by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: NYC Popfest Mix (Zip)
DOWNLOAD: Pet Milk - Cherry Outline (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Gold-Bears - Record Store (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Sea Lions - All Right (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Go Sailor - Windy (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Soda Shop - Farewell (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Days - Simple Thing (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Days - Downhill (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Fan Modine - Julu Road (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Kids on a Crime Spree - Sweet Tooth (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Silver Swans - Secrets (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Silver Swans - Anyone's Ghost (the National) (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Silver Swans - Mother of Pearl (MP3)

Go Sailor

This week is the fifth-annual NYC Popfest which happens Thursday - Sunday (May 19 - 22) at a variety of NYC and Brooklyn venues, playing host to around 30 bands from around the world. Previous years have seen the likes of The Radio Dept, Pelle Carlberg, The Drums, Love is All, Allo Darlin' and more.

Festival passes are sold out at this point -- as are tickets to Thursday's show at Cake Shop with Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Gold-Bears -- but you can still get tickets to any of the other individual events.

We're also giving away pairs of tickets to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shows. Line-ups for each night are at the bottom of this post. We've got:

1 pair of tickets for Friday night at Cameo
3 pais of tickets for Saturday night at Santos
5 pairs of tickets for the all-day Sunday show at The Rock Shop.

To enter, just send an email to BVCONTESTS@HOTMAIL.COM with the subject line "POPFEST" and the day you want tickets for, aka "POPFEST FRIDAY." We'll pick winners at random. Please note many of these shows are 21+.

This year's Popfest is a nice mix of new and old, jangly and loud. Every year at Popfest I've discovered at least two bands I'd never heard of before who've gone on to be favorites. I imagine this year will be no different. There are some MP3s above, plus a swell 24-song mix the Popfest folks made for your downloadable enjoyment. For this year's preview I'm just going to go through the events day-by-day. Keep reading below...

Continue reading "a guide to NYC Popfest 2011 (with lots of MP3s, day by day analysis & chances to win free tickets too)"

DOWNLOAD: Crystal Stilts - "Shake The Shackles" (MP3)

"We are also playing tomorrow night with Crystal Stilts, German Measles and The Mad Scene (Hamish from the Clean, Girl from Yo La Tengo)..." - Street Chant

Crystal Stilts at Rock Shop (Pascale Gueracague)


Crystal Stilts played Rock Shop on Friday (10/29), days after the release of their new Shake The Shackles 7" via Slumberland Records. Download the title track above and stream both tracks from that release, below.

Crystal Stilts seem to open for half of the indie legends that pass through town (The Vaselines, Dean Wareham playing Galaxie 500, Henry's Dress/Aislers Set, Comet Gain), and/or play with every notable current indie-pop band who are on tour too. They're also part of indie supergroup Cinema Red & Blue which prominently features Comet Gain's David Feck, but also "employs the services of Amy Linton, Hamish Kilgour and Gary Olson." It's not a big surprise then that their recent Rock Shop show with German Measles, The Surprisers and The Mad Scene was equally indie-star studded, though it was the Mad Scene that consisted of regular member and New Zealander/Brooklynite Hamish Kilgour of The Clean along with Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo, Amy Linton of Aislers Set, and Gary Olson of Ladybug Transistor. New Zealand band Street Chant, who were in for CMJ, also played some songs at the show.

If you missed Crystal Stilts over the weekend, you won't have long to wait to catch them again, and for FREE; the Brooklyn band will play a free show at Brooklyn Bowl on 11/14. It's part of the venue's "Local by Local" series of shows. 21+. 8pm show.

Meanwhile, Cinema Red & Blue released their debut LP last month on What's Your Rupture. Crystal Stilts have a new LP on the way as well and though very few details have been released, look for it in early 2011. Until then, tide yourself over by checking out the new 7" tracks streaming below.

Continue reading "Crystal Stilts played w/ a guest-filled Mad Scene, released a 7" (stream it), playing a free show"

DOWNLOAD: Cinema Red & Blue - "Same Mistakes" (MP3)

Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo (more by Abby Braden)

Wooden Shjips will be at ATP NY this weekend (hand-picked by Jim Jarmusch). That's followed by a show at MHOW on 9/6 (tickets) and then more dates north and west as far as Chicago, but then Ripley Johnson of the psychedelic left coast crew will start heading back east for a different string of dates with his other project, Moon Duo. The band will team up with Crystal Stilts and Messages (mems of Psychic Ills) for a show on 9/17 at Knitting Factory. Tickets are on sale.

