The time has come — The Pygmalion Festival unveiled their 2016 lineup for Music and Literature, with announcements on Tech, (a brand new component) Food and The Made Fest coming later.
Do yourself a favor and check out what’s in store for the festival this year, with new components and all that good stuff.
Tickets for the festival go on sale this Friday, June 10th at 10 a.m., and you can find the link here.
MUSIC
FUTURE ISLANDS
Over the last eight years, Future Islands, Baltimore’s most quixotic and emotionally involving trio have maintained an admirable level of skill and pace, never slowing down for the corners. It’s vocalist Samuel T. Herring, William Cashion (bass, guitars), and Gerrit Welmers (keyboards, programming, guitars) who find themselves responsible. Their sound is at once beguiling and irresistible. It’s one part melancholic, one part euphoric; full of animated bass lines, robust drum machines and questing keyboards, all set off by Sam’s remarkably distinct, soaring vocal.
Listen to their smash from Singles, “Seasons (Waiting on You)”:
VINCE STAPLES
With a string of potent mixtapes, extensive touring opportunities and a spot on the roster of a legendary label, Vince Staples remains focused on making magnificent material, like 2015’s Summertime 06 one of the most revered and critically acclaimed hip-hop albums of 2015. “I’m just working on music,” he says. “That’s my life now, so I’m giving it everything that I got.
WOLF PARADE
Wolf Parade formed in Montreal in 2004. The group, comprised of members Spencer Krug, Dan Boeckner, Arlen Thompson, and Dante DeCaro, released three universally acclaimed records for Sub Pop — Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005), At Mount Zoomer (2008), and Expo 86 (2010). The band is playing their first run of shows in over five years, performing in front of many sold out shows thus far in 2016.
LOUIS THE CHILD
Hailing from Chicago, Louis The Child is an electronic music duo with the simple goal of creating music that makes people happy. Their single, “It’s Strange”, has been played on BBC, Triple J, and KCRW, and racked up over 5 million plays on both Spotify and SoundCloud. In 2016, SnapChat listed Louis The Child as one of 3 EDM Artists to Watch, and Mix Mag ranked LTC as the #1 Artist Taking Dance Music to the Next Level. 2015 involved numerous tours supporting Madeon, Kaskade and The Chainsmokers. Currently embarking on their first headlining tour, LTC is on the rise.
FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Frightened Rabbit arrived at Dessner’s Ditmas Park, Brooklyn studio last August with thirty contenders for Painting of a Panic Attack, and whittled down from there over the course of the following month. As they considered which direction the album should take, (Scott) Hutchison says it became clear that the best tracks were the ones with the most emotional immediacy. “‘I Wish I Was Sober’ is not the first song I’ve written about being drunk, and ‘Break’ is not the first song I’ve written about being a fuck-up and wishing I wasn’t, but it turns out there are many ways of expressing that,” says Hutchison. “I think people who are fans of our band come to us for a sense of belonging. I know that’s not unique to us, but I really do believe that our music can come to a person at a pivotal point in their life and that we can become this place to consider where you are in the world.”
ALVVAYS
Alvvays are two women, three men, a crate of cassette tapes and a love of jingle-jangle (and based in Toronto). Molly Rankin and Kerri MacLellan grew up as next-door neighbours in Cape Breton, lifting fiddles and folk-songs. Heartbreaks of different shades soon entered their lives, as did the music of Teenage Fanclub and Belle & Sebastian. Similar noisy melancholy drifted over to Prince Edward Island, finding Alec O’Hanley, Brian Murphy and Philip MacIsaac.
Car Seat Headrest’s conceptual ambition and stunning songwriting has been apparent since its early days of laptop recording, the scale of (Will) Toledo’s vision going far beyond the constricting “lo-fi” term. Now on his Matador Records debut, Teens of Style, we witness Toledo presenting his intricate ideas with more clarity and refinement than ever, delivering an enthralling collection of songs destined for wide acclaim.
