Of Montreal - Suffer for Fashion

Gnomead's Garden, a blog from a lovely and generous Beulah fan, has posted a live performance of the (late, lamented) band singing the "ABCs" song. It's from the 2001 Noisepop Festival.

Beulah - ABCs

The blog has also posted a Beulah live concert, B-sides, rarities, and even a "Psycho Killer" cover. Click here for all their various Beulah coverage.

According to the band, their new video, "Suffer for Fashion," will premiere on MTV2's "Subterranean" program this Sunday night. I'll post the video as soon as it comes online.

Adam Schragin has turned in another excellent interview, this one with Jill Carnes of Thimble Circus. Her band--which also features Olivia Tremor Control's Eric Harris--released Lullaby for Worriers in 2003. "In the Courtyard," she talks with Adam about working with members of Neutral Milk Hotel, OTC, Gerbils, and The Instruments to create one of the most idiosyncratic albums to ever arise from Athens. Three sampler tracks included!

In the Courtyard with: Thimble Circus

People in a Position to Know has completed the vinyl version of Casper & the Cookies' The Optimist's Club (the CD, of course, being on HHBTM). What makes this special is the fact that it has hand-painted silkscreened covers, a bonus track, and a marble sheen! You can order it here.

The Sunshine Fix, though the name of a track by Olivia Tremor Control, actually pre-dates the band slightly, a moniker for Bill Doss' solo recordings from the early days of Elephant 6. Under this name he released a cassette (A Spiraling World of Pop), before concentrating his focus on the Olivias for a few years. Just as that band was about to go "on hiatus," the name resurfaced again, this time on a vinyl single sold at merch desks during OTC's 1999 "farewell tour." Both sides had a surprising country flavor; "Beaconary Word" sounded like something a horse-riding Roy Rogers might sing after taking too much peyote. The following year, Kindercore Records properly announced the band to the world with an EP, The Future History of the Sunshine Fix, which contained both of the single's tracks as well as some funkadelic new ones, most notably "The Sound's Around You" (which has the subtitle "'Oh no it isn't!' cried the little lord funkleroy.") If the EP doesn't fully cohere (the country tracks sound jarringly out of place amidst the rest), it certainly grabs one's attention, and set the stage for his full-length debut, Age of the Sun, which fully commits to a unifying sound and vision. This week's MP3 is the EP's opening track, which features Derek Almstead (M Coast), Pete Erchick and Eric Harris (Olivia Tremor Control), and Scott Spillane (Gerbils). (Note that this EP is the only Sunshine Fix release to feature all of the Olivias contributing, though not on a single track.)

Sunshine Fix - The Sound's Around You

Royal Rhino Flying Records, a fantastic new indie label, has a number of projects on the horizon of interest to fans of Elephant 6. First up is Build Your Army with Potatoes, to be released later this summer. The compilation will feature tracks by High Water Marks, Palermo, The Visitations, Calvin, Don't Jump!, Bombay Bicycle Co., King of Prussia, and Seamonster (contributing "Robert Schneider's Abacus," a beautiful tune we featured on this site not too long ago).

Further down the line, a second compilation in the Potatoes series will feature "new and unreleased material" by The Instruments, Great Lakes, Von Hemmling, Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra, Midget and Hairs, and the Mendoza Line. The label is also set to release the vinyl of the High Water Marks' new album, Polar (Happy Happy Birthday to Me is handling the CD release), with two exclusive bonus tracks and unique artwork. Label founder Dwight writes, "Beyond that, we're hoping to do some small, tiny, eency-weency releases in the fall with Von Hemmling (a dedicated release and a Minders split), Midget and Hairs (unreleased material), the High Water Marks (an EP), and possibly Great Lakes. Nothing is really set in stone though."

To say that this is an indie label worth following is an understatement. You can take a gander at their MySpace page, and keep checking back here for updates. Thanks to Dwight for the info and Adam Schragin and Paige Dearman for the head's-up.

Since I just got my copy in the mail yesterday, I think it's safe to say that copies of the new Instruments single are now shipping from Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. The 7" vinyl features two Joy Division covers from Heather McIntosh's cello-driven band, "Passover" and "New Dawn Fades." HHBTM is also including in the package a bonus CD-R with the vinyl tracks and two more JD covers, "Decades" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart." (This is a very good thing, as I think my 1980's record player is finally breaking down.) It looks like there are still copies for sale at the HHBTM website. I'm listening to the single now, and I have to say that it's the most rocking The Instruments have ever sounded.

