Carnival Season Release New Song

Early promo shot of Carnival Season: l-r: Mark Reynolds, Brad Quinn, Tim Boykin

Who, you say? Carnival Season was a Birmingham, Alabama band that I only vaguely remember from their time together, but I had a later connection via Carnival Season member Brad Quinn. Quinn served as the music editor at the Columbia Free Times in the late 1990′s, the same alt-weekly I’ve been a music section contributor with since 1993. I knew even then that he played bass with one of my musical heroes, Tommy Keene, but only found out later about his first band. From the “BHAM WIKI” site:

Carnival Season (originally Karnival Season) was a Birmingham-based rock band, active from 1984 to 1989. It was comprised of guitarist and vocalist Tim Boykin and bassist Brad Quinn, along with drummer Mark Reynolds and rhythm guitarist Ed Reynolds.

The group signed a development deal with MCA records and recorded demo tracks at the Terminal Studio in Jackson, Mississippi with Tim Lee producing. Their deal with MCA went nowhere, so they signed with What Goes On, a UK-based independent label which also represented fellow Birmingham band The Primitons. In their local shows, GNP usually opened for them.

Ed left about the same time, and “Carnival Season” continued as a trio. The Primitons’ Mats Roden produced their second EP, also recorded at Terminal Studio. They toured regionally, opened for groups such as the Meat Puppets, Redd Kross, Drivin’ n’ Cryin’, and the Replacements, and also made a few trips to play in New York.

Their only full-length album, Waiting for No One, was recorded with Tommy Keene at Hit and Run Studios in Rockville, Maryland and released in 1987. Brad Quinn’s brother Chuck joined the group for its subsequent tour, which fizzled on the West Coast. The band broke up in 1989, with Boykin forming The Shame Idols and Quinn joining Keene’s touring band.

Carnival Season reunited for a show at The Nick in the Fall of 2007, and again at Bottletree in August 2010 to coincide with the release of a compilation CD on Greg Glover‘s Arena Rock Records.

The band quietly posted a video copy of a new song from recent recordings, with the following note:

When Carnival Season drummer Mark Reynolds passed away in December of 2012, the band had been sharing song demos for possible inclusion on their first album in 25 years. “In Our Time” would have been one of Mark’s songs to be included on the album. The song was recorded In Kobe, Japan, and Birmingham, Alabama, by Carnival Season’s Brad Quinn (bass, keyboards, vocals) and Tim Boykin (guitars) with guest drummer Eric Wiegmann. The sessions were engineered, mixed and mastered by Hatada Kazuhiro at Site Kobe Studios.

It’s a mellower sound than I recall from their official releases but a pleasant tune nonetheless, and worth more than a spin or two:

Dear Blanca, “Havana Tonight” Preview of Upcoming Album

Columbia’s Dear Blanca won’t release their new album Talker until February 12th, but they have been kind enough to post a song from it, “Havana Tonight”. It’s a careening track that feels as if it will fall apart at any moment, late-period Tom Waits mixed with a jazz/punk/indie aesthetic that comes out on top like the last kid standing in an epic game of King of the Mountain, breathless yet triumphant. Listen below:

A Fragile Tomorrow Release New Album Be Nice, Be Careful

If the Kelly brothers of the band A Fragile Tomorrow set out to make the perfect power pop record, they couldn’t have come up with a better pair of producers than Mitch Easter and Ted Comerford on the resulting disc, Be Nice Be Careful, out this week. Easter is reknowned as the founder of 80′s college rock popsters Let’s Active and he has been an active producer in North Carolina for many years; Comerford has worked with Easter and many of the best producers in the business.

The band’s back story is fascinating, with the three brothers–Dominic, Sean, and Brendan–and their family moving from Montgomery, New York to Charleston, South Carolina to follow a musical muse that included a love for the music of Hootie & the Blowfish as well as some of the same 80′s touchstones that spurred those SC natives—R.E.M., Guadalcanal Diary, Dumptruck, Marshall Crenshaw. That they have ended up working with a number of those artists, including The Bangles, Don Dixon and The Indigo Girls (who all make guest appearances on the new album) just makes the continuing tale more sweet.

Be Nice Be Careful is a modest yet assured set of songs that are whip-snapping tight and full of the kind of ringing guitars and vocal harmonies that made their heroes’ music so enduring. The centerpiece is “Kernersville”, which possesses one of those stick-in-your-head choruses and an undeniable pop hook, but there are other highlights such as the Crenshaw-esque “Long Time To Be Happy”, the almost alt-country twang of “Intentions”, and the silly organ riff that opens the album on “Don’t Need Saving.”

There’s a musical innocence here that might come from the fact that the band members are barely out of their teens (with the exception of non-Kelly brother Shaun Rhodes), but the lyrics belie that wide-eyed optimism with some emotional and insightful snippets of wisdom on tracks such as “My Home” and “Crooked Smiles and Greedy Hands.”

It’s only the first release day of the new year, but with my 2012 top ten lists not far in the rearview mirror I can’t help but think about 2013′s list and the odds that this one will be on it are pretty high.

Here’s a clip of them playing “Kernersville” at last year’s CMJ Music Marathon in NYC:

New Robyn Hitchcock Album Coming Soon!!!

This makes me happy….Yep Roc Records has announced a March release date for a new album from idiosyncratic pop-rocker Robyn Hitchcock:

Yep Roc Records is excited to announce the March 5, 2013 release of the new Robyn Hitchcock album, Love From London. The record was produced and engineered by Paul Noble, and features Noble on bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals; Jenny Adejayan on cello and vocals; Lizzie Anstey on vocals and keyboards and Jenny Macro, Lucy Parnell and Anne Lise Frokedal on vocals. A lo-fi rehearsal video featuring Green Gartside, Stephen Irvine, Terry Edwards, Mark Bedford, Adejayan and Noble in a London pub on a Sunday performing “Be Still” from the new album is here:

Hitchcock also celebrates his 60th birthday next March with a retrospective show on February 28th at the Village Underground in London where he will be playing songs from each of his albums, accompanied by some of his favorite British musicians.

Hitchcock describes his songs as “paintings you can listen to.” Love From London “celebrates life in a culture imperiled by economic and environmental collapse,” he says. “We are surfing on the momentum of chaos. If a consensus on global warming comes from the people, then the media, the politicians, and the corporations will have to adapt to it. Rock and Roll is an old man’s game now, so I’m staying in it.”