Mobius Band With "Friends Like These"

Boston blog-in-arms ExitFare here earlier this week dug up the local Mobius Band tour dates we've been hoping for, which were reiterated in an email received from the band today. The trio will play Northampton, Mass. Nov. 30, and then the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, Mass. Dec. 2. We've sort of given up on seeing shows in the Middle East Down, but we'll certainly make an exception for these guys. Mobius Band issues its Misra Records debut (and sophomore full length co-released with Ghostly International) Heaven Oct. 2, and the latest promo track, the synth heavy, Peter Sax-sung "Friends Like These," has been released here via indie music, pop and gossip concern Stereogum.com. The band begins a tour Oct. 1 and is out on the road for five weeks before pausing as the Massachusetts dates grow nearer. And check it out, the band now shares the same PR rep as Wilco and Jeff Tweedy. Wild.

We've spent more than a few minutes pondering the cover of Heaven. The image of the woman eating the apple -- a picture that we are told was shot by John Vanderslice that is shown in cropped form above -- with the album title plastered over part of her face is deeply evocative. In case some of you didn't take a Humanities seminar your freshman year, what we're describing is basically a representation of Eve eating of the Fruit of Knowledge. Prior to that Biblical (we'd argue, mythical) act, Heaven didn't exist, because Adam and Eve lived in Eden, and there was no need to aspire to a utopian afterlife in that pre-lapsarian existence. We could go pretty far down this path (our outline would go something like: "fall from grace," "fallen woman," "knowledge," "betrayal," etc.) and cross-reference it against the recent personal set-backs that the members of Mobius Band experienced during the writing of Heaven as outlined here. But that is going a little overboard. What we did want to say is that this is the first album cover in years that we've actually sat and thought about for this long. It's an experience that pretty much has died/is dying because of the digitization of music, and that's a shame. As a kid we could spend the better part of an afternoon looking at the covers of Led Zeppelin or Rush records looking for meaning.

Mobius Band -- "Friends Like These" at Stereogum -- Heaven
[pre-order Heaven here]

Review: Pinback | Autumn Of The Seraphs [Stream]

In an interview earlier this year TV On The Radio guitarist and producer Dave Sitek discussed repetition in music and how it appeals to a deeper consciousness in humans that is tied to the human heart beat. We wish we could dig up the clip, but the point is that this primal thrum that appeals to something very basic in listeners permeates the pleasantly sculpted music of veteran San Diego indie rock concern Pinback. We permitted Pinback's widely acclaimed 2005 Touch + Go debut Summer In Abbadon to skate by unexamined save for a few tracks posted on blogs, despite developing a pronounced affinity for the band's 2003 set Offcell. This latter record accompanied us on a lot of drives in the fall of 2003, and in the intervening years we've been increasingly interested by the work of Pinback's Rob Crow, whose non-Pinback releases earlier this year have both been notable, particularly the record by the project Other Men.

Here we pick up the Pinback thread on the occasion of its new, fourth set. Autumn Of The Seraphs percolates with the band's characteristic meditative energy. Mr. Crow, cohort Armistead Burwell Smith IV and band craft clean-burning songs that convey crackling passion and earnestness, all without getting too worked up. It's a neat balancing act, accomplished in no small part by refusing to indulge in rock's typically overt muscular posturing. As we said here a week ago: where other bands would use distortion, Pinback just dials back the edge and hits you with the clean. Where most other bands would deploy the fuzz-bass liberally to make their rock points strongly, Pinback uses in many places what sounds like one of those acoustic hollow-body electric basses that were popular in underground music circa 10,000 Maniacs. The album opener "From Nothing To Nowhere" is a case in point; it's all killer and no filler, but the instrumentation is surgically efficient. The album's hypnotic high points are "Good To Sea" and "Walters," two mid tempo amblers strung across crisp beats and abetted by a gauzy field of syncopated synth tones and guitar lines. Pinback embarks on an extensive tour Tuesday, and we've posted the American dates below.

Pinback -- "From Nothing To Nowhere" [stream] -- Autumn Of The Seraphs
[buy Autumn Of The Seraphs from Touch + Go here]

