Let me just say, this is awesome.

Just before the release of their new album (which we wrote up recently), Sleater-Kinney was interviewed by one of our new favorite comedy duos, Abbi Jacobson + Ilana Glazer of Comedy Central’s Broad City.

The panel discussion took place in New York City’s Ace Hotel in front of an intimate crowd of 150 or so lucky souls and clocks in at just over an hour, all of which is worth watching.

Oh, to have been in that room. But we’re all runners up thanks to NPR, who shared the videotaped Q+A with Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss last week, embedded below.

As NPR put it: “The mutual respect onstage was unmistakable: When Glazer and Jacobson insisted that Broad City wouldn’t exist without Sleater-Kinney, Tucker replied, ‘When we watch your show, I want to write a song.'”

We’re trying out a little bit of Web synergy today, so after you watch this interview, head over to Forgotten Favorite, the music journal we started with Pel, to read our retrospective on Sleater-Kinney and hear their relatively ancient cover of Boston’s classic “More Than A Feeling”.

Shortly after opening MooShoes Los Angeles last fall, Katie and I were enjoying one of our favorite Sunday activities—walking down to the Hollywood Farmers Market—when we stumbled upon a friendly looking fellow just off the beaten path selling hand-made vegan tacos. Turns out this fellow was named Mick Weldon and he happens to both make some stellar vegan tacos and seemingly be one of the nicest guys in the world. Tomorrow, he’ll be heading down to MooShoes (3116 Sunset in Silver Lake) to sell tacos and brighten up everyone’s day, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to find out a little more about him and his bike-cart-based taco company, 100 Tacos.

And, since I know it’s likely everyone’s question right off the bat—amazing photo above by Maria Foto. Everyone needs one of these portraits. Everyone.

raven + crow: Alright, obviously the first question has got to be—why are you so nice, man? Are you from the mid-west or something?

Mick Weldon: Aw shucks…I’m from Texas!

Southern kindness then. I’ll buy it. Alright, second question—what made you want to start up a taco cart? Are you particularly into tacos or is it more a matter of promoting veganism…or something else entirely?

100 Tacos began not by design, but rather out of necessity…and partially as a joke. I started carrying pre-made tacos to cycling races around Los Angeles to feed my friends and other racers (okay, and myself). Those things go on for hours, and rarely is there anything worth a damn to eat, much less something vegan or vegetarian. People were receptive to the idea, and about two years later I took it to whole new worlds (don’t you dare close your eyes).

Nice. I love an organic start-up story. For the unlucky souls who have yet to try your tacos, break ’em down for us, ideally in the style of a 80’s rap song.

Lay on the warm sand and listen to PM Dawn’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss”…it’ll all make sense.

The soy chorizo totally tastes exactly like that song. So what’s the inspiration behind the fresh, made-to-order tortillas?

It was love at first bite. I use non-GMO Masa Harina flour; the truth is in the tortilla. And doing it all by hand blurs the lines between food preparation and performance art or interpretive dance.

You should totally have interpretative dancers behind you while you prepare the tacos. Why a bike-drawn cart though? Was that just a by-product of the races or getting to know the guys over at Bicycle Coffee?

I owe it all to them. No company just “manufactures” a cart like this. I’ve been friends with Bicycle Coffee since they were roasting beans in a wok in their Inner Sunset apartment’s kitchen. Matthew McKee began designing and welding these magical carts off of which they now serve cold-brewed coffee out of a tap, as well as hot pour-over. I told them I quit my job and was ready to take 100 Tacos to the next level. After a short drive and a few days in Oakland, the first BC cart for food was completed.

Wait, what job did you quit for 100?

Working at a vegan bakery. 

Ah. I picture you whiling your days away in an Office Space style cubical. Does that get really rough some days though, maybe in the middle of the summer when you’re trucking that thing up a pretty serious hill?

I just count my lucky stars I’m not melting my life away in someone else’s kitchen, or in the office of a stuffy corporation.

High five to that. Now, not to put un-needed pressure on you, but any plans to expand the menu at all in the future?

Most definitely, as long as it is within my means. Evolving as needed is natural growth. Creating new options with what’s locally available and in season is how we should be eating anyway.

Nice. Excited to see what comes then. And where does the name come from—100 Tacos? Why 100?

“I sure could go for 100 tacos right about now.” – Bart Simpson

100 tacos is an achievable goal for an afternoon. When I’m all sold out, I move on to the next thing I want to do with my day.

AHHHHHHHH! A Simpson’s reference. I’m disappointed in myself for not catching that in the first place. Are you looking at this as a start to a brick-and-mortar kinda operation or are you more keen to keep it as is?

The beauty of not being tied to a set location and schedule affords me the time and energy to travel and pursue my other interests.

Like holding cats in a portrait-esque manner. And you’re a fairly recent transplant to Los Angeles, right?

Going on five years now. I hopped on a one way flight from Dallas, with a bag of essentials and my bicycle.

Why LA?

