It seems like only yesterday when we first heard of a little band from New York called Interpol. The band exploded onto the scene in the wake of the ‘NY Garage Revival’ that started in 2001 along with other bands like The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Always compared to Joy Division, Paul Banks and the boys make a sound of their own free of imitations. Interpol, still going strong, haven’t changed much in sound throughout the years, but we can’t help but go back and see where it all began. “PDA” was the band’s first single on Matador Records and gained the band instant success making them known as indie rock staples and artsy fellows.
Unless you have been living under a rock lately, you may have heard about a little band called The Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Yes, they are one of the most attention grabbing bands that have come out of New York City in a while, but the buzz on the street is starting to point to another upcoming indie act called Wyldlife. Wyldlife singer Dave Feldman has music flowing through his veins, as his brother Kurt Feldman plays drums in both The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The Depreciation Guild. Even though Wyldlife has barely broken into their twenties, the band has been together more than half their life and it shows. Fresh off their summer tour, the band who is already working on songs for album two, have just released their new EP titled Now We Are Gentlemen. Once you grab ahold of this record you will not want to let it go. Every song seems catchier than the one before and it somehow gets better with every listen. With killer guitar licks from Sam Allen and Jon Rick alongside the brilliant rhythm section of G Scott Corey and Spencer Alexander, the band manages to create a sound that hasn’t had me this excited since I first heard The Strokes who they share a degree of likeness to. Feldman’s voice is smooth with a slight rock edge and a lot of soul which is hard to pull off. This combination makes Wyldlife nearly flawless and extremely memorable. Watch out New York, there’s a new buzz band in town.
CMJ 2009 is just around the corner. It’s so close we can smell it in the air. Even though the artists aren’t supposed to be revealed until late next week the earliest, CMJ managed to spill the beans on a few. And by few we mean 70 out of about 1,200 bands. No huge names have been released yet but CMJ always holds out on us. The festival will take place from October 20th to the 24th this year in New York City as always. Is there any other place to hold such an event? Going strong for 28 years it’s always one of the most anticipated music festivals of the year. Some of the bands that have been confirmed so far are The Antlers, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Action Painters, These United States, Otter Petter, and Woodpigeon.
Discounted passes are available at CMJ.com until Tuesday August 18th. Act fast to avoid paying the regular price.
Welcome to our first installment of ‘PLAYTIME!’ This has been an idea we’ve been toying around with for quite some time that we have finally launched. Let us explain to you what ‘Playtime!’ is. This will be a segment in which we film some of our favorite bands and artists. Think of it as a version of ‘Take Away Shows’ but on a playground in New York City. Bands will be performing stripped down performances of their songs as life goes on behind them. Sounds nice, huh?Expect a lot more these to come!
Up first is The Everyday Visuals!
Our first episode of Playtime! features Boston’s own, The Everyday Visuals. We took the band to the ABC Playground over the weekend where they performed two songs, ‘Heal Me’ and ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ off their new self titled record.
The Everyday Visuals Perform ‘Heal Me’
The Everyday Visuals Perform ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’
The Everyday Visuals also performed an amazing show at Piano’s that night. An acoustic set if you will. In any situation the band can perform beautifully. Singer/Guitarist Chris Pappas’ voice is haunting and sends chills down your spine even when performing the most upbeat of songs. You can tell he is a true songwriter and it just comes natural to him. The accompaniment and backing vocals of Joe Seiders, Kyle Fredrickson, and Eli Scheer complete the sound as they play like seasoned musicians with a great deal of soul to them.
See more photos from The Everyday Visuals at Piano’s after theJUMP
Interpol frontman Paul Banks recently released his first video for his new solo project under the name Julian Plenti. The video for ‘Games for Days’ features Emily Haines (of Metric and Broken Social Scene ) and is rather dark but somehow also charming. The two get to know each other and then trash the place. Classic love story. Paul Bank has not only has returned to his old label Matador to release his record ‘Skyscraper’ but the album tends to sound a bit similar sounding to the first Interpol record, ‘Turn on the Bright Lights.’ This my friends is a good thing. We can’t wait to see more videos from Julian Plenti.
Just when we thought, or were promised really, that a new album by The Strokes was on the way, it was recently released that frontman Julian Casablancas is releasing a solo album of his own. I guess the big question here is, ‘What took so long?’ since nearly all of the other members have been working on other projects. With all of that aside, I have a feeling that this will possibly be the most popular of The Strokes’ side projects. The album will be titled ‘Phrazes For the Young’ and include songs such as ‘Brake Lights’ and ‘Ludlow’. It was produced by Jason Lader with additional work by Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogis (who oddly just produced the new Pete Yorn album. Guess he is settling in since Bright Eyes is only making one more record together before Conor goes solo for good). Casablancas will hit the road this year with a series of special show dates and then a mini solo tour to follow at the end of 2009. I’m going to take a longshot and say he will probably appear at CMJ. Will we finally get that new Strokes record this year? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. They said they were working on it. Sigh. Quite frankily, I just miss The Strokes.
Modern Mystery 
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