by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Teenage Fanclub - Baby Lee (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Vaselines - I Hate the '80s (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Vaselines - Sex with an Ex (MP3)

Like veteran indie bands from Glasgow? Want to see them live for free? Read on.

If the $50 price tag of this Thursday's (9/30) Belle and Sebastian show with Teenage Fanclub at the Williamsburg Waterfront has been scaring you off, we're giving away a pair of tickets to the show. Details below.

We're also giving away THREE pairs of tickets to tomorrow night's (9/28)  Teenage Fanclub/The Clean show at Bowery Ballroom. Details below.

Wait there's more. We're also giving away TWO pairs of tickets to see The Vaselines on October 6 at Webster Hall.  Details below.

The waterfront show on Thursday is the kickoff to Belle and Sebastian's tour. Fellow Glaswegians Teenage Fanclub are opening. Tickets are still available. Let's hope the current rainy forceast changes by then. The band also performs on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday (9/29) night. After the Waterfront show, the band head's to Las Vegas for this weekend's Matador 21 extravaganza, make a short detour into Mexico, and will then backtrack east across North America.

The band's eighth album, Write About Love, will be out October 12 and is Belle & Sebastian's first in nearly five years. A decade and a half into their career, you pretty much know what to expect from Stuart Murdoch, Stevie Jackson and the rest of the band, but since 2001's Dear Catastrophe Waitress the group's quality control has been pretty high. (2006's The Life Pursuit was especially good I thought.) Write About Love is another lovely record in the band's cannon. The vinyl comes with a bonus 7" containing two songs not on the album.

There are a couple of surprising guest vocalists.  Carey Mulligan, Oscar-nominated star of An Education, sings on the album's title track (which you can download for free via a widget at the bottom of this post), and Norah Jones features on "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John."

The band have taken some interesting routes promoting the new album. Earlier this year they encouraged fans to take pictures with the album's title incorporated into the shot, creating a Flickr pool for the project. Murdoch included his favorites in an entertaining half-hour "television" program (not sure if it aired anywhere but online) that is a mix of live performance, audience Q&A, and a discussion of the current state of the music industry. In a cute, charming way, of course. You can watch it below.

It is also worth noting that Belle and Sebastian have some really impressive openers along the way, including The Vaselines (Mexico dates), Versus in Washington D.C., Dean & Britta doing the Galaxie 500 thing in Boston, and Trashcan Sinatras in Seattle. All dates are at the bottom of this post.

Teenage Fanclub, who open the Waterfront show, have two headlining shows of their own -- tonight (9/27) and tomorrow (9/28) -- at Bowery Ballroom. Tickets are still available for both (click the links). Tomorrow's show is the more desirable of the two, with New Zealand indie rock legends The Clean as co-headliners. Merge labelmates The Radar Brother open both shows other dates on the tour.

If you somehow got this far into this post without reading it, we're giving away tickets to the show tomorrow with the Clean. See details below.

Teenage Fanclub's new album on Merge, Shadows, is the band's seventh. Like what I said about Belle and Sebastian above, you know what you're getting with a new TFC album at this point (midtempo, harmony-laden guitar pop indebted to Big Star and The Byrds) but the band has remained amazingly consistent during their 20-year history. It doesn't hurt that they have three very good songwriters in the band. (Though we can all agree Gerry Love is the best, right? No? Your mileage may vary.)  You can stream the whole thing over at Merge's website. And they have always been good live, funny too.

Teenage Fanclub's North American tour with The Radar Brothers takes them across the continent, ending in Vancouver on October 16. All dates are at the bottom of this post.

One of the TFC dates is opening for The Vaselines in DC on Saturday (10/2). That's where the Vaselines are launching their own North American tour. Will there be any musicians over the age of 37 actually in Glasgow next week? The Vaselines tour hits NYC next week when they play Webster Hall on Wednesday, October 6 with openers Jeffrey Lewis and Crystal Stilts. If you haven't heard The Vaselines' new album Sex with an Ex, it picks right up where the band left off 20 years ago: smart, funny, filthy, and catchy as hell. And still genuinely great live.

All tour dates for Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines are below, along with videos, contest details, widgets and whatnot.

Continue reading "Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub & the Vaselines launching tours w/ new albums (WIN TICKETS, get MP3s, dates & stuff) "