It’s nothing like TV tells us. And if people are complaining about traffic, lack of nature, Hollywood, etc…they are doing it wrong. The mountains and the ocean are just a bike ride away.

Our favorite thing about this town. Though don’t tell everyone. We don’t want to over-saturate this place with stuffy ex-New Yorkers like ourselves. So what do you think of the food scene here?

It’s pretty incredible. Anything vegan you could ever want is here. Honorable mentions: Vin Loi, Shojin, Donut Friend, Mohawk Bend, PFFP, Pure Luck, Organix, and Araya.

Aw, man, I have yet to check out Vin Loi. Gotta get on that. Did I see somewhere that you were in a band at one point with Austin from Parquet Courts?

Yes! We are Secret Path. Austin Brown, Donovan Jones (This Will Destroy You) and I create dark mystic space jams for bumping in aircraft jalopies on interplanetary voyages.

Have you been doing music at all since your move?

Each album takes one decade to complete, so we are halfway to the next installment!

We look forward to Secret Path 2020! Favorite thing about Los Angeles?

“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

That guy. He knew what was up. Best place—besides your cart—you’ve ever had Mexican food?

Bouldin Creek and Mr. Natural in Austin are classics. But I’m still lookin’.

And where can people find you, regularly or semi-regularly?

Currently, next to the Hollywood Farmers Market at Space 1520 (Sundays from 9am-1pm), but I am available to cater events, and I would love to serve tacos at your central Los Angeles Bat Mitzvah, Quinceañera, Grandmother’s 80th, or spooky roller disco party. –> soymick@gmail.com <–

Best farmers market in LA, man! Finally, spirit animal?

Falcor; flying on a non-GMO corn tortilla carpet.

Obviously.

Tomorrow—Saturday—you can find Mick slinging tacos in front of MooShoes Los Angeles at 3116 Sunset in Silver Lake starting at 11AM or so. Come by, eat some tacos, peruse some vegan shoes, and say hey. 

Alright, I know we’ve been talking a lot about music lately on these pages, but we just have to share this new find that came through last night.

St. Lenox is the genre-dodging project of award-winning teenage violinist + current day pursuant of his Juris Doctor degree at NYU, Andy Choi, and the end result has us reeling a bit. After giving up music to pursue a degree in Philosophy at Princeton, Choi rekindled his interest in it again while working on his PhD at Ohio State, playing through the Great American Songbook and testing the waters at area dive bars.

All this brings us to his debut, the blatantly descriptive 10 Songs About Memory and Hope, a collection of songs that’s essentially knocked the wind out of us. The first thing you notice listening to any of them is Choi’s voice, and rightly so. He’s got this brazen, haphazard croon that’s impossible to turn away from, partly because of how appealing it is, partly because it’s akin to watching a tightrope walker—he gives every indication he’s going to tumble off terribly at any second, but somehow he keeps it all together beautifully the entire time. His vocal melodies—sung with a seemingly impossible degree of confidence—strike you as weirdly familiar, like you’ve got this deep recollection of hearing them vaguely in the periphery long ago somehow and they’ve worked their way into your musical subconscious.

Then the music itself. Alone, much of it’s not necessarily that remarkable—largely lo-fi, often fairly minimal. But there’s this strange imbalance of pressence of voice and lack of production or even lack of attention to production of the music that makes it striking in a memorable way because of the strength of the vocals and direct lyrics…like with the first Liz Phair album. In the same way, it seems like one of those no-win situations going forward, where the immediate inclination from anyone else involved in work after this—the artist included—is going to veer toward a higher production value…which will then totally ruin the beautiful imbalance of the whole thing. Picturing Choi’s voice over third party-produced hyperbolic, squeaky clean music does nothing for me.

But this, as is, has got me really really excited to just keep listening.

Weird, awesome stuff. Keep it up, doctor.

St. Lenox’s debut, 10 Songs About Memory and Hope, can be ordered digitally, as a CD, or on vinyl through Revolver USA and downloaded via iTunes. I have no idea if Choi plays live shows, but I’d personally love to see that happen.

You can listen to a few of the stand-out tracks from the album below.

This just in—David Byrne’s new project is a color guard. No joke.

As the artist informed his fans this morning, some years back, a color guard team approached the artist about using some music he’d written for theatre piece in their routine.

His response—“Fine, no charge… you are a high school team after all,” asking that the team send through some sort of documenting of the finished product down the line. When they did, he “watched, and was amazed and delighted to find myself in a new world that I didn’t know existed.”

He continues:

“Over recent decades, the teams have evolved into something strange and wonderful; they’ve created a vibrant, innovative and original vernacular artform that is wildly popular across the whole North American continent, but is all but unknown in many of the big urban centers—like New York, where I live. Contemporary Color aims to remedy that situation.”

You can read his full announcement for more, but, the take away for you—David Byrne’s doing color guard-based performance accompanied by him and the likes of Nelly Furtado, Kelis, St Vincent, How To Dress Well, Devonté Hynes, Nico Mulhy and Ira Glass, tUnE-yArDs, and who knows what other awesome artists.

