Jason and Seth of the Maldives at Birds on a Wire Fest ::: Polaroid by Josh Lovseth

We asked the Maldives to go old-school on us for their three week tour down to SXSW and back and send us a few postcards from the road. (Click on the postcards to enlarge them, to read or admire their kitschy wonderfulness.) We caught up with the Maldives at the tail end of their tour and Josh snapped the above Polaroid at their second to last stop in Pullman, WA. It was clearly a great tour, but also typically fraught with pitfalls and difficulties, as we find out in the very first postcard …

Tour… Between Sickness Rain Snow Good Friends Good Shows Empty shows and Burritos… Tour had finally started… And… Stopped… For the Moment… Our Trailer has A Bum Wheel and We are Slightly bummed on the Side of I-5 in Between SF and LA… In the Middle of Nowhere. But… It’s Sunny… Luv… The Maldives… (Transcribed by JB).

Hey S on S,
Seth here. We are having mostly a blast, as you probably know, and but we all can’t wait to get home as well. It’s Friday night now, just before No Depression Set, We are Watching College Basketball. Lame, I know, We found a new favorite bar here in Austin called “Donn’s Depot.” An Amazing Honky-Tonk piano bar. Wish you were here! <3 Maldives.

Hello Guys, We’re here in Austin. The Boys and I have been running around Austin Tryin’ to cause some trouble. Lots of tacos. Lots of beer. Some Swiming and GREAT MUSIC! Wish Y’all were here. See You Soon. Brady.

Dear Sound on the Sound… We Have Left Austin and SXSW in our Wake and are Heading Home… I’m Sure that SXSW Stories are the Same every year (Crazy Shows, Crazy Food, Crazy People… Bill Murray), But Since Twas My First Time Attending, I Feel… Impressionable, And in Reflection… This Week I hung out with some of the Best People on the Face of the Planet… Most of the Them are from Seattle… But Austin is One Helluva Town… Can’t Wait to Go Back Next Year.
Love JESSE, The Blond Maldive.
(Under the Stamp is a really cool skull).

Find some video postcards from the tour that drummer Ryan McMackin put together at themaldivesmusic.blogspot.com.

Tour is always an adventure. Tour with 9 guys, double the instruments, a broken trailer, a killer soundtrack and over a thousands miles of driving in four days is the making of an awesome first Maldives tour vlog.

We’ll be following and sharing The Maldives tour adventures here on Sound on the Sound. Not only will we be sharing the boys’ video blogs, we’ve also equipped them with cash for the most obscene postcards they can find, postage, and a couple disposable cameras. We’ll share whatever arrives in our mailbox from the Maldives with you.

If you, like us, just can’t get enough of The Maldives you can also follow their tour blog Straight Chooglin’.

Currently dominating my playlist is NY band Dinosaur Feathers’ new record Fantasy Memorial. They playfully channel the vocal heavy, world music influenced pop that’s so in style right now into some of the catchiest, most dancinest pop songs I’ve heard in 2010. “Dancinest” is a word, right? It should be.

mp3: “Vendela Vida” by Dinosaur Feathers from Fantasy Memorial

If I could be at SXSW this week, this would be the band that I would probably have to see more than once. There sure are plenty of opportunity’s…

DINOSAUR FEATHERS at SXSW

3/18 - SXSW - Dominican Joe’s Coffee - All Your Friends Party - 2pm
3/18 - SXSW - Homeslice Pizza - Music by the Slice party - 5pm
3/18 - SXSW - Creekside Lounge - Pop Tarts Suck Toasted party - 9pm
3/19 - SXSW - Agave - Ghost Town day party - 1pm
3/19 - SXSW - Galaxy Room - Official SXSW showcase - 8pm
3/20 - SXSW - End of Ear - In-Store - 2pm

I eagerly await some west coast dates.

The Globes at Georgetown Music Fest ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Globes are going to SXSW this year. Though no official announcement from the Barsuk camp has made it’s way onto the net, we’ve known of their involvement with the label via seeing them make an appearance at the Barsuk holiday party, a few words in a column by Hannah Levin, and some other more informal channels. A look at the day-by-day schedule for SXSW and the Barsuk showcase gives us a clue that maybe we should be expecting an announcement soon about the partnership:

March 18, 2010
Red Eyed Fly
(715 Red River St) (18+)
Barsuk
The Globes 8:00 p.m.
Blunt Mechanic 9:00 p.m.
Pearly Gate Music 10:00 p.m.
The Wooden Birds 11:00 p.m.
Rocky Votolato 12:00 a.m.
Phantogram 1:00 a.m.

Local labels supporting locals bands is something we can always get behind.

Macklemore ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

This party just get’s better every year. Two stages and a hip hop showcase? This is how Seattle’s party at SXSW should be going down. It’s happening Saturday, March 20th at the Beauty Bar, starting 12 noon. It’s no doubt free, but you’ll likely need an RSVP. We’ll keep you up to date on that info as it arrives. On to the good stuff. Peep this year’s lineup:

Main Stage
The Cave Singers
The Dutchess & the Duke
Fences
The Lonely Forest
The Moondoggies
Rocky Votolato

Second Stage
Grand Hallway
The Maldives
The Staxx Brothers

Hip Hop Showcase
Dark Time Sunshine
Dyme Def
Grynch
Macklemore
Mash Hall (formerly known as They Live!)
THEESatisfaction

Um… can this party happen in Seattle?

The second stage isn’t a side stage, it’s the stage where the big bands get more time to setup. And a hip hop showcase is long overdue. The organizers definitely made this a destination party that well represents the face of the emerging Seattle music scene at this very moment.

Follow the action on twitter with @sxswSeattleParT and be a part of the action by tagging your posts #TheSeattleParty and #sxsw.

