Sorry for the delay folks, just a bit of technical difficulty. Over the weekend I contacted a few blogs to get the word out about the Swan Lake petition. You can read about it at BrooklynVegan, CBC Radio 3, Exclaim, Trendwhore, and a bunch of others. Thank you so much to all the blogs, here’s hoping we can get to 1000 signatures in the next few weeks.
Stereogum.com recently spoke with Spencer Krug about the myriad of projects he’s working on, including the upcoming Sunset Rubdown record:
Right now he’s editing songs and doing some re-recording at his home, and says the record will be done by the end of this month (just in time for his vacation in Mexico). Perhaps to avoid the “second guessing” he thinks had a negative effect on Random Spirit Lover, Krug and the rest of Sunset Rubdown recorded all the instruments live “on the floor.” “I like these kinds of recordings because they’re very honest and it’s hard to pretend that you sound any different from whatever it is,” he says. He’s also recorded two songs (“Insane Love Awakening” and “Coming To At Dawn”) for a friend’s 7″ series, to be released whenever his friend wants to. He expects the Sunset Rubdown record out in early summer. After that album, he’s planning another, more idiosyncratic record that he’s been working on for two years: an EP of marimba and drum songs. “[It's] an instrument that I’ve always liked, but I’ve never had the patience to bring on the road or even try recording,” he says. “I don’t think it’s the coolest move for my ’street cred,’ but it’s a beautiful sounding instrument, what can I say?”
New Handsome Furs tour dates:
03-06 Mercury Lounge NYC (tickets on sale 1/30 @ 12 noon)
03-20 SXSW Insound Party
04-08 Cargo London, UK
04-10 Motel Mozaique Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands
04-11 La Maroquinerie Paris
04-12 Domino Festival Brussels
Just in case you haven’t heard, Handsome Furs have a new record coming out called Face Control. I already posted that you can pre order the record from Insound.com. However that was before Insound released a separate digital pre order offer which includes a t shirt printed with the design above. The shirt is designed by Andy Dixon from The Chemistry Designs. Handsome Furs just performed at the Sundance Film festival and soon will be on their way to Berlin to start their 2009 world tour!
Spencer Krug writes and plays in Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake. Oh and now he’s also a published short story writer. Krug’s short story ‘Waterside Planting’ is part of The Lifted Brow’s fake bookshelf project. You can read the story on our forum here.
Speaking of Swan Lake, have you signed the petition yet??
photo cred: me
The other day I came across an interesting bit of news on the Jagjaguwar website. The post was in regards to Swan Lake’s new record ‘Enemy Mine’ coming out March 24th. I assumed it was just a press release, however at the very bottom of the post read the following:
SWAN LAKE does not currently have any tour plans but is easily swayed by gold doubloons and/or enthusiastic mobs.
This sentence inspired me to create an online petition entitled ‘Lets get Swan Lake to Tour’. Although there are misspellings, the general idea is to essentially get enough signatures to constitute a mob and therefore persuade the band to tour. So please sign the petition and help us to get Swan Lake to a town near you!
Face Control is now available for Pre Order at Insound.com:
Face Control- CD
Face Control- LP
photo cred:Cactus Muziekcentrum
Handsome Furs will be touring the US and Europe this year in support of Face Control. Here’s a current list of dates, including the newly posted US tour in March:
02-11 Point Ephemere, Paris France- Super Festival
02-12 Le Cylindre, Besanon France- Generiq Festival
02-13 Le Vapeur, Dijon France- Generiq Festival
02-14 La Poudri, Belfort France- Generiq Festival
02-17 Lio Bar, Brescia Italy
02-18 La Casa 139, Milan Italy
02-19 Lokomotiv, Bologna Italy
02-20 Traffic, Roma, Italy
02-21 Route du Rock Winter Edition Festival, St. Malo France
03-12 Mavericks Ottawa, ON
03-13 Horseshoe Tavern Toronto, ON (Canadian Music Week)
03-14 The Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI (tickets on sale 1/16)
03-15 Empty Bottle Chicago, IL
03-16 Off Broadway St. Louis, MO
03-17 Mojo’s Columbia, MO
03-21 The Loft Dallas, TX
03-23 Jackpot Lawrence, KS
03-25 The Aquarium (Dempsey’s Upstairs) Fargo, ND
03-26 7th Street Entry Minneapolis, MN
03-27 The Maintenance Shop Ames, IA
03-28 The Mill Iowa City, IA
03-30 Southgate House Newport, KY
04-09 Motel Mozaïque Festival, Binnenstad The Netherlands
04-14 Gebäude 9 Köln, Germany
04-15 Molotow, Hamburg Germany
04-16 Beatpol, Dresden Germany
04-17 Nachtleben, Frankfurt Germany
04-18 59:1, Munich Germany
Handsome Furs are set to play a (not so) secret show to celebrate the 1st anniversary of Phonopolis & Pome Records. The show is this Thursday January 8th. Tickets are $8 and the line up features a huge list of special guests, including: Julie Doiron, Miracle Fortress, The Luyas, Elfin Saddle, Adam and the Amethysts, Shapes and Sizes, Snailhouse, Special Noise, Nut Brown, and Patrick Gregoire (of Sister Suvi and Islands). Tickets are available at: Cheap Thrills, L’oblique, Atom Heart, Phonopolis, Sound Central, and Sonik. Each band will be playing a mini set, with Handsome Furs headlining. Thanks to forum poster Montreal for the info.
In other tour news, Sunset Rubdown will be performing at the Avant Festival in Moscow on April 25th, 2009 along with The Notwist. Thanks to Lyndsey for the heads up on this. Looks like they may be touring Europe in April/May, which means we should have some news soon about a supposed new record. According to SC Distribution “Sunset Rubdown set to be particularly active throughout 2009.” Sounds good to me.
Photo by Jody Rogac
A new bio for Swan Lake has surfaced with more details about their new record Enemy Mine:
Swan Lake is the musical group featuring celebrated songwriter-mystics Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach). Together they recorded Enemy Mine, their nine-song second album, in Victoria, British Columbia, in early 2008, a little more than a year after the release of their well-received debut collaboration, Beast Moans, also on Jagjaguwar.
While their debut album was a beautifully-weaved mash-up of their disparate song-writing styles, often with layer upon layer of various melodies and stylistics thrown into a collaborative cauldron to magical, and at times discordant effect, their second album Enemy Mine reflects a more strippeddown, more deliberate approach to collaboration. It’s as if they really tried to just make nice songs together. To quote Krug, “There’s architecture here.” Not that the lyric is about collaboration—it fits nicely though.
It is the band’s contention that this is the first known use of a “court painting” as a record cover used in popular music. As a result of this enthusiasm, the band had planned on calling the album Before the Law, a beloved Kafka parable and a reference to this court painting. However, the band is tired of being tagged as “literary”, so they dubbed the record Enemy Mine, a beloved movie from Bejar’s youth, and a good metaphor for collaboration.
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From SC Distrobution:
Enemy Mine will be released in both CD and LP formats. There will also be a pre-order campaign with stores and through mailorder, allowing consumers to immediately receive MP3s of the album with pre-order purchase. The LP will contain a digital download coupon for free MP3s of the full album.
Thanks to ededitedit for posting this on the forum.
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