned-local KCRW deejay Henry Rollins as the emcee…and sell out all 18,000 tickets on a Sunday night. And on top of all that, last night’s Bowl extravaganza (a one-night-only performance in support of Hurricane, Grace’s first studio album since 1989) included a moonlit duet of David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ between of Montreal’s caped-crusader frontgod Kevin Barnes and surprise-guest baby diva Janelle Monae (accompanied by two local pug dogs on leashes) and an onstage marriage proposal between two of Montreal band members that no woman could resist (she said YES!)…” Rolling Stone: “Of Montreal embraced a similar blend of psychedelic glam-rock and WTF theatricality. Dancers wore children’s-theatre-on-acid costumes like pig masks and skin-toned leotards. Bizarre poses were struck, and various forms of pantomime made tenuous connections to the actual songs: For ‘Elegant Caste,’ special guest singer Janelle Monae strode onstage in a black tux walking a white pug while Barnes made his entrance in a mostly white outfit walking a black pug. The pair continued to duet on a note-perfect cover version of David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream,’ then embraced and spun around the stage until they nearly keeled over. The craziest moment of a set thick with ‘em was when the band’s visual director Nick Gould removed his tiger mask, got down on one knee, pulled out a ring, and actually proposed to keyboardist Dottie Alexander, who wiped away genuine tears throughout the next song. That kind of theater you just can’t fake.”
August 7th – of Montreal plays Lollapalooza.
August 18th – The Music Tapes debut a new song and video, “For the Planet Pluto.”
September 1st – The Apples in Stereo: #1 Hits Explosion.
September 7-20th – Circulatory System tours with Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t and Nesey Gallons. They play All Tomorrow’s Parties in NYC on the 12th. Adam Kritzer for Culture Catch describes the ATP show:
Circulatory System, the newest incarnation of Elephant Six collective artists Olivia Tremor Control, played at Stage Two. The band’s juxtaposition of psychedelic pop and no-wave noise played well to the crowd. Songwriting group-leader W. Cullen Hart wore a straw hat and jumped around with abandon as Nesey Gallons of The Music Tapes built a rocking, jumbled wall of sound. Wth strings, horns, mallets, and most every instrument ever made, Circulatory System ripped through a set that teeter-tottered between of Montreal and Neutral Milk Hotel. At the end of the set when the lights went on, a few people started chanting encore. I’d been to festivals before and knew that tight scheduling allowed only for encores from headlining bands (and often not even then). The band came out to move their equipment; the crowd continued chanting. Will looked at Nesey, who cued the rest of the group. ‘Ok,’ said Hart into the microphone, ‘we’ll do one more song.’ They immediately burst into a dancey funk groove before transitioning to a molasses-slow texture that grew into a cacaphonous wall of noise. As the wall grew more and more dissonant, the members of Circulatory System all got closer and closer to their instruments. Hart seemed to rest his ear on his amp, Nesey fidgeted with gadgets, while a cellist [Heather McIntosh] repeated a note and whispered into her microphone. More and more out there we go; I can smell the sweat of the band and it is a remarkable odor. Hart moves back to the microphone, knocks his head forward four times, and the group jumps back into the intro groove. Eight measures of funk and the song ends abruptly.
September 8th – Circulatory System’s Signal Morning is released on Cloud Recordings. From NPR’s review: “It took nearly eight years to make, but Circulatory System’s breathtakingly inventive new album, Signal Morning, justifies the wait. The 17 new tracks, culled from hours of recorded material and meticulously pieced together in more than half a dozen different studios, are sonic wonders. Obliterated guitars rumble over strange, fluttering textures. Vintage synth lines and quirky found sounds tumble together amid psychedelic melodies and harmonies. It’s a mysterious and mesmerizing world of orchestrated chaos that offers new discoveries with each listen…Signal Morning features all of the original members of The Olivia Tremor Control (Bill Doss, Eric Harris, John Fernandes and Peter Erchick), along with Circulatory System’s Charlie Johnston, Derek Almstead, Suzanne Allison and Nesey Gallons. Jeff Mangum and Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel also appear on the disc. All of the contributing artists are part of the Elephant 6 collective, a sprawling group of likeminded musicians with a love for neo-psychedelic and experimental pop.” Brian Heater’s article on the band, “Inside Views,” appears in the NYPress. Bill Doss: “When [The Olivia Tremor Control] split up, I think I was a little lost…I didn’t know what to do and he was acting a little strange. That, of course, changed our dynamic. To be honest, there were several years where we didn’t hang out. He was a little mad at me, I was a little mad at him, and neither of us really knew why. I think it was that [Will’s symptoms of multiple sclerosis] kicking in. he was changing and it was weird, and neither of us really knew what was going on.” After the OTC reunion, “He started dealing with it…He reached out to me, and it was like, ‘this is ridiculous. We’ve been mad at each other for several years now, over nothing.’ We started hanging out and talking about stuff and becoming friends again. I tried to help him deal with the MS the best way I could, bringing in Montel Williams books to read and looking up stuff on the Internet. We all were.” Will says of the 2008 Holiday Surprise Tour, “…it was fucking great, man. There were so many kids into it…[who] weren’t even born in ’96.”
