Inspiration arrived and as he wrote, Van was compelled to fuel the process further by changing his environment once more.  He spent most of the next year traveling: to Alaska, where he’d spent summers working on his father’s commercial salmon fishing boat; to California, where he’d grown up in a seaside town off Highway 1; and eventually to New York, where in Brooklyn he endured relentless blizzards and a cold nearly reminiscent of Oslo.

Van gave his new project a name: WATERS. These new songs he wrote veered away from the frequently loose, punchy anthems of Port O’Brien, and as he intensively pieced each one together, he sought a bigger sound – something louder than he could play on his own.  So Van returned to Oslo, where his new journey had begun.  He put together a band of fine Norwegian gentlemen and spent every day of the next two months rehearsing in a small practice space outside of the city.

This band went with Van to Dallas, Texas, to record with producer John Congleton. Over a brief 10-day recording session in April, Congleton – who has worked on some of Van’s favorite albums (by artists including St. Vincent, Bill Callahan, and yes, R. Kelly) – kept the production stark, maintaining the songs’ intimacy and emotional intensity. Out In The Light has a louder, fuller, more aggressive and raw sound than any of Van’s earlier works. It’s a mix of fuzzy, pealing guitars and crashing drums, and easy, alternately soaring and languid, indelible melodies.

According to Van, “The record is about waking up. It is about getting out of a situation that seems endless, and realizing you’re not too old to make dramatic and sudden changes in your life. It is about starting over.”

Since they stopped touring in support of Future Perfect in 2006, Autolux has been steadily crafting the songs that make up Transit Transit, as well as continuing to play sold out shows to an ever-growing fan base and opening for a who’s who of the music world – including PJ Harvey on her first solo tour of Russia, and more recently, Thom Yorke, with his latest project, Atoms For Peace. In September 2009, Autolux went on their first headlining US tour, which included an appearance at the Flaming Lips’-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Autolux (Carla Azar: vocals/drums, Greg Edwards: vocals/guitar. and Eugene Goreshter: vocals/bass) produced Transit Transit themselves with Edwards serving as engineer. It was recorded in the band’s studio, Space 23, located near downtown Los Angeles. The album begins with it’s title track, an utterly unique concussion of rhythm, created from a looped sample of an old freezer slamming shut and a simple round of chords from an upright piano. The hypnotic density of the vocals and organic futurism of the instrumentation instantly rearranges any preconceptions about the ‘autolux sound’.  “Census” and “Supertoys” play like the logical evolution and refinement of Future Perfect, delivering propulsive grooves and atmospheric chord changes, while “Highchair” combines a simple, yet effective drum machine beat with tympani-esque tom overdubs to create an orchestral lo-fi dance track. There is a notable sonic progression throughout Transit Transit: vintage synthesizers and manipulated ambience glue central song components together, several tracks are built around piano, all three members take turns with lead vocals, harmonies are abundant, and there is even a bit of trumpet.  Ultimately, Transit Transit is propelled by its individual members’ strengths, coalescing into beautiful, complex songs. Goreshter continues to innovate his bass style, effortlessly modernizing the instrument’s melodic role, while still providing an on-edge rawness and groove-filled momentum.  Edwards’ guitars serve to modulate the moods throughout the record, constantly evoking feelings found in the space between emotions.  And Azar’s sturdy, creative drumming (a phenomenon to behold on stage) continues on record with plenty of hook beats – ferocious and delicate, at once.

Whether Autolux is a band you are just discovering, or if you are already a frantic fan, Transit Transit provides a deep and profound world in which to immerse yourself.

Autolux will be touring across the US and Canada this fall.  Dates will be announced soon.

Transit Transit track listing:

1. Transit Transit

2. Census

3. Highchair

4. Supertoys

5. Spots

6. The Bouncing Wall

7. Audience No. 2

8. Kissproof

9. Headless Sky

10. The Science of Imaginary Solutions

Los Angeles quartet Henry Clay People are thrilled to announce the release of their new album Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives. Set for a June 26th release on TBD Records, Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives is a thrilling and sweaty thirty minutes of teenage restlessness, quarter-life malaise, and adult resignation. The new album sees not only the return of the band’s original line up, but songwriters and brothers Joey and Andy Siara rediscovering and redefining their punky roots, allowing them to craft their most urgent, bratty, and melancholic record to date.

“We wanted to finally make the record that our sixteen year old selves would have been excited about,” says Joey. “Unfortunately the only way to do so was to live for the last 13 years and get some adult suffering under our belt. Now we can direct our misguided teenage angst at our failed 20’s.”

