STREAM: Loney Dear - “Airport Surroundings”

The Polyvinyl Record Co. recently announced the signing of Sweden’s Loney Dear, who will release its new album, Dear John, on the label on Jan. 27, 2009. The band will be touring the U.S. starting on Jan. 29 - most shows are with the noble Andrew Bird, while a few will be sans Bird (headlining Loney Dear shows) and they’ll also be hitting SXSW. The first music video from Dear John, for the song “Airport Surroundings” was unveiled today - it was directed by Marcus Söderlund who has also done videos for Jens Lekman and The Tough Alliance.

Hailing from the small city of Jonkoping, Sweden, Loney Dear’s primary member Emil Svanängen first began making homemade recordings of delicate, folkish indie pop in the early 2000s. As Loney, Dear (the band has since deleted the comma from its name), Svanängen self-released three homemade CD-Rs through his website: River Fontana Redux, Citadel Band, and Sologne. As buzz developed through MP3 blogs and other new media manifestations, Sub Pop offered Svanängen a contract in 2006. The first proper Loney Dear album, Loney, Noir, was released in early 2007.

Svanängen describes Dear John as a “marvelous album in dark shades with a lava-like glow from underneath.”

Praise for Loney Dear:

“Despair has never sounded so sweet.”–SPIN

“Svanangen’s captivating ruminations sound as if he’s trying to capture the purest essence of joy, albeit with a melancholy underbelly. It’s that bittersweet warmth that makes Loney, Dear’s hushed, pastoral folk songs seep into the heart.”–NPR

“He wraps the ups and downs of a whirlwind romance into tiny packages. You’re left hungry, fully certain that 34 minutes– let alone five– will never be enough of this very, very good thing.”–Pitchfork

“Through soft layers of acoustic instrumentation and vocal harmonies, Svanangen creates a sustained and lasting representation of the classic emotions of regret, peace, and loneliness.” –PopMatters

“Svanängen’s bright falsetto holds his miniature musical tapestries together.” –Austin Chronicle

LONEY DEAR

01/29 Northampton, MA Iron Horse
01/30 Boston, MA The Orpheum*
02/02 Richmond, VA The National*
02/03 Washington, DC The 930 Club*
02/04 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse*
02/06 Orlando, FL The Plaza*
02/07 New Orleans, LA House of Blues*
02/09 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon
02/10 Houston, TX Rudyard’s British Pub
02/11 Denton, TX Hailey’s
02/12 Austin, TX The Paramount Theater*
02/13 Albuquerque, NM The El Rey*
02/14 Tucson, AZ The Rialto*
02/15 San Diego, CA Soma San Diego*
02/17 Visalia, CA Howie and Son’s Pizza
02/18 Los Angeles, CA The Orpheum*
02/19 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore*
02/20 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore*
02/21 Portland, OR Roseland*
02/23 Seattle, WA The Moore*
02/24 Boise, ID The Knitting Factory*
02/25 Murray, UT The Murray*
02/26 Denver, CO The Ogden*
02/27 Omaha, NE Slowdown*
03/01 Chicago, IL Schubas
03/18 - 03/21 Austin, TX SXSW

* = w/ Andrew Bird

Loney Dear
Dear John
(Polyvinyl)
Street date: Jan. 27, 2009

1. Airport Surroundings
2. Everything Turns to You
3. I Was Only Going Out
4. Harsh Words
5. Under a Silent Sea
6. I Got Lost
7. Summers
8. Distant
9. Harm
10. Violent
11. Dear John

LONEY DEAR LINKS:

MySpace: www.myspace.com/loneydear

Press Materials: www.polyvinylrecords.com/press

MP3: Strand of Oaks - “End In Flames”

Strand of Oaks is Timothy Showalter, an Indiana Mennonite turned Pennsylvania Hebrew Dayschool teacher who even drives the school bus for extra cash (and has sing-alongs with the pupils as they ease on down the road). It’s like a scene from “Behind the Music” if the weed-soaked Tom Petty was your busdriver, and in this case the metaphors, spread throughout nine tracks, are to be taken quite literally.

