Shot in Williamsburg:

[thanks Kevin]

Fleet Foxes premiered this beautiful animated video for “The Shrine/An Argument” today, directed by Sean Pecknold, brother of Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold. The beast hand strumming the strings – so good.

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

Band names can subconsciously carry a lot of weight. I try to ignore their influence but sadly…sometimes they can just make it or break it when it comes to my opinion of a band. When I first heard about Pizza!, a band name that not only includes one of my favorite vegetables…but one that also utilizes the exclamation point perfectly, I was immediately in love. It only gets better that their former name, The New Motherfuckers, is pretty good too. LA’s Pizza! just premiered a video from Greenpoint (and former Los Angelenos) director, Caitlin Craggs, who also stars in the video. Appropriate for a song entitled “Big Mammoth Skull,” Craggs can be seen dancing in the video in a gigantic skull which she fabricated out of paper mache. Read an interview with the band and director and download the track for free here.

Pizza! — Big Mammoth Skull from Caitlin Craggs on Vimeo.

image c/o Miss Retro's Blog

Well folks, it’s that time of year again, and if you’re like me, you won’t be visiting family for Thanksgiving but you still want to gorge yourself with an exorbitant amount of good old fashioned home cookin’. If you’re even more like me, you haven’t had time to think much about foraging for food and supplies in advance. Fear not, turkey-lovers! Although the deadline to order turkeys and elaborate pre-made Thanksgiving meals from most restaurants and stores has passed, here’s the scoop on what’s still available at some of Williamsburg’s best food spots. Whether you want to impress your friends with some mad turkey-cooking skills or drink beer on the couch while you re-heat some delicious pre-made food, there is still have time to make it happen.

The Meat Hook

Local antibiotic and hormone free turkeys raised specifically for the shop have been available for pre-order since early October. They aren’t taking any more orders in advance, but there’s a small selection of 14-19 pound birds still available first come, first serve.  When these sell out, you can still get a delicious spiral ham or any other of their specialty meats to fill your belly. A few feet from the meat counter you can find gravy, stuffing mix, cornbread, and other necessary sides for your Thanksgiving spread as well as apples, potatoes, and smallish pumpkins for the specific purpose of making a homemade pie. (Perfect for those who don’t trust anything from a can.) For those who truly wait until the last minute, note that the meat shop, along with the rest of The Brooklyn Kitchen, will be closed on Thanksgiving and only open until 6pm the night before. 100 Frost Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (718) 389-2982 the-meathook.com

Marlow & Daughters

This beloved butcher shop also had locally raised, antibiotic and hormone free turkeys available for pre-order, but word on the street is that they will still have a few extra birds available from now until the big day. They will also be serving up other holiday items including cranberry sauce, homemade pie crust, their signature country pâté, and smoked tofu that is said to delight vegetarians AND meat-lovers alike. The shop will be open from 10am-3pm on Turkey day, but definitely come sooner than later if you hope to grab one of those extra birds. 95 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211 marlowanddaughters.com

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Tomorrow, Saturday 19th, the East River Pirates and East River Bar host a charity auction for Viva con Agua. Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli is a charitable organisation based in St. Pauli, Hamburg, Germany, campaigning for clean drinking water worldwide. Aside from amazing items like an all inclusive trip (air fare, hotel, VIP match tickets) to a FC St.Pauli soccer game in Hamburg  for 2 people in April 2012, there will be live music and a soccer match viewing.

FC St.Pauli plays arch enemy Hansa Rostock  and the match will be shown  on the big screen at East River Bar. The shindig starts at 7pm sharp. Please come out and support Viva con Agua. Make a difference while getting shitfaced with New York City’s St.Pauli supporters club. A flyer with detailed info is below.

Saturday 19 | 7PM | East River Bar | Brooklyn | 97 South 6th St | FREE

Real Estate

After spending last weekend dancing our pants off at the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival, TMBASTWT (The Most Blogged About Shows This Week Team) is still recovering. Highlights included a great set by Diamond Rings on Friday night and some awesome dance music by a whole team of DJ’s at Public Assembly on Saturday. Life moves pretty fast, and the next seven days are pretty full.

If you aren’t busy occupying something, get your ass to Jersey to see Lykke Li and First Aid Kit at the Wellmont Theatre tonight. This may be your last chance to see First Aid Kit as the undercard—they just scheduled their own headlining gig at the end of March. (See on-sale information for the show below.) Although it’s not on our top 10 list, we’ll personally be checking out Nyle vs the Naysayers, Osekre, The Press and Dollar Coffee at Cameo Gallery.

This weekend, you’ll have your chance to see the appropriately named metal band Mastodon with Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang. Unfortunately, their Saturday night show is sold out, so you may want to check out a nice lineup—Woodsman, Dive, Holiday Shores, Hear Hums and Flower Orgy—at Shea Stadium. (more…)

From Bushwick’s grey industrial streets, rose Spanish Prisoners’ strangely uplifting sound — a perfect blend of cloudy density and pop-y guitar riffs that brings to mind The Beach Boys on the verge of a heroin overdose. But don’t be fooled by the analogy, surf rock is nowhere to be found here — rather, a heap of perfectly listless waves crash over emotionally charged yet stoic lyrics.

Spanish Prisoners “Know No Violence” off of the band’s newest release, Gold Fools, carefully careens between dreamy layered vocals and lucid instrumental precision, a habit the band luckily doesn’t kick through the entirety of the album. We got to chat with songwriter Leo Maymind and singing drummer Mike DiSanto about finding the perfect amount of reverb, the influence of drunk douchebags and New Order on the album, and how, apparently, Nas’ Illmatic is totally timeless.

Oh and did I mention we have  a pair of tickets to check out Spanish Prisoners tomorrow night at Pianos with Ski Lodge, Wolff and more!? So check out the rest of the interview after the jump and leave a comment below for your chance to win and be sure to grab Gold Fools for the current price of whatever you want to pay for it.

First and foremost, where does the name Spanish Prisoners come from?

Leo Maymind: The name came from the David Mamet film “the Spanish Prisoner,” which I think is a classic con-artist movie. Mamet kind of has a cult following. I’m not even sure the rest of the band has seen it.
Mike DiSanto: I haven’t seen it and people always seem vaguely disappointed in me when I tell them that.
Leo Maymind: We’ve been talking about setting up a movie night and all watching it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Tell me a little about the writing process of Gold Fools. How does it differ from the band’s previous releases?

M: The writing process was very much the same as the recording and mixing process.  It was all kind of happening at the same time as Leo and I would pass tracks back and forth with a pile of USB keys. I bought a new keyboard at the time and every time Leo gave me a song he was working on I would delete some of his tracks and recreate them with the keyboard, which was maybe a little annoying but I regret nothing.
L: Mike would also incrementally decrease the level of reverb without telling me. And then I would just increase it even more the next time around, hoping he wouldn’t notice. So it was mostly this long process of just sending things back and forth and sort of carving out something that was pleasing to the two of us and our other two bandmates. Suffice to say it took a pretty long time to arrive where we are now.
M: That’s true, at least 40% of our discussions on the album involved reverb.
L: It was more like 70-80%. We would start talking about reverb and end up talking about New Order for an hour.

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