popwreckoning

The Watson Twins just finished up a brief tour with Josh Radin, giving fans a preview of their forthcoming Vanguard release Talking to You, Talking to Me, due out on February 9, 2010. The album is a departure from previous releases Fire Songs and Southern Manners, giving us less of a Route 66 campfire feel and much more of a full-body groove, backed up by the same brilliant harmonies we know and love. It was a risky move, but we’re pretty sure it’ll pay off. Besides, the twins are some pretty charming ladies and they assure us they’ve got some tricks up their sleeves come next tour cycle in February. Check out some photos below.

The Watson Twins: website | myspace | @ manhattan center grand ballroom | interview with pt. I | interview with pt. II | @ homers

Words & photos by Dese’Rae Stage.

After major tours in 2009 supporting Grizzly Bear and Girls, indie-pop group the Morning Benders are heading out on their own headlining tour in 2010. 

The tour is in support after their sophomore album, Big Echo, due out March 9 on the group’s new label, Rough Trade Records. Tickets for the tour go on-sale this weekend.

Tour Dates:
March 10 – Jonny Brenda’s / Philadelphia
March 11 – The Black Cat / Washington DC
March 12 – Local 506 / Chapel Hill
March 13 – The Drunken Unicorn / Atlanta
March 15 – The Bottletree / Birmingham
March 23 – The Rhythm Room / Phoenix
March 25 – Troubadour / Los Angeles
March 26 – Casbah / San Diego
March 27 – Detroit Bar / Costa Mesa
March 28 – Muddy Waters / Santa Barbara
March 30 – The Independent / San Francisco
April 1 – Holocene / Portland
April 2 – Crocodile Café / Seattle
April 3 – Media Club / Vancouver
April 5 – Club Velour / Provo
April 7 – Hi-Dive / Denver
April 9 – The Vaudeville Mews / Des Moines
April 10 – The Maintenance Shop / Ames, IA
April 11 – Huckleberry’s Pizza – Presented by Daytrotter / Rock Island, IL
April 12 – Schubas Tavern / Chicago
April 14 – The Drake Hotel / Toronto
April 15  – La Sala Rossa / Montreal
April 16 – The Monkey House / Vermont
April 17 – TT The Bear’s / Boston
April 22 – The Mercury Lounge / NYC

The Morning Benders: website | myspace | @moore theater | @ monolith | @ boston | @ city market

Glasgow-based indie rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks have announced their first headlining tour of North America for early next year. The tour will begin on February 11 at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom and continue through to the beginning of March.

The band was last on our side of the pond performing as part of the line-up for the Fat Cat Records tour this past autumn. Their debut album These Four Walls (featuring the amazing singles “Roll Up Your Sleeves,” “Quiet Little Voices,” “It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning” and “Ships With Holes Will Sink”) was released in America on July 7. Following this tour, the Scottish band will make an appearance at Austin’s South by Southwest.

Tour Dates:
Feb 11 – Bowery Ballroom / New York City
Feb 12 – First Unitarian Church / Philadelphia
Feb 13 – Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel / Washington, DC
Feb 14 – Middle East / Cambridge, A
Feb 17 – Casbah at Tremont Music Hall / Charlotte
Feb 18 – Masquerade / Atlanta
Feb 19 – The End / Nashville
Feb 21 – Hailey’s / Denton, TX
Feb 23 – Rhythm Room / Phoenix
Feb 26 – Troubadour / Los Angeles
Feb 27 – Slim’s / San Francisco
Mar 01 – Biltmore Cabaret / Vancouver
Mar 02 – Neumo’s / Seattle
Mar 03 – Doug Fir / Portland
Mar 05 – Urban Lounge / Salt Lake City
Mar 06 – Hi Dive / Denver

Photo: Mary Chang

We Were Promised Jetpacks: myspace | @ Black Cat | @ monolith

Remember The Bravery? “An Honest Mistake,” “Unconditional”? Their ongoing feud with The Killers when both bands came out at the same time? Well, it’s been a while since something good of theirs has been out, including their entire second album. They released their third, Stir The Blood, just the other day, to atrocious reviews. However, I’m quite enjoying the single “Slow Poison.”

.The Bravery – “Slow Poison”
“Slow Poison” is done in The Bravery’s same fashion: a little rock, a little goth and a little synth. It’s an upbeat number, perfect as a summer’s driving song and pretty fun to listen too, especially the guitar breaks. I also like how the song trails off at the end; you never really hear that anymore.

