January 21-March 31st – Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power tour continues.
January 26th – The New Yorker profiles of Montreal.
January 27th – Jon Brion remixes of Montreal for the EP of “An Eluardian Instance.” He tells LAist, “I love of Montreal…I feel like [Kevin Barnes’] records are the recorded equivalent of my live show in terms of someone acquiescing to their subconscious completely. When he’s making records by himself, I feel like he’s emptying out his subconscious and it’s some of the most honest and direct writing I’ve heard. When you see somebody being themselves, and getting away with it, it has a powerful effect, because we all inherently feel we’re only going to be understood a little bit. He’s in the midst of some great work. I wish my friends who are more inclined toward Hank Williams were listening to Kevin, because I feel like he has the same directness.”
February 10-March 7th – After the Holiday Surprise Tour and the Christmas caroling tour, Julian Koster finally provides a formal Music Tapes tour, as the band travels through the U.S. with Nana Grizol and Brian Dewan. Brian shows a filmstrip, and Julian, in many cities, plays a special game with the audience following the Music Tapes performance.
Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine – We R Super Heroes
February 17th – Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine, a children’s album by Robert Schneider, is released and featured on ABC’s Good Morning America. It’s also announced that the character of Robbert Bobbert is being developed for an animated children’s show. The album’s art is by, cartoonist and musician Todd Webb, who has his own band worth checking out, Seamonster.
February 21st – AUX 3 is held in Athens, featuring another performance of “Bill Doss and the Flashcard Orchestra,” plus Icy Demons, Howling Jelly, Dark Meat, and more.
February 23rd – Randy Bewley (Pylon, Supercluster, and Sound Houses) passes away from a heart attack. Kay Stanton of Supercluster and Casper & the Cookies: “He made it easy to forget that he was an icon by being so down to earth and just an all around sweet person. Randy would crack this quirky little smile that just made you think he knew a little more about everything than you possibly could, and that he knew that, too, but that it was absolutely cool. I was always amazed at how good his ear was. His guitar tuning was atypical, but when Supercluster would start to jam, he’d jump in there with some amazing lick or texture that really made the whole thing gel. And for anyone who’s ever seen him on stage with Pylon, they know how great he was. I don’t know if he really thought about just how much he influenced musicians everywhere. He influenced people who probably don’t even realize they were influenced by him. It’s so easy not to notice, because in Athens, even giants are demure.”
March – The High Water Marks: Arivar Sullimer three-song cassette (previously released as a CD-R sold at live shows).
March 10th – Madeline: White Flag.
March 11th – The Apples in Stereo and Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power perform in a tribute concert to R.E.M. at Carnegie Hall.
April 2-23rd – A Hawk and a Hacksaw tour with Andrew Bird and Wilco.
April 7th – SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers features The Apples in Stereo covering Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot-Flowers Pt.3.”
April 21st – Still Flyin’: Never Gonna Touch the Ground.
April 29th – Kelly Ruberto relaunches the long-dormant Elephant 6.com. On the U.S. American Idol, the finalists (“The American Idols”) perform a cover of The Apples in Stereo’s “Energy” in a Ford Fusion Hybrid commercial.
April 30th – Julian Koster writes on behalf of Neutral Milk Hotel:
The Paragon Carousel is a beautiful machine that has been my dear neighbor for many moons. Now 81 years old, it is in need of a little love and attention in order for it to survive. It is my sincere wish for the Paragon Carousel to be a part of the magic of long seaside summer afternoons for many years to come. But it might not get to. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the great whirling contraptions of mechanical music and light are not as profitable to operate as other things, and carousels are worth much more taken apart and sold in pieces to museums, where one must pay to look at them behind glass, rather than having them simply existing in the world that we now all share. I spoke with Jeff and Scott and Jeremy about this and they agreed that I should, on behalf of Neutral Milk Hotel, make an appeal to the good people who might have enjoyed the music made over the years, because we think you’d understand especially, and want to help. We humbly ask you to vote! The Paragon Carousel is competing with 24 other historic Massachussettes buildings for a grant of $100,000. The historic site with the most votes wins, and anyone anywhere can vote. We would love it if by our collective effort we could ensure the continuation of this grand place. It only takes a moment and you can do so here. You are allowed to vote once a day until May 17th . Your vote means a great deal to all of us at Elephant Six. Places like this are so special. They deserve to exist in the same world that we do. So we can visit them with our bodies, not just our memories and dreams. We’d like to thank you for your help and for spreading the word.