September 12-13th – Robert Schneider speaks at Big Sound, the music industry summit and showcase, in Brisbane, Australia.
September 19th – Kindercore’s Fall Hootenanny features a Masters of the Hemisphere and I am the World Trade Center reunion and performances by Je Suis France and Still Flyin’.
September 29th – Laminated Cat’s Umbrella Weather is released on Garden Gate Records, the label started by Robert Schneider’s wife and brother-in-law. The cover art is by Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss.
October 6th – Supercluster: Waves is released on Cloud Recordings. Fronted by Pylon’s Vanessa Hay, the band also features the late Randy Bewley, Bill David, John Fernandes, Bob Hay, Hannah Jones, and Kay Stanton. AllMusic writes: “Somewhere between moody early-’70s rock bands — think Jefferson Airplane’s followers in particular — and a more current indie rock theatricality is where Waves lies, all the more interesting given that the appropriately named Supercluster themselves are something of a supergroup of their scene, bringing in members from bands such as The Olivia Tremor Control, Deerhunter, Casper & the Cookies, and — above all else — two key members of the stellar Pylon, Vanessa Briscoe Hay and Randy Bewley. The tragic circumstance of Bewley’s passing before the album was completed underscores the whole experience as a might-have-been, but the end result is more than just a scene curio and remembrance. There’s something lively about the end result that could easily warrant more albums if the surviving members wanted to keep up with it, something at once sprightly and laden with experience in equal, entertaining measure. The understated but often sharply commanding vocals of Hay are worth giving Waves a listen alone, showing that she still has just the right ear for delivery.”
October 7th – Miles Kurosky signs to Majordomo Records.
October 9th – The Orange Twin Fall Festival features Neil Hamburger, Elf Power, Vic Chesnutt, Nana Grizol, and the Scott E. Spillane EXP.
October 10th – Circulatory System performs with German krautrock legends Faust at the 40 Watt.
October 20th – Nesey Gallons: Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago reissued on Cloud Recordings; Yo Gabba Gabba: Music is Awesome comp features of Montreal.
October 23rd – The Ladybug Transistor plays CMJ.
October 27th – Jamey Huggins (of Montreal, and formerly of Great Lakes) releases his debut album, James Husband: A Parallax I, on Polyvinyl Records. In an interview with The Austinist, he explains: “To me, that’s what this record is supposed to be – my attempt at continuing the Great Lakes… Basically this whole project has been me refusing to let go of that sound after the Great Lakes went country…I mean, I attempted something close to this record in like 2001, and now it’s 2009, and some of the songs on A Parallax I were written at least eight years ago, if not more. These eleven songs are supposed to make a good impression or something. It’s almost like my resume. But the truth is, I have thirty-six tracks…I considered putting them out all at once, like ‘Should I make this a double album?’ And eventually, people I trust from the band and the label, you know, we decided it was better to have a short little flip book than a three volume novel. So it’s not like I’ve been slaving over these eleven songs for eight years. There’s a whole lot where that came from, and this is just the first batch. I’ve always intended to release songs and intended to tour, and it’s just one of those things where you look at your watch, and seven years have gone by. Eventually Kevin [Barnes] pushed me out of the nest – he almost got pissed off with me because I was playing him a new song and he was like, ‘Well, what the fuck are you doing with those old songs?’ And it was perfect timing, because of Montreal was taking a break for several months for the first time in years, and I would’ve had nothing but time on my hands.”
November 10th – Thee American Revolution (Robert Schneider’s psych-rock side project) debuts with Buddha Electrostorm on Garden Gate Records, featuring covert art by Will Hart. Nana Grizol’s second album, Ruth, is also issued.
December 5-22nd – Julian Koster’s second annual house-to-house Christmas caroling tour is launched.
December 7th – of Montreal makes the cover of Under the Radar’s “Best of the Decade” issue.
December 8th – Jeff Mangum contributes a cover of the Tall Dwarfs’ “Sign the Dotted Line” for the American release of Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox. This is the first officially released track by Jeff under his own name since 2001’s live CD Live at Jittery Joe’s. Also appearing on the album is the first track by Red&Zeke, a recording project by Bill Doss and Neil Cleary (The Sunshine Fix) inspired by the music of Appalachia.
