We recently taped a session for NPR’s World Cafe in Toronto, where we dished on some details about writing and recording our new album, as well as debuting three stripped-down versions of some brand new songs (along with a track from The Slideshow Effect).
Click here to stream the performance and interview via NPR~~~
Set list:
i. “Get Back”
ii. Honey Baby Darling
iii. Sarah
iv. Little Expressionless Animals
More good stuff to come.
Dear Canada,
We’ve been through a long winter that we weren’t sure was going to end until about last week. I know you are distracted now by colours you haven’t seen in eight months, but hopefully you can find your way to one of these shows.
Dear Plant Earth,
Canada is cool and all, but they do not fulfill my needs as a strange and cranky individual who likes to stay in bed and eat dumplings while I re-watch all the episodes of Arrested Development. There is too much driving and not enough sleeping involved in playing shows in “real life”. This is why they invented the internet, so I can be lazy. Please watch our online show at stageit.com on June 23rd where Evan and I will play some songs for you and be extra comfortable knowing we are not sleeping in a shifty motel after the concert is done.
Make song/cover requests on our facebook page!
You can buy tickets here! (Pay what you can)
See you all soon!
xo
We wanted to share this music video for everyone as a way of saying thank you for sticking with us this past year. You’ve dragged us around the world and we have been fortunate enough to meet so many of you, and we feel that a sincere, heartfelt, weirdly familial, sloppy hug (in the form of a song) is in order.
The gratitude we wish to express reaches far beyond the touching messages of hope, and the insane donations you’ve provided us at our lowest point, but extends to the good times we’ve shared with all of you this past year. It’s 2013 and some of you are actually still buying music. In the time it takes to read this sentence (with the same energy you’ve exerted) you could be stealing our record, and literally every song ever recorded by a human being and Elvis.
So consider this music video our modest thank you for being the type of people that you are. It’s about friendship, and love, and is kind of a mix between Randy Newman’s Toy Story theme and the intro to The Golden Girls. You’ve given us a gift, the size of which cannot possibly be exaggerated. Thank you for being a friend indeed.
xx
E+D
Doodles, with love.
See ya when I see ya. (I hope I see ya).
We’re still here. Music, video, internet goodies, coming soon.
There’s no good way of saying that we have had some unfortunate luck. Last night our van was broken into just outside of Washington, DC and most of our equipment has been stolen. To our dismay, we have no choice but to drop out of the upcoming Philadelphia and Boston shows with Washed Out. We are asking for donations to help buy/rent equipment so we can get back on our feet for New York and continue on the rest of the tour. We hate to ask but we suffered a huge loss and anything would really help. Thanks to everyone for your support and I hope to see you all very soon.
Sincerely,
Denise
Donate here.
FULL LIST OF STOLEN GEAR:
(Please let us know if you see any of this online in the Washington area!)
Custom black Pedaltrain PT-1 flight case:
Pedaltrain pedalboard
Empress Compressor
Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr
Paul Cochrane Timmy Overdrive
Empress Multidrive
Boss PS-6 Harmonist
Strymon Timeline Delay
Strymon blueSky Reverberator
Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+
Cables etc.
Red Flight Case:
Roland SP-555 Sampler
Stereo Memory Man w/Hazerai Delay
Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb
Shure SM 58 Microphone
Three power supplies
Cables etc.
Silver Flight Case:
Novation Nocturne Midi Controller
Macbook
Cables etc
Black Dream Cymbal Bag:
Alchemy by Istanbul 22” sweet series ride cymbal
Avedis Zildjian 16” crash cymbal
Sabian B20 18” ride cymbal
Set of vintage unknown/unmarked hihat cymbals
Extras:
Gateway laptop
Projector/DVD player for live visuals
I know many of you have been curious about our new album, so Evan has been gracious enough to set up a small Q&A in order to fulfill your child-like wonder. Thank you all for sending in your questions on Facebook and Twitter - I hope we got to them all!
