Want to find some new Irish music to listen to this St. Patrick's Day? Well, we've got the latest Irish buzz for you - a smart half-dozen Irish bands that are making plenty of waves overseas - but haven't quite broken here yet. They're just the ticket to freshen up your usual St. Pat's roster of Cranberries, Pogues, and U2 tracks (not that there's anything wrong with any of those...)

CASHIER NO. 9 
Named after the coffeehouse singer Daniel Todd used to work in, these indie-electro-shufflers include James Smith on guitar, Stuart MacGowan on bass, and Steven Quinn on drums. They hail from Belfast, and blend The Rolling Stones and the best of shoegaze into their album-rock songs; this has landed them on Radio 1, the local Irish comp disc Oh Yeah, and Oxegen 2009.

STAND
Neil, Alan, David, and Carl make up Dublin band Stand, who brought their alt-rock music over to NYC for a little inspiration; within two years, they were selling out the city's famed Bowery Ballroom. Not bad, guys. Their latest set, 100,000 Ways to Harvest Hope, is an album with a theme of positivity, nicely framed within the quartet's energetic, feisty melodies.
(Hey! Read our interview with Stand this week right here on Groupee!)

THE AFTERMATH   
These Irish mod-popsters from Mullingar have taken their guitar-riff-anchored songs and cracking vocals, and thrown them onstage in support of the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, The Frames, and Razorlight. BBC Radio 1's Chris Moyes really really, likes them - so much that he named them to his Top Unsigned Bands Chart - and you should like them, too.

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB  
Bangor and Donaghadee, Northern Ireland are the dual homes of this electro-emo-pop band, who just released their debut EP, Four Words to Stand On, a little over a year ago. Since then, they've recorded a full-length set, Tourist History, that's being awaited by critics and fans alike, and they might even snag a spot at this year's Reading/Leeds fest.

THE SCRIPT   
They met when they were in their teens, over a shared fascination with MTV. But who knew that Mark Sheehan and Danny O'Donoghue would soon team up with Glen Power to form a trio who would eventually open up for U2 and Paul McCartney - and who would snag Meteor Music Awards in 2009 and 2010? Check out their R&B-infused, bright yet gritty Irish pop.

HERE COMES THE LANDED GENTRY 
This band, also from Northern Ireland, formed in early 2008, but it only took one demo to snag them national radio play in their homeland, plus opening spots for Black Diamond Heavies and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Be prepared, though - this isn't friendly indie-pop Irish music. It's old-school alt-rock jammed together with blues, rockabilly, punk, n' country. Oi!

"Well, that's nice to hear," smiles The Go Find's Dieter Sermeus, upon being told that listeners are hearing both jazz and art-rock in The Go Find's fusion of pop music, "It's not that we plan things upfront, like 'we should put some jazz in it'... the music comes out quite naturally. But maybe the fact that two of the band members did jazz school might unconsciously bring some jazz into our music!"

Sermeus says that his personal aim is "making nice pop music" that he tries to make it "interesting and fresh" in the process.

"We also put a lot of effort into our music - especially the arrangements," he says.

As far as crafting the songs, Sermeus works first with the band's drummer, Tim Coenen, with an acoustic guitar and a "very small, crappy drumset," the two of them working in a small studio, writing music first, then the lyrics. "I guess it starts with a mood," Sermeus explains.

The Go Find's latest, in particular, finds them in something of a chill, mellow, smooth-pop mood, with those inflections of jazz surfacing in tracks like the title tune and "Heart of Gold," skipping beats tripping along on "It's Automatic," and art-rock making an appearance on the electro-acoustic "Lottery Man" and the lovelorn duet "One Hundred Percent." The new album, Everybody Knows It's Gonna Happen Only Not Tonight, was recorded in a variety of places, starting with the drums, which were tracked in the old Jet Studio in Brussels, Belgium. "The week before we started recording, a famous Belgian crooner recorded his record," Sermeus chuckles, "it's a place full of memories of the old days. I hope they will never close it down."

The other parts of the album were recorded on The Go Find's home turf ("everybody has home studios these days," Sermeus says), and the set was mixed in a small "but very comfortable" studio in Antwerp, Belgium called Studio Paris. You've gotta admit that The Go Find does manage to keep moving, even in the midst of tracking a new album - and even if some of their recording travels were a little bumpy.

"Recording the arrangements was at times hard labor," Sermeus says, "because we never know up front which way a song is going to go, so we improvise and record and re-record... sometimes that's frustrating. Also I don't like the singing part. It's always very confronting when some guys tell you that you did a bad session! But in the end it's good to get feedback, 'cause you'll have a better record."

Something for which the inspiration arrived a little easier was the album artwork - colorful, quirky, and mountainous, the theme carried over to the band's current roster of still publicity photos as well as their stage backdrop and their latest music video.

"Do you know the old sci-fi softcover Penguin books?" Sermeus asks, "well, that was the starting point. All the credits are for Julia Guther, the lovely Berlin-based designer. She did a really good job. I think she captures the mood of the record really good with her work, and we thought it was a good idea to try and use the image in all the other stuff. So we cut out the mountains and made a big set, which was a lot of fun! But very lo fi too. As you can see in the end of the video, the mountains were standing because we put chairs behind them," he laughs.

Influenced by the likes of The Clash, The Dubliners, and The Pogues, Dropkick Murphys - comprised of Matt Kelly, Tim Brennan, James Lynch, Al Barr, Ken Casey, Jeff DaRosa, and Scruffy Wallace - blend punk and folk rock into a rollicking brew known as Celtic Punk. Founded as a band back in 1996, they've shared stages with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith, and will be hitting the road with the Vans Warped Tour this summer.

The band's Matt Kelly chats with us as St. Paddy's Day approaches, and the band gets ready for their annual St. Patrick's Day concert in their hometown of Boston.

Q: How were your European shows, and what are you looking forward to the most about your upcoming UK dates and the Warped Tour?

Matt Kelly: Europe was great. The fact that we had The Mahones and of course idols of mine Sick Of It All with us made for a real blast. The gigs were huge, the crowds energetic, and we'd played a couple places for the first time since 2001, so the Spanish gigs especially were electrifying. The UK and Irish dates should be great, we've got Cali punk stalwarts Face to Face with us to show the Britons how we Septics do it!  We have a lot of friends in the UK and Ireland, so we always feel at home there. As far as the Warped Tour goes, we found out we're sharing dates with Andrew WK; other than that, I haven't heard of half the bands to be quite honest!

Q: How is your new Live On Lansdowne live CD/DVD (editor's note: in stores March 16th) different from your Live On St. Patrick's Day in Boston disc?  

Kelly: That first album captured the first three albums' worth of material done in the live setting.  The new live album features songs off the three subsequent albums given the live treatment. Luckily, with the extensive back catalogue we have, we had the luxury of giving the second live album a completely different set list than the first, barring one similar track, "Forever," though they're two different versions. I always like it when you hear a band's live album and familiar songs have taken on new forms, after being played so many times onstage, that they're "enhanced" versions of the familiar studio versions.

Q: And how did you end up teaming up with Mighty Mighty Bosstones for "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" on Live On Lansdowne?   

Kelly: Well, since they're long-time friends, mentors, and co-conspirators of ours (not to mention that a couple of them housed Yours Truly for a while when I was homeless), our connections run deep. We've been friends with them since about '97, though a couple of the guys were friendly well before that.  Anyway, we'd taken them on tour a couple years ago, and we'd toyed with the idea of collaborating live on a song, and that one made the most sense!

Q: Are you guys working on any new material/songs as well?  

Kelly: During our off-the-road time, yeah, we've been in the practice space taping stuff, plus sending ideas back and forth to each other via e-mail, bouncing lyrics off each other, and such.  A handful of songs are being fleshed out, with plenty more on the back burner waiting to get the treatment.  If all goes well we'll be in the studio in the fall.
 
Q: First you've got all of those tour dates, and of course your yearly bash in your hometown - just how long have you been doing your St. Pat's shows in Boston (this year's is at the House of Blues), and what do you like best about those shows?    

Kelly: We've been doing this madness at home for about ten years now... just hearing myself say that blows my mind.  I think the best thing about these gigs is how it brings together so many of our families and friends under one roof, and we get to try and talk to all of them without going bonkers. With all the places we tour, it's nice to play some of our biggest or most exciting gigs a couple miles away from our homes, surrounded by camaraderie.  It's great.

Q: And other than the Boston shows, how do you guys plan to spend St. Patrick's Day/week this year?  

Kelly: We'll be pacing ourselves, seeing as we have two gigs in one night one of these nights, so I suppose we'll be trying to get as much rest as possible between gigs, and catching up with old friends and family we see once a year.

"When we moved to New York, as with any newcomer to that amazing city, we were in awe!" Stand singer/bassist Neil Eurelle enthuses, "the people, the cultures, the fashion, the accents, the friends we made... it all had a massive musical and creative influence on what we are today. We felt cocooned in Ireland and had to break out of that. In New York, we became a better band because we had to fight for every stage we played, every drum skin we busted, every meal we ate, and every girl that was willing to take a ride in the back of our van. It was fun, it was real energy and we were in it all together - the lads from Dublin, having the time of their lives. It bleeds through every chord on this new album," he concludes.

Eurelle - along with bandmates and childhood friends Alan Doyle (guitar/vocals), David Walsh (guitar/keyboards), and Carl Dowling (drums/backing vocals) formed Stand almost 15 years ago in Dublin, Ireland. In 1999, they released their first album, Correspondent, which snagged them a Top 10 position in the Irish Music Charts of the day. Bolstered by their success, they trekked to New York City, and as Eurelle explained above, had something of a musical and cultural revelation as a band, which fueled their next three sets, 2001's Beautiful Grey, 2004's Transmissions, and 2006's Travel Light. But the best was yet to arrive, as they eventually snagged some industry contacts through their manager, and were invited to record at the Goo Goo Dolls' GCR Audio recording studios, which is where they tracked their newest album, 100,000 Ways to Harvest Hope.

"To be in any studio like GCR is amazing, and we were very lucky to be able to do the new album there," Eurelle says, "there is a touch of magic in their live room, and the team of people we had around us while making the record - producer Marc Swersky, Michael McCoy, Justin Rose, and Ben Jura - were inspiring, creative and drove the recording engine 'til it burned! Our manager is from Buffalo and he has a good relationship with the studio and the owners; you don't get in unless you know someone. And he knew someone!"

Eurelle says that the band wrote around 40 songs for the record, which they trimmed down to about 15 potential tracks before they left Dublin for Buffalo, NY. "We had a good idea which ones worked well and which ones we wanted to record," he explains, "the plan was to record a song a day."

Stand would arrive at the studio at around 11 a.m. - early for rockers, of course - work on each song's structure and parts, and then track drums, bass, guitars, and a guide vocal together in GCR's live room.

"Usually, we settled on about the third or fourth take," Eurelle says, "it really helps when you've been working together as a band foro such a long time. After the live takes were finished, usually mid-afternoon, we would start the overdubs. We never did many overdubs as we wanted the songs to breathe. Last to go on were the vocals - again, this never took too long, either. We were usually finished by 11pm each evening. Then it was out for some craic (fun) and planning the next days session."

Fun is definitely on the schedule for Stand, as they're on tour this month with more live shows in the planning stages ("we're looking forward to playing live in front of new faces, traveling across the U.S. playing music with our best friends, and bringing the news of this new record to fresh ears!" Eurelle says) - but the album itself offers a more serious and hopeful message underneath all of this Irish band's charm and boisterousness.

"100,000 Ways to Harvest Hope, as the title suggests, is an album of bright light," Eurelle explains, "a record to lead us into this new decade on a positive note - leave the shite from the previous decade behind and start fresh. It's intention is to encourage everyone to wipe the slate clean and take hold of whatever they have and make the most of it."

We'll be camped out in a recording studio in Austin next week, bringing over 20 bands in for Groupee Sessions.  You'll be seeing the videos from those sessions over the coming months.

Here's a sneak peak at some of the artists we'll be recording live in studio:

Villagers



Mumiy Troll

MUMIY TROLL "POLAR BEAR' live on Craig Ferguson TV

MUMIY TROLL | MySpace Music Videos

So Cow



Codeine Velvet Club



Jill Barber



Peasant



Autumn Owls



Rose Elinor Dougall



Oh Mercy


Oh Mercy Get You Back

Oh Mercy | MySpace Music Videos

Visqueen



Madame Racamier



Kitten



Jenny Owen Youngs



The Lovely Eggs (with Special Guest Jad Fair)

Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordion?

The Lovely Eggs | MySpace Music Videos

Nic Armstrong



Standard Fare



BigBang



Blair


Blair - Hello Halo

blair | MySpace Music Videos

Dengue Fever

Seeing Hands

Dengue Fever | MySpace Music Videos

The Minutes

Ukraine from The Minutes on Vimeo.

Elk City

Elk City "Cherries In The Snow" video

elk city | MySpace Music Videos

Almost a year ago exactly, Bethany Cosentino, 23-year-old LA native and songwriter for indie-pop duo Best Coast -- recently dubbed by the mainstream media as one of the “queens of the lo-fi scene” – ditched the colder side of the States in favor of sun, surf and much better Mexican food.  Needless to say, she hasn’t looked back.   

“I lived in New York for a year to go to [New School] and I hated it,” Cosentino says.  “I’d been thinking about playing music but I didn’t really have the time, transportation, or the people to do it with.   I moved back to LA sort of on a whim and just started writing while I was living at my mom’s house,” she explains,  “and then I asked Bobb [Bruno] if he wanted to be part of it, sent him the songs and he was like, I totally want to do this.”

Although she technically has a background in music, having been involved in choir and theater in elementary school and taking guitar lessons as a teenager, Cosentino doesn’t consider herself a guitarist, or even a singer for that matter.  But the lack of formal training serves the songs even better, with simple, distorted chord progressions and devil-may-care vocals making up Best Coast’s open, breezy sound.  And while she does the bulk of the songwriting at home alone, she leans heavily on bandmate Bobb Bruno's talents to lay down bass, drums and additional guitar parts in the studio; Bruno himself is a fixture of the local scene who plays with and records a slew of other local acts, including Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda.

Away from the mic, Cosentino is just as unpretentious and easygoing as her music would suggest.  The influence of LA living is obvious from the first listen, and -- like some of the best rapid fire pop songs – easily makes you want to buy some beers, round up your best friends and drive up the coast for unbridled good times and relaxation. After spending some time playing guitar with LA band Pocahaunted, known for their long, droning compositions, Cosentino was in the mood for some good old-fashioned pop songwriting.  Most notably, trademark single “When I’m With You” is a 2 minute, 57 second ode to young love, with its chorus of “when I’m with you, I have fun.” 

“I have a short attention span, and coming from a band where all of the songs are 17-18 minutes long, I think if you can write a song and round it up at 3 minutes, and it’s all there – why make it 7 minutes?” she says.  “I’ve been listening to a lot of early Beatles, like Beatles For Sale, so when we went in to do the record it was really inspired by a lot of short, upbeat pop.” 

