The new Beach House album, Teen Dream, out on Jan. 26.

Local electro-retro-futurist Outputmessage dropped a four-song single yesterday, the third and final one leading to his upcoming album. You can pay what you want for it over at his bandcamp page, or stream it:

Teen Dream, the upcoming Sub Pop debut of the dreamy Baltimore duo Beach House, has leaked, and Gorilla vs. Bear has an mp3 of one of its songs, “Norway.” It’s less minimal, and a bit poppier, than the group’s usual fare, but just as gauzy and hypnotic. Not just one blog has described this as “gorgeous.” Right on.

Read More “More New, Free Music: Beach House, Outputmessage, and More” »

D.C.’s Black Eyes was one of those bands where you ended up collecting every song. The quintet didn’t record a lot of them, for one thing—fewer than 30 in the three years it existed. That, and the group’s chaotic, genre-hopping, paranoid post-hardcore was—and remains—utterly singular.

You can get a small sense of how that sound emerged at Hugh McElroy’s Ruffian Records Web site, which recently posted some free MP3s from two of McElroy’s pre-Black Eyes projects, A.K.A. Harlot #1 and Exaspirin, as well as a 1996 session McElroy engineered for New York art punk outfit the Vestpocket Psalm. While you’re there, you can also grab (for free) every song that Horses—McElroy’s 2004 band with Black Eyes members Dan Caldas and Mike Kanin—ever recorded, as well as Hume’s Wyfe EP.

Read More “Ruffian Records Posts Rare MP3s, Plans Releases with Sockets” »

If folk music’s prime currency is authenticity, Langhorne Slim might well earn some crooked eyebrows. Classically trained at the SUNY-Purchase conservatory, Sean Scolnik donned loafers and floppy hat and named himself after his hometown in the tradition of all those rail-hoppin’ ramblers who used to do that. The blogosphere gobbled up this aesthetic and and have cast Slim in the role of Guthrie-Dylan inheritor he came dressed to play.

Really, Slim doesn’t make music like that at all. His music is much more poptimistic, with an evangelical energy that has led some critics to call his music religious (and not in the way Bob Dylan equated Woody Guthrie’s music with religion). Slim’s lyrics lunge, albeit passionately, with a blade that is shinier than it is sharp. Cat Stevens, with his spiritual conceit, is an apter analog—or the Avett Brothers, with whom Slim has toured.

Read More “Tonight: Langhorne Slim @ Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel w/ Dawes” »

The Aislers Set

Slumberland Records, the locally formed label that has released some of the best, noisiest indie pop ever pressed to seven-inch, turned 20 this year, and it’s celebrating all weekend. Tonight’s show at the Black Cat features current Slumberland bands Crystal Stilts, Brown Recluse, Frankie and the Outs and Pants Yell!, as well as three reunited bands from the area, the Ropers, Lorelei, and Nord Express.

We asked some of the people involved with Slumberland over the years to share their favorite memories of the label. We ran some yesterday, and here are the rest:

Read More “Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm: 20 Slumberland Memories, Part 2″ »

To judge by their tightly wound, country-tinged pop songs, Olivia Mancini and the Mates aren’t shorting their craft. But even the most polished band needs its R&R, and this local act—featuring two former members of Washington Social Club—loves to curl up with a good book. That’s the impression, at least, left by “Graphology,” a rollicking gem from the group’s new album in which Mancini lists maybe a dozen book titles. Apparently, her bookshelf (including 50 Years of Fender, 1776, and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles) is pretty heavy on nonfiction, although some Dashiell Hammett sneaks in (noir does not make its way, it only sneaks). Pretty eclectic stuff: too bad, then, that Mancini concludes each verse with “those are not enough to make me smart.” But we’ve all been there.

Olivia Mancini and the Mates perform tomorrow at the Black Cat with Stripmall Ballads. $8. You can download “Graphology” at the group’s Web site. Here’s another song:

More literary pop songs after the jump, including a nonsensical (what else!) Pynchon tribute, a lucrative (?!) Brontë homage, and Dan Bejar being Dan Bejar!

Read More “Clip Job: Five Songs About Books” »

Few independent record labels make it to 20 years, and even fewer can claim the influence of Slumberland. Founded in 1989 by members of Black Tambourine, Velocity Girl, Whorl, and Powderburns, the label blended noise rock and shoegaze with melodic, underground guitar pop, laying the brickwork for what’s proved to be an enduring indie-pop aesthetic. Slumberland was initially based out of a house and record store in Silver Spring, and although the label’s head, Mike Schulman,  moved to California in 1992, he continued to provide a showcase for great D.C. bands—like Lilys, the Ropers, and Lorelei—and, well, great bands, like the Aislers Set, Boyracer, Small Factor, Rocketship and many others. The current roster includes popular acts like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Crystal Stilts.

The label celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend with shows at the Black Cat and in New York, which is as good an occasion for nostalgia as any. City Paper asked some of the people involved with Slumberland over the years to share their favorite memories. Today and tomorrow, read what they had to say.

