Hilly Eye at Acheron earlier this month (more by Andrew St. Clair)

Annual all ages, DIY music festival Hillstock is returning to Brooklyn this year from June 22-24 across four spaces in Clinton Hill. Day 1 (6/22) begins with a kickoff party at Free Candy on 905 Atlantic Ave with Math the Band, Ava Luna, Hop Along, Heaven's Gate, and more. On day 2 (6/23) we'll get the free block party at 106 Emerson Place with Hilly Eye, The Suzan, Life Size Maps, Swear and Shake, surprise guests and more, followed by a $5 afterparty with Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt, Twitchers, Nuclear Santa Claust, and Sega Genocide. The fest wraps up on 6/24 with a backyard picnic at 402½ Park Avenue headlined by surprise guests and also featuring Archipelago, Emilyn Brodsky, Modern Hut, and more.

The full schedule, flier and a trailer video are below...

Continue reading "Hillstock returning to Brooklyn in June (Hilly Eye, The Suzan, Math the Band, Ava Luna & more)"

Frankie Rose @ Township (more by Sarah Frankie Linder)

In addition to the Jens Lekman/Of Montreal show at Williamsburg Park, the Northside Festival (June 14 - 17) just announced a slew of confirmed artists who'll be playing this year, including Future of the Left, the U.S. debut of Iceage-spinoff Vår (formerly War), Frankie Rose (playing the BrooklynVegan showcase at Music Hall of Williamsburg with more TBA), Grass Widow, Cleveland's Gap Dream, Wymond Miles of the Fresh & Onlys,  Chain & the Gang, Kool Keith and more.

Other 2012 Northside Festival artists we've already posted about include Olivia Tremor Control, GZA, Neil Hamburger, Eternal Summers, Ceremony and Screaming Females and Royal Headache. Badges are on sale now and the full list of confirmed 2012 Northside artists is below.

Continue reading "more Northside Festival artists announced (Frankie Rose, Grass Widow, Felice Brothers, Buke & Gass, Vår, Gap Dream & more)"

DOWNLOAD: La Sera - "Please Be My Third Eye" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: La Sera - "Break My Heart" (MP3)

La Sera at the Bell House in 2011 (more by Jessica Amaya)

Vivian Girl Kickball Katy Goodman released her second album as La Sera, Sees the Light, earlier this year via Hardly Art. The album continues in the vein of the catchy indie pop of her 2011 self titled debut. You can grab two tracks from the new album, "Please By My Third Eye" and "Break My Heart" above or stream them below.

La Sera will kick off a tour this month in support of the album which culminates in a NYC show at Cameo Gallery on May 19 with Life Size Maps and The New Lines. Tickets are on sale now.

Vivian Girl Cassie Ramone's band The Babies plays Glasslands on June 6 with Nude Beach.

All La Sera dates and streams below...

Continue reading "La Sera going on May tour (dates & MP3s)"

The Babies @ Cake Shop - 2/6/2012 (more by Jessica Amaya)

285 Kent, the most difficult venue to keep track of in terms of who is playing, is hosting a show TONIGHT (Thursday, 2/9):

===| THURSDAY 2/9 @ 285 KENT AVE |====
:: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks
:::: the Babies
:::::: Darlings
:::::::: Life Size Maps --- ep release
:::::::::: Heaven's Gate
285 Kent Ave @ South 1st | Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Bedford, G-Metropolitan, JM-Marcy | 8pm | $7-$10 sliding scale donation | all ages

For the Babies, that will be at least their 2nd show this week, as they opened for Widowspeak and the Dum Dum Girls at Cake Shop on Monday. For Babies member Cassie Ramone, it will be at least the 2nd of three shows because Vivian Girls are also playing a free NYC event on Friday. Details below...

Continue reading "Vivian Girls playing free Fashion Week event; The Babies are at 285 Kent tonight with Alex Bleeker"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Cloud Nothings - "No Future/No Past" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Cloud Nothings - "Stay Useless" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: My Best Fiend - "Higher Palms" (MP3)

Nada Surf

The column comes early as it's a busy week and there are lots of shows to talk about. First up, venerable NYC trio Nada Surf's new album, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy, is out today and the band play Bowery Ballroom this evening to celebrate. Tonight's show is sold out but Nada Surf will be streaming the show live via their YouTube channel starting at 10PM. The band then head out for a good two months of touring and all dates are at the bottom of this post.

