popwreckoning

The Walkmen will hit the road this fall with Fleet Foxes in support of their critically acclaimed album Lisbon, available now on Fat Possum Records; see below for a list of dates.

The tour builds on successful North American runs and appearances on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and “Last Call with Carson Daly.” The band has received critical acclaim from NPR Music, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, SPIN, Pitchfork, New York Magazine and many more.

Having grown up playing together in various bands since the fifth grade, the Walkmen broke through in 2002 with their debut album Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone. 2004’s Bows & Arrows featured indie rock anthem “The Rat,” which Pitchfork recently named the #20 song of the decade. In 2006 the band recorded a song-by-song cover of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon’s 1974 classic Pussy Cats as a farewell to their Harlem studio space Marcata.

Below is a list of dates with Fleet Foxes.

September 7 Paramount Theatre Seattle, WA
September 9 Grand Sierra Theatre Reno, NV
September 10 Greek Theatre Berkeley, CA
September 11 Henry Miller Library Big Sur, CA
September 13 Santa Barbara Bowl Santa Barbara, CA
September 14 Greek Theatre Los Angeles, CA
September 17 Cain’s Ballroom Tulsa, OK
September 18 Austin City Limits Austin, TX
September 20 Florida Theatre Jacksonville, FL
September 21 Raleigh Amphitheatre Raleigh, NC
September 23 Merriweather Post Pavilion Columbia, MD
September 24 Williamsburg Waterfront Brooklyn, NY
September 25 Mountain Park Holyoke, MA
September 29 Hill Auditorium Ann Arbor, MI

Slow Club and Moshi Moshi Records are proud to announce news of the British duo’s sophomore album Paradise, set for North American release September 13.  Paradise is the follow up to their critically acclaimed full-length debut Yeah, So, which achieved praise from Paste and Pitchfork, writing that the “Sheffield boy-girl duo nail precious, vulnerable feelings over the course of their sweet (but not twee or saccharine) indie pop debut.”

This past week, Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson unveiled a preview of their new material, a music video for the lead single “Two Cousins” on the newly launched slowclubband.com – Watch Now. “Two Cousins” will be released as a digital single on July 26th.

Sonically, “Two Cousins” hints at the expansive new sound of the album, while its lyrical content touches on death, a theme that threads itself heavily throughout Paradise in comparison to their previous releases. “I think we both wanted to move away from our obsessions on the first album, and look more at our families, and how the loss of someone you love can affect you,” says Charles, before adding: “but we do still end up coming back to love and heartbreak, we can’t help it.” Yet while Slow Club retain their characteristic earnestness, on Paradise they’ve taken the lessons and experiences gleaned from the last few years and applied a lighter, more honed lyrical touch to telling their story.

www.slowclubband.com

Good news! The Kansas City band named after an adorable critter and responsible for the catchy song “The Wimp,” as well as being a favorite of fellow indie act Baths, is making new music. Capybara‘s back and wants to make 2011 the Year of the Capybara, but the guys need some help to make new music possible.

Capybara toured and released its debut, Try Brother, in 2009 to much acclaim, but in 2010, the future of Capybara became a bit of a mystery. The band kind of disappeared in 2010 and with the local success of Darin Seal‘s Saharan Gazelle Boy, rumors circulated of the break-up of Capybara.

Says Capybara, “We were asked frequently, ‘When is the next Capybara show?’ ‘When is the next Capybara album coming out?’ and ‘Why are you still living with your parents?’ But we didn’t really have good answers for those questions. About two months ago, however, we realized that if we were going to make music our livelihood, this is the best possible time to do it.”

So, the band is releasing new music in 2011. It might be an album, a series of EPs, or just an insane amounts of random songs. To make this music, they need money to put into it and so they’ve set up a Kickstarter. If you donate, the band is giving back to you. $1 let’s you download Try Brother and gets your name on the album artwork of the new release. $5 gets you everything at the $1 level and a monster drawing from Joel. Other rewards range from music lessons, dinners and personalized songs, depending on what you donate. You can learn more and make a donation at the band’s Kickstarter here.