January 11th - The Essex Green plays Track and Field’s Winter Warmers in London with British Sea Power and The Pipettes. Simon Price of the Independent writes:
All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey. And The Essex Green have come to paint London a deep, deep blue. The bleak midwinter may not be quite the most auspicious season to be hearing something as autumnal as the mellow mood music made by this Brooklyn band, but that’s perhaps as it should be. The Essex Green are a band out of time (they evoke the late 1960s/ early 1970s) and, if their apparently Anglophile name is any guide, a band out of place too: The Essex Green possess an elegance, and a mastery of poignancy, of which you might, quite understandably, have concluded that the present generation of American bands is utterly incapable. But they’re here in quaint Olde Englande tonight, to headline the first of the Winter Warmers, a three-night stand hosted by Track And Field, the club/organisation dedicated to playing ‘the music you never hear on the radio’ (think post-Cutie, think Bowlie weekender, think Belle & Sebastian, from whose song the collective takes its name). Central to their charms is the clear, pure voice of Sasha Bell, the singer/multi-instrumentalist who carries herself with the repressed demureness of Katharine Ross in The Graduate, and sings like Michie from The Mamas And The Papas. Bell plays a flute, plays a guitar, plays a Korg keyboard but makes it sound more like a vintage Farfisa, wears a tweed coat of the kind The Supremes‘ Mary Wilson used to wear (oblivious to the heat, because style is more important than comfort), and never smiles. Every boy in the room is falling in love with her. None of them will admit it. An Essex Green discography/family tree would be a complicated business: a reshuffled line-up of the same band will play the following night under the name The Ladybug Transistor, and they once recorded a whole album using the alias The Sixth Great Lake. For now, the most important artefact is The Long Goodbye, The Essex Green’s full-length hello. And listening to the album at home is a preferable experience to standing in a sweaty room and watching them (they don’t move much): with the exception of the odd surf number (‘Lazy May!’) from co-vocalist Christopher Ziter, their repertoire evokes The Carpenters at their most bittersweet, Saint Etienne at their most subdued, Jimmy Webb at his most conventional, and the themes to Seventies American TV shows you never saw. Not that this has prevented many people from standing in a sweaty room to watch them: it’s packed in here. ‘How come,’ asks Ziter, ‘it’s hotter than when we played here in August?’ Once anachronistic, always anachronistic.
February 3rd – Summer Hymns: Value Series Vol. 1: Fool’s Gold.
February – Cloud Recordings reissue The Olivia Tremor Control’s Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle.
The Sixth Great Lake at the Crossing Border Festival in Amsterdam.
February 16th – Chris Ziter of The Essex Green and The Sixth Great Lake, interviewed in SoundsXP:
In Sweden [The Essex Green has] been very, very lucky. We’ve been played on national radio over there and our first show in Stockholm last August was sold out and the show we’re playing in a week is apparently sold out. It’s been very good for us. I’m very interested to see Spain. I know that The Ladybug Transistor does well there; we’ve never been there before. I don’t have a sense of what’s going to happen in Holland. I’ve played Amsterdam before with The Sixth Great Lake. They flew us over for a festival and it was amazing. They didn’t seem to be as interested in The Essex Green as they were in the Sixth Great Lake record! But that was just one radio station that organised the whole thing so it’ll be interesting to see either way…The Sixth Great Lake is really just a recording project. It was just a way for us to get back together with a couple of old friends and record some songs. Between all the different groups it’s hard to tour with all those bands and The Sixth Great Lake doesn’t have the same name as The Essex Green or The Ladybug Transistor in terms of how many people are going to come to the shows. So we just did a two-week tour to play the songs because they haven’t been played. And it was really fun.
March 16th – Cloud Recordings reissue The Olivia Tremor Control’s Black Foliage Animation Music Vol. 1. John Fernandes, interviewed in CrownDozen.com: “Dusk… and Black Foliage were out of print since Flydaddy filed for bankruptcy in 1999. …Strangely enough, we ended up paying Flydaddy $4000 for the rights to our albums, even though they hadn’t paid us for 40,000 records sold in ‘98-’99.”
March – Laura Carter posts news of the long-rumored Neutral Milk Hotel rarities collection on the Townhall: “we’ve gotten half an album’s worth of non-released NMH/Jeff songs approved by Jeff, but the rest he’s not interested in releasing, so we are trying to get more stuff that he likes. We are thinking now that it will be two discs, the second being a DVD of a live show that we played in San Francisco.”
March 20th – Circulatory System plays with The Sunshine Fix at the 40 Watt.
April 6th – Elf Power: Walking with the Beggar Boys. In an interview a few years later with Athens Exchange, Andrew Rieger said of the album’s cover photo, “Beggar Boys, it’s actually kind of an homage, well, actually it’s a rip-off, but homage sounds nicer – of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young album, Déjà Vu, with them all dressed up and old-timey. I wasn’t even a big fan of that album, I just liked the cover a lot.” AllMusic wrote: “For a band that once wrote a song called ‘Simon (The Bird With the Candy Bar Head),’ the decidedly un-psychedelic sound emanating from Elf Power’s sixth full-length recording, Walking With the Beggar Boys, is more than a deviation — it’s a complete departure. Joining frontman Andy Rieger, multi-instrumentalist and ex-Neutral Milk Hotel member Laura Carter, and drummer Aaron Wegelin are Eric Harris, formerly with Olivia Tremor Control, and Craig McQuiston from the Glands. What sounds like an Elephant 6 love fest is actually an exercise in restraint, and after a few listens Walking With the Beggar Boys reveals itself as a near perfect little pop record.”
