Until recently, when Heather wasn’t laying down beats for Eux Autres, she was holding down the high end of some crazy four-part harmonies in The Shee Bee Gees (hands down the best all-girl Bee Gees cover band to ever exist). Sadly, the SBG’s are no longer with us, but we do have a great new track on which the ladies back up Colin Meloy. “It’s Scott Walker’s Fault” is off the forthcoming Minus 5 album, Killingsworth, and features the Decemberists frontman on vocals. Review and mp3 over at Pitchfork.

UPDATE (6/2): The record is officially out today, and thus the pre-order is over. Thanks to everyone who placed an order! There are still some copies left, so get your orders in soon. If mp3s are your thing, the single is now available at all of your favorite online retailers.

We’re very excited to finally start selling the new singles! New 7″ You’re Alight will hit the streets on June 2, but you can order yours now. There are only 250 copies of available, so be sure to get one early. The songs “You’re Alight” and “A Band Undone” are pressed on beautiful clear vinyl, and the silkscreened sleeves were created by San Francisco’s Yellow Owl Workshop. To sweeten the deal, the first 50 pre-orders receive a very special Eux Autres lapel pin. Who doesn’t love lapel pins? We’ve also got another pre-order special going where you can add on a copy of the first Eux Autres single “Partick Nil” for a mere $2.00 extra. All copies of the new 7″ contain a coupon for free mp3 downloads of both songs.

Check out all the artwork below.

7" - $5.00. Select shipping destination

7" USA (w/post) $7.00 7" Canada/Mexico (w/post) $7.75 7" Rest of World (w/post) $10.00

We’re back in San Francisco after NYC Popfest. The Bell House show was a blast last Saturday! Thanks to everyone who made it out to the show. It was the first gig with Yoshi on drums and it went off without a hitch. Awesome bands. Awesome crowd. Awesome weekend.

We found some recaps of the show for those who weren’t in NYC:
Brooklyn Vegan
Chromewaves
Chromewaves [great photo page here]

And don’t forget SF Popfest this weekend. Should be lots of fun. Three Imaginary Girls has done a SF Popfest preview podcast. Check it out.

Nicholas worked a little photoshop magic on some of the lomography photos…

The new fellows you are looking at are Yoshi and Nevada. It’s great to have four people in our band photo for the first time. Now Nick and I won’t argue so much about who looks stupid in what photo. Because now, everyone looks stupid. Kidding.

I bought a rad keyboard last week, and I’m very excited to play out soon–soon as in May, that is.

Speaking of Yoshi, his band Still Flyin’ destroyed SXSW and will be coming my way this weekend (Friday in Brooklyn@Union Hall, Sunday @Cake Shop). If you’re reading this and live in NYC, you should go.

I’m not sure my delicate constitution can handle two Still Flyin’ shows in a row, but I’m looking forward to finding out. I have my Emergen-C packets at the ready. Bring it on, Still Flyin’.

Lots of things going on, so I thought I’d post a little update…

Recording went really well and we’ve got three new songs on tape. These three songs, along with another new one from a session last fall, will appear on a 7” EP being released by Where It’s At Is Where You Are Records in the UK this summer.

But before that, we’ve got a 7” coming out on May 5. The a-side is called “You’re Alight” with a song called “A Band Undone” on the b-side. The wonderful Yellow Owl Workshop is hard at work on the sleeves, and they look amazing—hand-screened sleeves with clear vinyl. We’re working on a special pre-order package, so watch this space for more info in the coming weeks.

We’ve got shows confirmed for NYC Popfest (5/16 @ The Bell House), SF Popfest (5/24 @ Café Du Nord), and Indietracks (7/24-26 in Derbyshire, England). We’re in the process of setting up some more shows in the UK around Indietracks.

I picked up a new lomography (lomographic?) camera and took some pictures when we were recording in March. See below (more at Flickr)

Allow us to clear our throats. This is the beginning of a new era of Eux-ness. We have doubled. Eux Autres are now four. Yoshi has joined us on drums, and Nevada has rejoined us on keyboards. We couldn’t be happier about this. In celebration of this new incarnation, we are…

Pressing things.
A new 7″ is at the plant. It will be a beautiful object. Clear vinyl, silkscreened jacket by Yellow Owl Workshop. Two brand new songs with the new lineup, orderable soon. Pre-orders will get an extra special something from us.

Covering things.
We have a new song coming out on a compilation from Where You Are is Where It’s At Records. The comp is a 2-disc ode to the poet laureate of Americana, aka The Boss. Besides being an incredible performer and one of the most important songwriters of the last century, his work always intrigued me because he wrote a song, “Nebraska” about Charles Starkweather, the serial killer. Starkweather also happened to be both of my parents’ garbage man in Lincoln, Nebraska, when they were kids. Spookiness.