The exciting debut album from Manchester, England’s Delphic will for sure be in my top 2 albums of 2010. The electro / dance / rock trio is currently touring as support for the Temper Trap, and this is their first significant tour of North America to boot after just playing three gigs in America in June. It was my distinct pleasure to speak with Delphic‘s accomplished guitarist, Matt Cocksedge, before their gig at the House of Blues in Boston, the second night on a month-long tour of our continent. I have to say, he’s probably one of the most (if not the most) eloquent musician I’ve ever had the chance to interview. In part 1 of this interview, we discuss the cynical music media and why they seem intent on comparing Delphic to fellow Mancunians and hometown heroes New Order, why he thinks their tourmates the Temper Trap are actually more similar to them than you might realize, and how Radiohead is a real inspiration to them.

Mary Chang, PopWreckoning: I think every single blogger I know of wants to be different [taking a different album review approach] than Pitchfork, endeavor to not be like them. My mom doesn’t get the blogging thing, when I was explaining to her what Pitchfork was, she thought it sounded like people who were going after other people with pitchforks. That was the way she interpreted it, not knowing what it was.
Matt Cocksedge, Delphic: Yeah, makes sense.
PW: But when you’re talking about promoting music to the masses…
MC: But it seems like an accurate description of the press, doesn’t it? Hanging them out to dry. It’s difficult really.
PW: Maybe I can ask you, have you discerned a difference between the British media and the American media? Have you felt one given you a harder time than the other? Or maybe you haven’t had a lot of exposure to American media, yet.
MC: That’s the thing. I don’t know too much about American media reaction to us. All I know is that Pitchfork [when Pitchfork reviewed their debut album, Acolyte, released in June on Dangerbird Records here in America], that was out ages ago. I don’t know what else has gone with the release of the album, beyond that, I haven’t really heard [anything].
PW: To be honest, I don’t think I ever read that review. I’m sometimes scared to look…
MC: Yeah, I’m scared to look! Really nervous. [smiles]
PW: So you said that they slagged off Everything Everything? [the fellow Manchester band's debut album, Man Alive, was released in August in the UK]
MC: They did, they did. And I just can’t help but feel there’s some sort of…the Everything Everything album was critically received in the UK…
PW: Yeah, I reviewed it for another site and I really liked it.
MC: It’s a great album, with so many ideas.
PW: And very original.
MC: So original! And even it doesn’t connect with you, potentially you can still appreciate the ideas, the originality, the experimentalism. You know, they’re trying to do something new with guitar music in a band. And certainly with our review, it was more an indictment of British music than an actual review of the record.

PW: Oh you know what, I think I did read it. I think they focused on the New Order aspect…
MC: Yeah.
PW: Which is interesting, because in almost every single American article I’ve read about you guys, it’s always focused on New Order. Now, I was too young to appreciate New Order at their height of fame and you also, neither of us were there for the whole Joy Division / New Order thing. So I don’t come from it from that perspective.
MC: That’s the thing. We know New Order‘s music a bit. What I always think about the New Order thing, if “Doubt” wasn’t on the album, if you kind of take “Doubt” out of the equation of the album, and then look at it in terms of New Order, it’s very, very different. But when “Doubt” is included, I think it’s the most New Order, most obvious New Order kind of touch point on the record. I’ve always wondered about that. But people will hear what they want to hear and say what they want to say. And we’ve made this music and put it out, and then you take what you get given. It’s certainly interesting, you know, going around the world…especially places like Japan, there’s much more positive feeling, I think. There’s a lot of cynicism in the UK especially And the UK press and the UK audience. It’s because we’ve been spoilt for choice [when it comes to music], we’re just completely spoiled.

