To the imagination, there’s something totally irresistible about touring. Who knows what exciting adventures await the touring musician, what unknown drugs, what variety of floor they will be sleeping on next. Despite the fact that bands in the age of the internet make most of their money through touring, the tour itself is presented as this strange space outside actual music. Maybe there will be a hotel room to trash. Maybe the band will break up. No one ever suggests that it might actually be boring, that you might actually be looking for things to do during the time you’re presenting yourself to the world. 

Photo by Sarah Koch

Shawn Rosenblatt, the core of the band Netherfriends, has turned the mythology on its head on his latest tour, making his trip around the country into a productive affair. Evil Monito has been in communication with him about this project, which he’s calling 50 Songs 50 States. →

Fol Chen
Asthmatic Kitty Records
(2010)

Fol Chen would like you to think they’re a mysterious band, more art than pop. These L.A.-based fans of misdirection (try visiting their website) cover their publicity tracks with fake bureaucracy and snippets of their song lyrics sprinkled everywhere. But don’t be fooled: they might be dressed for the apocalypse but The New December, their second album, is one of the more straightforward shots of pop you’ll take this year. →

Caribou
Merge Records
(2010)

Daniel Snaith has been making music professionally for almost ten years. Since his first EP in October 2000, he has covered more musical ground than just about anyone in the business. His records range from the “indietronica” of his first record Start Breaking My Heart (released as Manitoba) to the brash psychedelic flourishes of 2007′s Andorra →

Slumberland Records co-founder Michael Schulman (left) and Matt Hartman of the How and Henry’s Dress

The Rickshaw Stop – San Francisco, CA
Live Review: 3/27/10

Local and international legends collided on a Saturday night at the Rickshaw Stop, though you might not know it from the billing or the venue, or from anyone who wasn’t in attendance. The people in attendance have different standards of success and different kinds of legends. →

If it’s difficult for Americans to talk about life on the ground in Iran, imagine how difficult it is for Iranians to. The dialogue about Iran in the States is so omnipresent and overwhelming that personal stories have to find outlets outside of the news to get their version of the events out to the public.

No One Knows About Persian Cats, by renowned Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, is a good solution. The film effectively blurs the line between documentary film making and fictional story. →

Treasure Island Music Festival – San Francisco, CA
Live Review: 10/17 – 10/18/09
***
Treasure Island, not only a book by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a bizarre little spit of fill in between San Francisco and Oakland, next to the anchor point for the Bay Bridge. A former naval base built out of soil dragged out of the Bay, it’s the legacy of an overfunded Army Corps of Engineers, who, if they had their way, would probably filled in the entire San Francisco Bay. Now students and government workers mostly live in the post-war tract housing that used to house Navy officers. It’s a little slice of suburban wilderness in the middle of a bay of commuters. →

Photo by Alicia J. Rose

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – “Shake a Shot”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson has been singing for some time, but he entered into the music world with his self-titled debut record in 2008. His second album in as many years is Summer of Fear (out on Saddle Creek), a yearning and robust affair about a particularly down summer. He sent us a dispatch over email about dealing with the press, living on the road and working with Kyp Malone. →

Photo by Eric Martin

Kyp Malone has had a pretty busy hiatus so far. Since TV On the Radio announced they were taking a year off in early September at Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, Kyp has released a solo album under the handle Rain Machine (on Anti- Records and is already halfway through a national tour with his new band. He spoke to Evil Monito over the phone about his new band, rawer songs, and politics. →

Cymbals Eat Guitars
Self-Released
(2009)

Cymbals Eat Guitars set out a tough dynamic for themselves to play, and while Why There Are Mountains, their debut album, has its successes, it doesn’t really come together as the grand statement of a renewed indie rock tradition that some in the music community have made it out to be. Instead of going the way of Broken Social Scene (another band that covers a lot of musical influence), who split their vast and disparate interests into discrete statements that then bleed into one another, Cymbals Eat Guitars is all bleed →

Photo by Kenneth Lu, Licensed under Creative Commons.

The Fox Theater – Oakland, CA
Live Review: 9/10/09
***
The Fox Theater in Oakland is one of the more interesting restoration projects of late in an area full of them. It was a movie theater earlier in the century, one that really did justice to the “theater” part of the phrase, belonging to an era where movie-going was still a glamorous affair. The acoustics aren’t great, and the interior frequently errs on the side of tacky. So it’s appropriate that two very theatrical bands should come and try to give the place back some of its grandeur. →