Optical Atlas

Kevin Barnes, mostly nude, came riding in on a horse at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC last Friday night, and it only got crazier from there.  The Skeletal Lamping tour features saloon shootouts, shaving cream-filled coffins, and wild orgies.  You can listen to a full recording at nyctaper.com, in both MP3 and FLAC format.  Stereogum and You Ain’t No Picasso are offering detailed concert reviews and photos, the former with videos as well.  Here’s a sample video courtesy Stereogum, of the band covering “Smells Like Teen Spirit”:

Pitchfork has posted some great photos from the New York stop of the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour.  Good God it looks like that was a blast.  Check it out here.

P.S. I just read at You Ain’t No Picasso that there’s a rumor of Jeff Mangum coming to Chicago, which makes my last post kind of amusing in retrospect…

Pitchfork has posted some videos from the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour’s New York stop.  The big news of course if that Jeff Mangum joined his friends onstage.  It’s very strange to post videos without actually watching them (for now), but since I’m seeing the show in a week, I’m hiding from all spoilers.  Not that Jeff Mangum will be in Chicago, but still…

The videos are below; the Pitchfork article is here.

NPR.org is offering a wealth of new of Montreal material, in the form of a full-length concert (which was broadcast live from Washington D.C. last week) and a half-hour audio interview with Kevin Barnes.  Both are available for streaming at this page.

Skeletal Lamping pre-orders from Polyvinyl are now shipping; I got mine in the mail yesterday.  Damned if I can figure out how to fold that cardboard CD packaging back into a neat little square, though this bright and cheerfully obscene flower doesn’t seem to want to un-bloom itself anyway.  If you’re waiting to pick it up in stores, it comes out October 21st.  The New Gay has posted an interview with Kevin Barnes which you can read here.  Thanks to I Rule the School for the link.

Casper & the Cookies have unveiled one of the new tracks from their upcoming album Modern Silence via Three Imaginary Girls.  You can download “Little King” here.  Check back with Optical Atlas next Friday for another new CATC track.

The Optical Atlas streaming jukebox has been updated with brand new music from Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, & the Amorphous Strums, The Visitations, and Dressy Bessy, plus an October-themed track from the Marbles, and more.  By the way, it’s very difficult to just take one track from the Vic Chesnutt/Elf Power collaborative album to demonstrate how amazing it is.  You really have to hear the whole thing.  Chesnutt’s vocals on certain tracks resemble David Bowie’s, and Elf Power lifts every song to a rock anthem suitable for a stadium concert.  But I could only choose one, so I picked “Little Fucker,” which sounds possibly the most “single”-like (if not FCC-standards ready).  The full album, Dark Developments, comes out October 28th on Orange Twin.  And I’ve been enjoying The Visitations‘ third album, The Conundrum Tree, ever since Davey Wrathgabar leaked it on MySpace last year.  It’s by far the band’s strongest album, and the closest in style to the rocking, sardonic work Davey used to produce for Fablefactory.  You can listen to “Fresh Dog” at the jukebox; The Conundrum Tree comes out next Tuesday on Orange Twin.

The lack of an update yesterday was due to the fact that I spent most of the day sick, semi-conscious on medication in front of a TV watching pirate and horror movies all day.  (If you must know: The Devil-Ship Pirates, The Burning, and The Evil Dead.  The highlight of my fever dream day was being suddenly woken by a half-dozen summer camp kids getting messily massacred by a crazed maniac with garden shears.)  I’m still sick and medicated today, but I made it to the computer this time.  Here is part of what I missed: a Folklore session taped last spring has been posted at Daytrotter.  Lead singer Jimmy Hughes is here joined by Derek Almstead, Ian Rickert, and Aaron Jollay.  The whole set is available here.  (This was actually taped the day after the quieter late-night set for The Optical Atlas Show.)

The band has also released this surveillance-camera-themed video for “Bingo Beats,” off their forthcoming Carpenter’s Falls.

You Ain’t No Picasso has posted an old Beulah concert (provided courtesy the E6 Townhall).  The setlist is a great mix of material from When Your Hearstrings Break and the then-new The Coast is Never Clear.  You can get the MP3s here.

Today we have a brand new installment of WGSU’s The Elephant 6 Show added to our E6 Radio archive.  You can download the October 7th episode here.  (No, there wasn’t a show last week, and won’t be next week either, alas.  So ration.)  A big thanks as usual to Becky Lovell for sending it along for us to hear.

The Athens Music Foundation has also just posted their very first podcast, the AthCast Flashlight, which features new music from Andy from Denver, The Transformers, Hola Halo, Paul Thomas, Whiff Trophy, and Russian Spy Camera.  Check it out here, as it’s really quite excellent.  (It will be available on iTunes soon.)  Thanks to Nicklaus for the link.