Pinback: InterWeb | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

09/11 -- Lou's Records -- San Diego, CA
09/12 -- Ameoba -- Los Angeles, CA
09/13 -- Ameoba -- San Francisco, CA
09/14 -- Fingerprints -- Long Beach, CA
09/19 -- Marquee Theatre -- Tempe, AZ
09/20 -- Sunshine Theatre -- Albuquerque, NM
09/21 -- Bricktown Events Center -- Oklahoma City, OK
09/22 -- LaGrave Field -- Fort Worth, TX
09/23 -- Emo's -- Austin, TX
09/25 -- Numbers -- Houston, TX
09/26 -- House Of Blues -- New Orleans, LA
09/27 -- Club Downunder -- Tallahassee, FL
09/28 -- The Social -- Orlando, FL
09/29 -- Common Grounds -- Gainesville, FL
10/01 -- Roxy Theatre -- Atlanta, GA
10/02 -- The Orange Peel -- Asheville, NC
10/03 -- Cat's Cradle -- Carrboro, NC
10/04 -- Satellite Ballroom -- Charlottesville, VA
10/05 -- Theatre Of The Living Art -- Philadelphia, PA
10/06 -- Stone Pony -- Asbury Park, NJ
10/07 -- 9:30 Club -- Washington, DC
10/09 -- Nokia Theatre -- New York, NY
10/10 -- The Roxy -- Boston, MA
10/11 -- The Tralf -- Buffalo, NY
10/12 -- Opera House -- Toronto, ON
10/13 -- The Crofoot -- Pontiac, MI
10/14 -- Metro -- Chicago, IL
10/16 -- Pabst Theater -- Milwaukee, WI
10/17 -- Fine Line Music Cafe -- Minneapolis, MN
10/18 -- Slowdown -- Omaha, NE
10/19 -- Gothic Theater -- Englewood, CO
10/20 -- The Depot -- Salt Lake City, UT
10/22 -- Showbox -- Seattle, WA
10/24 -- Roseland Theatre -- Portland, OR
10/25 -- Bimbo's -- San Francisco, CA
10/26 -- Bimbo's -- San Francisco, CA
10/27 -- Belly Up -- Solana Beach, CA
10/28 -- Wiltern Theatre -- Los Angeles, CA
10/23 -- Viking Union -- Bellingham, WA

Today's Hotness: Assembly Now, Answering Machine, Qui, Silver Jews

>> The electronically affable (we've only ever "met" him via email) Lush, drummer for London indie rock quartet Assembly Now, is now the former drummer for London indie rock quartet Assembly Now. Lush chalks his departure up to musical differences in a departure message to fans. In his stead for the foreseeable future (or at least foreseeable from across the Atlantic) will be John Sutton, brother to current bassist Howard Sutton, meaning now perhaps the rhythm section will have some sort of fraternal telepathy. Or maybe they will just pound each other like the Davies, Robinson and Gallagher brothers. Either way it will be exciting, no? We bid a fond farewell to Lush, who happily answered our questions when we featured Assembly Now in our on-again, off-again featurette Show Us Yours. Check out Show Us Yours #6 featuring Assembly Now here. The band's most recent release, the single "Graphs, Maps & Trees," was issued on the Kids label Aug. 6. Lush drummed on some pretty great singles. Here are the a-sides of the first two.

Assembly Now -- "It's Magnetic" -- "It's Magnetic" b/w "Out On 24s"
Assembly Now -- "Leigh-On-Sea" -- "Leigh-On-Sea" b/w "Tenement"
[right click and save as]
[buy the "Leigh-On-Sea" and "Graphs, Maps & Trees" singles from ITunes here]

>> According to a recent interview in the 'zine Noize Makes Enemies, The Answering Machine's next single will likely be for a track called "Light Bulb." According to the parley with band fronter Martin, the track was produced by Robin Houseman, who also produced the Manchester, England-based quartet's excellent "Silent Hotels" single, which streeted June 18 and sold out its vinyl edition of 500 in two days. According to the interview The Answering Machine's next single will be out in November. Will new drummer Ben play on it? We guess we'll find out in a couple months. In the meantime, kids in the UK have scads of chances to see the band live. Check out all the tour dates at the band's MySpace teepee here.

>> More news out of the Johnny Foreigner camp... so the signing was with Best Before as we expected. If you are a "friend" of "the band" on "MySpace" then you got the awesome bulletin the band sent out Friday night showing their names (and BLOOD) on the proverbial dotted line, as well as some shots of the recent recording session at Southern Studios and sundry other scruffy label and A&R types. The planned EP Arcs Across The City may be more of a November thing, as opposed to October, according to the latest missive, and is going to come in a cool package with pop-up art. Did we mention the Southern Sessions were recorded by a fellow named Harvey Birrell, whose credits include the Irish act Therapy? (whose song "Teethgrinder" errr, "Screamager" is totally the band's best jam). After stalking them via the Internet for half a year, we are hoping to get a proper interview with Johnny Foreigner later this fall. Watch this space.

>> Drowned In Sound has an informative and amusing interview with badman rocker David Yow, former fronter of The Jesus Lizard and newest addition to the trio Qui, here. Qui's record Love's Miracle streets next week on Ipecac. To hear Yow tell it, since leaving The Jesus Lizard he's spent most of his time drinking too much and playing with Photoshop. On the new record Yow is mostly singing vocal parts writting by Qui's Matt, but the now trio did write one song together, "Today, Gestation." We reviewed a recently released The Jesus Lizard live DVD here, and our foreign correspondent Zoz reviewed a Qui live date in January here.

