Optical Atlas

Members of Lexington pop landmarks The High Water Marks and Ideal Free Distribution have joined forces to become The Open Letters. The lineup – Hilarie Sidney, Per Ole Bratset, Tony Miller, Samantha Herald Miller (both husband and wife teams) - began playing as a unit in late 2009.   (Kenny Johnson joined shortly thereafter.) Tony Miller wrote Optical Atlas in December, “We’ve been practicing for a short time but already have 6 solid tunes…and I mean solid.  Right now, even in their rough form the songs feel excitingly good. We’re going to whip out a recording of a couple and put one on our upcoming Color Wheel Records comp due out this spring. Sound-wise everything is very poppy with big guitars occasionally bordering on shoegaze.”  You can hear for yourself with the sample track below.  Personally, I love it.  (There’s another track, with Per singing, posted on their MySpace page.)

Note that neither The High Water Marks nor IFD are defunct, though for now it’s the Open Letters effort that’s pushing forward in earnest.  They’re playing live at Cosmic Charlie’s in Lexington with Fire Zuave on March 1st. 

The Open Letters – Stupid But Strong

There’s bad news and great news coming out of Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records.

Their ongoing singles club was scheduled to feature Circulatory System and Sound Houses (aka The New Sound of Numbers) on a split 7″.  Unfortunately Sound Houses dropped out, and the Circulatory System material is already featured on the forthcoming full-length Signal Morning, so HHBTM’s Mike Turner has announced the single will be replaced by a 7″ featuring rare early tracks from Elephant 6 Recording Company projects The Sunshine Fix and Always Red Society.  Imagine, if you will, getting an early-90’s Olivia Tremor Control single, because that’s basically what this is: Bill Doss on one side, Will Cullen Hart on the other, both recording right before they joined forces.  In other singles club news, High Water Marks has replaced Tender Forever on a split with The Love Letter Band.  Also soon to be released are splits featuring of Montreal & James Husband, The Apples in Stereo & Patience Please, and All Girl Summer Fun Band & Cars Can Be Blue.  Subscribers can expect their singles to ship round late June.  If you’re a latecomer who wants to join the club, I’d recommend heading over to HHBTM’s website and sending a message to check availability.

The Fox Pop Recording Company, which recently released the Von Hemmling cassette You (Being My Body Whole), has now issued a cassette of the High Water Marks EP Arivar Sullimer, previously only available as a limited edition “handmade” CD-R (which is now out of print).  You can purchase the tape for only $3 (cheap!), with shipping $2 US, $3 international, and the label will also email you MP3s of the tracks upon purchase, if requested.  The three-song EP contains two pop songs and one longer experimental (think: beautiful noise) track, the first time High Water Marks has dabbled in those waters.  And yes, my tape player is still broken.

I could have posted about this yesterday, but hey, I already had 2 posts up, and I gotta space out these things.  Mike Turner at Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records has provided an update on the ongoing HHBTM Singles Club Volume 2.  So far the series has featured split singles by Fishboy, Baby Calendar, Marbles, Casper & the Cookies, Bunnygrunt, Phil Wilson, Boyracer, The Faintest Ideas, Tullycraft, The Smittens, Velcro Stars, Keith John Adams, Andy from Denver, Red Pony Clock, Ideal Free Distribution, and Poison Control Center.  Now Mike has updated his blog and the usual message boards noting the following:

The Of Montreal / James Husband single is being mastered shortly. The Circulatory System single will be split with the Sunshine Fix, and the Love Letter Band single will be backed with High Water Marks. I’m going to put up scans of the All Girl Summer Fun Band / Cars Can Be Blue single and the Apples in Stereo / Patience Please single next week. The club should be ready to ship no later than May 2009. Sad to say but that will be officially two years after the club started WTF I know, I know…

Hey, I’m patient (please).  Mainly because I keep forgetting about it.  But each time I hear an update, my enthusiasm goes through the roof.  (Only to vaporize as I gradually forget about it once more – it sounds like someone should perform some kind of science fair project on me.)  It’s big news that The Sunshine Fix will be sharing a 7″ with Circulatory System.  That almost makes it an Olivia Tremor Control reunion, joining, as it were, Bill Doss’ solo project with Will Cullen Hart’s (and I’ve a feeling the other Olivias play on the record, as most are currently in Circulatory System).  The James Husband appearance is significant as his material has been strictly underground for several years.  He has an album which should be coming out this year (expect an announcement on that soon).  Although they put out a great (and underrated) album a couple years ago, new High Water Marks material has been few and far between.  And of course we’ll always be excited about new material from of Montreal and The Apples in Stereo.  So yes, good things are coming for subscribers to the HHBTM singles club.  To pick up a subscription, go to their website.  You can also get info on picking up leftover individual pressings of different singles from the series in Mike’s full blog post, where he also dishes on Athens PopFest news (August 11th-16th this year) and more.

The High Water Marks will be playing a free show at the Old Tarr Distillery in Lexington, Kentucky, on November 25. Also on the bill is Vampire Weekend. The event is co-sponsored by You Ain’t No Picasso, WRFL, and W Weekly. Free food will be provided by Gumbo Ya Ya.

Should you miss the action, the band will be playing Lexington again on November 30th, this time at more familiar digs: The Dame.

We reviewed the new High Water Marks album, Polar, last week – and loved it – so this week we’re talking with Per Ole Bratset to talk about the band and the new songs. You can read the interview here.

More on those High Water Marks everyone’s talking about.

The band has announced they’ve polished off a CD-R EP that they’ll be selling at their show tomorrow night, as they make a rare live appearance at Lexington’s The Dame with The Apples in Stereo.  The band writes on their MySpace blog, “We will probably sell it online or put it up for download somewhere someday, perhaps. It has 2 short pop tunes and a 16 minute noise song. Yep, you betcha!!!!”  The track listing is:

1. Sinking Ships
2. Lulu
3. Arrivar Sullimer

You know what I just noticed?  On the Apples in Stereo MySpace page the song “Go” is labelled “Go the New Target Commercial.”  Hmmm.

Here’s my review of the new High Water Marks album, Polar, which is available now from Happy Happy Birthday to Me. Sample MP3 included.