Listen: Daytrotter Session

MP3: “Too Young To Burn” (Album Version)

Sonny and the Sunset’s vintage-style west coast pop songs tell sordid tales of death, drowning, outcasts, heavenly visions and otherworldly despair. Their newest LP, Tomorrow is Alright radiates with a classic yet indefinable sound, almost like a futuristic 50’s R&B.

California native Sonny Smith started his career playing in a blues piano bar nestled in the mountain towns of Colorado at the age of eighteen. He then embarked on a journey to Central America, where he lived on an organic farm in the Central American jungle, earning money while touring with a rag tag busking band and playing hotels and cabanas along the coast of the Caribbean. In 1996, he moved back home to San Francisco, where he continued to focus on writing music, short stories and plays. In the early 2000’s he toured in support of Neko Case and Jolie Holland and released a string of solo albums titled, This is My Story, This is My Song, Sordid Tales of Love and Woe, One Act Plays and Fruitvale. Tomorrow is Alright continues his exploration of outcasts, weirdos, freaks, death, love and atypical transformation.

In 2007, he formed Sonny and The Sunsets with help from friends Shayde Sartin & Tim Cohen (of the Fresh & Onlys), Tahlia Harbour (of Citay and The Dry Spells), Ryan Browne and Kelley Stoltz (Sub Pop Recordings) among others. Together the band created Tomorrow is Alright, recorded on a classic 1970’s 388 Tascam tape recorder in various uncommon places including out of Sonny’s camper. Tomorrow is Alright is full of straightforward-pop songs that recall the 1950’s era doo wop of The Falcons combined with the direct sincerity and positive spirit of Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman as well as the dark confessional humor of cartoonists like Robert Crumb and Ivan Brunetti.

Sonny Smith currently resides in the Sunset District of San Francisco where he stays busy writing music and providing occasional care to disabled war veterans and other people who have fallen through the cracks of society through a Bay Area based social work agency F & CMS. He works out of an office in the back of his friends’ surf shop. In addition to his work as a sometimes columnist or occasional playwright he also opened “100 Records” his first ever solo- art exhibition. The show ran for seven weeks at Gallery 16 in San Francisco; it featured 100 album-covers created by 90 different artists from around the world along with one hundred songs written and recorded by Sonny himself and a custom built jukebox to play those songs. The show then traveled to Austin and New York.

This June Sonny and The Sunsets plan to pack into Sonny’s camper and head out on U.S. Tour, where they’ll play Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this July. Their debut LP, Tomorrow is Alright, is currently available on vinyl from Soft Abuse Records, and will be released on CD and digitally via Fat Possum Records on Aug. 31.

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS

THU 08/12 BROOKLYN, NY Cinders Gallery (Sonny Smith Solo Set & Art show)
THU 08/19 SAN FRANCISCO, CA The Independent *
MON 08/30 SAN FRANCISCO, CA Amnesia
THU 10/28 PORTLAND, OR Holocene #
FRI 10/29 VANCOUVER, BC Cobalt #
SAT 10/30 SEATTLE, WA Neumo’s #
SUN 10/31 SPOKANE, WA Stage 54 #
TUE 11/2 SALT LAKE CITY, UT Urban Lounge #
WED 11/3 DENVER, CO Bluebird #
FRI 11/5 DALLAS, TX Granada #
SAT 11/6 HOUSTON, TX Mango’s #
TUE 11/9 PHOENIX, AZ Rhythm Room #
WED 11/10 SAN DIEGO, CA Casbah #

* = w/ Darker My Love
# = w/ Best Coast

Sonny and The Sunsets
Tomorrow is Alright
(Fat Possum / Soft Abuse)
Street Date: Aug. 31, 2010

1. Too Young To Burn
2. Death Cream
3. Strange Love
4. Planet of Women
5. The Houris
6. Stranded
7. Bad Vibes & Evil Thoughts
8. Chapters
9. Love Among Social Animals
10. Lovin’ on an Older Gal

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS LINKS:

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/sonnythesunsets

Artist page: http://www.sonnysmith.com

Label page: http://fatpossum.com/

MP3: “Little Brown Haired Girls”

Frankie Rose has a reputation around here. And by here, we mean Brooklyn. And by reputation, we mean her minimal, Maureen Tucker-like beats and iconic presence in such buzz-stirring bands as Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, and Vivian Girls. Those groups spearheaded a scene that mixed the sounds of lo-fi garage, big reverb-drenched Phil Spector-produced 60s girl groups, the noise aesthetic of the Jesus And Mary Chain with a touch of Velvet Underground and a strong DIY ethic to create a sound that’s influenced a new generation of bands around the world.

