Chapterhouse formed in Reading, Berkshire in the summer of 1987. After a few local gigs the band supported Spacemen 3 at the After Dark Club in Reading.

Following the show, Spacemen 3 asked Chapterhouse to support them on their forthcoming UK tour in early 1989. Spacemen 3's Manager then began to represent Chapterhouse and over the next few months the band moved to London and started performing regular gigs.

In 1990 the band began recording their songs for the first time at VHF, the studio used by Spacemen 3 in Rugby, Warwickshire.

These early recordings would form the core of what would become the band's first 2 EP's; Freefall and Sunburst.

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On Sale via JamUSA.com

Look no further than the title track of their new Vanguard debut album The Bear to understand Stephen Kellogg and The Sixers. As the band sings passionately, “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. Sometimes you’re gonna win, sometimes you’re gonna lose…but you know in the end – there's no apologies!”

“SK6ERS,” as they’re also affectionately known, have carved a determined, inspiring path since forming in Western Massachusetts in 2003. An exceptional live act given to high-energy showmanship, The Sixers are closing in on their 1000th show with a newfound grit and gratitude. Stephen and core Sixers – Kit “Goose” Karlson (keys, bass, tuba, accordion) and Brian “Boots” Factor (drums, mandolin, banjo) -- are friends who act like brothers and switch off on their instruments to keep it fresh; much in the tradition of their collective heroes, The Band. “We’ve all opted to approach our life in the same way – trying to put integrity ahead of ambitions of fame and fortune, though we’d like that too... at least the fortune part,” Stephen says with a laugh.

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After first gaining acclaim for a densely melodic sound which anticipated the coming emergence of grunge, Scotland's Teenage Fanclub spent the remainder of their career as torch-bearers for the power pop revival, unparalleled among their generation for both their unwavering adherence to and brilliant reinvention of the classic guitar pop approach of vintage acts like Big Star and Badfinger. Blessed with the talents of three formidable singers and songwriters (Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley, respectively) all sharing an unerring knack for crafting immediately infectious melodies, Teenage Fanclub's radiant brand of pop classicism enjoyed only a brief moment devotion to its unapologetically old-fashioned sensibility yielded of commercial and critical vogue, and over time, the band's dogged increasingly dwindling fan base and virtually non-existent record sales. Nevertheless, almost none of their contemporaries can claim either Teenage Fanclub's consistency or longevity though never groundbreaking or hip, their music possesses a timelessness and accessibility matched by precious few.

Tags | Follow | @TeenageFanclub | @NormanBlake |

Singers/guitarists Blake and McGinley first teamed with singer/bassist Love in 1987 in Glasgow's short-lived Boy Hairdressers, issuing the single "Golden Shower" on the famed Scottish indie label 53rd and 3rd, before disbanding. After a brief stint with the BMX Bandits, Blake reunited with Love and McGinley to form Teenage Fanclub in 1989; drummer Francis McDonald, a fellow BMX Bandit, completed the original lineup, although McDonald was replaced by fan Brendan O'Hare during sessions for the group's debut album, 1990's A Catholic Education. Released on the Creation label overseas and on the fledgling Matador imprint in the U.S., the album's thick, murky squall staked out sonic territory subsequently occupied by the nascent grunge movement and made Teenage Fanclub an instant critical favorite; the God Knows Its True EP soon followed, but although American major labels came courting, the band still owed Matador one more record. They submitted The King, a ramshackle collection of instrumentals capped off by a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Madonna's "Like a Virgin"; instead, the record was summarily rejected by Matador honcho Gerard Cosloy, and after paying Cosloy what they felt the remainder of their contract was worth, Teenage Fanclub signed to Geffen. Never shy about celebrating their inspirations covers of the Beatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko," the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Older Guys," and Phil Ochs' "Chords of Fame" are scattered across various singles and EPs Teenage Fanclub's 1991 Geffen debut, Bandwagonesque, gloriously evoked the raggedly radiant pop manna of Big Star, the famed 1970s cult band led by ex-Box Tops frontman Alex Chilton and his singing/songwriting partner Chris Bell. With its newfound melodic ingenuity, brash guitar sound and gorgeous harmonies, the record was a massive critical success, and although mainstream pop radio failed to bite, the group found a warm welcome on collegiate airwaves.

