So, when does the bowtie get its chance to go viral? (Image via Crispy on the Outside)

Good morning, D.C. elite! Yesterday, POLITICO failed to acknowledge that D.C. is a real place with, you know, real unemployment problems, and made the sweeping generalization that people are getting that money with no trouble around here. Since that’s clearly not true, let’s reclaim their totally absurd “D.C. elite” label for ourselves, why don’t we?

Missed out on the Smithsonian’s bhangra fun at Freer Sackler? ReadySetDC has you covered. Looks like the most vibrant evening the Smithsonian has ever seen. How about Bryan Weaver's campaign video? Looks like Jim Graham's bowtie has got some stiff competition.

Prince of Petworth notes that Busboys & Poets at 5th and K got upgraded, inside and out: That amorphous yellow sculpture got some landscaping, and the restaurant itself expanded. Does this mean you’ll, for once, get a table upon entry (this reporter has doubts)? Over on H Street, Biergarten Haus is hosting its first-ever trivia night, and DCist checks in on new Hirshhorn additions.

The Guardian reports that Fugazi is making moves. Despite no official announcement from Dischord, Guy Picciotto told World of Fugazi the band has been digitizing their archive. The content—show recording—will ultimately be available for download. The Guardian speculates the release of the archive could be well-timed with another announcement: that the legendary punk group, which never officially disbanded, could be reuniting...perhaps.

Way up in our neighbor to the north (er, Baltimore), Dan Deacon announces that this year’s Whartscape will be the last. That means you should bust your corduroy- and flannel-ensconced butt to Charles Street for one last round of cassette singles—and the girl from Ponytail treating an entire parking lot to her dolphin yelps. But, there’s hope yet for Wham City devotees: Deacon mentions Whartscape could evolve into an “outdoor festival with camping.” It’s the summer camp hipsters dream about.

Here on Arts Desk, Ramon Ramirez says Rick Ross’ Teflon Don is full of “monstrous, blockhead” bangers, but that’s a good thing. Jon Fischer digs up Hitler’s downfall in the face of Nadastrom, and notes that the controversial Imagining Madoff will open this week in New York. Jason Cox discovers that, on top of, like, making phone calls and stuff, your smartphone now functions as a show flyer. How novel!

"I really unabashedly am a bad singer," says Sam Herring of Baltimore's once rough-and-ragged—and now disarmingly introspective and motivic—Future Islands. He quickly qualifies the statement: "I don’t think I’m a bad singer, but I don’t consider myself a singer. I consider myself a performer who can sing a bit and does sing."

On the trio's upcoming record, In Evening Air, Herring's voice—an inflected, erudite growl, half Troggs and half armchair thespian—is a rewarding counterpoint to his lyrics, heartbroken and impressionistic, and Future Island's self-described "post-wave," a sometimes svelte, romantic take on synth-punk that feels spacious but not overloaded. The group plays tonight at the Black Cat.

"I’ll tell you, I sound 10 times better eight weeks into a tour because I’ve hit my stride," Herring says. "My voice is weaker but it’s somehow stronger. It’s been scarred over enough times."

A weakness for cigarettes and whiskey has been, well, helpful, if not always obviously so to Herring's friends. "I would tell them I was in the Tom Waits school of voice," he says.

"I try to completely let go of my voice, as much as I can," he says. "It’s funny that I get criticism—this guy is overly dramatic, he’s so soulful but it’s over this dance music. It’s the culture of pop music and electronic music that’s taken that soul out."

In other words: Expect more abandon than usually comes with drum machines and synths. Herring says he's used to being jumped on, rushed, and dogpiled during shows—most of the time, he manages to hold onto his mic despite the bruising. He wasn't so lucky last summer, though, when he toured as part of the Dan Deacon Ensemble in support of the junkyard-electronica musician's mammoth Bromst record. At a Paris gig, Herring was tackled by "this really drunk French kid." Six months later, he found out he'd torn his ACL, for which he had surgery this February.

Often on In Evening Air, Herring reaches those emotive highs. But on many songs—including some of the dancier ones—he sings in a softer, almost narrative voice. "We weren’t trying to make a party album," he says. That's never been the intention, ever since Future Islands formed from the ashes of its members' old band, Art Lord & the Self-Portraits. But the results—Future Island's scrappy and infectious 2008 album Wave Like Home, its entropic live shows—suggest otherwise. "I guess our music always came from the party atmosphere, but there’s always been that juxtaposition between what the music does and what I do."

The album, Herring says, chronicles a breakup he went through in 2008 while he was on tour, and the theme seeps into every lyric. Take the last song Herring wrote for In Evening Air, "Vireo's Eye," a ratchety anthem with a soaring chorus. "It would be so easy to just put nothing over it, and it would still be a great song," he says. "It was a challenge to me to write a final goodbye." Ultimately Herring concocted a sort of meta-pop coda: "Our own love has died through the medium of our music, and through our music I have chronicled the events of our love dying," he says. "The recurring line is, 'You are not my clementine and I am not your diamond's eye.'"

