by Bill Pearis

Cymbals Eat Guitars @ Bowery Ballroom in May (more by Ryan Muir)

Okay, so Saturday is officially bonkers. I think every band in town this week is playing somewhere, sometimes more than once. There are so many good shows you may get an ulcer trying to narrow down your choices. Here we go:

DAYTIME

Surely there's no place you'd rather be Saturday afternoon than at the free Brooklyn Vegan / Bowery Presents party at Pianos. We've got both floors going, with Cymbals Eat Guitars, Deastro, Pete & the Pirates, Surf City, BEAST, Smith Westerns, Dent May and many more. Plus free Miller and Vitamin Water, and, before and during BEAST's set: free bloody marys. Set times below.

But apparently there are other daytime shows. You might be forgiven if you snuck out and went to Music Snobbery's day party next door at The Living Room. I'm a big fan of Savoir Adore and Sissy Wish, and he's also got Denmark's Choir of Young Believers, Dawn Landes and Bird of Youth.

Then in Williamsburg (which is giving Ludlow St. a run for its money this year)... blogger collective After the Jump have put together a great free show at Brooklyn Bowl, with Surfer Blood, Harlem, Savoir Adore, Soft Black, Grooms, Bear in Heaven, and Small Black. Maybe we'll even get a supergroup of Soft Small Black. Anything can happen on the last day of CMJ.

Then there's the Pitchfork-curated Showpaper benefit at Market Hotel is so big it actually goes till 6AM. (Though it's just DJs after midnight.) It's a good opportunity, especially, for the under-21 crowd to see a lot of the CMJ bands (Surfer Blood, Delorean, Cold Cave) who have otherwise played bars. It's not free, but the $8 goes to keep Showpaper going, which is probably the greatest source for all-ages shows in the city.

Underwater Peoples have put on three showcases during CMJ week, and this last one is at Cameo Gallery. 14 bands from noon to 7PM, including Air Waves, Fluffy Lumbers, Frat Dad, Big Troubles, Spanish Prisoners, and Family Portrait. It may be getting a bit more chilly, but the beachy vibe will be present here this afternoon. Not free, but only $7.

A post with the Saturday night shows is HERE coming soon. In the meantime, it's still Friday night. Saturday day fliers and set times below...

Continue reading "CMJ 2009 - Bill's Saturday daytime picks"

Swedish band First Aid Kit were set to make their U.S. debut at CMJ this year. They had a show scheduled at Joe's Pub, were set to open for School of Seven Bells and The xx at Webster Hall Music Hall of Williamsburg, and play the MusicSnobbery CMJ showcase at Living Room. Luckily, MusicSnobbery got Sissy Wish to replace them on his show.

The cancelation, due to visa issues (the U.S. wouldn't let them in) was just announced, though they seem to allude to it in a message they posted on their website on Septeber 23rd. Maybe they were fighting it. That message and a video below...

Continue reading "First Aid Kit cancels US trip, CMJ shows (visa issues)"

photos by Bao Nguyen

Sissy Wish's trip to NYC from Norway was in a bit of disarray at first, but she/they still ended up playing four shows while they were here. The final one was last night (7/25) at Union Hall. The two before that were both on Wednesday at Pianos (7/22). That's because they played their originally scheduled slot of 7pm, and then were immediately asked by the venue if they wanted to play again that same night at 11:00 (they said yes). The Grates played the same show at 10:00, their 2nd of a three-week residency at the LES club.

I missed The Grates (two weeks in a row so far), but I made it to the early Sissy Wish set. Though I didn't love about half of the songs they played - pop songs in the vein of Robyn, Lykke Li, and Annie (Tori Amos and Kate Bush get thrown around a lot too), overall they were good, with a few hits to make up for the boring ones.

"I'm not sure why Norway's Sissy Wish hasn't gotten more attention in American. Maybe it's the name, which is off-putting. "What am I doing tonight? Going to see Sissy Wish in concert." I digress. Unfortunate moniker or not, her music is really appealing, not that far off from what Lykke Li has everyone in such a tizzy. Her latest album, Beauties Never Die (nominated for a Norwegian Grammy), is dancey, but with an organic feel to it that separates it from the glitchy, Frenchy, dirty, chopped-up sounds that are so in fashion with club-fillers." [Bill Pearis]

Bill wrote that a year ago, and Sissy Wish still haven't really taken off. Their were about 20 people at Pianos - which isn't actually that bad for a 7pm set on a Wednesday (especially considering they said the shows were cancelled on their own MySpace page), but that didn't stop the two-piece band from playing like there was a large audience in front of them.

