Screaming Females cover "If It Makes You Happy" at Lorem Ipsum Books

At this point, Pellytwins Dot Blogspot Dot Com is basically a Don Giovanni Records fanzine, and we're pretty okay with that. (Though we swear a relaunch with more expansive posts and a print-zine counterpart are actually, in fact, in the works. #Official.)

Here is a video I snapped last night of Screaming Females covering Sheryl Crowe's epic jam, "If It Makes You Happy." Screamales also covered this at the annual Don Giovanni showcase this past weekend in Brooklyn -- an inspired event as always.

This video was shot at Lorem Ipsum Books, one of my favorite places in the Boston area these days. Lorem Ipsum is a true gem in Boston. Above-ground DIY show spaces are rare in this town and I feel very lucky to be helping put shows on there. I put on this show with the Dreamhouse show-booking collective, a new group that I am organizing shows with in Boston. We have a decidedly minimal (read: non-existent) Internet presence but if you are interested in booking a show with us try emailing dreamhousecollective at gmail.

I am excited to rip the audio and play it on my radio show at WZBC. OOh speaking of which -- my show there is called Echoes/Ephemera and it airs Thursdays 6-7pm. I play only demos, home recordings, and other lo-fi/rarities/self-releases/field recordings/etc. #selfpromo

This was the second night of a tour the Screamales are on now of all free shows in record shops. I guess they made an exception for Boston. Modern Hut and Parasol played too and they were great. Screaming Females continue their record shop tour tonight at Feeding Tube Records in Northampton. Check out all of the dates here.

See you whenever xx

Stop the Presses: Hilly Eye Joins Don Giovanni, Announces LP and 7"

Art by Debbie Allen
The perennially awesome New Brunswick label Don Giovanni has confirmed they'll issue the debut LP from Hilly Eye, a post-Riot Grrrl two-piece fronted by Amy Klein (ex-Titus Andronicus). The record will be out in July, with a preceding 7" single, "Jacob's Ladder" b/w "Almanac".

Amy and drummer Catherine Tung are currently recording the album at Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge with friend and fellow Permanent Wave comrade Danielle DePalma. (Who, as you may know, is also the bassist for Amy Klein and the Blue Star Band.)


"Our influences are wide-reaching, but all of them are noisy," Catherine notes. The song "Double Dutch'", for example, "harnesses a Lightning Bolt-like energy," while one of the band's new songs draws a fair amount of influence from the Japanese noise group Nisennenmondai. "We often look to Sonic Youth in our songs that experiment with dissonance and tonality," Catherine says. "Our free-noise moments remind me a lot of earlier Boredoms."



In other Don Giovanni news, the label just announced that the new Screaming Females LP, Ugly, will be out April 3. It's preceded by the "It All Means Nothing" 7", which the band performed in this cute NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Ugly was recorded by Steve Albini, much like the new Cloud Nothings album. While Screamales, Cloudy No's, and Hilly Eye have not yet announced a national tour of basements and DIY spaces, and maybe they won't ever, we would very much like them to, thnx.

Watch a video of Hilly Eye playing a "Pellytwins Presents" showcase that Liz booked in Boston in October:



Words by Jenn & Liz

Guest Mix: Don Giovanni

Note: This is one of the best things we have posted on this blog ever.

Earlier this summer I wrote an article for Billboard on the "50 Best Indie Labels in America," and naturally included Jersey punk label Don Giovanni, who I first learned about in 2008, when I wrote about Screaming Females for Rolling Stone. I will never forget the moment in that interview when the drummer, Jared, told me that Joe, from Don Giovanni, once threatened to kill himself if he could not release the band's records. That sort of enthusiasm is always intriguing. Don Giovanni has since become one of my favorite indie labels operating anywhere in America, due in no small part to their releases for bands like the Females and Shellshag, whose energy is I think unparalleled by any other pocket of contemporary DIY music. Here's what I wrote about them for Billboard:

Don Giovanni isn’t a household name, but when founders Joe Steinhardt and Zach Gajewski launched the label as students at Boston University in 2004, that was hardly their intention—they set out to document the New Brunswick basement punk scene, and have become recognized throughout the underground DIY punk community for indie rock and punk releases from the likes of Shellshag, The Ergs!, and the critically-acclaimed Screaming Females.