Votes flood in, and the Paragon Carousel wins the grant. The President of the Friends of the Paragon Carousel writes, “[We] are elated to have won this Grant Prize from Partners in Preservation. It is a true honor to have received the support from so many supporters both locally and globally.”
Nesey Gallons – Wooden Whispers
May 5th – Three Nesey Gallons are released from Hurrah for Karamazov Records: Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago, Two Bicycles, and Somewhere We Both Walk (with a short story booklet included). Later in the year Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago is released on vinyl. Nesey, interviewed by Pure Pop:
[The cover of Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago is] one eye of a stereoscopic card. I found in New York State in a box under a tarp. In the woods. It was around when I first started writing the songs. I knew it would be called ‘Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago‘ before I found the card or wrote any of the songs. There was a song called ’I Remember Eyes’ that existed already (that isn’t on the album)…the funny thing about the card is it’s like an eye exam. You look through the stereoscope and see how far back you can see where the dot is…top bottom left right…so the album title has an unintended/accidental humorous aspect to go along with its real meaning…the back cover was ripped out of a library book. It’s a classroom of kids looking through stereoscopes. …I never meant to write songs. It just started happening. I never meant to be a musician…it also just kind of happened. It’s also an accident that I’m any good at it. I liked making sound recordings. Beginning when I was a little kid. It was really the Olivia records that helped connect the idea of songs and sound world coming together. It was the first thing I heard that was like my soundworld, but they had wonderful songs living in it.
May 7-9th – Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls helps oversee “With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart,” a play based upon (and featuring the music of) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and performed by the drama club of the school Palmer once attended, Lexington High in Massachusetts. From NPR’s feature on the play: “The students at Lexington High School say they haven’t just written a play based on this album, or a play about Anne Frank. It’s about art and music coming out of terrible things. And it’s about being transformed by that process of creation. A junior, whose parents did not want her identified, found herself transformed. ‘There was one rehearsal where we were using the music a lot, and I just remembered this thing that I had forgotten, which is that there were two Nazis in my family,’ one Lexington student says. ‘And I just had this realization that I had to make reparations, I had this just huge debt all of a sudden, which I had forgotten I had. And after that day everything’s been heavier and also lighter at the same time and I feel like the music just like draws things out of weird places that you didn’t know were there.’”
May 12th – Casper & the Cookies release their magnum pop opus, Modern Silence. The final track, “I Am Gone,” is a psychedelic suite mixed by Jason NeSmith and featuring contributions from Robert Schneider, Bryan Poole, Bill Doss & Pete Erchick, Vanessa Briscoe Hay & Hannah Jones, Elekibass, Keith John Adams, The Lolligags, The Shut-Ups, and many, many more…everyone, it seems, except the Cookies themselves. A very complicated diagram accompanies the liner notes. Retro LowFi: “It’s not just an early contender for that coveted ‘album of the year’ title, but it’s a late entry into the ‘album of the decade’ contest. Seriously.”
May 18th – A Hawk and a Hacksaw release Délivrance. The single, “Foni Tu Argile,” is a 78RPM record with packaging to resemble the shellac records of the pre-vinyl days. Three promotional short films are made for the album by Tristan Love and James Longmire.
A HAWK AND A HACKSAW: I am not a gambling man from mutuallymade on Vimeo.