Tags | Follow | @TeenageFanclub | @NormanBlake |

Dungen's fourth studio album extends the acclaimed Swedish outfit's sound past psychedelia into something far more rare. Moving beyond mere stylistic concerns, 4 finds Gustav Ejstes' focus on the extremes of Dungen's sound separating into two entities. Blazing, raw guitar workouts have their own time and place, but now, so do stirringly orchestrated, jazz-cooled compositions with cinematic undertones.

Bandleader Gustav Ejstes has made many allusions to his creative process as it likens to that of a hip-hop producer. On 4, that process is more evident than ever, both in the feel of each piece, and in the sense of intuition and control within the members of the group. New drummer Johan Holmegard joins guitarist Reine Fiske and bassist Mattias Gustavsson, while Ejstes steps away from guitar for the entire album, focusing on the piano as his lead instrument. Together, they have honed a classic and seamless sound, constructed with lavish studio flourishes and moving, narrative arrangements, and yet able to toughen up to tear veins of fierce blues-psych instrumentals up from the surface.

The ten tracks on 4 comprise Dungen's most concentrated effort to date, beats surging forth and atmosphere changing as their sound continues to evolve. Every song here runs under five minutes, pushing the group to introduce confident melodies and arresting ambiance in tighter frameworks. Gauging from the results, this challenge has done them well.

Tags | Follow | @Dungen | @TheEntranceBand |

Del Rey was born in 1997 in the attic of a three-flat in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Drawing on diverse backgrounds of Oberlin art-rock, Peoria punk, Scottish pipe drumming, and backwoods-Maine hallucinogenica (a highly combustible mixture of narcotics and electronics), musicians Damien Burke, Chris Cowgill, Eben English, and Michael Johnson forged a swirling din of pounding, hypnotic rhythms, dusky-yet-heroic harmony, and snaking, angular melodies. That is, until they were booted from the apartment by ungrateful neighbors. Fortunately, more friendly confines were soon found, and the rock has since continued unabated.

In ‘99, the band released a four-song EP, dlry, on their own Dirigible Recordings imprint, which displayed a newborn taking its first breaths, determined to create its own distinct identity. A debut LP, Speak It Not Aloud (My Pal God, 2001), found them molding a vocabulary of sonic lyricism and rhythmic textuality into concise, coherent compositions. On the subsequent Darkness & Distance LP (My Pal God, 2003), this lexicon coalesced into densely plotted tales of dynamic tension & release, where breakbeat armadas battled with ethereal volume swells, and shimmering keyboards mingled juices with crushing walls of guitar. And they lived happily ever after.

Their new album "Immemorial" will be released this October on At a Loss Recordings (US) and Golden Antenna Records (EU)! This mother$%$# has been a long time in the making, but the results are well worth the wait. You can listen to a sampler of the album on their MySpace page.

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Will Hoge has made a career of writing and singing powerful songs about life’s cruel and dark turns. Not long ago, he fell victim to one such turn. As Hoge rode his scooter home from the studio, he was struck by an oncoming van that had veered into his lane. There were no skid marks. Launched off his bike, Hoge ended up bloodied, broken-boned, temporarily blinded, and near death.

“[The accident] was like stopping a record as it spins,” says Hoge, who had been halfway through recording material for his new record before getting derailed. “It was like taking the needle and pushing it off the turntable.”

For ten months, the accident sidelined Hoge. For ten months, it made him do something he hadn’t done in 18 years: stop the music. Larger matters dominated his life, like physical recovery and the well-being of his family. “People would say, ‘I bet you’re ready to get back to playing and writing.’ I’m thinking, ‘Playing or singing is not the issue right now. I’m ready to get back to walking.’”

His previous album, Draw the Curtains, had been a unanimous high-water mark in his career, a magnificent collection of rock, country, soul, blues, and folk. With a great band, good vibes, and clear skies overhead, Hoge felt like he was building something real as a career artist. Eight months after the incident he re-entered the studio in pursuit of that mission. He now has his health, an invigorated spirit, and a renewed sense of his musical journey. “Making The Wreckage opened me up in a different way,” says Hoge. “I felt a calmness, a purpose. Right now it feels like I’m getting to the core of what I want to do and why.”