PW: That’s the thing, I think that’s the reason why I’ve gravitated towards British music in general, because you have people like Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens championing the little guys.
MC: Every evening there’s a new band starting out…
PW: Yeah, like clockwork every Wednesday I listen to Lammo’s “New Favourite Band” feature and while we don’t see eye to eye on every band, but it’s nice to hear different opinions.
MC: Definitely.
PW: It’s hard to hear about new [British] bands on American radio. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Delphic song played in Washington. Back in February, VV Brown played the same dance night you guys will play in DC next Friday, and one of the songs being spun that night was “Halcyon”. Me and a girlfriend, we’ve got our tickets and we’re coming up the stairs and it’s coming out of the speakers. And we went crazy because we knew the song! We were very excited. But we were the only ones in the club that knew it.
MC: That’s great! [grins]
PW: So to have you guys come to DC is really exciting. I think it’s the only date you’re doing by yourselves on this tour?
MC: Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if we’ve got one in LA…
PW: I know you guys are doing Club Nokia [in Los Angeles] with the Temper Trap…
MC: Yeah, we’re doing that…yeah, basically we’d come over here to tour with the Temper Trap. They’re lovely guys, which makes things a lot easier. Always a pleasure when you’re on tour with a band that is just nice, and good guys. Makes it a lot easier.
PW: When I saw you guys in Denmark [at Roskilde Festival], Rick [Boardman, Delphic's keyboards / synths player] already knew you were coming to America to support someone else but couldn’t tell me because he’d get in trouble. The Temper Trap never even crossed my mind…when I first saw this tour’s bill, I was kind of surprised because I think of the Temper Trap as more of a straight forward rock sound. Did you have any reservations supporting them? Not that you really had much choice as support but…did you wonder, is this going to be an issue when we play to crowds primarily there for the Temper Trap?
MC: No, not at all. We were really excited about it. We respect the Temper Trap a lot. I think what we do is very similar but we put it in different clothes. We both try and write songs and yeah, we’re songwriters…we put them in different contexts. Theirs is a more guitar-based thing and ours is a more synth-based thing. At the heart, we’re quite similar and something we share with them. I think it’s good. We’re not trying to steal fans, we’re not trying to be a better Temper Trap or trying to compete with them in that way. We’re a band on a similar tangent, but doing our own thing. They’re doing their own thing. Hopefully when people come see us, they can understand the similarities but appreciate the differences. And yeah, we’re really excited and thrilled that they asked us along. And really, really happy to be out here with them. We’ve only done the one show [at Philadelphia's Trocadero on Sunday night, 3 nights earlier], so I’ll let you know how it goes! [laughs] But at the moment, it’s been good!

PW: I have to ask, what did you think, coming back to America after 3 months since your last shows here? Did you approach that with trepidation? The last “gig” you had before that was Bestival, that was a couple weeks ago?
MC: Well, it’s certainly different than a festival. You can’t do so much jumping up and down and getting people to clap. You’ve gotta be a bit cooler! [smiles] Yeah, we’ve done the support band thing for a while, we know how it works, we’re just happy to be back out here. The crowd was good. It was a really stressful gig, to be honest with you, because it’s the first date of the tour. Backstage is always bit hectic. You hope everything works. It was really hectic, but I really enjoyed the gig myself. Great venue, the crowd was loud, yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.
PW: I have to say, as your set progressed, I could feel the audience getting behind you. I was in second row on the floor, which I was very happy about. I was surrounded by devoted Temper Trap fans and I basically explained who you guys were, and who the Hundred in the Hands were, because they’ve just put out their debut album last week.
MC: Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get it.
PW: It’s really good. I’d say that along with yours and Two Door Cinema Club‘s [Tourist History] albums, it’s up there in my top 5 albums of 2010.
MC: Oh wow, cool.
PW: And I heard smatterings of conversation after your set. One girl said, “yeah, it was kind of a slow start but after the third song with all the synth action, I really liked it!”
MC: Yeah, what was really cool were the pockets of people who were really going for it!
PW: [laughs] Yeah, that was us! We were the ones jumping up and down and pumping our fists. Expect that, I’ll get people excited for you guys tonight.
MC: Cool, I’ll keep a look out for it.

PW: Going back to the album, having heard what people have said about the album, one thing that I found very interesting was that people were comparing my favorite song, “Submission,” to Duran Duran.
MC: Really.
PW: What would say about that?
MC: Uh…I’d be quite speechless! [laugh]
PW: Me too, and that’s because I’m a Duranie.
MC: I’d never have saw that coming! Yeah, I dunno…I’m not offended by it at all. Certainly didn’t see that one coming. I dunno, it’s one of those things, you make music to put it out there and people will read into it what they want. “So this bit is like this…” and we would’ve never even heard of that band! And then sometimes they’ll write, “so this bit is like this…” and yeah, we did just rip it off a bit. [grins] Yeah, I don’t know if it was Duran Duran influenced, but I can honestly say I didn’t think anyone would say that.
PW: It reminds me of what people said about We Are Scientists‘s second album [Brain Thrust Mastery]. I liked it better than their first because it was more polished and had the synths. People said it sounded like Duran Duran because it had synths. Just because they have synths doesn’t mean they were influenced by Duran Duran. Similarly, some people think anything with synths can be classified as ’80s new wave.