At least that’s what she’s been known for up until now. As you’re about to hear on her new group’s self-titled Slumberland Records debut, Frankie Rose and the Outs have their heads in the clouds a bit more than Rose’s previous projects. Listening to the ghostly golden-oldie grooves of songs like “Girlfriend Island,” “Candy” and the pedal-pounding “That’s What People Told Me,” it’s as if the Cocteau Twins and Shangri-Las tracked a split LP with the help of a time machine and a freshly-acquitted Phil Spector.

“I tried to make this album as hi-fi as possible while sticking to the sounds that I’ve always loved,” explains Rose. “I grew up listening to a lot of musicals and Gilbert and Sullivan operas, so harmonies are a given. I also was drawn to anything spooky as a kid-’Good Vibrations’ still kinda scares me. Reverb puts a haze on everything, you know?”

Oh we know. And you will too, as the singer/guitarist/drummer-aided by fellow Outs bassist Caroline Yes, guitarist Margot Bianca, and drummer Kate Ryan- explores her dream-pop side on the album’s darker numbers, from the oscillating organs, spooky sleigh bells and melancholic melodies of “Hollow Life” and “Lullabye For Roads and Miles” to the disembodied balladry of “Save Me” and “Memo.”

All in the name of making “beautiful, serious music” that reaches well beyond simple Wall of Sound nods. That’s because Rose is more concerned with maintaining a specific mood than rehashing the hooks your parents lost their virginity to. Sometimes that means channeling the psych climaxes of Spacemen 3 (the chord-gnashing lead guitar of “Thee Only One,” Rose’s solo Slumberland single from 2009), and sometimes that can mean fusing a rickety rhythm section and galloping riffs with the spectral trails of Julee Cruise (the Rose-penned Vivian Girls cut, “Where Do You Run To?”).

Frankie Rose and the Outs is full of such lovely juxtapositions. From the galloping reverb symphony of “Little Brown Haired Girls” to the tough garage swing of “That’s What People Told Me” and “Don’t Tred” to the soaring chords and angelic harmonies of the well-chosen Arthur Russell cover “You Can Make Me Feel Bad,” it’s clear that Rose has finally found the perfect vehicle for her musical inspiration.

“To be honest, I like so much music,” says Rose, “and never know what influences are going to come out. For me, songwriting is more about evoking certain feelings than the lyrics or anything else. Hell, sometimes I don’t even know what the songs mean.”

FRANKIE ROSE AND THE OUTS

Sat-Aug-14 Brooklyn, NY JellyNYC Rock Yard *
Wed-Sep-15 Brooklyn, NY Glasslands $
Mon-Oct-18 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506 #
Tue-Oct-19 Baltimore, MD Ottobar #
Wed-Oct-20 Philadelphia, PA Kungfu Necktie #
Sun-Oct-24 Cambridge, MA TT The Bear’s Place #
Tue-Oct-26 Rochester, NY Bug Jar #
Wed-Oct-27 Cleveland, OH The Spot at Case Western #
Thu-Oct-28 Chicago, NY Empty Bottle #

* = w/ Chief, Minks, Total Slacker
$ = RECORD RELEASE SHOW w/ Light Asylum, Minks, Mirror Mirror
# = w/ WOVEN BONES

Frankie Rose and The Outs
Frankie Rose and The Outs
(Slumberland)
Street date: Sept. 21, 2010

1. Hollow Life
2. Candy
3. Little Brown Haired Girls
4. Lullubye for Roads and Miles
5. That’s What People Told Me
6. Memo
7. Must Be Nice
8. Girlfriend Island
9. You Can Make Me Feel Bad
10. Don’t Tred
11. Save Me

FRANKIE ROSE LINKS:

MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/saintoftheros
Press Materials - http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/press/frankie-rose/fr.html

Including Madison Square Garden with Phoenix, East Coast dates in Sept.

MP3: “Post Acid”

Bio:

In the life of Nathan Williams, the year of 2009 will go down as both a highlight reel and a total shit show. Meteorically, feverishly and somewhat improbably, two albums worth of naïve punk rock he recorded behind his parents’ San Diego home as Wavves became a sensation in the world of indie music. As a result, passports got filled, capers got pulled off and lots of good things got said about the music in both print and digital ink, plus in actual human voices. At the same time, fights got fought, situations got hairy and people got indignant and mean.

Oh well. Fuck it. All of it.

What’s important now is that, in the beginning of 2010, Williams made King of the Beach, the new Wavves album. King of the Beach is an adventurous and ambitious record. It cuts deeper into the bleeding throat catharsis and ’60s sunshine soul that Wavves is known for. It also unexpectedly flips out with elements of primitive electronics and psychedelic studio experimentation.

