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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We did a post on Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk back in October and since then they’ve been working on two upcoming full lengths titled Skeletor & Me and Know Yr Molars. They’ve also re-released their Puppycat EP as a 3″ CD, available on the CD-R only label Edition 59. Here’s the video by George Demoura for the instrumental “Fort Porkchop” off of Puppycat. Enjoy!
Man I am on a roll with Vimeo lately. Enjoy this totally rad video from Yeasayer for their song “O.N.E.”. Neon colors, lasers, coordinated dance moves… love it.
Great Vimeo find from The Faux Noise for the song “Save Me”. The band hails from Sweden and has a shoegaze-pop sound that is great for those rainy days and/or break up mixtapes. Also checkout their Soundcloud page for tons of free downloads and remixes.
Foals‘ new album Total Life Forever is set to release May 10th, and to give us a sneak peak they’ve released a pretty epic video for “Spanish Sahara”, and are offering up a free download of a Mount Kimbie remix from their website. I’m a big fan of what these guys do guitarically (if I may make up a word), and I’m glad to see they’re keeping the unison, echo-driven, duel-guitar riffs around for this next album. For those of you who haven’t heard these guys before, give their last album Antidotes a listen to prepare yourself for the new album. I have high hopes.
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Here’s another random Vimeo find, Video Marsh’s brand new music vid for Caribou’s “Odessa,” which will be on their 4/20/2010 release Swim. These guys nailed it with this video; I think it captures the feeling of the song perfectly!
Fantastic video for Vampire Weekend’s song “Giving Up the Gun” directed by the Malloy Bros. Includes an epic tennis match featuring Jake Gylenahall, a Jonas brother, Lil’ Jon, the RZA and more! Plus, slow… motion… enjoy!
I got an email the other day from David Beeman, mastermind behind the folk-pop quintet Old Lights. He was very pleased and very eager to share with us the brand new video by Cody Stokes for “Losing My Mind,” off their latest, Every Night Begins The Same (click to buy on iTunes). I really enjoyed this album, it’s got an awesome 60s-pop vibe to it. And here’s one of my faves from the album, “How Can I Get By.”
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Artist: Old Lights Song: How Can I Get By.mp3 Album: Every Night Begins The Same
Royksopp is one of my favorite electronic duos. Here’s an awesome video for “Happy Up Here,” track 1 from their latest album, Junior. This is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a while. Enjoy!
Back in the earlier days of Newdust I did a post on Junk Culture’s latest album West Coast, which I’ve been listening to on a regular basis since its release back in October. Here’s the brand new video for the title track, “West Coast.”
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.
Wow. That’s all I can say about Tindersticks‘ latest album Falling Down A Mountain. From track one onward, there’s never a dull moment in this album. It has a real rootsy, bluesy soul vibe to it, & Stuart Staples’ vocals and lyrics are powerful & heartfelt. My favorites are “Keep You Beautiful”, “Black Smoke”, & “No Place So Alone”. If you’ve got the time, give this album a solid listen. You’ll be glad you did.
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