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Mention Alejandro Escovedo to a casual music fan, and you’ll probably get a shrug of indifference.

But mention him to fans of punk, alt-country, blazing guitar-rock or confessional string-quartet pop, and you might get a big smile.

And mention that the Texas-based singer/songwriter/guitarist appears Saturday at the Jewish Mother with his hard-rockin’ group, the Sensitive Boys, for a very rare area appearance, and it’s a serious reason to rejoice.

For those not aware of the Mexican American musician’s talent, experience and rich history, suffice it to say he’s a sort of a musical “Zelig,” although hardly ordinary or unimportant.

He was named Musician of the Decade by No Depression magazine in 1998. Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, USA Today and Entertainment Weekly have all done loving profiles. He’s appeared on “Austin City Limits,” “Late Night With Conan O’Brian,” “Today,” “Tonight,” with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and at the Democratic National Convention.

Fans have decried their hero’s lack of popular recognition or mainstream success, but Escovedo sees it differently.

“I’m quite grateful and glad it’s gone this way,” he said during a phone interview. “I’m comfortable to have been able to experiment, to have had creative freedom and to have played music for a good reason.”

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The Swedish duo First Aid Kit comprises sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg (born 1990 and 1993, respectively), hailing from Enskede, a suburb south of Stockholm. Yes, they are very young, but the pure music they create speaks of bygone times and old souls. The emphasis is on narrative lyrics accompanying playful melodies with intense, dense harmonies.

The musical journey of Klara and Johanna began with singing along to the pop songs that leaked into their childhood home, radio hits by Britney, Christina and so on. However, it was not until happening upon the music of such venerable artists as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, that the sisters discovered how music that could touch them in a way that those radio songs could not.

Klara describes her first encounter with the song ‘First Day of My Life’ by Bright Eyes as a revelation. With authenticity and honesty having struck a deep chord within, this is what came to characterize the music of First Aid Kit. It has the feel of forest folk songs, full of enchanting storytelling, and as on EP highlight ‘Jagadamba, You Might’ a sense of compelling, ancient mystery. Their music has much in common with artists like Vashti Bunyan, Devendra Banhart, Bright Eyes, Joanna Newsom, Karen Dalton or The Carter Family.

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @FAKsessions | @ |

Comprised of members JP (dubbed “The Mastermind” by the rest of the band), TJ, Thomas Brian and Marcos, Surfer Blood met one fateful night at an after party for Miami’s Ultra Festival, though they didn’t attend the festival itself (“We do not like the D’n’B,” they proclaim). After discussing music, what else, for the remainder of the night, JP decided to recruit the three other guys to perfect a couple of songs he had been working on for some time, and thus, the band was formed.

If you’re wondering about the name, the band ain’t got no surfer blood in them, and actually denounce the surfer kids of their youth for making their high school experience miserable. As for the moniker itself, one of the band members just randomly yelled it out over the radio in the backseat of the band’s car, which is as good a naming process as any.

"We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you're walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever."

Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham of The Drums met at summer camp when they were children and have been best friends ever since. Soon after their initial meeting, they formed a persistent yet unprosperous electro pop band called Goat Explosion and toured extensively in North America during their teenage years. Around 2003, Jonathan and hometown friend (and master woodsman) Adam Kessler formed indie rock group Elkland, which was quickly signed by Columbia Records. In the years immediately following, Elkland garnered attention in clubs and on the indie music scene with their infectious debut single "Apart". In the meantime, Jacob formed a band called Horse Shoes (Shelflife Records), specializing in melodically strong and sentimental love songs. Jonathan ultimately decided to take a few years off from writing music after becoming disillusioned with the music business and parted ways with Elkland in 2005.

