We’d love to see your smilin’ face at the next Hunter/Gatherer gig being held on March 13th at 7pm at the Green Line Cafe on 45th and Locust in West Philly!

Audrey and Jesse will be playing with two cool local bands, Faux Slang (who’s EP you can download for free here) and Fence Kitchen. Having just delved into both bands’ catalogues, I can assure you it will be a good show. Please come out and start yr weekend right!

I haven’t been blogging about bands all too often here on The PJS because I do most of that over on yvynyl lately. However, this band I just discovered is too mind-blowing not to share.

Stag Hare is a young fellow named Garrick Biggs who lives in the middle of Utah. Followers of Growing, Brightblack Morninglight and Faust (as I am a huge fan of all three) will certainly fall deeply in love upon first listen. Here, lemme show you:

Stag Hare – Born into Magic

Also, if you dig this, you should most definitely check out my dear friends Niagara Falls who have a new limited-edition vinyl LP available now and are playing a show tonight at The Marvelous in West Philly. I’ll be there!

In 1961, 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller traveled to Papua to pursue a career in anthropology and escape the silver straitjacket that came from being the son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. After his dugout canoe swamped in the Arafura Sea, he went missing. Almost 50 years later, reporter Tim Sohn and a film crew ventured to Papua to investigate whether he drowned, was eaten by cannibals, or survived to live Kurtz-like in a remote village.

Gangi

I’ve been a fan of Matt Gangi’s music for something like two years, having completely randomly stumbled upon his MySpace page through friends. He’s an amazing songwriter and his sounds are completely 21st Century, but rooted firmly in the psychedelic era of the 60’s. He’s got an amazing ear and his partnership with Lyle Nesse on drums/drummachine/synth forms a killer duo. I’m so glad to have seen them play a small show at the studio/rehersal space/party house Inciting HQ last night – a complete treat.

06-animals

Magical, Beautiful

Magical, Beautiful is the band of my buddy Chris Keener whom I met years ago at True/False in Columbia, Missouri, his home town. He now lives in Chicago and collaborates with these fellas. We went to see them play at a small house show they booked, and I was blown away. Dualing synths, deep drums and what might be described as Joy Division-style vocals.

They just came out with their first music video recently:

Both of these bands are completely DIY operations, neither is on a record label. If you dig their music, I encourage you to click over to their websites and purchase their records. I have them, and I highly recommend them. Support indie music!

Ariel Pink’s set was one of the best shows we’ve seen this year. Mesmerizing. It was last Friday night at the MRoom, ‘The Other Bar‘ as my friend Sammy likes to call it due to it’s proximity to our usual hang out, ‘The Bar‘, Johnny Brenda’s. Ariel jumped, writhed and moshed all throughout the crowd, working the room like a stadium concert. It was amazing. I hadn’t heard much of his music before then, but have been collecting samples all week since.

I’ve been a fan of the young opening band from Brooklyn called Chairlift for a while. They’ve got some great throwback synth-pop going on. I struck up a conversation with the band after their set and ended up inviting them to crash at our house for the night. Turned out to be fun, and we talked music all the next morning until they headed off to their next gig in Baltimore. Here’s their awesome single, “Evident Utensil“. I dare you not to like it.

In my recent music blogging travels, I’ve discovered a ton of cool new music. From time to time I’ve had conversations with some really amazing up-and-coming bands who want to play a show while passing through Philly. I decided now is the time.

New friends {{{sunset}}} and Gangi will be here, so we thought we’d show them a Philly good time. Come join us for a fun lil’ freakout party at The Marvelous with my friend Norm Fetter (the psychedelic mastermind behind the Enumclaw tour-de-force) and my very own dear wife Hunter Gatherer – who will be joined on stage with the amazingly talented Mary Lattimore (of The Valerie Project) – as we celebrate the coming summer of music.

It’s happening on May 17th at 8pm. Wouldn’t you like to come? Of course you would! Add this to your Facebook calendar, or check it out on Going.com.

[UPDATE: Gangi can't make it and had to cancel, but the show will go on!]