Front-woman Siri Wålberg, wearing a shirt made of actual cassette tapes (see above and below), jumped around and asked for crowd participation, and she expressed her appreciation for everyone at the show (her 'new friends'). Her Scandinavian accent and non-mastery of the English language came across as endearing all the time, though her male partner in the band (he was wearing an Atari t-shirt) wasn't that happy when she announced how happy they were to have not messed up any songs yet ("you shouldn't have said that"). He played keyboards, guitar, and computer. Strangely, an unrelated band named Sissy Clemens went on right after them (complete coincidence apparently).

How were the Grates? Sissy Wish's Beauties Never Die is out in the US on 22nd of September. More pictures from the show below...

Continue reading "Sissy Wish & The Grates @ Pianos in NYC - pics "

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Yellow Fever - Culver City (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Yellow Fever - Joe Brown (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Fergus & Geronimo - Harder Than It's Ever Been (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Magic Kids - Hey Boy (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Coconut Coolouts - Party Jail (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Seaport Music Festival Sampler (Zip)

YellowFever @ Death By Audio - July 22, 2009 (by Bryan Bruchman)

There are a lot of out-of-town bands I'm looking forward to seeing this weekend, and luckily they're all playing more than once, and many are sharing the same bill.

First is Austin duo Yellow Fever who I have caught a few times in the last year and they are really something special I think. I wrote this the first time I saw them: "Their sound couldn't be more spare -- usually just drums, the simplest guitar (often just single notes, not chords), and Jennifer Moore's understated, kinda haunting voice. It's that space in between the instrumentation that makes them so special. It's a little bit like Young Marble Giants if Beth Orton was the singer instead of Alison Statton." My only complaint would be they are slow on releasing records, but I look forward to hearing new stuff from them while they're here. They played last night at Death by Audio, where Vivian Girls said this via Twitter: "Yellow Fever were amazing tonight! Don't miss their other NYC shows this week." So, yeah, don't miss 'em -- you've got four more chances, including tonight at Cake Shop. All dates HERE.

Fergus & Geronimo

While we're in the Lone Star state, let's talk about another duo, Fergus & Geronimo, who are from Denton, TX and are playing two NYC shows this weekend. Andrew Savage and Jason Kelly are also in such Denton bands as Wax Museums and Teenage Cool Kids respectively, bonded over a love of '60s pop, Motown and psych-rock (a Texas specialty). Those influences come through loud and clear in their music, most of which is, at this point, only available on their MySpace, which was enough to get interest from Tic Tac Totally, Transparent, and Woodsist all of whom will be putting out their records. The Woodsist 7", "Harder Than It's Ever Been," is out now and you can download the A-side at the top of this post. It's a 1:47 pop gem, one of the best of its kind since Box Elders' "Hole in My Head." This is super-catchy stuff, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them this weekend.

Fergus & Geronimo, who are a five-piece when they play live, are at 92 Y Tribeca on Friday (7/24) with Crystal Stilts, Portland's Little Claw and Memphis' Magic Kids who I'll get back to in a second. They also play Saturday (7/25) at Market Hotel, also with Magic Kids, as well as YellowFever and the ever-present (and very good) Beets (who have a tour coming up with the Vivian Girls). Tickets are still on sale for Friday's show.

Magic Kids

Now onto Magic Kids. They're from Memphis and I first heard of them from a MySpace bulletin from Girls who played a show with them and enthusiastically raved about them. There's not a lot of bio info out there, but there seem to be a lot of them, and they clearly love '60s pop: Beach Boys, The Association, Tommy James & the Shondells, etc. The band have a record coming out sometime on Goner (home to Ty Segall and Box Elders and others) and you can download their single "Hey Boy" at the top of this post. They play Cake Shop tonight (7/23), that 92 Y Tribeca show tomorrow (7/24) and Market Hotel on Saturday night (7/25).

Personal and the Pizzas

Also this weekend we've got a couple West Coast bands, both of whom love a good slice, neither of whom seem to mind a little extra cheese, and they play together at Silent Barn on Friday and Cake Shop on Saturday.

Looking like greasers and sounding like New York 1975, Personal & the Pizzas originally hailed from New Jersey but now seem to call San Francisco their home. I'm not sure that there's a whole lot you need to say about these guys, you see their name you hear one song and you kind of know whether you're gonna like it or not. Maybe not for a whole album, but tracks like "I Don't Wanna Be No Personal Pizza" or "Brass Knuckles" would add flavor to any mix, and you just know they'll be fun live. Pizza Slayer interviewed them:

PS: Do you have pizza at all your shows? How does it enhance the experience?