Also released on April 6th is of Montreal’s Satanic Panic in the Attic. With Kindercore locked in a legal battle with the Telegraph Company, of Montreal had moved on – to what would be an extraordinarily successful signing to Polyvinyl Records. In retrospect, Satanic Panic is a transitional album with enough to please both fans of the “old” of Montreal sound as well as those of the dance/funk/glam to come. Andy Gonzales and Derek Almstead had left the band, but for the recording of this album Kevin Barnes was largely alone, recreating the brand from the ground up. In a later interview with Paste Magazine, Kevin reflected:
I guess [I began writing more personal songs] around Satanic Panic in the Attic. I got married to Nina and moved out of the house with the band, and me and Nina and my brother got a place together. It was a supportive environment being with the band, but it was also more challenging as far as accommodating everyone, being in a communal household, being reliant on each other for so many things, and then you’re in a band together, and you spend so much time together. Every artist I know is totally crazy and neurotic, so it’s kind of a dangerous situation to be in. It was really liberating for me to get out of that and move in with Nina and David. They didn’t really have any demands, it was just do what you want, just create something we find interesting and fun. Their life wasn’t really—I mean, it was connected to mine on an emotional level, but not a financial level. And they had their own creative outputs, so it wasn’t the same situation. Like when [the band and I] were living out in the country, if I wanted to do something like on Satanic Panic or Sunlandic Twins—where I recorded every part—then feelings would be hurt. [Former bassist] Derek [Almstead] would be like, ‘Why are you writing the bass lines? I want to write the bass lines,’ which is totally understandable. I was depriving them of their creative outlet that was fulfilling and exciting. So that was a difficult transition for the band, when I took it over again and started doing everything by myself.
Under the Radar wrote of Satanic Panic, “It is the experimental indie pop album of the summer.” Pitchfork was taken by surprise at the new directions being explored: “Satanic Panic displays a considerable maturation in Kevin Barnes’ songwriting. Everything, from the Sgt. Pepper’s-copping album art to the wontedly verbose lyrics and song titles, would suggest a predictable collection of spindly psych-pop. But when the music actually starts, the differences become apparent. ‘Disconnect the Dots’ begins with a Doppler-affected drum sample, before the abrupt appearance of both handclaps and a verifiably indelible guitar riff. Seconds later, Barnes arrives, bearing an invitation: ‘Come disconnect the dots with me, poppy,’ he intones, before deliquescing into a blissful mini-chorus. From there, the song shifts effortlessly from section to section, orchestrating a dense but well-balanced array of organ drones, vocal harmonies, astral guitar peals, and interlocking electro-acoustic percussion… ‘Disconnect the Dots’ is more than just an album pacesetter– it’s a mission statement for a band remade, or at least reconsidered. The new of Montreal grab your attention, not deliberately invite it to wander…My naysaying of of Montreal’s earlier work is only meant to underscore the impressive growth displayed here. While albums such as The Gay Parade and Coquelicot often drowned in oppressive amounts of cheerfulness, it’s possible to take Satanic Panic seriously while still enjoying even its stickiest melodies…Satanic Panic in the Attic is idiosyncratic without being hokey, and although the band has been stiffed recognition for the consistency of their previous work, this album should make the group much more difficult to ignore.”
May 4th – Icy Demons: Fight Back!
Part of the old Girl Scouts site left standing at Orange Twin.
June 12th – Flagpole:
The Orange Twin Conservation Community, located just five miles north of Athens on land that was formerly a Girl Scout Camp, hopes to serve as a model for other communities interested in sustainable, eco-based living while emphasizing artistic endeavors. To this end, Orange Twin has held a series of benefit shows on its property for the past several years. As many of the bands on the Orange Twin record label have gained substantial popularity in the United States and abroad, these shows have been successful in not only delivering fine music and good times to attendees, but also in spreading information about the village and its goals. In a wonderful twist of fate, the show happening Saturday, June 12, at Orange Twin features a full day of events beginning at 2 p.m. (horseshoes, anyone?). Starting at 3 p.m., The Instruments and Art Rosenbaum perform at the community swimming hole. DJ Andrew Rieger (of Athens rock-masters Elf Power) spins a set of music during dinner around 6 p.m. The always interesting Kingsbury Manx and eco-warrior musicians Brightblack play at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., respectively. The feather in the cap of the entire event is a performance by Bonnie “Prince” Billy at 10 p.m.
Laura Carter told Farming for Artists, “We built an amphitheater for the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy show. We carved it out of the hillside with a Bobcat.”
July 13th – Old Enough to Know Better: 15 Years of Merge Records features new tracks by The Ladybug Transistor and The Essex Green, and older tracks by Neutral Milk Hotel and The Music Tapes.
