January 14th – Beulah posts on their website, “Happy New Year! We just read an online article that said we’re gonna be breaking up after the release of our next record. This news made all of us so sad that we’ve decided to stay together until each of us dies.”
January/February – Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t: Special Fanfare for Anything. A tour-only release which Pete Erchick begins selling over his pipesyousee.com site.
Thimble Circus – Eat This City
February – Thimble Circus: Lullaby for Worriers. Jill Carnes, interviewed by Adam Schragin for Optical Atlas in 2007:
I was ready to face the blank canvas when the switch was in the ‘on’ position. I wrote all the songs well before the recording sessions. Eric [Harris] was a great help with the recording process. He had most (if not all) the necessary equipment to make the dream come true. He was very knowledgeable and easy to work with as well. Plus he had a terrific sense of humor and an all-around good spirit. Jeff Mangum and Laura Carter recorded a Thimble Circus radio performance. Some of these songs were dumped onto the four-track and other layers were recorded on the remaining tracks. Jeff also made a chair screech very loudly on cue during ‘Eat This City.’ Heather McIntosh came over one day and laid down her cello part on ’78s.’ Then, on another day, Pete Erchick came over and laid down his groovy piano stylings on ‘Eat This City.’ Chris Jolly [Boom Box 2000] played some haunting piano and trumpet on ‘I Am Punkrock’ one Sunday in the closed Flicker Theatre. Deanna Varagona plays baritone saxophone in the band Lambchop. She played her axe on ‘Heavy Metal.’ Karen Gaitens and Alex McManus both helped out on ‘I Got Blue.’ Alex plays in Lambchop and also he has a solo band called the Bruces. Eric played piano on ‘I Got Blue.’ Eric also played that steady jazzy bass rhythm line on ‘Soap Opera Epic.’ Also he played his drums and percussion anywhere on the recording you hear drums and percussion. All these kind contributors were great additions to my otherwise lonesome songs. We recorded on Eric’s various reel-to-reel tape recording devices. As with some of the recorded tracks from the already-mentioned radio performance, these reel-to-reel recordings were dumped onto 4-track. And likewise, these tracks already had many layers, so again we had many leftover tracks to play with. One day we went on a long walk with a hand-held tape recorder. We stopped cars to ask the drivers if they would blow their horn. Scott Spillane blew his horn, as well as many other local townspeople. These horn-tooters can be heard on ‘Eat This City.’
February 5th – The Apples in Stereo appear on Last Call with Carson Daly.
of Montreal – How Lester Lost His Wife (demo from the “A Pollinaire Rave” CD-R)
February 13th – From the Boston Globe:
Just a few days after of Montreal’s European tour ended last month, [Kevin] Barnes; his Norwegian girlfriend, Nina Grottland; and his brother and bandmate, David, returned to the road. This time sans instruments but with backing tapes, playing small clubs and record stores in what they call ‘A Pollinaire Rave – music as art performance’ tour… ‘Basically, it’s a theatrical piece,’ says Barnes. ‘It’s definitely a comedy and it’s definitely absurd and it’s difficult to explain. The general idea is these three convicts – me, my brother, and Nina – are in this new government program that’s like the opposite of “Scared Straight.” They send prisoners to school to interact with the kids, who show them a more wholesome life, and this teacher’s eighth-grade class writes this play for them. We take poetic license. We get to act like convicts and blame it on eighth graders.’ And, what do these convicts sing about? Well, there’s ‘Chrissie Kissed the Corpse,’ which Barnes describes as ‘this absurd tale about finding this old woman waiting for the bus to come and playing with her dead body. It sounds really gross, but it’s such an upbeat song, you can just pass it by without realizing’ what it’s about. …In a suite of songs, Barnes says, ‘we play with this Greek theme with Prometheus, Zeus, and Pandora. Pandora’s got a new box. She opens the box and Zeus gets a little upset.’ The show, a work in progress, consists of demos of songs that will comprise an upcoming (summer 2003) of Montreal CD, Satanic Panic in the Attic. ‘It’s a little more overtly sinister than the last album,’ Barnes says. The first couple of ‘Pollinaire’ shows were rough – Barnes uses the phrase ‘clearing the room’ – and as such they’ve changed things around. ‘It used to be an amalgamation of Greek myths,’ says Barnes, ‘but that was way too difficult to follow and not that entertaining, so we came up with different ideas and abandoned the Greek theme except for first scene.’ The seven-year-old quintet is part of the Elephant 6 collective, a nebulous consortium of bands (Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.) – ‘people working together, helping each other out, making music that’s sort of similar’ is how Barnes describes it. Barnes is a fan of ’60s psychedelia. ‘Our musical tastes are extremely varied, from Charles Mingus to Joni Mitchell, Big Star, Buzzcocks, Black Sabbath…The motivation is definitely to make something unconventional and unpredictable. Why write another three-chord pop song that’s not original? Why not try to expand the format?’