Tags | All Ages | Follow | @SurferBlood | @TheDrumsForever |

The times have finally caught up with acclaimed Denver quartet DeVotchKa. Not long ago when the band unloaded their instruments - a violin, a tuba and an accordion, among others - into a rock club, they were told they must be in the wrong place. They created music that was Grammy nominated (DeVotchKa created the soundtrack for the indie smash Oscar winning film Little Miss Sunshine) without the benefit of a huge promotion team or runaway budget, instead relying only on their own efforts by self-releasing their records. And they crafted gems of songs by mixing a beautiful blend of Eastern European bohemia, American prairie rock and distinctive indie and called it pop, rather than world, music. Now, the band is au courant, poised to shine on with their Anti- Records debut A Mad and Faithful Telling. From the cinematic richness of "Transliterator" to the modern pop experiment of "The Clockwise Witness," to the soaring and wrenching "Undone," DeVotchKa have produced a career-defining record and the world is listening.

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @DeVotchKaMusic | @AngusJuliaStone |

The times have finally caught up with acclaimed Denver quartet DeVotchKa. Not long ago when the band unloaded their instruments - a violin, a tuba and an accordion, among others - into a rock club, they were told they must be in the wrong place. They created music that was Grammy nominated (DeVotchKa created the soundtrack for the indie smash Oscar winning film Little Miss Sunshine) without the benefit of a huge promotion team or runaway budget, instead relying only on their own efforts by self-releasing their records. And they crafted gems of songs by mixing a beautiful blend of Eastern European bohemia, American prairie rock and distinctive indie and called it pop, rather than world, music. Now, the band is au courant, poised to shine on with their Anti- Records debut A Mad and Faithful Telling. From the cinematic richness of "Transliterator" to the modern pop experiment of "The Clockwise Witness," to the soaring and wrenching "Undone," DeVotchKa have produced a career-defining record and the world is listening.

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @DeVotchKaMusic | @AngusJuliaStone |

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$9 Bud & Bud Light Pitchers + $4 Bloodys & Mimosas

$5 Gameday Food Menu:

Buffalo Wings

Artichoke or Buffalo Cheese Dip with Flatbread

Quesadillas with Salsa & Sour Cream

Chicken Fingers with Your Choice of Honey Mustard, BBQ, Buffalo, or Ranch Dipping Sauces

Burgers

Breakfast Burritos:

The Ultimate: Scrambled Eggs, Sausage Patty, Tater Tots & Cheddar Cheese

Pesto Omelet, Bacon, Pepperjack Cheese & Tots

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Lissie left LA, spent time in London and Tennessee, hankering a little for that Midwestern hometown in Illinois. Eventually she extricated herself from a long, troubled relationship and relocated to Ojai, CA, population just shy of 8,000. She rented an old farmhouse she had never seen, in a town she had never visited, “just because I sat next to someone from there on an airplane who told me it was nice.” She likes it up there. “It’s fairly slow, everything closes early and you can see all the stars at night. There are mountains outside my front door and it’s really quiet, which means I get a lot of work done and have time to myself which is essential for me to function. I can still drive into LA for some excitement when I want, going out and being around other people is equally important to me.”

“All these things,” she says, talking a little about her new hometown in CA, and a little about her music, too, “I do them without thinking. So much of my process is instinct and it’s natural. Even in photo shoots I won’t wear concealer, I don’t want to look like someone painted my face. Everything I do I want to feel natural; I want it to mean something to me. If it doesn’t feel natural I can’t do it. I can’t act. I’m not good at faking it.”

And this is the essence of Lissie, something straight-down-the-line, unaffected. “Now I’ve gotten older I really found myself recognizing the hometown Midwesterner in me and embracing it,” she says. “For better or worse it may not be all that tactful or that cool, but there’s no phoniness. It’s pretty direct. And I’m direct; I’m not hiding anything. I don’t really know what or why or who I am,” she says, “but I don’t know how to not be how I am.” Lissie is, you might say, ‘not heated, treated, whipped or spun.’

Since early this year, Lissie has largely been based in London, where Catching A Tiger was first released. Embraced lovingly by the British press, she’s been featured in Q, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Mirror, Time Out, The Big Issue, and on the BBC and Later…with Jools Holland, among others; she’s played with Joshua Radin, The Local Natives, and Alan Pownall, in addition to performing at Bonnaroo in Manchester, TN, and The Great Escape in Brighton, England. She’s also picked up praise and support from a wide range of fellow artists, including Katy Perry, Courtney Love, Mumford & Sons, and Ellie Goulding, who joined her onstage to perform “Everywhere I Go” at The Great Escape in May.

