photo courtesy rawkblog.net, thanks David!
February – The Olivia Tremor Control plan to reunite for a performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties. John Fernandes tells Pitchfork: “This will be a one-off affair, except for one other show at the Garage in London while we are over there. We haven’t played together since 1999, but we were like a family for so many years that it doesn’t seem right not to get together to rock every once in a while. We might possibly be joined by Neutral Milk Hotel members Scott Spillane and Julian Koster, and we are going to try to convince Yoko Ono to sit in with us on ‘Holiday Surprise III.’”
April 5th – Marbles: Expo. Hunter Felt writes in PopMatters, “From the sound of the press release, this album should be a trifling throwaway. Luckily, [Robert] Schneider is so deft with the simple pop song that Expo is a rather charming little album. It is certainly not essential, but, then again, neither were any Apples in Stereo albums and you’re not going to find me tossing away Her Wallpaper Reverie or The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone any time soon. The synth-heavy instrumentation doesn’t actually change Schneider’s approach very much. In fact, only the opening ‘Circuits’ seems to follow a new wave song structure, the rest of them sound like Beatlesque pop tunes performed with keyboards. There’s less guitar and more beeps, but the songs themselves are sugary gems anchored by Schneider’s emotional, high-pitched voice and his ability not just to create a great hook, but his skill in placing that hook at the exact right moment.” The Marbles also tour in support of the album, with Robert playing Marbles, Ulysses, and Apples songs, and performing with props such as a Darth Vader cut-out.
Marbles – Magic
A Hawk and a Hacksaw – Laughter in the Dark
Also released on April 5th is the second album by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Darkness at Noon. AllMusic writes, “On his second release as A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeremy Barnes continues to play the antique card, now focusing on the ‘ompah’ accordion sound of an 18th century European village, as opposed to the Reconstruction-era American village of his previous effort. Of course, just because Barnes evokes a certain time and place doesn’t mean his hectic musical ear stays in that one place, hence the squeezebox that morphs into a battery of bagpipes on the highly cinematic opener, ‘Laughter in the Dark.’ There’s also room for a prideful horn that echoes the work of Ennio Morricone and the constant pitter-patter of castanets and marching snares that ensure that the solemn moments like ‘For Slavoj’ and ‘Europa’ don’t stay that way for too long. The other notable change from the self-titled debut is the absence of digital interference. On the first album, Barnes threw his vintage sounds into a modern wormhole with much sampler stutter. On Darkness At Noon, he keeps the computerization well in the back, invisible to the ears. Or perhaps the ten-deep list of musicians on the CD sleeve means it was a full battalion of players tapping, blowing, squeezing, and strumming away all at once. Imagine that.”
April 12th – of Montreal: The Sunlandic Twins. From a profile for 88.9 WERS:
…Both Satanic Panic in the Attic and of Montreal’s new album, The Sunlandic Twins, were played, written, and recorded by [Kevin] Barnes alone, with merely occasional recourse to other musicians. In other bands, such a dynamic could be limiting. Not so with of Montreal. On tour, the band imbues Barnes’ ambitious arrangements with perfect theatrical verve; they perform daubed in glitter, with Nabokov-ian butterflies pinned to their guitars. The Sunlandic Twins continues the tradition of glimmering, propulsive hooks established in Satanic Panic, expanding the sonic palette to encompass influences as diverse as IDM and afrobeat. [Kevin Barnes:] ‘This recent one, for a long time, the working title was The Voice of the Vanishing Twin. Because I heard that a lot of women, when their egg is fertilized, they actually have twins for a brief period, and then the one… I don’t know if it eats it necessarily, but it could I guess eat it, but then sometimes it just disappears…I had fun making the electronic stuff on Satanic Panic, and I wanted to push that a little bit further, and experiment more with that genre. Because it seems like there’s this new wave of people just having fun again, and we kinda just want to be a part of it. It’s really fun music to play, and you can see a lot of weird stuff. So I kinda wanted to make an intelligent dance record, you know, that wasn’t just like [sings] ‘Everybody on the dance floor / Shake your ass for the deejay’ or whatever.’