“There was a conscious effort going into this that I didn’t want to make the same record again. I already made the same record twice, with the same fucking cover art,” says Williams. “It wasn’t overbearing, but I didn’t want to recreate something I’d done. I wanted to make something bigger, something stronger.”

Unlike Wavves’ previously released material, recorded in haphazard bursts on Williams’ laptop, King of the Beach was toiled over for three months at Sweet Tea Recording, a world-renown studio in Oxford, Mississippi. Sweet Tea is also the home of Dennis Herring, producer of the last two Modest Mouse albums, and the man who dismantled and re-assembled the sound on this record.

All the rumors are true: Herring is a studio perfectionist. Williams is not. “There were some definite ‘I want to wring you neck’-type moments,” Williams says of the sessions, but he also understood that, with the resources he had available to him, he’d be stupid not to make the album sound exactly how he wanted it. “When you’re not watering it down with a load of shit and reverb, it’s a lot harder to make a record, because you know every part is going to be heard perfectly. You can’t half-ass anything,” says Williams. “A lot more effort went into this than with previous Wavves records.”

Another marked difference in the making of King of the Beach was that Williams wrote and recorded two songs with bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes, the duo who became his touring band at the end of 2009. Pope and Hayes formerly backed recently departed garage rock force of nature Jay Reatard. Williams met the two after his infamously disastrous performance at the Primavera Sound Festival in Spain. “I think we all agree that they squeegeed me up, because I melted down.” says Williams.

Though there is a confidence in the scope of the album-from the title track’s denim on sand anthem-baiting to the tweaked pop of “Convertable Balloon” to the unabashed prettiness of “When Will You Come”-Williams’ usual lyrical themes of self-loathing are still impossible to ignore. “I think everybody feels that way sometimes. I know everybody feels that way sometimes. You’re a fucking liar if you don’t,” says Williams. “It wouldn’t make sense if I’m feeling a certain way to not write about it. There are songs about hating myself, but there are also songs about driving in a car with a balloon and playing Nintendo too.”

In the end, though, King of the Beach is not an album for the miserable. While the verses of “Take on the World” enumerate the things Williams hates (his writing, his music, his self) the chorus resolves into a simple, bold repeated phrase: “To take on the world would be something.”

The album title King of the Beach isn’t meant to be ironic or a self-deprecating joke. It’s a declaration. “Without sounding cheesy, we all wanted to make something inspiring,” says Williams. “It’s the type of thing where you have this much, but you could have more, so go get it.”

PRESS QUOTES:

“King of the Beach features a big, bratty melody, booming drums and a catchy, lo-fi guitar hook that scrapes like sandpaper. Williams has also retained a true punk-rock sense of defiance: “You’re never gonna stop me!” he howls over and over in the chorus. Just try and prove him wrong.” - Rolling Stone

“A comeback certainly seemed far away, but on King of the Beach (Fat Possum), which will be released in August and from which Mr. Williams played songs on Thursday night at the Knitting Factory, that’s exactly what he’s pulled off. Gone is the ferocious sugar-rush distortion of the last album, replaced with crisper arrangements, and, in places, lyrics that seem to acknowledge both that Mr. Williams is in touch with his flaws and that he’s still plenty impudent” - NY Times

WAVVES

Mon-Aug-02 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom *
Fri-Aug-06 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza
Sat-Aug-07 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle / Lollapalooza afterparty #
Thu-Aug-12 San Diego, CA Museum of Contemporary Art / San Diego
Fri-Aug-13 Pomona, CA The Glass House %
Sat-Aug-14 Portland, OR Berbati’s Pan +
Mon-Aug-16 Santa Barbara, CA Soho
Tue-Aug-17 Santa Cruz, CA Crepe Place
Wed-Aug-18 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop
Wed-Aug-25 Seattle, WA Neumos
Thu-Aug-26 Vancouver, BC Biltmore
Fri-Aug-27 Victoria, BC Sugar
Mon-Aug-30 Davis, CA Sol Collective
Tue-Aug-31 Visalia, CA Howie and Sons Pizza Parlor
Sat-Sep-04 Los Angeles, CA FYF Fest
Fri-Sep-10 Memphis, TN Hi-Tone
Sat-Sep-11 St. Louis, MO Billiken Club
Tue-Sep-14 Bloomington, IN Rhinos
Wed-Sep-15 Columbus, OH Skully’s
Thu-Sep-16 Buffalo, NY Mohawk Place
Fri-Sep-17 Northampton, MA Pearl Street Nightclub
Sat-Sep-18 Waltham, MA Brandeis University
Mon-Sep-20 Providence, RI Met Café
Fri-Sep-24 Kingston, NY 323 Wall Street
Sat-Sep-25 Baltimore, MD Ottobar
Mon-Sep-27 Washington, DC Rock and Roll Hotel
Tue-Sep-28 Greensboro, NC Guilford College
Wed-Sep-29 Charlotte, NC Milestone
Thu-Sep-30 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn
Fri-Oct-01 Nashville, TN Exit/In - Next Big Nashville
Sat-Oct-02 Oxford, MS Proud Larry’s
Wed-Oct-20 New York, NY Madison Square Garden $