Leave Ruin is Strand of Oaks’ hometown deathbed-confession hymnal, the soundtrack of an Exodus. It’s been back roads and parenthetical side streets for Showalter since he left his ruin of small town America. As a Hoosier transplant, he landed in the fertile musical soil of Northeastern Pennsylvania with a few key twists of fate that would turn his tragedy into trajectory.

While escaping a relationship gone worse, Showalter returned home to a house burned down, leaving all of his earthly possessions charred in flames. Spending nights in downtown hotels and on park benches with a borrowed guitar, he began to face the proverbial demons. Like any good roller coaster ride there came an upside, as inspiration grew like weeds within the rubble; songs led to shows, which led to tours of the US and UK with Jason Anderson and Kimya Dawson. Leave Ruin took shape shortly thereafter while touring and collaborating with Lou Rogai (Lewis & Clarke).

Taking cues from such luminaries as Neil Young (On the Beach era) and a burgeoning Springsteen, Showalter extends his musical gesture and searches to find modesty in the midst of confusion, addressing insecurities and settling existential debt with a simple and beautiful delivery. The personification of a Midwestern Grandfather’s advice, his songs smack with hard truth and poignant severity, from child-like naivete to heart worn wisdom… sparse guitar, hammond, rhodes and wooden instruments support an atmosphere that is tender and raw, at times uncomfortable, shockingly candid, and unforgettable.

STRAND OF OAKS

01/22/09 - Brooklyn, Ny - Zebulon w/ Matt Bauer + Drew Victor
01/30/09 - Wilkes-Barre, PA - Cafe Metropolis *release show* w/ Jason Anderson + These Elk Forever
01/31/09 - Meadville, PA - Allegheny College w/ Jason Anderson

Strand of Oaks
Leave Ruin
(La Société Expéditionnaire)
Street date: Jan. 27, 2009

1.End In Flames
2.Two Kids
3.Lawns Breed Songs
4.Mourning Worker
5.New Paris
6.Sister Evangaline
7.Dogs of War
8.Do You Like To Read?
9.Leave Ruin

STRAND OF OAKS LINKS:
MySpace - www.myspace.com/strandofoaks

Press Materials - www.la-soc.com/leaveruinpreview.html

REPO is the fifth official full-length album by Black Dice. The Brooklyn, NY-based trio has never worked harder at crafting a set of concise, sonically battering, or flat-out bizarre tunes than on this collection of fringe-surfing tone bombs. Yet a new roadhouse blues-band philosophy has simultaneously emerged, allowing the group to loosen up and toss off a record packed with blurry hooks and zoomed-in riffs as casually as a grizzled denizen of roadside dives might spew out aural alchemy in-between a few brews.

Brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren have spent the better part of 10 years in daily contact, touring the world over, and sculpting their saw-toothed sound balloons under circumstances most reasonable people would wretch at. The resultant hive mind occupied by the three is an inevitable consequence of so much shared experience, both musical and simply day-to-day. Their communal consciousness is as packed with garbage as much as it is concerned with making catchy tunes, and often the songs pouring out of it contain equal parts bombastic infectious rhythm and chaotic detritus.

REPO is the sound of a disciplined group of cosmic jokers setting out to reclaim the landscape popular culture would have us believe we cannot afford. The record irreverently mulches the sounds and images of radio, TV and internet into a fertile compost pile squirming with new, raw life.

