Monday, July 31, 2006

Superchunk Surfacing



our favorite neighborhood bar, the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro, NC is celebrating 5 years of getting locals & tourists sloshed and having a great jukebox, and Superchunk will be playing a show as part of that celebration...September 1 at the Cat's Cradle of course. supposedly we'll be practicing a couple times between now and then so it could be pretty good. i told everyone in the band that we'd be performing a new song called "Learned to Surf", but in order for that to happen, i have to (re-)learn to surf, and then write the song, so i coulda just been talkin'. we'll see.

Tenement Halls is gonna rock that shit also!

scroll down over here for a nice recap of the last show we did (at SXSW this year) from the cats over at Evil Sponge .

old chunk live pic from Irving Plaza by Alexis Scherl

Friday, July 28, 2006

Not Much Going on in the World These Days...


...might as well go on a Soul Patrol ! Our esteemed leader takes time a time out from not getting jackshit done anyway to meet with the bafflingly....well, just baffling Taylor Hicks tonight on your dime, folks. odds are that he's smarter than Bush and less of a suck-up than Blair, who's hanging in the White House until the Idol folks show to partay.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

So Much Music...


...so few hours in the day. what's been in the pile..."NP" as the kids say:
Eccentric Soul - The Big Mack Label the Numero Group label is on such a roll it's sick, i don't even look at what the album is anymore, if i see the cool package w/ the "N" on it, i get it. no letdown here; i hope if they ever run out of obscure labels to reissue they just start making them up.
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs yeah of course this is the classic, but sometimes we take classics for granted. went back and listened this morning in anticipation of seeing the man live in concert next week, and it really is nearly perfect.
Oakley Hall - Gypsum Strings best live band i've seen this year's newest record didn't hit me as immediately as the one before with the blue cover, but it has now caught up. great stuff on their site .
Hot Chip - The Warning been addicted to this record since the first time i skeptically put it on expecting to hear sub-Rapture dance-punk drivel and instead heard great songs performed in the style of a more soulful OMD, or maybe a high-school New Order without the faux naivete. awesome, i'm going to do a cover of "And I Was A Boy From School", i'm serious. i already started.
Lavender Diamond - You Broke My Heart and some other songs from the internet...when i hear "she's somehow affiliated with Devendra Banhart and the whole freakfolk scene" i don't exactly drop what i'm doing and crank up the old victrola, but i love a tremolo-less singing voice that's pure like this, it's really charming stuff. could become precious quickly but hasn't yet, anyway...
Bill Evans - Alone i can always, pretty much always, put on a Bill Evans record and be happy i did. i don't know if i'll ever UNDERSTAND what he's doing, but i'll never let that stop me. this is just him by his lonesome, no overdubs (though those records are good too), and it's beautiful.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Steely Dan Brings the Funny



there are some hilarious lyrics in Steely Dan songs, but they also often come off as dudes who take themselves really, really seriously. maybe they do! but this open letter to Luke Wilson asking for his help in getting his brother to apologize for making a terrible movie out of one of their songs is worth reading start to finish.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Kind Words


some more nice and semi-nice notices for the Who Loves the Sun score, courtesy the internets:

Prefix

Dusted
Artist Direct
Amazon

and the movie's site is now active to the extent that you can watch a
trailer there -- note the Superchunk in the background, and the great Silver Jews song, of which there are a couple in the film.
if you didn't go see the
Silver Jews on their last couple (and first couple ever!) tours, do so when you get the chance, it's beautiful.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Shows, playing them


to get warmed up for what will surely be an onslaught of live appearances after the release of the new Be Still Please album we're happy to report a few pre-release live dates, and even happier to report that we're opening for the incomparable M.Ward on these shows. Portastatic will be a duo for these, with myself and Margaret White making all the noise:

Sept 18 Charlottesville VA, Satellite Ballroom
w/ M.Ward
Sept 19 Carrboro NC, Cat's Cradle
w/ M. Ward & Lambchop (!! "strong triple bill" as JJ Jackson use to say)
Sept 20 Nashville TN, The Belcourt Theatre
w/ M. Ward
Sept 22 Denton TX, Hailey's
w/ M. Ward
Sept 23 Austin TX, The Parish Room
w/ M. Ward


this trip includes one town i've never personally seen, Denton, TX, and a couple of my favorite venues to play (the Cradle, and The Parish Room). The Belcourt sounds too classy for our types, and i have no idea what Charlottesville will be like if it doesn't involve sushi.

see you there!

(thanks to John for the photo)

Friday, July 14, 2006

The First Song On Our New Album

is called "Sour Shores" and yr pals at pitchfork have made it available for listening to...
Sour Shores

the album will be called Be Still Please and here's the rest of the tracklisting for those who like to imagine what the other 8 songs will sound like too:

1. Sour Shores
2. Black Buttons
3. I'm in Love (with Arthur Dove)
4. Sweetness and Light
5. Getting Saved
6. You Blanks
7. Like a Pearl
8. Cheers and Applause
9. Song for a Clock

Thursday, July 13, 2006

oh, right, portastatic

Who Loves the Sun soundtrack has been out for over a month and while we didn't get the Harper's cover we were hoping for (or at least a review in Alternative Press -- oh wait we did get that) there's been some love on the old interweb:

The Spacelab
Cokemachineglow
A Robot Cometh
the 'Fork
Tiny Mix Tapes

plus scroll down at the site below for a nice review here of the live soundtrack to The Unknown (which we will hopefully perform again elsewhere, later this year or early next....)

SoylentX

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Tangled Up In Blogs


spent a breezy week at the beach and i suppose it's time to get back to the blogging... in between getting crushed by rogue waves i found the time to read the Bob Dylan memoir "Chronicles" and if you have a passing interest in the man i highly recommend its bizarrely detailed, often scattershot, sometimes terribly written but always entertaining and hilarious pages to you. the comically circuitous "explanation" of the numerical system that revitalised his songwriting sometime around 1990 is awesome, as is the anecdote about sitting around with Cash, Kristofferson, et al playing some tunes & talking about why he doesn't eat pork... read today he has a new album coming out, typically ugly art (it's no Saved, though, in that dept), and i'm looking forward to it.

check this mesmerizing live clip from the pancake makeup phase.