May 20th – Robert Schneider receives a gift from custom-guitar designers Blindworm Guitars, the “Elephant 6 Guitar.” He tells Optical Atlas, “It is the coolest guitar I have ever played! The inlaid Elephant 6 logo is made of meteorite dust, and on the headstock, the elephant’s eyes are made of dinosaur bones. It feels like I am holding a living creature, and plays great– I used it at the most recent American Revolution show, and played extra psychedelic.”
May 21st – In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on the upcoming Circulatory System album, Will Hart drops that he’s been recording again with Bill Doss, and “We’ve got two songs for the next Olivia record, in my opinion…They’re on Bill’s hard drive…We’re really proud of it…We’re working toward something. I’m not sure that we know, even.” A short while later he elaborates upon these comments, in Pitchfork: “Well, to be honest, I’ve got MS. I found out that I have multiple sclerosis, blah blah blah, and I was drinking heavily. And Bill [Doss] was like, ‘Man, you gotta stop drinking. What is the deal?’ And, well, you know the deal with wine. And he was like, ‘Stop, man. Just stop doing that. If you will, start taking the shots.’ Like, I have to take a shot every other day. That’s actually why. I mean, I wish there was some other cool reason. But we love to play together. When we get together, we all agree it’s really fun. Music is fun. This is fun for us… We had fun on that reunion [tour in 2005]. It was great. But, you know, you got me totally honest. It makes total sense what Eric [Harris] said. He’s like, ‘I don’t just wanna go out. I wanna do new stuff, if we’re gonna do something.’ [Laughs] Thank you! Exactly! I mean, we felt the same way. He was like, ‘We’ll start doing stuff every Sunday, make stuff up.’ So we started doing this stuff every Sunday. It was awesome. Because I hate Sundays here…But it’s exciting because it feels just like it was before, I swear to God. There’s no fucking difference. Really. No fucking difference.”
Marshmallow Coast – Hangin’ on a Cloud
May 26th – Marshmallow Coast’s Phreak Phantasy is the first MC record to feature the Elephant 6 logo. Pre-orders shipped with an original painting by Andy Gonzales. Indieville writes, “All keys and vocals, Phreak Phantasy leaves the listener with an intriguing case of ‘I could do that too’ crossed with a sincere respect for how well the whole thing has been executed. These are strangely infectious synth-pop tunes, seemingly straightforward in their manner yet deceptively infectious. Marshmallow Coast’s Andy Gonzales has been at this for a long time, and is one of the longer-standing members of the Elephant 6 troupe; his experience is evident on these nine songs, which manage rough-around-the-edges brilliance that will have you humming in your sleep.”
June 8th – Matt Jordan at You Ain’t No Picasso interviews Eric Harris about the Major Organ and the Adding Machine film:
Back in the late 90’s we poked around with it quite a bit. Me and Joey Foreman. But we just didn’t have the technology, quite honestly, back then. The things we wanted to do were not available—it didn’t happen to work back then. So we poked around with MIDI and we recorded a bunch of music and it just never happened until we got Final Cut Pro on his computer. And then it was like ‘Hey let’s make a movie.’ He’s always been a great filmmaker. And we just moved into the digital age and all the sudden everything seemed possible…the plot sort of emerged organically. Which was more than we could have hoped for. By the time we got the Fernandes kids involved it was kinda going into [a] place like, ‘Oh, now I understand what the plot of this is.’ It really kinda occurred to us in a backwards way like that. But we still wanted to leave enough open-ended. We didn’t want people to get an easy conclusion out of the movie, and we wanted it to be for kids too.
June 11th – Chris Knox of the Tall Dwarfs suffers a stroke at his home in Grey Lynn, New Zealand.
June 23rd, 25th, and 27th – “Elephant 6 Night at the Movies” at the Athens Ciné, curated by Eric Harris, features the Major Organ and the Adding Machine film as well as Elephant 6-related shorts, live footage, and music videos.