We have probably spent more time talking about DG on this blog than any other label or band, and this guest mix by Joe is the first in a series of mixes that we will be posting as we "relaunch" our blog this fall. Many of these tracks have never existed before in MP3 format. Check out what Joe had to say about the mix, as well as the tracklisting, below. Screaming Females and Shellshag play Bowery Ballroom with Hilly Eye, tonight.

mix: Don Giovanni Guest Mix 4 Pellytwins Blog

When the Pelly twins asked me to put a mix together for their site I was stoked, especially when they said they wanted me to do all current bands not on the label. I've heard over and over again that there aren't as many good bands around as there used to be, or that all the great bands broke up, etc. This mix represents just a small part of a class of bands that are not just the best around right now, but who are sure to be considered classic in the future. With I think just two exceptions of bands that recently broke up, all of these bands are active:

01 Tacocat - Party Trap
02 Masshysteri - Dom kan inte hora musiken
03 Tropical Punk - To Hearts
04 The Men - Think
05 House Boat - Real Life As a Metaphor for Real Life
06 Blasting Concept - Age of the Rat
07 Avon Ladies - Power Failure
08 The Two Funerals - Boy's Club
09 Tenement - Stupid World
10 Lemuria - Wise People
11 The Gift - Corpse Reviver
12 Emily's Army - Strictly For The Birds
13 Lecherous Gaze - Phaze
14 P.S. Eliot - Sadie
15 Omegas - Peasant Dance
16 Grabass Charlestons - Dale
17 Dead Mechanical - Sidewalks
18 Vacation - Cop Knock
19 Night Birds - Paranoid Times

Previously:
-- Q&A with Don Giovanni Records
-- Premiere: Modern Hut's debut single, "Wrong"
-- mp3: Big Eyes - "Why Can't I"
-- Shellshag Played the New Afternoon Show
-- Big in 2k10: Byrds of Paradise

Farewell 2 College Radio: Heaven's Gate and Bryan Waterman on NAS

It is with both sadness and excitement that I prepare for my final week at WNYU, where I have spent the past two years hosting the New Afternoon Show. I have often joked that joining WNYU changed my life, but it's definitely true to some extent. I feel certain that, had I not joined the station during my first semester at NYU, my approach to music/life would be a lot less interesting. WNYU served as my gateway to a lot of important records, as well as to a deeper way of thinking about music. (But luckily I get to pack up all of these experiences and take them with me to my new job at P4K.)

The show will kick off with a guest DJ set from one of my favorite former professors, Bryan Waterman, who just published his 33 1/3 on Marquee Moon this past summer. Certainly not a new name if you are a regular reader of this blog! I will be playing excepts from live sets, interviews and guest DJ sets from my past two years at WNYU, including songs and words from Tune-Yards, Male Bonding, Hilly Eye, La Big Vic, Twin Sister, Weed Hounds, Coasting, Shellshag, Beach Fossils, Julian Lynch and more.

Around 7pm, the show will close out with a live set from Heaven's Gate, who are the kind of band I created this blog to write about — a punky noise-pop group comprised of folk singer/songwriter Jess Paps, former Sweet Bulbs members Mike Sheffield and Jack Wolf, ex-Michael Jordan guitarist Alex Cvetovich, plus Weed Hounds' Patrick Stankard on drums. Check out their new track, "Weakness Worms," below, which is covered in hints of their musical histories.

Weakness Worms by jennpelly

Check Out This Sick Pop-Punk Comp to Benefit Planned Parenthood

On October 4th, the Gainsville, FL punk label Paper + Plastick will release Are You With the Band?, a stacked pop-punk compilation of female-fronted artists to benefit Planned Parenthood. Curated by Lauren Denitzio, formerly of The Measure SA, it includes previously unreleased tracks from two of the best bands we've featured on this blog: Noun (Marissa of Screaming Females), and Brooklyn's Shellshag. Not to mention Cheeky, Little Lungs, Slingshot Dakota, P.S. Eliot and more. It's kind of like a who's-who of the Microcosm-fueled DIY pop-punk/indie scene, and will be available digitally and on 12" vinyl with a large-format, full-color art booklet. Other pockets of contemporary DIY could do well taking a page out of this scene's book; we're hard-pressed to recall other recent projects with such positive and proactive social agendas.

Track listing:
1. Aye Nako – Bent Out Of Shape *
2. Cheeky – Two Face
3. Black Rainbow – Make Amends *
4. Dead Dog – Couch *
5. Sourpatch – Things You Say *
6. Little Lungs – Things Fall Apart
7. Slingshot Dakota – Michael Jordan Saved My Life
8. The Measure – Stop Calling *
9. The New Dress – Hey Kid *
10. No More – Flatland *
11. Noun – TV Shows *
12. The Two Funerals – Too Late *
13. Shellshag – Crybaby *
14. The Homewreckers – Uncontrolable Decay *
15. P.S. Eliot – Entendre *
16. WITCHES – Grey
*Previously unreleased

Pigeons: "Tournoi" (video)

