What The Heck Fest is taking place this weekend in Anacortes, WA from July 15-17. Bands playing include Mount Eerie, Earth, Liturgy, and many others. 3-Day passes are sold out but partial passes are still on sale. Full lineup below.

Mount Eerie (aka Phil Elverum and whoever he has playing with him at the moment) also has a few other shows coming up in the next few months. In September, like Guided By Voices, he'll play Hopscotch Fest. he plays a NYC show shortly after that on September 26 at Le Poisson Rouge. The LPR show and What The Heck Fest are both with Nicholas Krgovich (of No Kids), who played with Phil at Northside. Tickets for the NYC show are on sale now.

All (three) tour dates and What The Heck Fest lineup below...

Continue reading "upcoming Mount Eerie shows, What the Heck Fest in WA"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem (MP3)

Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum is going on tour this fall. In addition to his dates with Why?, Elverum will be headlining a trip with friends and collaborators Tara Jane O'Neil and No Kids. One NYC stop on the tour will be a Halloween show at the Market Hotel with an eclectic bill of metal bands Liturgy and Krallice, the minimal folk of Tara Jane O'Neil, and No Kids's indie pop. (There's also a TBA NYC show for Mount Eerie on November 2nd.)

UPDATE: Krallice are not playing the Halloween show (which is curated by Brandon Stosuy of Show No Mercy), anymore. Another band will be announced instead. We also found out that No Kids will be Phil's backing band. That is all.

If that lineup sounds strange, it might make more sense after looking at the lineup of this year's What The Heck Fest, or hearing the new Mount Eerie record, Wind's Poem, which is out now on his own PW Elverum & Sun label. The double LP covers a range of sounds from the first blast of introductory noise (as heard in the inaugural track, above) to more melodic, image-driven storytelling to creepy marimba-eque textures (notably on "Between Two Mysteries"). No idea if live he'll be doing the songs with band, iPod or solo.

Elverum just wrapped up What the Heck Fest 8, which ran July 17-19 and brought a lot of great artists to his hometown of Anacortes, Washington...

What the Heck Fest is a festival out of Anacortes, Wa put on (more-or-less) by Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie and Geneviève Castrée of Woelv. It's kind of like summer camp with tons of indie bands. They've been at it for 8 years now. This year's fest was awesomely diverse (highlighted humorously saturday night with Olympia black metal superstars Wolves in the Throne Room following posi indie folkster Kimya Dawson) and I really couldn't have been more pleased to have the presence of so many things that didn't fit the k records/indie rock mold that people assume this festival is in the mix. [Letters With Mixtapes]

Continue reading "Mount Eerie - 2009 tour dates (Market Hotel on Halloween w/ Liturgy, No Kids, Tara Jane O'Neil & ???) +++ MP3"

by Andrew Frisicano

Mirah + No Kids @ Highline Ballroom (more by Kyle Dean Reinford)

Mirah will play a show at NYC's Market Hotel on Sunday, May 3rd with TJO (aka Tara Jane O'Neil), Tall Firs, and Air Waves. Mirah's latest record, (a)spera, came out on K Records on March 10th. O'Neil's own K Recs release, A Ways Away, is due out May 5th.

Market Hotel is a considerably different venue than the Highline Balroom, which Mirah and O'Neil played when they last visited NYC during last year's CMJ. In May, Mirah will tour across Europe with Tara.

Mirah, Tara and No Kids all also meet at What the Heck Fest in Anacortes, WA, which runs July 17th-19th. The line-up for the three-day fest is posted below. Passes are on sale.

No Kids, who also played that Highline show, have their own NYC dates coming up in May. Singer Nick Krgovich will play two shows with To Bad Catholics, his side-project with No Kids singer/synth player Julia Chirka. They'll visit the Cake Shop on Tuesday, May 19th with Skeletons. Then, they'll perform at new Ditmas Park venue Sycamore on Wednesday, May 20th. Katie Eastburn (from Young People) opens both shows.

Nick Krgovich recently gotten into writing musicals (which seems to be a something of a trend). Perfomances of Krgovich's "In The Yard, Havin' Fun," commissioned by Vancouver's PUSH Festival, took place in early February. The show included contributions by Parenthetical Girls, Juana Molina, and others.

On No Kids' Myspace is a remix of the band's "For Halloween" done by "Robby from the terrific PDX [a.k.a. Portland] group WHAT'S UP?...for an upcoming 12"."

"In The Yard, Havin' Fun" poster, all tour dates and full What the Heck Fest line-up, below...

Continue reading "Mirah, Tara Jane O'Neil & No Kids - new albums, projects, NYC shows, 2009 tour dates & What the Heck Fest"