Find the Q&A here! Or by clicking the image above!
Happy Holidays!
The time has finally come to share the first taste of our upcoming LP, The Slideshow Effect, and—forsaking further unnecessary divergences into Star Wars laced rhetoric—I must say that I’m quite excited. This new Memoryhouse track, titled The Kids Were Wrong, contains all of the tenets of that classic Memoryhouse sound(!) such as rhythm, and at some choice moments…melody.
Alright, it’s December 16th, how many awful press junkets have you read this year? Did any of them actually make you want to listen to the song? I didn’t think so. We have a new song coming out today, it’s going to be on our new record which is coming out on February 28th, 2011. Shut up and put it in your ears, I’ll wait.
CMJ is almost here! Come see us DJ! And play music! And take naps in between!
Thursday, October 20th
Memoryhouse DJ Set
CJLO hosted Medium Rotation CMJ Mixer
Solas
5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Sub Pop/Hardly Art Showcase
Mercury Lounge
Lame Fest II Eclectic Boogaloo
10 PM
Friday, October 21st
6DB Showcase
The Delancey
1:40 PM
Yours Truly Showcase
Glasslands
10:15 PM
Saturday, October 22nd
BrooklynVegan Showcase
Public Assembly
1:00 PM
AAM Showcase
Knitting Factory
3:15 PM
MTV Hive ‘Live in NYC’
The Studio at Webster Hall
8:15 PM
For those of you non-New Yorkers, we are also doing a East/South/Midwest tour of the US after CMJ. Check out our tour dates.
(Stream The Years in its entirety above featuring new and unreleased visuals from Jamie Harley.)
Here’s a quick reminder that The Years is available just about everywhere today (UK physical release is next Monday). Also, many, many thanks to everyone that came out to see us on our recent trek with Peter Bjorn and John.
Things will remain active for us in the forseeable future with some headlining dates in Canada/U.S. this October, CMJ, The Radio Dept. Tour, and of course, much more music to be violently unleashed, Godzilla-style, upon masses both unsuspecting, and inquisitively in-the-know.
Keep up with our tour dates here.
Finally, here are some trenchant insights on The Years release, written by Denise and I. (You can read the whole thing here).
"As a kind of unifying aesthetic, The Years was created with many references to the author Virginia Woolf. The title of the EP quoting her 1937 novel by the same name, To the Lighthouse a 1927 novel, ‘The Waves’, a song on the original release, another novel written in 1931. Despite popular belief, it wasn’t because of the connection to the beach (why would it be?), but to the theme of the passage of time.
For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated with the illusion of how time seems to overlap over a consistent space. During the recording of the EP I was able to visit a house that I once lived in, but was too young to ever form a full image of it. To my knowledge, no one had lived there in at least sixteen years, but in my own mind, it had not changed since the day I left it. Of course, it was in shambles. A country home, untouched, unentered, in almost two decades. It was like I was watching the paint peel off of the walls, the basement flooding, the wet and cold seep through the windows, and still place my memories in each room they occurred. It was an eery sensation that could only really be interpreted by someone who understood the relationship one has to a specific space and time, to their own static and often distorted memory of something. Somehow Woolf understood this very well.”
Receiving things in the mail can be nerve-wracking (ask the Unabomber). Especially when you just got your first smart phone and you’ve streamed too many videos of cute baby animals. Yet, once in a while, you receive a package from Sub Pop that makes all those data charges drift away like kittens down a slippery park slide.
Stream The Years now at Refinery 29 or MuchMusic on your computers and pre-order your copy of The Years for your enjoyment in the world of physical, touchable matter.
By all accounts, it should have ended with “To the Lighthouse”, like the old one did. There’s an air of finality in the way Denise sang the line “hush the static sound of time dispersing” that appeared to serve the dual purpose of reiterating the main argument of The Years, while shoehorning some vague semblance of closure to the preceding.
