Michael Cooper
Palisades closed in June. The Brooklyn venue, which is hopefully reopening in August, has been a key part of the borough's perpetually morphing DIY scene for the last couple years; its endearingly shabby likeness was even immortalized on the front of a recent issue of The New Yorker. If you, like me, are irrationally sentimental about almost everything, the new Bellows song will resonate and also sting a little: its narrative takes place inside the venue. At the Palisades, with the tonic water bottle/ the second band is saying that they're through, one verse goes. So we move, but I wanna keep sippin’/ I’ve always been a little bit aloof.
Bellows is the recording project of Oliver Kalb, who is a member of The Epoch and also plays in Eskimeaux and Told Slant. On his new album, Fist & Palm, out September 30 on Double Double Whammy, Kalb unflinchingly embraces elements of conventional pop: vocoded singing, programmed drum claps, tastefully blown-up arrangements. "Orange Juice," debuting here today, sounds like the creation of someone who spent a lot of time listening to The Postal Service's honestly-still-perfect Give Up in the early-aughts.
The lyrics, hooked around the on-trend central stanza drinking orange juice from a tonic water bottle, detail the aftermath of the narrator's freak-out. The bottle is a symbol for, as Kalb explained in an email to The FADER, the "objects immature people use as scapegoats to shield ourselves from taking blame when things go wrong." It's a song that will click with anyone who's lost their cool and can't explain why, even those who have never set foot in Palisades.
Tour dates:
10/22 - Portsmouth, NH @ 3S Artspace ^
10/24 - Toronto, ON @ Silver Dollar Room ^
10/25 - Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s ^
10/26 - Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen ^
10/27 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry ^
10/28 - Omaha, NE @ Milk Run ^
10/30 - Denver, CO @ Lost Lake Lounge ^
11/1 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court ^
11/2 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux ^
11/3 - Walla Walla, WA @ Billsville West ^
11/4 - Vancouver, BC @ 333 Clark ^
11/5 - Seattle, WA @ The Vera Project ^
11/6 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios #
11/7 - Eugene, OR @ The Boreal ^
11/9 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop ^
11/11 - Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater ^
11/12 - Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge ^
11/14 - Austin, TX @ The Mohawk ^
11/15 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada ^
11/16 - Jackson, MS @ Big Sleepy’s ^
11/17 - Nashville, TN @ The End ^
11/18 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade ^
11/20 - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook ^
11/21 - Washington, DC @ DC9 ^
11/22 - Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA ^
11/23 - Somerville, MA @ ONCE Somerville ^
^ w/ PWR BTTM & Lisa Prank