Hello!  Good lord it's been a while.  We've been spending our time moving apartments, countries, and jobs!  Jonathan is now in Seattle, Alisha in St. Croix, and Evan in the Mid-west.  Needless to say, we've been re-organizing!  But that doesn't mean that we've stopped doing the writing! 

As I write, the remastered Beatles are coming out of the speakers, we got the coffee, and it's sunny in the room.  We've got the telecaster, the keyboard, and it's go go go! 

We have some new titles for the songs as well for our new album, not sure what the title is yet, but the working song titles include: Nightshades, This is how it must begin, Boiling Tea Building Roads, and We're Gonna Have It Out.

More soon!!!!!

J

So we are in dire need of a new redesign! And updates! And they will be forthcoming, but for now, we just want to write and say hello. We hope everyone is doing ok, especially those with loved ones in Mumbai. And for those in the States, have a happy Thanksgiving--hang in there in these rocky times! Be good to each other. :) More to come! And yes, we have new songs coming soon--but for now, we are listening to lots of Hugo Wolf. And Andy Gibbs! And having lots and lots of food.

We were in Texas last night and went into a formerly independent bookstore called Bookstop, once a 50's movie theater, now gutted internally and replaced with a Borders 'n Nobles.  But that's not really why we mention it.  We mention it because, it still smells the same, the soul of the art-deco neon, the stairs, the little stool step ladders, all the hours we spent haunting the sci-fi section with the patchouli wearing Goth.  And the books!  The books are still the same--granted, there seem to be more the sequels and less weird self-published nonsense, and the nonfiction section is ever dwindling, but still--you can find such fine words strung together...  Like Amy Bloom's "A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You" and Alan Dean Foster's "Light Years Beneath My Feet."  Or Terry Pratchett's "Thud!"!  !      !

Anyhoo, we'll be back with more soon.  Still recording.  We managed to upgrade our macbook pro's harddrive, but, alas, somehow managed to dent the keyboard from the inside.  There are, like, 10,000 screws to this thing!  WTF!

And as far as what we've been listening to, lots and lots of Fleetwood Mac, the best of Pink Floyd, and we found our favourite version of Saint Saens' Organ Symphony with Matthias Eisenberg.  And for new stuff, go Sam Phillips! 

Ah, summer is busy! Look for Ash in a couple of ads coming up! And looks for us in fried chicken houses across America. From Dinastia China to Bon Chon, we love our fried chicken. Ahem. Anyhoo, this time, instead of mentioning other stuff we like from our collection, we'll talk about some stuff we're looking forward to, and maybe some stuff we're listening to right now.

Sam Phillips - Don't Do Anything - we have the BIGGEST crush on Sam, nee Leslie, Phillips. She of the nasal deadpan heartbreak. And this is her first non-T-Bone-Burnett produced album, but it's going to be so cool. The few songs we've heard are absolutely brilliant and offkilterly Tom Waits on cognac. We can't wait.

Ron Sexsmith - Exit Strategy of the Soul - So we're totally torn. On the one hand, Ron Sexsmith is genius and every album is like a masterclass in pop songwriting. On the other hand, another album with Martin Terefe, is like a little too much of a good thing. Martin's as clever as Froom/Blake, and a bit more refined than Steve Earle was, but he's also a tight-compression-beat-thing dude, and that's just so different for those of us who were weaned on Other Songs.

We've also been listening the heck out of the few songs on the new My Morning Jacket, passed to us through the great musical friend network. Evil Urges is amazingly brave, at least the bits we've heard, and we're thrilled to hear the modernity breaking through, and the crew's stepping off into new language. You hear a lot more of the shameless love of melody and pop in the new album. We can't wait to hear the rest.

Also, we've been spinning the new Ladytron, "Ghosts" is amazing! Plus we love both leading Ladytrons. So petulant, dark, and cute. And The Kills - Last Days of Magic, and the Raveonettes, whose new one we don't quite get as much as their last, but still, always, so fatalistically romantic.

Speaking of romantic and modern, we've also been listening a lot to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev is just so great in terms of sound palette and melody. We've been watching that animated short too, Peter and the Wolf--letting it all soak into our new recordings.

So we have some new working titles for our songs. Words like nightshade. Lots more gut-strings than before.

More soon!

cheerios!