>> More news from Drowned In Sound, who are really holding shizz down lately, no? The site reports that there will be a new Silver Jews record in 2008. The band, led by troubled poet David Berman, was to have finished recording the set last month and may be released as soon as January. More details are here.

Johnny Foreigner: The Beginning of The End and Everything

Oh, man, the new Johnny Foreigner song -- flipping brilliant.... We're cobbling together a quick post even in our harried state (the work project is still not over, and, yes, it will kill us, albeit a little more slowly from here on out) because there is news aplenty afoot regarding the noise pop geniuses. Word is a label deal for Johnny Foreigner is imminent, based on the Birmingham, England trio's latest MySpace message. Could be that the deal mentioned will be with Best Before Records, a label that is affiliated with a larger UK media and entertainment consortium called Mama whose holdings include live venues, music magazines and artist services businesses. JoFo disclosed Wednesday that it will release a six-song EP titled Arcs Across The City on Best Before, possibly in October. Best Before's web site already has a picture of the band in its header image, although as of Wednesday evening there was no other mention of Johnny Foreigner that we noted in our brief scan. Arcs Across The City was recorded at Southern Studios; songs recorded during those sessions include new versions of "Yes You Talk Too Fast" and "Champagne Girls I Have Known" (demo versions of both of those are freely available from the band's web site, as we wrote here in July) and new material. One new track, "The End And Everything," is a blistering, quirky slice of superlative rockery and is also the inspiration for the EP title. We can't stop playing it. Go to JoFo's MySpace and stream it until your head pops off. Can't wait for the EP.

Johnny Foreigner -- "The End And Everything" [stream] -- Arcs Across The City EP

Today's Hotness: Adrian Orange, Elevator Drops, Padded Mailers

>> We finally had a few hours to ourselves today which we used to go through recent promos that have collected on our desk. There was a lot of interesting stuff, and a lot of stuff that came close to getting us excited but came up short, like a certain promising power pop record hamstrung by mundane lyrics. One record, however, and one track in particular, that made us pause and take notice was from the forthcoming post-rocksteady set from Adrian Orange and Her Band. Adrian Orange is a dude from Portland, Ore. (who played in another project called Thanksgiving and co-founded Marriage Records, no less), so it's anybody's guess who the "her" of "Her Band" is. But nonetheless, the band's forthcoming K Records release is unlike any other that we've heard from the label. Orange and a loose collective concoct a perfect late summer sound that is far from unusual, but wholly engaging. Check out the groove-heavy track "You're My Home." Adrian Orange and Her Band's self-titled set will be released by K on Sept. 11.

Adrian Orange and Her Band -- "Your Home" -- Adrian Orange and Her Band
[right click and save as]
[pre-order Adrian Orange and Her Band from Newbury Comics here]

>> It's been a while since we checked in on the status of the perpetually delayed comeback record from Boston strung-out-robot indie rock trio The Elevator Drops. The band's fourth full-length OK Commuter (if you include the odds 'n' sods collection Epidose I) has been mysteriously delayed since its original Feb. 14, 2007 release date passed. Anyhow, a July blog post at the band's MySpace dojo reported that OK Commuter was attached to San Francisco-based On/Off Records and is -- if the blog post can be believed -- expected to drop sometime this month. A quick trip to On/Off shows that the digital-only label only sells singles, which is curious. But on the upside the label is currently offering a new Elevator Drops single, "Party Song" b/w "Catastrophe." The single is $2, and you order it through Paypal and then in theory they send you downloading instructions -- so far we've paid, but we're presuming no one is working Labor Day to send out the downloading directions as we haven't received them yet. Oh well. The Elevator Drops are still offering the tooth-achingly sweet rocker "Shake It" from OK Commuter for free download at its MySpace. We've been listening to it for months, and we'll save you the trip by re-posting it here.

The Elevator Drops -- "Shake It" -- OK Commuter
[right click and save as]
[watch the On/Off web site here to see when OK Commuter finally gets released]

>> Here are some ridiculously incremental updates for two of our favorite bands: venerable label Troubleman Unlimited reported last week that it expected the new Meneguar record "in about 10 days;" We can only imagine pre-orders will be taken shortly thereafter (we just checked, and the ever trusty Newbury Comics is taking pre-orders NOW). The Brooklyn quartet's sophomore set Strangers In Our House streets Sept. 25. In a few days Meneguar commences what we believe is its first European and UK tour [full dates here], which leads us to our second ridiculously incremental update, this one for Birmingham, England's own noise rock monsters Johnny Foreigner. A message board posting we saw somewhere in the last few weeks said the band may have a six-song EP in the offing. It sure would be nice if Troubleman would give that thing US distribution, no? Anyway, Meneguar and Johnny Foreigner have two dates together in England, Sept. 26 and Oct. 4, and we expect the people lucky enough to see these shows will see one of the best bills of the year.

