K Records Announce Sleepover at Helsing Junction; Don't Forget Your Smurfs Pajamas With the Cute Footsies Or Your "My Buddy"

By Jon Lorenz on

In classic K Records fashion, Calvin and crew are havin' a sleepover, and everyone's invited! Set for late August, the Helsing Junction 2009 Sleepover will see the the crew hopping on big wheels and riding 55 all the way down to rural southern Thurston County to join forces with the 30-acre Helsing Junction organic farm (30 minutes from Olympia, an hour and a half from Portland and Seattle, and an hour from Tacoma). In addition to swimming, camping, picnicking, and other summer camp-style fun, there will be plenty of underground films and of course sincere, heartfelt music during which you can find a warm blanket to cuddle in with your snookums.

There will be performances by Kimya Dawson, LAKE, Desolation Wilderness, Tender Forever, Mirah, Karl Blau, Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso, Joey Casio, Christmas, Angelo Spencer, Hooliganship, Brainstorm, Danny Kelly, Gary May, Why I Must Be Careful, Inside Voices, and others. And if that's not enough, there will be a DJ party too in the orchard with Jeffrey Jerusalem, film screenings curated by Vanessage Renwick, and plenty of fresh organic cooking from the Helsing Junction crew, who have been providing organic fruits, vegetables, and flowers to the surrounding areas for years and running an 800-member CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Together, Helsing Junction and K Records will be celebrating all things locally produced, whether it be fruits, vegetables, or music.

Passes for the three-day fest, from August 21-23, are $30 in advance or $35 at the event. For more info, click here and here.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Alec Ounsworth Releases Solo LP, But Who Will Clap Hands, Say Yeah?

By E. Nagurney on 07-16-2009

Everybody knows clapping your hands and saying yeah isn’t a one-man job. You can clap hands or you can say yeah, but doing both at once? Preposterous. It took four men, under the guise of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, to properly clap hands and say yeah. Properly clapping and saying yeah must have been even harder than imagined, though, as CYHSY have been silent since the mixed reception of their 2007 album Some Loud Thunder (TMT Review).

Lead, um, Clapper Alec Ounsworth intends to break that silence, but all by his lonesome on his debut solo album Mo Beauty, out October 20 on ANTI-Records. Well, not entirely by his lonesome: Backing up Ounsworth are New Orleans music staples George Porter, Jr. (bass), Stanton Moore (drums), Robert Walter (keys), and Mark Sutton (baritone and pedal-steel guitars). Those guys seem like they’re capable of clapping and maybe even saying yeah. If not, they’ve got plenty of help on the album with appearances from New Orleans musicians Mark Mullins, Craig Klein, Greg Hicks, Washboard Chaz, Shannon Powell, John Boute, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, and Meschiya Lake.

That’s an awful lot of New Orleans. Makes sense, too: Ounsworth says that “New Orleans informed the spirit of the record, as it should.” But don’t get any big ideas that it’s a specifically New Orleans record, as Ounsworth also says “most of the songs weren’t written specifically for New Orleans.” Okay, so, some New Orleans, but not too much. Got it.

Mo Beauty, mo tracklists:

1. Modern Girl (...with scissors)
2. Bones in the Grave
3. Holy, Holy, Holy Moses (song for New Orleans)
4. That is not my Home (after Bruegel)
5. Idiots in the Rain
6. South Philadelphia (Drug Days)
7. What Fun.
8. Me and You, Watson
9. Obscene Queen Bee #2
10. When You've No Eyes

Rejoice! The Big Sur Festival Lineup Is Here, And It Doesn’t Contain Girl Talk, of Montreal, or Kings Of Leon Like Every Other Festival Does!

By Annapocalypse on 07-16-2009

Is it just me, or are rock festivals getting incredibly predictable with their lineups each year? For example, the 2009 Lollapalooza lineup contains over 20 bands that I’ve seen already. Maybe I just spend too much money on shows, but either way, it’s hard to find a festival lineup these days that doesn’t recycle the same tired list of indie rock headliners and opening acts.

Luckily, the Big Sur Festival from Kemado, Mexican Summer, and (((folkYEAH!))) promises to feature bands that you will likely never find on the Lollapalooza main stage. These confirmed headliners include:

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Dungen

Farmer Dave Scher

Gang Gang Dance

Kurt Vile

Saviours

VietNam

Wooden Shjips

Woods

The festival goes down on Saturday, August 29. Tickets are $29 and available via Big Sur’s website. Take that, Perry Farrell!