The band's seventh album, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy, is another fine record in Nada Surf's catalog of positive-vibe guitar pop, bolstered this time out by Doug Gillard who provides a lot of great lead work. This kind of music may not be in fashion right now, but it also never really goes out of style. And they do it really well You can stream or download the ebullient first single "Waiting for Something" at the bottom of this post and Spotify users can listen to the album here.

Cloud Nothings - 'Attack on Memory'

Also out today: Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory which, as Andrew noted a couple weeks ago, is much more sophisticated and agressive than the tuneful pop-punk the band have released in the past. They're still writing catchy songs -- check out "Stay Useless at the top of this post -- but the shift is fairly radical, so much so that main man Dylan Baldi briefly considered changing the name of the band. (It's not that radical.) It's a very good album, and you can listen to it on Spotify and watch the brand-new video for "No Future/No Past" at the bottom of this post.

The album, you may have seen, got Best New Music on the 'Fork yesterday, and despite this there are still tickets to be had for Cloud Nothings' show this Thursday (1/26) at The Studio @ Webster Hall though I imagine not for long. Knowing how good the band are live (what a drummer!) I'm really anxious to hear these songs live. It's a one-off show, but the band will tour starting mid-February including, need I say it, time in Austin for SXSW. All dates are at the bottom of this post.

The Hundred in the Hands - Bowery Ballroom Feb. 2011 (more)
 

The Hundred in the Hands are playing their first show in a long time this Friday (1/27) at Glasslands, which will give us the first taste of the duo's second album which will be out on Warp at some point this year. While they haven't released any tracks from it yet, they are still updating the THITH Zine, the band's culture zine that most recently interview artist Zander Blom. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the archives that's worth checking out.

My Best Fiend

A lot of people will be at Glasslands on Friday just to check out THITH's Warp labelmates My Best Fiend whose album In Ghostlike Fading is out February 21. My Best Fiend are not your typical Warp act, closer to the space blues of Spiritualized or My Morning Jacket (or Neil Young) than the electronic music that fills most of the label's roster. The band have been plugging away in the Brooklyn scene for upwards of seven years and its good to see it pay off for them. You can download album-opener "Higher Palms" at the top of this post and you can stream "Cracking Eggs" (which features Light Asylum's Shannon Fuchness) further down.

The Glasslands show also features duo Bikini who make unapologetic four-on-the-floor dancefloor fodder, and Bear in Heaven will be DJing between sets, hopefully not playing all the records at 400,000% slower than normal.

Guy Harvey

And finally we have Florida's Guy Harvey, which is a band and not a solo artist and should not to be confused with Elbow frontman Guy Garvey which I did for half a second. The band are on tour with Gainsville residents Averkiou and hit NYC this weekend for two shows: Friday (1/27) at Cake Shop and Saturday (1/28) at Death by Audio. All GH/Averkiou dates are at the bottom of this post.

You may recognize Guy Harvey frontman Adam Perry from his moonlighting gig as an auxiliary member of Surfer Blood. There's not a lot of Guy Harvey music out there to listen to, but both sides of a 2010 7" (streamable below) are ace, with a strong Flying Nun influence. If you liked the Twerps album from last year, give Guy Harvey a listen. Averkiou, meanwhile, make fuzzy, shoegazy pop not too far from early Teenage Fanclub. Check out a few streaming tracks at the bottom of this post.

Friday's Cake Shop show is with Byrdsy locals Slow Country whose new album is a name-your-price download at their Bandcamp and is quite nice. Saturday's show at Death by Audio also has underrated Brooklyn bands I'm Turning Into and Bright Lights. Either show is worth checking out. Or go to both!

That's the main stuff for this week. Below are a few more picks, day-by-day, of shows not covered otherwise.

The Hairs

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24

There's a TWII-approved line-up at East Village mainstay Lit Lounge -- that is now booking bands I've heard of again -- with The Hairs (new single out next month), Pigeons, and Gross Relations.

Friends have shown up on most of the "Bands to Watch in 2012" lists. Go watch them in 2012, tonight, at Cameo as part of a very solid bill with Phonetag and Spanish Prisoners.

continued below...

Continue reading "Nada Surf, Cloud Nothings, Hundred in the Hands, My Best Fiend, Guy Harvey, Averkiou & more in This Week in Indie"