April 15th – Olivia Tremor Control plays in Athens, joined by Julian Koster and Scott Spillane. Elf Power opens. Redandblack.com:
Olivia Tremor Control makes its return to the stage tonight for a show at the 40 Watt Club, its first live performance in roughly five years. The concert will help the group get back in the swing of things for its upcoming appearance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. They were asked to perform by the festival’s curator, eccentric film and music auteur Vincent Gallo. They will be playing alongside an array of famous artists, including the Zombies, Yoko Ono and Gallo himself. John Fernandes, who plays bass and clarinet among other instruments, said fans can expect the group will perform at tonight’s sold-out concert, a few songs off 1996’s The Giant Day EP but mostly material from the band’s lengthily-titled albums, 1996’s Music from the Unrealized Film Script Dusk at Cubist Castle and 1999’s Black Foliage: Animation Music. Olivia Tremor Control’s origins lie in the small town of Ruston, La., where childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum began playing music together. The band eventually found its way to Athens. Upon Mangum’s departure to focus on his own band Neutral Milk Hotel, Hart and Doss rounded out the group with Fernandes, drummer Eric Harris and keyboardist Peter Erchick, who joined upon completion of the first album. The band went on extended hiatus in 2000 because ‘everyone had different projects they were working on,’ Fernandes said. Hart focused on his group Circulatory System (in which Fernandes and Erchick are both members), Doss formed The Sunshine Fix and Harris joined Elf Power. There had been no official indication from the band of a reunion until the group agreed to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties. There doesn’t appear to be a future for The Olivia Tremor Control after this brief run of shows. Fernandes stated, ‘I don’t think we’re going to make any new recordings.’ He said that no shows are planned besides tonight’s performance, the festival and another show the band is doing while in England.
April 22-24th – The All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, curated by actor Vincent Gallo, features a reunion of The Olivia Tremor Control (Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon also perform).
April 28th – Von Hemmling: Wild Hemmling. Jim McIntyre, formerly of The Apples in Stereo, had been creating bedroom recordings (both experimental and pop) under the name Von Hemmling for many years, but was one of the most obscure extensions of the E6 collective until this CD, a collection of VH tracks old and new, was finally self-released and sold to the fanbase via his website. The CD was shipped with a CD-R of bonus tracks.
June 22nd – NPR’s rock critic Ken Tucker pits Dressy Bessy’s new album Electrified against Coldplay’s X&Y. Dressy Bessy wins.
July 1st – Dressy Bessy is profiled in Guitar Player:
If the energetic retro-pop on Dressy Bessy’s new album, Electrified [Transdreamer], sounds similar to indie rock heroes Apples in Stereo, there’s a good reason: Lead guitarist John Hill is also a member of the Apples. ‘In the Apples, I’m the “jangly guitar guy,”‘ he explains. ‘But I grew up listening to heavy music such as AC/DC, early David Bowie, and Billy Squire, and those influences manifest themselves more in Dressy Bessy. We rock way harder.’ The origins of Dressy Bessy date back to the mid ’90s, when Hill taught his girlfriend, Dressy Bessy vocalist/guitarist Tammy Ealom, how to play guitar. While Hill was on tour with the Apples, he lent Ealom his Tascam 4-track. When he returned, she enthusiastically presented him with a batch of promising tunes, and Dressy Bessy was rolling. ‘I usually write songs when I’m pissed off,’ proclaims Ealom. ‘I’ll write something upbeat to overcome being upset.’ To turn lemons into lemonade, Ealom chooses a preset drumbeat from a Casio keyboard, develops chord progressions and riffs using her ‘65 Hagstrom II, and searches for a melody that fits. ‘Songs don’t come easy to me,’ she admits. ‘I have to work at them because I’m a perfectionist.’ Hill’s solos are a perfect complement to Ealom’s melodic exorcisms, as he often melds compelling melodies with a punishing rhythm-lead approach. ‘I always find it incredulous when I see a band’s guitarist playing slowly and quietly,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I’m even capable of doing something like that. I have to be blasting at all times to be comfortable.’