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Tags | 18+ | Follow | @LissieMusic | @ |

“Every day an artist gets up and knows he has to run. He has to run faster than the distant fragments of our time, faster than the voices hemming him in, telling him that however much he thinks,imagines, writes or comunicates, the system has already found a new way of drowning him out.

Faster than the army of pretentious pinheads boasting artistic bollox, screaming their cheapskate anger, selling out for twenty seconds of fame, filling their arses with gold so they can say I was there, applauding midgets dressed up as giants.

He knows he has to chase ideals that have packed their bags And run off to the nearest tourist haven or tax haven and chase gods that ask for a discount on the rent on olympus and apartments with a view of the clouds because, if they look down, they say they get an urge to throw up. Down here, it’s all ours, it all belongs to men and women, but it’s common knowledge that we’ve never had a particular talent for doing things well. Every day an artist gets up and knows he has to run. What he doesn’t know, perhaps, is that he doesn’t have to run …alone”

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @BloodyBeetroots | @MidConspiracy |

Come celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Erin's groundbreaking debut album, "Distillation". McKeown, backed by full-band, will perform the album in sequence followed by a set drawing from the best of her old and new music.

Ten years into a dynamic career marked by 7 LPs, 2 EPs and a live concert album, Erin McKeown delivers Hundreds of Lions, her first collection of original songs since 2005’s We Will Become Like Birds.

Although Erin started writing songs while still in high school in hometown Fredericksburg, Virginia, she really began earning her chops while attending Brown University, releasing two albums before graduation and gigging on weekends whenever and wherever possible. She hasn’t slowed down, famously averaging 200 live shows a year. As a multi-instrumentalist, Erin’s become in demand as a session player, recording vocals, piano, bass lines and of course guitar tracks for other artists’ records all while steadily working material that became Hundreds of Lions.

At the center of the album, the song “The Lions” brims with bright piano, cathedral spire atmosphere and traces of carnival-noir pop as Erin sings, “There’s a risk, there’s a twist, in anything worth doing,” with a voice clear and strong as glass ribbon.

Tags | Follow | @ErinMcKeown | @ |

2009 was a big year for Drop the Lime. He released two huge club hits, Devils Eyes and Set Me Free, the combined force of which helped him topple the likes of Phoenix, Florence & The Machine and The XX as “Most Blogged Artist on the Planet” (Hype Machine). Luca took his unique style of DJing around the globe, farther afield than ever before, crisscrossing North America many times as well Europe, China, Singapore and Australia. Videos of kids losing their minds to his unique sets, mixing rockabilly and club music with live vocals on top are all over youtube.

2010 sees him continue his quest to be one of the world’s leading DJ/producers, with a slew of singles and debut album about to hit in a big way. Keep your eyes on the Elvis Presley of dance music!

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Tags | 18+ | Follow | @DropTheLime | @TroubleandBass |

Theres a certain beauty and the beast quality to the greatest male/female singer/songwriter duos Consider Jane Birkin, the well-heeled toast of 60s society, hooking up with Serge Gainsbourg, the filthy Gallic singer/songwriters ever-present gauze of Gauloise smoke irreversibly clouding her reputation. Or theres Nancy Sinatra, the golden daughter of the Chairman Of The Board, whose career was rescued from its early doldrums thanks to the intervention of producer Lee Hazlewood, who injected a gravely, cynical tone that gave Nancys subsequent records a disquieting, idiosyncratic charm. And so it is with Ballad Of The Broken Seas, an album length collaboration between Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan.

Theres a similar sense of contrast, between Isobels aching, pristine chill of a vocal, and Lanegans wounded, regret-stewed burr. Their musical backpages could hardly be more different; Isobel found her initial fame playing cello and singing with deftly-melodic Glaswegian indie collective Belle & Sebastian, before branching off for the lushly-orchestrated melancholia of her Gentle Waves for two LPs, and releasing her debut solo album, the acclaimed Amorino, in 2003. Lanegan, on the other hand, sang for Screaming Trees, perhaps the greatest and most underrated of all the grunge bands, until their dissolution in 2000, since when he has juggled the solo career he began while still in the Trees, and a unique role as occasional frontman of Queens Of The Stoneage. The sweet, folksy girl and the grizzled rawk guy; a classic cocktail, perhaps, but the roles are inverted, in this case.

