New Single from Eternal Summers. LP The Drop Beneath ...umm... Drops March 4th.

Deb Caponera

"Gouge"

In an interview I did with Eternal Summers' Nicole Yun back in April of last year, she described the sound of the band's new songs as "a cock-eyed fusion of pretty pop and heavy rock." The Virginia band released the first of those new songs, "Gouge," today; and it definitely retains some of the lovely jangle of Eternal Summers' earlier records even as it turns up the noise / shoegaze factor.

"Gouge" is the first single from the band's upcoming and crowd-funded The Drop Beneath, which is due out on Brooklyn's Kanine Records on March 4th. That same day, Eternal Summers are scheduled to play a show at the Brooklyn outpost of Rough Trade.

Maybe we can entice them into making another Asbury Park stop as the weather warms up.

Viginia Is For Lovers Edition

Still Here Friday

Awaiting CoolDaughter #1's second race of the week and, probably, last race until the fall. We got to spend her off day touring Jamestown and Yorktown, which everyone loved.

We'll be heading back sometime this weekend, and I'm looking forward to getting back to the pool, the beach, and out to some shows.

In the meantime, here's something from our friends and Virginia's own Eternal Summers.

Enjoy yourself this weekend.

Rock on.

80 Degree Edition: Crowd Funding, Book Review, Vampire Weekend

Recap Friday

Just wanted to point out a few things:

There are a couple of crowd funding campaigns going on right now that I think deserve your attention:

Eternal Summers have a pre-order project going on PledgeMusic to finish their third LP. Correct Behavior is one of my favorite albums from last year, and the band's singer / guitarist, Nicole Yun, was kind enough to answer some questions over email for me.

Local Americana act Harper's Fellow are doing something similar over at IndieGoGo. They'll be using some local Asbury businesses to complete their record, and they'll be donating 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the record to help with Hurricane Sandy relief.

I also did a review of Jesse Jarnow's book, Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock.

Speak Into My Good Eye has the review I did of the upcoming album from Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City.

So have a look at all of those if you like.

And rock on...

Eternal Summers Launch PledgeMusic Pre-Order. Coming to Stone Pony on 4/13.

Fan Funded Final Phase

Roanoke, Virginia's Eternal Summers, whose Correct Behavior was one of my favorite records from last year, are giving fans the opportunity to pre-order the follow-up to that album via PledgeMusic. Fans can pledge at varying levels, ranging from $10 to be eligible for a download of the album when it's ready all the way up to $2000 for the privilege of cutting drummer Daniel Cundiff's hair. All pledges come with a digital download and access to other content produced during the album creation process. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Camp Sunshine.

If you'd like to catch them live before committing to a pledge, head over to the Stone Pony on Saturday. Eternal Summers will be visiting the Jersey Shore to open for The Presidents of the United States of America.

This is all pretty cool. I've been waiting for some new music from the band, and it always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to pay bands directly for their music. Maybe we can all get together and scrape up the $1000 to have Eternal Summers play a house concert for the first-ever CoolDad Music BBQ.

Eternal Summers, Correct Behavior, 2012

Saturday Run / Sunday Cocktail Hour Album Review

I'm not good with Augusts or with Sundays.  I enjoy the summer and the weekend too much relative to the rest of the year or the rest of the week, and I always get a little depressed as either comes to an end.  As my friend MomVee points out over at Watering Place, August does have a lot going for it.  We usually take a family vacation right before Labor Day.  Sundays, too, are usually nice days.  CoolMom and I took a nice, long bike ride, and we went swimming with the kids.  I just can't get over that feeling that something good is ending.

One of the really nice things about August, though, is that CoolDaughter #1 has a month off from competitive swimming.  This means that I've got a little more freedom on Saturdays than I do the rest of the year.  I thought a band called Eternal Summers may be the perfect antidote for my August melancholy, so I took the latest from the Roanoke trio, Correct Behavior, out for a Saturday run.  I also played it for CoolMom while we enjoyed some pre-dinner margaritas on Sunday night.

Eternal Summers are Nicole Yun, Daniel Cundiff, and Jonathan Woods.  In a general sense, I guess the band would fall into the dream pop category.  Their sound has much more of an edge to it, though, than  than the music of the genre's standard-bearer, Beach House.

The record opens with the bell-like guitar tones of "Millions."  That's a sound that can always pull me right in, and, paired with Yun's vocals, it makes for a strong beginning.  "You Kill" features some big, 1990's guitar riffs, and "Girls in the City," this time with Cundiff doing a spoken-word vocal, goes for a  post-punk, shoegaze sound.  "Good As You" is a beautiful song that sounds like a lost Sundays track.

Correct Behavior comes in at just over thirty minutes, so it was perfect for my just over three-mile run.  As I got home, the last track, appropriately titled "Summerset," was just ending.  I was a little sad.  I'd really enjoyed the album and wished it were longer.  I didn't realize that I had my player set on repeat, so I was pleasantly surprised when that guitar from "Millions" kicked right in again.

Summer's ending.  The weekend is over.  They'll be back, though.  In the meantime, I'll have records like Correct Behavior to remind me of them for a short time while I wait.

Oh, and CoolMom loved it.

Tumblr Discoveries

Late to the Macro-Blogging Game and Late to Eternal Summers

I'm late on a lot of things, but I eventually come around.  In the few months that I've had this blog, I've been cross-posting content to Twitter, Facebook, even Google+ (Feel free to follow or like this blog on any of those, btw).  The most dynamic community, in terms of drawing traffic and interaction, has been Tumblr (Feel free to follow me there and reblog some stuff, too.), which I joined at about the same time that I created a Blogger account.  Not that there's been a great deal of either traffic or interaction at this point, but Tumblr has definitely been the most active source for that type of stuff.

I'm just not sure if people pay much attention to the long-form blog anymore.  Maybe if I started this thing about five years ago, like I always said I would, each post would draw a stream of angry, only partially coherent, anonymous comments like BrooklynVegan.  No matter, I enjoy doing things this way, and I'll likely keep it up for a while.

Back to Tumblr, though.  It's a two-way street.  Even with the hundreds of artists and record labels I follow on Twitter, I'd say most of the new music I discover now comes from Tumblr-er's posting of what they like.

Carrying through on that late on a lot of things theme, over the last few days, Tumblr blog thedreamcomparison has introduced me to a dream pop duo (now a trio, I guess) that's been around for a few years, Eternal Summers.  The band's latest LP, Correct Behavior, came out just last week.

Eternal Summers don't do that same, languid dream pop that's taken over a large percentage of the mindiesphere recently.  Their version has an almost punky edge to it that I've really been enjoying.  I've spent the last day or so listening to all the Eternal Summers I could find and grabbing a few records.

So, I'll keep long-form blogging it over here.  You can read all of this stuff via Tumblr if that's your preference.  I know I'm going to keep obsessively scrolling through that feed.  It turns up some gems now and then.