For the Springsteen compilation, we chose to cover “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” a song that walks the delicate line between bravado and desperation. The track was supposed to be on Born in the USA, but it got cut from the album and has only shown up on live recordings and a B-side collection.

Other bands on the comp include Glam Chops (Eddie Argos from Art Brut), Darren Hayman, and Help Stamp Out Loneliness. We’ve got our song streaming on myspace, so go check out.

Recording things.
This weekend (March 8th/9th) we’re recording again with Jason Quever (Papercuts…great new album out soon, btw) in SF. The songs are a little darker, which is what the doctor ordered–it’s been a long winter, at least on my side of the country.

May as well make some music to keep warm with.

Look for these and our last October’s session on an EP of new Eux Autres goodness this summer.

Scheduling things.
We’ve confirmed for both the San Francisco (May 21-24) and NYC  (May 14-17) popfests and are currently putting together a UK/Europe tour, including a stop at Indietracks in July. Give us a shout if you want us to come to your town and we’ll do our best to make it happen.

Glad to be back with a new site, a new lineup, and new news.

Thanks for listening.
xo
HL

Last we play Sacramento. An early show at an old-school bar called the Press Room. Onstage I say how happy I am to be there—I truly would not rather be anywhere at the moment. Some wondrously nice locals take us to get pizza afterwards. It’s a warm ending to a really satisfying tour. I am grateful we get to do this with our lives. And yes, I want to go home.

After the show, where I’ve had too much Coffee Patron (tequila), we gun for home, making it only to Redding. We watch Adult Swim, which makes me feel as if I’ve been dosed with acid.

Then I start compulsively reading the electric stove ratings on Consumer Reports in some wayward, distant claim on domesticity.

The next day, we finally make it home. My room is clean, my laundry is dirty. My bones are tired.

Who am I, Bob Seger?

There’s a small issue I feel I need to clear up here. Thanks to Heather’s first post, Seattle, I’ve been asked by multiple if I actually did shit my pants south of Anacortes, WA. I can promise you that I most definitely did not shit my pants at any point on this (or any other) tour. What I was explaining to Nevada at the time was that Heather blogged about the tour, but he (Nevada) shouldn’t worry because she wouldn’t put anything embarrassing in the blog. My example was that, hypothetically, if I were to shit my pants, she wouldn’t write about it. Apparently, I was wrong. Heather would write about it…and as a result, my kind words of advice have had the exact opposite effect I was looking for.

Now that we’ve got that straightened out, I’d like to turn your attention to a truck stop about an hour east of San Francisco. I was using the bathroom (not my pants, you see) and noticed some extremely elaborate graffiti carved into the toilet seat. It was like a series of interlocking vines or something, perhaps a design for a sweet lower back tattoo for the artist’s girlfriend. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? I mean, I understand toilet wall graffiti. Who doesn’t like to spend a few minutes in a truck stop stall drawing a giant cock and balls? But on the seat? Baffling. My goal has always been to spend as little time in contact with the seat as possible. Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong…

Okay, I just needed to put that one out there. Now you can go back to Heather’s blogging…and probably some other completely made up story about me throwing up on a karaoke jockey in Modesto.

In the AM we’re sent off with a care package, replete with music, beauty products—my skin is having some sort of armageddon–and music. Anya is a saint.

We get a flat tire somewhere north of San Diego. It’s actually been a slow leak we’ve been ignoring for two days, but it’s now low enough for the gas station attendant to tell us to pull over to the garage to have it checked out. Thirty minutes later, we’re back on the road.

We have to get all the way back to San Francisco, in order to revisit Yoshi and our other SF friends, Evan and Chris. We all go to Benihana where we tell the waitress it’s Nick’s birthday. That means three waitresses grudgingly come over and beat on a drum and clap and sing to us. They finish off with a Polaroid of the “birthday” crew. After that, we get get a room for karaoke and spend the next three hours doing a sing along with 15 people. One of the biggest hits is Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” (my selection!) Really, with all the swaying and closed-eyed belting, we could be at church camp. Except there’s a lot more whiskey.

Yay to seeing my friend Anya. Anya is a band friend, a singer songwriter we met at Mississippi studios in Portland. She is also a dj on a commercial alternative station in San Diego. We have had some long talks, some winey nights, me and Ms. Anya.

She makes us snacks and cookies and then takes us out to dinner. One of the best and most awkward parts of tour is how much at the mercy of other people you are. When they are so gracious and generous—which is almost always–it’s nearly embarrassing. For each of them, they’re extending themselves for one night, but for us, constantly moving, it’s every night that someone really goes out of their way for us—and that’s not even including all the people who show up to see us play. It’s humbling.

The show is our last with Fishboy and I can’t really say goodbye because it’s making me all sad. I think all of the bands are rendezvousing at a tacqueria later, but we end up being the only ones. I’m bummed, but a pound of carnitas helps me through the pain.