Episode 126: Live This Month - August 2008
August 5, 2008
This week’s podcast episode is our latest in the Live This Month series, spotlighting some of our favorite local and touring bands playing some excellent shows in August. Check out some information on all of the bands below:
We kick off the show with a song from Innocent Ghosts, the debut album from Geographer (”Each Other’s Ghost”) (Feature Podcast). The band celebrates the new CD’s release with a show we’re presenting at Cafe du Nord on Sunday, August 17th. The concert also features headliner Judgement Day and Cotillion. Read more
Episode 125: July 2008 Monthly Mix
July 29, 2008
This week’s episode is our latest monthly mix, featuring new music from six great Bay Area bands and our latest follow-up interview with a group we’ve previously featured on the podcast. Read more
Episode 124: Minipop
July 23, 2008
This week’s podcast features Minipop, a San Francisco quartet who describe their music as akin to “marshmallows on morphine and Care-Bears on Xanax”–an appropriate, if exaggerated, way to describe the group’s warm, enveloping dream-pop. Founded in 2004, the band has steadily built a strong following through lauded live performances and a well-received EP, before marking a new milestone late last year with their first full length record, A New Hope. Released on local label Take Root Records, the album is a rich recording that deftly and simultaneously balances catchy melodies and beautiful atmospherics. Read more
Episode 123: Two Sheds
July 15, 2008
This episode is presented by KQED Interactive.
This week’s podcast features Two Sheds, a band whose melodic folk-rock songwriting has impressed us since we first heard their terrific debut Strange Ammunition a couple years ago. At that time, the group resided in Sacramento, where husband and wife duo Caitlin and John Gutenberger still live, but with two band members now based in the City and frequent performances here, we’re proud to consider them rising stars in the Bay Area indie music scene. We certainly aren’t the only ones, as the group’s local profile has been aided by some supportive bands and bloggers. Read more
Episode 122: The Lightning Bug Situation
July 8, 2008
This week’s featured band is The Lightning Bug Situation, the solo project of San Francisco’s Brian Miller, who you might also know as one-half of local rock duo The Speakers. Miller’s latest Lightning Bug Situation album, A Leaf; A Stream, rightly found a place on many critics’ best-of-2007 lists, with a hushed, skillfully-layered mix of folk-rock, melodic indie pop and compositional instrumental music. Like many great albums, it’s a mesmerizing long-player, as songs frequently bleed into instrumentals and back again. It’s also an album of intense lyrical themes both macro and micro, with Brian confronting the war in Iraq and becoming a new father, as filtered through the lens of family relationships.
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Episode 121: Live This Month - July 2008
July 1, 2008
This week’s podcast episode spotlights some great Bay Area shows coming up in July and includes music from both local and touring bands. There’s plenty of terrific stuff here, so be sure to go out and see some shows!
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Episode 120: June 2008 Monthly Mix
June 24, 2008
It’s time once again for the latest installment in our Monthly Mix series of episodes, where we collect a number of songs from new and recent releases by a variety of Bay Area bands. This episode also marks the debut of a new feature we’re going to start incorporating into our mix shows, a new short interview with a band we featured a year or two ago on The Bay Bridged to discuss a new album released since our first conversation.
About all of the bands:
Ted the Block (”Kicking Down The Ladders”) is the name of the solo project from Winston Goertz-Giffen, also a member of Saything and formerly of The Aimless Never Miss. His latest album Thinkinging… is an eclectic collection of patchwork rock full of melodic twists and turns. He doesn’t have any future shows listed, but we’ll keep you posted.
Love is Chemicals (”Over Land, Over Sea”; later, “My Ticker Tape Parade” and “Agitator”) kick off our series of new interviews with Bay Bridged alumni. Their sophomore work Song of the Summer Youth Brigade was recently released digitally and we caught up with the band at our studio to talk about their dynamic, evolving sound. You can purchase SotSYB on iTunes or from their web site.
We’ve also included an uber-catchy song from local garage-pop duo Sassy (”Sweet Child”). The band celebrates the release of their debut album Get a Grip this Saturday, June 28th at 12 Galaxies, where they’ll be joined by Von Iva, Hot Tub and El Fay.
Episode 119: Built for the Sea
June 17, 2008
This week’s episode of The Bay Bridged Podcast is presented by KQED Interactive.
This week’s featured band is Built for the Sea, a San Francisco quartet whose textured rock-pop calls to mind to the legacies of shoegazer and melodic alternative rock music without drawing too heavily from either camp. The group started as a songwriting project for singer-keyboardist Lia Rose, a veteran of the Bay Area music scene, and their 2006 self-titled album showcases her strong command of soaring melodies and bittersweet personal lyrics. Rose’s voice has drawn many listeners into the band’s music and it’s central to the songs too, a versatile instrument equally capable of airy musings and earthy wisdom.
But while the group started as Rose’s, it has evolved into a truly collaborative band full of talented musicians. We’ve actually already interviewed members of this band twice before on the podcast, speaking with guitarist Jonny Latimer as a member of The Aimless Never Miss and drummer Eric Kuhn for his band Silian Rail. With fourth bandmate Daniel Mckenzie also a member of Shuteye Unison and formerly of the now-defunct The Rum Diary, it’s a collection of songwriters and performers to be reckoned with and suggests an exciting new chapter for the band.