But as close as he is to his lyrics, Herring says he often reacts most strongly to the band's solely instrumental moments, the work of his bandmates J. Gerritt Welmers and William Cashion. Of one noisy fadeout on the record, he says: "It breaks my heart, and makes me so happy."

Future Islands perform with Double Dagger and Ed Schrader tonight at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat.

Perhaps you've heard there's a lot of free shit going down this weekend. If you haven't, well, there's a lot of free shit going down this weekend. Most of it revolves around the Kia Soul Collective tour, which has set up shop in a warehouse at 3330 New York Ave. NE, with free parking as well as a free shuttle from Union Station. Wale performs in the space tonight at 7 p.m., with DJs Stereofaith, Reed Rothchild, and Chris Burns spinning from 4 p.m. Tomorrow night belongs to Dan Deacon, The Creepers, and Nouveau Riche DJs; the music starts at 8 p.m. And MGMT is headlining an 8 p.m. show Sunday night following DJ sets by DJ CA$$IDY and Dave Nada. To get tickets to this last concert, however, you have to test drive a Kia first, which you can do all weekend, if that's your thing.

And Future, Army Of Me (in an acoustic iteration), Laughing Man, and The Mighty Heard are all performing outdoors at the H Street Festival on Saturday, all along H Street NE. Brightest Young Things is also hosting a free party that night in the Rock & Roll Hotel's upstairs bar. Baller.

Dischord Records is now distributing releases by Windian Records, a new label started by The Points drummer Travis "Cobruhhh" Jackson. The band's new Beat In Hell 7", whose 6-minute B-side is about four times longer than every other Points song, is available now.

This is a few days old: Dischord and DeSoto Records are rereleasing Jawbox's 1994 career highpoint For Your Own Special Sweetheart, and they've included a few bonus tracks from the very rare Savory+3 EP. The remastered album drops Nov. 23.

The Velodrome dance/not-dance party is back from summer vaycay this weekend.

Local way-beyond-left-field hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory has a release show at Liv next Friday for its new album, Second Rome, and apparently the eminent Princeton African American Studies professor and group namesake will be there.

Image courtesy of Dan Deacon's MySpace page.

More info and video from last year's Whartscape after the jump.

Not familiar with Wham City? Get acquainted. B-more's a quirky metropolis with a soundtrack to match. Just as trained ears can pick out a distinctive D.C. post-punk grind, Baltimore's deafening feature is noisy pop. And Wham City's noisy pop, Baltimoreans will agree, is de riguer. It's a bit off in the best way possible, and so is Baltimore.

Mega-Ppsses and Friday evening's show in the BMA auditorium are sold out, but tickets for individual shows are still available for $18. Considering each set's lineup of 20+ bands, that's a lot of bang for your buck.

Mostly playing music from his most recent album, 2009’s Bromst, the Baltimore native accomplished a feat that can prove difficult for experimental artists to pull off: the ability to stretch one’s tolerance for abstract sound while inspiring the type of vertical bouncing and fist-pumping usually found at a Journey cover band show. In this contradiction lies Deacon’s brilliance, though, because the theatricality that supplements the music does not read as attempted irony. Deacon closed the show with “Wham City" (the clincher of Spiderman of the Rings) as his entire band and touring crew fell off the stage to surf the sea of upraised arms. Left alone onstage, sweating through a one-piece painter’s suit and tinkering earnestly with his buttons and knobs, Deacon cut the figure of a mad scientist in a lab whose product inarguably transformed the world into a far better place to be.

The entire show was recorded and is available for streaming at NPR Music.

Sunday

• Dan Deacon & Ensemble, Future Islands, Teeth Mountain. 9:30 club. $12. All ages.
• The Dig, All The Kings. The Red & The Black. $6. +21.
• MC Chris, Whole Wheat Bread. DC9. $14. +18.
• Ben Lee, Low vs Diamond, Dawes. Rock and Roll Hotel. $16. All ages.
• NSO plays Mozart. Kennedy Center. $20-$80. All ages.
• German Academic All-Star Jazz Ensemble. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free. All ages.

Dan Deacon photo by Frank Hamilton, via MySpace.

Summer Music Guide picks after the jump.

• 9:30 Club: Dan Deacon & Ensemble, Future Islands, Teeth Mountain. $12.
• Bangkok Blues: Blues Jam with the Idle Americans. Call for price.
• Birchmere: Moya Brennan, Ashley Davis. $29.50.
• DC9: MC Chris, Whole Wheat Bread, I Am the Dream. $12 in advance, $14 day of show.
• Galaxy Hut: Prabir & the Substitutes.
• IOTA Club & Cafe: Jill Sobule, Justin Trawick. $15.
• Jaxx: Kreator with Exodus, Belphegor, Warbringer, Epicurean. $22–$25.
• Kennedy Center Concert Hall: Master Chorale of Washington: “Carmina Burana.” $25–$80.
• Kennedy Center Millennium Stage: German Academic All Star Jazz Ensemble. Free.
• Kennedy Center Opera House: Washington National Opera: Wagner’s “Siegfried.” $45–$300.
• Lyric Opera House: Etta James and the Roots Band. Call for price.
• Navy-Marine Corp Memorial Stadium: Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival: Albert Cummings, Zac Harmon, The Nighthawks featuring Hubert Sumlin, Lydia Pense & Cold Blood, Shemekia Copeland, Blood Sweat & Tears, Jonny Lang. $45-$115.
• The Red & the Black: The Dig, All the Kings. $6.
• Rock & Roll Hotel: Ben Lee, Low vs. Diamond, Dawes. $16.
• Sonar: Lift Me Up Tour featuring Kate Voegele (on the club stage). Call for price.
• Sonar: The Ting Tings. Call for price.
• The Talking Head: Liechtenstein. Call for price.