March 11th – Dressy Bessy: Little Music.
March 29th – The Apples in Stereo perform at SXSW, and Robert Schneider meets actor Elijah Wood, who will invite The Apples to join his startup label Simian Records. Robert told the AV Club in 2007: “I met Elijah years ago at an Apples show at South By Southwest. He was rocking out in the front row, and he came around to meet us later. I was like, ‘Holy shit, Elijah Wood is an indie-rocker.’ He’s totally into music. He’s a record collector. He probably buys 78s. For all I know, he buys Edison cylinders. [Laughs.] He’s not in any way what you would consider celebrity-ish. We kept in touch a little bit by email over the years, and when we were starting to record this new album, he contacted us and said, ‘I’m starting a new label, and I’d love to have The Apples be my first record.’ He came into the studio the first week we were recording, and just hung out. I showed him how to use the vocoder and the Mellotron. He was flipping out; it was like Christmas morning for him. I was like, ‘This is the perfect guy to be putting out our record.’” In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Eric Allen said of Wood, “He’s really cool…He listens to a lot of different types of music. We didn’t know what to think at first, but he’s been nothing but good to us.”
Robert Schneider interviewed at SXSW 2003 for Cooking with Rockstars.
The Essex Green – Our Lady in Havana
April 8th – The Essex Green: The Long Goodbye. Salon.com: “The Brooklyn trio of Sasha Bell, Christopher Ziter and Jeff Baron have been playing together in various forms since 1997, most notably in The Ladybug Transistor. Their second CD as Essex Green is the perfect music for a morning when you have a mini-hangover and your new sweetheart is in the kitchen fixing you French toast. It’s a hopeful mixture of bliss and subsiding pain. The 12 songs on The Long Goodbye alternate female and male vocals, with the center tracks ‘Julia’ and ‘Old Dominion’ featuring both singers. Bell’s voice is light on the airier tracks; Ziter’s is grave with the rougher tunes. The result falls somewhere between the poppy ’60s psychedelia of The Byrds and the happy melancholy of contemporary Scottish band Belle & Sebastian. The Long Goodbye is sad without being gloomy, sweet with out being saccharine, and makes a great album for springtime — especially after a long, hard winter.” Sasha Bell, interviewed in soundsxp about “Our Lady in Havana”: “I was traveling in Cuba at the time, on a Central American journey. I’d gotten out of a relationship and I was all heartbroken and I decided to go to Central America for a month. I wrote a bunch of songs down there and that was one of them.” Many of the rest of the songs ended up as her solo project, Finishing School.
May 6th – The Late B.P. Helium: Kumquat Mae.
June 3rd – Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t: Individualized Shirts (reissue) & Zumm Zumm: Crusp Srexstling released on Orange Twin Records.
June 27th – The 63 Crayons: Good People.
July 1st – Summer Hymns: Clemency; and of Montreal: If He is Protecting Our Country Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children? (reissue of a tour-only release with slightly different track listing).
August 1st – Ulysses performs with Tiny Sticks. Ulysses was the new Lexington-based band formed by Robert Schneider; Tiny Sticks an ESG cover band fronted by B.P. Helium.