Tags | Follow | @IsobelCampbell | @Mark_Lanegan |

K-os, born Kevin Brereton, is a genuine neo-crossover rap n' roller who's music, much like your Ipod, might speak to hipster club kidz, pop chart gazers, Canadian indie rockers, dirty south electronic rap renegades, or reggae rude boys simultaneously. As it should - his rhyme and crooning skills took root in arguably the most polyglot and multi-cultural city on the planet, Toronto. And he's quite vocal about his not belonging to any one genre - he belongs to them all. Says K-os: "I'm a historical opportunist who’s grown up on everything from Dylan to Marley to KRS-One... I've never seen myself as just a hip hop artist".

On Yes!, his 12 song deep fourth album, released in Canada on Nettwerk/Universal, the now Vancouver-based upstart has consolidated everything he's done before, and chimed in where his head's at now, like a more musically seasoned audio auteur would, despite his past successes. "As cliche as it may sound, this record really does take the best elements of my past work" he explains. "Strangely, three albums later, it feels like I'm starting new again, with a new label, manager, and agent. This album is a return to me picking up drum machines, guitars, keyboard and going for broke!"

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Tags | Follow | @koskhv | @Astronautalis |

On Sale Friday at Noon

Phantogram’s music sounds like it’s made by a band from the city. Electronic loops, hip-hop beats, shoegaze, soul, pop — each finds its way into their songs. Unexpectedly, the band doesn’t live and work in a major urban center, but rather calls the town of Saratoga Springs, NY (population 26,186) home. Despite the cultural influence of local Skidmore College (where fellow beat-experimenters Ratatat formed) and a relatively small scene of adventurous musicians and listeners, Saratoga isn’t exactly teeming with fans of J. Dilla, My Bloody Valentine or Serge Gainsbourg. But Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the duo that make up Phantogram and who grew up in the even smaller nearby municipality of Greenwich, have flourished in Saratoga. In fact, the town itself isn’t rural enough for their taste — they drive almost every day another 45 minutes into upstate farmland to a barn they call Harmony Lodge to write and record. Serving as their homemade studio/practice space/think-tank/bat-cave, the barn is equipped with various samplers, tapes, records, synths, drums, and both percussive and stringed instruments. It’s there that Phantogram allows their natural surroundings and metropolitan influences to meld together creating beautiful, beat-driven dreamlike pop songs.

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @Phantogram | @ |

All Time Low has emerged as one of the most popular new bands in recent memory, beloved by an increasingly fervent fan following for their fast-paced and fizzy brand of pop-punk. Now, with the hugely anticipated “NOTHING PERSONAL,” the Maryland-based band has exceeded all expectations with a collection of effervescent new songs, marked by unstoppable hookiness and a newly discovered knack for exploration and invention. Where other bands might have played it safe by rehashing established hits, All Time Low instead opted to push the envelope by collaborating with a veritable who’s-who of producers, each with their own unique sonic stamp. Unified by singer/guitarist Alex Gaskarth’s clever lyricism, songs like “Weightless” and “Therapy” are marked by a range of diverse musical approaches, all the while retaining the patented All Time Low energy and enthusiasm.

“This record was less about doing what the bands we grew up listening to did,” Gaskarth says. “It was more about knowing what we do, developing that sound, but also stemming out, trying new things, and exploring other veins."

Tags | All Ages | Follow | @AllTimeLow | @ARTTM |

Northern Ireland’s TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB is a music-mad trio whose debut album fizzes with invention and sparkling tunes. Rooted in rock and pop, with elements of electronica / electro, and Afro-beats, the sum is greater than any ‘indie electro pop’ parts.

Two Door Cinema Club’s story begins three years ago with three 15-year olds at school in a town just outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Vocalist/guitarist Alex Trimble and bassist Kevin Baird studied music together; guitarist Sam Halliday was a friend of Alex’s. The trio initially formed a rock band with a drummer, but after his departure, the remaining members realized“We were playing music that we weren’t enjoying,” says Kevin, “so we said ‘let’s write some songs, without any pretense of what they’ll sound like’. That’s why we find it so hard now if people ask us what genre we are.”

