DOWNLOAD: Fan Modine - Julu Road (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Fan Modine - Through the Valley (MP3)

Go Sailor may be band from the past, but they have found Twitter and that's where the above message was posted last night during the NYC Popfest opening night show at Cake Shop where sets were played by PET MILK (PA), AMIDA (UK), GOLD-BEARS (GA), SEA LIONS (CA), DREAM DIARY (NYC), and THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART (NYC). Bill says it was surprisingly not that crowded, and that Gold-Bears were the stars of the night ("like Superchunk covering the Wedding Present, that kind of energy"). Pains sounded great too, though Peggy Wang joked, "I think we were better at Popfest '07." Here's a picture from their set at Popfest 2011:

Watch a video of Gold-Bears below.

Go Sailor's tweet also refers to the show they're playing for Popfest at Cameo tonight (5/20). They headline. SODA SHOP (NYC), CAUCUS (JAPAN), THE FELT TIPS (UK), and BETTY AND THE WEREWOLVES (UK) are all also on the bill which Bill discusses in much more detail in his entire fest preview. If you don't have a ticket, they say "LIMITED AMOUNT OF TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR (DAY OF SHOW)."

Go Sailor member Rose Melberg spoke to NY Press. Why did they reunite? "We had a great time when we got together last year for the Slumberland 20 year anniversary shows. So now when an opportunity comes up to play that works out for all of us we figure we might as well do it. It is mostly just a chance for us to hang out with each other since we all live so far apart." Who knows when they'll reunite again, so don't miss your chance tonight.

Popfest continues on Saturday and Sunday, and invividual day tickets are still on sale for both of those shows. Saturday is at Santos Party House. Sunday is the Rock Shop. More about both shows in our guide, but I do want to just remind you that Sunday's headliner is Fan Modine who doesn't get out much, and whose only other scheduled show at the moment is on 5/28 at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC. The Rock Shop show will double as a record release show for Gratitude the Shipper, his first album in seven years. Two songs from that album are re-posted on the top of this post.

But that's not all. As previously mentioned, many of the bands playing Popfest have other stuff scheduled too, and you'll find some of those shows listed HERE, HERE, and HERE. May you have a very great tweekend.

A video of Gold-Bears performing in the Newtown Radio studios, below...

Continue reading "NYC Popfest continues, Gold-Bears played w/ TPOBPAH, Go Sailor is tonight, Fan Modine Sunday"

DOWNLOAD: Sea Lions - All Right (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Gold-Bears - Record Store (MP3)

Sea Lions

As Bill wrote in our NYC Popfest 2011 preview, "Another repeat are Oxnard California's Sea Lions who were one of my favorites last year and who I'm pretty sure will have a record out on Slumberland too."

Sea Lions are playing Popfest, but they also have two other NYC shows coming up (that I could find) four other NYC shows coming up. On May 19th they play the sold out NYC Popfest show at Cake Shop with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Gold-Bears (who play and more. Two days later you can catch them TWICE. They play Saturday night shows at both Glasslands and Death By Audio in Brooklyn on a bill with other Popfest bands, and then the next afternoon, Sunday, 5/22. you can find them at a party in Bushwick. On May 24th they play Brooklyn Fireproof. On May 28th they are back in their home-state for an appearance on a Slumberland showcase at San Francisco Popfest. More details on all those dates, below.

Meanwhile for a taste of NYC Popfest before it even starts, Gold-Bears (who play Cake Shop with Sea Lions) are here and play Brooklyn Fireproof tonight (5/17) with The Hairs (who play Death By Audio with Sea Lions).

The Hairs (the new group from Kevin of Knight School fame) also play Rock Shop Sunday, Cake Shop Monday, and South Street Seaport in July. All dates below...

Continue reading "Gold-Bears are here, Sea Lions are coming, Popfest & other shows too (many w/ the Hairs)"

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)"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Gold-Bears - Record Store (MP3)

Even without Pains, Thursday, May 19th at Cake Shop is a must see. Also playing that NYC Popfest show are their Slumberland labelmates Gold-Bears who have a similar ability to mix sweet melodies with roaring guitars. Their debut album, Are You Falling in Love?, just came out this week and is excellent. If there is a midpoint between The Wedding Present and The Mountain Goats, Gold-Bears may just be that. You can download their track "Record Store" at the top of this post. Gold-Bears haven't played NYC since last year's Popfest (when they played the Saturday matinee show.) More about the Cake Shop lineup and other bands playing Popfest coming soon (stay tuned).

Gold-Bears are on tour now, and if you can't make it to Cake Shop, they also play Brooklyn Fireproof two days earlier (with w/ the Hairs, the Sanctuaries, and Inland Island). All dates and a video are below...