.Of Montreal Remix
So this is a pretty bad remix. I feature it as just an example (though some may like it). Usually Of Montreal just make music; I’ve never heard a remix by them and this might be why. All the sounds jar together and collide with so much noise and fluidity. The mix is heavier, obtuse, with no real style: A remix gone wrong.

.Drop The Lime Remix
A much fuller remix, with electro thumps and tropical drums. The vocals are allowed to follow through like that of the original, but the music is changed to that of the dancing kind. It’s slower, heavier with little fits of speed. It’s slightly spacey, but one that’ll surely be able to have you shaking that still body of yours.

The Bravery: website | myspace | @ the midland | under cover

Despite a rough van adventure to get to Kansas City, I had the pleasure of finally catching Eye Alaska at the Pac Sun Tour. Though we struggled to find a quiet spot in a venue packed with fans rocking out to the many other talented bands on the tour, Eye Alaska lead singer Brandon Wronski and I talked over the crowd to discuss the tour, acoustic songs, backpacks and even Jay-Z. Check out the full interview below.

Bethany, PopWreckoning: You almost didn’t make it here to Kansas City. What happened in Denver that you had to cancel the show?
Brandon Wronski, Eye Alaska: Yeah, um, our van wouldn’t start, actually. We had to wait for AAA to get there. Then they got there and said we had to get a new battery, so we had to wait to get a new battery. From there, they were like, “Oh the battery doesn’t work and you need a new starter.” So we were like, “Ok, sweet.” And we had to wait like eight hours for it to be like 7 in the morning. So, we got stuck. Then, a storm came along and we got stuck in the snow. It was a whole mess of several things going and the storm ended up following us through the Rockies. We were driving along between 5-15 mph, so we had to miss the show last night and missed our in-store today. We barely made it to our set today, so that’s good we did.
PW: I’m glad you made it.
EA: Me too.

PW: You guys seem to have been working harder than any other band on this tour. Why’d you agree to do so many in-stores?
EA: The in-stores are really cool. You get a personal interaction with the fans. We’ve had almost every day of the tour doing an in-store. It is basically like playing two shows a day. It is hard to get there on time doing two shows a day and it is hard on the voice, but it is good. It is good to give the fans that personal interaction at the in-stores and let them see you live in our element at the shows.
PW: Did you have to hard-core adapt for the in-stores? Is it hard to make your songs acoustic?
EA: Yeah, we switch the songs a lot acoustically. I love playing acoustic. It is cool because you get to experiment with the songs and people get to hear them in a way they don’t usually get to hear them. A lot of times when acoustic, people can pay attention to the words more. You can pay more attention in general. You get a whole different experience.

PW: You guys have been doing more than any band on the Pac Sun tour. When do you take a break? What do you do for your free time?
EA: We don’t have any free time really. We are constantly moving. If we have a day off, it is usually to just drive some ungodly amount of hours, so we really don’t have much free time. In the van, we’re usually sleeping and if I’m not sleeping, I’m writing music and working on new songs and all that kind of stuff.

PW: I’ve seen you wear a backpack several times during your live shows. What’s in the backpack? What’s its story?
EA: When we do home shows and headlining shows in California, a lot of times we’ll sell special, custom, limited-edition backpacks and all the money we make from those goes to sponsoring kids in Africa. Sometimes we’ll have CDs in it.
PW: That’s cool. You doing that tonight?
EA: Not tonight. We usually only do it at special home shows, so only at a few.

PW: You guys do a lot with social media. You’re even doing a Twitter contest right now. Talk to me about that. How do you use social media and is Twitter your favorite of the tools?
EA: My favorite is Tumblr. I have a Tumblr that I use a lot. I like Twitter, too. It is definitely the big hot thing right now. I kind of hope social media on the internet goes away because it is kind of annoying sometimes. I love talking to the fans and I love that aspect of it, but there’s so much spam and people trying to get what they want out of it that it isn’t that fun after awhile. The fans are great, but other than that, it loses its fun.
PW: How has the Twitter contest been working out for you guys?
EA: It’s been good. We’ve been getting a lot of kids uploading pictures and all that. It’s been good.

PW: Awesome. Ok, it is super loud, so to wrap up, what’s your favorite memory of the naught years as we hit the end of the decade? Do you have a favorite musical memory?
EA: Yeah. Favorite memory from this decade?
PW: Yeah.
EA: Oh, man. That’s a hard question. I don’t know. I think Jay-Z Blueprint 3 has been mine.
PW: Really?
EA: Yeah, he just calls everybody out and all the stupid things like bright color-wearing because they got a slurpee dumped on them. Then the auto-tune thing. He’s just the man to call out everything like that and somebody needs to do it and he’s just the person that can really do that and not look like a total douche-bag. Jay-Z is awesome and he just does so much besides music like his Water for Life campaign in Africa where he built wells.
PW: Nice. So how far does this love of his franchise extend beyond Jay-Z? How about Beyonce?
EA: Haha, she’s rad, too. Jay-Z is just awesome.
PW: Alright, cool. I think your fans will be surprised to hear that.
EA: I don’t know. I think it just cool that he uses music for more than music. That’s my end goal to use music as a platform to do bigger things.