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Formed in Glasgow in 1987, The Vaselines released two singles and one album, Dum Dum, on the 53rd & 3rd label. Splitting up in 1989 (in the same week their album was released), they might have faded into obscurity but for the intervention of a certain band from Seattle. Nirvana covered three Vaselines songs, helping to fuel a growing after-the-fact appreciation of their seedy, two-and-a-half chord, garage pop manifesto.

Founding members Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee remained musically active throughout the intervening years: the former with Captain America aka Eugenius and finally as a solo artist; McKee with Painkillers and Suckle.

Eugene and Frances collaborated intermittently in the intervening years. They toured jointly and played a few of the old songs together in the wake of their respective solo project releases in 2006. But an acclaimed, unannounced appearance at a fundraiser in Glasgow’s Mono for Malawi Orphan Support in 2008 was the real catalyst for their latest, exciting bout of creativity.

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Bear in Heaven have trapped echos, tremors, winds, and fading light. Theyve redefined time, and folded it. Theyve unbuttoned sound, and realigned it. Within four walls in Brooklyn, Jon Philpot, Adam Wills, Sadek Bazaara, and Joe Stickney mined the democracy of their collaboration, plus the endless hours of streamofconsciousness recorded documentation of rehearsals over the past years, to conceive the crystalline form of Beast Rest Forth Mouth, their second album, their exaltation.

A seed planted in the Southern US years ago (all members hail from Georgia or Alabama), Bear In Heaven began as the musical arm of Jon Philpot in 1998. Time eventually brought in a slew of players, like rickety scaffolding, that grew the sound and guided the group to morph from a 6to5to4piece. As a fourheaded organism, Bear In Heaven has now found a sonic stride unlike any in their history. Freely acknowledging the importance of the number four, the album Beast Rest Forth Mouth (think 'East West North South') was a conscious product of the four compass points, of the four makers, and of the inevitable confusion that manifests from that crossroad mentality: four directions could lead you anywhere and everywhere. Its the acknowledgement of what can go down at that convergence, at that dusty center, that drives Bear In Heaven and imbues the songs of Beast Rest Forth Mouth with something akin to both eternal peace and nervous urgency

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @BearInHeaven | @ |

Chicago360 is an annual documentary program that showcases the untold and undiscovered aspects of Chicago life. Each year five Chicago filmmakers are brought together to interpret a particular theme and then create a short documentary film based on their interpretations. The result is a feature-length film broken into five individual sections, each section focused on a specific aspect of city life as told through the imagination and style of each filmmaker.

Chicago360 v.5 picks a unique theme each year centered around the Chicago community. This year's theme is "Aliens in the City". The Street Musicians segment will be directed by Alex Mechli.

Split Pillow's motion pictures are original works created by a constantly rotating segment of Chicago's greater filmmaking community. Split Pillow has no permanant company of artists, instead striving to bring experienced alumni together with new emerging talent for the mutual benefit of both. Split Pillow is funded through a variety of sources including state grants, foundation gifts, individual donors and film sales.

Tags | All Ages | Follow | @SplitPillow | @ |

The Morning Benders caught our eyes, ears and hearts in 2007 with their inspiring ambition to become an international band, while staying true to their hometown of Berkeley and building things the right way.

Over 2007, the morning benders - chris (vocals, guitars, organ, rhodes, pianos), joe (guitars, rhodes, pianos, organ), julian (drums, percussion) and dp (bass) - self-released 2 very raw but charming EPs. "Loose Change" was recorded on a laptop with one microphone and "Boarded Doors" was recorded at the bands home practice space in a basement. They began to build a passionate and loyal fan-base by feverishly gigging around the Bay Area and Los Angeles at everything from house parties to supporting noteworthy bands such as Yo La Tengo, Two Gallants, MGMT, White Rabbits, Au Revoir Simone, Yeasayer, The Long Winters, Oh No! Oh My!, The Deadly Syndrome, The Rosebuds and more.

Tags | 18+ | Follow | @MorningBenders | @ |