June 24th – Lucas Jensen interviews Will Hart for Aquarium Drunkard:
Well, MS. Yeah, I mean, my mind…in the last 10 years I was, like, what’s the deal? I had all this stuff and I was excited, but a lot of things started changing. I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I was going blind, and I went to the doctor, and so I got the brain scan. And he said, ‘You’ve had it for ten years’ and I said that makes sense. That makes sense. It had been sucking part of my creativity out. It’s like I’m trying, but if you don’t know that, you wonder what is going on. I record every day still, and I have amassed so much stuff personally. It got confusing. Which version do you like? Any of them, Will! Let’s just overdub on the version you like…I hate needles. Everybody says, ‘That doesn’t hurt,’ and I got used to the needles, but it burns going in. It has some enzymes. It’s a drag. My friends are always over here cracking on me when I’m ‘Hey! I’ve gotta do my shot!’ I can’t ever psych myself up. [The medicine is] Rebif. It’s not helping it. It’s just helping it not be worse. The doctor, he saved my eye. I mean, mostly. Because I was blind. I was in that state of ‘What the fuck is going wrong?’ Because I was doing creative stuff, but I couldn’t always get it together. And, by the way, it wasn’t any less creative or any less good. I could feel that in my heart and in my brain and stuff. I don’t know. It’s tough to keep it together.
July – As part of Happy Happy Birthday to Me’s Singles Club Volume II, a 7” is issued featuring vintage E6, pre-Olivia Tremor Control recordings from The Always Red Society (Will Hart) and The Sunshine Fix. Also this month, of Montreal’s cover of Prince’s “Computer Blue” is included in a Purple Rain covers EP for SPIN Magazine.
July 22-26th – XX Merge, celebrating 20 years of Merge Records, is held in Carrboro, NC. Rumors fly of a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion or Jeff Mangum appearance, neither of which happens. The Essex Green, The Ladybug Transistor, and The Music Tapes perform in addition to vast swaths of the Merge roster.
July 26th – of Montreal plays the Hollywood Bowl. From Lyndsey Parker’s review in NME: “This is why Los Angeles rules. It’s a city where almighty disco dominatrix Grace Jones can perform at a classical/orchestral music venue like the Hollywood Bowl (her first L.A. concert in 20 long years), enlist indie space-glam eccentrics of Montreal and Cambodian ’60s psych-pop revivalists Dengue Fever as the opening acts and punk legend-turned-local KCRW deejay Henry Rollins as the emcee…and sell out all 18,000 tickets on a Sunday night. And on top of all that, last night’s Bowl extravaganza (a one-night-only performance in support of Hurricane, Grace’s first studio album since 1989) included a moonlit duet of David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ between of Montreal’s caped-crusader frontgod Kevin Barnes and surprise-guest baby diva Janelle Monae (accompanied by two local pug dogs on leashes) and an onstage marriage proposal between two of Montreal band members that no woman could resist (she said YES!)…” Rolling Stone: “Of Montreal embraced a similar blend of psychedelic glam-rock and WTF theatricality. Dancers wore children’s-theatre-on-acid costumes like pig masks and skin-toned leotards. Bizarre poses were struck, and various forms of pantomime made tenuous connections to the actual songs: For ‘Elegant Caste,’ special guest singer Janelle Monae strode onstage in a black tux walking a white pug while Barnes made his entrance in a mostly white outfit walking a black pug. The pair continued to duet on a note-perfect cover version of David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream,’ then embraced and spun around the stage until they nearly keeled over. The craziest moment of a set thick with ‘em was when the band’s visual director Nick Gould removed his tiger mask, got down on one knee, pulled out a ring, and actually proposed to keyboardist Dottie Alexander, who wiped away genuine tears throughout the next song. That kind of theater you just can’t fake.”
August 7th – of Montreal plays Lollapalooza.
August 18th – The Music Tapes debut a new song and video, “For the Planet Pluto.”
September 1st – The Apples in Stereo: #1 Hits Explosion.