August 4-7th – Athens PopFest 2004, the first of several successful Popfests hosted by Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. From a 2009 profile of HHBTM’s Mike Turner for Blur Magazine:
‘There’s a time from 2002 to 2003 where all the things that came out were Americana,’ Turner [said]. ‘It wasn’t Elephant 6, it wasn’t pop, it was very much roots oriented acoustic music — folky ’60s based. And right after that there may have been more like psychedelic pop stuff, which led to the twee pop.’ And it was at the time of more twee when Turner, living in Panama City, Fla. decided to take a chance on creating a music festival — 400 miles away in Athens. Set to play at Tasty World and the 40 Watt Club, Popfest 2004 saw the 50 or so bands (including Sunshine Fix and the Rosebuds) play four days and nights in early August. Turner moved to town just in time for the festival’s festivities. ‘I thought, you know what, I’m just going to put together a festival,’ Turner said, laughing. ‘I’d been visiting Athens and I fell in love with it . . . I made friends with people who were putting out records at that time. So I just moved up here and put together a festival with no real job. The first year of the festival was a success in that it went off.’ With Eric Hernandez at his side as the festival’s stage manager (he also does artwork for the label), Turner knew he had a good idea, but with several kinks to work out. ‘I learned everything not to do, then it was trying to fix that and make back the money that was lost,’ Turner said.
August 5th – At Castle Clinton in Battery Park, NYC, Beulah plays its final show. The band officially calls it quits. Brian Heater (who took the photo above) interviewed Miles Kurosky before the final concert:
[Kurosky] asks me about the weather. The reports haven’t been all that promising as of late. It’s overcast, definitely something to be concerned about a few hours before performing under the open sky. It likes to rain here in August, and often does so without much warning. A mother sent Kurosky an e-mail a few days before. Her daughter is flying out from Kansas City to catch the band’s final show. What will happen if it rains? Kurosky hasn’t sent a reply. He doesn’t know the answer. We exchange a few Keith Relf/electrocution jokes, and then make our way into the hotel room that he is sharing with Beulah’s guitar-playing keyboardist Patrick Abernathy. The New York show has allowed the band the opportunity to stay two per room, instead of their customary three. Rooms on other floors of the hotel are housing Beulah wives, Beulah girlfriends and a Beulah baby. Miles Kurosky looks calm. He has skipped a day or two’s shave. He admits that he feels ‘a bit loopy’ without his coffee, and occupies himself by re-stringing his guitar—a shiny red Gibson—throughout the bulk of our interview, but otherwise it’s fairly easy to tell that this is not a man deep in the grip of some existential crisis. His answers are easy and forthcoming, and the muckraker in me feels a slightly sadistic tinge of disappointment, realizing that Beulah’s is not a breakup born of any of the usual rock tabloid fodder. ‘I think like anything,’ Kurosky begins, ‘I mean with any career, you just know when you’re done. And it isn’t so much a burned out thing, or being bummed or upset with one another. You reach a point where you go, “well what else are we going to do?”…I think we’re pretty happy,’ he admits. ‘It seems like we were a success in terms of what we did. In this business, it’s hard to sell 500 records. It really is. There are plenty of bands that are just trying to get a fucking record label to put out their record…I think we were a pretty good band when I look back on it. I think we made good records.’ …When I ask him what he plans on doing, his answer comes easily: ‘I plan on golfing. I fucking love golfing.’ With half a record’s worth of songs already, and the promise of collaboration with ex-Beulahs should the recording process ever ensue, it seems a bit early to drop Kurosky off into the indie rock retirement home, though he insists that maybe a final act isn’t such a bad thing after all. ‘It’s good to have a last show. I like to have an ending to it. I don’t think there’ll ever be a reunion.’ A few hours later, Beulah is laid to rest. The show starts earlier than scheduled, with hopes of beating the rain, and though the sky opens up two songs into the set, the rain clouds soon part, and after a few last request, some teary-eyed sing alongs, a couple of microphone-to-mouth electric shocks, and an encore featuring ‘Life During Wartime,’ the band finishes their last show under the watch of the nearby Statue of Liberty. A good band may be easy to kill, but the show will always go on.
Cooking with Rockstars: Miles Kurosky, interviewed as Beulah draws their final tour to a close.
