Also, I just became aware that New York Gazers, a new Facebook group, recently started up and is putting together information about New York City shoegaze bands, live performances and events, and anything that combines shoegaze and our grand City.  It's in fledgling form, but I'd love to see it succeed, so please follow the link and "like" it!

And lastly, at the direction of New York Gazers I stumbled across this page on The Deli Magazine's New York City music scene blog.  It's a list of New York area shoegaze bands, compiled in order of either "Web Buzz" or "Popularity," ranked automatically according to what I'm sure is an arcane and totally accurate algorithm.  We were surprised to find ourselves ranked at 27 and 28 (respectively) out of 55, and in fact we're thankful to be included at all.  Who'd have thought?

And a small word about that whole shoegaze thing: I'm aware that for a couple of reasons our music doesn't exactly fit into the specifications of the genre.  The vocals are not effects-laden or buried in the mix.  You can understand (most of) the lyrics.  The song structures are a little out-of-the-ordinary for the genre.  We have at least a little bit of stage presence.  All the same I've always used the word to describe our music because we do use a lot of guitar pedals and soundscapes and we focus a lot on texture.  OK.  Glad we straightened that out.

So... check out our new show listings, have a good week, and I hope we see you soon!

In the interest of full disclosure I am a little bit biased, as yours truly will be working there Saturday nights, so I'm a little emotionally invested in the venture.  But it really is a picturesque place to see us play, maybe the best sounding room in an intimate venue in Brooklyn, and with inexpensive drinks (or high end cocktails, whichever floats your boat).  And with a $5 door charge and a forecast of above-freezing temperatures there's really no excuse to miss this.

Joining us will be our friends Money / Paper / Hearts (their drummer, Drew Mendenhall, used to play in a side project with me and Eric) and Eagle Hawk Falcon Owl.  Both of these bands are definitely worth catching, so why not come by at 8:00PM and stay for the whole show?  I mean, it's three bands for $5.  What a deal.  Hope to see you there!

In other news, Eric's sister Jayme took this video of our song "Finally Here," which will appear on our upcoming record, Spilling Blood.  This was from our show last weekend at Bar Matchless here in Brooklyn.  Hope you enjoy it.

As for the photos?  Have a gander.

We'll be appearing with our new friends Ichicuts, our old friends Autumn Bells (who you may remember as The Bottoms Of Our Hearts from our show at Trash Bar a few months back, and you may remember features Alex Beard of the late great Hula), as well as some new bands we hope to become friends with— The Beach Arabs and The Dazzling Dooms.

The whole shebang starts around 7:30PM, and we play at 10:00PM.  Since The Dazzling Dooms go on at midnight and must be done by 1AM, set times will be pretty strict.  So just to be safe?  Turn up at 8PM and stay until the wee hours of the morning.  It's not a school night, after all.

So we've decided on a title for our forthcoming record (it's called Spilling Blood!) and we thought we'd announce this by bringing out two tracks that will appear on said forthcoming record:  "Doing Just Fine" and "Niagara."  Give them a listen so you have an idea what to expect when Spilling Blood finally gets out.  They're on the song players on the right side of the web site, if you like QuickTime, or you can go to the songs page and download them if you're old fashioned (or you want to keep them forever and put them on your iPod and listen to them all day every day).

In lesser news, we also added a page to the site with reviews and interviews, as well as an archive page and a function to search the whole website, if there should ever arise a reason to do such a thing.

Yeah.  Moving on.  In more important news, we're also playing a show this month.  We'll be appearing at Alphabet Lounge in the East Village with TinVulva and The Handsome Men.  We go on at 9:30PM sharp.  Early show.  Ten dollars.

See ya there!

Check how red my face is.

Let the record show we are now only playing one show this month, next Wednesday, September 28th, at Trash Bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn, at 256 Grand St.  Brooklyn, NY 11211.

We'll be playing at 10:00 p.m., immediately after our good friends, The Bottoms Of Our Hearts— who feature our good friend Alex Beard, who once played drums with our good friends (you may remember them) the late great Hula.  They go on at nine.

Also appearing will be Ichicuts (at 11:00 p.m.) and Too Tiger (at 8:00 p.m.).  There will be an open bar with the cover from 8 until 9.

Here's all that information in an easily digestible form:

Wednesday, September 28th
@ Trash Bar
256 Grand St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
8PM: Too Tiger
9PM: The Bottoms of Our Hearts
10PM: Oceanographer
11PM: Ichicuts

So, to be clear, we will not be playing 9/24 at Bowery Electric, and we will not be playing 9/26 at Cake Shop.  We will only be playing at Trash Bar on 9/28.  I repeat: we will only be playing at Trash Bar on 9/28.

And we very much would like to see you there.

Thankfully the show was recorded and we'll be releasing a small EP of those live tracks, which sound fantastic on account we were playing in a historical building designed with amazing acoustics in mind.  So there's something to look forward to.

And on that note we'll be playing three shows in September.  Quick rundown: 9/24 @ Bowery Electric, 9/26 @ Cake Shop and 9/28 @ Trash Bar.  Don't worry about it, we'll give you more details on those gigs in the coming week.  Just worry about Saturday.

So!  If you live in New York City, we'll see you soon.  That is if you really love us and meant all those words you said over wine and candle light last weekend.

FIRST off, we did an interview with Aaron Miguel Santos of Blaqbook, who also reviewed the last show we played.  It was a lot of fun for all involved in both instances.

SECOND.  We're nearing the end phase of recording our next record.  This is kind of a big deal.  Over three years ago we started writing new material with this end goal in mind, and in that time we've changed band members, dropped songs, written new ones, completely reworked old ones, recorded all of them at least three times, and we still don't know what we're going to call the record.  But either way, we're in the last phase before final mixing, and that's exciting news for everyone.

ANYWAY.  It's been a crazy several months for everyone involved.  Oceanographer played our last show with Ryan, he moved to Texas with his wife and baby,  then Kevin got married and members of Oceanographer and Monuments and Ghost Gamblers and Basement Band and others were all busy rehearsing songs which we played together at his wedding (it was beautiful and I cried), then we've been holed up at East Side Sound working on the upcoming record, I moved apartments, and a distant invisible dark-energy galaxy was found to be colliding with our own.

I hope you can understand why we've been busy and haven't updated our site.  Please forgive us.

SO, we're still on live performance hiatus while we search for a fill-in for Ryan (them some big boots to fill), but in the next couple days (weeks?), I do hope to post some photos of Oceanographer taken by John Durgee in the back of some crazy bus.  I also hope to post some rough mixes of songs on the upcoming record.  So stay posted.  Thanks!