September 7-20th – Circulatory System tours with Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t and Nesey Gallons. They play All Tomorrow’s Parties in NYC on the 12th. Adam Kritzer for Culture Catch describes the ATP show:
Circulatory System, the newest incarnation of Elephant Six collective artists Olivia Tremor Control, played at Stage Two. The band’s juxtaposition of psychedelic pop and no-wave noise played well to the crowd. Songwriting group-leader W. Cullen Hart wore a straw hat and jumped around with abandon as Nesey Gallons of The Music Tapes built a rocking, jumbled wall of sound. Wth strings, horns, mallets, and most every instrument ever made, Circulatory System ripped through a set that teeter-tottered between of Montreal and Neutral Milk Hotel. At the end of the set when the lights went on, a few people started chanting encore. I’d been to festivals before and knew that tight scheduling allowed only for encores from headlining bands (and often not even then). The band came out to move their equipment; the crowd continued chanting. Will looked at Nesey, who cued the rest of the group. ‘Ok,’ said Hart into the microphone, ‘we’ll do one more song.’ They immediately burst into a dancey funk groove before transitioning to a molasses-slow texture that grew into a cacaphonous wall of noise. As the wall grew more and more dissonant, the members of Circulatory System all got closer and closer to their instruments. Hart seemed to rest his ear on his amp, Nesey fidgeted with gadgets, while a cellist [Heather McIntosh] repeated a note and whispered into her microphone. More and more out there we go; I can smell the sweat of the band and it is a remarkable odor. Hart moves back to the microphone, knocks his head forward four times, and the group jumps back into the intro groove. Eight measures of funk and the song ends abruptly.
Circulatory System – Overjoyed
September 8th – Circulatory System’s Signal Morning is released on Cloud Recordings. From NPR’s review: “It took nearly eight years to make, but Circulatory System’s breathtakingly inventive new album, Signal Morning, justifies the wait. The 17 new tracks, culled from hours of recorded material and meticulously pieced together in more than half a dozen different studios, are sonic wonders. Obliterated guitars rumble over strange, fluttering textures. Vintage synth lines and quirky found sounds tumble together amid psychedelic melodies and harmonies. It’s a mysterious and mesmerizing world of orchestrated chaos that offers new discoveries with each listen…Signal Morning features all of the original members of The Olivia Tremor Control (Bill Doss, Eric Harris, John Fernandes and Peter Erchick), along with Circulatory System’s Charlie Johnston, Derek Almstead, Suzanne Allison and Nesey Gallons. Jeff Mangum and Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel also appear on the disc. All of the contributing artists are part of the Elephant 6 collective, a sprawling group of likeminded musicians with a love for neo-psychedelic and experimental pop.” Brian Heater’s article on the band, “Inside Views,” appears in the NYPress. Bill Doss: “When [The Olivia Tremor Control] split up, I think I was a little lost…I didn’t know what to do and he was acting a little strange. That, of course, changed our dynamic. To be honest, there were several years where we didn’t hang out. He was a little mad at me, I was a little mad at him, and neither of us really knew why. I think it was that [Will’s symptoms of multiple sclerosis] kicking in. he was changing and it was weird, and neither of us really knew what was going on.” After the OTC reunion, “He started dealing with it…He reached out to me, and it was like, ‘this is ridiculous. We’ve been mad at each other for several years now, over nothing.’ We started hanging out and talking about stuff and becoming friends again. I tried to help him deal with the MS the best way I could, bringing in Montel Williams books to read and looking up stuff on the Internet. We all were.” Will says of the 2008 Holiday Surprise Tour, “…it was fucking great, man. There were so many kids into it…[who] weren’t even born in ’96.”
September 12-13th – Robert Schneider speaks at Big Sound, the music industry summit and showcase, in Brisbane, Australia.
September 19th – Kindercore’s Fall Hootenanny features a Masters of the Hemisphere and I am the World Trade Center reunion and performances by Je Suis France and Still Flyin’.