On the band's MySpace page, Heather has announced the new Instruments album is coming closer to completion, and soon she'll be posting some new live dates (with the 63 Crayons). We know at least two of the dates will be on July 3rd at the Union Hall in Brooklyn, and July 5th at the Cake Shop in New York City, according to the 63 Crayons page.

The Apples in Stereo will be performing at the Housing Works Used Books Cafe at 126 Crosby Street, New York, tonight at 7:30pm. Tickets for the evening are $25, and include a free beer and a chance to win a guitar painted by Steve Keene, the album artist of Fun Trick Noisemaker and The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone. I actually have a small, original Apples in Stereo painting by Keene which was part of an Insound giveaway for Discovery back in 2000 - one of the coolest "pre-order and get this limited edition ___" deals ever. Anybody else have one of those?

Saturday night, the Apples will be playing at the Central Park SummerStage with CBGB's legends Television.

Finally, Idolator has posted the "Sunndal Song" from New Magnetic Wonder as part of their "Stuck on Repeat" feature. You can get it here. Thanks to Adam for the link.

Here is some footage of The Ladybug Transistor--reunited with Sasha Bell--performing "Oceans in the Hall" at the recent San Fadyl Memorial Benefit in Brooklyn.

Before there was The Music Tapes, and before the years of Neutral Milk Hotel, Julian Koster was the triumphant leader of Miss America (renamed hastily to Chocolate USA due to copyright infringement). The band produced an untold number of self-released cassettes as part of their "Chocolatey Good Smash Hit of the Month Club" (a "way-fun mail club") as well as a full-length, All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today, which was given a CD release by Hoboken-based Bar/None Records (Of Montreal's first label). The album--which also featured band members Keith Block (drums) and Liza Wakeman (violin), as well as an assortment of supporting players--was a delirious mixture of sophomoric humor, sophisticated humor, happy songs filled with suicidal imagery, early-90's funk, scat singing, subliminal messages, and random nonsense songs that are strangely moving. Listening to it fifteen years on, it's striking how innocent it all is; even though little of it sounds like The Music Tapes, the impish spirit is Julian's. Threaded throughout the album are very personal cassette correspondences sent from an elderly New Yorker named Marie Caso, who relates to Julian her likes and dislikes, and an elaborate explanation for why she never buys clothing for men. It brings an unexpectedly nostalgic tone to the record, and unites what is otherwise an album of dramatically disparate styles.

By the band's second release, Smoke Machine, Chocolate USA seems revamped, refocused, and particularly intense. The tone of Smoke Machine is one of adolescent, outcast angst, from the nihilistic miseries of "Ugly Girl" to "The Boy Who Stuck His Head in the Dryer (and Whirl'd Round 'n' Round)." Both songs involve kids who have had it with the banalities/cruelties of life, and are ready to leap out of their skins to escape their current state of existence. There's also quite a bit about cows and smoke machines. Julian seemed determined to make a more cohesive album than his last, and he succeeded, but the sound is also fuzzier, louder, and more cathartic. He seems genuinely pissed when he realizes, "There is no Santa Claus/How could you lie to me?" If the band is tighter and the result more compulsively imaginative, it might be because of the environment: part of Smoke Machine was recorded at 210 Sunset Avenue in Athens, Georgia, an address so pivotal to the Elephant 6 legacy that the Olivia Tremor Control even sang about it ("Long live the life we led at 210" is a lyric from "Courtyard"); Julian also recruited Olivias Bill Doss and Eric Harris into the band, and in the finale of "Bookbag" couldn't resist screaming out, "Elephant Six!" Within a few years Julian would be recording with Neutral Milk Hotel. His own songwriting poured into The Music Tapes, which took another musical approach altogether: stitching together elaborate radio-drama fantasias, equal parts Phantom Tollbooth, TV holiday specials for children, and Superman serials, while paring down his songs to something simpler and decidedly therapeutic. The singing saw became his most prominent instrument.

While we await the release of two new Music Tapes album in the (hopefully) near future, here's a look to the past, with four samples from the Chocolate USA albums.