August 17th – The Sunshine Fix: Green Imagination CD (a limited release included a DVD of SF videos bundled with the CD). Dayton Daily News said: “The second album by The Sunshine Fix, Green Imagination (SpinArt) shows the mature confidence and relative restraint of Bill Doss, a grad of the band The Olivia Tremor Control, indie-rock masters of kitchen-sink psychedelia. Though lacking the colorful rushes of the Tremor Control, Doss’ latest project steadily unearths power-pop nuggets with the unforced ease of late ’70s Todd Rundgren or many a Beatles album cut. Yet Green Imagination pulls out stops on occasion: A few songs use a children’s choir, a gimmick that never fails.” In 2006, Bill Doss explained to Optical Atlas how he was able to snag the background vocals of the Georgia’s Children Chorus for “What Do You Know” and “Runaway Run”:
I had always wanted to have kids involved in my music and the song ‘Runaway Run’ seemed like the perfect place to do this. My wife, Amy, actually set that up for me through her boss. He is involved with the local Presbyterian church here in Athens and the Georgia Children’s Choir is part of that church. So, he put in a call to the choir director and we met and went over the songs so that they could make sure there was nothing too off-color for the kids to sing. I was worried that the song might be too difficult for children to sing but to my surprise, the material they were warming up with was far more complicated than what I had for them! In fact, they learned and perfected the parts so quickly and with so much time left that I decided to also have them sing the refrain on ‘What Do You Know,’ which wasn’t originally planned. The director even had us all go into a classroom to discuss each line of the lyrics individually so that the children could completely understand what they would be singing. This was a little uncomfortable because of the lyrical content. I wouldn’t say that the lyrics are anti-God or anything like that–quite to the contrary–but they are definitely not pro-Christianity or even pro-organized religion. They more refer to a oneness that is expressed better in religions like Taoism. I think ambiguity helped mask that fact. Either that or the kids were down with the Tao! My goal now is to have the kids sing every song on my next record and me not sing at all. I prefer the sound of their voices to mine!
August 31st – The Minders’ Hooray for Tuesday is reissued on Future Farmer with bonus tracks.
September 14th – The High Water Marks: Songs About the Ocean. Jason Hailman: “Songs About the Ocean is for those who’ve always wished Apples in Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney contributed more to the Apples‘ discography. Here, Sidney teams up with Norwegian Per Ole Bratset to create a set of shimmery pop songs. When Sidney sings, ‘Time is so short, so feel everything,’ it’s more than a trite sentiment or thesis statement – it’s a small rebellion against modern alienation.” Uncut Magazine: “Clock-stopping, pulse-raising mega-pop. The sound of sherbert and acid fizzing in tandem drives this monumental example of psych-pop.”
October – The Sixth Great Lake: Sunday Bridge. A relatively obscure sophomore release from a band once well-promoted on Kindercore Records, but AllMusic wrote: “The Sixth Great Lake returns with the subdued Sunday Bridge, a vinyl-only release on Memphis-based Tup Keewah Recordings. The band continues to conjure up country, folk and Southern spirits with their relaxed, acoustic approach. The group shares songwriting duties equally, with Zach Ward, Chris Ziter and Michael Barrett all contributing four songs each…The album’s intimacy makes it an excellent follow-up to 2001’s Up the Country.” I write (here, now) that this is actually one of my favorite E6-related albums of the decade. Not too many people have heard it, but it’s a gorgeous album which has aged beautifully.
October 5th – The Late B.P. Helium: Amok. Bryan Poole (of Montreal, Elf Power) finally issues a solo album. He described the roots of the song “They Broke the Speed of Light” to Optical Atlas in 2006:
This song is one of many I have where I’m looking for what I feel I’ve lost. It’s the deep, dark, sad part of me. And it’s the reason I call myself The Late B.P. Helium. I felt so god-like as a child. I really believed that I had special powers and insight. I was emboldened. I used to have ‘tricks’ to put myself into trances where time seemed to race. I’d ponder and concentrate and achieve what now seem to have been out of body experiences. I was über confident. But of course, as puberty hit and nerdom arose and the torture of social interactions deteriorated my confidence, I slowly lost this grand light. Also, around the time I was 18, I was put on a medication I was told was for depression. Later in my mid-twenties I found out it was for people whose minds are racing. I’ve never felt the same since. I can’t concentrate the way I used to. And that realm inside my head seems but a memory. The title refers to a story I heard on NPR about scientists being able to freeze light and also to accelerate light past the known limit. It seemed fitting. The drums on the original were played again by old roommate, Ed Livingood. I was trying to help Adrian Finch [Masters of the Hemisphere] record some songs and he came up with the drumbeat, but neither of us could play it. So I grabbed Ed and he bashed out this beat. Adrian ditched the song. I stole the drum bit for myself and wrote the song. I find beats are a door to different songs for me. Drones are another door.
October – November – Elf Power tours, reunited (briefly) with B.P. Helium in the band.
October 12th – of Montreal: The Gladiator Nightstick Collection.
Robert Schneider and Brian Wilson, post-reconciliation (2008)
October 21st – Robert Schneider interviews Brian Wilson for Denver’s Westword. “Today, I interviewed my greatest hero in the whole world, and I freaked him out. Brian Wilson doesn’t know anything about me or my band. He doesn’t know that I’m famously just as spacey as he is. He doesn’t know that, like him, I’m good at singing pop songs and making records for stoned college kids to listen to through headphones. All Brian Wilson knows about me is that I am one nervous interviewing dude. Brian Wilson might tell you that, despite my ambitions, I should not be a journalist. Brian Wilson might even have my ‘Scoop’ hat revoked. See, I have a lot of nervous energy. I talk too much. I talk too fast. I’ve really tried to cut down on my sugar intake, but sugar just makes me feel so happy, you know? Still, I think I did a pretty good job of containing my excitement when I answered the phone and it was Beach Boy Brian Wilson. But as things went along, the pace of our conversation picked up speed like the brakes had been cut. He fed off my nervousness, and I fed off him feeding off me. Today I irritated Brian Wilson. I flustered Brian Wilson. I out-spaced-out Brian Wilson. Magazines of the world, is there anybody else you want me to interview? Let me at ‘em.” Sample exchange from the interview:
RS: I saw you perform SMiLE twice last summer in London, and I also saw Pet Sounds a few years ago in Denver. You seem really happy and relaxed, like you’re enjoying yourself. It’s really impressive to me. Being on tour for me is kind of weird, because you’re kind of in this suspended state, and your environment’s always changing.
