Category Archives: lollapalooza

My water comes straight from the tap

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You forgot, didn’t you? You totally forgot how much you LOVED Matt & Kim. You got them confused with She & Him, and remembered that you only like listening in those melancholy moments. NO! Matt & Kim is nothing like that! Last year’s Grand was just one beautiful explosion after the other. Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino are two totally insane dance punk masters who might be the best representation of the term “dynamic duo” ever envisioned.

Earlier this month they released Sidewalks and I have restored my joyful commitment to shake it. Shake ehhhttttttt. I’m ready to travel for a show again. I’m in full-on stalker oh-my-God-I-could-be-your-friend mode. But I couldn’t be their friend. I am nowhere near as cool or as brave. I will just stay here and stay safe, with my silly four-strands-of-pink-hair punk posery.

But oh my God, seriously. PleaseIneedtoseethemlive.

I slept through this tour that just ended.

Do you know why?

I was so mad that all my cries about THEM being the SOLE reason I wanted to go to Lollapalooza where unheeded.

What. That’s the way I remember it.

And those bottles are just for show.

Click to Play Matt & Kim – Cameras

I’ll leave you with this. It is unmitigated evidence that Kim Schifino could be my best friend.

I have always said if Beyonce came up to me and said “Kim (yes, in this daydream Beyonce knows me) I want you to come be one of my back up dancers,” I would have to tell Matt I am leaving the band. Well, we all know this isn’t going to happen, so to satisfy myself I dance at our shows. I decided I had to step it up though and bring out not just a booty dance, but a booty dance on top of the crowd.

I have done it twice now. The first time was in San Francisco. See the video below.

Buy all the Matt and Kim you can get your hands on and that is an order!

The reason my molars are so broken

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Please don’t put your face into your hands we could be friends.

This is an amazing album. I am quite satisfied with the music I have discovered this far in 2010, even if half of it was produced in 09… Yeah, 09. Mookie and I are both bummed that we didn’t “hear of them first.”

Maybe we should move to the east coast, where all this great hipster music is coming from.

Nah.

“I’d rather live in Bend, not know anything, drink tea, and look at the water,” I told Mookie. We will, one day.

And since you are my friend I would ask that you lower me down slow and tell the man in the black cloak he doesn’t need to trouble his good soul with those Latin conjugations

It’s all good though. The album just recently dropped, on April 13. So probably none of your friends know about them yet. Go check them out: FREELANCE WHALES. The album is called Weathervanes.

Download Freelance Whales – Kilojoules

So I’ve arranged for your phobias to be performed by a string quartet

Some of these catchy lyrics… They make the non carbonated Neuro Sleep I am currently pounding come out of my nose. These are lyrics in the same vein as Death Cab For Cutie… This “simple complicated lyrics” styling that I have such a thing for.

Don’t fix my smile; life is long enough…A few more of the quite brilliant postmortem instructions being doled out in the song “Generator Second Floor”…

I love this album. I love these sounds they make, what with the use of glockenspiel, guitars, banjos, tambourines, harmonium… Laptops too… Cello… You know how we love a cello… And you know how we love bands that use ridiculously-named instruments like bing carbon telephones and microkorgs.

Oh, and could this be the best part of the album? Check out this album art.

Right?

Here is what you need to know about Freelance Whales. I am pulling this off of their MySpace page:

Freelance Whales found one another in late 2008, in Queens, amidst a strange amalgam of unfamiliar instruments, and precariously arranged pop songs. Using whatever musical gadgets they happened upon (mostly harmonium, banjo, glockenspiel, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums, waterphone), the five members worked at crafting songs with interlocking rhythmic patterns, lush textural layering, and an engaged group-vocal energy. The result is their debut LP, weathervanes, whose songs work at evoking a sense of dislocation, or sensory disorientation. They invite the human spirit to exit the body, if only for brief moments. Freelance Whales can be spotted in the streets and humble venues of New York City, and in due time, elsewhere.

In due time, indeed. They played at South by Southwest. They’re touring New England right now. They’ll make it to the left coast by the end of May. Then Lollapalooza. Sasquatch.

“Amazingly, Freelance Whales are even more arresting live than they are on record. They exhibit the exuberance of a young band that feels lucky to be sharing ideas with their audience” – Leo Maymind, Earfarm

Check out another favorite, “Ghosting”, performed live for NPR’s All Songs Considered – live at an Austin hotel during SXSW:

And all your little molars cracked under pressure