May 3, 2007

Today's Hotness: Colleen, Pernice Brothers, The Cure, Cat-A-Tac

Colleen -- Les Ondes Silencieuses>> How many Colleen releases will just sneak up on us? We think this is the second one in a row -- we had much more luck getting promos from her (well, Colleen proprietress Cecille Schott's) label Leaf when we were still with Junkmedia. A couple years back we reviewed Colleen's sophomore set The Golden Morning Breaks here and named it one of our favorite releases of 2005 here. Anyway, tucked into this review at Mapadaisical of a live Colleen performance is news that Schott's third proper (and sorta fifth improper) record Les Ondes Silencieuses will be released in the UK May 21; the U.S. release is slated for July 10. As with her previous album, the music on Les Ondes Silencieuses is coaxed from obscure instruments such as the viola da gamba (a seven-stringed "ancestor" of the cello) and spinet, which is apparently a small harpsichord. Mapadaisical also points us to this MP3 from the new record -- check it out.

Colleen -- "Blue Sands" -- Les Ondes Silencieuses
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>> We don't think we've seen this posted anywhere else just yet, even though the announcement was in an email from a week ago. Joe Pernice of the Pernice Brothers is about to embark on a new recording project. Whether the sessions will yield a Pernice Brothers record or something under a different moniker is not yet determined. Apparently the sessions will happen at the Ashmont Records world HQ south of Boston. Ashmont honcho Joyce claims she's been asked to rent Morphine's drum kit for the sessions. If that is true and not some inside joke, it makes us wonder why they don't just jam at Hi-N-Dry Studios in Cambridge, which we visited recently. Good times. Anyway, with the announcement today that "Gilmore Girls" is getting canceled, Pernice's marketing team must be in a tailspin trying to figure out the next-best means of reaching the youth of today. In case you've forgotten, you can stream a whole arm-load of Pernice Brothers jams at the band's site here.

>> At this point there are few acceptable reasons for not having heard The Cure's epic-lengthed mood piece "Carnage Visors," especially as it has been made widely available for The Digital Age via the recent (and most excellent) Cure album reissues. But anyway, if you haven't heard it, today's Ear Farm's post is for you.

> We discovered the band Cat-A-Tac today via a quasi-legal podcast of our favorite local college radio show this morning. We expect you are going to hear a lot more about the Denver-based quartet soon, at least from us. We went over to CD Baby to buy its just released debut Past Lives And Former Lives from CD Baby and -- at least today -- they were selling them 2-for-1 stylee. The track we heard that inspired us to instantly buy was the title track, and we are eagerly awaiting the discs' arrival in the mail. In the meantime, we can all stream the cut and two others at Cat-A-Tac's MySpace wigwam here. There you will also encounter some tour dates, including two for the east coast of the U.S. No Boston show... yet.

>> We're hearing from people who know stuff that Dinosaur Jr. will be taping a couple TeeVee appearances next week. So if you missed them on Letterman last week, you'll have some more chances. Hey, let's check to see if the Letterman site has posted the performance from Monday yet... Well, whatta ya know! Here it is! You've got to sit through a short soap commercial, but it is well, well worth it. Oh, we just noticed that according to Freakscene it is also on YouTube now. So much for the lawsuit we guess. Here it is:

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