Misha

Ah the joys of spring.  Rain, sun, hot, cold, more rain, and then some.  It gives us a lot of time to listen to our records, when we're not GTA/IronMan/Harold/Kumar/MarioKarting.  So then, here we go, more things we like:

1. Masters of Reality: Sunrise on the Sufferbus--Chris Goss, who is basically MoR, did a lot of production work for Kyuss, which we now know of as Queens of the Stone Age.  But the Sunrise on the Sufferbus is really different--not the least because Ginger Baker plays drums on it.  In some ways it's blues minimalized and modernized, but it's also of itself, a brilliant song album.  Plus it's so cool and clean and hypnotic.

2. George Van Eps - We loves George.  The reason John started fingerpicking is because he kept losing picks, but the reason he kept doing it was because of  Chet Atkins, Mark Knopfler, and GVE.  Lots of guitarists can play really fast up and down the neck, but few can make the guitar sound so smart and so much more than a violin with frets.  Youngsters like Charlie Hunter and Ben Monder owe a lot to the last generation of brilliant chordal guitarists, like Joe Pass, Lenny Breau, Tal Farlow, and Howard Alden.  George played this famous style of fingerpicked, chordal jazz guitar that makes one guitar sound like three, or maybe four, sometimes.  Beautiful swing, beautiful sounds, and he can totally shred.  But what makes this harder is you're thinking like a pianist, melody, harmony, counterpoint, but on 6 or 7 strings!  Crazy!

3. Dwight Yoakum - His odd acting aside, Dwight Yoakum and Peter Anderson, his trusty producer, set the standard for the modern old retrocountry thing.  Sure he doesn't have the deep steady authenticity, maybe, of a Randy or a Lyle, but he's got his own thing going.  Particularly the album Gone, which foreshadowed the Brill/Phil/MuscleShoals sound of the now country-esque acts, like Shelby Lynne.  And he's from California!   Guess hene the Bakersfield sound moniker.

4. Richard Thompson - Were there enough words to describe the talent of RT.  The improbably deep voice, the amazingly wiry and pushing fingerpicked guitar solos, but most of all, the incredible songwriting.  Not experts, but we imagine that his is the marriage of traditions with the newness of pop, of the hooks and the choruses, but also of smart words.  He's been covered by everyone, it seems, and also had the opportunity of working with so many greats, not to mention singing with Linda Thompson.  So great, so sad.  So brilliant.

5. Tears for Fears - It seems like every 80's band has a weird backstory, or front story, or whatever.  TFF, aside from the naming origin story, may not be one of them--however, they did write brilliant songs, over and over again.  And for us, suckers of the Beatles lineage, Roland Orzabal's songwriting, and, as it turns out, nice production skills, makes TFF a repeating play.  The Seeds of Love was an ambitious, sprawling Beatles/operatic/RnB album, one wonders what would've been if grunge hadn't come along.  We can remember the first time hearing Nirvana, kind of the way it must've felt to hear the Beatles, especially after the hair bands and everything (Nirvana, of course, not the Beatles.) But TFF, you had us at "Shout."

Mixing and recording continues--last night, we tried some songs out with actual bass and drums. Awesome! So, what have we been listening to now?

1. Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale - A great chamber theater piece. The instrumentation is unusual, the story interesting, and it's Stravinksy where we're not overwhelmed by the sheer metallic weight of his gorgeous symphonies. Very Modern, it's in many ways dissimilar to the Copland Clarinet Concerto we mentioned last week, smaller, more arch, and just different in setting and intention, but there's a shared sense, for us at least, of wonder. Also, you can count the number of times the time signature changes.

2. The Mavericks - What a Crying Shame - The Mavericks were so cheeky yet old fashioned, it's amazing they survived at all in the 90's Nashville country scene. Singer Raul Malo sounded a bit like Roy Orbison, yes, and they were major label, yes, but they were also wonderfully subversive, sneaking in real songwriting and playing in a band(!)--when the rest of the industry focused on starlets from Canada or power ballads masquerading as country. They score too because they weren't of the dreaded neo-traditionalist or indie-n3rd-revisionism school of country either. They were fun! And boy could they play! Apparently, the drummer (who, along with Raul, was from Miami) apparently used to be a prog-rock drummer. Who'd have guessed? Also, their version of Springsteen's "Heaven Will Allow" is also awesome.

3. Ko Nimo - Ko/Koo is so cool. A well-regarded Ghanan guitarist/percussionist and writer/teacher of palm wine music, he creates these really beautiful, impossible to reproduce, songs that are melodic but so dense with thought. John studied with Koo at UWash briefly, which mostly entailed hanging out, getting health advise from Ko, who was a chief lab tech at one point in his career, and also the gentle suggestion that perhaps percussion isn't going to be John's strong suit. When we're looking to be inspired by fluid, intuitive, but vast rhythm-based music, his is great.

