On the 30th of October, I met with Caithlin De Marrais and her friends at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, which happens to be the same church where Sufjan Stevens recorded piano parts of his album, Illinois, and Caithlin recorded parts of her newest, My Magic City. She wanted to play a few songs with her friends at the church, and Kyle Fischer, who previously played in Rainer Maria with Caithlin and William Kuehn, got us the space to ourselves. They ended up playing for over an hour, and probably continued to do so after I left. For “Carefully”, the very last song I taped, Josh Kaufman gave in to the temptation of unlocking the gigantic, gorgeous church organ, which came alive like a fabulous beast. Also present was Seb Leon, who did a Bowie-esque duet with Caithlin on her song “Outer Space Is Still Sexy”.
On the 19th of November, These United States were in town to play one of their last shows of the tour at Knitting Factory. On the evening of the 20th, they were heading out to Connecticut, and that morning we met in Lefferts Garden, Brooklyn—where they were staying—to film a few songs for the Secret Garden. The sequence of events as they happened: breakfast at the diner, kitchen table conversation and beer-drinking at the apartment, invasion of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that involved insufficient winter clothing and four awesome performances, back at the apartment for a story on the day’s adventures.
[Update: I added downloadable version for your iPod. See within!]
Our new friends at Laundro Matinee have posted a preview of our Secret Garden show with These United States. The full video will be available on this website on December 9December 10? (We’ve been kidnapped by a boatload of pirates who think their ship doesn’t smell… and so we’ll have to return at a later date) | Watch the preview ».
I met with California’s Princeton on the last day of CMJ, just as they were waking up after a late night out, and a week full of shows. Keyboardist Ben Usen was nowhere to be found*, and the band had traveled light with little equipment; so the Kivel brothers took on a keyboard found in their host’s apartment, while drummer David Kitz played the drum machine. Jesse Kivel sings a new song, “Stunner Shades in Heaven”, in the kitchen, and Matt Kivel sings another new song, “Martina & Clive Krantz” in the living room. I requested for at least one song from the Bloomsbury EP, after which Matt learned to play “Ms. Bentwich” on the keyboard as we were filming. That evening the band played their last CMJ show at Club Love, snippets of which you will see in this video.*Ben might’ve been taken hostage by an infamous New York City gang, members of which kept yelling his name at the show.
Princeton will play Pianos on December 2 and Update: December 5 at Union Hall. Read all of our previous posts on Princeton.
When we first talked about doing Secret Garden videos with The Loom, we had planned to perform “Patience for Books” at Retro Fret, a specialty music store in Gowanus that boasts a stunning collection of vintage instruments. At the time, we ended up shooting two videos at singer John Fanning’s apartment and were unable to visit Retro Fret. So we went back later, and below is the result—this is the shorter edit, I might post the longer one later. The Loom is playing several CMJ shows this week, and tonight they share a particularly lovely bill at The Bell House with some of my favorites Princeton, Frances and La Strada.
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Download “To Get Things Straight” | Locas in Love is a precious little project formed by Stefanie Schrank, Björn Sonnenberg, and Jan Niklas Jansen, who also play with Germany’s “powerpop” band, Karpatenhund. Having missed the trio’s Cross-Pollination show with the Blood Sugars at Pianos, I caught up with them at their makeshift studio in Bushwick, where their host, Sam, arrived just in time to play the tambourine. They play two songs for us; we meet Sebastian the cat; Bjorn indulges in a little bit of Bushwick history, introduces Yeti-bama, and takes it to the street.
hooves on the turf is a mostly-music blog based out of brooklyn. i can be reached at hoovesontheturf [at] gmail [dot] com - please send me your lovely music as an attached mp3 or an mp3 link. if i like what you send, i'll be sure to ask for more.
jon in Favorite Music Videos of 2008: “I’m not a big MGMT fan but I’d give an honorable mention to the Time To Pretend video for managing to crossbreed Lord of the Rings with a Windows95 screensaver.”angelica in Not altogether wicked, merely unteachable: “Thank you for this profound and somewhat haunting post. Orwell may have been referring to another period, but this excerpt is pretty much a description of the times now.”Payton in My Own Gummy Winners: “I was trolling the Hype Machine to see who else really enjoyed Crimes (it was my top album as well). What you had to say about West Won hit the nail on the head. Great opening track that does have a huge...”Croytaque in Videos: Dark Dark Dark, The Loom at Union Pool: “if there’s too many problem of sounds, how many “dark” will they add to their name? ; ) Nevertheless an engaging band.”Janice Cosenza in These United States at the Secret Garden: “Just finished watching. What can I say. The band is the best and the video is awesome. This band is not Meat-e-oak-a, they are Soup-ear-e-a! Oh, the pride of a Mom. Merry Merry to...”