Yet the E.P has changed, undeniably, since it made its first, embryonic appearance nearly two years ago. Beyond the physical product with which it will be packaged as, but rather, the idea of what the release means, especially to Denise and I. These feelings, outlined in Quiet America, will vary from person to person—affectionate addendum—precocious post-script—endearing epilogue—or perhaps just curious cash-grab.
I tend to view Quiet America as a sort of “Hello!” to counter Lighthouse’s “Goodbye!”. A “Hello” steeped in ambivalence, and a little self-doubt, but a greeting none the less. I suppose that’s what I mean when I said the E.P. represents something else to us now. Whereas it’s initial release—set loose upon the ravenous bowels of the internet (and what ravenous bowels they are!)— was a resignation of sorts, mired in the kind of disconnection and existential angst that played a large role in defining the aughts for many. The Years now represents the idea that life can improve in the most unusual and fantastical ways if one were to open themselves to experience (something I fought tooth and nail for many years) and that, as always, music has the capacity to grow with us through the many different stages in our lives.
So in short, I think we’ve come a long way from the hospital bed in “Lately”, and I’m very grateful that we have the opportunity to say much more (when the time is right)(…tick tick tick…) but for the time being, I hope a “Hello” shall suffice.
Very proud to share a first glimpse at our inaugural release with Sub Pop. This of course, is the first physical pressing of Memoryhouse’s first EP, The Years, but I tend to find the term “reissue” doesn’t really capture just what this EP entails. We’ve re-recorded Sleep Patterns, Lately, and To the Lighthouse in a manner that is consistent with memoryhouse’s noises and idiosyncrasies while broadening our sonic pallet, and cleaning things up so that the songs are, you know, listenable. I’m even more excited about the new additions, “Modern, Normal”, and “Quiet America”. Believe me, these weren’t added just cuz, which is to say that this isn’t like the cantina scene from the 90s Star Wars re-release where random CGI monsters are found to be co-mingling with muppets. No. This EP is still full-muppet, but will provide some insights as to where our music is heading on our RealD 3D debut. So if nothing else, take with you the understanding that re-imagining The Years was a thorough and well-considered process, one that should hopefully yield many listens as the clock inches ever closer towards our first L.P.
"Was I sleeping while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today…Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on his forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries…At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.”
Here is a live acoustic rendition of Lately performed for Invisible Children’s Silver Series in Austin during this year’s SXSW festival. Invisible Children is a wonderful cause and we are very honored to have participated in this video session with them. Please go here to read about the organization and learn how you can be a part of it.
Until next time, keep fit and have fun.
Here’s a video of us playing a new song at Pianos in New York. This is definitely on the L.P, albeit with a bit of a different arrangement. And alas, it isn’t titled “I Won’t Follow You Back Home”, though if we ever become a parenthesis band, then this would definitely be a contender for top parenthesis (if there exists such a wonderful distinction). Finally, a sincere thank you to everyone who came out to this string of concerts, it was a thrill to get to perform with our expanded line-up, and test out some of our new material. We’ll be on the road again very soon, and we’ll cover more and more ground, until we will render ourselves geographically redundant.
P.S. - Big thanks to iwaseasymeat for these great high quality audio/video recordings of our songs.
Here’s a mix of songs I’ve had on repeat during these rainy Spring days. I was very touched by the tragic story of Jackson C. Frank so this collection is more or less an extended tribute to perhaps the most tragic figure of the 60’s folk movement.
"Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek."
i. I want to be alone (dialogue) - Jackson C. Frank
ii. Emerald bikini - Ennio Morricone
iii. Wailing of the willow - Harry Nilsson
iv. Too far gone - Emmylou Harris
v. O.K. - Jon Brion
vi. Lullabye - Loudon Wainwright III
vii. Kindelsberg - Hauschka
viii. Magic window - Boards of Canada
Here is a complete list of Memoryhouse’s SXSW performances.
It’s official.