I can’t get enough of Freelance Whales right now. These guys just finished up at SXSW and I’m sure they left a lasting impression on anyone who was lucky enough to see them. Here’s an acoustic performance of “Ghosting,” a song from their latest album Weathervanes. This was part of NPR Music’s Tiny SXSW Concert series. As always, their acoustic performances are great!
I got a chance to see Freelance Whales last night at Mango’s Cafe in Houston, TX. These guys are fantastic live! If you’re gonna be in Austin this week for SXSW, I highly recommend you check ‘em out. Weathervanes is Freelance Whales’ latest effort, a love story between a little boy and a ghost who lives in his attic. It’s set to release April 13th, but can be pre-ordered on their site. Check out the footage below from last night at Mango’s; this is “Generator ^ 1st Floor.”:
I also had a little Q & A with drummer Jacob about the band, the album, and a ukelin:
Newdust: How did you guys all meet and when did you start playing together?
Jacob: Aside from Doris, who’s originally from Queens, we all had moved out to New York a year or two prior to pursue music. We had various projects posted online, and we were all scouring the web for music projects to work on. Judah had some great demos mocked up and he actively responded to the different things we were doing at the time. The formation went through some brief and semi-frequent lineup changes early on, but eventually came together fully as a quintet around November of 2008, and we played our first show a couple of months later, in January of 2009.
ND: I’ve seen several clips on youtube of the band performing out on the streets or in subways….Who’s idea was it to play street shows? With your tour in the works and your growing popularity, are you going to continue to play street shows?
J: We decided to play street shows – and will hopefully continue to play them when we can (we’ll be going out today for the first time since November) – because of the opportunity to meet new people and bring strangers to shows. We had gotten to a point where relying on our friends to come to shows every other weekend seemed unfair, so we used street performing as a sort of jumping-off point to play to crowds of people who had never heard us. The first time we did it, we noticed a handful of people from the street had come to the show a couple of hours later. So we’d play at least one street show before every “proper” show, and it grew from there.
ND: I read on your pr’s website that over the last couple years you guys have been collecting instruments. What’s the coolest instrument you’ve come across?
J: Judah just got a Chinese zither, and is in the process of putting it together. It’s an instrument I’ve always been fascinated with, so I’m really looking forward to getting that thing into the fold. Kevin is also working on restringing his ukelin – a sort of hybridized ukulele and violin – in the hopes that we can bring it out on the road and start writing with it.
ND: Weathervanes tells a ghost story. Tell me a little more about the story & how it came about.
J: The story is based on some dream logging that Judah did for a class in college. He filled up many-a-notebook and eventually noticed patterns forming in his dreams, which he pieced together into the thematic elements on Weathervanes. Without giving too much away, the story is about the relationship between the narrator – a young boy – and the ghost – a young girl – that haunts his childhood home. It’s about how she wants to be seen now that she’s gone, and how the boy can learn to be a ghost when his time comes.
ND: What’s next for Freelance Whales? is there a new album in the works?
J: There’s no new album, per se, but there are lots of ideas and song bits floating around. On our next tour we’re going to make a concerted effort to write together lots more, in the hopes that we can start to develop and play these new songs at shows. Many of our favorite bands are into road-testing material, and I think it’s an essential skill to have.
Well, there you have it! Look out for Weathervanes April 13th on Frenchkiss/Mom & Pop Records. I’ll let Freelance Whales play us out with “Generator ^2nd Floor”:
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So heads up on this relatively new act from Washington D.C. This lovely lady goes by many names but currently is playing under the moniker Lightfoot. She is performing live at DC’s Rock n’ Roll Hotel this Friday at 8PM. Enjoy!
PS: Check back tomorrow for my interview with Jessica (Lightfoot). Hopefully I can get all the juicy details about her songs of heartbreak.
So the new Spoon album has been out now for about two weeks, and I have yet to listen to it. Shame on me for being both a dedicated Spoon fan for nearly a decade now, and an avid member of the indie music community for not being all over this when it came out. But I have come to my senses and have just purchased the album (you can do so as well on the band’s merch site). I did some YouTube searching to see what live footage has been thrown up so far, and I came across this excellent live recording of “The Mystery Zone” from their performance on Santa Monica, California’s KCRW. The performance aired on January 20th as a part of the station’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show program. You can watch the entire performance on the station’s website.
A while back we did a post on The Seedy Seeds‘ “The Feeders.” Here’s an excellent live video of them performing “On The Subject Of Our Past Selves,” at The Green Building in Louisville, KY. They are the first of many bands to perform on the “Green Building Sessions.”
Here’s up & coming Elephantom, a young & talented band from Boston performing “I Am Your Head,” at theZullo Galleryin Medfield, Massachusetts. They’ve got a new CD out titled Swim. Toward The Sun., which can be downloaded for free here.
Spoon announced “Written In Reverse” as the first single off their upcoming LP, Transference, set to release January 19th. So far only live versions of the song have been scattered across the web (I found this one on Stereogum, who found it on you aint no picasso, who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night). The mix is a little rough on this live version, but you can look forward to the official digital release of this song on December 1st.
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