4. Margo Guryan - Take A Picture - Written in the late 60's, the pop songs on this album flowed so well together, with interesting melodic ideas and very assured. Looking back now, it feels proto-twee, and you can hear the impact of her works on a number of more contemporary twee/sweater bands. Her songs felt effortless, warm, and tinged with jazz and classical in a really thoughtful way. Maybe a little like the Zombies if their music was more focused and intimate. It's great that in the last decade or so has she become more popular.

5. Broadcast - Along the same lines as Margo Guryan in some ways, but add some TheUSofA, Broadcast is the near-perfect realisation, for us, of a feeling and a concept of fuzzy possibilities. Incredibly smart, but emotional, and just dead-on marriage of darkness, pop, pain, and psychedlic tightness, when we heard them first, we were like, well, "what else is there to say in this genre/field?" Kind of the same feeling we got when we heard The Knife. Sighhhhhhhhh.


P.S. RIP GFW or CGW. We hardly knew ye in your latest incarnation, you once great computer gaming magazine. Sigh. First Microsoft acquired you, then you became a bi-monthly rag, and now the most embarrassing stake in the heart, the "on-line" incarnation. Noooooo! And goodbye, Dan Hsu, under your tutelage, EGM actually started to develop a little rabid personality--hellyeah! And we'd like to take this opportunity to say, from inveterate magazine lovers, that Automobile, under Jean Jennings and MotorTrend under Angus MacKenzie have both become so much more interesting to read with insightful non-review-based features which finally separate them from C&D and R&T. Please don't go under! And Play, the little videogame magazine that we're not sure how survives, keep Heather Campbell, please, and let her write more opinion columns. Her Best-of-2007 essay showed us that indeed videogame writers can be thoughtful, and that Play has gone from bad-copy-editing-too-cocky to actually realising some of its ambitions. Yay!

Hello! As we’re getting our next record started, we’re enjoying the process of just relaxing our brains and enjoying media without thinking/filtering too much. So, a little more of things we like in music that we’ve been listening to:

1. Wallace Roney - Misterios - yes, he’s a bit like Miles in some cases, and Gil Goldstein’s arrangements, somewhat Gil Evansy, don’t help dissuade, but the songs are just so great, the mood so perfect, the arrangements gorgeous, Geri Allen on piano! So amazing. The weird tension between post-post-young lions classicism and the feeling of "now," it’s very pretty. And a little out too--the feeling of players like Allen bounding themselves into a more traditional role, so cool!

2. Danny Gatton - the reason we like Telecasters so much is because of Danny Gatton. And that’s a fact. Danny Gatton was one of the best, most beautiful, twangy, gutsy guitarists ever ever. Definitely a little country and a little blues. When a lot of guitarists first ascend the shredness ladder, they’ll look at how fast can you play, that’s it. Danny Gatton appreciation comes much later, when you realise that it’s also the notes you chose, how you can make the guitar sound like three guitarists, how you can play counterpoint, all that stuff. His is the music of instrument geeks, but also, there’s a muscularness and tenderness that makes it transcend genre stuff.

3. Saint-Saen’s Organ Symphony - it’s very dramatic, amazing orchestration, Romantic, big but nimble. And then you get the organ. So awesome! The Orchestra of St. Luke’s version is really good.

4. Brian Ferneyhough - Pretty much just because he can and gets away with it. Check out the Arditti recordings. Holy crap.

5. Henry Threadgill - As we’ve been playing more and more with Evan, who also plays with Pyeng Threadgill, we’ve gone back to listen to our Henry Threadgill records, which also has this sense of fierce modernism and pushing, with bits of tenderness. Plus anyone who shepherded Tim Berne, Marty Ehrlich, and the wonderful Brandon Ross, has got to be awesome. AACM woot woot!

Now back to our mixing desk!

We rocked! We played! We saw faces! Smiles! Nodding heads. Hello darlings, just a quick note since we haven’t posted in ages! So our live band is coming together! Still a little too much of the rock side of Misha perhaps, and not quite enough electronics, but we’ll have it together we promise.
SXSW was fantastic--thanks to Cliff, Clyde, Justin, and many others who came out and said hi! And thanks for all the lovely notes for those of you who couldn’t make it!

