NYC band Murder Mystery are back with a new single entitled “The World” that is a nice mellow tune that draws on the best of the Psychedelic Furs, The Cure and the Strokes. Above all the chiming guitars and pulsing synth is vocalist Jeremy Coleman’s charming vocals and lyrics. If you’re starving for some new Strokes material, this will definitely hold you over.
January 13, 2009
New Murder Mystery Song
January 10, 2009
Elizabeth Willis is a Soulful Singer/Songwriter from New York City
Elizabeth Willis is a singer/songwriter from New York City who has been classically trained in violin and piano since the age of four. She’s got some soulful pipes on her, and her compositions lean heavily towards classical composition. She’s been getting some national attention from the likes of NPR and Newsweek.
January 2, 2009
Exclusive! 10 Questions with Steve Schiltz of Longwave!
10 Questions with Steve Schiltz of Longwave
By: Aaron Z. Lee
I was planning to see NYC indie rock band Longwave at the Mohawk in Buffalo, but in true crappy Central New York weather tradition the show was postponed to the spring due to a huge lake effect storm, but I still got a chance catch up with Longwave’s modest frontman Steve Schiltz and discuss a few things including their current tour and electrifying new album that was #3 on my best of 2008 list.
1.Your new album sounds great. Do you think that RCA is kicking themselves for dropping you?
I don’t know. Probably not yet. give us time.
2. There are a lot of songs about being lonely or reaching out to friends on Secrets Are Sinister. I know you guys wrote the album while you were unsigned, did it feel like the end of the road?
Sure, a little bit. The record deal didn’t really have a lot to with it, though. If the band wasn’t going to make a new record it wouldn’t have been because of RCA dropping us, it would have been because we were tired of it. We always thought we could get another record deal somehow. We just had to see if we still WANTED to do it.
3. There’s a noticeably more aggressive sound to this record, with you guys even incorporating some guitar solos into the songs, how did this come about?
There were always guitar solos here and there, and most of the time they were me. Shannon would always say I should do more. I went out on tour for a while with some other bands and I got into playing my guitar more, so I was ready to do it. I wanted the guitars to be important on this record. I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to do with the sounds, especially with the distortion and fuzz sounds.
4. On There’s a Fire, you and Shannon Ferguson wrote the bass parts and assigned the keyboard parts to new members. Is that how it worked out on Secrets are Sinister?
The record was mostly made by Shannon, Jason, and I. So it was kind of like you are saying, except Morgan did join the band towards the end of the recording. Paul and Jeff, who toured with us on there’s a fire, also played on a song or two. We used some recordings we had done at that time, and they had done a good job, so why not?
5. You guys did most of the work on this album yourselves, how does that compare to the past records you’ve worked on?
We have always been very involved. Shannon and I especially. And every record has had some kind of home/demo recording end up making it to the end. This time we just did MORE of it. It is not the first time we have done it, Shannon recorded our first indie record, “Endsongs”. And we had our friend Pete min mix it. Pete recorded some of THIS record too.
6. Does touring with a new album after so much uncertainty feel like a victory?
YES!
7. How have the crowds been reacting to the new songs in general?
So far so good. I write 12 or 13 song set lists, and people generally shout out a few they want to hear. If we know them, we play them. If we do an encore, we generally end at about 16 or 17 songs. So that is nice. I still write the set lists kinda short in case it feels like the show is going badly…
8. You’re originally from the Rochester, NY area, is there anything about that area that inspired you to go into the music business?
Our drummer Jason is also from Rochester! And I am IN Rochester for the holidays right now! I only knew that I couldn’t stay in Rochester and play music the way I wanted. The guys I wanted to meet just weren’t there. There were people, like Tony Gross at GFI, John Nau who still repairs my amps, the house of guitars guys, and guys in exploding boy, officer friendly, and the dizzy monk guys, who I learned so much from. It was just that after a few years I knew I needed to go to New York. Ironically, Dave Fridmann is from close by. Dave is amazing. There are great people in/near Rochester, I suppose learning from them made me want to keep going. that meant going to New York.
9. Your new album is being released by the Original Signal indie label, how did you guys get hooked up with them?
Our A&R guy now worked on “there’s a fire” at a different company. People shuffle around, and he wound up at this label and they seemed like they really wanted to do it, and wanted to work hard, so here we are!
10. You guys have toured extensively in the past with lots of bands including Spoon, The Strokes, Kasabian and the National. Since it’s the holiday season, do you guys have any great holiday or snow related memories from touring?