Crystal Stilts recently played Bowery with Dean Wareham but have otherwise laid relatively low. Members of the band recently completed a new collaborative LP with David Feck of the UK's Comet Gain under the moniker Cinema Red & Blue. You may remember they played here back in September...

"Cinema Red and Blue is a Comet Gain side project featuring frontman David Feck, as well as that band's Anne Laure and Hoffner Burns. They're actually in town to record their album at Gary Olson's Marlborough Studios in Brooklyn and decided to play a show while here. I ran into Feck at a show on Monday and he told me that the album is about half covers and to expect the same from the live show. He rattled off a bunch of the songs they're covering but the only one I remember now is a Julian Cope song from his 1989 album Skellington. The band will be augmented live by former Comet Gain / current Soft City member Phil Sutton, plus JB, Andy and Kyle from Crystal Stilts. I have to imagine Gary Olson will contribute trumpet to at least one song. This should be fun." [Bill]

That self-titled LP is due 9/28 via What's Your Rupture, and features the Vic Godard cover "Same Mistakes" which can download above. Finest Kiss adds that, "the makeshift band also employs the services of Amy Linton, Hamish Kilgour and [as Bill predicted] Gary Olson."

Wooden Shjips released Vol 2 earlier this year, a compilation of rare singles available via Holy Mountain. Moon Duo was recently featured on the Woodist comp Welcome Home / Diggin' The Universe.

Messages (the band featuring members of Psychic Ills) also have another show in the near future, supporting Excepter and Up Died Sound on 10/27 at Coco66.

All tour dates and some video is below....

Continue reading "indie supergroup Cinema Red & Blue LP coming soon (MP3), Crystal Stilts, Moon Duo (a NYC show) & Wooden Shjips too"

DOWNLOAD: Taken By Trees - Watch the Waves (MP3)

"On set with Cults at their video shoot. Video will be amazing." - The Willowz

Will McLaren w/ Cults @ Ridgwood Masonic Temple (more by Jessica Amaya)

Will McLaren, guitar player in Cults, is also a member of longer-running band The Willowz. Cults started out as as duo. Core Cults member Madeline Follin is the sister of Willowz member Richie James Follin. Core Cults member Brian Oblivion used to be the Willowz tour manager. Madeline met Brian through the Willowz and formed Cults. They then added Will Willowz (and others) to the live band. Quiz later. The two bands are touring France together in June.

The Willowz, who recently played a bunch of shows with Delta Spirit, have more recently been taking part in Hot Hot Heat's month-long residency at Public Assembly including the show that happened last night (a few people I know went and watched it after PiL played right next door). The next show is on May 26th.

Victoria B

Will, besides playing at the upcoming Cults dates (which include a Nortside Fest show and a tour with Maps & Atlases), will be joining Taken by Trees (aka Swedish songwriter Victoria Bergsman) at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Tuesday, May 25th. Other guest musicians at the gig will include Mikael Karlsson (who's worked with Lykke Li) on keyboards, Amy Linton from The Aislers Set on drums, and Elsa Chiao on backup vocals. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the show. Details are below.

Taken By Tree's Victoria is also DJing at the Bell House during Pop Fest this weekend.

Videos of the Willowz, all dates, and a live clip and short doc on Taken by Trees' record East of Eden, which came out last September, with the LPR show flyer, below...

Continue reading "Taken By Trees playing LPR after PopFest w/ Amy Linton & Will McLaren who is in The Willowz AND Cults (win tix)"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Summer Cats - Hey You (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Summer Cats - Super (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Summer Cats - Let's Go (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Summer Cats - TV Guide (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Black Tambourine - For Ex-Lovers Only (MP3)

Summer Cats

As previously reported, Australia is invading America (and NYC) this month -- musically speaking -- and another battalion has been added to their ranks: Melbourne's Summer Cats. The band are making the most of their trip with a quick East Coast / Midwest tour -- including Mondo! at Don Hill's on Friday (3/5) and then Bruar Falls in Brooklyn on Sunday (3/7) -- then down to Austin for SXSW, then to California for the West Coast editions of Slumberland's 20th Anniversary concerts.

