This is an interesting twist! Today I received a Facebook event invite for a show at Dublin Underground in Albany, NY on Monday, October 26th. Bands performing are Alta Mira, The Receiver and The High Dials. What what? THE HIGH DIALS? Like, purveyors of chiming, NUGGETS-era psych-pop? Never thought I’d see the day!

UPDATE:
Show failure last night. Apparently the High Dials were spooked off by the fact that Dublin Underground would not let the bands use the (giant / more-than-adequate / house) PA for the show. Someone mumbled something about the club not wanting to hire a sound engineer for the night as the excuse for not being allowed to use the house PA. Alta Mira and The Receiver soldiered on with the former’s practice PA set up curiously next to the club’s PA; sounding excellent in that compact, crisp-sounding room.

I can appreciate that Monday isn’t the most obvious day to have a full staff, but perhaps making the club barely functional could help smooth any “new-business bumps in the road” that they might be facing. It didn’t help that some clearly advertised beer specials were suddenly not specially priced any longer, nor the absolutely inappropriate insane light show that was constantly spraying green and red lasers around the room. Perhaps there’s more to the story, but kind of a bummer from this perspective, indeed.

Original post, for posterity:
I must admit that I haven’t kept my ears with The High Dials in the past few years, but A New Devotion and War of the Wakening Phantoms contain some excellent, excellent songs that creep into my brain here and there. From the latter, “Strandhill Sands” kind of just wrecks me in a good way.

Strandhill Sands – The High Dials

(Photo by Flickr user tomcochrane, used under a CC share/attribute license)

Now, this is something to behold!

Founding member of Anticon and all-about-sound/beat-production man Odd Nosdam will be stopping in Albany on Saturday, October 24th to play at Valentine’s.

Sharing the evening will be Bre’r (not to be super-confused with Br’er who just played at RPI :: seriously, someone needs a new band name!!!!) and Dead Friend (formerly Gun Christmas, Jamboyz, etc!).

(and really, dope poster!!!)

The lovely folks at The Hidden City have an amazing set of photos from last night’s heARTS aligned event in Cohoes, N.Y. The above image is the card designed by Jason Antonelli that represented the song “Forest & Dive“.

Thanks to Matt Durfee for putting on such a rad event!

Details:
6pm – Doors
7pm – Scientific Maps
8pm – Panel
9pm – off on your merry way

Linda Norris Auditorium
339 Central Ave.
Albany, NY

Deer Tick : “Still Crazy After All These Years”

THIS JUST IN: Deer Tick will play a show at the Madison Grille (?!?!?) on Monday, February 16th. Doors are at 6pm, show starts at 7pm.

I highly endorse this show and look forward to it like you wouldn’t believe!

( Above photo of Deer Tick’s John McCauley crooning on the beach was taken by Liz Isenberg and stolen from the Deer Tick MySpace page. )

Bob Dylan,
Levon Helm,
Swell Season,
Conor Oberst,
Gillian Welch,
Steve Earle

All on one bill…

IN SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY!!!

Not sure when this came together or who is behind it, but WEQX has this web page up announcing this doozy of a get-together for Sunday, August 17th at SPAC. While inside seats run $125, I think I’ll be happy with a four pack of lawn seats for $120 ($30 each is a steal for each individual act alone…) (hell, I’d probably pay a good $100 to see Gillian & Dave play music again…).

Tickets go on sale this Saturday, June 21st via LiveNation, TicketMaster, etc.

This summer just got a whole lot better…

While I had a little bit of trouble getting into the record at first, more listens revealed an unbeatable second half. Witness the sequence from “Regular Unleaded” through “Butter Your Frappe” — killer. The crux of the tunes coming somewhere around “Sandinista” which displays their penchant for seamless odd-meters and cyclical, beautiful canonic writing. Again, severe props to drummer Paul Flaherty for the wide openings between notes and careful tempo handling.

The band has been kind enough to allow me to share this mp3 from the album here!
“Sandinista” : mp3

The full album is available at the iTunes music store. If you enjoy, please consider tossing a little money the bands’ way so they can afford to make and release more recordings.

In addition, the band posted two (downloadable) live performances from their Lizard Lounge show on June 9th on their MySpace page. Check out the loping “Expectations” and an updated version of album track “Butter Your Frappe” featuring some added vocals and some more freak-out than the studio version. These live versions have that spirit and sound I remember from the Valentine’s show that really took me out to dry. While there are hints of this magic hidden throughout the album, the live show is certainly where it’s most likely to be caught.

Mercat will bring their folk/noir/blues/circus music to the Amrose & Sable Gallery tomorrow night (Thursday, 6/11). Sharing the night with whiz-pop auteurs Scientific Maps, Mercat are on a brief tour that will circle them ’round to Ohio and back through the weekend.

Of note within the tangled mass of accordions, jingles, breathy vocals, fiddles, and trouble is the strong arm of cellist Karen Codd, who Albany old-schoolers will remember as former member of knotworking and The Kamikaze Hearts. Since leaving Albany for NYC a few years back, she has firmly ensconced herself in the art and music world, playing in no less than three bands at one time and handling stints at the Guggenheim and currently at Capricious Magazine. I am looking forward to hearing what these ladies have cooked up, piqued by the three songs from their new album “Companion Animal” that are posted on their MySpace page.

( Bonus: check out this video posted by the folks at the Capitol District Federation of Ideas of Scientific Maps playing a song called “Construction Begins”. Scroll forward to the one minute mark for the song to witness some excellent harmonizing by Sci Mappers Donna Baird and Aaron Smith. Rad! The song will be featured on “Brontosaurus : Human” a benefit compliation CD for CDFI released by The Rev Records. Excellent!)