PW: “Submission” has the right balance of synths, guitars, beats, and everything is so clean. The echoes are absolutely perfect to me. It’s the perfect song. I can put on my headphones and go into my own little world listening to it. Do you remember how the song came about? How do your songs usually start, does it start with someone’s lyric, “hey, I have an idea“, or “hey, I got this great guitar riff, let’s work off of this…”
MC: I think with “Submission”, I really think it came about from the beat, you know? We wanted a more down-tempo number. It’s still quite quick, but it feels a lot slower than a lot of the record. We really wanted a bit darker of a tune, more of… that kind of feeling, and it came from [Matt starts tapping the table with his hands in time to the killer main rhythm of "Submission"]…
PW: I think that’s why I like it, it’s so funky.
MC: Yeah, we’ve got the guitar riff at the end, that came quite early as well. Yeah, all the songs, they all come from different places, there’s no set way of doing it, at least in terms of the initial idea. When we have an idea, and we’re developing it, then you kind of have your way of working on it, trying to flesh it out and make that transition from idea to song. And that’s difficult, because not all of them make it through. Sometimes you have a great idea but you can’t fit it in the right context. That can be difficult. But that came from a beat. Other tune came from a sound on the synth, or a chord sequence, and there’s no rules with this sort of thing, is there? We have strong instincts with these things. We try to work within a concept or the framework of an album for the set of songs we want to write. And once you have that framework established, it’s constrictive yet freeing because you can explore all areas in a certain kind of musical world, in a way. That definitely how it happened with the first record. We knew the kind of record we wanted to make in terms of sound and what we were talking about, and really then it was seeing what worked within it and what didn’t work, and how best make an album flow and what we needed to do to give it more depth. There is no real right or wrong, it’s whether you get that feeling. James [Cook, Delphic's lead vocalist and bassist] might play me something. So do I get it, do I feel it in my gut? Does it give me that kind of emotion? If the answer is no, let’s write another one. And if the answer is yes, okay, let’s take it to the next stage, let’s develop it and put an arrangement around it, put words to it. Are there any words that fit that we have already? You know, so you build it from there. But the initial idea is always the most important thing. It’s whether you get a buzz off of it…
PW: Like a spark of inspiration.
MC: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes…we’re writing ideas for the second album now, and there are some things…James played me something he’d written the other day, and sometimes you can just hear immediately, “that’s a finished song,” even if it’s just something on the piano with a bit of melody. I just know what that’s going to be. And that’s the most exciting thing. That’s when you know at the heart, there is something really special. It doesn’t happen all the time, but then it’s something you really need to grab onto and protect, in a way. You want to keep it true and make something real out of it.

PW: I think it is a gift when you’re able to create a timeless melody. A lot of music today, say hip hop, doesn’t necessarily have a great, underlying melody. It’s just not there. Or even some harder rock stuff. I saw Biffy Clyro 2 weeks ago at their first headlining gig of America, in Washington. They couldn’t even sell out DC9, and that’s a 200-capacity venue.
MC: Really? That’s madness. They’re really big in the UK now. [Biffy Clyro regularly sells out stadiums there.]
PW: I’m not a huge fan of theirs but I wanted to see history in the making. I consider Biffy kind of thrash metal, and my issue with thrash metal is that there isn’t a melody running through the whole thing, a melody that really grabs me. I’m not going to remember that song next week. Before or while you were in a band, were there any other bands that you looked to as idols?
MC: Hmmm…Radiohead really, for me personally. They’re the bosses, aren’t they? The big kids in the class. I just think…they don’t put a foot wrong. They’re the band that I think always…I remember when we were working on parts of the first album, “what would Thom Yorke do?” kind of, that we said to each other kind of jokingly, but with a serious tone. They don’t seem to make missteps. And I think as a band they’ve always been so inspirational, because they’ve always done their own thing. Believed in what they do. Writing OK Computer and then bringing out Kid A, the most incredible movement in modern music, right? I think they’re certainly a band we have immense, immense respect for. And a band whose career path we look to and we’re like, if we have a career anywhere near that, we’d be happy. As a band who’s just released a first record, you’re very much at the whim at the reviews and the whim of word of mouth. And people are very open to speculation on things. And open to New Order comparisons! [laughs] But I think as we release more records and release more, people see what we’re actually about. I think looking at a band like Radiohead, at Pablo Honey or even The Bends, and seeing how they were labeled as, like, Pixies‘s wannabes, and all that kind of thing. Then they kind of emerged and blossomed into their own thing. I think we’re really eager to kind of move on and keep developing, and show people…we’ve still got a lot to prove, I think, and we’ve still got a long way to go, and a long way to improve. We’ve got a lot to prove to ourselves and everyone else as well. And who we are. And we’re just excited to be given the chance to do that. Some people [in bands] do that to them [finger gesture], and some people, “thanks for believing in us, we want to pay you back.” You know? I think that’s the Manchester spirit a little bit, that bit is anyway. Sorry, I hope I didn’t offend you doing that!
PW: Haha, no worries. Was that a bit of anti-Southerner kind of thing?
MC: [laughs] Oh, no no! It’s just that kind of gang mentality in Manchester.
PW: “All for one, and one for all” kind of a thing?
MC: Yeah, it’s a band thing as well, but we don’t feel like part of London. We’re a Manchester band and proudly so, but we don’t feel like we’re a part of any scene in Manchester. There are three or four of us versus the world as it were. You’ve only got your mates to rely on, they’re the ones you want to see it through with. And so to kind of prove ourselves is a massive, massive thing. And it’s something we are working on and will hopefully achieve.