With songs such as the rambunctious The Backseat Of A Cab, the 90’s guitar slack of Hide, the skater brat inspired The Fakers and the punk revival of EveryBandWeEverLoved, Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives is a record dealing with
compromised dreams and empty bank accounts, for and by the high school Descendents devotee turned college Malkmus-minion.

In support of their TBD Records debut Somewhere On the Golden Coast, the Henry Clay People spent most of 2010 and 2011 on the road with the Drive by Truckers, Silversun Pickups and Against Me!, along with successful performances at Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. With an enthralling live show, HCP have built a dedicated national following of both critics and kids.

Along with The LA Times, Aquarium Drunkard, MTV News, Paste Magazine, My Old Kentucky Blog, and more, Spin Magazine raves “The Henry Clay People specialize in raggedy power chords, barreling piano, and desperately boyish vocals – what Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would sound like if they’d taken temp work and listened obsessively to Crazy Horse.” KEXP simply says HCP create a “remarkable set of classic- sounding indie-rock with clear echoes of Pavement, the Hold Steady, the Replacements and early Built to Spill, but they find their own voice with detailed songs that split the difference between sardonic and heartfelt when describing the music scene, living in debt and working part-time, transforming everyday subject matter into raging, celebratory anthems for slacker rock ‘n’ rollers and other folks just trying to make ends meet.”

The Henry Clay People will hit the road this summer. Stay tuned for tour dates!!

Secretly touring the UK under the alias of one their new song titles “Bitter Pills,” 22-20s showcased a wealth of radically new material ranging from the uptempo rock of single and digital live EP namesake “Latest Heartbreak” and album title track “Shake/Shiver/Moan” to the classic morning-after bluespop of “Let It Go” and “4th Floor.”

The new lineup and broader musical horizons of 22-20s debuted with  Latest Heartbreak EP, released March 9 through tbd records (U.S. label home to Radiohead, Underworld, White Rabbits and others), featuring four tracks record live at last year in Reading UK.

Shake/Shiver/Moan, the first 22-20s album to feature the Trimble/Bartup/Irving/Hare lineup, will be released by tbd in the U.S. on June 22, and will feature the studio versions of the tracks from the live EP and six other brand new 22-20s numbers. The album’s release will be preceded in the States by an extensive run opening for Band of Skulls and The Whigs’ co-headlining tour and will be followed by further North American touring throughout the summer.

It’s also an extremely personal endeavor: having lived in the heart of the Dust Bowl for their entire lives, the trio of musicians ventured Westward in recent years, settling down in Portland, Oregon, to record their latest work. “There was a spirit of change,” Tabish offers. “We had done [2011’s second LP] Tamer Animals, which was very close to us and about our home. So the next record was about the spontaneity of travel and being isolated. For the first times in our lives we were moving off on our own away from our families and kind of coming into our own. I wanted the songs to reflect that new spirit.”

To engage with Rituals is to barrel along a winding, hidden dirt path; peering into its bounty is to be swept away into the pines and deep, briny brush revealing a new, almost utopian existence. The classical strings of opener “Fair Weather” swells into the pitter-patter electro snippets of “Pattern,” Tabish’s reedy voice hovering ever so slightly above the mix. Ambient soundscapes (“New Fog”) buttress against prog-rock stomp (“2 Pyramids”) lending the album the experience of embarking on a choose-your-own-adventure novel. “There’s kind of a duality to this record,” Tabish says, referencing “Pattern” — “rhythmically kind of up-tempo, really fast-moving, marimbas, this new kind of new-wave orchestra sound” — in opposition to the closing title track, a slow-building, piano-and-strings-anchored ballad Tabish wrote in the finals weeks of recording.

“This one was a real journey,” Tabish says of the 18 months spent writing more than 60 songs for Rituals, a constant creative outlet for the relentless sonic architect amid a rigorous few years of touring their debut album.  “It was a long time spent searching for a new identity,” the soft-spoken singer continues of the writing process, “still trying to retain the past of our musical palate but also really trying to stretch ourselves into a new type of music.”

There’s no compromise when writing, Tabish says, and to hear him tell it one risks losing their self-worth if they relent on their artistic intent. “Be a dentist or something if you’re not going to make the type of music you want to be making,” he says laughing. “Writing for me, no matter what’s going on in my life, it’s the thing that gets me right with the world. It calms me down.”