P&P: Everybody loves the pie!! We probably order it like half and half..we're usually pretty broke so it's kinda hard to shell out like 70 or 80 bucks just for the love of it, but we'll do it. We don't care. Everyone loves Pizza and Pop. One time we was all dressed up in haWaiian shirts and coconut tits and all, and then we ordered some a them hawaaiian pizzas and then that delivery chic delivered the pies to us while we was playin with them shirts on and and she didn't know what the hell was goin on.

Meanwhile, Coconut Coolouts are from Seattle and feature not one but two stand-up drummers which would be enough to get me to the show. That and their songs are a lot of fun, sort of bouncy party garage rock and I'm pretty sure they have more songs about Pizza than P&Ps do. For a little more on them, I defer to my blog source for Seattle, The Finest Kiss:

The Coconut Coolouts remind me of the Nuggets box set, where there are so many great bands with seminal songs on those cd's that I had never heard, it's hard to believe that the bands weren't bigger than their regional popularity. The Coconut Coolouts will likely be on on a Nuggets comp sometime in the year 2040 and people will be wondering why they had never heard of these guys with classics like Spinaround, Coconut Weekend, Party Jail and Stickup. Apparently they sometimes dress in banana costumes for gigs, no bananas were on stage but they were throwing out lifesavers saying they were acid.

Personal & the Pizza and Coconut Coolouts have a split tour "Pizza Army" 7" that you'll wanna pick up at the merch table. Both NYC shows and a bunch of their other tour dates are with Tyvek.

Coconut Coolouts

A few more shows of interest this weekend. Black Moth Super Rainbow make their second Seaport Music series appearance on Friday (their first was in 2007 opening for Fugiya & Miyagi), this time headlining. Their latest album, Eating Us, was produced by Dave Fridman (Flaming Lips, MGMT among other things) and is pretty good. Opening will be low fi electro goths Blank Dogs whose new album, Under and Under, on In the Red Records I like a lot. They are also a band that benefits from good sound, something the Seaport has brought to every show this year. (Here We Go Magic in particular sounded stellar.) Also playing is one-man experimental band Dan Friel. Between the three acts there's gonna be a lot of temperamental old synthesizers, patch bays and homemade equipment on the Seaport stage -- let's hope it doesn't rain. I should also mention that Seaport Music has a "digital mixtape" you can download via Insound that features 15 of the acts playing this year, including all three of this week's acts (plus Superchunk, Casiokids and more). Download link is at the top of this post.

And don't forget Sissy Wish has added another show while in NY -- she plays Union Hall on Saturday night. She's better than her name.

Tour dates and video after the jump...

Continue reading "Fergus & Geronimo, Coconut Coolouts, Magic Kids, Personal & the Pizzas, YellowFever & more in This Week in Indie"

Sissy Wish, who played Pianos last night (7/20), and is playing Pianos tomorrow (7/22), is NOT playing The Bell House tonight (7/21), but is now playing Union Hall on Saturday (7/25).

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Sissy Wish - Dwts (MP3)

Norwegian electro-pop singer Sissy Wish is back in New York this week with two shows at Pianos: tonight (7/20) with Cincinnati's Slow Claw and locals Ghost Robot Ninja Bear, and on Wednesday (7/22) with The Grates. Both shows, Sissy Wish is on first. There may be a free show tomorrow as well at Bell House but that is still being sorted out.

It was almost a year ago exactly that Sissy Wish (real name Siri Ålberg) was in town. Her 2007 album, Beauties Never Die, has been available digitally since last year but is finally getting an official U.S. release on September 22. Pitchfork gave it an 8.0 in April:

The pseudonym may initially evoke images of cardigan-clad musicians strumming playground-set songs, but Ålberg's music is anything but twee and naïve. Rather, the name Sissy Wish implies a combination of playfulness and wistfulness-- two qualities in good supply on Ålberg's third full-length. Originally released in Norway in 2007 and finally getting a U.S. release this spring, Beauties Never Die balances maturity and wonder as it takes a hard left turn away from the guitar-driven rock of the first two Sissy Wish albums. Instead, Ålberg and producer Jørgen Træn toy with computers, synths, and a few live instruments to animate these 10 inventive, diverse tracks. As such, the album shares some similarities with recent efforts by fellow Scandinavian dancing queens Annie and Sally Shapiro, but it sounds as though Ålberg has arrived at this new sound not through a well-stocked record collection or a thorough knowledge of pop history (although one expects she has both), but by giving full rein to all her personality quirks and musical curiosities.