Read More “Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm: 20 Slumberland Memories, Part 1″ »

Thanks in part to Don DeLillo’s 1973 novel Great Jones Street, it didn’t take long for the rock-star-toiling-away-in-seclusion narrative to go from the stuff of critical legend to obvious fodder for parody. Nevermind that two years later saw the release and instant canonization of Bob Dylan and the Band’s long-buried The Basement Tapes—the inspiration, in fact, for the DeLillo character Bucky Wunderlick’s “The Mountain Tapes.” And so for listeners, the brilliant, hermetic artist has persisted, both as a reductive, suspect concept and as an undeniably seductive one. Listed here, some examples of the latter.

The D.C./Baltimore psych-folk act Le Loup retreated to a cabin in North Carolina to record much of its latest album, Family (out now on Hardly Art) and the result is druggy, country-fried, and poppy. Take “Grow,” which sports what might be the best pairing of Beach Boys harmonies and the “Be My Baby” beat since, well, the Beach Boys. But the real innovation here is space: Where past Le Loup songs were concise and linear, Family’s breathe and frolic and expand. The band—which performs Saturday at the Black Cat with Pree—recently recorded a session for All Our Noise. Check it out:

More records made in wooded seclusion after the jump: Reluctant backwoods Svengalis, some latter-day Johnny Cash, and brassy mountain ditties!

Read More “Clip Job: Five Records Made in Cabins (Other than Bon Iver)” »

Spelling for Bees refers to itself as both a collective—in that it’s an umbrella for music by its 40 members—and a supergroup, meaning that its participants, drawn from indie-rock bands the District over, occasionally create songs together. The two cuts on the project’s MySpace page, “Love at First Sight” and “Giboullee (Bella),” are delicate and slow-building with an orchestral flair, and the group’s leader, Mittenfields member Dave Mann, says he eventually hopes to incorporate every player, Polyphonic Spree-style, into the live set. Mann formed Spelling for Bees this March with members of Mittenfields and another of his projects, Sweet Tea Pumpkin Pie, as well as Dangerosa, We Were Pirates, the Mean Ideas, Sun Committee, and others (one member, Austen Brown, used to be a singer in the Spree). The group has a residency at the Velvet Lounge, and each month’s performance resembles an open mic centered on a theme; at the show this Tuesday, every member will cover a Radiohead song. The Charlottesville, Va., band Invisible Hands opens, and doors are at 7 p.m. $5.

More overstaffed bands after the jump: cute orchestral indie, a Canadian choir, and Thin Lizzy and the Sex Pistols getting festive!

Read More “Clip Job: Five Bands with at Least as Many Members as Songs” »

Salome, one of the few metal bands that performed at this year’s CMJ.

For D.C. bands, the takeaway from CMJ seems to have been this: It will not pluck you from obscurity, but it can’t hurt. Also: Don’t believe the hype.

“The myth that you can land the perfect agent or manager at a place like that—I don’t think it pays attention to the reality that you’ve been talking to that person for seven months already,” said Jesse Elliott, whose polymathic alt-country band These United States played a handful of shows during this year’s College Music Journal Music Marathon. The annual industry gathering featured over 1,000 artists, close to 100 venues, and around a dozen acts from the D.C. area.

Elliott’s got a point: Most of the young bands I heard chatter about during the festival—like Florida’s Surfer Blood, New York’s Freelance Whales, and London’s Golden Silvers and Mumford and Sons—had recording contracts, significant blog buzz, or both going in, not to mention full management teams in place. These are not bands whose success lives or dies according to an industry festival.

“Most of the bands at these festivals are already signed,” wrote Todd Hyman, who runs the District-based labels Carpark and Paw Tracks and hosted CMJ showcases for both, in an e-mail. “Though this year there seemed to be a preponderance of unsigned blog bands. Seems folks were complaining about that.”

Read More “At CMJ, No Fast Track to Fame, but Plenty of IRLing” »

Duchess Says, from Montreal, performs at Arlene’s Grocery in New York City on Wednesday.

Kria Brekkan at Cameo Gallery: A cynic might say Kría Brekkan’s hour-long set at the Paw Tracks label showcase confirmed numerous clichés about Iceland’s parochial peculiarity. To wit: Pretend Lars von Trier’s costume team had reimagined Sabrina the Teenage Witch and you’re still falling short on quirk, insularity, and shamanic strangeness. Crazy-eyed, angel-voiced, and spooky-thin, Brekkan employed all the womblike abstraction of her former band, múm, but none of its glitchy restraint. And because Brekken invoked a very natal image when she crouched on the floor and peeled her dress over her body, I feel OK suggesting that her lengthy, deconstructed nursery rhymes (conjured via laptop, a row of voice-manipulating pedals, and an accordion) could credibly soundtrack a birth. Brekkan performs at Floristree in Baltimore tonight at 9 p.m.

More favorites from CMJ after the jump: bad beach similes, calisthenic indie rock, and intimidating French Canadians!

Read More “(Bonus) Clip Job: Five Acts I Loved at CMJ” »