Powered by his critically successful new release (Bromst) and glowing green skull, music-as-performance artist Dan Deacon chugs along on his North American tour, leaving his mark on dancefloors and day-glo wearing revelers along the way. But if there's one thing on which Deacon won't leave a mark, it's the environment. At least, that's the idea. In an effort to reduce his carbon footprint, the Baltimoron is following trailblazer Willie Nelson's (and Matt & Kim, Sheryl Crow, myriad indie acts, etc.) footprints in a veggie oil-powered school bus (via Pitchfork).

Although there are mixed opinions about the "veggie car's" efficacy in saving the planet, I say, Good job Dan Deacon, doin' your part. BUT IT GET'S BETTER. Waste (used) veggie oil is not so easy to scavenge by day after rockin' so hard at night. So, Deacon's bartering with fans–grease for spots on the guest list! Five gallons of clean, filtered veggie oil = you, plus one, on the guest list. Thirty gallons = dinner aboard the eco-bus, prepared lovingly by Deacon and friends. When you and your green grease arrive at the venue, call Geoff (862-266-6130) for the hook up.

Since Deacon wraps his tour at the 9:30 club May 17, I did some preliminary digging for greasy contacts. Unfortunately, D.C.'s few WVO (waste vegetable oil) online forums/blogs have been inactive for a year or more. Most restaurants'll be happy to part with the slop, so reaching out to pubs, burger joints, and diners on your own might be your best bet (my search stopped short of calling every restaurant with a heart attack on its menu). And there's always Craigslist.

Still, with D.C.'s liberal population, it's curious that there aren't any active sites/blogs devoted to grease foraging. Are there any WVO hotspots in D.C.? Or is the french fry mobile passe, and biking the optimal way to traverse the District (unless, of course, you're hauling gear on tour)?

Photo of Dan Deacon by Bob Jones, via MySpace.

Last night, I realized that in my mini-review of Dan Deacon's now-leaked album, Bromst, I should have posted a few soundclips to give BPB readers a chance to hear some of the Baltimore artist's epic creations. Well fair-use laws dictate that you will only get to hear a small portion of these lengthy songs. It's like only reading the first ten pages of Crime and Punishment. Oh well. Here's samples from two Bromst tracks:

"Surprise Stephanie"

"Wet Wings":

Bromst comes out March 24 on Carpark.

*photo courtesy of BrooklynVegan.

So Dan Deacon's upcoming, long-awaited, much discussed, new album, Bromst, leaked yesterday. At least it's the first day I noticed its appearance in the freebie format. Deacon has said the new album is darker. The album's first single has already been digested. Deacon told the Baltimore City Paper that he thought of Bromst as more of an album than 2006's Spiderman of the Rings:

"Unlike Spiderman, which was essentially a one-man, purely electronic piece of music, Bromst was recorded entirely live and written to be performed by a 15 person band."

Apparently, the album has a narrative, too. Whatever his intentions, Deacon still knows how to build a song. The songs may feel like your walking through a Lucky Charms forest (the chipmunks return) but this time he's figured out the low end, too. And, well, occasionally unprocessed singing. "Padding Ghost" and album opener,"Build Voice," are beautiful examples of Deacon's fresh use of the slow build. "Snookered" is the saddest Wham City nursery rhyme you'll have ever heard.

"Of the Mountains" finds its footing in skewered poly-rhythms and mournful wordless chants before melting into an (indie) dance floor stomper. Midway in, the song switches up and goes quiet and tribal again as if Deacon's raided Peter Gabriel's drum circle. The (indie) club kids are going to lose it over this one.

"Suprise Stefani" could pass as almost conventional, maybe not even out of place on a Postal Service record. "Wet Wings" opens with a sample of an old-timey spiritual (Hazel Dickens?). Maybe Deacon found the haunting tune at True Vine before melting the sample down and turning the whole thing into your Spring jam. The song archs upward into a cacophonous bliss, rocking steady with a lost Run-DMC beat, a marching band thump. All of it given the Joe Meek bells and whistles. "Slow Horns/Run For Your Life"–with its moving, staccato piano break–is a sweet surprise. Suddenly, there are no jokes.

This isn't a man alone with his comic books and keyboards. If Deacon wants a movement, he's gonna get one.

Dischord says remastered copies of Fugazi's "7 Songs" EP are now available.

Gypsy Eyes need to update its news page. We know the label is hosting an inaugural-themed event at Comet. Just can't find the details.

I'm really digging The Points.

Your Must Purchase: Sublime Frequencies has a another vinyl-only Tuareg guitar record out.

The Vinyl District revisits some classic Replacements tunes.