Thanks for those who came out to The Annex and the Pianos gigs too! And for the nice words written. Our first three gigs, EVER, couldn’t have gone better, even if one Internet site, ahem, thought we were too giddy. We’ll only get better, we’ll show ya.

On another note, we are now in the process of making our next album--what’s it sound like? Too early to tell, but a few things are clear--it’s less electronic, or maybe just less overtly so, and there’s more guitars, stars, and bars. Little more of our Texas influences, Asian influences, and probably darker.

More later! Pictures and videos and whatnot!!!

Yay!

Oh, and input things that make us happy right now and working their way into our music:

Mi Dulce Nina by Kumbia Kings
Richard Thompson’s Ghost of You Walks
The World by Jia Zhangke
Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red
Volver by Pedro Almodovar
Team Fortress 2 by Valve
On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams
Warcraft III: FT by Blizzard
Shelter by Susan Palwick

more later--we’re going to try and feature something we like every week--maybe go through our archives. Maybe it’ll make listening to us more fun too!

Oh, and Clyde’s label Twentyseven Records has a band coming out soon called This Is Ivy League--check them out!

So why the long paws, you ask. Well, no reason, 'cept we been busy! And it's winter. And now we's back together in NYC, hellyeah! So what's been going on?

In reverse chronological order, Ash has been with her family, eating her way through Shangdong in northern China, where, she found pleasantly, the average citizen is at least as tall as she is. She also went to Harbing, which has the coolest Chinese name ever, saw beautiful ice sculptures, contracted a bout of eating flu, and then flew to Beijing, where the tourists seemingly outnumbered the rain-seeding, pollution-waiving locals, even in the dead of winter. As of this writing, she lands in less than 12 hrs, which means John has precisely 11.5 hrs to clean the detritus and debris away from the apartment.

John, on the other hand, has been playing with many great musicians, adapting the Misha music to fit a live show, and getting used to eating on the couch, or anywhere he pleases. So, you're probably thinking, yes, we've heard this before--to make it a little more real, how about a bit more detail about the musicians we've been playing with? And dates? Some real dates!?

We've kind of gotten down the instrumentation we're playing with, although it seems that, as with life, things are constantly shifting. Right now, our live sound is a four piece, with male and female vocals, guitar, keyboard, bass, and drums.

We've been working with Alisha Westerman--who is a wonderful songwriter/singer/guitarist/keyboardist, and seems to have the hook-up everywhere and with so many cool musicians. Her demo was recorded by Davin the dude, (we may have added the last part,) who we heard just became Saul Williams' guitarist! That is so cool! Do check out Alisha's page--she's very, very talented. And has the coolest, quirky voice ever. And completely instinctive harmony. Alisha's page Also, she's a PEN fellowship winner. (We like to embarrass the ppl we work with.)

And Ed (who doesn't list his last name,) super-amazing jazz/hip-hop/Brill-building/rnb bassist, who also moonlights as a music maker for shows like Tyra and Oprah (sellout,) who has more tattoos than any musician we've ever worked with, and whose other band, Swear On Your Life, is a heavy/rock/metal group. Amazing live, and strangely, apparently opening for WASP (?!, yes that WASP,) at Irving Plaza late February. If you're into it, go see the show! Even if you're not, go see it, hell, we're going to! Ed has played with a bunch of crazy kats too--including the ex-drummer of PFunk. Who used to yell at him on-stage. Sweet! Ed works at the craziest bar in Crown Heights. Ed is also the only one in Misha who can still transcribe music. SWEETNESS!

We've been working with a group of drummers, additional vocalist/guitarists, and keyboardists too--but we're still trying to nail down the final line-up, given our playing. So as you can see, we are def an odd-duck collective, but, nothing less would be expected for Misha, right? Right?

Ah, so, what are we doing playing-wise? Well! We've finally booked dates at a few local venues in NYC, trying out different things before we decide what to do next (these options including playing dates in Europe or preparing to record our next album)! Alisha and John will be doing a laid-back, trying-things-out, two person set this Friday at the Sidewalk Cafe this Friday (Feb 1 at 10pm,) then a full band show at the Annex (where apparently Secret Machines had a residency a while back) in late February, right now on the 27th at 10pm. We're also considering playing in Boston, D.C., and possibly L.A. if we can figure out how to get plane fares, etc. Oh, and a little festival in Austin in mid-March, which Tomlab is still trying to confirm. Woohoo! It's def a bit strange doing Teardrop Sweetheart live, while songs like Summersend translate very easily, and sound not-too-shabby, Cruelist Heart has us tearing our hair out. Sigh. FUN!