Src: Austin Statesmen

Rusty Gold from michael jeter on Vimeo.

[Warning: Video above may be NSFW. If you consider out-of-focus penis NSFW. -The Editor]

This is a tour to phone dad about. San Fransisco Americana-tinged mega-group Or, The Whale have joined forces with Seattle’s own likeminded mega-group the Maldives to make the ride down to SXSW this March a whole lot more fun. These two bands both put out strong records last year, made friends after playing a few dates together, and now they’re hoping to ride each other’s coattails a bit. Since my pop had to jet a bit early for my birthday show, this will be the show I’ll be making him the sell on. I don’t think it’ll be a hard sell at all.

The video above is a song called “Rusty Gold” from Or, The Whale’s self-titled LP, released in September of 2009.

Or, The Whale Winter 2010 Tour Dates

Feb 27th - Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern
Mar 9th - Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge ^
Mar 10th - Seattle, WA Tractor Tavern ^
Mar 11th - Cottage Grove, OR Axe and Fiddle ^
Mar 12th - San Francisco, CA The Independent ^
Mar 13th - Los Angeles, CA Hotel Cafe ^
Mar 14th - San Diego, CA Bar Pink ^
Mar 15th - Tucscon, AZ Club Congress ^
Mar 17th - Mar 20th - Austin, TX SXSW

^ = w/ The Maldives

The Maldives will be playing the SXSW Seattle Party themselves on March 20th, happening again this year at The Beauty Bar, where they’ll be joined by . Then they’ll looping around back into Utah and Boise for a few dates after SXSW. Those dates are below.

The Maldives at SXSW and beyond:

Mar 20th - The Beauty Bar - Austin, TX
Mar 21st - Lola’s Saloon - Fort Worth, Texas
Mar 24th - Bar Deluxe - Salt Lake City, Utah
Mar 25th - The Bouquet - Boise, Idaho

Tickets for the Tractor Tavern show on March 10th, a bill that also includes PDX band Weinland, can be had at TicketWeb for $10 adv.

Blind Pilot at the Triple Door ::: Photo by Josh

Blind Pilot is already having a banner 2009 and things are just getting started. Last week while they were in SXSW they had a set broadcast on NPR. A few months ago they were asked to play Carson Daly. Now as just as they roll into east coast, they’ve got the wind at their backs on news that they’ll be supporting the Decemberists for the first leg of the The Hazards of Love tour (including an already announced date at Sasquatch). We put their album from last year 3 Rounds and A Sound at #11 on our top Northwest Albums of 2008, so you can probably guess that we thought this course of events was destiny being fulfilled.

Youtube: “Go On, Say It” by Blind Pilot from 3 Rounds, And A Sound

All the new tour dates with the Decemberists are listed below the fold. For their currently in progress tour, they are playing the Mercury Lounge in New York, Tuesday March 31, before heading back to the west coast for a few dates in April.

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Did you miss the live broadcast of the Decemberists performing The Hazards of Love last night on KEXP? Whether you did or you just want to listen to it again, you can stream it at NPR.org and I highly suggest you do. It’s clearly a hot stream today considering I wasn’t even able to pull up NPR’s page earlier today. Featuring the full cast of characters in Lavender Diamond’ Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, I think it manages to be as epic as the band had hoped. Also take a moment to swoon over the openers Avett Brothers set.

The Hazards of Love will be released in stores, next Tuesday March 24, but you can find it on the iTunes Store as I write.

The title track from the Thermals soon to be released 4th LP Now We Can See has been freely available for a while now, along with a couple of others floating around, but today’s NPR Song of the Day is a new one to me. It’s titled “When We Were Alive,” and doesn’t stray too far from the classic Thermals formula or the cultural introspection that proved so successful on the previous album with the opening lyrics “we closed our minds, we shut our traps, we built a house, the house collapsed.” Now We Can See arrives April 7, but for now, stream that song of the day above, and take home the MP3 below.

MP3: “Now We Can See” by the Thermals from Now We Can See out April 7, 2009 on Kill Rock Stars

After representing Portland and Kill Rock Stars down at SXSW playing no less than eight parties in Austin, the band will come back to the Northwest, to play a CD release show first in their hometown of Portland at the Wonder Ballroom on April 9, and then in Seattle at Neumos on April 11. Then it’s off on a 6 week tour of the lower 48. One thing seems a little special about the tour though, in that it seems they’ve gone to pains to make sure most of the shows around the country are all-ages or 18+.

This video is for “Everything With You,” the lead single from NY, NY’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s debut self-titled full-length, which came out on Slumberland Records last month. They’ve correctly characterize themselves as “hyper-melodic”, and in our book that’s not a bad thing at all, because it’s all about the voices. In fact we happen to think their new record is catchy as all get out. A devilish fusion of the Smiths’ commitment to creating captivating vocal melodies and Belle and Sebastian’s knack for catchy upbeat pop, The Pains new record comes along at just the right time, filling the niche of music that can accompany me during the transition into the sunny summer months.

MP3: “Everything with You” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart courtesy of Slumberland Records

MP3: “Come Saturday” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart courtesy of Slumberland Records

The Pains don’t have any dates yet scheduled for Seattle (the do for just about everywhere else in the world though), but Eric Grandy over at the Stranger promises us a summer date in Seattle will appear soon, so not to worry. Capitol Hill Block Party 2009 maybe? They are playing the Pitchfork Fest in Chicago Mid-July, among other festivals so something like that doesn’t seem entirely out of the question. And the Stranger is heavily involved in the Block Party each year usually…

Most immediately, this week The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are playing a bevy of dates at SXSW, all of which you can find below the fold. When I say bevy I mean ten, including four in one day, many of which some might consider the “cooler” parties, with two separate visits to Emo’s Jr in the same day. Impressive.

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