BW: Okay, what’s your last name?
RS: Schneider.
BW: Schneider?
RS: Yeah, I play in a band called The Apples in Stereo.
BW: I see. Okay, now I see what’s going on here.
RS: But I like being on tour, because my responsibilities are very limited and specific. Are you enjoying touring and playing with your new band right now?
BW: Uh, yes.
RS: Does it wear you out?
BW: No.
October 26th – Ulysses: 010. The Pop Cult interviews Robert Schneider about Ulysses:
Just recently, I got finished with a solo album this last summer called By the Way of Marbles. It’s my band name for my solo stuff. I wanted to record the record a couple of years ago but I was just having a hard time getting inspiration to do it. I needed to record a record because I owed it to my record label SpinArt. I signed a contract for it a couple of years before. John Ferguson and Ben Fulton from Big Fresh have amazing recordings and I love to see them live. I just thought, watching them, that those two guys might be fun guys to get together with, try to record, I thought that I might be able to get more excited about my Marbles record if i got a little band together. The Apples has just gotten done. We had just finished touring for our last album pretty heavily and in those tours there have been a lot of changes in my life and at the same time I started to write songs in a really different style. We were in Spain on tour and one night in Barcelona, I sort of had this half-dream, the sound of music, and I wanted to start writing songs that were nothing like the Apples songs, or any other songs that I had written before as far as the field goes, the directness, and lyrical nature. That’s what I really wanted to focus on. Writing lyrics that were very direct. It was more of a musical style dealing with the kinds of chords I used and the way I played guitar or sang the lyrics. I started writing these songs and they didn’t fit into the Apples or the Marbles record, which had songs that were really poppy. I got together with Ben and John one night at John’s house and we were going to start rehearsing songs. John was on drums and Ben was on synthesizer. They were going to play other things on the record but it was just the instruments we had around. I kind of wanted to teach them the songs on instruments they may not even play on the record just so they could get to know the songs from the inside-out. Before we started playing my Marbles songs I said ‘Hey, I have this new song. Can we try this real quick just to see what this sounds like?’ I think it was ‘Evening Star.’ It’s kind of Velvet Undergroundy kind of song, kind of poppy. We started playing it and it sounded great. I realized it sounded like a band, like a new band. I had them playing styles or instruments that they didn’t usually play. Ben tends to play more flourishy stuff on the keyboards in Big Fresh than he plays in Ulysses. He had to play bass and then filter the synthesizer with his other hand. Then John is an excellent drummer, but it’s the instrument he’s least comfortable on, so I like the idea of putting him on an instrument he’s awkward on. We recorded our album just about two months after we started the band I think.
Magnet Magazine – “Fresh Fruit: The Apples Have Fallen from the Tree” by Matthew Fritch:
Robert Schneider has been known to have a few fires going at once, but his main flame—The Apples in Stereo—is eerily dim at the moment. The band’s most recent album, Velocity of Sound, appeared in 2002, about the same time Schneider separated from his wife, Apples drummer Hilarie Sidney. Both members of the now-divorced couple have recently debuted new groups. Schneider has been focusing on Ulysses, a quartet he formed with members of Lexington, KY, bands Big Fresh and Hair Police. ‘I got sort of burned out on making huge, ambitious productions,’ says Schneider of 010 (Eenie Meenie), which was recorded in just four hours. Ulysses will please those disappointed by the sugary, kiddie-punk buzz of the Apples’ recent work; 010 offers the more plaintive, moody sounds of Pavement or the Velvet Underground. Says Schneider, ‘It definitely influenced the overall mood of loneliness or emptiness, but I wasn’t specifically writing about [Sidney]. I’ve always written like that. I just decided to focus on that and push that particular style.’ ‘It’s all too personal for me,’ says Sidney of 010’s lyrical content. ‘People will read into it how they will.’ Sidney’s combo, The High Water Marks, issued Songs About the Ocean (also on Eenie Meenie) in September. After meeting songwriting partner (and now husband) Per Ole Bratset in Oslo, Norway, in 2002, the two began tradiing four-track cassette tapes through the mail. An upbeat, jangling pop effort on which Sidney shares vocal and guitar duties with Bratset, Ocean doesn’t fall too far from the Apples tree. ‘Robert writes so many songs that there wasn’t room for me [in the Apples],’ says Sidney. ‘It’s really nice to have another outlet.’ Although members of the Apples are booked through 2004—guitarist John Hill plays in Dressy Bessy, bassist Eric Allen performs with jazz combo the Perry Weisman 3 and Schneider will issue Expo, an album by his Marbles side project, early next year—signs indicate the core band isn’t history just yet. ‘I’ve got a lot of songs written for our new album,’ says Schneider. ‘Our marriage breaking up was a bump in the road, but the band has actually been easier since we broke up.’