Ok, enough about our music--we've also been on a tear of listening to other great bands and acts--especially looking at live shows. The latest has been the jaw-dropping Cornelius "Sensuous Synchronized Show" show at Webster Hall--holy cow! He's only doing a few shows in the States, unfortunately for those who missed him/them, but this was simply amazing performance. The music was, well, Cornelius, but nonetheless, the show! The show! Every, and we mean, EVERY, song was synchronized to the video display. And these weren't simply a redux of the album songs either--they remapped everything. If you can find some good YouTube footage or a concert DVD, it's worthwhile seeing. Thanks to Bill Stites from Rock's Off under whose auspices we were invited.

We've also been going back and listening to all our favourite albums--stuff that makes us happy and warm and inspired us to write music in the 1st place. So lots of Richard Thompson has been making the rounds, listening to Pete Thomas's and Jim Keltner's drums--and also Margo Guryan and Os Mutantes. We're probably not going to sound like them (ahem) live at our first go-around, but in the spirit of making things loose, these artists totally inspire us.

So, in between recovering from bouts of the interminable-winter-flu/cold/allergies, the whiplash NYC weather, visiting friends at our apts, new years parties, the damning-with-faint-praise PF review (sigh,) the 8th most downloaded track at Stereogum last year (yay!,) and talking to our heroes at Giant Robot (Hi Martin!)--we've been busy! And it wouldn't be us if we didn't own up to also seeing Clobberfield, which is just a bit creepy when you live in NYC, and beating CoD 4, which, great gfx and all, kind of bored us. Oh, and reading lots of books. Mostly awful, awful books we found at the Strand for very, very cheap.

Oh, and John had raw food for the first time last night, or rather, organic, semi-raw food. It wasn't bad! His tastes, sadly, remain plebian. Just what IS tempeh? And seitan?

Hello dear friends,

Thanks for the very nice letters and notes! We thought, since it's nearing the holidays, we'd say hello again, and wish everyone a good holiday, or at least better days ahead, while we're enjoying an unusually clear day here in the NYC.

Rehearsals, such as they are, continue--basically, we're working through how exactly to play this sh*t live; as many of you have noted, it's a bit unwieldy what with all the instruments and stuff, and we'd like to keep it a small group.

So some thoughts are:
Bass, drums, guitar - which didn't work as well as we'd hoped. So no PB&J lovin' so far.

Our next to-do's include trying different things with sampler/drum or sampler/bass or keyboard or just guitar or slides and videos! After seeing Yacht and his amazing performance with just playback, we were like, well, we can't do that anymore. :)

On another note, we went to see Aimee Mann last night do her Xmas thing last night, and aside from confirming our over-the-top crush on Nellie McKay, the show was cool! Aimee had the best band, and we heard not enough, but quite a few of her songs. What's weird, or not so weird, is that we seemed to be like the youngest ppl there by a long shot. Next to her guest musicians, Ben Lee and Josh Ritter and Nellie. Sigh. There was a guest star-ladden film, weird Hanukkah rap, a not-very-good-at-all comedian, but strangely no Mr. Mann (or Michael Penn,) as he is otherwise known. Also, last week, we saw Dirty Projectors, who are AMAZING live. And Tomlab had its outing of Dave Shrigley's book--and it was a great show--Yacht rocked, our new friend Nick from P:ano/No Kids was amazingly soulful, and Tussle was very, very rhythmically fun. Jan dj'ed, and there were many other great bands and performances from Chris, Islands, and R Stevie Moore, not to mention the fact that David Byrne

And a quick hollaback to those who asked what we're listening to now--well, besides the new No Kids (former P:ano) release from Tomlab, and a few songs from Goldfrapp and Hot Chip's new albums, we're grooving to some awesome music from the early 90's. In a further attempt to alienate our fan base, we are currently illin' to some Club Nouveau, Mary J Blige, Teddy Riley, Tevin Campell, Tracy Spencer, and Midnight Star. Stick THAT in Google. :) Beware our new songs--we'll try to post something to our MySpace site soon.

In the meantime, thanks, keep writin', and we'll keep writin' back. And yes, ever onwards to that one day in the live venues. Here's our bandmate Andrew's drawing for a potential t-shirt... so cool! (Ash says, so cute!)



PS We beat Mass Effect. And got the girl. And now we're playing Dragon Quest VIII, which is muey bettah, we think.