And how does it feel to see your name in the LA Times dubbed as one of the “queens of the lo-fi scene”?

“It’s pretty funny.  [Laughs]  I wouldn’t really explain it as lo-fi.  It sounds like a girl singing songs about a boy, it’s pretty simple pop music with elements of 60s girl groups, 50s music, things that I listen to.  People love to use that word these days but I wouldn’t tell somebody, oh, I’m in a lo-fi band,” she says.  “But it made my parents proud, so that was nice.”

In the short time since the band’s inception, they’ve already completed a handful of 7-inches – including a new one that is set to drop in April – and recorded their debut album which will be released at some point later this year. 

“We recorded at Black Iris, which is where we recorded ‘When I’m With You’ and ‘This Is Real,” Cosentino says.  “It’s a similar vibe, but when I heard the rough mixes I was like, this sounds like we made a record.  It sounds less like, here’s a 7” with four singles on it.  It sounds more cohesive, like a piece of art or something, you know?” 

While living in New York, Cosentino also met Cassie Ramone, who would go on to become the guitarist/vocalist for Vivian Girls – the two bands recently came off a short tour together in February and will be hitting the road again in April.

“I’ve known Cassie for like 4 or 5 years, we used to live together in Brooklyn for awhile.  I met Katy [Goodman] and Ali [Koehler] through Cassie, but I knew her before she was ever even doing Vivian Girls.  I remember when she played it for me I was like this is awesome, and then we went on tour together, so that was weird.” 

Now that she doesn’t have English papers and 20-degree winters to worry about, Cosentino spends what little off-tour time she has left hanging around LA, enjoying the little things and life as a homebody. 

“I stay at my house a lot, I don’t really go out very much,” she says.  “I like to go eat Mexican food and go to a movie or something, but I don’t really have a very exciting life outside of playing music.  [Laughs]  LA is awesome, there’s a shitload of places to go – rad clothing stores, music stores, bookstores and stuff like that.  But I kind of stay in this neighborhood unless I really have to venture out.” 

Nonetheless, ask her what else she’d rather be doing and there isn’t much.

“I’d probably still be in New York, like, miserable,” she says.  “I’d probably be working retail.  This is the only thing that I want to be doing.   It’s stressful to be busy all the time and be gone from your family and your cat and stuff, but it pays off in the end.”

After the 7" release and Vivian Girls tour in April, the band will gear up for their first European tour in May.  

“It’s really exciting, I feel very honored that this has happened to me.  It’s strange that this time a year ago I was miserable and never left my bedroom, and now I wish I could only be in my room but I have to go do stuff!”


Be sure to catch Best Coast on tour in April in the following cities:

4/01  NEW YORK, NY, Bowery Ballroom (w/ Japandroids)

4/03  PHILADELPHIA, PA, Barbary
4/05  MONTCLAIR, NJ, The Meat Locker
4/06  BROOKLYN, NY, Knitting Factory                                                            
4/07  NEW YORK, NY, Mercury Lounge
4/12  MONTREAL, QUEBEC, The Cove
4/13  TORONTO, ON, The Garrison
4/14  DETROIT, MI, Magic Stick 
4/16  CHICAGO, IL, Schubas

WHY? drummer Josiah Wolf is prepped to step out from behind the drumkit to debut his first solo set of psychedelic pop tunes, on which Wolf plays all of the instruments. Mixed by his WHY? bandmate - and brother - Yoni Wolf, the album, dubbed Jet Lag, was put together following the dissolution of an 11-year relationship - and a potentially jarring move from California back to Wolf's homeland of the American Midwest.

To promote the disc, Wolf will be serving as opening act for WHY? in Europe this month, and will launch his own tour later this spring across the U.S.  We threw a quartet of questions at Josiah about his new album, and got a few answers - and one cat tale - back in the process.

Q: What inspired the very poetic nature of the lyrics on Jet Lag - and what do you write first, the lyrics or the music?

Josiah Wolf: I generally write the lyrics and music separately. I would say that I write the lyrics first most of the time. On some rare occasions they come at the same time. It is hard to say what inspires lyrics. Everything I take in, I suppose.

Q: I know you went through a big geographical change right before you recorded the new album; did you experience any kind of 'culture shock' going from California back to the quietude of Ohio, or was it just back to business as usual?

Wolf: I would say that nothing really surprises me much. I grew up in Ohio, so the weird stuff about these people isn't shocking. I will say that I have a hard time feeling a kinship with any particular place; I always feel like an outsider in California, New York or Ohio. I think New York is my favorite, though. 

Q: Where did you record the album?

I recorded the album in Waynesville, Ohio in January of last year, on a cottage on a 15-acre property owned by an older couple with two dogs and two cats that I cared for while they were in New Zealand for a few weeks. I slept in a loft bed in the kitchen, and there was a room to record in and a bathroom and that was it; and I did all the producing.

Q: Was it tricky recording on your own?  How was it being sequestered in such a small place for your sessions - and were you totally by yourself?

Wolf: It is sometimes difficult doing everything yourself, but I enjoyed it. Once you are in the swing of things it goes pretty smoothly, and there is no one there to disagree with you. Sometimes the dogs would come into my cottage for a couple hours; they would sit and watch me recording like my little audience. That was nice. The funniest part was that their cat Cody came over one time - he'd only been in the house one other time - and suddenly he vanished. He was there one minute and then he was gone.

Now this place was tiny - and I also kept it pretty clean - so there was no place for this cat to go. It was winter, so the doors and windows were closed as well. For over two hours I went crazy - I looked everywhere ten times. I seriously thought I was losing my mind. I called my brother and told him that perhaps a supernatural phenomenon had occurred; he assured me that cats can get into places you would never imagine, but I thought I'd looked in even the tiniest places. Finally it hit me.

The cat was inside my Hammond organ.

He'd gone into the tiny space above the volume pedal.

What a relief. I could retain my skepticism for the supernatural.

Those not directly familiar with Göteborg, Sweden band The Soundtrack of Our Lives - also known affectionately as TSOOL - will probably, at the very least, remember the band's uber-catchy single, "Sister Surround," which featured Crombie-coat outfitted frontman Ebbot Lundberg dancing around (and jumping rope... er, jumping mic cord) along with his eccentrically-outfitted bandmates in a simple but compelling performance video.  

Since then, TSOOL has released another album (2004's Origin Vol. 1), and Lundberg has produced for the likes of The Preacher and the Bear and The Oholics; but it would take an additional three years for the band's next album, their current set Communion, to surface back into the public eye.

A musical "reflection of the forces that are brainwashing our society," according to Lundberg, Communion's ( ) tracks include "Second Life Replay" (which Lundberg calls "a 'magic moment' in the studio,"), gospel-themed first single "The Passover," and "The Ego Delusion," which Lundberg says is his favorite to play live.

"It's my favorite to perform because it's making fun of Richard Dawkins - who wrote "The God Delusion" and "The Selfish Gene"," Lundberg says. "Unfortunately, it's the most difficult song to play live because of the static rhythm, which our drummer, Fredric, is not very fond of."

Fredric, of course, being Fredrik Sandsten, who shares bandmate duties with Martin Hederos (keyboards), Mattias Barjed (guitar/vocals), Ian Person (guitar/percussion/vocals), and Ake Karl Kalle Gustafsson (bass/violin/vocals), as well as Lundberg himself. Communion, as a matter of fact, stayed "all in the band," so to speak, as it was recorded at Svenska Grammofon Studion, which Gustafsson owns, and was recorded, mixed, and produced by Lundberg and Gustafsson themselves, as they aimed at an arena-ready sound with a message.

"It's an epic attempt to bring hope into all the bullshit you're being fed with," Lundberg explains, "the album is meant to be an interesting frequency raiser, so to speak."

 So with all of this earnest, time-sensitive social consciousness going on, exactly where was Lundberg during his two years out of the indie-rock spotlight?

"I wasn't away," he says, "I was just busy producing those other bands. Besides that - I was writing, eating, and sleeping."

Indie-rock singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield has already had quite the storied career in her short life. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based musician helmed her own band, Blake Babies; teamed up with Evan Dando on several occasions to sing with Dando and his band The Lemonheads; has contributed backing vox to everyone from Susanna Hoffs to Aimee Mann; has her own record label (Ye Olde Records); and has appeared on TV's Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, MTV's 120 Minutes, and cult classics My So-Called Life and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Whew. Where she found the time to put together a solo career, we'll never know - but that's exactly what she did. And now Ye Olde Records is releasing Hatfield's tenth solo album, Peace & Love, an effort on which she wrote all of the songs on the album, played all of the instruments, and recorded and produced the set herself, a real Jill-of-All-Trades. 

The challenges of working alone were many, but Hatfield beat the odds and conquered the puzzles, one technicality at a time.

"It was a little bit unnerving having the recording machine looming all the time, 24/7, in the back room," she explains, "definitely put the pressure on me to work work work. I had to figure out a lot of things- how and where to place the microphone, for example, in order to get the best sounds out of my guitar. But I learned a lot just by trying things and experimenting with the unknown."

"I like being alone and so I liked working alone," she continues, "I'm not a very social sociable person, so no one else was invited to collaborate in the recording process; as it says in the album materials, I 'composed, arranged, performed, produced, engineered, and mixed' the thing myself."

Hatfield not only accomplished the completion of her entire album - which includes the simple but super-catchy "Why Can't We Love Each Other," the confident "What Is Wrong," and her ode to Evan Dando titled (what else?) "Evan" - and she also fell into several happy accidents along the way, one being in "What Is Wrong's" middle solo section.

"I don't know what happened with the guitar solo in "What Is Wrong,"" she chuckles, "I just sort of plugged in and in about three seconds got a kind of nasty sound happening. I pressed 'record' and this gnarly blast fell out. Listening back, I was very amused with myself."

In spite of the paean to Dando, the album is not, as many have assumed (and as the title would perhaps indicate), primarily about relationships.

"I would not say that the album is that," she explains, "there is some of that, but there is more than that. I never really have a theme when I make an album; it's always just a bunch of songs about some things I was thinking about when I was writing."

As far as deciphering Hatfield's new set of songs - you'll simply have to snag a copy of Peace & Love and analyze it for yourself. Although Hatfield's live shows are the subject of great reviews and much fandom, she says that she has no plans to tour to promote her latest tracks. So you'll just have to wait.

"I actually have nothing musical planned for the near future," Hatfield says, shaking her head, "I am working on a book, and I'm quite sure I'll still be working on that in the summertime."

Influential L.A. radio station KCRW recently earmarked AM's "It's Been So Long" as one of their Top Tunes, pronouncing AM "not an easy artist to Google, but one with contagious music." And AM's debut disc, Troubled Time, achieved the remarkable feat of having all 10 songs featured in films and television shows, a la the music-placement accomplishments of Moby.

The artist himself - who deftly and unusually blends soul and R&B with Brazilian rhythms into earworm-ready pop songs - worked with Magnetic Fields' Charles Newman to produce his new album, Future Sons and Daughters, and he'll be promoting the set in part by touring alongside groovy French electronica duo Air. AM says he'll work with a full live band for the tour, including colleagues Mark Getten on bass, Brett Bixby and Jesse Nason on keyboards, Michael Sawitzke on guitar, Chris Lovejoy on percussion, and Derek Brown on drums (former Eels' drummer Butch Norton played drums on the album itself.)

"I am actually quite a big fan of Air, so I'm really honored to be opening the show for them," AM says, "I mean, they're one of the few successful 'soundtrack' bands out there, and I love their deceptively simple arrangements. I especially love their new album (Love 2, 2009) which is a lot more organic and spacious. Above all, I think we're coming from similar places musically and have a mutual love affair with 60s and 70s soundtracks and groove."

A retro sound isn't just something AM conjures up from a keyboard patch or computer program; it's actually a way of studio life for the musician, who pays sharp attention to detail and takes cues from his musical peers of days gone by.

"For Future Sons and Daughters, we hardly used any instruments or amps older than 1970," AM recollects, "if we didn't own the gear I borrowed it. I wanted things to sound dusty. Not to say we didn't use some newer stuff. I'm not a vintage snob necessarily, but I really tried to keep the sound consistent by using as much vintage gear as I could. I've always been drawn to the way guitars sounded in the late 60s - real thin and bright and raw. Drum wise we went more 70s. We also used a couple of analogue synths from the 80s... which I guess now are considered vintage," he laughs.

"We also took the bass in a different direction musically; my bass player Mark had been taking lessons from the legendary Carol Kaye at the time, so he was challenging himself to do things differently. He and I had really been digging into Carol's work on those David Axelrod recordings from the 60s (The Capitol Sessions), which no doubt influenced some of the bass tones on this album."

Future Sons and Daughters was recorded primarily at Wilder Bros. Studio in West L.A. (with additional tracking recorded at AM's producer, Charles Newman's, place.

"Charles was living in one of Elliott Smith's old cottages in Los Feliz - the legendary 'Snow White Cottages,'" AM explains, "we did some of the vocals there - I tend to prefer a more home-like environment to cut vocals, no pressure. Wilder Bros. was built in the '70s and still has all of the coziness one would expect from a studio in that era; wood everywhere, very brown and cozy. Both places had such a vibe, so it wasn't hard to be inspired."

Instrumental music is another element that inspires AM. "Jazz, film music, and soundtracks," he says, "most of the records I've bought in the last few years have either been instrumental, or the songs are sung in a language I don't understand."

As a matter of fact, his own song, "Jorge Ben," is one of the songs he's looking forward to playing live the most from the new album. "I also really like playing "It's Been So Long," he adds, "I love Chris' percussion work on that song. We both have such a love for '60s and '70s Bossa Nova and Tropicalia, and that song has those elements."

After the Air tour wraps, AM plans to continue touring in the U.S., and also has possible dates on the way in the UK and Europe this summer.

"When I'm not touring, I'm usually writing and producing music for films or other artists," he explains. But with Future Sons and Daughters already gaining critical buzz, AM knows he might have to devote some extra time to his own work. And he's just fine with that.

"We plan on staying very busy this year on the road," he grins.

"The Cloud Cult name is a sect of predictions that come from the old world, and discuss how technology will grow faster than the spiritual capacity to handle it. It ultimately becomes the downfall of a civilization built on it," Cloud Cult's Craig Minowa says in explanation of the band's moniker. "Those who carry on into the new world are those that still know how to live off the land. It's not an anti-technology concept, but rather one of balance."

It's a good thing that Cloud Cult's philosophy doesn't prohibit technology; otherwise, fans would be deprived of both their recordings and their upcoming documentary, the 100-minute No One Said It Would Be Easy, which serves as a backhistory of sorts of the band members and a look at their progress as a band to date.

