Back in July a friend of mine told me he was working on a split 7″ series that would see A and B-sides consisting of two bands covering each others songs. One of the bands he quickly name-dropped as being part of the series was the Parenthetical Girls. I’m still not entirely sure if this series will see the light of day (the press release states that these songs are not scheduled to appear on any official releases), but it’s clear now that he does have some inside knowledge as to the PG’s plans.
With the release of Entanglements, the first album for their new home Tomlab, perched just over the horizon on next Tuesday, September 9th, the Parenthetical Girls have released cover versions of two songs that will appear on the upcoming record. To be fair, we should say that labelmates No Kids and fellow North West avant-heroes The Dead Science released them as they are the bands actually performing on these tracks, but with a promise of even more songs from the record to be released in this fashion, maybe the Girls are ushering in a new way to promo an album without having to actually give you the real songs.
Unique is a word not often used to describe music these days, but wielding a sound like a fist fight between Beirut and Burt Bacharach with Glen Miller coming in and beating them both down with his clarinet, the Parenthetical Girls come as close to unique as you can without becoming a parody of themselves. Which makes it interesting to hear an electro-blip arrangement of “This Regrettable End” by the Kids and The Dead Science performing a dramatics, weeping mind-fuck version of “Young Eucharists”.
The Parenthetical Girls will celebrate the release of Entanglements in their hometown of Portland, OR on Sept. 7 at The Leftbank as part of PICA’s Time Based Art Festival, after which they’ll board a plane (I assume) to do a short run of major city East Coast dates with Sunset Rubdown.
MP3 Download - “This Regrettable End” (No Kids cover)
MP3 Download - “Young Eucharists” (The Dead Science cover)
MP3 Download - “A Song For Ellie Greenwich” (original)
Parenthetical Girls Tourdates
09.07.08 - Portland, OR (The Leftbank / PICA’s Time Based Art Festival)
09.16.08 - Brooklyn, NY (Music Hall of Williamsburg)*
09.18.08 - Philadelphia, PA (First Unitarian Church)*
09.19.08 - Washington, DC (Black Cat)*
09.20.08 - Columbus, OH (Skully’s Music Diner)*
* w/ Sunset Rubdown
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