Summer Cats are an almost quintessentially Slumberland-sounding band: sunny male/female vocals, jangly guitars that sometimes get very very noisy, and vintage organ. The band kind of is vintage Slumberland too -- singer Scott Stevens spent a good portion of the '90s fronting shoegazers The Earthmen, whose "Cool Chick #59" was one of the label's early singles. After a string of 7"s on labels like Popboomerang and Cloudberry, Summer Cats became labelmates of Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Crystal Stilts and released their debut album, Songs for Tuesdays, last year.

There's a brand new single out from the band, "Your Timetable," that definitely dips into the band's distortion-loving side. You can download it's poppier flipside, "TV Guide," at the top of this post. There are three other Summer Cats tunes to download too, do check them out -- good stuff.

As for the West Coast Slumberland 20 shows are happening March 27 in San Francisco (sold out) at the Rickshaw Stop, and then the next night (3/28) at the Echo in Los Angeles. As much as I enjoyed the SL20 show at Bell House back in November, I'm more than a little jealous of the California line-ups, especially the San Francisco one. Both shows are headlined by UK indiepop stalwarts Boyracer who are currently claiming these will be their last-ever shows, plus Henry's Dress (original lineup!!!), Go Sailor (Rose Melberg of Tiger Trap/Softies and Amy Linton of Henry's Dress/Aisler's Set, their first show in 14 years!), and more recent Slumberland acts Brown Recluse, Devon Williams, Neverever (ex Royal We and Bricolage), and third-ever (and fourth-ever) live performances of Sic Alps side project, The How. The Rickshaw Stop show also has local Slumberland act Brilliant Colors. And Summer Cats, of course. Holy crap!

Summer Cats also play the Cake Shop/Slumberland showcase at SXSW (3/19 at the Mohawk)  that also features The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Frankie & the Outs, Grass Widow, Reading Rainbow and Standard Fare (who we just posted about).

Black Tambourine

While on the subject of Slumberland Records, and to make this post as tangential (and Brooklyn Vegan-esque) as possible, as part of the label's 20th anniversary they're putting out a new compilation of one of their earliest bands: the short-lived but highly influential Black Tambourine. The group was made up of Pam Berry (also of Glo-Worm and co-founder of zine chickfactor), Velocity Girl's Archie Moore, Brian Nelson and Mike Schulman who runs Slumberland to this day. This replaces the label's previous Black Tambourine comp, offering up six previously unheard tracks. Two of those tracks are demos and the other four are brand new -- two originals, plus covers of Buddy Holly and Suicide. Out March 30, Black Tambourine will be available on CD and a gatefold double LP. Despite the new recordings, the band aren't getting back together or touring... so don't get too excited (editor's note: though I heard there is a chance of a UK show). There is a new video for their song "For Ex-Lovers Only," which you can watch below (and download an MP3 above).

After the jump there are Summer Cats videos and tour dates, and that Black Tambourine music video, album art and tracklist...

Continue reading "Summer Cats playing NYC, SXSW & LA Slumberland show w/ Henry's Dress & Go Sailor (dates) ++ Black Tambourine comp"

photos by Tim Griffin, words by Bill Pearis

Amy Linton

Frankie Rose

Influential indie label Slumberland Records turned 20 in 2009 and celebrated this landmark with two big birthday shows -- one in Washington DC (where it got its start) and one in Brooklyn (where much of Slumberland's current roster reside). The Bell House show was a cardigan-clad indie marathon, with a nice mix of Slumberland bands (and fans) old and new. It really did feel like a party. There were favors for the guests (a Slumberland rarities compilation CD) and even a few surprises. Slumberland head honcho Mike Schulman joined Philadelphia's Brown Recluse on stage for some well-played tambourine, and Amy Linton, conspicuously absent from the listed proceedings, turned up for an unannounced, too-brief (and crazy loud) set of Henry's Dress and Aislers Set songs with help from Crystal Stilts. There might've even been a cake. With the label going strong, another 20 years doesn't seem entirely out of the question.

Videos (including the entire Henry's Dress/Aislers Set set), plus pictures of all the bands from the whole long, fun night are after the jump....

Continue reading "pics & video from Slumberland's 20th Anniversary party "