>> Are you 1) in a Boston area indie band about to do a big mailing or 2) do you operate a Boston-area indie label and are you about to do a big mailing? Clicky Clicky HQ has scads of used padded mailers that we've been saving in the hope that someone else could re-use them. These are not pristine, but you should be able to tear off the mailing labels and postage that got them to Clicky Clicky HQ and put on your own labels and postage. Anyway, if you are interested in the padded envelopes, hit our email link over to the right. We'd be happy to bring a big shopping bag full of mailers to your Boston/Cambridge-area residence. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ya'll.

>> Our work project is still ongoing, so things will be quiet again here until next weekend.

Today's Hotness: The A-Sides, The Answering Machine, Sigur Ros

>>[PHOTO CREDIT] Our big day-job goings-on have kept us from telling you the important news that you can stream The A-Sides' forthcoming sophomore set Silver Storms in its entirety right now over at Philebrity. We haven't even streamed it yet ourselves, although we did catch the studio version of the Philadelphia indie rock phenom's new tune "We're The Trees" on Jon Solomon's consistently excellent Local Support podcast a week ago. The Philadelphia Weekly here has an interesting question-and-answer with a couple of the guys from the band, and the most up-to-date fall tour dates were recently posted at The A-Sides blog here. The A-Sides will play the Middle East in Cambridge, Mass. on Nov. 4; Silver Storms will be released Sept. 18. We're checking our mailbox every day, oh great promo Gods -- please don't disappoint us. For the 10th time, here's an MP3 for "Cinematic," a track off the new record.

The A-Sides -- "Cinematic" -- Silver Storms
[right click and save as]

>> The beer-drinking young folks in Manchester, UK-based trio The Answering Machine are easily as charming as their music, if this video (which takes forever to load) posted at the V Magazine site is any indication. The negative rap on this band is that they are very derivative of The Strokes, but we don't buy it. First of all, The Answering Machine appears to still not have a drummer. Additionally, saying an act is derivative of The Strokes basically ignores 30 years of rock history. But that's a conversation for another day. The Answering Machine recently did a BBC radio session -- you can hunt around the band's MySpace wigwam for the details and a link.

>> The trailer for the Sigur Ros documentary "Heima" has a very Harry Potter vibe working in it. Check it out here. And we mean the HP movies, of course -- we've yet to read any of the books. But the Sigur Ros video is stunning. Generally, we have to be in a specific mood to really get down to Sigur Ros, but this video is pretty inspiring, Spine-tingling even. Is this Icelandic band now out-Pink Floyding mid-'70s Floyd? If not, they're damn close.

>> We're in receipt of the new (or new-ish) Wombats EP. You Ain't No Picasso has the video of "Let's Dance To Joy Division" posted right here. With its iffy lyrics, it's not the sure shot that The Wombats' unstoppable cut "Moving To New York" is, but the track is still amply peppy. And the end of the video has some compelling visual surprises. Check it out here.

>> One of the things getting us through the 13 and 14-hour days we've been putting in at the day job recently is the forthcoming record from indie rockers Pinback. It is called Autumn of the Seraphs and it is due on Touch and Go Sept. 11. We hope to have the time to review the record in full sometime next month, but in the event we don't have the time (a second deadline-sensitive project is already in line behind the current Sisyphean task, and this is all in addition to our usual workload) we can tell you that a lot of the review will or would focus on the tone and energy of the set. Where other bands would use distortion, Pinback just dials back the edge and hits you with the clean. Where most other bands would deploy the fuzz-bass liberally to make their rock points strongly, Pinback uses in many places what sounds like one of those acoustic hollow-body electric basses that were popular in underground music circa 10,000 Maniacs. On top of it all, we love how Pinback's Rob Crow rocks the flight suit for the video for "From Nothing To Nowhere." Check it out here.

From The Admin Cubicle: John Paul Sartre Experience

Greetings. Thanks everyone for continuing to visit the site even though it has been dormant for the last 10 days or so. Readership is only down about a third, which is crazy since, you know, we haven't posted in a while. The bad news is that our big project at the day job is going to take another week, so there will be little posting before the 10th or so. That said, we might get a random post up before the weekend is out that will give you something new to look at. In the meantime, make sure to dig back through our recent posts to dig on Ringo Deathstarr and Nosferatu D2. We've been listening to that stuff alot while ploughing through the endless, Sisyphean task we are charged with. -- The Management.