Pigeons' recent releases for Soft Abuse, Curatorial Club, and Olde English Spelling Bee highlighted the Bronx duo's noir-ish breed of slow, psychedelic pop. But on "Tourni," from their forthcoming The Sweetheartstammers LP, guitarists Wednesday Knudsen and Clark Griffin carry their sonic vision to a new level of clarity, with higher-fidelity production values and help from two new members: bassist Jason Meagher and drummer Nathan Bowles. The result is a fuller-sounding Pigeons that still maintains their brooding beauty, but with pronounced hints of Hope Sandoval and brighter guitars that meander densely. In the video above, Brooklyn-based filmmaker/visual artist/recent Julian Lynch collaborator, Amy Ruhl layers chroma-keyed footage atop digitally animated archival photos. And like Pigeons, the result has an eery gracefulness that feels vintage and secret.

Pigeons tour Europe and the USA this fall and winter. The Sweetheartstammers drops November 8th on Soft Abuse.

Pterodactyl: "Nerds" (mp3)

mp3: Pterodactyl - "Nerds"
It's refreshing to hear a track called "Nerds" from a Brooklyn band that genuinely eschews its home-zone's trend wagons. But would you expect anything less of a band on Brah Records, the Jagjaguwar imprint curated by Oneida? Pterodactyl's perennial art-rock pummel was first plucked up by their neighbors at Brah for 2007's Pterodactyl and 2009's Worldwind. Those records' tornados of angular, mathy guitars, skitzo drums, and piercing, emotive screeches are toned down in their forthcoming LP, Spills Out, with a pop structure that's a tamer Pterodactyl, but still pretty frenetic. The band says "Nerds" is about playing life like a video game: "role playing," "nerdy gamers in love," and the mindmeld you reach in a relationship "when you lose track of who's who." Despite cleaner, criss-cross croons and a potentially voguish Spector-fuzz influence, "Nerds" maintains a thrashy momentum that keeps the sound delightfully uncool. Just check out that first verse's melody — appropriately lifted from Zelda's theme.

Spills Out drops November 15th on Brah Records.

Pre-Order Real Estate's LP for 285 Kent Bootleg

Remember back in June when we helped organize that sweet book-launch show for Waterman and Patell's 33 1/3 volumes? You can now grab a bootleg of Real Estate's set, pressed to vinyl, when you pre-order their sophomore record, Days. (Thanks, NYC Taper!) It's out October 18th on Domino and will likely be one of our favorites of the year. It seems appropriate that this bootleg would become a tangible artifact; the set was performed to honor a time in New York music before mp3s and YouTube streams made many people forget how important physical pressings can be in properly documenting our musical moment.

Pre-order the Real Estate LP here, and if you haven't already, order 33 1/3's Marquee Moon here.

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Widowspeak: "Widowspeak"

Widowspeak's debut record for Captured Tracks is characterized mostly by its careful sparseness, tasteful subtlety, and knowing restraint. Listen closely to the young trio-- from Brooklyn by way of Tacoma and Chicago-- and it's clear that although the record could lean primarily on singer Molly Hamilton’s refined alto, or guitarist Rob Thomas's psychy twang, it does neither. Widowspeak is a collection of smoky pop melodies, and it's also a great guitar record. Mostly, it's a continuous call-and-response, pinned by drummer Mike Stasiask's studied, vintage beat and occasional organ touches from the lipstick-red Farfisa at Rear House, where the band tracked the LP with Jarvis Taveniere of Woods earlier this year.

Side A opens on the East Coast with the upbeat and delicate surf guitars of "Puritan." Molly's soft, unfurling vocals deliver images of New England car-rides, and the track embodies an indie-pop purity that its title can't help but signal. The band switches gears with Northwest-inspired hit single "Harsh Realm," a moody slow-burner with serious licensing potential, the silver ping of Thomas' guitar coming to a crawl. "Nightcrawlers" builds to a dark, twangy psychedelia that is dissonant and urgent and a seeming ode to overwhelming New York late nights. But "In the Pines," a chugging and atmospheric pop song that is also one of the record’s most compelling, shuttles us out to the country once again.

Most of the songs on this album could be singles, and Side B makes that more obvious. A steady string of poptimism on "Gun Shy," "Hard Times," and "Fir Coat" carries the band's formula to sunnier, more upbeat territory, suggesting that had Captured Tracks not plucked them from obscurity, a whole lot of other indie-pop labels would have probably taken notice eventually. There's no denying Widowspeak have crafted Captured Track's cleanest-sounding LP to date, embracing a minimalism that's refreshing and, for this label, wholly new.

Stream the full album below. This post originally appeared on Altered Zones.
Widowspeak: Widowspeak by alteredzones