Here’s a really nice, comprehensive, easy-to-digest (get it?) infographic on veagnism + the environment from a somewhat strange source—CulinarySchools.org.

Though we’ve never heard of the site before and it essentially seems to be a resource for those hoping to go into culinary careers or find free food clip art—of, course, a smiling kangaroo holding the world in one hand and a mug of beer in the oth…wait, what?—their facts do seem to be well-backed-up (see source at bottom of graphic). So we’ll take it! Plus who doesn’t like jolly roos, mate?

So, no pressure or anything—you know us—but, if you hold dear, say, the environment and, say, the future of our existence as a species, you should totally go vegan. Added benefit—all those animals you’ll save! Huzzah! It’s win-win-win!
Infographic by CulinarySchools.org

This Presidents’ Day, Reader, we celebrate the protectors of liberty + freedom with Philly band, Free Energy.

Long-time friends and Red Wing, Minnesota natives Scott Wells (top left) + Paul Sprangers (bottom left) first played together in lo-fi indie band, Hockey Night, one of the last bands to put out an album on the now-defunct, venerable label, Lookout! Records. After that band folded, Wells + Sprangers signed to NYC’s DFA Records off of homemade demos they recorded for their new, much more mellow project, Free Energy.

Though most would rightfully describe Free Energy as a bit of a throwback to some solid 70’s era—I’ll say it—Freedom Rock, I’d be hard-pressed to call the band a knock-off or joke act in good faith. Sit down and listen to their music and it’s hard not to be pulled in by their accessible pop hooks and singer, Paul Sprangers’ smooth, easy vocals. Once you get used to the mad riffage and nod to the days of bellbottoms + sideburns, you may even hear a resemblance to pop masters, Phoenix.

After signing to DFA, Wells + Sprangers made a move from the Midwest to Philly and filled out the band but, as Sprangers says, the band’s sound still pulls significantly from the slower pace of non-city life. “Being from the Midwest definitely informed our aesthetic. Growing up in a small town with radio and MTV—then later discovering indie rock and punk rock—really shaped the kind of music we make now. So, I had the same kind of unabashed love for Phil Collins as I did for Pavement—I don’t think I ever grew out of that. It probably shows.”

Give their superb song “Dance All Night” a listen below and then check out their get-rich-quick/lose-your-way/get-poor-quick/rob-a-convenience-store/find-your-way-burn-your-clothes-and-go-swimmin’ video for “Girls Want Rock”. Both tracks are from Love Sign, the band’s sophomore album, just released on their own imprint, Free Energy Records. You can listen to + purchase the album or individual tracks via the band’s bandcamp page or, if you want the CD or vinyl, through their store at Impact Merch.

And frontman, Sprangers, hopes you like it:

“When I think of great songs by Peter Gabriel, or Tom Petty, I hear the them almost like hymns. They speak to something greater than ourselves. Even the simplest rock music—songs about partying and girls—can be transcendental,” says Sprangers. “I hope people can relate to what we do on some level. I hope kids like it. I hope moms like it. I don’t care about being cool, I just want to connect. I want people to know that no matter what, life is good, and every experience is meaningful. Maybe that’s weird. But we definitely feel like weirdos and we always have…maybe we always will, which is totally fine.“

Hey man, is that Free Energy? Well turn it up, man!

We’re 100% obsessed with the peanut butter + jelly cookies from ‘sNice, the vegetarian café in Park Slope + lower Manhattan. We stopped by the other day and are still kicking ourselves for not leaving with a tote bag full of them.

Essentially, they’re simple, extra-moist, extra-thick little peanut butter cookies with an indentation in the middle full of grape jelly. But that mundane description doesn’t come close to capturing the pure, adolescent joy these confections bestow upon their lucky consumers.

Excuse me while I gently weep just a bit for not having this prized delicacy in my possession today, Reader. And for my laziness at not wanting to walk down to Park Slope right now. Woe is me. Woe. Is me.

Totally dig the badass design on this vintage anthology of mystery stories we came across in Carroll Gardens the other day.

We’ve had our eye on Brooklyn’s Field Mouse ever since we first heard them early last year. The band strikes an enticingly delicate balance between 90s shoegaze/noisepop influences and more contemporary sounds, keeping it al rooted in solid song-writing.  To date, they’ve released a few songs digitally and as limited edition 7″s, but now Field Mouse is working on their debut, as of yet unnamed full-length. After catching a couple of their live shows—shrouded in a beautifully curated wall of sound—and hearing some of the new material, we’re predicting big things for them in 2013.

We recently got a chance to catch up with Field Mouse singer/guitarist, Rachel Browne, and got her thoughts on shoegaze, how many guitar pedals is too many, what’s she’s listening to lately, and we get a brief interjection by bandmate, Andrew, regarding the most terrifyingly awesome tattoo we’ve ever seen.