James Husband’s excellent debut album A Parallax I, a decade in the making, is released today on Polyvinyl Records. I highly recommend it to all fans of E6 or of Montreal.
Concurrently, Polyvinyl is reissuing on vinyl the early of Montreal records Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies, Aldhils Arboretum, The Early Four Track Recordings, The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit’s Flower, and The Bedside Drama, and you can purchase all of them now at the label’s website. This is the vinyl debut of The Early Four Track Recordings and The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit’s Flower.
James Husband’s debut album A Parallax I is shipping now, if you pre-ordered from Polyvinyl Records (I just got my copy in the mail on Saturday, and I’m listening to it as I’m writing this…). And the Austinist has just posted a great interview with Jamey, conducted from his porch while he was locked out of his house.
In last night’s post about the new James Husband album A Parallax I, I neglected to mention that he has some tour dates lined up in support of the album. Here they are, courtesy Polyvinyl Records:
10/23/09 New York, NY @ CMJ
11/02/09 Orlando, FL @ The Social w/Why?
11/03/09 Gainesville, FL @ Common Grounds w/Why?
11/04/09 Tallahassee, FL @ Club Down Under w/Why?
11/07/09 Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Fest
James Huggins’ solo recording project James Husband has been known mainly to Elephant 6 and of Montreal obsessives who may have heard some tracks on his MySpace, or via CD-Rs passed around at shows. Earlier this year Huggins dropped word that Polyvinyl was showing interest in releasing his music officially, and a short while later they created a space for him on the label’s website as one of their signed artists. Now, at long last, comes the album announcement.
A Parallax I will be released October 27th, a 12-track sampling of James Husband’s decade-plus collection of recordings. According to the press release, “the first third of the album was recorded on cassette, the next third on strictly analog and the last third in a straight digital format,” which implies a kind of chronology, or at least progression, represented in the track sequencing (below). The influences run the gamut, from 60’s psych to the witty, playful pop he’s currently playing as a member of of Montreal–so don’t judge the album by its cover, which seems strictly early-80’s Lionel Richie. (God, my childhood spent in department stores waiting for my mother and sister to come out of the dressing room!) Incidentally, those who find themselves newfound James Husband fans can (and should) also seek out Great Lakes, in particular their first, Zombies-esque album; Huggins sings vocals on the terrific “Virgil.”
Anyway, pre-order now to get a limited edition deluxe CD, which comes with a James Husband EP featuring 6 covers. You can also get a double-gatefold LP with the album on 180-gram pink vinyl (with digital download code). (Pitchfork mentions the of Montreal/James Husband split 7″ on the Happy Happy Birthday to Me Singles club as though it’s forthcoming, but it’s already been released, and the singles club is almost entirely sold out–perhaps, by the time I finish writing this sentence, completely sold out.) Here’s the track listing with a sample MP3:
A Parallax I,
by James Husband
1 Little Thrills
2 A Grave in the Gravel 3 Greyscale
4 Elephant Alibi
5 Take the Train
6 No No Baby
7 While the Boys Went Down Under
8 Window
9 Waiting on Rayne
10 Driving Around
11 The Darkestness
12 The Great Grand Ghosts of Buena Vista GA
Polyvinyl is simultaneously repressing some classic of Montreal albums on 180-gram vinyl. Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies! Aldhils Arboretum! The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit’s Flower! The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy! The Early Four Track Recordings! Expect those to be released on October 27th as well, but if you want everything, you can pre-order the whole lot right now.
Circulatory System have been added to the lineup of this year’s Flaming Lips-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties New York. The festival is held September 11-13 in Kutshers Country Club, Monticello, NY. Tickets are available here. Thanks to Kathy for the tip.
Speaking of Circulatory System, I’m debuting their new track “Overjoyed” in a long-overdue update to the Optical Atlas streaming jukebox. The track is, of course, part of the wonder that is Signal Morning, released September 8th on Cloud Recordings. Also in the update: vintage Elephant 6 recordings from Will Cullen Hart’s old recording project, Always Red Society, and Bill Doss’ The Sunshine Fix, both tracks available now on a split 7″ released as part of Happy Happy Birthday to Me Singles Club. I’ve grouped all three together in the playlist for an old-fashioned Olivia Tremor Control buzz. Plus: new music from Robert Schneider’s psych band Thee American Revolution, of Montreal covering Prince for SPIN Magazine, a track from James Husband’s upcoming solo album on Polyvinyl Records, new songs from Casper & the Cookies and Nesey Gallons, and a pair of older cuts from Elf Power and Great Lakes.