July 16-17th – The Intonation Festival almost nabs Jeff Mangum. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “Among the major disappointments [the festival's primary promoter and talent booker, Mike] Reed suffered in compiling the bill was…a glimmer of interest from the legendary leader of Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum, evaporating.”
August – Orange Twin begins selling guitars decorated in collage by Jeff Mangum.
August 2nd – Beulah: A Good Band is Easy to Kill DVD is released, chronicling their farewell tour. Noel Murray in the Onion AV Club writes, “…while director Charles Norris overemphasizes the dull grind of life on the road—with its turnpike food, merch-slinging, and soundcheck woes—he also catches a lot of the romance. Some days the fans are great, and some nights everything clicks on stage, and sometimes the possibility that sales might spike or a major label might bite seems palpable. By the time Beulah gets to the standard end-of-tour ritual of unloading the equipment and putting it back in storage, stalwart indie-rock fans may feel inspired to rush out and see their own favorite bands before they’re gone for good.”
Trailer: Beulah – A Good Band is Easy to Kill
August 2nd – As The Olivia Tremor Control begins a U.S. tour, Jeff Mangum joins the band onstage. Billboard.com:
Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind Jeff Mangum made his first live appearance in years last night in New York, guesting with Olivia Tremor Control during the first of two performances at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. The artist bounded on stage about an hour into the show to sing ‘I Have Been Floated,’ from OTC’s 1999 album Black Foliage: Animation Music. Mangum appeared to be wiping back tears and hugged OTC members at the song’s end, which was met with stunned, thunderous applause. Decked out in a blue button down shirt and green ball cap, Mangum came on stage again during a jubilant encore to handle lead vocals on ‘Shaving Spiders.’ At its conclusion, he pulled OTC member Julian Koster to the floor and was then jumped upon by other members. In the late ’90s, members of Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel were frequent collaborators with each other under the umbrella of the Athens, Ga.-based Elephant 6 collective. But Mangum has rarely been heard from since the tour in support of Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, a cult classic that has come to be thought of as a touchstone of late ’90s indie rock. The set has sold more than 141,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Aeroplane is due to be reissued by Domino Records in the U.K., although no specific date has been confirmed. In addition, Fire Records is planning an expanded reissue of Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1996 debut, On Avery Island, with the band’s approval. As for Olivia Tremor Control, its ongoing tour is an outgrowth of a reunion inspired by an appearance earlier this year at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. Co-frontman Bill Doss split from the group in 1999; he then released two albums with the group The Sunshine Fix, while remaining OTC members issued a project as Circulatory System.
August 4th – Dressy Bessy performs “Electrified” on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
August 9-13th – Happy Happy Birthday to Me’s Athens PopFest features Pylon, of Montreal, Circulatory System, Marbles, The Late B.P. Helium, Scott E. Spillane, Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t, Casper & the Cookies, The 63 Crayons, Visitations, Summer Hymns, The Instruments, Marshmallow Coast, Geoff Reacher, Folklore, and more.
September 7-8th – Olivia Tremor Control caps their reunion tour with two nights at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.
September 11th – Zizek!, a documentary on philosopher Slavoj Žižek and directed by Astra Taylor, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. The soundtrack is by Jeremy Barnes.
September 30th – The Gerbils perform one of their last shows, at the Caledonia in Athens.
November 8th – of Montreal is featured on Music from the OC: Mix 5.
November 17th – Jeff Mangum joins Elf Power on “The Arrow Flies Close” (“I hope Jeff will sing me a song…”) at the Knitting Factory in NY.
November 28th – Kim Cooper’s chronicle of the making of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is published as part of the 33 1/3 series of books on great albums. The book features interviews with Julian Koster, Robert Schneider, Ben Crum, Laura Carter, and others. Largehearted Boy writes, “Of all the books in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series on seminal albums, I have enjoyed In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the most. Kim Cooper not only details the recording of one of my favorite albums, but she also captures the formation of the Elephant6 collective that created (and influenced) so much of the music I love.”