The film includes live performance footage, backstage clips, interviews with the band (and their fans), artwork from Scott West, and even info on their own Earthology Records, the unique eco-friendly record label through which the band self-release their albums and records from their geothermal-energy-fueled studio. The documentary was an ambitious endeavor for a self-contained Midwestern band whose fan base has been growing steadily but slowly since 1995.

"John Burgess shot our video for the Feel Good Ghosts album, and we decided to try a documentary out," Minowa explains, "it was a fun process, but it was a little intimidating to have a video camera around all of the time. It's an honor to have so much effort put into the depiction of our history, and the response has been very positive."

Speaking of that aforementioned studio, that's where the band has been working on their upcoming album, which has been in-progress for the past year or so.

"The new album is being recorded at our new home in the woods of Wisconsin," Minowa says, "I've been working on it for over a year, but much of the recording sessions have been done over the last 6 months. The view from the studio is phenomenal and, in fact, a sunset scene inspired the opening of the album. I was having writer's block that day, and the introduction fell out in real time."

Fans surely noticed the six-month absence of Cloud Cult from the live stage while they focused on their recording duties; but now they're getting back on the road, also slowly but surely, with tour stops booked at Duluth, Minnesota (3/26), Chicago's Lincoln Hall (4/15), Madison, Wisconsin's Majestic Theater (4/16) in preparation for the full national tour they'll kick off when the new album is released later this year, which is slated to happen in August or early in the fall.

"The shows have been good so far," Minowa says, "It's fun to be back out on stage."

Twins Jack Barnett on vocals and various instruments and George Barnett on drums and loops; Thomas Hein on bass, drums, and sampler; and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson on keyboards and sampler make up Brit art-rock/alt-rock band These New Puritans, who recently wrapped work on their sophomore disc, Hidden. Their live shows are already the stuff of quizzical legend, from their cryptic clothing choices to the many crafty ways they work to translate their own complex songs to a live setting - and their new, aforementioned album is also already the subject of praise and interest from critics n' fans alike.

Hidden was recorded in a trio of locales, with production by Jack Barnett and Graham Sutton ("It was recorded half in London, half in Prague, and was mixed in Los Angeles," Jack Barnett explains); the songs themselves were treated to a banquet of sounds.

In addition to the traditional recording processes used on Hidden, the band also utilized Foley techniques (Foley artists, most often hired for filmmaking, create sound art from various objects and instruments to coincide with visual images, to make viewers believe that the sound effects are actually real sounds) in their songs.

"I wondered why the kind of sounds you get in films - like sword sounds - aren't ever used in music, and thought it would be good to have them in our songs," Barnett explains, "so the engineer brought in his knife collection, and we recorded a lot of Foley. We weren't experimenting, though - we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We weren't just doing strange sound techniques for the sake of it - it had to make sense."

Barnett did try one particularly unique Foley effect that he'd read about - throwing a nail past a microphone to create the 'whooshing' sound of a bullet zipping by - but that one didn't quite pan out as he'd hoped.

"We tried it for about an hour - but ended up with an hour's worth of silence," he says.

Silence is far from the norm on Hidden, however. Each song is chock-full of sonic intrigue, from "Time Xone"'s unusually-arranged woodwinds to the bombastic (literally - just wait until you hear those drums) "We Want War" to the unexpectedly danceable guitar-tronica of "Three Thousand." First single, "Attack Music," is "on the way soon," according to Barnett, and features scratchy-machinist sounds that befit the track's title well. And These New Puritans fans will get a chance to hear these sonic compositions live this summer, as TNPS hits the tour circuit.

"We're already writing new music," Barnett says, "and we'll be touring Europe, America, and Japan."

Perhaps once they do arrive in Japan, they'll be able to recreate one of the more unusual instrument usages from the recording of the album.

"We used these drums called Taiko drums," Jack Barnett says, "they are huge Japanese ceremonial drums; so huge that they had to be delivered on trucks. We hired them for a day and just spent it doing all the Taiko parts, but they were actually too big to fit inside the studio, so we had to record them in the warehouse next to the studio, running all the leads to them. In the end they sounded good in the warehouse, because it had such a huge acoustic."

While most bands would consider giant Taiko drums an eccentricity, perhaps, Barnett and crew took it all in stride, as if it were nothing more than another guitar or synth thrown into the mix. "This music couldn't use any different instrumentation."Barnett shrugs with a smile, "it was just what the songs demanded."

Brit shoegaze-pop duo Monster Movie's latest album Everyone is a Ghost, will be in-stores this March, complete with ten of the band's synth-dusted, atmospheric pop tunes, plus cool, distinctive artwork from Rhode Island illustrator/musician William Schaff.

We chatted with Monster Movie's Sean Hewson and Christian Savill to find out how their process went, as well as just what kind of monster movies they'd pay good money to see, since, given their band name, they must be monster movie experts - right?

Q:  So what exactly is the origin of your band name?

Sean: We stole it from Can. Neither of us owns the album, though we own some of their other albums. There's no real reason for that. We wanted to call ourselves B-Movie but that had already been done, I guess - so we just went through Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler until we found something else.
 
Q: As far as actual 'monster movies' go, do you prefer the old-school variety, like Frankenstein, Godzilla, or Claude Rains' Invisible Man... or the newer movies, such as Scream, Cloverfield, etc.?

Christian: I like the old movie monsters, the B-movie kind, mainly because I don't think I've seen any modern monsters.  I like to see massive spiders or lobsters or something like that. One of my favorite monsters was the Chewits monster from the UK adverts. The Stay Puft marshmallow man (Ghostbusters) was pretty cool. Does he qualify?
 
Sean: Cloverfield was good. But the important part in any monster/horror movie is the reveal - when they actually show you what everyone is scared of, is it genuinely scary or just silly? Sometimes it's better to not do the reveal at all - like in The Blair Witch Project.

Q: Agreed. No one likes a wimpy monster. Would you be able to reveal a bit to us about the writing process for the new album?

Christian:  Well, we've been through some major upheaval since finishing the last album. I moved locations in London, my wife had a baby, and then we moved to the U.S.. On top of working full time, it was hard finding time to work on the new album. Some of the record was written in London, but curiously the album really started coming together when Sean and I were living thousands of miles apart. We started swapping demos and found that similar themes were popping up. Initially I had to live in Jacksonville, Florida, which was a terrible shock to the system; I quickly moved to Asheville, North Carolina. those two cities helped contribute a few ideas. When we had enough songs that we didn't hate, I flew back to England in February 2009.

The idea was to record everything in Sean's Dad's living room in two days, then mix it in 3 days at a studio in Weston Super Mare. We quickly realized that we had massively overestimated our musical and recording capabilities. So we went back home and got our friends Rachel Goldstar and Ryan Graveface to bail us out. Rachel recorded her vocals in Austin, Texas, and Ryan recorded all manner of instruments and voices in Chicago, Illinois. We then went back to Weston Super Mare in September 2009, where our beleaguered engineer Martin Nichols (at the White House) tried to make sense of all the different parts recorded here, there and everywhere, whilst we sat on our arses eating crisps and doing crosswords.

Q: Did you handle production duties for the album yourselves? If not, who worked with you?

Christian: We did produce the album ourselves, but we had major help from Ryan. We've never really had anyone else play on our songs before so it was really great to hear his contributions. 

Sean: Yeah, most of it is us - we have the basic ideas but Martin also helps. He's essentially the engineer but we trust his judgement on a lot of things.

Q: Is there an overall theme to the album? Several of the songs seem to have a common topical thread.

Christian: I wouldn't say there is one particular theme to the album, but at one point Sean and I swapped demos at the same time and both songs were going on about ghosts. Moving to the U.S. was a major culture shock to me, and that is reflected to some extent. Lyrics are something that I would definitely like to improve on in the future. There are one or two bands that I admire greatly whose lyrics are embarrassingly bad. Even if those bands claimed that the vocals were just another instrument and are buried in the mix. They're still shit.

Sean: Like most people, we feel pretty alienated from what is happening around us. I guess we went for the obvious images of ghosts and desolation to sum these feelings up, as we're pretty simple fellows. We go through life in a state of confusion waiting for something to go wrong. And then we can't cope when it does. With lyrics, we just try not to ruin the song by writing something stupid. The worst is for someone who makes up songs is to think they're a clever lyricist. I hate people who write 'amusing' lyrics like Robbie Williams or that joker from The Beautiful South. I just don't see what's so good about being funny.

I'd be more concerned if people weren't able to be funny - that would imply some kind of mental failing. It's also a really obvious and boring defense mechanism. The other bad thing is to write a good tune and then stick a bad lyric on it. We were both pretty well-educated, so we've got okay vocabularies, and we've been smacked around by life so there are occasional flashes of wisdom amongst the moaning.

Q: So what are your plans for this spring and summer - do you plan to relax and catch some actual monster movies, or will fans be able to see you on tour?

Christian: It's a World Cup year so I reckon the summer will be taken up with that. We do keep threatening to play live. We've actually got a band together now, so we might actually carry out the threat.

Sean: Our life is spent desperately scouring the TV pages looking for sporting events to watch. But other than that, we have been training a rhythm section in the ways of Monster Movie. They are Gregg Cox on bass and Sam Williams on drums; they're both much more competent than us (on their own instruments and on ours) so can we show them the songs and they'll tell us the names of the chords. It will be good when we record, because now Martin will have someone to talk to about technical things. At the moment we're rehearsing with a view to recording an album as a four piece with Rachel and Ryan adding bits over the top. We'd like to play live but we'll see. I don't think we can manage a tour, but maybe the odd support slot here and there.

Really we're doing it so they can record most of the tracks whilst we continue to eat crisps and do crosswords. Then, when they're done recording the album for us, they can finish the crosswords too.

"Working with Flood in his studio was a breath of fresh air for the band," Editors' bass guitarist Russell Leetch says. "We had a truly tremendous time, and we made Flood feel young again!"

What made Flood - esteemed producer of such musical luminaries as Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, U2, and Sigur Ros - "feel young again" was likely the detailed and creative production on Birmingham, UK band Editors' latest album, In This Light and On This Evening, a synth-riddled extravaganza of a set that blends the band's distinctive, sharp indie-rock with an overload of electronic elements, lending a new, energizing urgency to songs like "Papillion," "You Don't Feel Love," and the title track.

Recorded in Willesden, North London, while the band stayed in Cricklewood ("most probably the shittiest area in London you could probably find - six weeks of my life in Cricklewood, never again!" Leetch exclaims), the new album's darker, post-punk synthetic feel was, according to Leetch, in part derived from drummer Ed Lay's work on an electronic drum kit.

"As far as musical inspiration, we weren't really listening to anything specific in the studio, and where we may have previously referenced a sonic sound to a previous record made by someone else, we did not this time," Leetch muses, "a lot was just Ed playing on an electronic kit - you make the drums more spacious and minimal, and that lets the other music do something different from what we had done before."

Also different are the band members' approaches to the whole recording process as well as the accompanying promotional junket.  For instance, where singer/frontman Tom Smith is more sanguine in his proclamations about Editors' songs ("... when an album feels this dark, the fragments of hope and love that do occasionally shine through shine through ten times brighter than they would normally do so..." he says), Leetch himself is fervent in his dedication to the band, yet more devil-may-care about the overall situation.

"I don't want every person to feel the same, and I don't care if they take hope in what we do or not," he declares, "I don't want every lyric taken apart, and out of phrase things can sound stupid. One publication recently wrote a derogatory review and gave an example of the lyric ‘give a dog a bone...' being primary school writing. But what follows - ‘heal it for the day, but teach it how to kill them' - is a lot more gruesome. I guess if people take a fragment, whether one word or a phrase or the whole song, and enjoy it, then that's all that matters."

"Our song "Bullets" always takes flak for the lyrics," he continues, "I haven't got a clue what, ‘you don't need this disease' means or is intended to mean - it just whirls and whirls and makes you think 'what??' - and I like that."

What Leetch doesn't particularly like is touring, in spite of the fact that, as he says, a lot of the band's new songs are "going down a storm" live, especially "Papillion," what he calls the "most instant" song that Editors have ever written.  But given the choice between a stage or a studio, Leetch would rather spend his time indoors, crafting the next Editors album.

"I'm already bored of touring, to be honest," he explains, "but that's the only way to get exposed it seems, and the only way for bands to earn some cash. I'm just looking forward to writing some more music, and I don't want to lose the momentum we gained writing this latest record."

Perhaps studio memories both grand and humorous will help him get through the tedium of being on the road again, since that looks like the place Editors will be spending the bulk of their time at least through this spring - and probably well beyond.

"I think the most memorable moment in the studio was wearing an antique Prussian helmet that was a present from (U2's) Bono to Flood, dancing around to "Papillion" - a moment only the band and the people in the studio will ever appreciate," he laughs.

Stumbled upon this video recently... amazing song and performance.

Villagers is led by Conor J. O'Brien, from Dublin.

With Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Phantom Planet) on production duties and a penchant for blending sonic experiments with pop hooks, Chicago quartet OK Go takes an art-rock approach to their latest collection of smart-dance tunes, with a concept borrowed from writer General A.J. Pleasonton's wellness text The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky, in which Pleasonton's basic philosophy was boiled down to aiming at hope even when things seemed hopeless.

First single "This Too Shall Pass" limits the lyrics - a surprise, perhaps given how wordy even Pleasonton's title is - and instead deftly blends singer Damian Kulash's falsetto sass with the choir refrain, rendering the tune undeniably catchy within just a few phrases, not an easy feat for a tune that conjures up images of marching bands while simultaneously singing of the power of positive thinking. The song's follow-up companion piece, "All Is Not Lost," is reminiscent of U2's arena-pop, with b-i-g guitars and a dramatic arrangement, and also offers forth that feeling of "can do."

Elsewhere on the set, "End Love" goes all '80s Revolution with cold-glass synth riffs and tick-tacky hi-hats, taking the listener right back to those legwarmer-bedecked, pastel-lit dancefloors, complete with Kulash channeling Prince's vocals; Kulash's higher-toned vocals actually surface on many of the tracks on Of the Blue..., and manage to sound both current and neon-retro at the same time.

And in the experimental department (which festoons much of this set), vocoder laced through an interesting narrative marks "Before the Earth Was Round"; "Back from Kathmandu" somehow manages to effectively blend Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" period; "Last Leaf" prettily breaks the track down to just Kulash's vocals and an acoustic guitar for a complete change of pace; and "In the Glass" wraps back around to what fans will know as more traditional indie-rockin' OK Go, although the arrangement, again, is more sophisticated and features layer upon layer of interesting sounds.

Yes, it's nerdy-nice, for a change, to hear a band theming their songs around something productive instead of the same old whiny emo-complaints; but the real icing on the cake is that OK Go does it with both panache and skill, pushing the sonic envelope of their own talents and having what sounds like a whole lot of fun balancing indie-pop, art-rock, and plenty of hooks. So don't be surprised if you're still humming these songs days later - and don't be surprised if this is a band that continues to grow.