The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas to Release Solo Album Before Everyone Forgets Who He Is

By Nobodaddy on 07-15-2009

Lookout Used Bins and... digital... used bins? Whatever! The Strokes' frontman Julian Casablancas has finally decided that he’d better stop slacking and release his own awkward, mediocre, not-quite-as-good-as-The-Strokes-were-together-even-though-it-sounds-an-awfully-lot-like-them solo album, in order to compete with the other erstwhile Strokes who have already released their own awkward, mediocre, not-quite-as-good-as-The-Strokes-were-together-even-though-it-sounds-an-awfully-lot-like-them solo albums throughout the past year or two.

As NME reports, the singer is currently finishing up work on a full-length record, to be released under his garish Christian name, with a release tentatively slated for the fall of this year. Casablancas -- who, since the last album from The Strokes, released “My Drive Thru” with Santigold and Pharrell Williams and collaborated with Danger Mouse on one the crappier tracks on the recent Dark Night Of The Soul album -- is the fourth Stroke to release a solo or side-project album, following two solo albums from Albert Hammond, Jr., one from Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fab Moretti's side project Little Joy. As for guitarist Nick Valensi, well, he must be running for office or something...

But back to Jules’ record! Set to include such NYC-cool sounding tracks as “River Of Brake Lights,” “Glass,” and “Ludlow St.,” the album, which will be titled Phrazes For The Young, was recorded in and out of various phone booths in Los Angeles, Nebraska and Casablancas' hometown of New York City. It was produced by Jason Lader, with additional production from Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis. A pretty absurd trailer video for the album, complete with ostentatious “MIDI Covers the Strokes” soundtrack (album preview?), can be viewed on Casablancas’ website.

But wait, there’s more! Casablancas is even set to get up from whatever leather couch that he’s usually sprawled on reading Henry Miller and play a "specials series" of U.S. dates, followed by a solo tour later in 2009. Stay tuned for all of those details, as well as a full tracklist, as well as anything else that might distract you from realizing that The Strokes were probably supposed to have finished tracking their forth album by now.

The Black Heart Procession File Orderly into America’s Heart with a Wonderfully Gloomy New Album

By Liz Louche on 07-15-2009

The Black Heart Procession really appeals to my inner goth. In my mind, it’s all visions of sunn 0)))-style robed figures walking single file and flagellating themselves in a Medieval attempt to prevent swine flu from taking over our cities, all while creating perfectly constructed melancholy indie chamber pop. Of course, the San Diego-based core members of Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel have been doing their thing since 1997, which is long enough to prove my conceptions untrue, but not long enough to make me stop hoping that maybe, just maybe, one day this will be their modus operandi.

Over the decade or so, The Black Heart Procession have released six full-length albums, including a collaboration with Dutch band Solbakken for the In the Fishtank series. And now, at last, there’s another album on the way. Six is the band’s next offering, available October 6 on Temporary Residence Ltd.

Aside from their recent confirmation to play Estrella Damm Primavera Club 2009), there is no word yet on tourdates or awesome band t-shirts (the rather Liars-ish album art leaves no doubt that these shirts are gonna be kickass), but you can get the tracklisting in all its kinda goth, totally beautiful glory below.

1. When You Finish Me
2. Wasteland
3. Witching Stone
4. Rats
5. Heaven And Hell
6. Drugs
7. All My Steps
8. Forget My Heart
9. Liar's Ink
10. Suicide
11. Back To The Underground
12. Last Chance
13. Iri Sulu

The Dodos Cook Up 3-Step Plan to Combat Time to Die Leak

By E. Nagurney on 07-15-2009

The new Dodos album, Time to Die (TMT News), has escaped from captivity and made it out onto the internet -- two months before the original September 15 release date. Them’s the breaks, but Dodos aren’t taking it lying down. The jittery San Francisco folk trio have enacted a three-step plan to combat the leak. Roll the slides!

- Step 1: Set up a website where fans can listen to the album, download (in exchange for one shiny e-mail address) an MP3 of the track “Fables,” pre-order a physical copy of the record, and watch a video message from the band. All this because, as singer Meric Long puts it, they want you to “hear it and feel it.” I don’t know if I really want to “feel” an album called Time to Die. Sounds kind of scary, but whatever.

- Step 2: Bump the digital release date way up. On July 28, you can download the album exclusively from Amazon MP3. It’ll even be the Amazon Daily Deal that day, meaning it will be crazy cheap. If you’re not so down with Amazon, don’t worry: the record will be available at other digital music retailers the following week.

- Step 3: Swim in their new Uncle Scrooge-esque pool of money.

Maybe that last step is jumping the gun a bit, but let’s hope it comes to pass for The Dodos' sake. I mean, that would be pretty cool.

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