Stay tuned for part 2 coming soon…

Tour Dates
Oct 05 – Phoenix / Toronto*
Oct 07 – Newport Music Hall / Columbus*
Oct 08 – DC9 / Washington, DC^
Oct 11 – St. Andrews / Detroit*
Oct 12 – Metro / Chicago*
Oct 13 – Turner Hall / Milwaukee*
Oct 14 – First Avenue / Minneapolis*
Oct 21 – Popscene / San Francisco&
Oct 22 – Fox / Pomona, CA*
Oct 23 – Club Nokia / Los Angeles*
^ Delphic only
* supporting the Temper Trap
& with the Hundred in the Hands

Delphic: website | myspace | American Release Details of Delphic EP | Delphic’s Debut Album Streaming on Their MySpace | @ Trocadero, Philadelphia

Bear In Heaven is an experimental indie-rock band from Brooklyn, New York whose latest album Beast Rest Forth Mouth was recently released to significant critical acclaim, even receiving Pitchfork’s much-coveted ‘Best New Music’ designation. After being personally blown away by the album, I rushed to get an interview with frontman Jon Philpot to find out how Bear In Heaven began and how it feels now to be in a rising indie band. The interview was conducted just a couple days after the Pitchfork review.

Marc Z Grub, PopWreckoning: So tell me about your week, Jon.
Jon Philpot, Bear In Heaven: My week? My week has been pretty crazy.Lots of interviews with web people and people from magazines and also lots of emails from people in Europe, which is cool.
MG: Was it like the Pitchfork review went up and suddenly the phone started ringing?
JP: Essentially, yes. I am as amazed as anybody about how incredibly powerful Pitchfork is. And I’m happy to have received the good side of it. It’s really cool. I never knew it existed like this.
MG: Yeah, this sort of ‘OMG, Pitchfork is so powerful!’ thing keeps coming up with bands I talk to. It’s pretty amazing. So, this [album, Beast Rest Forth Mouth] is your second album, right?
JP: This is our second full-length record and we also have an EP that I did on my own way back before any of the guys that are in the band were presently in the band. And there’s also a dance EP we made for this record out of [the song] “Wholehearted Mess.”

MG: So can you tell me how Bear In Heaven originated?
JP: It started basically with just me. I was making bedroom-style music but kind of pushing it a little as far as what I was trying to record. Then people kind of got excited about stuff that I was doing and then I got a record out – that little EP I was telling you about – called Tunes Nextdoor To Songs. And then the guys joined the band: the guys that are in the band presently. We lost two members – one is David Daniell, who’s actually gone on to a really successful solo experimental guitar kind of career. He moved to Chicago and started doing that. And then the other fellow is James Elliott and he played with School Of Seven Bells for a while. I think he actually recorded on their Alpinisms record and then he also has the really fruitful kind of awkward dance music project that he’s doing too [ed. Ateleia]. And then the four of us that are left just kind of kept going.