Poster Children are a high-energy punk-pop band that formed in 1987 in Champaign. Playing what they call “post wave” music, their three full-length releases illustrate why they have a die-hard cult following: their ability to write hard yet melodic songs and their do-it-yourself philosophy, which includes driving their own tour bus, creating all of their own artwork and T-shirt designs, and having their own record label.
Perhaps the most immediately apparent characteristic of the fifth Russian Circles album, Memorial is its wide range of emotion. Vacillating from somber-yet-soaring melodies on one track to pummeling metal heft on the next, Memorial sounds like an album with split personalities.
Christmas Island, the 5th album proper from Phoenix, Arizona’s Andrew Jackson Jihad, is a little bit silly, a little bit serious. It’s a record that’s irreverent yet somber, full of humor and full of pathos, its twelve songs combining the two to create a record that truly cuts right to the bone of the human condition. They’ve built a significant cult following since their inception in 2004, one that knows just how heart breaking, heart warming, and inspiring their shambolic songs can be. The tension between fury and forgiveness, between anger and calm, between love and hate and life and death, isn’t just thematic, but weaved into in the sonic fabric of these songs. Christmas Island – it’s far from a random title, but it’s also kind of a secret – is simultaneously ridiculous and sublime in the way that Andrew Jackson Jihad always have been. It’s a record absolutely in keeping with their bold and brilliant past – the one their cult following has been following for years – but it’s also a bold and brilliant step forward.
THE HOOD INTERNET x SHOWYOUSUCK
As the name that they go by suggests, The Hood Internet are quite clearly an act in thrall to the possibilities that the internet has opened up, these past few years, for hip hop as a genre; it’s especially true of alternative hip hop, whereby artists play by different rules and experiment more than the mainstream side of the style would really allow. The Chicago duo – comprised of ABX and STV SLV – were primarily concerned with mashing up other hip hop tracks to begin with, after they formed in 2007, but have since gone on to pursue original material, in the form of their one album to date, FEAT; the album features underground guest spots form the likes of Tobacco, Class Actress and Cadence Weapon. In addition, the pair have also pursued slightly sillier things, like Album Tacos, a series of photoshopped classic album covers with tacos covering the original content, but they’ve also played live sets, which has seen them mash up classic hip hop cuts in a slick and often comical manner; it’s little wonder, then, that they’ve managed to carve out a cult fanbase, one that’s no doubt eagerly awaiting the next move from the duo in the studio.
If you’ve ever looked at an old document and noticed brown spots on it, what you are seeing are signs of aging. It’s not exactly clear what specifically causes them, but one day, the page will completely brown over and be no more. This is called foxing.
A group of St. Louis musicians took this idea and turned it into a band. “From the conception of the band, we realized: we’re not gonna be around forever,” says Foxing singer Conor Murphy. “There’s classic literature that over time grows really old. But hopefully, you can make something that meant something at some point and will mean something down the road, even if it is aged and dated. That’s always what keeps me going, the idea that we’re writing something now that we won’t be able to write in ten years.” At only 21, Murphy is wise beyond his years and Foxing’s debut album, The Albatross, is indisputable proof of that.
Aloha began with Tony Cavallario and Matthew Gengler in the summer of 1997 in Bowling Green, OH. The only Polyvinyl band to be signed based on a demo tape, the band has operated from a number of bases, variously doing their writing, rehearsing and living in Cleveland, Chicago, Washington D.C., Cincinnati, Rochester, Pittsburgh and Altoona, PA.
Although the four members of Aloha (including T.J. Lipple and Cale Parks) are scattered across the eastern half of the country, their commitment to making music together remains.
THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE AND I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE
Connecticut-based band The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die has a new album Harmlessness available now. It is the band’s second album and first with Epitaph.
The group create their dense textured sound with multi-layered and heavily effected guitars as well as synthesizer, cello, and trumpet. In their idealistic maximalist world, more of everything is better.