PW: What’s next for you guys after the Pac Sun tour?
EA: I’m not quite sure yet. We still got a bunch of things up in the air that we’re trying to figure out. We’ll be touring and I’ll be writing and all that good stuff.
PW: Alright. Sounds good. Let’s end it there.
EA: Thanks for having me.
PW: Totally. You guys are really fun. Thanks.

Eye Alaska: myspace | @ pac sun, the beaumont

I’m getting just a little peeved with the Washington Post. It seems like whenever I’ve found a little-known band on my own and think going to a little club to see said band is going to be a relaxing, laid-back night, the paper finds out about the gig and proceeds to do a big write-up on the band, calling the gig a best bet for the weekend. Inevitably, whatever the gig, the venue will sell out in record time and I’m forced to stand uncomfortably squeezed in among people who’ve just heard about the band that very week because they read about it in the Post. This is exactly what happened Friday night when I went to Iota, a small club connected to a cafe in Arlington, Virginia, just over the river from Washington D.C. Thankfully, this time the band in question was London-based folk pop band Fanfarlo, so at least I didn’t have to worry about any overzealous moshers or serious drunks. And in hindsight I’m glad the gig sold out, because the band’s performance was breathtaking and so many people got to see the band’s artistry firsthand.

Fanfarlo is led by Swedish musician Simon Balthazar (guitar/clarinet), who sings lead vocals alongside with the sweet harmonies of Cathy Lucas (violin / mandolin / and a whole bunch others). They’ve been compared to the Arcade Fire, which I suppose is the lazy journalist’s easy choice for comparison because of the strong pairing of male/female vocals. Leon Beckenham (trumpet / keyboards / glockenspiel), Justin Finch (bass) and Amos Memon (drums) complete their talented line-up. They released Reservoir, their debut album, earlier this year.

If you’re wondering where their band name came from, it was taken from a novella written in 1847 by French poet Charles Baudelaire called La Fanfarlo. But should you be put off by the tres chic name, please know that they make decidedly unpretentious beautiful folk pop. They started their set at Iota with just three of their members – Balthazar, Lucas, and Memon – to play “Drowning Men.” Their slower songs like “Comets” (with the smooth-as-silk chorus of “we’ll tear it down / we’ll hold the truth / by the neck / oh, by the neck / kick in the doors / and burn the books / try to forget / try to forget“) and “I’m a Pilot” are dreamy and gorgeous played live with the unique collection of instruments being played alongside Balthazar and Lucas’s voices; the two of them are tied with the xx in my mind for the most gorgeous boy/girl paired voices heard this year.

But speeding things up on songs like the verbosely-titled “Harold T. Wilkins, or How to Wait for a Very Long Time” or the fun “Luna”, with its driving drum beats augmented by Balthazar ditching his guitars to beat on a single drum, showed that they can do much more than ballads and do so in an engaging way. Check out an acoustic version of this song they filmed in a friend’s back garden this past June.

In addition to tracks from Reservoir, we also got a sneak peek into their next release in two new songs, “Atlas” and “Waiting in the Wings.” When the band left the stage following “Luna” (the last song on their printed set list), it was unclear whether they’d return. Following audience cheers for more songs, the band came back for an encore of “Ghosts,” which was as haunting as the title suggests. While being haunted is usually a bad thing, I like to think the entire Iota audience that night were entranced by this London band and their brand of bewitching folk pop.

Three dates are left on Fanfarlo‘s North American tour before they head back to London for the holidays. Please note: the two Canadian dates (Toronto on December 15 and Montreal on December 16) on their original schedule have been canceled due to Balthazar’s passport and Canadian visa getting stolen when their van was broken into during a stop in Portland last week. The band are scheduled to go on tour again in the UK in early 2010 with another great band from the London folk scene, Mumford and Sons.

Set List:
Drowning Men
I’m a Pilot
Finish Line
Harold T. Wilkins, or How to Wait for a Very Long Time
Atlas
The Walls are Coming Down
Waiting in the Wings
Comets
Luna
//
Ghosts

Tour Dates:
Dec 14 – Majestic Cafe / Detroit*
Dec 17 – T.T. The Bear’s / Boston*
Dec 18 – Webster Hall / New York City*
* with Freelance Whales

Fanfarlo: website | myspace
Freelance Whales: myspace

Eels just premiered this new video for “In My Younger Days.” It’s off their new album End Times out January 19, 2010.