Scotland is the home of critically-acclaimed indie rockers The Twilight Sad, who are in the midst of promoting their latest set, Forget the Night Ahead, which dropped late last year. While the album was recorded just outside of Glasgow at Chem 19 Studios, the band members themselves have moved on, for the most part, and are scattered a bit 'round the countryside - a factor they say contributes greatly to their distinctive musical sound.

"Craig (Orzel), our bass player, is the only one of us that stays in Cumbernauld," vocalist James Graham explains, "Cumbernauld is pretty shit - it's been voted one of the worst places in the UK for the past few years. I stay in a small farming village called Banton, and it's very nice - lots of hills, lochs, and the best pub in the world called The Swann Inn. It's good staying just outside the city; as far as where we live affecting our music, I think it's more of a subconscious thing within the songwriting, staying where we stay. If we stayed in California, I am pretty sure we wouldn't sound the way we do."

In addition to Graham and Orzel, The Twilight Sad also include Andy MacFarlane on guitar and Mark Devine on drums, comprising the band's full rockin' quartet. Forget the Night Ahead may only be their second full-length effort, but they've already learned what keeps them focused... and what to avoid.

"Chem 19 is a studio owned by Chemikal Underground Records," Graham says, "it's in an industrial estate - so we had to drive there every day, which kept us away from any distractions such as drink and drugs, which was a good thing!"

Recorded with Delgados drummer Paul Savage on production duties (Savage also recorded the band's first album), Forget the Night Ahead was also mixed by Savage in the end, "because we had built up a really good relationship with him, and he got what we were trying to do with this record," Graham confirms.

Much of what the band was trying to do with the record was inspired by some of Graham's own struggles; but instead of allowing himself to fall further, he instead channeled his difficulties into the music, to both his and the fans' benefit. The songs on the new set are very personal, detailed, and emotional, from the unsettled, restless feel of the instrumental "Scissors" to the raucous bombast of "That Birthday Present."

"I went through a tough two-month period about two years ago after we came off touring the first record," Graham says, "I lost someone close to me, and went off the rails and did some stuff that I wasn't too proud of. So I wrote the songs about my feelings at that time and the way I affected those close to me. I feel the song writing has matured a lot since the first record; the songs on the first record were the first we ever wrote, and after touring the world for 2 years we became better at what we do and wanted to try new things."

The band has been playing the new songs for a while now, filtering them in with the tracks from their first album, a mix that's both extended-play worthy and that will likely broaden their audiences, given the different dimensions that the two albums offer, all songs with longevity, whether the charts think so or not.

"The new songs fit in really well with the old songs," Graham says, "plus we used to only play for a half an hour; now we can play for longer, which is nice for the people who have paid to see us. The audiences have been reacting really well, too; lots of people singing along - which I still find really weird," he chuckles."

Currently writing their new record, which they'll record some time this year, The Twilight Sad also have a full American tour on their schedule for May as well as European and festival dates - and fans can still look forward another single from this album, "The Room," which Graham says they're also making a "really cool" music video for. But wait, there's more...

"We have a special release also coming out in the first half of 2010 which I can't give the details out for yet," Graham smiles, "and we're all separately working on some collaborations, too. I am pretty excited about all of it."

They've been referred to as having "...dubstep running through their bones, hip hop in their fingers, and '60s psychedelia in the heart..." - a witty description for the musically-varied beats n' samples tracks created by Bristol duo Malachai - aka Scott and Gee. Even Portishead's Geoff Barrow (the band's producer/instrumentalist) is a fan, and has become something of a mentor to the pair, dropping their Ugly Side of Love album on his own label, Invada, where it'll be released to stores on February 2nd of this year.

We wanted to find out more about their Beck-meets-Arthur Lee-in-Jamaica brand of music and how they get it to sound that way, so we sat down with both the rambunctious frontman (Gee) and his cohort (Scott), and got... well, a few answers, at least - and a whole lot of rather entertaining banter.

Q: So how did your collaboration with Geoff get underway? Is he a musical presence on your album, or more one of the guys behind the scenes?

Scott: Geoff's an old friend of ours who I simply played the music to as we were making the album. He's a presence on "Only For You," as he co-wrote that one with us, but everything else is Gee and I.

Gee: I disagree! The way I see it was that me and Scott did all the music apart from the co-written "Only For You," which Geoff is a presence on, which all came about 'cos Scott, while we were making the album, simply played the music to Geoff, an old friend of ours.

(editor's note: Hmm, wise guys.)

Q: Your music is known for being chock-full of diversity - how do you get such a complex mix of sounds and approaches?

Scott: We are diverse because mundane and elongated music bores us very quickly. There are two of us, so we simply feed off each other.

Gee: We are diverse because... hang on, Scott - did you just say "we simply feed off each other"?

Scott: Yes, I did.
 
Gee: Why?

Scott:  ...Because we do...

Gee: When?

Scott: Sometimes...?

Gee:  Okay then - when? Say, a day?

Scott: ... Thursday...?

Gee: I didn't even see you Thusday.

Scott:  What's thus day?

Gee: Eh?

Scott:  You just said 'thus day' instead of Thursday.

Gee:  Pfff. Whatever. Next question!

Q: Well, alrighty then. So where was the new album recorded, and how did the sessions go for you? Was it a fun process?

Scott: It was all recorded within a two-mile radius in Bristol, UK, at my home studio, Gee's home studio, and some bits at SOA Studios. But we never have fun when we record - we are totally focused.

Gee: Ha ha, Scott, you are so full of it.

Scott:  At least I'm there and I'm ready, not fartin' around with my hair like some people I can mention.

Gee: I record when I'm good and ready.

Scott:  'Ready' bollocks!

Gee:  Just answer the questions, busy boy.

Q:  Yes, please do - so do you guys plan to tour behind the new set?

Scott:  Yes, we do. Malachai live has had a few incarnations in the past, but we plan to take the live show back to our roots, with two turntables and a microphone - and it will be rather heavy.

Gee: To be honest, I think we should just leave it there - we obviously can't even get through an interview without the singing chip that dwells on Scott's shoulder raring up and belting out 'I did it myyyyy waaaaayyyyy!'"

(editor's note: at this point, Scott mysteriously steps out and vanishes from the interview.)

Gee: Oh, he's gone, has he?  Okay - one more question, and then I need to split 'cos I need to pick up my laundry before my nose job.

Q: One more is exactly what we've got. I know you guys have a lot of connections to the art scene in Bristol, which of course includes works by famed graffiti/street artist Banksy. So if Banksy himself were to create some street art to represent your band, what would you want it to be?

Gee: Actually, we already own personalized Banksy bits - he did the grills on the front of my old-school Sharp GF777 boombox. If you stop by one of our gigs, I'll gladly give you Banksy's mobile number so you can submit ideas to him. I know he's pretty skint at the moment, he stopped 'round my house late last Friday afternoon trying to sell me towels.

Q:  Well, thanks very much. I'll take that under advisement.

Gee:  Cool. Thanks for your time and interest and sorry for the arguing and stuff.  Is Scott still gone?

(editor's note: Scott is nowhere to be found.)

Gee: Has he taken the car?

(editor's note: the answer to that is apparantly yes.)

Gee: Can you give me a lift to Swindon?

Big Phony is the musical non de plume of Bobby Choy, who has quietly (and independently) released a couple of fine records that showcase his introspective folk-pop.  You may recall our session with his band last year (see video from that session below).



Choy's music is eerily similar to the work of Elliott Smith, but also recalls Simon and Garfunkel at times with its hushed, bittersweet tones.   He's the rare songwriter who can craft compelling melody while also establishing a strong mood.  Simply, he's one of the best young songwriters in the country. 

Big Phony's latest release is Kicking Punching Bags, which continues with his wistful themes of regret and loss.  It's a fine, cohesive work with a production that puts the delicate melodies front and center.  The centerpiece of the record is "I Love Lucy", which was included in his last "bootleg" release of demos.  A magnificently beautiful love letter of a waltz that glides along above a lonesome slide guitar, the song blends folk, pop, and country. 

If you like your pop music sad or your folk music melodic and rich, this record is certain to please.

Irishman Brian Kelly is the man behind So Cow.  He looks like Buddy Holly and on this track anyway channels Ray Davies, Robin Hitchcock, and early Squeeze. 

With lyrics that are both playful and original ("All the townies are smoking pot / I'm the boy that hormones forgot"), Kelly seems like a fresh new face for the smart pop scene.

Check out the song "Halcyon Days" from the band's debut record released last year.  Have not heard the whole album, but based on this song alone, I'm very curious.

He'll be at SXSW in March.

Still not sure why this song has not gathered more attention here in the US, but I hear it a lot on BBC Radio... Plan B's insanely catchy, amped-up motown romp, "Stay Too Long."

Check out the video below:

Working out of a moveable home studio ("when we finish a record, we tear it all out and move elsewhere," Justin Faircloth says) to craft their new album The Archer, North Carolina's Houston Brothers, which comprise the aforementioned Faircloth and his brother Matt Faircloth, focused their latest set on a theme of travel.

"The theme is travel that results in change - and moving to move, I guess," Justin Faircloth explains, "to avoid stagnancy - to get out and to return, and see what happens, both physically and just within my own head This has happened for me over and over, and for most people. Plus we love to travel, to tour and play to strikingly different ears, to see radical, unfamiliar sensibilities."

Luckily, producer Mitch Easter (R.E.M./Suzanne Vega/Wilco) shared the brotherly duo's sensibilities as far as musical production was concerned; the legendary man behind the boards not only helmed (album name) with great attention to detail, but also contributed a chill, comfortable feel to the sessions.
 
"Working with Mitch was great," Matt Faircloth enthuses, "we dug his whole aesthetic. He has a very DIY vibe - he's just chilling out in the country next to this big hay field, with all this great gear. He really cares about his work, which is very inspiring."

"Mitch is the first outside producer we've ever worked with," Justin Faircloth continues, "and it's amazing to relinquish control. We rode the wave of his very unique vision, and it was wonderful. He is articulate and intuitive, and has this wonderful quality that is an introspective shyness, this tender air about him, that made me very comfortable."

This particular incarnation of the band's home studio was another element of recording reassurance, with its old-school surroundings and warm acoustics.

"The wood floors and high ceilings made for good sounds," Matt Faircloth says. His brother agrees.

"Yeah - the plaster walls and deep, expansive wood floors sound great," Justin says, "and there are French doors that open up to a larger room, within which an old Baldwin spinet piano resides. The piano has traveled with us for years; I've written many songs on that piano, and it could tell some tales."

The internet, as everyone knows, is fond of telling tales, too - some of those tales being correct, and some being... well, we'll just politely say "misguided."  For instance, when you try to look up The Houston Brothers on Wikipedia, you instead get... bubblegum pop trio of brothers Hanson.  Perhaps it's time for a little retribution.

"You do?" Matt Faircloth says incredulously, "Hanson? Hmm. We take our Wiki place very seriously. We need to file an inquiry into this immediately. I do remember those guys though - they were famous for that great "Mmm Bop" song."

"Well, they are very handsome, and there are three of them, right?" Justin Faircloth muses, "still, we could take them down properly - I'd have 'em chew on Matt's socks."

With their debut album just out last fall, the pairing of multi-instrumentalist Xian Hawkins and singer-songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs, aka Bell Horses, is an eight-song set that showcases the ability of digital-age musicians to collaborate no matter what the distance or conditions.

Recorded while Hawkins and Youngs were in different cities, the indie-pop set, titled This Loves Last Time, veers between downtempo and organic chill via songs like the string-laden "Small Hours" and the multi-layered "Still Life," all diluted through Youngs' unique vocal ennui. Hawkins, on the other hand, is the man behind the electronica; we talked with him about the band's origins and Bell Horses' multi-city recording process.

Q: So Xian, your band name paints an interesting visual; what is the name derived from?

Xian Hawkins: The name Bell Horses is taken from a turn of the century tale about horses passing in the night, strung with bells so as not to collide. It's kind of a nice image, and it seemed an apt analogy for the process of making this record.

Q: How did each of you find the experience of collaboration on this album, as opposed to your usual work as a solo musician?
 
Hawkins: As we were never in the same room while recording (or writing) this was new for both of us. Oddly, it actually enabled more focus and simplified the process in that we avoided getting caught up in each others neuroses about how something was going to turn out - a high level of trust developed by default. Our influences and backgrounds are really different, and this record is something that pushed us both creatively in directions we might not have gone on our own.

Q: I understand the production was largely done with both of you in different cities; could you tell us a little about how you made that work?

Hawkins: The humorous part of it might be how long it all took - kind of laughable really. We would email files back and forth or snail mail CDs. Due to working separately and both having other projects, tours, and such going on, things dragged when it came to the finishing stages. With the lag time from start to finish, other influences start to drift in and you have to resist suddenly wanting to make the whole record over or adding bagpipes to every song. 

Q: Does the album itself have a theme to it, or is it more a collection of standalone singles?

Hawkins: The theme might be mostly in the mood of the record rather than something literal. I did my best to create a kind of sound-world for the vocals, almost like a physical space they could inhabit. The intention was to make an album where the songs belong together and it's something you want to listen to from beginning to end - not just a bunch of singles. We intentionally kept it sort of short for that reason; there were at least 3 other tracks that we cut just to make the sequence of the record feel right.

Q: Did you work with any other musicians on this set, or was it solely the effort of your two talents?

Hawkins: Alexander Ericson from the band Alberta Cross and The Northern Territories sings on three of the tracks, while violinist Eve Boltax played on almost all of the  songs - her string parts were edited and tweaked a bit but they really add a lot to the feel of the record. Michael Lerner, drummer for The Antlers played additional percussion on two of the tracks, and will be working with us more on the next effort.

Q:  And can you tell us a little about your forthcoming plans for touring?

Hawkins: We would really like to tour and flesh the songs out in a live setting - it's in part a matter of making our schedules cooperate. We're working on new material right now and trying to change up the writing process a bit so the songs are developed with performing them in mind. For the immediate future, there's a remix record in the works, which hopefully will see the light sometime early next year.

Loney Dear - aka Emil Svanängen - released his latest album, Dear John, a year ago this month; but it's already ancient history, according to the sensitive, complex and often cryptic singer-songwriter.

"I'm really proud of it and for the response to it," he explains, "but the work on it, I'm trying to forget. I'm working hard on getting new energy for my music - right now I'm building up ideas, recording, and generally trying to feel good about myself and my music."

That productive spirit may be somewhat elusive for Svanängen at the moment ("2009 was a long year," he says), but when it arrives, it arrives in force. Dear John may be more minimalist in its production, but the evocative moods of the songs and beats are by turns quietly introspective and heart-on-sleeve revealing. According to Svanängen, though, the new album, by contrast, is slated to take on a different, but equally intriguing, tone.

"Dear John was darker, heavier, and more tech," Svanängen muses, "the new one, it will be about honesty to myself, and acoustic textures and bass notes."  And the process has already begun, influenced in part by a couple of legends, one classical and one jazz.