The only performances announced so far are June 22 + 23 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on June 27 +28. Click the link to the original message from Byrne above for pre-sale codes.

Tickets for the Brooklyn show went on sale today and were still available at the time of writing.

And get ready for what I can only assume will be a rising trend of color guard-based popular entertainment.

Can’t wait for their version of Pitch Perfect.

Having now firmly established some regular outlets for sharing some of our favorite old music (via Forgotten Favorite, the retrospective music journal we recently started with Paul at Pel) and new (via our new monthly mixtape series), we feel the need to highlight a song that now falls into the chronological gaps—Tove Lo‘s “Habits (Stay High)”.

This track from the Swedish singer (pronounced “Toh-Veh Low”, given name Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson) has been a not-so-guilty pleasure of both mine and Katie’s since it entered our collective consciousness last year. If I remember right, a publicist sent along to us in a particularly busy time for the studio and I just threw it into a figurative digital pile of music entitled ‘To Sort’. However many weeks later, I finally gave it a listen and fell in love with the catchy track. Whether or not the lyrical content can be held on high—Ms. Lo speaks of binging on Twinkies and throwing up in the tub in her efforts to get through the day—it’s totally addictive, musically.

Tove Lo’s début full-length, Queen of Clouds, was released last fall, and the most recent single, “Talking Body”, just got a video the other day, which Tove described as a “sexy, tacky, dirty Dogville-inspired piece.” You can check that out below too.

We won’t be posting an inspirational photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s with a one-line snippet of a massively inspirational, cultural-shifting speech he once gave or—god forbid—superimposing such a quote over a dude who just won a football game.

We will, however, be posting this badass photo of him in Chicago schooling local civil rights leader Al Raby in a game of pool.

After such a tumultuous year, I feel like we could all use a little inspired levity.

Wishing a most giving, kind, productive Martin Luther King, Jr. day to you all.

Starting a new tradition in 2015, we’re putting together monthly SoundCloud “mixtapes”, compiling some of our favorite, mostly new tunes that are catching our ear and setting the tone for the studio each month.

This month’s picks feature some new bands we’re really, really excited about, like the electronic duo Sylvan Esso from Durham, North Carolina  and locals, Little Brutes and some new music from old timers like Sleater-Kinney and German band Lali Puna.

You can listen to all 15 tracks below or on our SoundCloud page. A couple of these tracks are downloadable if you click through and one band included has a free download for today only via KCRW’s Top Tune series.

Expect later mixes to come at the beginning of months from here on out.

Bon weekend, ya’ll.

Another year, another set of coffee labels for Pel‘s annual New Year gift to clients. This year, Paul + co. have teamed up with Manhattan’s abraço—one of Paul’s favorite coffee shops—to create two exclusive custom blends—the Butterfly Blend of Columbia + Java and the Kenya AA Lanana + Rwambiti.

Last year, we designed labels for Pel shortly after creating the company’s brand, incorporating an illustration we made of a coffee plant and the colors of the there countries of origin.

This year, we explored a couple of different design directions, but ended up going with Paul’s original idea of a pattern made up of “angular tesselating colored triangles” and two different color palettes for the two coffee blends.

Check out Pel’s work—both in partnership with us and solo—on their Web site; abraço‘s located at 86 East 7th Streetin Manhattan if you’d like to try out their held-in-high-regard coffees.

Birthdays mean gluten-free vegan donuts, which is actually a very, very good thing, thanks to BabyCakes—recently rebranded as (owner) Erin McKenna’s Bakery.

Pictured here, their salted caramel donut and (in the background) their coffee cookie crunch donut, both tasting very un-gluten-free.

Erin McKenna’s FKA BabyCakes has locations on the lower east side in NYC, down in Larchmont Village here in LA, offers packaged good in Walt Disney World in Orlando, and will soon be opening up shop in various other locales, including, we hear, back in Disneyland in Anaheim.

Mickey + Minnie love those vegan donuts.

NPR’s currently streaming in full some new albums of note from veteran musicians, among them, the ninth studio album from Belle and Sebastian, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, and the first album in ten years from one of this writer’s all-time favorite bands, Sleater-Kinney.

The album, titled No Cities to Love, is the band’s eighth studio release, technically, but, after so much time, rather than sounding like an emotionally stunted picking-up of where they left off in 2005/6, Cities sounds like they’ve been making music together all this time. With the exception of the unmistakable, unshakeable roaring croon of Corin Tucker, most other aspects of the music have evolved and shifted into new, pretty surprising areas that I just didn’t expect to hear when putting this record on.

Honestly, I was never a huge fan of their 2005 release, The Woods—I appreciated the experimentation and liked when they veered off into the CCR-esque stylings, but, overall, it sounded like an album form a band that had just developed a bit of an identity crisis. Cities definitely sounds jumbled or disorganized at times, but it’s striking me as more current and urgent and…interesting this time round.

I think it might be a slow burn—something of a musical enigma for the first few listens for me at least. You can listen to it for yourself in full for a limited time and read Katie Presley’s write-up at NPR’s First Listen.