Eels: website | myspace | hombre lobo

Kill Rock Stars artist Panther is giving their final roar. They’re calling it quits and their last show is in their hometown of Portland, OR.

The show is Dec. 20 at Rontom’s and is free to the public as a thanks for all the support beginning when Panther was just a small solo project for Charlie Salas-Humara.

During their time as a band, Panther released three albums and toured the world supporting bands such as Gossip and RATATAT.

Rumors are that the members already have new musical endeavors and you can bet we’ll keep you posted as we hear them.

Panther: website | myspace | @ berbati’s pan

It may have taken four questionable years, taken the inevitable “it’s not you, it’s me” by Polyvinyl Records and a cataclysmic soul searching for the entire band of Decibully for their third album to happen, but here it is. And so here is another reason why the “worth the wait” saying gets more annoyingly true.

World Travels Fast is a myriad of instrumental talents, as all six members bust out their best nerdy work sounding out sleigh bells, accordion, banjo, lapsteel, shakers and other random accompaniments to a well-rounded rock project.

It’s definitely a deeper (both emotionally and progressively) album than either of the previous two; besides being so musically talented, you’ll immediately hear an overwhelming presence of reverberation that keeps a ribbon of drama flowing evenly throughout the whole thing.

“You love sad songs,” William Seidel repeats in “Hour Of Noise” (which has the best musical effect on the entire album—a creepy, haunting saw), and you can expect a similar tone the entire listen. I’d pair this play with a day driving in cold mid-western slush, trying to figure out what you’re going to do next with your life. It’s the perfect partner, because rather than leave you crying in your Starbucks, it will soundtrack a solid revolution (auto-biographical, I imagine). Listen to echo-ey “Don’t Believe The Hype,” you’ll get it.

There are slower acoustic performances like self-titled “World Travels Fast” or strings-sidled “Little White Girl,” if you are indeed looking for a sappy soul-damaging tryst with musical heartbreak. There’s an amazing track called “Baby’s Mama,” that must be some homage to Sting right before he got all ethereal on us.

For an upswing, push play on the tracks fired up with enough Mutemath and The Music that again, keep out an air of depression (that would be “Somewhere In The World” and “Get In the Car,” for starters).

Some other thoughts while digging this (as you inevitably will), is that you realize it’s just damn well beautifully sung. And it seems as if something is missing. Could it be…keys? Heaven forbid an indie band bring back a modern day revival missing some dripping piano hook. And true, they use an insane amount of instruments that may confuse the listener on what genre to book it in. But here it’s not a bad thing, the full presence of noise is so sophistically placed that you, too, may want to start learning how to break out a saw and make it croon.

If an album isn’t heartbreaking, but it isn’t empowering, and can’t really be spun when you need a sick beat for a dance party, what do you call it? You bring to mind this one, and use it to exemplify reality.

You can stream, buy, download or do whatever you want here.

Decibully: myspace

If you’re so hip to music you’re nicknamed “A&R” and all the club bouncers know you on a first name basis because you go to shows so much and you’re constantly finding yourself saying, “I listened to that band before they got big,” then Bonnaroo has the perfect challenge for you. They’re looking for help booking one of the greatest, but lesser known artists and they want the local music gurus to share their discoveries with the rest of Bonnaroo in 2010.

To help book, head to bonnaroo.com, then watch Gary Chardonnay‘s Bonnaroo video at the top of the page and answer the following questions:

• How many bobbleheads appear in the video?
• What is the meaning of “Bonnaroo”? (hint: it’s written in the clouds)
• How many times does Gary Chardonnay say “Bonnaroo”?
• What recent (ridiculous!) news scandal is touched upon in the video?

Submit your answers along with a testimonial in 25 words or less on why YOU should be allowed to book a band at Bonnaroo.com and you’re entered for a chance to win and book a band.

One winner gets to book an artist, but 100 other contestants will win the 2010 calendar seen in the video. The grand prize winner is announced Wednesday, January 6, 2010. They’ll then participate in a “booking call” and help select a local/regional act or a relatively new artist starting to achieve major recognition. Qualify acts should have been together and performing for at least 200-300 regularly for a year, they should have one CD released for about six months, they can’t have more than one CD on a nationally recognized label and the winner can’t be a member of the band or the manager of the band nor can they be a music industry professional.

Official contest rules can be found at Bonnaroo.com.