Cory Graves
Midlake and True Widow Prep New Albums, and The Granada Wants You To Fess Up.
“It is finished. Thank you God!”
And, just like that, with a simple Tweet Denton heroes Midlake let the world know that the recording of their upcoming fourth full-length album has finally been completed.
But, aside from the fact that the disc will be released sometime in 2013, not much is known about the as-yet-unnamed album. Back in April, the band's Eric Pulido told Britain's Clash Magazine that his band's upcoming album would feature a new sound with even more keys this time around — but, as he put it, “not Kraftwerk.”
As an unintended effect, upcoming tours to promote the album will likely give Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith even less time to play with his now-Brooklyn-based outfit The Fieros. That hasn't stopped the outfit from continuing to score placements in ads and television shows, though. In the past week the formerly Dallas-based band — which previously had seen its songs played during episodes of The CW's Arrow, MTV's Underemployed, Punk'd, The Pauly D Project and an ad for The Simpsons — saw their song “To Pieces,” used as the centerpiece of a new ad promoting the new season of A&E's The Glades.
But Midlake isn't the only band in town this week with new material worth mentioning. Not even close, really. A pair of other national acts with local ties have new album news of note this week as well.
Despite signing to Relapse earlier this year, local stone-gaze trio True Widow decided to once again record their upcoming third album Circumambulation at Argyle's Echo Lab with Centro-matic drummer Matt Pence at the helm. Due out July 23, True Widow recently released a teaser video for the album shot by former Red Animal War frontman Justin Wilson that features clips of the band in the recording studio, all set to a snippet of one of the new tunes.
On the other hand, you won't have to wait quite as long to hear new material from St. Vincent and David Byrne. To promote their upcoming summer tour, the twosome put together a brand new EP called Brass Tactics, which they released today for free. On the disc is “Cissus,” an un-released track recorded during the Love This Giant sessions and featuring drum programming by local studio ace John Congleton, plus remixes of Giant tracks “I Should Watch TV” and “Lightning,” and live versions of St. Vincent's “Marrow” and Talking Heads' “Road to Nowhere,” the latter of which was recorded during the pair's performance at SMU's McFarlin Auditorium last October. Unfortunately, the tour which this album was designed to promote won't be bringing the dynamic duo anywhere near North Texas. If it makes you feel any better, however, you can think of these five free tunes as something of a consolation prize.
Elsewhere on the new release front, Dallas indie-rockers Catamaran released their debut single, “All Around” last weekend; ClubCasa Chamber Orchestra, a band headed by Prince's saxophonist Sly5thAve and featuring former Polyphonic Spree trumpeter Jay Jennings released an instrumental cover of Justin Timberlake's “Suit and Tie” that was mixed by Little Black Dress bassist Nolan Thies; America's Got Talent season two runner-up Cas Haley will celebrate the release of his third full-length this Friday at House of Blues; and Fort Worth's Hanna Barbarianswill release their latest EP this Friday at Lola's.
Further down the road, Bludded Head should have some new material to release sooner than later. The band is currently recording new songs at Fort Worth's Eagle Audio, with Pinkish Black frontman Daron Beck producing and Britt Robisheaux engineering. Per the band's Facebook page, the album should turn up a pretty out-of-left-field collaborator or two. Eleven Hundred Springs pedal steel man Burton Lee, for instance, does his thing on one track.
And finally, the staff at Granada Theater continued their dominance in the area of local show promotion this week. The venue that pioneered the Twitter Wall and has hosted a live version of the dating game in the past upped the ante once again with their latest promotion. In order to hype next month's Twin Shadow show, the venue has set up a “confession line,” in which they intend to collect seedy, anonymous stories from local musicians to be used at a June 11 event at Sundown. Those with the juiciest real life Behind the Music-style stories are encouraged to leave a message at 214-814-5033.
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