More Music
- PRINCE RAMA
- PSYCHIC ILLS
- MILD HIGH CLUB
- JOAN OF ARC
- MOTHER NATURE
- LUCY DACUS
- HOOPS
- MAIDEN RADIO
- ELSINORE
- FRONTIER FOLK NEBRASKA
- BONES JUGS
- JOAN SHELLEY
- TARA TERRA
- REBECCA REGO & THE TRAINMEN
- THE DIRTY FEATHERS
- THE FIGHTS
- KOWABUNGA! KID
- BOOKMOBILE!
- MOTES
- TIGERBEAT
- CHURCH BOOTY
- TAKE CARE
- EURIAH
- THE INN KEEPERS
- CODY LEE
- SNAYL
- DJ BELLY
- FIONA KIMBLE
- THE WANDERING BOYS
- DJ RICKY WELLS
- ALEX AND THE XO’S
- PENNY HORSES
- BIG EASY BRASS
- MANK N SASS
LITERATURE
JEAN THOMPSON (pictured right): is the author of six novels, among them The Humanity Project and The Year We Left Home, and six story collections, including Who Do You Love (a National Book Award finalist). She lives in Urbana, Illinois.
TYEHIMBA JESS (pictured bottom right): Detroit native Tyehimba Jess’ first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.” Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU alumnus, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004-2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000 – 2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship. He exhibited his poetry at the 2011 TEDxNashville Conference. Olio, his second collection, was released by Wave Books in April 2016. Jess is an Associate Professor of English at College of Staten Island.
EULA BISS: Eula Biss is the author of three books: On Immunity: An Inoculation, a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle Award for nonfiction; Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award for criticism, and a collection of poetry, The Balloonists. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an NEA Literature Fellowship, and a Jaffe Writers’ Award. She holds a B.A. in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and a M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa.
LITERARY DEATH MATCH, now in 60 cities worldwide, was called “the most entertaining reading series ever” by the LA Times. The live show brings together four authors to read their most electric writing for seven minutes or less before a panel of three all-star judges. After each pair of readers, the judges take turns spouting hilarious, off-the-wall commentary — in the categories of literary merit, performance and intangibles — then select their favorite to advance to the finals. The two finalists then compete in a vaguely literary competition to determine who takes home the Literary Death Match crown.
NEIL STEINBERG is a daily columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has been on staff since 1987. He has also written for many publications, including Esquire, Rolling Stone, Forbes, The Washington Post and The New York Daily News. The author of eight books, his latest, Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery, written with Sara Bader, is being published by the University of Chicago Press in September, 2016.
KIM CHINQUEE is a regular contributor to NOON, Denver Quarterly, and Conjunctions, and has also published in Ploughshares, The Nation, StoryQuarterly, Indiana Review, Fiction, Mississippi Review, and over a hundred other journals and anthologies. She is the author of the collections Oh Baby, Pretty and Pistol, and senior editor of New World Writing. She lives in Buffalo, NY.
MATTHEW MINICUCCI is the author of two collections of poetry: Translation (Kent State University Press, 2015), chosen by Jane Hirshfield for the 2014 Wick Poetry Prize, and Small Gods, forthcoming from New Issues Press in 2017. He is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kent State University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his MFA. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New Poets 2014, Blackbird, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review, among others.
ADRIAN TODD ZUNIGA is the co-creator and host of Literary Death Match an international reading series that marries the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, rapier-witted quips of American Idol’s judging (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare. It has been hailed as “the most entertaining reading series ever” by the Los Angeles Times. Zuniga is also a fiction writer, host of the LDM Book Report, and an award-winning journalist.
BOOK FORT: Book Fort is a roving, interactive book fair that seeks to make a meaningful contribution to communities through readings, performances, and opportunities to connect with a curated selection of independent publishers, presses, and literacy organizations.
Featured book presses:
● Hobart
● More TBA
Full disclosure: The Pygmalion Festival is produced by the same company that owns Smile Politely. Many of the bios you read here are provided by press, although some may be altered slightly for this article.