Continue reading "Gold-Bears released an album on Slumberland, on tour now, playing Popfest (MP3, video & dates)"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: The Wake - Oh Pamela (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Neverever - Blue Jeans (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Neverever - Young and Dumb (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Tender Trap - Girls with Guns (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Allo Darlin - Dreaming (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Allo Darlin' - My Heart is a Drummer (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Veronica Falls - Found Love in a Graveyard (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Moustache of Insanity - Amazon Wishlist (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Horowitz - Winona (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Embassy - It Pays to Belong (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Leaving Mornington Crescent - Corners (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Very Truly Yours - I'd Write You a Song (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Pants Yell! - Cold Hands (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Brown Recluse - Night Train (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: BOAT - We've Been Friends Since 1989 (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Bunnygrunt - Hometown Rockstar (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Bears - Wait and See (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Gold-Bears - Tally (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Sea Lions - I Wish I Was Lou Reed (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: One Happy Island - Temporary Tattoo (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Young Friends - Make Out Point (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Apple Orchard - Half Steps to Bright Smiles (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Dream Diary - Bird in My Garden (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: World Atlas - Winter Stories (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: My Teenage Stride - Creep Academy (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Cotton Candy - Fantastic & Spectacular (MP3)

NYC Popfest 2010 starts on Thursday with four days of cheery tunes and good vibes. And with temperatures that are supposed to climb into the '80s, we may finally answer the question, "When is it too hot to wear a vintage cardigan?" In years past, Popfest has played host to the likes of Pains of Being Pure at Heart ('07 & '08), Cats on Fire ('08 & '09), The Radio Dept ('09), BMX Bandits ('07), The Drums ('09), and lots more.

This year's line-up is pop-solid and we're giving away a Festival Pass that will get one person into all four nights. Just send an email to BVCONTESTS@HOTMAIL.COM with the subject line "POPFEST" and we'll pick a winner at random and notify them Wednesday night (tonight). Please note, some of these Popfest shows are 21+.

Festival passes are otherwise sold out, but there are currently still tickets available for all four shows, though I think you might want to act quick on the Cake Shop (5/20) and Don Hills (5/21) shows as they're at small venues. Here's an overview of what's going on, complete with MP3s for almost every band playing (above).

The Wake

Popfest organizers scored a coup getting Scottish indiepop legends The Wake (not the American goth band of the same name) to play the big Saturday (5/22) show at the Bell House. While they the attention their Factory Records labelmates New Order and Happy Mondays (or even A Certain Ratio) received, their catalog is well-regarded, especially 1985's Here Comes Everybody which is a bona fide  indie classic. Check out "O Pamela" at the top of this post. The band's hazy, reverb-laden sound has parallels to current bands like The Radio Dept or Wild Nothing, or any of the chillwave groups out there.  The Wake are working on a new album due out this year. This is their only U.S. show. Stick around after The Wake's show for a DJ set from Victoria Bergsman.

Bunnygrunt

Bunnygrunt date back to the early '90s cuddlecore scene (a genre which now sounds like some kind of porn for Furries) and were contemporaries of bands like Tiger Trap and Tullycraft. Reformed since 2004, these Saint Louis indie legends are pretty much patron saints to Popfest bands.

The Embassy

At the all-day Sunday (5/23) show at The Littlefield show features the first and only U.S. performance by enigmatic Swedish duo The Embassy who's music is somewhere between indiepop and Balearic disco. I liked 2005's Tacking which came out on the Service label, home of Jens Lekman, Studio and The Tough Alliance. Check out "It Pays to Belong" at the top of this post. but the band have been rather quiet since. Maybe we'll find out what's going on with them at the show.

Then there's Veronica Falls play the 5/20 show at Cake Shop. Maybe you saw them this past weekend when they played Glasslands on Saturday and Bruar Falls on Sunday. Their Glasslands performance was great, and they were surprisingly rockin', given the gentle nature of some of their recordings. Singer/guitarist James Hoare is a student of the David Gedge school of manic strumming, especially on their "Found Love in a Graveyard" single that becomes almost like an extended VU jam onstage.

Neverever

Singer Roxanne Clifford and drummer Patrick Doyle were both in Glasgow's The Royal We, whose singer Jihae is now in Neverever who will play the Littlefield show on Sunday. The band also features her n0w-husband Wallace Meek who was in fellow Glaswegian band Bricolage but they now call Los Angeles their home. The band's debut, Angelic Swells, is out next week on Slumberland and is fairly indebted to '60s girl groups. Check out "Blue Genes" at the top of this post. I'll admit that part of me hopes we'll get a Veronica Falls/Neverever supergroup to play Royal We's awesome single "All the Rage" (the band never played America) but I'm not holding my breath.

Tender Trap

Tender Trap play the Friday (5/21) show at Don Hill's which is also the bi-weekly Mondo! party. Not to be confused with anthemic Australian band The Temper Trap, The Tender Trap features Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey who were both in iconic indiepop bands Tallulah Gosh, Heavenly and Marine Research. I was a big fan of their last album, 2006's 6 Billion People, Their new album, Dansette Dansette, is out June 22 on Slumberland Records and you can download "Girls with Guns" from it at the top of this post.

