Ravens & Chimes’ follow-up to 2007′s Reichenbach Falls is done recording, frontman Asher Lack just blogged. The band reunited with dream team producers Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire) and Larry Crane (Elliott Smith) to track the sophomore effort, which should be due later this year. One track that will likely make the cut is “Carousel,” a mournful ballad that almost made the Eclipse soundtrack. The band will return to the stage with a June 26 gig at Bowery Ballroom. [Photo by David Greenwald]
The new Ravens & Chimes song finds the New York band in a different mood than their usual autumnal, post-Funeral blues. “Hearts of Palm,” in fact, finds frontman Asher Lack and company sounding downright joyful. Could it be Where The Wild Things Are? Signs of life in healthcare reform? The abundance of pumpkin ale? The abundance of pumpkin everything? Whatever it is, let’s hope it’s as contagious as swine flu. (New Yorkers: the band plays CMJ this Friday at the Mercury Lounge at 8:30. I expect a full report.)
Premiere! I finally joined the rest of the cool kids on Vimeo (verdict: rad) and now that we’re in hi-def visually, if not sonically, here’s a gem of a jam: a new live track from Ravens & Chimes. Frontman Asher Lack tells me this song, “Clarissa Explains It All” — yes, after your favorite ’90s Nickelodeon show — is going to be a bit faster when it arrives as the b-side of this fall’s “Hearts of Palm” single, but it’s pretty high energy here. The Rawkblog Band to Watch has half of their sophomore disc tracked and hopes to tour before knocking out the rest, so we’re looking toward 2010 at this point. No rush, fellas.
A pair of rehearsal videos from Rawkblog ‘09 Band to Watch Ravens & Chimes just went up on YouTube. “Outside the Window” is above and “Spend the Night With You” is after the jump; both are the kind of evocative, insistent indie folk we’ve come to expect from the group, who are in the midst of recording their sophomore album. Promising stuff. Update: “Outside the Window” has been taken down, hope you got to hear it; “Spend the Night With You” is above.
Bummed that on a list of a lot of only semi-obvious picks from artists with bigger, even better songs, Elliott Smith got stuck with “Needle in the Hay,” the song that most plays into the Elliott Smith Was Sad And Took Drugs And Sang About Himself Narrative, when, like Joni Mitchell or Neil Young or his heroes in Big Star and the Beatles, his “confessionalism” was as much storytelling and character study as it ever was diary-page.
Despite “Miss Misery,” it is admittedly the song I think he’s best known for; it is a great and powerful song, but he was and remains so much more than that.
Also, this: “Posthumously parsing Elliott Smith songs— for foreshadowing, for anything— feels like something of a fool’s errand in 2010.”
I don’t know, Amanda, does that mean David Foster Wallace’s books have no meaning now? Or the poems of, like, Samuel Coleridge? What an awfully slippery slope to look for an angle on.
Also really glad “1979” charted so high, song rules, the Pumpkins rule(d), suck it, cred.
Ravens & Chimes’ follow-up to 2007′s Reichenbach Falls is done recording, frontman Asher Lack just blogged. The band reunited with dream team producers Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire) and Larry Crane (Elliott Smith) to track the sophomore effort, which should be due later this year. One track that will likely make the cut is “Carousel,” a mournful ballad that almost made the Eclipse soundtrack. The band will return to the stage with a June 26 gig at Bowery Ballroom. [Photo by David Greenwald]