From All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today:
All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today
The Shower Song

From Smoke Machine:
Bookbag
Ugly Girl

Of Montreal covering the Zombies and David Bowie!

They are the most inexhaustible band in the land, and now they're going back overseas! Here are the tour dates:

Of Montreal - European 2007 Summer Tour

July 20 - Skellefteå, SWEDEN - Trästockfestivalen
July 21 - Tønsberg, NORWAY - Slottsfjell Festival
July 24 - Helsinki, FINLAND - Redrum
July 25 - Turku, FINLAND - Dynamo
July 26 - Emmaboda, SWEDEN - Emmaboda Festival
July 27 - Östersund, SWEDEN - Storsjöyran
July 28 - Storås, NORWAY - Storåsfestivalen
July 29 - Huntingdon, ENGLAND - Secret Garden Party Festival
July 31 - Cardiff, WALES - The Point
August 01 - Dublin, IRELAND - Crawdaddy
August 02 - London, ENGLAND - Scala 16+
August 03 - Brighton, ENGLAND - Audio Brighton
August 04 - Barcelona, SPAIN - Razzmatazz
August 05 - Zambujeira do Mar, PORTUGAL - Festival Sudoeste

Midget and Hairs is one of the earliest Elephant 6 recording projects to emerge from Ruston, Louisiana, as singer/songwriter Paige Dearman, with assistance from members of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo, and The Olivia Tremor Control, set her hypnogogic hallucinations to fuzzy cassettes and scratchy vinyl. But a full-length never materialized, and her material quickly became hard-to-find collectibles. In this Optical Atlas interview, Adam Schragin catches up with Paige in Austin to trace the origins of Midget and Hairs, as well as her newest band, Exhibit B Static Shade. Rare MP3s included!

In the Courtyard with: Midget and Hairs

The McSweeney's magazine The Believer will feature Of Montreal on this year's magazine/CD combo. The band will be represented both in an exclusive interview and with the track "Du Og Meg" (also on their EP Icons, Abstract Thee) on their CD compilation. The CD will also feature Zach Condon (Beirut), Page France, Sufjan Stevens, and many others. You can order it now at the McSweeney's store.

Pete Erchick (Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't) will be playing a show at the Flicker Theater in Athens on June 14. Also scheduled for the evening's entertainment is Diego Catalan. It all starts at 8pm.

It may, in fact, be the least surprising cover of all time--I mean come on, it's a song about Iceland--but it's still a rocking performance from Of Montreal and that means it's worth checking out. Very thanks to Erik Graham for sending along this video he shot at the March 12th show in La Tulipe, Montreal: the band covering the Fiery Furnaces' "Tropical Iceland." We welcome your videos, concert reviews, et cetera...as always, send them along, but be sure your subject heading says more than "Hi," which I read as, "Hi, I'm spam!" and instantly delete.

Shortly before The Olivia Tremor Control released Black Foliage Animation Music Volume 1 (still...waiting...for volume 2...), they released a teaser single on Flydaddy for Hideaway. Back in 2000 or so...or was it Christmas 1999?...my brother-in-law gave me this single as a present. I remember playing it for my mother and she said, "They sound kind of like the Beach Boys." Not a big coincidence, there, as Brian Wilson (and what should have been Smile, had Wilson finished it in the 60's) was a strong influence on the band's second album. But I'm not going to share that trademark Olivia track, as you can enjoy it if you go buy their very-in-print album from Cloud Records. Today's Tuesday rarities are the single's B-sides, which depart strongly from the syrupy psych-pop of "Hideaway" to explore the experimental and improvisational side of the band.

This "Combinations" outtake is, like the "Combinations" tracks on the full-length, an attempt to scatter and recombine (or "animate") the song "Black Foliage" into an unrecognizable new shape. "Can You Come Down With Us?" is a live version recorded for Greater London Radio on the 18th of August, 1998. This twelve-minute-plus track is staged as they usually play it live: a slowburn build with the instruments almost tuning themselves as they rise slowly toward the song itself. Accompanying the band is Kirk Pleasant (Calvin, Don't Jump!) on trombone and Andy Gonzales (M Coast) on banjo. The single stayed in print for a long while and is probably still pretty easy to find online used, so Olivia completists are encouraged to track it down.