* = w/ Smith Westerns, Total Slacker
# = w/ Harlem, Fergus and Geronimo
% = w/ Abe Vigoda, The Growlers, Crystal Antlers
+ = w/ The Cool Kids
$ = w/ Phoenix, Dirty Projectors

Wavves
King of the Beach
(Fat Possum)
Physical Street date: Aug. 3, 2010

King Of The Beach
Super Soaker
Idiot
When Will You Come?
Post Acid
Take On The World
Baseball Cards
Convertible Balloon
Green Eyes
Mickey Mouse
Linus Spacehead
Baby Say Goodbye

WAVVES LINKS:
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/WAVVES

Label - http://www.fatpossum.com/

Listen: Daytrotter Session

MP3: “Too Young To Burn” (Album Version)

Sonny and the Sunset’s vintage-style west coast pop songs tell sordid tales of death, drowning, outcasts, heavenly visions and otherworldly despair. Their newest LP, Tomorrow is Alright radiates with a classic yet indefinable sound, almost like a futuristic 50’s R&B.

California native Sonny Smith started his career playing in a blues piano bar nestled in the mountain towns of Colorado at the age of eighteen. He then embarked on a journey to Central America, where he lived on an organic farm in the Central American jungle, earning money while touring with a rag tag busking band and playing hotels and cabanas along the coast of the Caribbean. In 1996, he moved back home to San Francisco, where he continued to focus on writing music, short stories and plays. In the early 2000’s he toured in support of Neko Case and Jolie Holland and released a string of solo albums titled, This is My Story, This is My Song, Sordid Tales of Love and Woe, One Act Plays and Fruitvale. Tomorrow is Alright continues his exploration of outcasts, weirdos, freaks, death, love and atypical transformation.

In 2007, he formed Sonny and The Sunsets with help from friends Shayde Sartin & Tim Cohen (of the Fresh & Onlys), Tahlia Harbour (of Citay and The Dry Spells), Ryan Browne and Kelley Stoltz (Sub Pop Recordings) among others. Together the band created Tomorrow is Alright, recorded on a classic 1970’s 388 Tascam tape recorder in various uncommon places including out of Sonny’s camper. Tomorrow is Alright is full of straightforward-pop songs that recall the 1950’s era doo wop of The Falcons combined with the direct sincerity and positive spirit of Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman as well as the dark confessional humor of cartoonists like Robert Crumb and Ivan Brunetti.

Sonny Smith currently resides in the Sunset District of San Francisco where he stays busy writing music and providing occasional care to disabled war veterans and other people who have fallen through the cracks of society through a Bay Area based social work agency F & CMS. He works out of an office in the back of his friends’ surf shop. In addition to his work as a sometimes columnist or occasional playwright he also opened “100 Records” his first ever solo- art exhibition. The show ran for seven weeks at Gallery 16 in San Francisco; it featured 100 album-covers created by 90 different artists from around the world along with one hundred songs written and recorded by Sonny himself and a custom built jukebox to play those songs. The show then traveled to Austin and New York.

This June Sonny and The Sunsets plan to pack into Sonny’s camper and head out on U.S. Tour, where they’ll play Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this July. Their debut LP, Tomorrow is Alright, is currently available on vinyl from Soft Abuse Records, and will be released on CD and digitally via Fat Possum Records on Aug. 31.

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS

07/25 San Francisco, CA All Shook Down Festival
08/19 San Francisco, CA The Independent *
08/30 San Francisco, CA Amnesia

* = w/ Darker My Love

Sonny and The Sunsets
Tomorrow is Alright
(Fat Possum / Soft Abuse)
Street Date: Aug. 31, 2010

1. Too Young To Burn
2. Death Cream
3. Strange Love
4. Planet of Women
5. The Houris
6. Stranded
7. Bad Vibes & Evil Thoughts
8. Chapters
9. Love Among Social Animals
10. Lovin’ on an Older Gal

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS LINKS:

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/sonnythesunsets

Artist page: http://www.sonnysmith.com

Label page: http://fatpossum.com/