Black Dice
REPO
(Paw Tracks)
Street date: April 07, 2009

1. Night Creme
2. Glazin
3. Earnings Plus Interest
4. Whirligig
5. La Cucaracha
6. Idiots Pasture
7. Lazy TV
8. Buddy
9. Ten Inches
10. Chicken S**t
11. Vegetable
12. Urban Supermist
13. Ultra Vomit Craze
14. Gag Shack

BLACK DICE LINKS:

MySpace - www.myspace.com/blackdicemyspace

Press Materials - www.paw-tracks.com/repopresspage.html

Artist Page - www.blackdice.net

Easily the front runner for best song titles of the year (see track list below)!
MP3: Blackout Beach - “Nineteen, One God, One Dull Star”

Blackout Beach is the solo nom de guerre of Carey Mercer (from Frog Eyes and Swan Lake), and Skin of Evil is his second full-length. Originally slated for a Dec. 2008 release, the record sees the light of day today, Jan. 20, 2009. Skin of Evil is remarkable in the sense that a. it contains a story, and b. it sticks to the story; a rare occurrence in these free times. “Donna” is the subject, and each of her lovers (past & present) say their peace in song (Donna gets her song, too). Composed, played and recorded entirely by Mercer alone, these songs revel in the dark side of the heady proto-punk Cleveland axis (e.g. Peter Laughner, David Thomas) with a minimal, textural & almost Suicide-ish sense of pop form and the experimental nature of recent Scott Walker works.

Some thoughts / notes on Skin of Evil by Dan Bejar:

- I believe Skin of Evil is the best record I will hear all year, but let’s not get into that.

- A frame of reference for something like this might be:
Goofy American babbler (Jerry Lee Lewis/Dennis Quaid) meets the highest, the most harrowing of modernist Euro nightmare (The Drift ) — By this I guess I mean that there can be no frame of reference, for these two things have never met before, and external forces work hard to make sure they never do, but somehow the sonic space created for this set of singing happened, and feels familiar, doesn’t give me the willies. Maybe it’s ’cause Scott Walker has never hinted at expressing an interest in the traditions of rocknroll guitar (neither does Carey but it can really sound like he must when he plays)

-And unlike J.L.L./Quaid , Carey is not a pervert/showman

- I’ll make no bones, I enjoy the sound of people singing like this. I even like the sound of people talking like this. I also think that this is the best record Carey’s been involved with.

- Note: how good it sounds when Carolyn/Megan chimes in!

-Maybe it’s about a girl, about salvation’s undoing through romantic love, wreckage of this kind — No matter, the important thing is that this is the first time I’ve REALLY heard theatrics AND atmospherics in a record, and so much of both, cept maybe for Roxy Music’s Avalon, which this record reminds me a lot of, if only for how incredibly well you can hear every last thing, which is good, cause every last thing sounds so cool!!

-And though Bryan Ferry’s version of control and release are slightly different than Carey’s, it’s really more just different lyrical concerns, which we’ll here call “worldview”.

- One last thing about theatrics and atmospherics: they are at war (did I already say that?). Theatrics (individual) vs. Atmospherics (the universe) seems pretty straightforward to me as a life model — I keep thinking about this listening to Skin Of Evil, though I’m not sure if this is what the record’s about.

-Also, being fucked over constantly to the point of almost death and then maybe death, by higher powers, like Gods, the jailer (or whoever holds the keys), your local PTA, etc. also: the possibility that you have a small hand in it, this, your doom, a ditch in the rain you don’t just somehow fall into (see, ‘Salad..)

Blackout Beach
Skin of Evil
(Soft Abuse)
Street date: Jan. 20, 2009

01. Cloud of Evil
02. Biloxi, In a Grove, Cleans Out His Eyes
03. William, the Crowd, It’s William
04. The Roman
05. Woe to the Minds of Soft Men
06. The Whistle
07. Nineteen, One God, One Dull Star
08. Three Men Drown in the River
09. Sophia, Donna, I Was Down the River Waiting
10. Astoria, Menthol Lite, Hilltop, Wave of Evil, 1982

BLACKOUT BEACH LINKS:
MySpace - www.myspace.com/blackoutbeach

Press Materials - softabuse.com/press_kits/blackout_beach_press.html

Carey Mercer’s new blog - cloudofevil.blogspot.com