Saturday, July 26, 2008

UK Tour Part One

Allo Luvs!
So it is Thursday and we just finished our gig in Leeds with Ballboy and the Manhattan Love Suicides I thought I would take this time to update you all on our adventures so far. So Colin and Dana arrived a week ago and played a Let’s Whisper gig in London. They were celebrating the release of their new EP on Wee Pop Records. They played with Allo Darlin and they had a blast. The next night they headed to Oxford for a solo gig that Colin had. Colin said the gig was fun even though the sound guy kicked over his whiskey.

Holly and I arrived on Saturday. We all met up in Leeds for some practice sessions. Later that night we made dinner and then we went to a local pub for our first tastes of English beer. It is better here. Our first gig was on Monday night in Sheffield. The Pete Green set up the gig. We played with the Parallelograms and the Seven Inches. Both bands were great and super sweet. After the gig we headed back to Leeds and Dana, Holly and I attempted (unsuccessfully) to watch Project Runway on the internet.

On Tuesday we headed to Birmingham (pronounced BUR-ming-GUMM, rather than Birming-HAM.) Our new friend Duncan from the Autumn Store set up a fantastic line up of international music. He and Debbie were super great hosts--they even cooked us pasta and brought it to the club! The Zebras and our label mates Red Pony Clock both shared the stage with us. After the gig a crazy guy told Max and I that Americans were “Doo Doo” then called me “Grandchild”. He was nice I think.

We woke up in Birmingham and headed to Glasgow. We drove through the Lake District which was breathtakingly beautiful. We arrived in Glasgow around four pm. Colin got his first fish and chips of the tour and I had veggie haggis. I am not going to lie to you, the gig that night was pretty amazing. Music Is My Girlfriend set up a fantastic night of music. The Just Joans opened and they are a charming little sextet that make Colin cry. Zoey Van Goey were really really impressive. If you get a chance to see them don’t wear socks, because they will knock them off. Then we crashed in Glasgow. Oh Oh Oh! On the way home we stopped in Appleby and had our first pub lunch. I got the ploughman’s lunch.

So we just played with Ballboy and the Manhattan Love Suicides and the gig was great. It's was Max's friend Neil's birthday and the show felt like a party. We have three more gigs with Ballboy. We are truly lucky.

Here are some pics from the first leg of the tour.


Xoxo

The Smittens

Sunday, July 13, 2008

New Smittens Video for Gumdrops!

We have a new video for our song Gumdrops! The lovely Eva Sollberger shot and edited our video. Thanks Eva, we love it! Thanks goes out to Esse Luna who plays the librarian and did an amazing job. Goma started as the Maltese Falcon and was a superstar. This video was shot at Lawrence Barnes School and the kids that participated were amazing. Thanks Lawrence Barnes! Tonight The Smittens are celebrating our new album "The Coolest Thing About Love" with a listening party at 7pm sharp at Parima and we will be debuting the new video as well as having a slideshow of Smittens artwork and photos. Live music will follow the listening portion of the evening with Missy Bly, The 500's and The Specific Heats. Come on down to Parmia for a fun night of music!


Tuesday, July 08, 2008

New Album!

The Coolest Thing About Love – Our new album comes out at the end of the month!!!!!! Sometimes it feels like all we can think about, and yet there is a lot of other stuff going on for us this month, too! Places to go, people to see and songs to sing! Hopefully we can share some of our summer with you!

Thank you so much to all of you who came out last month for our split 7” release shows with Tullycraft! It was a wonderful double shot for us as we had our dynamic pals the 500s show up from Portland, Maine to play a few songs with us at the Monkey House and then we got to be rocked by Pants Yell in Somerville the following night! We were so glad the East Coast kids came with their dancing shoes!

July seems to be a month that keeps on getting awesomer and awesomer – we have so much going on that it’s hard to know where to begin – how’s about we start with our Battery Park show next week? Well, we are playing on Thursday, July 10th at Battery park – it’s a free show sponsored by Burlington City Arts and local radio station The Point – bring a blanket and a snack and enjoy the lovely outdoors and some fun tunes – we should be playing around 6:30 and after us there’s a band called Need to Breathe that will be kicking it souther rock style! Should be fun!

After that we are having an official listening party for our brand-new album, The Coolest Thing About Love on Sunday, July 13th at Parima Thai restaurant – come for cocktails and wrap your ears around our latest and best album in a comfortable setting with a sweet sound system! Stick around afterwards and we have some friends coming to celebrate with us – Missy Bly, The 500s and The Specific Heats will all be playing to help us celebrate our new album – and it’s David’s birthday-eve that night, too, so it will definitely be a super fun party!

After that, we’re heading off on our craziest summer trip ever – The Smittens are touring the UK! We are so excited to be able to play for the kids in Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds (twice), Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol, London and Nottingham – and to be spending a couple days at an amazing festival called Indietracks! (www.indietracks.co.uk). If you want to live vicariously, well, let us recommend the brand new indietracks sampler comp from our new friends at make do and mend records (www.makedoandmendrecords.co.uk) – it just came out on Monday!

While we’re in the UK singing and dancing and running about we will be out of out heads happy to know that our new and long-awaited and third album is finally released! Yes, that’s right! According to the fine folks at our Athens, Georgia label, Happy Happy Birthday to Me (www.hhbtm.com) – The Coolest Thing About Love comes out on July 29th! I guess all the awesome albums come out on Tuesdays, but soon you will be able to pre-order the album direct from the label and you may even get some goodies for showing your support so early!

Please feel free to check out our Myspace page (www.myspace.com/thesmittens or our facebook page ( www.facebook.com/pages/The-Smittens/17313842955) to hear a couple songs from the new album!

Things are starting to happen incredibly fast here, so we’ll try to update again soon with more details! Our tour dates are up on our Myspace page as well, and we'll keep them updated with the latest info!

After we get back from Europe, we are going to have an album release show in our hometown (location tbd) and we’re also heading back down to Athens for the HHBTM Popfest 2008 – playing an official Athens release on Saturday, August 16 at the famous 40 Watt club as part of that fantastic fest! We’re also gonna pop in and play a show in Atlanta on Thursday, the 14th – with our pals One Happy Island!

Hope to see many of you very soon! Have a fabulous summer!

Xoxo,
The Smittens