Read on and then give their newly released track, “Tomorrow is Yesterday” a listen and watch the video for their earlier song, “Glass,” below.

So, first off, tell us how + when the band started. Is it something you + Andrew struck up with any goals in-mind or was it begun more organically?

We went to a music conservatory in Westchester, NY and Andrew played bass at one of my recitals. We had fun and just kept making music together and eventually we made a band out of it. Andrew has always liked to focus on production and tone and I focus more on the songwriting and melodic aspects, so we compliment each other well and are able to write together pretty effortlessly.

That’s great. Sounds like a balanced creative partnership. You all seem to have gone through a number of lineup changes over the years, growing beyond a duo and then back down again. Last we saw you, you had a great live drummer and seemed to be playing with pre-recorded bass. Plan to keep it that way for a while or…I don’t know, throw in a six-piece horn section?

We have not really gone through that many. The core of the band Is just Andrew and myself. Geoff has been playing drums since the first 7″ we released. We would love to have more focused bass and synth players, but that’s more a matter of meeting kindred spirits with free time (which hasn’t proven to be easy).

Fair enough. Yeah, the resulting live sound you all get with just three people is really impressive—very deep and layered. I’m guessing there are a lot of live loops going with the guitar, but is that something that was difficult at first to get down in the live setting?

Less of the sound than you would think comes from the programming. We spend way too much time thinking about guitar tone and I think that is the lion’s share of what we are working with live. I’d love to have a full-time synth player, but I think, in the meantime, Andrew and I will be alternating playing them with guitar live in the coming months.

How many pedals do you all use between the two of you?

Well, one thing I’ve learned is that if you aren’t careful, the more pedals you have, the more it can just become a wall of reverb and distortion. We each just have a few fuzz, reverb, and delay options but that’s about it. I’ve been using an analog chorus pedal lately which I really love. But I’d say the live pedal count is about 10 between us.

Ah, that’s not bad. Having been a big fan of the early-90s shoegaze sound, I hear a lot of that influencing your songs, but how do you think you differ from a straight retro act in that sense?

It’s hard to say because shoegaze isn’t exactly a well-defined sound. Souvlaki sounds a lot different than Loveless. There is a similar production aesthetic to much of it but I think the thread that tends to carry is that drums and bass are pretty buried in the mix. Where I think we differ is how those elements are super important to our songs and how they come out in production. If you strip our songs down to their demo form, they are clearly influenced by many other things in much more obvious ways than shoegaze. I like to think that we borrow from that era of production a bit, but less so with the actual songwriting.

Great answer. I’ve always thought that truly well-written should be able to stand up on their own, with minimal production—say, acoustic guitar + voice in a café. Are they any particular bands, albums, or songs that you feel directly fed into your early sound or the things you’re writing today?

Early on when we were working together as a duo, a lot of common ground music fed into the things we wrote. Early Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Breeders, and some poppier bands like Rilo Kiley and even that first Anniversary record—just things we grew up loving and emulating. We’d both been in a bunch of bands before we met. Today I feel incredibly moved and influenced by my local music scene and my friends within it.

God, I love that first Anniversary record. Where did the band name come from?

It’s just a name. It came from a note I wrote in a journal when I wanted to make the band a real thing.

Fine then. What do you all do day-job-wise?

Psychic cops is what Andrew told me to say. In reality I am a pretty bad waitress.

I’m assuming you don’t mean that in the Michael Jackson sense of the word. I won’t ask where you work, but what originally brought you to New York?

Andrew and Geoff are both native New Yorkers. I’m from Connecticut and my college was halfway between the city and my home, so moving here was not so much a big decision as it seemed a default choice. We are not exactly sure why we are here at this point, to be honest. I think the cons are starting to outweigh the pros—namely the cost.

I hear you on that. The neighborhood in Brooklyn where we our studio is just got crowned the priciest in the borough. So that’s fun. Do you all have any notable goals for the new year, musically or not? Debut full-length, sell out Radio City, cure lycanthropy?

Definitely finishing our full length and releasing it; touring, of course, and hopefully writing much more.

Excited to hear about the record. How about any acts you’d love to be paired with in coming live shows? You know, besides a split ticket with Jay-Z at Barclays.

I have been freaking out about Melody’s Echo Chamber lately. I think that would be a fun show.

Oh, yeah, that’s a great album. So French-psych. Not the answer I would have expected, but I could totally see some commonalities between your sounds now that you say it. What other new stuff are you all listening to lately?

Grooms, Swearin’, Foxygen, Widowspeak.

Good that you got Foxygen in there lest we be accused of insular New Yorkers. Okay, lightning round time—Best thing about New York?

Any food at any time of night.

Worst?

Absolutely the cost of living. Runner up is the brutal summer/winter climate situation.

Both bummers. Most ridiculous potential album name that got shot down?