Dressy Bessy – The Things That You Say That You Do
August 26th – Dressy Bessy: Dressy Bessy CD+DVD on the Kindercore label and distributed by new partners the Telegraph Company. Kind of a breakthrough for the Denver band in terms of perfecting their sound, and foregrounding their rock elements. Delusions of Adequacy says: “On their third full-length album, perhaps the only band to successfully meld the Elephant 6 styles of retro/psychedelic-tinged rock with modern power-pop and sheer bubblegum has created what may be the perfect pop album…Tammy Ealom’s vocals are cute and bouncy yet possessing a sly edge; the guitars by Ealom and Apples in Stereo alum John Hill are tight, perfectly recorded, and full of hook after hook; and the rhythm duo of Rob Greene (bass) and Darren Albert (drums) are tight and catchy. While Ealom had proven she has the perfect voice for the band’s style of power-pop bubblegum on the band’s previous efforts, here she seems more mature, a bit more serious without losing her playful edge. And, if anything, the band has even more hooks than before. Perhaps the best example of a perfect hook-driven pop song is ‘The Things That You Say That You Do,’ which uses some clanky guitar strum to deliver the memorable hook, and Ealom’s own drawn-out voice is perfect. It’s impossible to hear this song and sit still. …Much has been made of Dressy Bessy’s retro feel, and the foundation of their music is clearly the sheer fun pop sounds perfected by the Beach Boys and the 60’s sound, but it’s clear on this release that the band has exorcised any pure retro mindset and placed themselves firmly on the forefront of the modern pop scene. Because, frankly, hooks are timeless, and such sheer fun, catchy, and clever songwriting is as much a product of today as yesterday. This is the album that Dressy Bessy has been gearing up to make, and it will clearly give this hard-working band the recognition it deserves.” Rolling Stone says, “If radio programmers have any taste left, Dressy Bessy is a hit.” But more importantly, Surfer Girl Magazine raves: “Every song is complementary in its bratty, rambunctious, tough, and irresistible sound. The whole album is sweet and sassy. Oh, and it’s not for women–it’s for girls.”
Dressy Bessy – Better Luck
August – Magnet Magazine’s 10th anniversary issue names Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the best album of 1993-2003.
September 2nd – Beulah reissue When Your Heartstrings Break, having reacquired the rights.
September 4th – Kevin Griffis writes “Have You Seen Jeff Mangum?” for Creative Loafing on the dissolution of Neutral Milk Hotel, and featuring interviews with Will Hart, Scott Spillane, Jeremy Barnes, Robert Schneider, Laura Carter, Josh McKay, and Jeff’s father James. Jeff writes to the author, “I am flattered that you want to talk me, but I have to say no. I wish you the very best in everything you do. But please do not contact my family. I think [my dad] was caught off guard by you, and maybe even a little intrigued at first, but now he is left wondering how a perfect stranger could know about his painful past. I don’t wish to revisit the past either.”
September 9th – Beulah: Yoko. Mark de la Vina for Knight-Ridder:
In the two years since the indie pop band Beulah released its latest record, three of its seven members got divorced, and the group decided to call it a career. But after lead singer Miles Kurosky completed a strong batch of new songs, most of them addressing the end of his relationship with his fiancee, the Beatles-esque band from San Francisco put its breakup on indefinite hold. The new material, which pushed the septet into more mature thematic territory than heard on earlier Beulah discs, demanded a jolting title. ‘Yoko‘ is what the band came up with. ‘”Yoko” certainly is a provocative word,’ says Kurosky during a phone interview from his hotel room in Minneapolis. ‘Yoko Ono is pretty tremendous as an artist, but in a lot of ways she was like our muse, to break away from some Beatles comparisons.’ Shedding old skin has been a recurring theme for Beulah. Naming this adventurous disc after Ono, the often misunderstood maverick who inspired husband John Lennon to test new artistic waters, strikes Ono as fitting. ‘Well, I really blessed Beulah, because it’s going back to being real,’ Ono says via e-mail through her publicist. ‘I think Beulah is starting to do something on a different level. It’s very close to the kind of writing that was done in the ’60s. People just wanted to be real. It’s good it’s coming back.’ Ono, whose name has become synonymous with a girlfriend or wife who splinters a rock band, was ‘probably one of the most remarkable and fascinating women in the last half-century,’ Kurosky says. Before the group received permission from her to use her name, the working title for the disc was ‘All the Beatles Are Dying, But Please Don’t Blame Yoko.’ …Yoko, Beulah’s fourth disc, is darker and more adult than the previous CDs, with lyrics that tackle the kind of issues lost on a younger band. Songs about spiritual displacement and the emotional miasma of a long-term relationship gone bad belie Beulah’s ultra-catchy, hook-filled pop sound. Since the group’s 1997 debut disc, Handsome Western States, Beulah’s sonic calling card has been lush Brian Wilson-style arrangements with strings, staccato horns and infectious ‘ba-da-ba’ background vocals. On Yoko, just a hint of those elements remain. Next up for Beulah is the chance to reconnect with Ono, when the band remixes one of her songs. Kurosky says the band is unsure which Ono tune it will do, but it has received her blessing ‘to pick any one we want. Then we’re going to Beulah-ize it.’