Recently added to Tender Trap's lineup is Elizabeth Darling of Allo Darlin who also play the Don Hills/Mondo! show. Their debut album is out June 7 (in the UK at least, not sure if anyone's grabbed it up stateside) and is full of bouncy and charming guitar pop not too far removed from Belle & Sebastian. Their single "The Polaroid Song" is one of my favorite tracks of 2009 and you can watch the Breakfast Club homage video for it at the bottom of this post. And you can download a couple tracks from the album at the top of this post. Allo Darlin are also making the most of their trip, playing a short East Coast tour. Dates are at the bottom of this post.

Moustache of Insanity

Allo Darlin's Will Harrison also plays in Moustache of Insanity who are playing the free daytime show on Saturday at Spike Hill. Sometimes compared to Moldy Peaches, the band should provide some levity (and cheap keyboards) to the proceedings. Check out "Amazon Wishlist" at the top of this post for an idea of what you're in for, and if you want to hear more, you can download a zip of their new EP here and there are loads of downloads via their website.

Some more UK bands: Horowitz make nerdy, nasally bedroom pop, and hearts!attack are one of the more ramshackle/low-fi groups playing the fest. Good stuff.

Leaving Mornington Crescent

And it wouldn't be a Popfest without some Swedish bands. In addition to The Embassy, there's Leaving Mornington Crescent who play Cake Shop on Thursday, and A Smile and a Whisper at Littlefield on Sunday.

The Don Hill's show on Friday will be the last-ever NYC show for Boston's Pants Yell! who are splitting up after playing a farewell show in their hometown next week.

One of the many highlights of The Bell House show is Seattle's BOAT who will play some non-popfest shows too.

One Happy Island

This will be the second year in a row at Popfest for Chicago's Very Truly Yours, who are playing the e debut LP was just released this spring. You can download at track from it at the top of this post. Recommended if you like winsome, Camera Obscura style. pop.  Also back from last year are Vermont's Smittens (5/21 Don Hill's), and it will be the second Popfest for Boston's One Happy Island who last played it in 2008 and play this year at the Saturday afternoon free show at Spike Hill. Check out "Temporary Tattoo" at the top of this post.

There's a few animal bands (in addition to Bunnygrunt): Cleveland, OH's Bears, who play the Bell House show (5/22), are lush and lovely with gorgeous harmonies. Check out "Wait and See" at the top of this post, whereas Gold Bears (Spike Hill, free day show 5/22) from Atlanta, are more in the shambly tradition of The Shop Assistants and Boyracer. Then there's local duo Elephant Parade (Cake Shop on 5/20) who play laptoppy folk, and the Sea Lions (Oxnard, CA playing the Sunday show at Littlefield) evoke comparisons to the Pastels and The Clean.

Sweater Girls

More out-of-town American bands: Sweater Girls are from Los Angeles and feature Allan Kingdom of C-86-era UK group The Siddelys; and Santa Monica Swim & Dive Club are actually from Michigan and play super-twee acoustic pop; The Young Friends are from Arizona but sound like Scotland 1980; and Apple Orchard hail from Richmond, California and make dreamy, Field Mice-ish pop (lots of free MP3s on their website).

Florida's For Ex-Lovers Only named themselves after a Black Tamborine song and kind of sound like that too. They play Littlefield on Saturday.

Opening the Don Hills show on Friday are Cotton Candy, which is Mark Robinson's current band that also features his wife. There's more a capella covers of old commercial jingles than you might expect from the former frontman of Unrest (who are reforming briefly).

And of course NYC is well represented. In addition to previously mentioned Elephant Parade, indiepop stalwarts My Teenage Stride, who are the only band to have played all for NYC Popfests, will play the big Bell House show on Saturday, as do World Atlas (NYC's answer to Belle & Sebastian); Dream Diary (NYC's answer to The Pastels/Field Mice) play Cake Shop on Thursday, and the shoegazy Corita play the free Saturday afternoon show at Spike Hill. And The Secret History make their third appearance at the Fest at Littlefield on Sunday.

Ok, I think I got everybody in there. Day-by-day Popfest schedule, plus some other tour dates and videos after the jump.

Continue reading "a massive guide to NYC Popfest 2010, lots of MP3s & a chance to win a festival badge "

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Veronica Falls - Found Love in a Graveyard (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Allo Darlin' - My Heart is a Drummer (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: BOAT - Lately (MP3)

The line-up for the fourth annual NYC Popfest has just been announced, which will happen May 20 - 23 at a variety of venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Thirty-two bands from around the world will be playing, and I think it's a pretty strong bunch of bands. Highlights for me include Veronica Falls (pictured above) which features ex-members of The Royal We and Sexy Kids; newly-reformed Glasgow/Factory Records legends The Wake who'll have a new album out this year; London all-girl trio The Tender Trap (not to be confused with The Temper Trap); winsome Allo Darlin' who are also from London and will be at SXSW this year; L.A.'s Neverever (until recently known as the Champagne Socialists); and Seattle's awesome BOAT.

A few MP3s to whet your Popfest appetite. Ticket info hasn't been announced yet, but you can follow the Popfest blog or Twitter for updates. You can check out the full NYC Popfest line-up after the jump.

Continue reading "NYC Popfest 2010 lineup announced (Veronica Falls, The Wake, The Tender Trap, BOAT & more) "