"Inspiring me today is - well, I've been saying Bach and Coltrane in a lot of interviews, but actually I found out I really really love those artists. So many times, I've heard an instrumental song, started to like it, and then found out it was a J.S. Bach song. He is the father of so much music, to this day; Radiohead is Bach with drums, for instance."

The process itself is a slow one for Svanängen; not one for rushing an album project, he values quality over quantity as well as plenty of time for himself, and we don't mean time to party. Keith Richards, he's not.

"I actually just recorded a song three days ago and made a video for it," he says, "it's on my blog and on YouTube. A typical day would be waking up at ten, reading the news and having tea in bed," he says, "going to studio for a few hours (this is a good day if you havent noticed) - getting tired and leaving for a bike ride into Stockholm, then hopefully returning. Damn this is difficult. What a struggle."

Perhaps Svanängen's latest tour tired him out a little - a busy round of live dates with Andrew Bird.

"It was really nice getting to play to Andrew's big crowds, and winning over some of his audience. I just loved every day of that tour; I'm really thankful to know Andrew and his crew and friends."

Touring will take a backseat for now to Svanängen's studio work, although he's still making casual plans to work with fellow artists here and there as winter takes hold.

"Right now I'm looking forward to working with some jazz/free jazz/improv musicians in Stockholm and other cities. I did a show in Stockholm before this past summer with a vibraplayer and his trio; that was a lot of fun, so I'm really looking forward to doing more of that thing. I'll spend my winter enjoying myself and making music - that's the plan."

"The first song I ever wrote was called "Daddy, The Noise and The Plumber,"" Glass Ghost vocalist/keyboardist/synthmaster Eliot Krimsky explains, "I wrote it with my first piano teacher. It was about a flood that happened in our house when I was 6 years old; one day the pipe burst in the ceiling of my room and there was water everywhere! My teacher and I made up a narrative together based on this flood, and I made improvisations to go along with the story. I remember performing the song and ending with a mysterious 'Dun Da Dun Dun.'"

Nothing like getting an early start. And Eliot hasn't slowed down much at all since those very early days; neither has his bandmate, drummer Mike Johnson. The two previously worked together in another band called Flying - but it's their debut set as Glass Ghost (Idol Omen, released in September of 2009) that has critics and fans buzzing.

"The Same" features Johnson's avalanche of tempo, while "Like a Diamond" showcases Krimsky's emotionally-wrought side, and "Ending" - appropriately the final track on the album - skips along darkly in yet another of the band's bouts with the quirkiest of pop arrangements. The '80s-reminiscent, forward-reaching set recalls both Talk Talk and Scritti Politti, while isolating Krimsky's unusually off-kilter vocals and Johnson's deftly haphazard drumbeats.

Johnson got just about as early of a start at drumming as Krimsky did with his songwriting, his interest initially piqued by a classic rock song.

"I think that it might have been Led Zeppelin," Johnson chuckles, "I was talking to someone today at a coffee shop, and we were observing that we were hearing "Stairway to Heaven" for the second time since we sat down - and that two "Stairway to Heavens" was too many for one cup of coffee. The guy I was talking to said that as a kid, he used to think about what the first thing would be that he would do if he could sit down at a drumset; I remembered that the first thing I did was play that fill from "Stairway to Heaven." I didn't take it too seriously at first. But my brother had an electric guitar, and we started a band called Road Kill with some kids from the neighborhood - I think I was in fourth grade. We had a song called "Girls, Beer and Music," he laughs.

So - pretty much as inauspicious of a beginning as a song about plumbing. No wonder these two work so well together, even as they go against the typical "rock-band lineup" by sticking to their own format as a true (and cool) indie-rock "duo," a performers' term otherwise associated with lounges at roadside hotels.

"i remember a day when me and Eliot first started jamming, just the two of us," Johnson remembers, "we had a song we were doing called "Walls" (which we started playing again, pretty successfully I think, on this last tour), and we were just starting to play the song "Divisions." We were in our old living room just kind of jamming those tunes, and I remember thinking that it sounded really good with just the two of us, and maybe people would actually like it."

"For a while, we kept trying to figure out who we could get to play with us, and we still think about that sometimes," Johnson continues, "but we kind of just kept playing as the two of us, and then we got a record deal with a really cool label and we've done tons of really cool shows - and it's still just the two of us. Sometimes it is really hard to be kind of unconventional - it can be especially hard when we're playing with more straight-ahead rock groups, or groups that produce a lot of sound. So far though, I've really enjoyed the challenge, and I feel like it's forced me to work extra hard on music this year."

The limited lineup works for Krimsky's musical sensibilities, as well.

"When we started playing songs like "Divisions" and "Like a Diamond" early on, I realized that the parts spoke for themselves," Krimsky says, "at the time, our set up was just Wurlitzer and drums, and those songs really started to interweave with each other in a way that left all of this space, yet felt complete. I remember listening back to the practice tapes around then, and feeling that the space of the music really worked. It has been intimidating, and at times very hard to open for big rock bands; it feels like audiences sometimes are expecting a bigger sound. But the other side of that is that when we are playing with rock bands, we are not what people expect, which is definitely a good thing."

Both Krimsky and Johnson make sure that they have their fave pieces of gear with them for both recording and performance purposes, whether they're close to home or on the road.

"My snare drum is the only thing that I use that's actually mine," Johnson says, "it's really nice, and I wouldn't record without it. Everything else that I've got is on loan from very nice people," he laughs.

"My Moog Prodigy is really special to me," Krimsky affirms, "it's my left hand, and it supplies the low sub bass; it sounds really warm and human although it is electronic; it's also old and wooden, and you just can't beat it."

Both musicians already have fave songs to play live...

"I think my favorite song to play on the most recent tour was "Mechanical Life,"" Johnson says, "we were on tour with White Rabbits, and on that song Matt, Brian and Jamie from White Rabbits joined us playing drums. It got to sounding really good with all the drums playing together, especially by the end of the tour. They're really great players."

... and "Mechanical Life" proved to be an all-round top pick for both bandmates.

"Yeah, "Mechanical Life" seemed to be a showstopper on the tour, because of all of the energy with three of the White Rabbits playing with us," Krimsky confirms, "it was so fun and exhilarating. The tour was very exhausting, but musically it went really well; I think by the end of the tour, we got a lot more comfortable playing in front of different audiences, and were able to adapt easier to what we needed sound wise.  I think a better comfort level made us play better and feel more confident."

England's Field Music hail from Sunderland, and released their first album in August of 2005. Two additional albums later, and it seemed that the end was near for the indie band that was made up of brothers David and Peter Brewis and bandmate Andy Moore.

They told the BBC that they were going to break up after the promo duties for their 3rd album, Tones of Town, were over in 2007. The "breakup" wasn't as dramatic as it sounded, however; they simply stepped away from their band duties for 3 years, and will be back in 2010 with a brand new set of Field Music songs (dubbed Field Music (Measure)) that will hit stores early in the year. David Brewis gives us the scoop on the process.              
So what was the real impetus behind taking three years off from the band, and what did each of you do with your free time? 

David Brewis: I think we could see a strong possibility that if we'd just kept plugging away immediately after we'd finished Tones of Town, then we'd be in danger of conforming to some abstract definition of what Field Music is supposed to sound like, rather than following our noses and trying to make the music we'd be most interested in.

We're not successful enough for there to be some huge financial imperative to repeat ourselves, like lots of bands, so anything which might hinder us in making the best music we can is definitely to be avoided! When we stopped touring for Field Music, I made a record under the name School of Language, which came out on Thrill Jockey in the U.S., which in turn meant that I got a chance to tour over here with some astounding musicians (Doug McCombs from Tortoise and Ryan Rapsys of Euphone). Peter, meanwhile, had started to piece together his album, The Week That Was, and we toured for that record too.

For all the talk of us needing an extended break from each other, we both played in each other's bands, with Peter playing bass for School of Language and me playing drums for The Week That Was. Peter also finished his Master's degree in composition at Newcastle University, and we've both done bits of work recording for other people at our studio in Sunderland. Andy Moore, who played piano in Field Music, started putting together a record too, but it fell by the wayside a little bit, in part because he was busy training as a chef. We haven't exactly had our feet up. 

Where was (Measure) recorded, and how did you approach the process - did you write the music first, or the lyrics - or was it more of a cohesive process? 

The album was recorded at our studio/practise room in Sunderland. I think both me and Peter tend to write music first, or at least, a musical idea tends to get the ball rolling even when we may use lyrics which were written previously. It can work in lots of different ways - a few snippets of music on the new record go back years and years, but other bits weren't finished until we were right at the end of recording. 

Is there a theme or inspiration that runs through (Measure)? What inspired the album's title and the way it's written? 

Unlike our previous records, we were keen for this one to quite sprawling musically and thematically - we didn't want something that was easy to sum up. I suppose we were going for something more like The White Album or Tusk or Physical Graffiti, where the feel of the album comes more from its variety.

We like the idea of having another self-titled album - a sort-of redefinition of principles - but for practical purposes, that would be difficult; so Field Music (Measure) is partly a nod to The White Album, which has both an unofficial title and an official one (and similarly with Led Zeppelin IV), and Peter Gabriel's first four solo albums, all of which were just called Peter Gabriel in the UK, but which had an additional qualifier added for the U.S. based on the artwork. Our artwork is a kind-of graphic score, so the 'measure' of the album title is partly referring to a (musical) bar - we would have chosen a different title had we used different artwork. 

Is the album's 20-track length a result of your having accumulated song ideas over the three years? 

No, not really. We've both been releasing records in the meantime so we haven't had time to build up a stash. We actually decided we wanted to do a double-album very early on in the process, long before we'd written all of the songs. Luckily the pressure to make it a long album spurred us on - I'm not sure I'd want to risk that again though, as it sounds like a recipe for writer's block. 

Who produced the album, and what were the best - and worst - things about the sessions for the new set? 

We produced the album ourselves and, other than the strings, a cornet on one song and backing vocals on one song, we played the whole thing ourselves too. The best sessions are always ones where you get more done than you think you will - for instance, on one day, Peter brought in two songs which I hadn't really heard before, and we just set up and sat down at the drums and piano and recorded the basic tracks;we got them done for both songs that morning. It feels like a very pure way to record!

The overall atmosphere for all of the sessions was of me and Peter trying to figure how best to help each other out; that might have been sitting at the back of the room not saying anything, or it might have been wrestling the guitar out of each other hands to show how its done, or even just going home early to give each other some space! The worst things were when neither of us could figure out how best to help out and we end up just pissing each other off. Happily, that really didn't happen very often. It's been the most enjoyable recording experience I've ever had. 

And will you be doing a full touring schedule to promote the new set? 

I hope so, but it all depends on demand, especially in the U.S.. In the UK, we can tour for very little - we have our own van and we're pretty well-organized. But in the U.S., we have to deal with visas and hiring or shipping equipment, and flights. It feels terrible when there might be ten die-hard Field Music fans in some remote corner of the States, but those ten aren't necessarily going to make it worthwhile for a promoter to put us on. Which is a shame! I'll keep my fingers crossed that people like the record and want to come and see us play.

Cake are in the middle of recording their sixth studio album. That's a cool tidbit of welcome news for Cake fans, right? But this time around, the news is even bigger than that - the iconic band, who were recently honored as one of Billboard's Top Ten Greenest Bands, teamed up with a company called Borrego Solar to convert their California recording studio to solar power, to insure that the latest Cake album will be recorded off the grid, with their sessions powered completely by the sun.

Cake's John McCrea said that it seemed like a waste to be living in California and not taking advantage of all the free electricity; bandmate Vince DiFiore agrees. "With the current scientific knowledge (out there), the logical step was to better the situation," DiFiore explains, "without halting our operation altogether, we did something that might help a little."

Cake's studio, in Sacramento, was the subject of a pro solar-power installation, and the band even recorded the proceedings; fans can watch how it all was done at www.cakemusic.com/solar.html.

"Sacramento, like many places in California, has a gigantic supply of sunlight," DiFiore says, "and because Sacramento is lucky enough to have a public utility, we actually get checks in the mail every month for our excess electricity."

DiFiore also emphasizes that he hopes bands and musicians both big and small scale will start taking steps towards converting their work equipment to sustainable energy as time goes on.

"Hopefully very soon, more and more solar panels and converters will be available for many applications and many different situations," he says.

In addition to their solar innovations, the band is also taking on a unique approach to promoting their music; they'll be sharing the results of their solar sessions as the recording of the album is taking place. A set of free cell phone ring tones - each based on a song from the upcoming album - are being released via the band's mailing list (to sign up, visit http://cakemusic.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi) as a sort of early alternative to the preview single. Although McCrea has his doubts about albums as a whole ("we weren't sure if people were still even listening to albums - so we thought we might just release ring tones instead"), DiFiore still has confidence in the traditional album form.

"Albums are a great idea," DiFiore confirms, "they will be around for a while. But ringtones are here to stay too."

The ring tones will serve as mini-previews for the songs on the album, effectively amping up interest in the new music long before it's ready for release in spring 2010, although the exact date remains to be seen.

"We're working hard on the album at the present," DiFiore says, "but the release date has not yet been set, although we do hope to play the new music live for people next year."

"When Ryan (Carbary) and I began making music together a few years back, we didn't have a name," Ivan and Alyosha's Tim Wilson explains, "we'd ask everyone for ideas. Finally, our friend and producer Eli Thomson came up with Ivan and Alyosha, and it stuck," he smiles.

Although Wilson doesn't directly make the Dostoyevsky reference, it's pretty obvious that the names - also the names of two of the main characters in Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov - could be appropriate (although hopefully minus all that Russian drama) for these two friends whose brotherly relationship makes for a strong and productive partnership, blending their individual personalities into one musical craft.

Ivan and Alyosha's debut EP, The Verse, The Chorus, echoes both plenty of '60s-'70s Europop and American rock n 'soul, and adds in sounds and compositional approaches that also throw nods to some of the duo's indie-rock contemporaries of today.

"We are definitely influenced by Europop and rock," Wilson agrees, "that's what indie rock is, to us at least - a return to organic instrumentation, a return to the song, acoustic guitars strumming, hands clapping, tamborines shaking. We kind of ended up with a nice family band/Fleetwood Mac feel on The Verse, The Chorus. A lot of the records and songs back then - the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and certainly not just in Europe - are so timeless. David Bowie, T-Rex, Rolling Stones, plus everything coming out of Motown, are all influencing what we are attempting to do musically."

"There are certainly also a lot of artists making timeless records now who are influencing us. Helio Sequence, Wilco, Rufus Wainwright, Monsters Of Folk, and Belle and Sebastian are just a few," Wilson continues.
 
"The older recordings - as Tim mentioned, of the 50s, 60s, and 70s - are a large influence on what we want our records to sound like," bandmate Carbary explains, "there are many new production techniques we enjoy, but nothing beats those older recordings."

