obits_cakeshop20101

Obits working on new songs, playing two shows at Cake Shop ++ other dates, solo & art projects

by Bill Pearis

Obits

Almost 25 months to the day of their live debut, Obits return to Cake Shop on two consecutive nights: February 12 and 13. Says guitarist Sohrab Habbibion:

We’ve been wanting to play the Cake Shop again, but haven’t since our first show there. This is our quasi two-year anniversary of that show, so we thought it’d be fun to do two shows and play a bunch of the new songs we’ve been tinkering with. We’re working on a new record and have whittled down at least 40 songs ideas to about 20 more fully formed tracks. And of those 20-ish, we have a half dozen or more that should be ready to play.

Also, these shows are the first NY area ones we’ve played that are ours since our record release show in March. Everything else has been either an event like New Year’s Eve or opening for Pinback or Polvo or random CMJ stuff. So we figured it was about time to headline a proper show and just have a good time with it, getting our friends to open and test out some new stuff before we head back to Europe.

Those friends opening the Feb. 12 show are Gray Goods and Rope. The Feb 13 show has Buenos Dias and Wrong Dots. Both shows are $10, no advance tickets. After the Cake Shop shows, Obits head to Europe and then return to play some U.S. dates opening for Ted Leo. All dates are at the bottom of this post.

In other Obits-related news, two members of the band have upcoming art shows. Drummer Scott Gursky (who designed the Cake Shop poster above) is part of “Vision Quest – A Group Show of Neo-Shamanic Art” which is running now through February 21 at the Observatory in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, singer Rick Froberg has a solo show at Fuse Gallery that has its opening reception the same night as the second Cake Shop show.

Sohrab also tells us, “Greg, our bass player, and I are recording a King Crimson-ish prog jam with Alexis from GvsB that I wrote for a project to celebrate the paperback release of our friend Jeff Rotter‘s really awesome and hilarious novel The Unknown Knowns. There’s going to be a totally absurd video involving a complex underwater world and lyrics like, ‘The parchment culled from lamprey gills / And with a waterproof kind of quill / The rhymes are writ in a font of yore / Unavailable at any store.'”

There’s more. “The Forgery Series show I played [opening for That Petrol Emotion] was satisfying enough that I’m going to record a single. Phil Palazzolo, who’s an old school NJ hardcore guy that’s also worked with Okkervil River and on A.C. Newman’s last record, is hopefully gonna produce it. It should be fun and, with a bit of luck, find a balance between pop melody and Kraut drone.”

All Obits 2010 tour dates are below.

Obits – Pine On

Obits – 2010 Tour Dates
Feb 11 TERRACE F. CLUB w/Bear Hands Princeton, New Jersey
Feb 12 CAKE SHOP w/Rope & Gray Goods New York, New York
Feb 13 CAKE SHOP w/Buenos Dias & Wrong Dots New York, New York
Feb 23 THEATERKELLER Göttingen
Feb 24 THE GREAT RÄNG TENG TENG Freiburg
Feb 25 L’EMILE VACHE w/Les Wad-Billys Metz
Feb 26 TBA Cesana / Torino
Feb 27 L’USINE Genève
Feb 28 TBA Lyon
Mar 1 L’APPART CAFE w/Les Spurts & This Is Not Hollywood Reims
Mar 2 TBA Paris
Mar 3 LA FOURMI Limoges
Mar 4 SAINT EX w/SSM Bordeaux
Mar 5 APOLO 2 Barcelona
Mar 6 CARACOL Madrid
Apr 7 FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH w/Ted Leo and The Pharmacists Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Apr 8 9:30 CLUB w/Ted Leo and The Pharmacists Taxation Without Representation, Washington DC
Apr 10 PARADISE w/Ted Leo and The Pharmacists Boston, Massachusetts