Exclusive: Varsity Drag Live Set, New Album Coming

Stellar news, inconvenienced but loyal rock fans: not only is Varsity Drag, the delightful indie-punk vehicle of Lemonheads co-founder Ben Deily, playing the Cantab Lounge basement in Cambridge, Mass. this Saturday night, but also we can report that the trio will release later this year a live record titled Rock & Roll Is Such A Hassle. The set, recorded at The Weekender in Innsbruck, Austria in 2007, will be issued by the Cambridge, Mass.-based act's European label Boss Tunage through all the usual digital storefronts and in a limited CD run. We heard it is "surprisingly ass-kicking," and after sampling several preview tracks we can confirm that. That giant graphic above very well might be the art that goes with the record, and since we've gotten it exclusively, and since we know the vision of certain readers isn't what it used to be, we made it all big. Fans will recognize the title of the live album as the name attached to Varsity Drag's 2007 tour, a poster for which you can puzzle over here at BenDeily.com.

Rock & Roll Is Such A Hassle, itself of unknown release date, precedes by an indeterminate length of time a planned sophomore set from Varsity Drag. The new set could be released by year's end if all goes as planned; Deily and his rotating crew of merry men and women released its first record For Crying Out Loud in 2005. An advance EP of certain new material -- probably a digital-only release -- will be issued sooner rather than later to incite sizzle for the new full-length. Said new recording will likely feature the drumming of Deily cohort Josh Pickering, who previously beat the skins manned the four-string thunderstick in Mr. Deily's '90s vehicle PODS and who manned the kit for the trio at the most recent Drag gig we took in, namely the Pat Leonard tribute late last year. We have an unconfirmed track list for Rock & Roll Is Such A Hassle, which we paste below for your reference. Note that a couple of those tracks are hyperlinked -- these are MP3s, made available to us through the kindness of Deily himself. Which of course, makes rock & roll slightly less of a hassle. And that much more awesome. Varsity Drag appears at Cantab Lounge this Saturday with Mr. Sister, The Motion Sick Broken River Prophet and St. Helena.

1. Skinny Ties
2. Summertime [right click and save as]
3. Uhhh (Lemonheads)
4. Billy Ruane
5. Starfish
6. Miles Of Ocean
7. Burying Ground/2 Weeks In Another Town (Lemonheads)
8. Falling (Lemonheads)
9. Blackout [right click and save as]
10. 7 Powers (Lemonheads)
11. Ever (Lemonheads)
12. Postcard (Lemonheads)
13. Powerless
14. New Strings
15. Second Chance (Lemonheads)

[buy Varsity Drag, PODS and other Ben Deily-related recordings right here]

Previous Varsity Drag Coverage:
Varsity Drag @ O'Brien's, August 2008
Varsity Drag @ Cantab Lounge, February 2008
Free Range Music: Varsity Drag, May 2006