While they're in production, Wilson explains that he usually writes the songs on acoustic guitar and piano, passing them along to Carbary for "a bit of a musical and arrangement overhaul."

The Verse, The Chorus was recorded mostly in California, and wrapped up further north.

"We did some of it down in Los Angeles, specifically at Sonikwire Studios in Irvine, where we tracked mainly drums and bass," Carbary explains, "then we shaped the songs with producer Eli Thomson at Frank Lenz's apartment in Huntington Beach. We finished up overdubs and got the songs where we wanted them in Seattle at a few home studios, and then mixed the record at Avast!. So, we got the ball rolling in L.A. with Eli, then finished it on our own."

"The sessions were kind of a learning experience, for sure," Wilson says, "a lot of ambition, not enough vision or preperation was our problem; we kind of made it up as we went. To be honest, looking back it was a frustrating year (but still fun.) I'm pretty sure Ryan would say the same. But we ended up with something special, something very honest - we learned a lot about ourselves, each other, what not to do, and how to put a record together."

Wilson and Carbary are demoing for their next upcoming Ivan and Alyosha album even as you read this, and hope to have the new set ready for release in the spring, when they're also scheduled to play the SXSW Fest.

"These days, my brother Pete is also writing songs for our second record," Wilson says, "lately it certainly has been more democratic than ever before, and more productive, it seems. We are closer, our friendships are deeper, our vision and goals are similar, and we are having a lot of fun working together."

Hmm. So should fans anticipate a Dostoyevsky-slash-Thomson-inspired Dmitri being added to the Ivan and Alyosha moniker soon?

Only time will tell.

As we draw a close to the first decade of the 21st century, you typically see lots of best of (or even worst of) lists, but we thought it would be beneficial to review some great records of the past decade that did not get the attention they deserved. 

For your consideration:

1.  M. Ward : Transfiguration of Vincent (2003)

My pick for record of the decade (not just most overlooked), this one helped put M. Ward on the map, but it was the records that came after this one that have gathered more attention.  By far his most cohesive work, it's a cathartic reflection on a life ended too soon.  Every serious music fan should have this record in his collection.

2.  Emma Pollock : Watch The Fireworks (2007)

Ex-Delgado Emma Pollock launched her solo career with this stunning record, which showcased both her amazing voice and top-notch songwriting.  Every song on the record is outstanding.

3.  Wolfman, Featuring Pete Doherty : For Lovers (2004)

Released in the crumbling dust of The Libertines, this one-off single never got any airplay, and served as a transition for Doherty's move to Babyshambles.  It's one of the most poignant songs you'll hear and a perfect match for the bittersweet voice of Doherty.

4.  Spoon : Girls Can Tell (2001)

Spoon certainly garnered lots of attention this decade, and deservedly so, but this less-talked-about album is the one that helped them turn the corner toward national recognition.  It's a stunner, with a unique sound... like someone stumbling around late at night.

5. The Late Great Daniel Johnston : Discovered Uncovered (2004)

The covers with originals album features some great performers covering songs by the (very much alive) Daniel Johnston.  The quirky, yet melodic, songs by Johnston are given fine showcase by some great bands, including the song by Guster listed below.  For those that have not heard his songs, this is a great way to get introduced.

6.  Jeff Tweedy : Sunken Treasure : Live In The Pacific Northwest (2006)

This DVD followed Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on a mini tour from the Pacific Northwest down to San Francisco.  A fascinating glimpse into a solo performer on a tour, the video also contains some great performances by Tweedy to adoring audiences.  The DVD included free MP3 downloads, all of which are essential for WIlco/Tweedy fans.  Best of all, his sound check run through of "Radio King"- haunting and pure.

7.  Ladyhawke : Ladyhawke (2008)

You could dismiss this as a tribute album to 1980's synth rock, but that would be a major injustice.  Filled to the brim with big hooks and pure in its devotion to the 80's sound, this record deserved more attention and airplay.

8.  Jamie Lidell - Jim (2008)

I was not a big fan of his debut record, which had its moments but felt like an exercise in experimentation, but this one blew me away with its blue-eyed soul.  Infectious and downright thrilling at times.

9.  Dios (Malos) : Dios (Malos) (2005)

Joel Morales is a major league songwriter and Dios is both inventive and interesting in their arrangments.  You can sense that their best stuff is still ahead of them, but this record, as well as their debut, is jampacked with sonic goodness.

10.  Detroit Cobras : Baby (2005)

Sure, they are primarily a cover band, but this record is like a blast straight out of Motown, and the muscular vocals of Rachel Nagy are a thing to behold.  Great fun.

11. Jason Falkner : Bliss Descending (2004)

Though the Oughts have been somewhat of a lost decade for Falkner, who wowed on his first two solo records in the late Nineties, this EP was a little morsel for his fans.  Falkner is one of the most talented singer-songwriters on the planet, so hopefully we'll see more from him in the next decade.

12.  A Camp : A Camp (2001)

Cardigan leader Nine Persson teamed with Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous for this sad beauty of a record.

13. The Delgados : The Great Eastern (2000)

The band never achieved a large following in the US, but they've been quite influential in the Scottish music scene.  This record nicely showcased the band's gifts for sophisticated pop.

14.  Eels : Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (2005)

While most of the records from Eels prior to this one left me a little cold (technically good, though hard to love), this double album was ambitious and moving.

Brooklyn's Dead Leaf Echo has mastered the art of the shoegaze - and have utilized those skills to craft a new album, dubbed Truth, that is garnering just as many positive critical reviews as it is accumulating "civilian" fans. Mike DiLalla, Ana Breton, and frontman LG make up the vintage-meets-modern trio, who working to express their personalities and viewpoints through their music - and who are just as inspired by literature as they are by the music of others.

"Yes, we are very influenced by literature," LG confirms, "this band concept started around Nabokov. But really overall it's influenced by many different authors, from many time periods including prose, poetry, and drama; Romantic literature and existentialism both rank high among the personal list. These inspirations are constantly on rotation, constantly changing, varying from writers, composers, painters... all creators."

Taking those influences - and their songs, of course - to The Bunker Studios, where Truth was recorded, the band worked with engineer John Davis and mixmaster John Fryer on the set, which was produced by LG himself.

"Live, the band plays as a five-piece," LG explains, "but recording is great with less people as it's easier to streamline the sessions."

Dead Leaf Echo is also known for opening up their songs to a plethora of remixers - something many bands shy away from - and this process has both enhanced the band's work and given them insight to their own songs that they otherwise may not have run across. That's not to say it's open season on DLE songs, though, so proceed with caution.

"Remixes are always encouraged, and direction is usually open regarding them," LG says, "if someone approaches us that we'd feel can bring a fresh direction to the song, then they are encouraged to work on it. On the flip side, with the definitive versions of the songs that are on the albums, the mixes are supervised at a scrutinizing angle."

Truth, LG says, is more than just anothers singles set, and definitely follows a theme. "Yes, the album like all of our albums is lyrically a concept album," he says, "everything revolving around the ambitious and often ambiguous word Truth. In its simplest form it's dealing with the word in relation to its counterpoint - Lies."

Speaking of truth and lies - otherwise thought of by some as "The Music Business" - LG has plenty of thoughts on those matters, as well.

"Pop music is always evolving," he says, "though the telescopic nature of that is now starting to slow - after the dramatic shift and rise in pop music since the late 50's, the evolution is cyclical, just like the trends. Although trends culturally are also products of marketing, the natural evolution is hopefully a little more organic. I feel that the level of songwriting has dipped in the past 10 years, but only in relation to the prolific output that has been the past 40 years; it was bound to recess."

"They said the same thing in the 80s, especially with digital technology becoming more available and used," he continues, "they complained about it then, but the 80s don't seem to be waning in popular culture now. Technology is both a boon and a hindrance to art; there's always a different lag time for the particular medium, and it incorporates technology to meld. I remember everyone complaining in the 90s how bad it was too, but they did the same thing in the decade before, so really it's all about hindsight when viewing the present. Viewing the present is not something you can do with nostalgia - it's too fresh."

LG further emphasizes that reflecting one's personality in music is really "the only thing that's going to keep music working to new ground" - he thinks that's what will make it singular and original.  "But manifesting that is not always easy for most people," he agrees.

"In regards to improving popular music, the problem doesn't have to do in the music itself but in the awareness and cultural depreciation of what is popular music," he explains, "by making it a commodity, its value fluctuates based on quality. But who decides that? What it is based on? The level of the recording, how many chords it has in it? Your often comparing taste with proficiency," he continues, "but it's also based on demand."

"The digital format kills that notion, because music as a supply is never-ending, and is consumed now and disposed of at a much higher rate at a much lower value... often for free."

"Electrolightz actually came about by coincidence," singer Rami Perlman explains. "erOc (producer) had been working on some electro songs on his own, and had NameBrand rap on the tracks. Those songs had erOc's voice on them. I didn't even know about the project when I met up with erOc to try to get him to produce some of my solo stuff; I played him a couple Rami Dearest tracks, and he was like "yeah, that's cool - but check out what I've been working on - I want you to sing on it." The second he played me the first song ("The Future") I knew that erOc was on to something special."

Perlman worked on songs with erOc for two weeks before he even met Name Brand; Kash, the drummer, is the fourth member of the band. "I hit it off with Name Brand right away," Perlman says, "but we didn't know we were going to form a band until we all got in the same room." The rest, as Perlman often says in interviews, is "history-slash-the future."

erOc's own history primarily revolved around hip-hop, which he spent a good half-dozen years producing; he then started checking out other genres of music for inspiration.

"I really got into bands like Cut Copy and LCD Soundsystem, and producers like MSTRFT and Justice," erOc explains, "I started making instrumental tracks in that vein for hiphop artists, and as I listened to them over and over again, lyrics and melodies just started coming to me. A lot of the themes are things that we were going through in our lives while we were in the creation stage... so they are serious, while fun and dance oriented at the same time."

For the Electrolightz project, Perlman explains that they all approached the writing process as a team, with erOc most often concepting the beats and melodies, with Name Brand and himself reworking things as a unit.

"Everyone in the band are talented musicians in their own right," Perlman says, "so sometimes I'll come in with a hook, or Name Brand will come up with lyrics to a verse that I sing. It's a group effort."

For the winter, this versatile trio will be keeping busy working their way through a list of remixes (one of their most popular to date probably being their standout take on La Roux's "Bulletproof"), and will be hitting the road soon, too.
 
"We are in the process of finishing up an Electrolightz mix tape, featuring original songs and remixes both," Name Brand says, "and in addition, we plan to play and tour as much as possible - it's all Electrolightz all the time."

"And we also just put the finishing touches on our "The Future" video, which was directed by Matt Silverman and has SFX by Jeff Goldman, so we are going to put that out with the mixtape," eRoc adds, "the future never felt so right!"

 

Back in November, we brought you the top ten tracks that were the perfect accompaniment to both your Thanksgiving turkey and your Aunt Maude's green bean and onion casserole (well, okay, there's no hope for that, but anyway...)

Now that Christmas is upon us, we figured you'll be too busy with all that present-wrapping, eggnog-drinking, and fruitcake-dropping to give the time to your holiday playlist that it so aptly deserves. So here's our second installment of prefab holiday hits - these, of course, collecting the hip tunes that you'll need to bring the cool to your Yule.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono - "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"
This quintessential anti-war meets Christmas song from the brainy Beatle actually spoke out against the Vietnam War, but in such a passive/festive way that it's become a holiday standard, and has been re-recorded by the likes of The Alarm, The Fray, and The Polyphonic Spree to Sarah McLachlan.

Owl City - "The Christmas Song"
One of the big surprise success stories of 2009, Owl City, aka Adam Young, quietly recorded his sweetly-executed little indie-pop album in his Minnesota basement surrounded by icicles - and it hit the Billboard charts with a well-deserved bang. His Christmas song is equally as innocent and charming as the rest of his tunes.

Julian Casablancas - I Wish It Was Christmas Today
Strokes singer Casablancas has been testing out his mettle as a solo artist, complete with his own Christmas single - although it's one he borrowed from Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, and the rest of the SNL holiday crew. The original lo-fi track has been expanded into a NYC-rockin' pop gem complete with buzzy guitars and singalongability.

Blondie - We Three Kings
Three cheers to Blondie for taking an obscure Christmas carol and turning it into this basement-cool version. The accompanying video features the band performing live (and cold) in the middle of a winter-barren forest; it's both a great predecessor to Blondie's upcoming 2010 album, and a groovy addition to your holiday playlist.

The Killers - "A Great Big Sled"
Recorded in 2006 as the band's holiday single, the initial proceeds from the tune went to Bono's RED campaign, and the track was accompanied by "home videos" of the band members celebrating Christmas. As for the song itself, it features lead singer Brandon Flowers in a youthful mood, praising the simple delights of a day in the snow.

Smashing Pumpkins - "Christmastime"
"Presents are wrapped up, it's beautiful, beside the Christmas tree..." lead Pumpkin Billy Corgan sings, in a surprisingly grunge-and-drama free holiday tune that's sincerely pretty and perfectly seasonal, complete with plenty of warm string sounds, chiming bells, and even a few flutes just for good holiday measure.

Band-Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas"
Written by Ultravox's Midge Ure and The Boomtown Rats Bob Geldof, this '80s track is notable not only for its famine-relief charity intentions, but also because it's great fun to play an audio version of "spot the celebrity," as the vocals were sung line by line by everyone from members of U2 and Duran Duran to Sting, Paul McCartney and David Bowie.

Ron Sexsmith - "Maybe This Christmas"
A plea of hope for the season, underrated Canadian singer-songwriter Sexsmith gently croons his way through this piano n' chimes indie-folk number - "Maybe forgiveness/will ask us to call/someone we love/someone we've lost/maybe this Christmas" By the time this sentimental song ends, you might even be making a few phone calls yourself.

The Eels - "Christmas is Going to the Dogs"
Leave it to The Eels to find a completely different take on Christmas music - albeit one inspired by their contribution to the soundtrack for the Jim Carrey version of Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. "Well, Christmas is going to the dogs/we'd rather have chew toys than yule logs." Finally, a song for the poor, beleaguered Max.

The Kinks - "Father Christmas"
A punk, witty, recession-friendly take on the typical holiday Santa song, this one dropped way back in 1977 from the Brit band, and tells the tale of a department store Santa Claus who is cornered by a group of poor kids who demand money and jobs instead of toys (since toys are just for "little rich boys.")

Best known as the side project of Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie, rockers The Almost spent their summer recording their latest album, Monster Monster, which was tracked in Nashville and just released this past November.  Considered a concept or theme album this time around, the new set fuses Americana with the band's brand of modern rock, and lyrically focuses on overcoming struggles (hence the "monsters") in one's life. A Monster EP was released to preface the full-length album, and gave The Almost an even bigger boost.

"The EP has passed all of our expectations in terms of sales," The Almost's guitarist Jay Vilardi says, "the idea was to give something back to those who still buy physical media."

