Be Prepared: A Weather | Everyday Balloons | 2 March

According to this recent item at Williamette Week's Local Cut blog, superlative slowcore combo A Weather will issue its sophomore set Everyday Balloons March 2 on the Team Love label. The set -- 11 tracks deep -- is apparently more guitar-heavy, which sounds like a good thing, although the tension and restraint of the band's first set was one of its strongest features. We know that "Lay Me Down" in the track listing posted below is not a cover of Grateful Dead's "To Lay Me Down," although we think it would be amazing if A Weather decided to take that on (as we've said before). The Portland, Ore-based quintet has continued a tradition of releasing a holiday track, and this year it offers at its MySpace cabin and on Williamette Week's Another Grey Christmas 3 comp a version of the standard "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Last year's track was "Winter Wonderland," which we are posting below. We reviewed A Weather's 2008 debut Cove here, and named it one of the best records of the rapidly waning decade here.

A Weather -- "Winter Wonderland" -- 2008 Williamette Week holiday compilation
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[buy A Weather music from Newbury Comics right here]

Everyday Balloons:

1. Third of Life
2. Winded
3. Ducks
4. Seven Blankets
5. Midday Moon
6. Newfallen
7. No Big Hope
8. Fond
9. Happiness
10. Giant Stairs
11. Lay Me Down

A Weather Recording Follow-Up To 2008 Standout Cove

[A note to readers: with our new family commitments we will institute some changes here. One of these is the shelving of the Today's Hotness feature, which collected newsworthy items into an amalgamated post. Instead we will run more shorter items as we are able to churn them out. Here is the first. -- Ed.]

Portland, OR-based slowcore stars A Weather have spent recent weeks recording a new set that may see release before year-end. The quintet has laid down tracks in its home town at the studio Type Foundry, and as recently as Friday fronter Aaron Gerber tweeted that he was working on vocals for the planned set. There are few details to be had about the new set at this point, but it will include the track "Lay Me Down," according to another tweet. We can only hope this is a cover of Grateful Dead's "To Lay Me Down." Come to think of it, we recall Cowboy Junkies doing a very good cover of that track for the Deadicated comp in the '90s. We'll have to track that down again. The new A Weather set is unlikely to be ready for public consumption before fall or winter, so in the meantime continue to play the excellent Cove to death. That record, in case you don't recall, was one of our favorites of 2008. Read our review here.

Something we've had on our list of things to write about for months and months is three A Weather demos submitted to and made available to the Interwebs by Fat Cat Records. The tracks, which we believe were recorded by Mr. Gerber whilst he was still at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, include two versions of "Still Talk" -- one digitally sliced, diced and Animal Collective-ized and the other acoustic -- and "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive." The tracks are memorable, but the digitally tweaked version of the former is sufficiently different from the material on Cove to imbue it with distinctive intrigue. The three tunes are alternately attributed to A. Sweater and Sweater Weather, monikers that are certainly early ruminations on the name that ultimately framed the quintet. Here's "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive."

A. Sweater -- "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive" -- Music For Six Twilights
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[buy A Weather music from the band here]

06/27 -- The Doug Fir -- Portland, OR
07/12 -- The Backstage Lounge -- Vancouver, BC