Richard Harrington, Washington Post:
Beulah’s Web site has provided plenty of notice that Yoko is ‘a bit of a left turn, a curveball for all you sports fans.’ To minimize the shock ‘for those who don’t dig the rock,’ Beulah is also packing along a limited-edition, acoustic version of Yoko drawn from demos recorded on four- and eight-track cassette; it will be sold only on tour. ‘What I like is the fact the acoustic version exposes the songs for what they are — songs,’ Kurosky says. ‘A lot of times, people focus too much on the arrangements and the instrumentation, so it’s really nice to be able to see how I start off these songs, which is with my acoustic guitar, and they can see the evolution of the songs.’ Does this suggest a break with the past? ‘A little bit,’ says the group’s principal writer, singer and architect. ‘It’s conscious and organic at the same time. The conscious effort came out of the fact that there was a deep need and desire to do something different, to challenge ourselves artistically.’ The results may challenge those who’ve grown accustomed to Beulah’s ethereal dream-pop. Though Yoko has only been out a month, the mostly glowing reviews have been tempered by less-than-enthusiastic reactions from some of their most fervent fans. ‘A lot of them can’t get into Yoko but they like Heartstrings or Handsome Western States, and frankly I don’t really like those records,’ says Kurosky, who obviously liked them when he made them. ‘Certainly, but I’ve grown out of that. I know where [the fans] are coming from. I used to say the same thing: “Why can’t Pavement keep making Slanted & Enchanted over and over?”‘
September 22nd – Robert talks Ulysses and Optical Records Mfg. with Chris Rediske of Pitchfork:
Since the unofficial dissolution of the musical leviathan that is (or was) Elephant 6, one thing has become abundantly clear– it doesn’t necessarily mean all that much. All of the principals that founded the damn thing in the first place continue to make very similar music. The worship of Brian Wilson and ’60s pastiche pop continues unabated, and bands influenced by, and related to E6, continue to form and develop around the same ethos championed by the original Elephant 6-ers. Such is the case with the latest entrants in the canon– separate side projects from the Apples‘ Robert Schneider and Hilarie Sidney [The High Water Marks]. …With The Apples on temporary hiatus, Schneider is putting his efforts into a new project, Ulysses, as well as launching a label, Optical Records Mfg., with good friend Amanda Burford. Schneider, who relocated to Lexington, KY last year, was impressed by local band Big Fresh and tapped two of its members for his latest project. ‘Big Fresh is really amazing, and these two kids just seemed like they’d be perfect for Ulysses. John [Ferguson, Ulysses' drummer] is a great singer, and he writes incredible harmonies. I’m kinda singing in a lower register, and John comes up with all these great parts.’ Ulysses‘ other member is Ben Fulton, who provides the synthesizers and bass. Schneider says the focus and sound of the band is significantly different from the Apples. ‘Without going into it too much, I had just been going through a lot in my life, and a lot of these songs come from that. It kind of forced me to dig deeper, emotionally, and it’s really taken my lyrics to a new level.’ During the conversation, Schneider name-checks influences like The Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine (!), The Cars, and Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain–not your typical Apples source material. ‘I got tired of writing songs with chords, and I was playing around with lots of open tunings, or just a couple of fingers on the guitar at a time, where the other strings ring out and create cool harmonics. The sound is a lot more sad, spacey, droney, and clean [than the Apples]– it’s new wave, basically. I’m trying to do everything differently with this band.’ Although Schneider writes the majority of songs for Ulysses, some are collaborative, and Ferguson has also contributed a couple of original songs. The band is concentrating on practicing right now, although they will be playing a few shows in New York to coincide with this October’s CMJ festival. Schneider says they intend to track much of the album live-to-tape, possibly with Jason Falkner (Jellyfish, TV Eyes) at his home studio. Schneider hopes to have Ulysses‘ debut out by spring 2004, though at present he’s not sure what label might be releasing it…First up, though, will be a seven-inch single on Optical, with the cuts ‘Push You Away’ and ‘Castles In Spain.’ Optical, in fact, will concentrate on seven-inchers for the moment: Schneider prefers the DIY aspect, for one thing, and the relative speed and ease of release. ‘I’m just really excited about starting up, finding cool acts to sign, and getting their music out there,’ Schneider told Pitchfork. He’s also got single releases from Von Hemmling, Palermo, The High Water Marks, Hair Police, and Oranger in the works. Of course, that’s not the only project on the burner, as Schneider’s Marbles moniker continues to provide an outlet for his assorted solo recordings. To somewhat confuse the matter, the next Marbles release will be called Orchestre Fantastique, which had previously been the name under which he had recorded some soundtrack music, and was expected to be the band name for his collaboration with Andy Partridge of XTC. However, according to Schneider, that project is on indefinite hold. ‘Andy is an amazing songwriter, and we worked really well together, and I had a great time with it. It just seemed like it was taking a really long time, which may have been frustrating to him. We wrote like thirty or thirty-five songs together, incredible songs, and we may come back and finish it, but right now it’s just sitting there.’ Schneider also elaborated on the status of Elephant 6. ‘As far as an actual functioning entity, yeah, it’s pretty much over. There’s just no one putting effort into it, and the logo isn’t on any of the newer releases, so officially that’s it, but you know, obviously the ethos is still there, the DIY, the home recording, the focus on just making great records. And I think a lot of the bands feel more free to focus on their own stuff that way, and not spread themselves so thin. I was doing so much producing, and playing on other bands’ stuff, and I just wondered what would happen if I could focus all that energy and all those ideas on my [own] stuff, and make it that much better.’ He also confirmed that a final E6 compilation is in the works, but didn’t have any further details on a possible release date or the contents. However, Pet Sounds (Schneider’s home studio) is up and functioning in Kentucky, and The Apples are still together and planning for the future, although the remaining members still live in Denver.
September 23rd – Finishing School: Destination Girl CD+DVD is released by The Telegraph Company. Sasha Bell interviewed with soundsxp:
[On the album is] San Fadyl from the Ladybug Transistor. I gave him my songs as click tracks, just drum machine stuff, and I sent it to him in Switzerland where he lives. I said: can you add some drums to these? We hadn’t really discussed it because we had this mutual understanding and respect for each other’s capabilities but I was really blown away! He really helped shape most of those songs. I recorded most of it with my friend Tomas Hakava in Sweden. I didn’t even know that Tomas played guitar. I thought he played trumpet but it turned out that he’s an amazing bass player and an amazing guitar player. Jeff Baron, from The Essex Green, did a bunch of guitar and a bass track or two. Two string players from New York, who usually play on the Ladybug records, were involved. Then James William Hindle did some backing vocals on it and I did whatever I do: keyboards, flute and singing…You can separate [Finishing School] from the rest of the musical triumvirate [The Essex Green, The Ladybug Transistor]. I think it has a different feel. Part of that is having different musicians on it. On some of the songs the drumbeat is a little different. That’s San, just rocking out. On this record, he used toms for the first time. He said ‘I’m feeling the toms’ and he normally never uses them. Now he does, even in the Ladybug. There’s something in these songs that inspired people to do those things…The company who’s putting this out, The Telegraph Company, have just started a video unit. It’s a husband and wife team and Joanne has