While Rituals marks a new chapter in Other Lives’ story, it’s also a continuation of a decade-plus passage.  “I feel really lucky to be able to have a band and people around me that have been so supportive and we’ve stuck together all these years and still don’t hate each other,” Tabish says. “All three of us are like brothers. I don’t think that will ever go away. I loved those kids then and I love them now. There’s that mutual feeling. If I want to go have a beer with anyone it would be those two guys. That kind of says something.”

Every summer, Van works on his father’s commercial salmon fishing boat, the Shawnee, on Kodiak Island in Alaska.  The work is exhausting and the weather could be much better, but the contrast between the serenity of the wilderness and the rigorousness of the labor seem to cause quite a bit of musical inspiration.  Meanwhile, on land and around the corner, Cambria also writes music while maintaining her position as the Head Baker at Larsen Bay.  Her days can be even longer, and the work even more tiresome.  After both write parts and lyrics separately, they fix them together when Van comes ashore. For the first time this summer, Caleb also joined the ranks at the cannery, and their cumulative effort while up in a latitude and longitude few of us may ever see resulted in the creation of the songs that comprise the band’s first studio-recorded album “ALL WE COULD DO WAS SING.”  Because when you’re working all day in the freezing cold, what the hell else are you going to do?  “Stuck on a Boat” tells of the frustration related to being so close yet so far away.. Van stuck on a little fishing boat, while Cambria bakes across the bay…yet weeks go by without having a chance to go to port.  “Fisherman’s Son” speaks of the frustrating, yet contented thought of destiny.  “Don’t Take My Advice” captures the endless quest for settling, while  remaining in awe of the entire world to explore.  “In Vino Veritas” expresses the flurry of emotion caused by isolation, while emerged in substance.

The album was recorded in San Francisco, CA by two very talented engineers.  Aaron Prellwitz recorded the band at the legendary Tiny Telephone Recording Studios, where he has also recorded Sun Kil Moon, the Mountain Goats, and Death Cab for Cutie.  Jason Quever, of the band the Papercuts, recorded the other half of the songs at his Pan-American Recording Studios.  Lush string arrangements, raw electric guitar, percussive banjo, pots + pans, a tight rhythm section, group chants and screaming provide the new album with a diverse, but cohesive feel.

In the summer of 2007, the band released a compilation of previously self-released songs titled The Wind and The Swell on American Dust Records.  They’ve become a touring machine since the critically lauded M. Ward first named Port O’Brien his Favorite New Band on Pitchfork Media.  They have been able to perform with several of their favorite artists; touring the United States with Rogue Wave, the West Coast with both Bright Eyes and the Cave Singers, and England with Modest Mouse. Now, Port O’Brien is ready to take on the rest of the world, using the little island of Kodiak as a jumping off point.

White Rabbits signed to TBD Records (US home to Radiohead/Other Lives/Hatcham Social) and erected a makeshift studio in their basement rehearsal space to demo new material.  Band members popped in and out over the course of several months lending ideas and personality to a new batch of songs that defy instant categorization. After enlisting tourmate, friend and songwriter Britt Daniel (Spoon) as producer, the pair began the process of exchanging demos between Brooklyn and Portland.  White Rabbits recorded It’s Frightening over the course of four weeks, only taking a break to play the Transmusicales Festival in Rennes, France.  The sessions were recorded by visionary engineer Nicholas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Deerhunter) at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, NY.  Taking special care to recreate the unhinged nature of the original demos, the band utilized the wide range of tools in the analog-friendly studio to shape the personal spirit infused in the new tracks.  Upon the completion of tracking, White Rabbits traveled to Austin, TX to mix the record with studio wizard Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail Of Dead) using his exceptional ears to transform It’s Frightening into a uniquely rewarding headphone experience.

It’s Frightening plays like a classic reel of tape from start to finish. Opening with the visceral drums of “Percussion Gun,” it is clear that time-off from the road has served the band well.  The many highlights include the emotional centerpiece “Company I Keep,” the new sonic territory of “Lionesse” and the macabre lyrics of “Right Where They Left.”  Fans of Fort Nightly will find much to go weak in the knees over and new listeners are in for an awakening as White Rabbits flip the switch on an already impressive beginning. It’s Frightening is a journey into the playfully dark musings of Everyman.

The lineup : Stephen Patterson (vox/piano), Jamie Levinson (drums), Matthew Clark (drums, guitar), Alex Even (guitar), Gregory Roberts (guitar/vox).