The entire band participated in the creation of the album, with Gillespie stating that the new album was planned to be "more of a complete band effort," while Vilardi says that the recording process itself was a great experience.

"We tracked at Dark Horse studios in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Aaron Sprinkle," Vilardi explains, "we also enlisted Matt Carter, the guitarist from the band Emery, to engineer the record; it was nice to get out of our comfort zones and into Nashville where none of us live."

There was a pile of energy during these sessions, too, as song after song evolved through the hard work of Gillespie, Vilardi, and fellow bandmates Alex Aponte, Dusty Redmon, and Joe Musten.

"There are always a lot of opinions flying around when things are collaborative," Vilardi laughs, "this is almost always a good thing! We had so many songs as a result - 17 tracks total."

That ended up being more than enough for the album, of course (hence the EP), and also enabled the band to kick things off quickly in a visual sense by shooting three music videos in the last three months.

"We actually shot "Lonely Wheel" and "Hands" together on the same day, and about a month ago Aaron and I shot a vid for "Little Drummer Boy"," Vilardi says, "we absolutely love doing them so hopefully we'll make a few more for this record. I would love to shoot a vid for the song "Monster Monster.""

When they weren't busily wrapping up their new album and making videos, The Almost found themselves back on the road, where they toured across the country and met plenty of new musical colleagues along the way.

"The tour just ended - it was incredible!" Vilardi smiles, "both The Used and Drive A are great and fun bands to hang with and watch live. All of the shows were fun, but overall Orlando was the best for me - and any show in Texas! Not sure why, but Texas shows are always nuts."

And in spite of their packed schedule, the band are ready to get back onto the tour trail ("We're super anxious!" Vilardi says); but for now, they'll have to be content with taking a rest over the holidays. But it won't be long until their travels rev up again; they'll be part of the Australian SoundWaves tour in February, playing shows alongside My Chemical Romance, Jane's Addiction, Faith No More, and others.

Vilardi, however, is ready to go asap - "We look forward to... well, somehow keeping busy until then!"

Aussie ARIA-award-winning electronica band Infusion hails from the seaside city of Wollongong (informally known as "The Gong") in New South Wales, and features the zippy live performances of trio Jamie Stevens, Manuel Sharrad, and Frank Xavier. A fave on the club circuit, Infusion have made their mark on most of the big music fests, including Coachella, Glastonbury, Roskilde, America's SXSW, and Australia's own Big Day Out fest.

Now, their latest album, All Night Sun Light lets you bring the dance club into your own living room - and even throws in a few mellower tunes that add an unexpected, almost earthy feel - and modern-pop guitars! - to their statement-making electro beats and videogame-reminiscent sounds. We talked to Frank Xavier about the recording process and also managed to find out where Infusion will be headed next, so that you can plan ahead to buy those concert tickets.

What inspired the songs on your new album, and what kind of music were you listening to during the making of the album? Did what you were listening to further inspire you?

Since we were touring quite a lot in dance clubs, I was trying to listen to other stuff - lots of rock and indie stuff, and not much instrumental stuff - so out came the guitar and the pen and paper, rather than heading straight to the computer to start the writing process. Then it was a case of trying to incorporate this into the sound that is Infusion!

I understand the album was recorded in a wide range of studios "all over the place" - can you tell us a little about that process - what were some of the locales and how did your recording process work?

Yeah - it was hard actually finding the time to write and record while touring. We shipped our gear over to the UK to write the album when we were living in Brighton. But when we were touring Europe, we were just too exhausted and distracted to do anything, so we moved back home and hired a house down the coast in Victoria, Australia to start the writing/recording process, then we took the tracks home and worked on the production in our own studios. From there, we recorded the vocals and guitars in the home studio, and got the drums recorded in a local studio, and then the strings and brass were recorded locally as well. Then we met with an Engineer in Los Angeles while we were touring, and hired a room in Jim Henson's studio to play some demos, and while we were there we recorded some piano. We put it all together and had a month to get the sessions to New York for mixing by James Brown (nope, not that James Brown - the acclaimed producer who's worked with both Placebo and NIN.)

So was it distracting or liberating recorded in such a scattered way?

Well, I think it was recorded that way 'cause we didn't have all the material ready to go. It was a work in progress - writing and recording at the same time - this is distracting because you're constantly changing things. It's easier to get your songs done, then record and mix at the same time in a block. The only problem then is that you're stuck if you're not happy with it. We were constantly rerecording 'cause we had a means to do so, and didn't get to the mixing stage till we were ready.

What do you feel James and working at Looking Glass (Philip Glass' recording studio in New York) - added to the album? How do you think Brown's work and Glass' facility helped enhance the set?

Initially we were toying with the idea of mixing this ourselves like the other albums, but our mixing tastes are all quite different, and a mediator sounded like a good idea. Rough mixes were done at home, and a few mix notes; then the stems were sent to James to mix on The SSL at Looking Glass. James would get a mix and then send it to us to have a listen, and we would suggest changes. It was a good way of working and James is pretty quick. It's difficult to get good strings or a good drum mix out of a home studio, and a mix always sounds warmer and well separated out of an analog console. James was able to make things sit right and simplify things a little, and push out the main elements in the tracks.

I noticed there are some forays into a mellower style on some of the new songs; do you prefer writing ballads, or the more dance-friendly tracks? Do you have a favorite song on the album yet? If so, what and why?

I'm familiar with writing the more dance friendly tracks, so writing ballads becomes more of a challenge and something more experimental for me. The recording and writing process was more organic and sample-based here. And I do have a few favorites - "Try It On" is one of them, because it reminds me of the old Infusion, but with a mature edge to it.

And finally, do you prefer studio work, or touring? Do you have tour plans for this album, and if so, can you tell us what the band's upcoming plans will be?

I prefer studio work, but you can get really caught up in working and end up burning away hours of your life. At the moment I'm looking forward to touring again and travelling, 'cause its been a while and we have new material to promote. At the moment we have a gig lined up in Europe, and will be touring the U.S. early next year.

Brooklyn, NY’s Savoir Adore open up about the transition from singer/songwriter team to whimsical indie-pop quintet, and take us on a tour through the Wooded Forest...

What's the story of Savoir Adore?  How and when did you get together?

Paul Hammer:  Savoir Adore began as an experiment in 2006. Deidre and I had played together before and we thought it would be fun and exciting to record together. As a challenge we decided to write and record an EP over the course of a weekend; we didn't really know what to expect. The rules were simple - we had 48 hours and no acoustic guitars were allowed. Haha. The result was The Adventures of Mr. Pumpernickel and the Girl with Animals in Her Throat.  We were both pleased and excited by the recordings and the music, which started floating around and eventually got to Will Griggs at Cantora Records. The label encouraged us to record more and we did!

Who else is in the band and how'd they get into it?

PH:  David Perlick-Molinari is my best friend and Deidre's boyfriend.  He encouraged us from the beginning and was our go-to choice for helping to bring the songs alive in a performance setting. He's also a production guru -- he produced MGMT's Time To Pretend EP. He's been with us ever since.  Sasha Brown is on bass and we met him through our first drummer, and Tim McCoy is our current drummer.  I met him when I sat in with The Isles once.

You were both doing the singer/songwriter thing for a few years before forming Savoir Adore.  The only song it's really sort of apparent on is "Honestly" -  has that background had any influence on the songwriting process? 

Deidre Muro:  It's funny you say that "Honestly" is the only song that showcases that - I'm sure it’s because it’s the only track that features acoustic guitar.  Our individual backgrounds as solo artists have had a tremendous influence on our songwriting process.  With Savoir Adore, we've pushed ourselves to try writing in ways we haven't really done before.  

PH:    Only one of the songs on In the Wooded Forest was written before we entered the studio. The rest were all written while we were in the studio, which I think allowed us to be inspired simultaneously by SOUND and SONG, which was definitely a new and exciting thing for us. As far as a "singer songwriter acoustic guitar sounding" track, “Honestly” is definitely the closest thing to that, but I think all of our songs have a strong songwriting base underneath the textures of sound. We try to give equal importance to song and soundscape. 

On a similar note -- how has each of your songwriting processes changed since forming Savoir Adore?   Do you like the collaborative aspect?

DM:  Definitely – it’s generally a collaboration from the birth of the idea for a song.  We do most of our writing in the studio and record simultaneously, jointly making decisions as we go along.

PH:  The collaborative process is great! And our process is continuously changing.  What has always made Savoir exciting for me is that we continuously challenge each other to write/record in new ways. Every songwriter has certain tendencies, and Deidre really challenges me to open my mind to new ideas.

How did you get involved with Cantora Records?

PH:  We initially knew Will Griggs from attending NYU at the same time, and I also played in a band with him earlier in college.  They heard the Mr. P… EP, came to our first show, and encouraged us to keep going and take the project seriously.   

Where did you record In The Wooded Forest?  What was your favorite song to lay down? 

DM:  We recorded ITWF upstate in Carmel, NY at Paul's home, where we have done all our recording up to this point.  My favorite song to record was "The Scientific Findings of Dr. Rousseau" because it is a quintessential example of our layering recording process that we used throughout the album.  This included us running back and forth between control room and live room, hitting “record” and then tracking layer after layer of percussion, vocals, or whatever texture the song called for.

PH:  My favorite song to record was “MERP.”  It was written with Deidre on a Jupiter 8 and me on the drums.  Over a 20-minute period of throwing ideas back and forth we slowly but surely developed the riff and beat for the and laid down the main elements of the track. There was something very special about that song and how we recorded it, and I still think about it whenever I listen to the album. 

When did you guys start writing the songs for the album, how did that come about?

PH:   The first few songs that were written for this album were written in the spring of 2007, immediately after we finished our EP.  The rest of the songs were finished over the next 1 1/2 years.

Is there any kind of thread that holds the songs together?

DM:  Not as much as the first EP, this is not a narrative.  A lot of the songs are very inspired, and take cues from the world we created, but it really captures us venturing outwards from our first recording endeavor to the next step.

PH:  There are definite ideas that hold the record together – mainly, contrasts:  the contrast between the natural world and the mechanical world, between what is magical and what is real, light and darkness and all the other contrasts that exist.  We began writing from this place and then realized how inspiring it was for us. We realized that these contrasts exist in the real world, and where they meet there is often something special. “Savoir Adore," or roughly "to know love,” is basically the closest thing to real magic humans have - it's the perfect combination of the natural primal world, and a more civilized psychological construct. I think In the Wooded Forest became a series of these beautiful contrasts. 

What was it like to play at SXSW 2009?

DM:  Hilarious - we weren't actually an official band!  But we still had a bunch of shows/parties booked.  We also did a 31-hour drive home (straight!) from Austin to NYC.  Yay!

PH:   We originally went down to do a taping for MTV's Ahead of the Curve and to play with another band, the French Horn Rebellion (I play drums, and Deidre sings). Then we ended up playing a few parties and it was incredible. Hopefully we'll go back this year (officially) Also - I do not recommend the straight drive either. Plan some stops or fly.

What can you tell us about the 12-song concept EP, The Adventures of Mr. Pumpernickel and the Girl with Animals in Her Throat, that you recorded in 2006?

DM:  The story is that Paul and I challenged each other to completely step out of our "boxes" and write/record a concept album in one weekend.  This one experiment yielded such interesting results that we ended up becoming a band.  Interestingly, it has pigeonholed us as fantasy-oriented, even though that's never really what we intended!  In fact, when we made that EP, we never really even intended to be a band!  It's just funny how things happen sometimes...

PH:  The story takes place within 24 hours, in which we are introduced to Mr. P and the setting of the University/Wooded Forest.  We also learn that one of his students, Gloria, is very much in love with him.  One day, on his way home from the University, he passes by the Wooded Forest and comes across the Girl with Animals in her Throat, who he is immediately entranced by.  He gets home and settles in for the night, only to be kept up by a series of visitations from magical forest creatures -- Les Grenouilles (the frogs), then a mystical turtle.  Finally, the Girl appears at his door with the prophetic Three-Headed Boar, which has come to warn Mr. P of tragic events to come.  In the morning, a news broadcast announces that a young girl had killed herself in the Wooded Forest.  The young girl was Gloria; when she had snuck out to Mr. P's house and seen him with the Girl, she stabbed herself in the heart three times.  Having died there, the Wooded Forest claims her body and takes it into the ground.  Snow falls in honor of her tragic death.

Phew.  Now, in 10 words or less, how would you describe yourselves?

PH:  Lush, adventure pop with beautiful melodies and unique rhythms!

DH:  Girl and boy sing hummable melodies over pop songs with magical instrumentation.

Name the top 5 albums you've been listening to?

 Paul:

1. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

2. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

3. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains

4. Taylor Swift - Fearless

5. Whiskeytown - Pneumonia

 Deidre:

1. Fats Waller

2. Alan Lomax - Prison Songs, Vol. 1

3. Cocteau Twins – “Heaven Or Las Vegas”

4. Phoenix -  Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

What are you going to do after you finish this interview?

PH:  Sleepy time!

The spiritual and skilled Autry Rene Fulbright of Midnight Masses has long found music to be a medium for expression and a source of personal salvation. The native Atlanta musician moved from his hometown to Brooklyn, New York, and soon became part of the local music scene, collaborating with the likes of Dragons of Zynth and Conrad Keely of ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

When Fulbright's father passed away in 2008, Fulbright found music to again be a saving grace as it helped pull him out of that difficult experience to create anew. He traveled to Austin, Texas, and co-wrote a number of songs with Trail of Dead's Jason Reece; before long, Fulbright had returned to Brooklyn and resumed work with a number of musical friends to craft what would be Midnight Masses' first album.

"Recording in Austin was really casual and off-the-cuff," Fulbright says, "it's where the initial project started. It's nice any time to get out of New York to record because we can stay focused even in a casual atmosphere."

Fulbright also credits his bandmates - Daniel Wood, Miyuki Furtado, Eric Rodgers, and Destiny Montague - as having direct influence on the songs.

"Everyone is in the band for a reason," he explains, "all of their individual talents and abilities to have fronted other groups has a profound impact on our presence." Jason Reece remained an important part of the project, too - "Jason is to Midnight Masses as Steve Martin was to early SNL," Fulbright says.

One of the notable elements of Midnight Masses' songs are the layered, complex harmonies that often appear throughout the compositions; Destiny Montague says that the harmonies are usually a group effort.

"Autry usually sings the main melody," Montague explains, "and we all add our own harmonies in a five-layer harmony cake."

The most significant element of the set, though, is the impact of the passing of Fulbright's father, although Fulbright says that the music they've created can apply, through listening, to a wide range of personal situations.

"The album is primarily based on my father's death and the band getting together to create a sort of cathartic document of the time period," Fulbright says, "but it means something different to everyone in the band and I hope that anyone who listens to it would understand the inspiration and emotions involved, but also be able to be personally inspired/moved by it. Ultimately I would just like people to enjoy it as a narrative piece of music."

