The band, not the personality test.
Jul 2nd, 2009 by Tim
Album comes out on Tuesday, so reviews are trickling in. Here are two — one from Chicagoist, and one from Skopemag. The former likes it, the second decidedly does not, though the writer seems to be reviewing our lives rather than our album. Sigh.
I have a friend who called me a Yuppie Punk once. When I complained, she insisted that it was a compliment, and that she wants to be one someday, too.
Jun 29th, 2009 by Tim
Bill Wikstrom posted a write-up about Topless in advance of its release. You can read his take on it at http://talkaboutpoppopmusic.blogspot.com.
Jun 16th, 2009 by Tim
To promote the video for “This Song is a Commercial,” the label’s put together a contest. Basically, you send in video of yourself dancing to our song, and you get entered to win a portable MP3 player plus a year’s subscription to Rhapsody (we’ll probably load the player up with Wonderlick’s collected works, as well).
We’re planning on splicing together the footage we receive for our next video, so whether or not you win the sweepstakes, you’ll probably wind up in a Wonderlick music video. You can enter here:
Jun 7th, 2009 by Tim
An interview I did with a site that analyzes the creative process called Pen’s Eye View just went live. It’s on their home page now, but here’s the permanent link: http://www.penseyeview.com/content/wonderlick.
We’ll get it up on the Press page later today. Looks like I’m already repeating lines between interviews — a bad habit I try to avoid, but I’m out of practice.
In other news, Abby tells me she’s pleased with video, but won’t show it to any of her friends, “because there’s a vibrator in it.” I was laughing about that with video’s producer, Lauren Tabak, who was equally mystified. “Really?” she said. “It’s not the hardcore pornstar? The heaps of gay? Dad?”
If you haven’t seen the video yet, it awaits you below.
Jun 6th, 2009 by Tim
Behold, the video for “This Song is a Commercial”
It premiered as AOL Music’s Video of the Day today. Please use the share button in the player above to spread it around.
Many thanks to Director Alexa Inkeles and Producer Lauren Tabak, as well as the very accommodating cast and crew — full credits after the jump.
May 19th, 2009 by Tim
Here’s the album, in its entirety. We’re offering a free MP3 of “This Song is a Commercial,” as well.
By all means, hit the word “share” and send it to friends…
May 17th, 2009 by Tim
Over the next week or so we’ll be tricking out the Music and Buy Things pages with a bunch of widgets from our buddies at Topspin, so as a combination test/preview, we figured we’d get things started with a sneak peek at the lead track from Topless at the Arco Arena. Take a listen:
May 13th, 2009 by Tim
Why do I love this new Rancid video so much?
Operation Ivy’s one album was brilliant — clearly inspired by the Clash, but somehow still it’s own thing. Rancid records, on the other hand, never gave me that same feeling of building something new and glorious on top of hallowed ground. They were catchy enough that I dutifully obtained most of them, and ripped them into my portable mp3 player, but I never genuinely loved them as albums.
And yet, when a Rancid song crops up on shuffle play in between the 18,000 other tunes it’s competing with on said device, I usually find myself happily surprised. So when I got a tweet from @Punknews pointing me to this video earlier today, I clicked through, somewhat eager but, as usual, not expecting a whole lot.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot here. But I have been watching it incessantly all day (to the point where I’m now getting more excited every time I recognize some East Bay “landmark,” like Golden Gate Fields, where Donna and I won $65 after she talked me into taking a day off work just to fuck around).
There’s something big hiding inside small pleasures like that.
May 12th, 2009 by Tim
Here’s the label for the Topless CD. As you can see, we love it so much we incorporated it into the banner for this website. It will probably become a T-Shirt, as well.
It’s based on a poster I saw a few years ago in an exhibit of WPA art. In that one, the shadow was being cast by a heavily-muscled arm holding up a big steel hammer. I don’t know how people saw it at the time, but in retrospect I can only admire the weird combination of idealism and naivete. (Side note: if you like this sort of thing, and you’re ever in San Francisco, go check out Coit Tower. The WPA murals that ring the lobby are as much fun to look at as the view from the top.)
The design was done by Jeff Castellana, whom we’ve been working with since last year’s Love & Television EP. He’s sprinkled all kinds of stuff like this throughout the CD packaging. We figure, if you’re gonna make a concept record, you might as well treat it like an actual record, even if CDs themselves are starting to feel old-fashioned.
(Picture of a Coit Tower mural after the jump) Continue Reading »
May 10th, 2009 by Tim
So last night was our first experiment with webcasting. Wine Time with Wonderlick, in which Jay and I spent a little over a half hour drinking a fine bottle of Bordeaux, giving each other shit, and responding to comments typed in by viewers, was kinda fun and kinda embarrassing. The high point was probably when a deathbot like the one to the left did an extended dance to “Fuck Yeah!”, a track from Topless that got its world premiere during the episode.
If Stickam’s statistics are to be believed (and our friends at the label who set this webcast up in the first place insist they are), a total of 8,514 people tuned in, though most of those had no clue who we were and just joined because the episode was featured on Stickam’s homepage, then promptly left when they saw how ridiculous it was. Looks like we kept between 500 and 600 people engaged enough to stick with it till we got to the literal and metaphorical dregs.
Which, if we were on tour, we’d consider a pretty successful gig night. But I don’t know what it means in this particular context, or whether we should do one of these again.
It was fun watching some of the people who’d tuned in staring into their own webcams, and heartening to see that they had opened their own bottles of wine, and would raise ther glasses when we did.
If you watched, let us know if it’s worth trying again, or if it was just, you know, stupid.