You can download her single "Dwts" at the top of this post and you can stream the whole thing at Afternoon Records' website. If you don't catch her this week, Sissy Wish will be back in the States this fall. All upcoming 2009 dates and a video after the jump...

Continue reading "Sissy Wish is here - MP3, 2 or 3 NY shows (1 w/ the Grates)"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: The Crimea - Loop a Loop (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Crimea - Lottery Winners on Acid (MP3)

The Crimea

Just a couple considerations for what I'm sure is an already busy weekend.

Touring here for what I'm pretty sure is the first time are London five-piece The Crimea, who are really easy to write about, even without actually listening to their music, because there's lots of interesting factoids. John Peel loved them, and their 2002 independent single "Lottery Winners on Acid" got them signed to Warner Brothers who put out their 2005 debut Tragedy Rocks. A re-release of "Lottery Winners" scraped the UK Singles Charts and then they were then unceremoniously dropped by WB soon after. Pressing on, they released their second album, Secrets of the Witching Hour, forfree via their website last year (before Radiohead did it, mind you) and put out 16 remixes of the single "Loop a Loop" via 16 blogs (including Music Like Dirt and Nothing But Greenlights). Oh, and singer Davy Macmanus is brother of superstar BBC1 DJ Annie Mac.

While it might not scale the heights of Tragedy Rocks, Secrets of the Witching Hour is as good album, full of anthemic (but not too anthemic) songs, punctuated by the McManus' world-weary lyrics and vocals. Songs like "Loop a Loop" don't sound like much at first but then you sort of catch yourself digging it halfway through. A lot of their songs catch you off guard like that. Will they be any good live? Find out Saturday (7/12) at Cake Shop or Sunday (7/13) at Union Hall. There's also a 7/14 date for "McCarren Park" but what exactly that means I'm not sure. Full tourdates below.

Also visiting this weekend are New Zealand's Cut Off Your Hands who just wrapped up a short West Coast tour with We Are Scientists. You might have seen last year at BV's Pianos day party that happened during CMJ. I missed it so I'm going to try extra hard to make it to one of these shows this weekend -- either tonight (7/11) at Cake Shop (where they're playing with Elephant 6 legends Elf Power) or tomorrow (7/12) at Market Hotel. Weird venues for a band whose records are as polished as COYH's recent singles. I mean that in a good way, their music is as sparkling as it is frantic and catchy. The band's debut album, You & I, is in the can and should be out this fall sometime. I can only assume we'll get a preview this weekend.

A few more notable shows....

Continue reading "The Crimea, Cut Off Your Hands & more in This Week in Indie"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: The Indelicates - Waiting for Pete Doherty to Die (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Indelicates - Fun is For the Feeble Minded (MP3)

The Indelicates

Union Hall is celebrating its 2nd Anniversary this month with a number of special shows including this week's sold-out Fleet Foxes show, Mia Riddle on Friday and the highly-underrated Wye Oak on Saturday. (If you haven't checked out Wye Oak's If Children, it's one of my favorite records of the year so far. Not groundbreaking or even fashionable, just great songs.) Union hall also has a Muxtape with a nice selection of the month's musical highlights and is well worth checking out.

Not part of the Second Anniversary festivities per se, but if you're not worn out from celebrating America all weekend tonight (July 6) at Union Hall is Norwegian artist Sissy Wish who, despite the overly twee name, makes some really catchy electro-ish pop. Her 2007 album, Beauties Never Die, was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy and is not that far off from what Lykke Li does and can be found on eMusic if you have an account. I caught a bit of one of her SXSW performances and though it was a bit laptop-y, she was still pretty fun. Maybe for this short East Coast tour (including the Knitting Factory on Tuesday) she'll have more of a band? All dates are at the end of this post. Also on tonight's Union Hall bill are Toronto's The Coast who make anthemic vaguely anglo-inspired pop that doesn't easily fit in with any of their Canadian brethren at the moment (maybe Wolf Parade... a bit) -- which is a good thing if you ask me. Opening are Fresh Air Kids who are made up of former members of The Isles and Arbor Day.

continued...

Continue reading "Sissy Wish, The Vaselines, The Indelicates, Wye Oak, Union Hall & more in this week in Indie"