And more of that music will be forthcoming; Fulbright says there will be a bonus EP ready soon to go along with the Rapture Ready EP.

We're right in the middle of sorting all of that out," he confirms, "in addition to the bonus EP, some friends of ours are working on remixes for 'Walk On Water' and we're working on some videos too; we're also working on our first full length record."

They began their current road trek way back in August, to continuing promoting an album that's over a year old. But their audiences are still Satisfied (hence the album's name) - and even as their namesake month begins, DecembeRadio is perhaps even more in demand now than ever before.

This big-time tour is also a big change-up from the band's early beginnings, in which they started like so many bands do - jamming in middle and high school.

"Josh (Reedy, lead vocals/bass) and I grew up in the same area," guitarist/vocalist Brian Bunn explains, "we started playing together in a band as kids. We knew this is what we wanted to do, so we worked hard to make it a reality."

The rest of DecembeRadio - Eric Miker on guitar/vocals, and Boone Daughdrill on drums - got together with the help of producer Scotty Wilbanks, who remains the band's producer to this day. The band fit together like a musician's puzzle, with each band member taking on a definite role.

"Myself and Josh take care of most of the songwriting and musical end of things," Bunn says, "while Eric does a lot of the business." Drummer Daughdrill's role is a little less complex, but no less important. "Boone is the fun-loving, free spirit that keeps everybody smiling," Bunn chuckles.

Satisfied was recorded at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the first release for the band on their new label, Springhill Records. Wilbanks, of course, was back on production duties, and threw in some keyboard work for the band, too. Since DecembeRadio is already working on songs for their next album, one can only assume they don't really mind the studio part of being in a band. And one would be right.

"Records are always hard work," Bunn says, "but we love going into the studio and crafting new songs."

DecembeRadio's songs are influenced by a lot of '70s rock and blues music; they're most often compared to The Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz. But the messages in their music are more peace than party, as their lyrics deal with Christian topics. This is one band that knows how to blend positivity and pure rock; guitarist Miker first impressed his bandmates early on, by throwing a Guns n' Roses guitar riff into a worship song.

That musical approach has already snagged the band a Grammy Award nomination (for "Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album" - they lost to Jonny Lang's Turn Around, but still consider the nod an honor) and keeps them on the road about 200 days out of the year ("150 shows a year," Bunn confirms.)

And as of now, they've got a few live dates left in December (12/4 Punta Gorda, FL, 12/5 Charleston, SC, and 12/28 Springfield, IL), then they'll be taking a break before resuming their tour on January 16th. And as for their road routine - no problem. They've got it down pat.

"We must have coffee and Egg McMuffins in the mornings," Bunn says, "we also cannot live without our computers and cell phones... and as for myself, I have to have a guitar on board at all times."

Influenced in part by both The Kinks and The Muppet Show, Seattle, Washington indie-pop band Curtains For You were pretty geeked about Sesame Street's recent 40th Anniversary - but that was as far as the celebrations went. This is a band that, in spite of whatever velour-suited idols they may have, are simply too busy making music to worry about much else.

Their latest album, What A Lovely Surprise To Wake Up Here, was recorded at London Bridge Studios in Seattle and produced by the band themselves.

"It was a really great experience, and I must give credit to Geoff Ott who owns and runs London Bridge," lead vocalist/guitarist Matt Gervais says, "his energy totally heightened the recording process and he's a hell of an engineer. He knows what he's doing and we owe a lot of the purity of sound to his expertise. Gotta give Nick Holman, our bassist, most of the credit too, because he engineered and produced all of the tracking that we did outside of the studio. He's our resident recording expert."

Gervais explains that the quirky title of the album actually came from a little note that Mike Gervais (guitar/sax/vocals) left for pianist/vocalist Peter Fedofsky after literally waking up on Pete's couch unaware of his whereabouts. Pete saved the fortuitous note, and it popped up on the night that the band was busily brainstorming the album title. 

"We unanimously agreed that it was perfect," Gervais confirms, "the title has a certain sense of humor and sadness that seemed to work perfectly with the album's lyrical themes."

Fedofsky agrees with that decision - "Yeah, that was pretty hilarious, as Mikey was out of town when we were trying to decide on the album title. I opened my lyric book to take notes, and this note fell out on the floor that said the album title. Without being in the room, he named the album. Someday that note might end up at auction and be worth something... maybe I should hang on to that!" - and also seconds Gervais praises of their studio compatriots.

"I'll echo the kudos that Matt is giving out," Fedofsky says, "Geoff admirably became a member of the band for those sessions. Whenever his name comes up, we all just smile and remember how much fun we had with him. We were in a very goofy headspace while recording the record, and he just went there with us, no questions asked. And Nick, as always, went the extra mile to put the record together with his awe-inspiring know-how."

This well-honed team of bandmates - the last but not least being drummer Dave Lawrence - also hew close to the team sensibilities of The Beach Boys when it comes to writing both their music and lyrics.

"As far as the Beach Boys, I have a certain love for the innocence of their lyrics," Gervais says, "especially the stuff just previous to Pet Sounds, when Tony Asher took lyrical duties. So many of the songshave such a nice sentiment and they're so well put. The simplicity conjures a lot of tears for me. Plus there's a moment in "You're So Good To Me" that culminates in this awesome falsetto sing-a-long: '...and I love it, LOVE IT, la la la la la la la la la!' For Nilsson it's almost the opposite; he is one of those songwriters who conveys the deepest of emotions while sounding totally detached at the same time.  I'm working on a list of them, but John Lennon can do it, and so can Rivers Cuomo. It's mesmerizing."

"For me," Fedofsky says, "I'm always lost in a Wilson-haze when it comes to the chords he gets away with. Listening to something like "Girls on the Beach" or "Keep an Eye on Summer" is endlessly fascinating. He's all about slyly breaking the most obvious of rules musically. I also really get into his post-Pet Sounds period, specifically Friends and sMiLe stuff. There is an aching beauty to his music in that era, and coupled with Parks' lyrics on sMiLe, it never fails to please me. Shoot - now, I'm going to listen to "Cabinessece" after this interview," he laughs.

"As for Harry (Nilsson)," Fedofsky continues, "he is so damn interesting to listen to. He was a total mystery to record execs, having huge hits with covers and others having huge hits with his originals. He followed his whimsy until the end of his life, never really listening to the record companies. Toward the end of his recording career, his voice really had recovered to close to its former glory, and it is a shame that RCA dropped support for him in the wake of Elvis' passing. Those last records (That's the Way It Is and Knnillssonn) were the sound of an artist regaining his confidence and power. I would love to go down in music history as a band that pursued their muse and whimsy without being forced by someone's business decisions. In that regard, he is an industry inspiration. Musically, his vocal skills and arrangement skills are without equal."

Curtains For You's own songs are infused with a sense of fun - much like many of The Beach Boys songs were - plus an equal portion of idiosyncratic lyricisms that are just as pop-accessible as they are fuel for pondering. In crafting their album, Fedofsky calls London Bridge "one of those magical studios that feels like home," and it's apparant that their recording sessions were far from the angst-ridden times that many bands claim as part of the "process."

"First and foremost, our recording sessions were some of the best times we've had as a band," Gervais enthuses, "it's like a party where you also get to record an album with your best friends. On the first day of the sessions Mikey and I stopped at Jack in the Box for a healthy morning breakfast, and just as we pulled in to the lot Mikey revved the engine and I spilled maple syrup all over my pants. I had to play in my undies for most of that day while my knickerbockers dried in the sun," he laughs, "it's quite an invigorating feeling and I highly recommend it to any recording artist. I've heard that Neil Young's Harvest was recorded pants-less."

Once again, the bandmates are in agreement over their studio memories.
 
"It was a blast for sure," Fedofsky continues, "London Bridge's lounge is a fantastic space to unwind and relax between takes. In the studio itself, I was sequestered behind a fort made of sound baffles. I could hardly see over the top of them, so I felt like I was in a padded cell. What I remember most is listening to the first playbacks of "Dead World." We hopped into the control room and rewound the tape. All of a sudden, this huge sound filled the room, and we knew that this whole "recording" thing was going to work.  As far as I remember, the take on the record is either take one or two of that song, and it set the pace and tone of the rest of the sessions. That set the pace and tone for the sessions."

And their studio sessions ran like a well-oiled - if slightly goofy at times - machine.

"Typically, we'd arrive in the morning and have a spot of tea or coffee, and then just start playing," Fedofsky explains, "we'd do three takes of a song, dump the tape to Pro|Tools, and then hit the studio for 3 more takes. It was 15 minutes on, and then 15 minutes off to dump the tape. We just kept going and going, stopping only for the occasional break/technical fiddling. We'd kick it off at about 10 a.m. or so, and quit around 11 p.m. after some playback listening."

Now that the album's wrapped, Curtains For You are prepping for both the upcoming winter and for their big tour that will kick off in February; in the meantime, the weather may be the only thing that these in-tune bandmates might just disagree on.

"Having just moved to a house on a very steep hill, I will be pursuing my earnest prayers for no snow/ice this winter, as Seattle is the least prepared city in the world for both," Fedofsky says.

"As for me," Gervais ponders, "well, if we're we're lucky enough to get the same kind of snow storm in Seattle this year as we did last year, I'll be sledding down Denny Hill in a garbage can."

Sherwood's latest album, QU, is hot. And so were their recording sessions. Literally.

"We recorded QU at Seagrass Studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Valley Village," Sherwood's drummer, Joe Greenetz, explains, "Seagrass is owned and operated by a producer named Brad Wood. We had a terrific time - it's a very laid back atmosphere, and we actually lived in a house next door to the studio for two months."

"One day as we were tracking in the studio, Brad noticed smoke in the air outside," Greenetz continues, "he walked out the door looking in the direction of the smoke, and started running, yelling "Call 911!" The neighbor's storage shed was going up in flames, and the fire was starting to touch our landlady's building, which also housed a really nice concert piano that we'd been using on several songs.  Brad got a hose and started to douse the flames as I called 911; five fire engines showed up and helped put out the blaze. It was a very close call. Then we took a break for lunch."

As cool in the face of fiery adversity as they are onstage, Sherwood is perhaps best known so far for both their peppy indie-rock stage shows, as well as for being one of the first bands signed to newbie record label MySpace Records. But while the initial impression of most music consumers may have been "Huh? Why is MySpace trying to sell albums?" Sherwood was just happy to be there.

"Being signed to MySpace Records has been a fantastic experience," Greenetz enthuses, "the folks there are passionate and knowledgeable, and generally great people. Our affiliation with MySpace the website has proven to be very fruitful, and MySpace Records has proven itself to be a legitimate label." 

Sherwood's third album, QU, is their second for MySpace Records (their first was Sing, But Keep Going on indie label Sidecho Records); Greenetz says it's their most mature effort to date.

"That's probably the most cliché thing to say, but we spent much more time on both the writing and recording of this album. And Brad's production style is less perfectionist than Lou Giordano's (who did our previous album), which lends the album a more organic feel while still sounding sonically impressive. We're very proud of the record."

In addition to the album itself, the band's already shot a video for the single "Maybe This Time," and Greenetz says that Sherwood's singer, Nate Henry, has a few more ideas up his sleeve for future videos, "but we're keeping them close to our chest for now."

In the meantime, the band will embark on a short schedule of west coast radio promos after the wedding of guitarist Dan Koch; they'll take a well-deserved holiday break; and then they'll be start rehearsing for a tour slated to kick off in early 2010. As for the fans, they'll be able to check out the new album itself, of course, as well as an upcoming new episode of their web series, The Sherwood Show, which will arrive with a newly-shot complimentary video and some new recorded music.

"It's gonna be good," Greenetz says.

One has to wonder if The Wild Turkeys' show bookings pick up in the month of November, at least in the U.S. But all Thanksgiving jokes aside, a feature on The Wild Turkeys simply must begin with an explanation of their most, ehrm, unusual band instrument - the "Suitcase and Dresser Drawer Percussive Contraption."

"It consists of a suitcase as a bass drum, an upturned dresser drawer as a snare drum played with brushes, and tin cans and pots attached to the dresser drawer," band member Sheldon Jaaskelainen explains, "the idea really was to match the sound of a drum kit without the volume it creates; that is how the Drawer was created." 

"The Drawer" is played by fellow Wild Turkey Vaughn Alexander, whose bandmates, in addition to Sheldon Jaaskelainen, include another Jaaskelainen - Sheldon; yet another Jaaskelainen - Byron; and a second Alexander, Devin. Got that? Yep, that's two sets of brothers all in one band.

And it gets even more interesting. The Wild Turkeys - from Canada, no less - craft a sound that blends pop, rock, bluegrass, and old-time country into a strangely modernized honky-tonk sound. Ready for one more twist? The band also dresses the part - well, one of the parts - by completely embracing an old-time country feel with their band wardrobes, their standard outfit being, as Sheldon Jaaskelainin explains, "a cowboy hat, a western style snap up shirt, bandanas, cowboy boots, string ties, and a smile."

All of this might seem pretty zany (and, well, it is) - but the band's musical skills and precise performances bring what would otherwise perhaps be a gimmick up several notches to an entirely different level, garnering them both fan and critical kudos. Their second full-length album, Suspendered, hit stores last year, and snagged nominations from the Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards for both "Best Album" and "Best Songwriter." They've also already opened for the likes of Creaking Tree String Quartet, Washboard Hank, and The Cowboy Junkies. Pretty good for a cross-genre band that's only been around since 2006.

"I'd lived in Toronto as a full time musician for a while, but was looking for some players to start an acoustic based group," Sheldon Jaaskelainen explains, "I have always loved old time country and bluegrass music, and decided to call up a few friends (some being family members) and give bluegrass music a try. We had so much fun after our first rehearsal that we decided to form a band. After a few months of rehearsing, writing and having gone through a few different band names, we settled on The Wild Turkeys."

The band's sound quickly evolved to accommodate the more pop-based tones of Jaaskelainen's vocal delivery, with the rhythm sections quick beats transferring their songs from would-be saloon to rock stage.

"As a writer, I can't help but be influenced by other music in other genres that I listen to," Jaaskelainin says, "so, for example, when I write a fast tempo foot stomper, the performance, live and on record, is going to have more of an edge to it, simply because I've been exposed to modern rock and roll."

The Wild Turkeys are currently taking their sound on a tour that will take them all the way across British Columbia and back; Jaaskelainin says that each audience can look forward to "a guaranteed good time -yee-haw!" while he himself with be outfitted with "earplugs and lots of good music" for the road trip.

Two sets of brothers in one tour bus? Can you say: stage set for plenty of tomfoolery?

"Our photo shoot for the cover of our album was something else," Jaaskelainen chuckles, "most people think that the cover is photo shopped - and it isn't. We hung Devin by the limb of that tree using Dollar Store straps which he ran through the legs of his pants and attached to his bootstraps, making it look like he's hanging by his suspenders. After the shoot, we walked away and left him there for a while because he couldn't get down. I thought that was pretty funny."