The Olivia Tremor Control - Combinations
The Olivia Tremor Control - Can You Come Down With Us? (Live on GLR August 1998)

Defgav.com, an excellent MP3 site from an E6 fan, has posted a rare Music Tapes performance from August 18, 1998, at the Garage in London. In addition he's posted this YouTube clip (below), which gives a sense of the insanity and invention typical of one of Julian Koster's live shows--it's apparently from a February 1999 show in Athens. There's also a Neutral Milk Hotel live set at the website if you check his previous posts. A very nice job - grab the concert here.



The A Hawk and a Hacksaw/Hun Hangar Ensemble tour EP is now available for order on Amazon.com. Here's their description:

Superb 8-track audio CD and short film DVD package. Strictly limited edition of 4,000 individually numbered copies in deluxe gatefold card packaging. The EP includes the first recordings by A HAWK AND A HACKSAW (duo ft. former NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL drummer JEREMY BARNES) and THE HUN HANGAR ENSEMBLE, a group of extraordinarily talented Hungarian folk musicians. The songs are both traditional (Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and klezmer) and AHAAH originals. The 20-minute bonus DVD, 'An Introduction To A Hawk And A Hacksaw', documents the last two years of travelling and performing throughout Europe and the United States. The EP follows the highly acclaimed 'The Way The Wind Blows' album from late 2006, their most successful yet, and is a precursor for AHAAH's fourth album.

Today is apparently the release date...this blew right past me. Thanks to lou2ser at the Townhall for noticing it. You can order the album and help pay a few cents of Optical Atlas' server fees if you use this link.

This Tuesday marks the release of the sixth album by The Ladybug Transistor, Can't Wait Another Day, on Merge Records. In addition to The Essex Green's Jeff Baron and Great Lakes' Ben Crum, it features guest spots by members of The Clientele, Circulatory System, Architecture in Helsinki, and Currituck Co. You can read my review here.

Kelly Ruberto has updated Elephant6.com with the following message:

Hello! I am currently working on a total re-design of the website so some info might get a little out of date while i'm working on that...
I especially need some help updating the discographies (particularly for the very prolific Of Montreal). Any input to fill in the gaps is appreciated!

LOOKING FOR BURIED TREASURE...
Also, we are looking for your e6 related videos, photos, posters, etc. for a couple upcoming DVD projects. please contact kelly @ elephant6.com if you'd like to submit something! thanks!

OUR FRIEND...
And, we are currently putting together a retrospective of the photography of Will Westbrook for an exhibition in Athens, GA in the winter of 2007 and the publication of a book (to be released in Spring 2008). if you have any of his artwork that you'd like to offer for this project please contact Kelly.

Ames, Iowa's Poison Control Center have announced that they've signed to Minneapolis' Afternoon Records, and will be releasing their debut full-length, A Collage of Impressions, this fall. The label will also be releasing a limited edition EP on July 10 with the album's first single, plus five other tracks. I've been anxiously awaiting this debut for a long time.

And of direct interest to Optical Atlas is that the band will be covering some songs from Olivia Tremor Control's Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle on a tour-only CD. As previously mentioned, the band will also be featured on a split 7" with The Apples in Stereo on Happy Happy Birthday to Me's upcoming Single of the Month Club.

The PCC will be hitting the road in July. Dates below. And you can hear their first single, "Glory Us," at the band's MySpace page.


Upcoming Shows

06.15.07 Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews
06.16.07 Ames, IA @ Bali Satay
07.03.07 St. Paul, MN @ Big V's
07.04.07 Minneapolis, MN @ Hexagon bar
07.05.07 Chicago, IL @ The Darkroom
07.06.07 Dekalb, IL @ Otto's
07.07.07 Grand Rapids, MI @ The DAAC
07.12.07 Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Tavern
07.14.07 Indianapolis, IN @ Irving Theater
07.16.07 St. Louis, MO @ CBGB's
07.17.07 Kansas City, MO @ The Brick
08.10.07 Athens, GA @ Athens PopFest
08.12.07 Murfreesboro, TN @ Murfreesboro Pop Fest
09.21.07 Ames, IA @ Iowa State University
11.11.07 Northhampton, MA @ New England Popfest