So the blog was hijacked for a little bit. By which I mean I got quite drunk with the dastardly Bill Bressin one night after practice and gave him the password. It was a good joke at first, but one that has unfortunately gone too far. I hope that the goings-on of our house in Harrisonburg will still be documented on the internet, as Bressin is a talented writer, and very funny, it just needs to happen on its own webspace. This space is reserved for the occasional band updates for which Twitter does not provide enough room and occasional rants from yours truly. And now, for some more of that.

We are extremely busy right now, but a lot is up in the air and we don't want to announce anything until we're completely sure that its going to happen. Suffice to say, we are writing new music. A lot of it. And, we're writing in a live environment for the first time, which is very exciting. We've already started breaking some of these new songs in live, and theres a good chance they'll keep changing and developing from show to show. We're working to make sure that this music gets released in 2010, and we'll post updates as they become available.

We're also working hard to make sure that we're on the road more in 2010 than ever before. We'll be out for a little bit in the spring, for longer in the summer, and then hopefully again in the fall/winter. The big question right now is "where?" We'll be doing a full U.S again at some time during the year, and we've also got our eye on the other side of the Atlantic. We're also looking to play more one off shows, so keep an eye out.

So, if you might be interested in helping us book or playing a show (or shows) with us, either in the US or Europe, now is the perfect time to get in touch! Myspace works, but Gmail is better- giftsfromenola@gmail.com.

Thanks!

current listening:
-neil young
-the six parts seven

went a whole 'nother tour without a single blog. so what, want to fight about it? I'm pretty sure this is just one more way for me to talk to myself anyways. so lets recap.

tour was good, mostly. except for the torturous amount of gear failure during our time with our brothers in irepress. perseverance. a continued education in what it means to perform. crash course in diesel/vegetable oil mechanics. lots of sweat and truck stops. there were dozens of dying beautiful moths and butterflies at one gas station in the middle of the night. there was a roadrunner that confronted cj and I in the desert. there were chickens thrown in portland. much of it feels unreal, but my beard, bank statements, and back pains remind me of the truth: I lived on a schoolbus for 9 weeks with five dudes. weird, right?

now were back at home, if you can call it that. we returned to harrisonburg, had a few harrisonburg (read: drunk) nights and then some returned to school and the others to the "real world." for the first time in this bands history we are scattered across the state. its different. more importantly, we are writing music and do not plan on taking such a long time to release some of it this time. we are making plans. we are thinking about music differently. we will be playing shows this fall and winter. we will play new things. that being said, after four-ish (? jesus) years of constantly writing, recording, booking, touring, or some combination of the above, this feels like a standstill. one of my best friends told me the other day that she was able to remember what the word "ennui" meant while studying for her GREs by thinking about my life outlook right now. bummer.

you know, when we started doing this people used to come up to us in bars and ask us "man how come yall guys dont have a singer?" and now people on message boards talk about how dissapointing it is that we "went vocal," about how it ruins it for them. the more we hear what we do being called "post-rock," the more determined we are to be anything but. in such a short period of time we have watched what we knew would happen, what happens to every "new" musical subgenre. I'm afraid that one of these days "post-rock" is going to be something like metalcore is right now.

played out, overpopulated, soulless, all out of ideas, all out of ideals. rotting.

its already happening, the wound has been inflicted. theres no stopping it, of course, it has to happen. forests have to burn in order for new ones to grow. in order for us to breathe. on a sinking ship, captains die. rats thrive. david bazans new record is very good, and I think hed be picking up what Im putting down here:

You used to feel like a smoker, shivering in the cold
Waiting outside the bar 'til the opener's over
But now you feel like a drinker, 20 days off the sauce
Down at the liquor store, trying to call your sponsor

You used to feel like the forrest fire burning
But now you feel like a child, throwing tantrums for your turn

You used to sound like a prophet, and everyone wanted to know
How you could tell the truth without losing that soft glow
But now you feel like a salesman, closing another deal
Or some drunk ship captain, raging after the white whale

You used to feel like the forrest fire burning
But now you feel like a child, throwing tantrums and then some
You used to feel like the prodigal returning
But now, now you hate what you made, and you want to watch it burn

that songs called "lost my shape."

this used to be a wide open field, a way of shedding the most basic restriction there was in the american idol frontman fetish culture. funny how things change.

rats took out something like a hundred million civilized human beings back in the day. back when that was over a quarter of the planet.

there are temples elsewhere in the world where rats are fed by holy men, and food that they've touched is considered to be blessed. perspective is a crazy thing.

-nate

cruch time

besides fear, stress is the best motivator. coffee helps too.

less than two weeks til tour and so much on our plates:

buswork. still got plenty to do, but the filter/ pump setup is up and running and smelling like french fries.

gearfest 09. rewired cjs new (old and gnarly) 2x15 to run at 16ohms. taking the guts out of the fender studio bass and putting them into a head. going to run it through the mesa 4x10. sounds beautiful. just picked up a mesa 1516 cab and it sounds beautiful as well. just about got everything up and running. still need to build a case for all the keyboard/drum machine/ sampling stuff though. busybusybusy.




inventory. our house is full of records:

and weve got a new shipment of shirts on the way, modeled here by the illustrious tim skirven:
AND, I have to move out of here. havent even really thought about that yet. need to get a wedding present too, and something to wear to a wedding. am I forgetting anything? oh yeah, we need to practice too. that whole thing. and wade and andrew have class. fucking a.

to summarize: shits crazy right now. and I dont think its ever going to stop raining in harrisonburg. time to leave.

-nate

current listening-
the mars volta- octahedron
the avett brothers- the gleam and second gleam eps
bjork- medulla (and how bout that cover, eh?)

current reading-
cs lewis- the pilgrims regress
kerouac- big sur

Process

Back?

So its been quite a while since we've done anything with this, and probably even longer since anyone's looked at it. Now seems like a decent enough time to start back up again. Brief summary- three of us have just graduated from JMU. We have a new record coming out in June. We will be supporting it heavily on the road by means of a schoolbus that runs on WVO. We have a lot in the works and a lot of work to do. Heres some pictures:












More to come.