$15 admission / 7pm doors / 7:30 start / standing
Three Fun Indie Lifer Bands take the Lilypad!
Moviola
In between the cracks of the musical Rust Belt, Columbus, Ohio’s Moviola has quietly—FOR 30 YEARS—produced an expansive catalog, with (now) 11 records and countless 7” inch singles, a radio show, and a concert film to their name, spanning everything from 4-track fuzz-pop to hi-fi country soul. With five equal singers and songwriters—the whole is greater than the parts, democratic ideals, fucking Gestalt theory in action. Recording themselves, in studios that they built themselves. Writing and performing fully fleshed concert films. As much prankster art collective as…band. Some parallel universe Midwestern EGOT stuff, right there. A small cadre of supportive labels, writers and fans have followed along for the ride. This August, they return with record #11, Earthbound, their first on Kingston, New York-based Dromedary Records.
Started by Jake Housh in 1993 in a duplex near Ohio State, the band, on early 45s and 1994’s Frantic sounded less like their Columbus punk contemporaries, and more like “Neil Young’s noisy nephews” (LA Weekly). Throughout their early career, the group played live shows with kindred bands like Fruitbats, Flaming Lips, Calexico, Califone, Guided By Voices, and many others, yet it was the pursuit of collective learning-by-doing, happy accidents, experimentation and recording in various basement, warehouse, and attic studios that became their primary raison d'être. In quick succession, The Year You Were Born (1997), Glen Echo Autoharp (1998), and The Durable Dream (1999) saw the group cover wide sonic turf, traversing buzzing lo-fi rock, Space Echo® folk, pure pop arrangements, and nooks in between. Split singles were fast and frequent as well, sharing sides with like-minded friends like the Handsome Family, Cobra Verde, Tobin Sprout, Hiss Golden Messenger and Eric’s Trip. Rumors of the Faithful (2001), East of Eager (2004) and Dead Knowledge (2007) came next, and found the band growing in sound and scope. A singles compilation Broken Horses (2008), Scrape and Cuss (2019), Broken Rainbows (2022) bring us up to the release of Earthbound.
As has been the unique blueprint for how they approach music-making, Earthbound contains multitudes: shared songwriting from each member of the group, at times lush, at others coarse, yet the result has a singular “Moviola-ness” about it all, occupying its own headspace. Recorded in Columbus, Brooklyn, and Brattleboro, it’s the most realized, succinct and least ambiguous effort of their career. Five separate voices, coming off as one, a band of brothers, no time for mincing words. Can a group be hitting its stride 30 years in? It seems so. Listen in.
Sleepyhead
Sleepyhead was formed in a basement room at NYU's Brittany Dorm in the fall of 1989 by drummer/vocalist Rachael McNally, bassist Mike Galinsky and guitarist/vocalist Chris O’Rourke.
They released their first 7" single, the Kramer-produced "Play," in 1991 on Picture Book Artifact. Four full-length albums followed, on three different independent record labels. Punk Rock City USA was released by Slumberland Records in 1993, followed by Starduster (Homestead 1994), Communist Love Songs (Homestead 1996), and The Brighter Shore (Sealed Fate 1999). They toured the United States and Europe throughout the nineties, sharing the stage with such legendary bands as Polvo, Half Japanese, Yo La Tengo, The Grifters, The Dambuilders, Nation of Ulysses, Helium, Royal Trux, Antietam, Luna, Versus, The Magnetic Fields, and Dungbeetle.
Around the time their fourth album was released in 1999, Rachael and Chris got married, and Mike Galinsky had moved on to a successful career in filmmaking. Dan Cuddy (The Special Pillow, ex-Hypnolovewheel) joined Chris and Rachael on bass. With Dan on bass, Sleepyhead did some touring for The Brighter Shore and began writing new songs. Rachael and Chris moved from New York to Boston in 2002 after having their first child. (They had another kid in 2005.) By this time, they had begun recording a new album with producer Mike Deming (Pernice Brothers, Apples in Stereo, Beachwood Sparks, Lilys), at Deming’s famed Studio 45 in Hartford, and subsequently Enfield, CT. In 2004, bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Derek Van Beever joined the band and they’ve been playing shows in Boston, Providence, New York, and beyond ever since.
In 2013, this new lineup of Sleepyhead went into Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA to record the last three songs for their long-time-coming fifth album, Wild Sometimes, which was released on renowned Chicago indie Carrot Top Records on April, 8, 2014. Sleepyhead celebrated the deluxe double-vinyl reissue of Starduster and Communist Love Songs in April.