Not GREAT memories!! Hmm……I remember rushing to Boston in the snow once to play some NEMO festival or something. I was still booking the band, this was around the time of our first record. Before RCA. Anyhow I booked this show and someone had given me the hard sell, it was big deal, label people there, lots of BS, etc etc. We wound up in a snow storm, and thought we were surely going to miss it. Our drummer Jeremy got behind the wheel and Shannon guided him through all kinds of tricky traffic maneuvers. We somehow made record time! We pulled up 10 minutes before our set time, and the band before us was just playing their last song! We had made it! We loaded our gear down the stairs in the freezing cold, into the middle east downstairs. We parked the van, started setting up the amps, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were. We were awesome! Then we looked out into the crowd. There was no one there. I think that sums up something for us.
Thanks for doing this interview and hopefully I’ll get to see you guys in Buffalo next year!
Thanks for writing about us, Aaron! Come and say hi at the show.
October 10, 2008
The Nowist North American Tour
The groundbreaking German indie-rocktronica band, The Notwist, fresh off of the release of their first album in six years, “The Devil, You, and Me” are kicking off their new tour of North America tonight at Lee’s place in Toronto.
In celebration of this, we’ve received a few goodies. One of them being a video of the Notwist and the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra together performing “Boneless”, which also happens to be the Notwist’s latest single.
The next goodie that we’ve got for you is a “radical reworking” of track by Panda Bear of Animal collective.
To top it all off, I’ve even got the album version of “Boneless” to share with you all.
The Notwist – Boneless (Yousendit)
The Notwist – Boneless
FRI 10/10 – Lee’s Place – Toronto, ON
SAT 10/11 – Le National – Montreal, PQ
SUN 10/12 – Roxy Theater – Boston, MA
MON 10/13 – Webster Hall New York, NY
TUE 10/14 – First Unitarian Church – Philadelphia, PA
WED 10/15 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
THU 10/16 – Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH
FRI 10/17 – Logan Square Auditorium – Chicago, IL
SAT 10/18 – Turner Hall – Milwaukee, WI
MON 10/20 – Bluebird – Denver, CO
TUE 10/21 – In the Venue – Salt Lake City, UT
WED 10/22 – Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
FRI 10/24 – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, BC
SAT 10/25 – Berbati’s Pan – Portland, OR
MON 10/27 – Bimbo’s – San Francisco, CA
WED 10/29 – Henry Fonda Theater – Los Angeles, CA
August 5, 2008
The Walkmen’s You & Me
The Walkmen’s new album “You & Me” starts off with a low rumbling beat and the words “Well, it’s back to the battle today, but I wouldn’t have it any other way” encapsulating perfectly the feeling of returning from a vacation or a couple days off to the mundane daily grind of your job. It’s sublime in it’s “It’s got to be done, so here we go” type feel. The Walkmen to me have always felt like the penultimate working class group. I think this stems from their first album “Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone” where the album art is an aged photo of boys smoking, presumably in the 1930′s. Ever since, I’ve associated the Walkmen in my mind with other famous 1930′s-1940′s images, like the steel workers having lunch high above the city or the weary faces of farmers facing the dust bowl. But, As much as the Walkmen convey that they know what a hard day’s work is they feel like they also know the full extent of cutting loose. There’s something noble about how they describe getting drunk with friends, something classy, that only they can pull off.
You & Me is a return to form for the New York City band, granted there were a few amazing standout tracks on their previous record “A Hundred Miles Off”, (Another One Goes By, Lost in Boston) the album was largely a propulsive experiment in making your ears ring. This time around Hamilton and co. favor quality over clatter and the album is all the better for it. Again we’re given chiming guitars and familiar raw hazy emotions, calling to mind red ears and alcohol, but occasionally the haze lifts and a life altering epiphany appears. That maybe getting drunk with your friends and staying out at all hours of the night might not be the best way to spend your life.
The musings about being left behind by those in your life springs to mind immediately on the song “In The New Year” where Hamilton Leithhauser mulls over how his sisters married his best friends while he lives at the same old address. Other standouts include the Ocean Rain-esque “Red Moon” which is followed by my favorite song on the album, “Canadian Girl” the chord strums, and guitar accented back beats just make it for me. Don’t limit yourself to just those tracks though, the album is beautiful in the way it ebbs and flows through various rhythms and styles that all sound distinctly like The Walkmen. Keep an ear peeled for a harp towards the end of the album.
On this their fourth and possibly best album, The Walkmen have crafted an album made with shambly melodies and fuzzy tones that come together in way that’s just as satisfying as closing the door behind you after getting home at four in the morning. In a perfect world, it would be mandatory to listen to the Walkmen on any drive home past midnight.
You can get the excellent new Walkmen album here, for $5, and $5 will go to the Sloan Kettering Hospital. This is a unique opportunity to get some great music at a good price, and help out a good cause.
Walkmen Myspace