September 29th – Laminated Cat’s Umbrella Weather is released on Garden Gate Records, the label started by Robert Schneider’s wife and brother-in-law. The cover art is by Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss.
October 6th – Supercluster: Waves is released on Cloud Recordings. Fronted by Pylon’s Vanessa Hay, the band also features the late Randy Bewley, Bill David, John Fernandes, Bob Hay, Hannah Jones, and Kay Stanton. AllMusic writes: “Somewhere between moody early-’70s rock bands — think Jefferson Airplane’s followers in particular — and a more current indie rock theatricality is where Waves lies, all the more interesting given that the appropriately named Supercluster themselves are something of a supergroup of their scene, bringing in members from bands such as The Olivia Tremor Control, Deerhunter, Casper & the Cookies, and — above all else — two key members of the stellar Pylon, Vanessa Briscoe Hay and Randy Bewley. The tragic circumstance of Bewley’s passing before the album was completed underscores the whole experience as a might-have-been, but the end result is more than just a scene curio and remembrance. There’s something lively about the end result that could easily warrant more albums if the surviving members wanted to keep up with it, something at once sprightly and laden with experience in equal, entertaining measure. The understated but often sharply commanding vocals of Hay are worth giving Waves a listen alone, showing that she still has just the right ear for delivery.”
October 7th – Miles Kurosky signs to Majordomo Records.
October 9th – The Orange Twin Fall Festival features Neil Hamburger, Elf Power, Vic Chesnutt, Nana Grizol, and the Scott E. Spillane EXP.
October 10th – Circulatory System performs with German krautrock legends Faust at the 40 Watt.
October 20th – Nesey Gallons: Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago reissued on Cloud Recordings; Yo Gabba Gabba: Music is Awesome comp features of Montreal.
October 23rd – The Ladybug Transistor plays CMJ.
October 27th – Jamey Huggins (of Montreal, and formerly of Great Lakes) releases his debut album, James Husband: A Parallax I, on Polyvinyl Records. In an interview with The Austinist, he explains: “To me, that’s what this record is supposed to be – my attempt at continuing the Great Lakes… Basically this whole project has been me refusing to let go of that sound after the Great Lakes went country…I mean, I attempted something close to this record in like 2001, and now it’s 2009, and some of the songs on A Parallax I were written at least eight years ago, if not more. These eleven songs are supposed to make a good impression or something. It’s almost like my resume. But the truth is, I have thirty-six tracks…I considered putting them out all at once, like ‘Should I make this a double album?’ And eventually, people I trust from the band and the label, you know, we decided it was better to have a short little flip book than a three volume novel. So it’s not like I’ve been slaving over these eleven songs for eight years. There’s a whole lot where that came from, and this is just the first batch. I’ve always intended to release songs and intended to tour, and it’s just one of those things where you look at your watch, and seven years have gone by. Eventually Kevin [Barnes] pushed me out of the nest – he almost got pissed off with me because I was playing him a new song and he was like, ‘Well, what the fuck are you doing with those old songs?’ And it was perfect timing, because of Montreal was taking a break for several months for the first time in years, and I would’ve had nothing but time on my hands.”
November 10th – Thee American Revolution (Robert Schneider’s psych-rock side project) debuts with Buddha Electrostorm on Garden Gate Records, featuring covert art by Will Hart. Nana Grizol’s second album, Ruth, is also issued.
December 5-22nd – Julian Koster’s second annual house-to-house Christmas caroling tour is launched.
December 7th – of Montreal makes the cover of Under the Radar’s “Best of the Decade” issue.
December 8th – Jeff Mangum contributes a cover of the Tall Dwarfs’ “Sign the Dotted Line” for the American release of Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox. This is the first officially released track by Jeff under his own name since 2001’s live CD Live at Jittery Joe’s. Also appearing on the album is the first track by Red&Zeke, a recording project by Bill Doss and Neil Cleary (The Sunshine Fix) inspired by the music of Appalachia.