MG: And how did the four of you get together?
JP: [Keyboardist/Guitarist] Sadek (Bazarra) and I are friends from Atlanta. We actually dated the same girl, that’s how we know each other, oddly enough. Not at the same time though, at different times. [Guitarist] Adam (Wills) and I worked together at a studio, at this kind of video-making studio and then when I moved up to New York, he moved up kind of shortly after and we just maintained the friendship. And [drummer] Joe [Stickney] and Adam actually went to school together, so that’s how those two guys knew each other. And then we just kind of started playing altogether. Actually, we got a practice space and it was all the people that I told you about, minus Joe, and we were playing music without a drummer for like, a long while. And that was kind of weird but we were doing it, we were playing. And then Joe came in and we were like, “oh, now we’re a band.”

MG: Has having a full band changed the way that you write and changed the way that Bear In Heaven sounds?
JP: Yeah, it did, I mean it limited the palette in like a good way because before it was like you’re just making music and you think about, “oh, what sound could I put here” or, “what sound could I put there” and “do I know anybody who plays cello or harp or trumpet or something” and you just put all those people on the record because that’s what was going on. And your pallet is super wide or at least my pallet was super wide, you know, I knew all these people doing different stuff.

Now that we’re like a band and want to make music that reflects what we’re doing live, it’s limited the palette and made us sort of more cohesive I think. But we still have these weird elements of what I was doing in the past or something. Like when we started playing altogether, we were playing the songs I had recorded on my own. We were kind of trying to translate them in a weird way. We had synthesizers and samplers and we were trying to translate these weird very personal-time songs, none of the timing was in any kind of normal counts or anything like that. It was basically like a cluster fuck. But that, I think, that kind of helped us learn to do things more efficiently, but also kind of keeping some of the weird ridiculousness that I guess I was doing on my own. Basically, I didn’t really know what I was doing: just kind of experimenting.

MG: I was trying to think about how to describe your guys’ sounds in terms of influences or likenesses to other bands and I was having a really hard time doing it. Where would you say the Bear In Heaven-sound comes from?
JP: There are so many things that have shaped [the sound]. I guess Talk Talk was a really big influence at one point; those guys were making really cool music. I think everybody in the band would say something different though. I really like Jerry Butler. You know, it’s been funny reading people trying to figure out what we’re doing and we’re not trying to do a thing that sounds like something else, we’re just doing our thing. Does that make sense?
MG: It does, because you guys really do not sound like any one other band or thing in particular. I thought you guys definitely sounded very 2009, but I couldn’t point to any one band or movement in particular and say like, “They’re trying to do that.”
JP: Yeah, like it’s not because we don’t want to. I mean, like we know we sound like whatever else is going on, there is definitely that, [but] there’s not really a point in trying to be like another modern band necessarily. We’re just trying to do what we do naturally and [we’ve been] kind of way under the radar for a long time so we just kind of kept doing what we were doing. A lot of times we’ve failed. We’ve had a lot of failures and also some minor successes here and there and we’ve made friendships in the music community that we value. We’ve been around playing for about five years, but I don’t know. I heard one guy on Facebook or Twitter or something compared us to Moroder and Toto.
MG: Giorgio Moroder?
JP: Yeah. (Laughs)
MG: I guess that’s not a horrible comparison, but any band that I’d try to compare you to, it would be like, “not reeeeaaaallllyyyy.”
JP: Yeah, we come from such a wide background I guess. I mean all of us independently come from such a wide listening background, it’s stuff that it’s just gotten in our brains and we don’t even know what the hell it is anymore. There’s a lot of stuff that I really like, like you can definitely put Jerry Butler and Talk Talk down there, those guys are great. But if you talk to Adam he might tell you there’s some RnB thing that just hit him hard or something like that. Oh, and Prince. Prince is great.

MG: You all said you come from different background, what kind of background would you say you come from?
JP: Musically, uh– a late bloomer. I didn’t start playing music until late in the game, but when I did start playing I was really into minimalism and experimental music and that kind of stuff. Not necessarily like pop tunes, though strangely, the older I get the more I really like pop music and rock. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll still listen to some ‘out’ electronic shit and I think that that’s kind of where my heart will always be. I definitely have to say when I heard about Tony Conrad and that band AMM, I was like, “This is music?” I mean, it was confusing that that could actually be music.

MG: How old were you when you started playing music?
JP: I probably was 19, maybe.
MG: How old are you now?
JP: I’m old. It’s kind of funny. I’m 35.
MG: Oh wow, it took a long time to get to ‘Best New Music,’ but you got there.
JP: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean I’ve been in other projects that have kind of just totally gone under the radar and weren’t even for this particular crowd at all.

MG: You said you guys had a lot of failures, could you tell me about maybe about a couple of your massive failures?
JP: Well, as far as live shows go, one of the bigger failures we had was when we headlined at The Knitting Factory. That was a terrible show. It was one of those shows that we were like, “Jesus Christ, are we gonna continue this?” But we pushed through, thankfully. We ended up having a good show a couple weeks after that. But that show in particular was terrible. It was the night of the Palin-Biden presidential debate and everybody’s eyes were glued on the television. Nobody came out to that show, maybe five people in total. It was a pretty rough experience. And then I guess, you know, not to put any hate on the last record we did (Red Bloom Of The Boom), but we were just making music that we kind of had to get it out, get it out of our system. These like long songs and they were not necessarily for everybody-
MG: Pitchfork still gave you a good review on that one though, they gave you like a 7.8, which is pretty legit.
JP: Yeah, yeah, no, we were really gracious that we got that. That actually helped too. But you know, that record was more of, like, we just had to get that record out of us. And it was good that we did. And it’s weird whenever I listen to it, there’s like so much space and we just were taking our time. But in this climate, it seems like the attention span just isn’t there on a record. All the songs that you hear on this record were at one point over seven minutes so we’ve cut it back and you know, we’re trying in a way to make it fun for us and fun for the audience. We’ve definitely learned a lot over the course of trying to make these songs the way that we want to make them and the way that we do make them.

MG: And how else is this album different from the last one?
JP: It’s just more ‘honed in’ on what it is we’re doing. I think we are actually ‘figuring it out.’ We’re figuring out our process; we’re figuring out our systems. We’re kind of a nerdy band a little bit, we’re kind of pecky, but it’s been kind of fun, it really has and it opens us up to doing different sounding stuff, I think. We want to make stuff that not just us would enjoy.

MG: So what’s next for Bear In Heaven? What are you guys feeling in terms of your next step?
JP: Music videos and then going on tour as much as we can. And between all that, just kind of get back to writing and stuff like that, which is cool. We’ve always had more songs written and recorded than are out so we finally caught up with ourselves. [We can finally] take the stuff – like a freakin’ hard-drive full of sketches – and be like “alright, those ten, make something.”

MG: Are you feeling like you’re going to be making any stylistic changes?
JP: I don’t know, we’ll just feel it out. We’ve not like had a plan like that ever, so we’ll keep hopefully just stumbling along. Maybe we’ll land on something good.

Bear In Heaven: website | myspace

Some blog call Pitchfork is hosting their big important music festival Friday, July 17 through Sunday, July 19at Chicago’s Union Park this year. They’ve just announced the addition of The Flaming Lips to Sunday night’s show.

2009 Line-up (thus far):
Friday - “Write the Night: Set Lists by Request”
Built to Spill
The Jesus Lizard
Yo La Tengo
Tortoise

Saturday
The National
Pharoahe Monch
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Sunday
The Flaming Lips – “Write the Night” redux
Grizzly Bear
The Walkmen
Vivian Girls

Pitchfork Music Festival: website | tickets

In time for Halloween, Les Savy Fav front man Tim Harrington unveiled the premiere episode of “BEARDO”, a new web series on Pitchfork.tv following hilarious results from camera takeover at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival.

Three episodes of “BEARDO” have already been completed and PopWreckoning is happy to share with you the first, “Vampiral Dysfunction”, which fits in nicely with today being Halloween. Kristen Schaal guest stars as the date to Harrington’s Dracula. Watch the hilarity ensue.

Happy Halloween!

BEARDO: website

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. Most of what’s been said has been positive, a few reviews have been on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it’s among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: “lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic.” One is left only to conclude that you m ust think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it. It’s true that the events described in these songs really happened. It’s true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the limp-dicked cuckold. Sometimes your screaming about your worst fears, your most trite jealousies. Such is life.) It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit scene of bands. We’re one of them. We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It’s always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we’re among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There’s this long history of dialog between bands and writers, NME ripping apart the Cure or Rolling Stone refusing to write about Led Zeppelin — so it’s a bit of a thrill that you have such a20strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We’d love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we’re doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. We’re serious about this stuff. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can’t be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best–
Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event

The Airborne Toxic Event: website | myspace | stream “Somewhere Around Midnight” | s/t album review | download: philadelphia | live in Philadelphia