just bought a really nice DV camera. So it was just the two of us running around and trying to make these videos. We did a video for ‘Destination Girl’ which is almost a fairytale narrative and it’s pretty funny. I do all these alternative endings to it, which are kind of gory. I get eaten in the desert by a wolf fake blood and all; I figured there wasn’t enough gore in regular pop music! Jeff from The Essex Green is in it and he wears this big wolf mask, assumes this crazy character and does all these crazy things running around New York City. We just tried to film it all and weave it together somehow…I played all of [the new songs] for Jeff and Chris [Ziter, of The Essex Green] and there were some songs they really wanted for the Essex Green record. But the ones that were most personal I decided to do as the Finishing School…After the Emmaboda festival, we’re sitting in the hotel eating breakfast and I’m looking around and thinking: ‘that’s a big picture in the paper. Wait, it’s me!’ The Essex Green is doing so well in Scandinavia, especially Sweden. So I gave the Finishing School record to the woman who set up the Stockholm show, who works for the radio, and she emails me a few days later to say: ‘your record’s charting on national radio!’ It’s not even out yet! So yeah, Sweden is obviously the place!
The Ladybug Transistor – Choking on Air
October 7th – The Ladybug Transistor: The Ladybug Transistor. Uncut says, “Five Albums in, TLT hit paydirt. Swapping their traditional Brooklyn studio for Craig (Calexico) Schumacher’s one, Gary Olson’s low-slung croon—a latter-day Edwyn Collins rolls across their most adventurous pop-baroque melodies yet. With Lambchop contributors Paul Niehaus (steel) and Dennis Cronin plumping the pillowy layers of strings, Staxy horns and chugging organs, it’s like Belle and Sebastian slopping sorbet with early Jonathan Richman. Cherry on top is Sasha Bell’s delicious turn on ‘The Places You’ll Call Home.’” Q Magazine says, “Brooklyn’s Ladybug Transistor have taken the brave step of recording their fifth album outside their Marlborough Farms retreat. The result is a sort of glorious record Greenwich Village Beatniks would make if they’d been hibernating for 40 years. Gary Olson’s smooth, mannered vocals catch the ear immediately: ‘I can’t wait for this day to begin’ he sings with the air of a lovestruck teenager, and you’re with him all the way. But it’s the delicate instrumentation that wins you over. Having ditched synthesisers, muted trumpets and sparkling piano give tracks like ‘In December’ the bright sheen of a sunny winter’s day.”
October 15th – Washington Post live review of Beulah at the Black Cat in Washington, DC: “Monday’s live incarnation strutted like Neil Young circa 1969. So it went for most of the band’s songs, rather roughly dragged from their lush California pop casings and given a proper smacking about, led by Bill Swan’s trumpet, Miles Kurosky’s grainy vocals and the exuberant thump of drummer Danny Sullivan. Rumors that this would be Beulah’s final tour have floated around the band this year, but the unit that rambled through established pop epiphanies ‘Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand’ and ‘Gravity’s Bringing Us Down’ and new gems like ‘Hovering’ seemed to be having way too much fun to pack it in anytime soon.”
October 31st – Dressy Bessy makes its national television debut on Last Call with Carson Daly.
November 4th – Marshmallow Coast: Antistar.
November 5th – The Minders perform at the Tribute to Elliott Smith at All Tomorrow’s Parties. Smith had died on October 21st from two stab wounds to the chest.
November 12th – Kindercore Records announces suddenly that it will be closing business.
November 14th – Stan Hartman, “CEO of Kindercore, The Telegraph Company and International Development of Entertainment Alliance (IDEA),” issues a statement to Flagpole: “Kindercore absolutely is not dead, and we’ll continue to function. We’re going through some changes, but I want it to be clear that we are not halting business practices and the label will continue to release records next year.”
November 18th – The Minders: The Future’s Always Perfect; Amos House Collection Vol. III features new tracks by Circulatory System and Elf Power.
November 23rd:
