Winter – The Olivia Tremor Control launches a website, selling copies of their John Peel Sessions CD and soliciting for dream tapes. The website soon goes defunct.
March 10th – of Montreal is interviewed in Excellent Online. Kevin Barnes:
There’s a lot of myths floating around about Elephant Six. A lot of people come up to us and are like, ‘So, do you guys live in the Elephant Six mansion? Do you guys go to meetings every week?’ and we just go, ‘Umm.. nope.’ What it started out as was Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, and Apples in Stereo. They didn’t really have a label to put out their stuff, so they just went, ‘Well, let’s start our own thing and release our own records.’ But it’s just kind of like – it’s like the whole Guided By Voices thing, like how Robert Pollard used to make up band names and stuff, even though he wasn’t in the band. It was just that sort of thing. And then all the bands started getting recognition, and people were like, ‘What’s this Elephant Six thing that’s on all your records?’ and it was just like, ‘Oh, it’s a label… sort of.’ For a while, it was like… we put the Elephant Six logo on A Petite Tragedy because we thought it would be really good for people to take notice of it. Cause there’s so many releases, so many bands, who are just starting out at our level, and it’s kinda hard to really stand out, and so it was kinda cool that they said we could go ahead and do it, cause it helped us get a little bit more recognition than we would have gotten if we wouldn’t have put it on there or weren’t associated with them.
March 29th – Japanese pop singer Kahimi Karie releases Once Upon a Time, an EP written and produced by The Olivia Tremor Control (who act as backing band and remixers as well).
April 11th– Great Lakes: Great Lakes. Record review from Austin Chronicle: “What if Brian Wilson hadn’t spent the Mid-Seventies in bed? What if he picked himself up from the morass of the 1967’s aborted Smile album and kept right on producing Pet Sounds-caliber Teenage Symphonies to God for the next decade? The wonderfully layered pop soapbox from Athens, Ga.’s Great Lakes evokes a wishful scenario in which Wilson delivers a solo album circa 1975 with Brian Eno at the helm. Here, it’s Apples in Stereo mastermind Robert Schneider at the mixing board on an album recorded entirely at home, and though the Beach-Boy harmonies are supplanted by forlorn, nasal vocals, the multi-instrumentalist trio taps deep into Pet Sounds‘ bittersweet aural notion of innocence lost…Anyone with even the slightest predilection toward the hopelessly romantic notions underlying pure pop music will find plenty to identify with in Great Lakes‘ 12 songs. Every summer deserves an album like this.”
Travis Nichols of Flagpole profiles Dan Donahue, Ben Crum, and Jamey Huggins of Great Lakes at work on their first album:
‘Really, all rock and roll music comes out of what happened in the ’60s, so there’s no avoiding it,’ [Dan] Donahue says. ‘That’s where it began. But we’re more just trying to make music that sounds like the sounds in our heads. If I had a way of describing it, I guess it would be something like an antique future – something that takes classic mediums and puts them together in new ways.’ Perfecting this old-to-begin-with package has become quite a task. From its beginning as an outlet for Donahue and [Ben] Crum to play songs they penned in high school, Great Lakes has developed into an 11-member troupe onstage and an intense bedroom workshop at home… In the meantime, Great Lakes is trying to hone their ensemble live show. ‘It would be preposterous to try and list everyone who helps out,’ Donahue says, sighing. ‘It’s not even like we’re a band, you know – we’re not just four guys. Basically we record sounds and we get all of our friends to fill in the holes.’ No doubt with the caliber and reputation of the helpers (Scott Spillane of Neutral Milk Hotel and the Gerbils; and Kevin Barnes, Dottie Alexander and Derek Almstead of of Montreal, to name a few), the live performance could, and probably will, go off in all directions. ‘Since there are so many people helping out,’ Donahue says, ‘it sounds different every time we try it.’
The Apples in Stereo – I Can’t Believe
April 18th – The Apples in Stereo: The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone. Robert Schneider interviewed in Terrascope:
I got the title from a renaissance astronomical text that I saw on TV on a science show. Moon spelled with a ‘e.’ It’s not about Percival Lowe, but some older guy. Anyway, he looked up in his telescope and saw things on the moon he interpreted as being structures and canals. I saw it and thought, ‘That’s so good it’s gotta be the title for the new album.’ The sound of that record is kinda futuristic but it’s also old-fashioned and that’s kinda the way I think we are.
The Village Voice: “In typical Elephant Six fashion, they’re busy and fussy and can’t stop their minds from wandering. But with Robert Schneider fixing the holes, the lyrics swirl around sensibly and the formidable tunesmithing never goes down the drain. Nostalgic and in love with love, he’s as American as all get-out or Steve Earle. A-” The Washington Post: “If this album is noisier and more aggressive than most of the Apples‘ previous work, it draws from much the same mid-’60s precedents. Schneider (and drummer Hilarie Sidney, who wrote two of these songs) reconjure the charm of sun-dappled mid-’60s California pop bands like the Beach Boys and the Association, adding the propulsion of garage-rock and bubblegum and the baroque-tinged arrangements of the Beatles and the Kinks. Indeed, ‘I Can’t Believe’ neatly melds the crunch of the latter band’s ‘You Really Got Me’ period with the gentler sound that would follow soon after. Such hybrids don’t disguise the band’s influences, but the Apples reconfigure their sources with such energy and invention that none of these songs sound like museum pieces.” Ink Blot Magazine: “Once in a while, a record will come out that’s simply perfect… their finest record to date – pure, gleeful pop virtuosity.”
April 25th – of Montreal: The Horse and Elephant Eatery (No Elephants Allowed): The Singles and Songles Album. In an interview with Splendid E-zine, Kevin explains, “…we didn’t have a very good deal with our label [Bar/None] – we signed the contract when we were pretty young and we didn’t know anything about record contracts, so we had a pretty crappy royalty rate. So Kindercore — the label we’ve been doing stuff with recently — offered us a pretty good deal, so to get out of the contract we released the Singles and Songles album.” Derek Almstead says of the band’s E6 association: “I think for Robert [Schneider] and a few other people, maybe, it’s really important to mention it, but for us it’s like they’re our friends, we put the logo on our records and all of a sudden we got all sorts of attention because of it, and that’s great, but we’re just friends. We hang out and we like each other’s music.”
Black Swan Network – Aqua Waters (and a Pear-Shaped Thought)
THE KINDERCORE AND HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME SINGLES CLUBS: Beginning in 1999, Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records – a record label begun by Mike Turner as an offshoot of his zine Bee’s Knees – began to release a “single of the month club,” each a uniquely packaged 7”. Most of the releases in this club were mailed to subscribers in 2000, and featured contributions from Black Swan Network, of Montreal, Great Lakes, The Essex Green, The Late B.P. Helium, Marshmallow Coast, Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra, Calvin, Don’t Jump!, Kingsauce, and more. At about the same time, Kindercore Records started its own Single of the Month club, each a split 7” and issued in green, lookalike sleeves (stamped with the name of the artists). Contributors here included of Montreal, Elf Power, The Ladybug Transistor, Dressy Bessy, Great Lakes, Japancakes, My First Keyboard (of Montreal as led by Dottie Alexander), and many others affiliated with the Kindercore label. Ten singles were issued, but the series was never completed, much to the consternation of subscribers. It was later announced that a CD compilation of the entire singles club, including unreleased tracks, would be sold, but the project never materialized due to internal label woes (see: 2003). Singles from both of these clubs have become highly sought-after by collectors, particularly two from the HHBTM club: the Black Swan Network’s, which feature songs by Will Hart that anticipate Circulatory System’s debut album (2001); and of Montreal’s contribution to the HHBTM club, the B-side of which includes two exclusive tracks by Kevin Barnes and his brother David, absurd audio playlets which foreshadow their collaboration on the “A Pollinaire Rave” tour (2003).
July 4th – Elf Power’s first album, Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs, is reissued (with The Winterhawk EP included).
July 18th – The Powerpuff Girls: Heroes & Villains (featuring The Apples in Stereo, Dressy Bessy, and The Bill Doss). Animator Craig McCracken, creator of The Cartoon Network’s “The Powerpuff Girls,” was an Elephant 6 fan. Bill Doss intended his contribution to be billed as The Sunshine Fix, but was asked to change the name to avoid drug connotations (this was a children’s album, after all, and kids shouldn’t be shooting up sunshine). A video was produced for The Apples in Stereo’s track “Signal in the Sky,” from Will Vinton Studios.
July 25th – Summer Hymns: Voice Brother and Sister
July 27th – Bablicon: The Orange Tapered Moon. The LP covers were individually hand-painted. Pitchfork: ”Though they have loose ties to the Elephant 6 scene (drummer and leader Jeremy Barnes is a member of Neutral Milk Hotel), nobody’s going to compare Bablicon to the Olivia Tremor Control or the Apples in Stereo. They’re primarily an instrumental outfit that thrives on energetic improvisation, so more apt ’60s comparisons would be Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Even the Beefheart resemblance, which evokes an image of wide-ranging experimentation, is probably too limiting as Bablicon dabble in thoroughly modern ambient music and noise textures as well, working their way through a huge library of musical toys with both joy and skill. This kid-in-a-candy-store approach to raw sound is a huge part of this record’s appeal, as the obvious pleasure Bablicon derive from making music together carries over to the listener.”
The Olivia Tremor Control – Christmas with William S.
August 8th – The Olivia Tremor Control: Singles and Beyond. Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times: “The most ambitious member of indie-rock’s so-called Elephant 6 collective, The Olivia Tremor Control is now on sabbatical so that auteurs Bill Doss and William Cullen Hart can strike out on their own. In the meantime, they’re giving us this 20-song collection of assorted rarities to tide us over, and it comprises some of the most effervescent psychedelic pop this side of the Fab Four.” Bill Doss, in an interview with jound.com on Singles and Beyond, explains how the track “Christmas with William S.” was assembled:
[The birds and bells were recorded] behind my house, when I lived on…[laughs] I was going to say the street, but like that would mean anything. Actually, it was the house that the B-52’s first played in, like in 1976 or something, when they first got together. I think they played at a party in that house, in the very apartment that I lived in. And there was a church behind the house, and that’s where the bells came from. And the birds were, obviously, up in the trees…That was a piece I really liked, because to me it actually had a movement. It takes you from inside the kitchen where I started it, out the screen door, through the leaves, into the church, and that’s where all the sounds get crazy, cause it’s supposed to be a church of electronic sounds, or electronified sounds. You’re hearing the bells, and then once you get inside the bells get strange and they change into all the sounds, which were actually Christmas songs cut up and then re-arranged so that hopefully you couldn’t tell what Christmas songs they were but they still gave you the feeling of Christmas. And then after you hear all the sounds and it gets all freaky – you know, ‘freaky, man!’ – you go back to the house. So you hear the walking back through the leaves and then the screen door again. So it’s like a journey. [‘William S.’ is] William S. Burroughs. That’s why we called it that, cause it was a collage and he worked with collage, doing sound collage and…visual art collage…We called it that ‘cause it was supposed to be a Christmas track. At the time somebody had just given me a record of William S. Burroughs’ stuff and it was all chopped-up stuff. It just seemed perfect.
August 8-12th – The Kindercore Expo in Athens features performances by of Montreal, The Sunshine Fix, The Essex Green, Dressy Bessy, Masters of the Hemisphere, Great Lakes, Japancakes, Summer Hymns, 8-Track Gorilla, Je Suis France, and more. Kindercore Records had been singled out as the ”indie label to watch” in SPIN Magazine this year. Co-founder Dan Gellar interviewed in jound.com:
It’s funny, because you sell as many records in Japan as you do in America when you’re big in Japan. It’s the same number, but there’s so many more people here, I guess. And the fanaticism of the people there, I guess, also separates it a little bit. Of Montreal and Dressy Bessy just went over there, and they were playing to 1,000 people that were screaming all the lyrics to their songs. And they came back and then they had to play the festival and they were like ‘this is just gonna suck,’ you know, after that, nothing’s going to be the same again in America, cause people just aren’t that fanatical…It’s just crazy; they’re making DJ bags over there right now with Kindercore logos on them – really nice, hundred-dollar DJ bags. Who would buy that here? But in Japan they’re going to sell thousands of them. It’s just so weird to us. I guess until you go there you can’t even begin to comprehend what it really is…Of Montreal really didn’t want to come back, I’ll say that much.
August 15th – Keep Left – Vol. 1: A Benefit for David Barsamian & Alternative Radio, featuring an exclusive track by The Olivia Tremor Control, “Glass Beard.”
August 29th – The Sunshine Fix: The Future History of the Sunshine Fix
September – Rabid Chords 002: VU Tribute, released by Victor Entertainment in Japan, features artists from Japan and the U.S. covering songs by the Velvet Underground. Four bands affiliated with E6 appear: of Montreal (”She’s My Best Friend”), The Ladybug Transistor (”I Found a Reason”), The Olivia Tremor Control (”European Son”), and The Music Tapes (”All Tomorrow’s Parties”). Also in 2000, Contact Records in Japan released The Invention to Be Nobody & Nowhere: U.S. Pop Life Vol. 5 – Athens, which featured tracks by The Sunshine Fix, Summer Hymns, My First Keyboard, Calvin, Don’t Jump!, Japancakes, of Montreal, and Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t (Pete Erchick from Olivia Tremor Control).
October 3rd – The Minders: Down in Fall
October 15th – Great Lakes play the Knitting Factory as part of CMJ
October 17th – Elf Power: The Winter is Coming. The Boston Globe: “Sometimes it’s good to stand out from the crowd. As a member of the avant Elephant Six Collective, Elf Power has often stood in the shadow of better known peers like Apples in Stereo. With their third release, The Winter Is Coming, the band confidently steps to center stage. In the past, the Elf Power focus has been on a unique combination of Tolkien-inspired lyrics and Kinks melodies. But here, the band reaches outside itself. The record jumps from the Far Eastern moodiness of ‘Wings Of Light’ to the wonderful horn inclusions on the title track. On previous efforts, vocalist Andrew Reiger has sometimes sounded a bit thin, but he has either taken up smoking or found the perfect producer. He is captured wonderfully here, and ‘The Great Society’ provides an ideal opportunity for his vocals to mesh with those of bandmate Laura Carter. Elf Power has brought lots of sounds and ideas to this release, yet as different as the songs sometimes are, the album holds together as a solid, superlative effort.”
October 24th – Marshmallow Coast: Marshmallow Coasting
November – Dressy Bessy: The California EP
Kincaid – Storm King (W. Cullen Hart Remix)
November 14th – Kindercore Fifty: We Thank You, a three CD set celebrating fifty releases on Kindercore Records. The first disc, “The New,” features new tracks by The Apples in Stereo, of Montreal, The Sunshine Fix, Marshmallow Coast, The Essex Green, Dressy Bessy, Japancakes, and more. The second disc, “The Classics,” features select cuts from older Kindercore releases, including Major Organ and the Adding Machine’s cover of “What a Wonderful World.” The third disc, “The Remixes,” features remixes of songs by The Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal, The Ladybug Transistor, and Japancakes, as well as W. Cullen Hart remixing Kincaid.
December 9th – Fablefactory performs one last time at the 40 Watt, then breaks up.
