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The Third Album Begins

Wonderlick has begun its next LP, and, as is our custom, we will be posting free rough mixes of new tunes (and new mixes of existing ones) as they’re ready. Here are the first four songs we’ve finished. Well, finished isn’t the right word, but you know what we mean:

Click For Free Download!

Unlike the last two albums, we’re recording this one with an actual band. So, in addition to Jay and Tim, the first three songs above feature the following:

Johannes Luley recorded and mixed ’em, and also played some piano on “Little Sweet Things.” Jay and Tim did everything else. The band tracks were laid down at Studio SQ in San Francisco; additional fiddling (the metaphorical kind, not the amazing Jean Cook kind) happened at My Sonic Temple in L.A.

If you like what you hear and want to contribute to the recordings, donations are always gratefully accepted, though entirely optional. At this stage of the process, donations tend to get spent on better quality wine. “Easy” and “Cold Patch,” for instance, were fueled by two nice bottles of BV Dulcet.


Live Lick Download

Well, we couldn’t work out those live dates after all. But if the five-piece Wonderlick can’t come to your town, it can at least come to your computer. Four tunes the band recorded live are now available to download, for free.  Consider it an early Christmas present from Tim, or an early Chanukah present from Jay. Click the button below to get the work-in-progress “One of the Good Guys,” a cover of Guided by Voices’ “I Am a Scientist,” and two from Topless.

If you just want to hear the songs in their entirety, or share them with friends, here you go:

Summing It All Up

bad aimRight when I was feeling guilty for not updating the site for a while, and trying to think of something relevant to post, a fan named Jester Jay sends through a link to his blog, which contains this perfect encapsulation of Wonderlick’s aesthetic:

“I’m not sure how I ended up here, since it’s not what I was aiming for, but I wasn’t really aiming anyway.”


Music from Different Fur

Those tracks we recorded for Dennis the Menace’s radio show are now available via this little widget.

Take a listen to “One of the Good Guys,” “I Am a Scientist,” and live versions of 2 from Topless. We’re investigating ways to make them available for download, but for now, stream away.

Double Encore E.P.

Up till now, the Double Encore E.P. was just a bonus we stuck in the envelopes of supporters who were particularly generous during the pre-order campaign. But starting today we’re letting it stand on its own — you can hear the whole thing for free in its entirety right here, or on the Music page, and you can buy it, if you’re so inclined.

These 7 tracks were all recorded for Topless, but left off the final album for one reason or another. “Nobody Loves You Enough” is probably my personal favorite of the bunch, and provides a few more details about Jenny’s home life with her stoner boyfriend.

Updated Press Page

press-hatThe Press page has been updated with links to the last several weeks’ worth of features, interviews and Topless at the Arco Arena reviews (wheteher good or bad).

Also, a site called Coverville has a podcast featuring twelve different Clash covers. The first eleven are all songs from London Calling (by acts ranging from Social Distortion to the Honeydrippers), but they slipped in our take on “Janie Jones” as a bonus at the end.

Wonderlick on KUSF 8/2

slightly-rude That session/interview Wonderlick recorded a couple weeks ago will be broadcast on KUSF this coming Sunday, 8/2, at 4pm PST.

You can listen live here hear the archived show here.

Fans Dance

Figured folks might like to see some of the videos we’ve gotten of people dancing to “This Song is a Commercial.” Here’s Monica, with a self-described “interpretative dance entry”:

These kids were a little too young to enter the contest officially, but their dad still wanted to share. There’s some pretty cool stunt photography 50 seconds in. Also, for some reason, hats:

Different Fur Session

furSo yesterday marked the semi-debut of Wonderlick as a live five-piece. I say semi, because we recorded a radio session yesterday, but it won’t be broadcast for a couple weeks. Once it is, we should be able to get all the tracks live on this site in a sharable player.

Many thanks to Dennis “The Menace” Scheyer for hooking the session up in the first place, and for doing a flattering amount of research about the band before sitting down to interview us — it’s always a pleasure to talk to people who get you.

Thanks as well to the band — Ken Flagg tinkled the ivories, Daniel Fabricant played a five string bass, and Chris Brague drummed. I’ll try to get some more photos of the day up later on. In the meantime, you should check out Ken’s MySpace page, as he’s a pretty amazing solo artist, too — I particularly recommend “Mountain Girl.”

We did 5 songs total: 3 from Topless (“Commercial,” “You First,” and “Fear of Chicago”), a cover of GBV’s “I Am a Scientist,” and a brand new one we literally wrote in the lounge while the engineers were getting drum sounds. That one’s called “One of the Good Guys,” and is the first of what may turn into an entire album about superheroes. Not the pretend kind in comic books, the real life ones who actually make themselves costumes and give themselves names and fight crime here in the U.S.A.

More Press

We’ll get all these arranged nicely in the Press section eventually, but here are two more Topless-related features from the interweb.

The first is an interview with an Iowa paper, written by my friend Kembrew McLeod. Kembrew’s a prankster as well a respected academic, so you can understand why we get along. We did the interview over email, and the actual transcript exceeded his word count, so maybe I’ll post the unedited version at some point.

The second is actually four separate entries at a pretty cool new site called songfacts.com. They asked us for the details behind four tracks from the new album, and we happily obliged.

Tomorrow we head to Different Fur studios in SF to record a few songs for broadcast on KUSF on Sunday. Feels good to play live with real live human beings. I’ll try to remember my camera and post some pix from the studio tomorrow.

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