We are just starting to work on the LP so we have not come up with any names. I think I will pitch 2 Phast 3 Phurious though.

I was 100% going to suggest that. Best bar in Brooklyn?

Lulu’s is my general go-to place, but Night of Joy has delicious cocktails and I usually have my birthday there, so try em both I s’pose.

Oh, haven’t been to Night of Joy. We’ll have to check it out. Cat or dog people?

Geoff owns a dog-walking business, so we hear about dogs a lot. I am neither, and Andrew has a rabbit, so I think we will go with two rabbit people + one dog person.

Rabbits do seem oddly shoegaze. Pro- or anti-wammie bar?

Deeply, deeply pro. I think calling them wammie bars is a bit silly though. They are definitely tremolo arms. There is a way to make them sound stupid but where would My Bloody Valentine be without them? The vibrato effect they can produce is one of the most beautiful things about guitars and is part of the reason we tend to play Jaguars and Jazzmasters.

Agreed, and apologies on the terminology. I’m a child of the 70s. Favorite venue in New York?

Glasslands/Shea Stadium.

Craziest tattoo?

A tattoo of Sharon from Lost crying from the pilot episode.

Where the FUCK did that tattoo come from? It’s nuts.

(from Andrew) Haha! It was one of those things floating around on the internet. I saw it a year ago in a Lost related tattoo blog post. The place where I found this specific version was a comment on a videogum article. I would LOVE to know the original source though. Someone out there is FILLED with regret.

Good god. Ideal guest musician you’d want featured on a track?

Joey Santiago.

Nice. Best town you’ve played on tour?

Atlanta was really nice the last time we were there.

Signature cocktail? 

A drink I just now invented.  It’s a bunch of top shelf stuff mixed together in a bucket with ice.

I think that’s called ‘the Bucket Kickah’. Best Hitchcock movie?

Vertigo is my favorite!

Finally, how do these pants look? Can I pull them off?

You can pull off anything, but the first thing you need to do is not ask if you can pull them off. Pulling something off is about confidence. Some clothes can make you feel confident by themselves, but some clothes are more adventurous and it just means you need to supply the confidence. Straight up put them on and give zero fucks.

Damn. It’s like you’re channeling Clinton Kelly.

Field Mouse will be playing—as luck would have it—Shea Stadium along with the superb Darlings March 8 and Pianos on the LES March 20. Check their Shows page for other coming live dates + stay tuned for their debut full-length album. 

Band photos by Shervin Lainez.

Field Mouse – “Glass” from stereogum on Vimeo.

A good while back, Katie + I were out and about in Cobble Hill with a group of friends when we all decided it was high time we got some food in us. We ended up settling on one of the many en vogue drink-forward places in our neighborhood that support their cocktail menu with simple fare that focuses on high quality ingredients. Most of these joints are pretty un-animal-friendly—these are the same places that will wrap bacon around anything—but a few cater to vegans somewhat, drawing on local fare to highlight the qualities of the vegetables. One such dish was an egg-free sweet potato gnocchi at the establishment in question, Char no. 4, a whiskey bar + restaurant on Smith Street. 

Char rotates the dish into their menu every now and then, but, upon having the gnocchi, Katie + I made replicating it at home a priority. 
What’s detailed below isn’t an exact replica but, rather, our take on it, adding in flavors that we think play well together and going for a gluten-free option with the potato dumplings.

The gnocchi themselves may seem challenging, but they’re really not tough to make at all. It’s all about getting the dough mixture down. The added starch allows you to get a nice stiff batter that’s rugged enough to not fall apart when you’re cooking it though. Gnocchi’s usually boiled, but we think sauteing them gives them a nicer flavor and keeps them whole better.

Give it a try and see what you think.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Wilted Spinach + Maitake Mushrooms 
◊ 4 medium Sweet Potatoes
◊ 1/2 pound Fresh Maitake Mushrooms
◊ 1 bunch Fresh Spinach or 1 bag packaged
◊ 1 large Yellow Onion
◊ 6 cloves Garlic
◊ 1/4 cup Corn or Potato Starch
◊ 1/8 cup Oat Flour
◊ 1/8 cup Tapioca Flour
◊ 1/4 cup Vegetable Broth
◊ 1/2 cup Dry White Wine
◊ Salt + Pepper
◊ Olive Oil

We usually fall soundly into the Anti-Peeling lobby. Though it’s not necessarily true that vegetables hold all of their nutrition in their skin, they do hold more depth of taste there, in our opinion. So, assuming they’re cleaned well and grown without harmful chemicals, we usually leave our vegetables un-skinneed/-peeled. In this case, though, the sweet potatoes should be peeled to allow for a more consistent, smooth gnocchi dough. Once they’re peeled, chop them into cubes, roughly an inch or two square.

Warm about two tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add the sweet potato chunks and cover. Cook for a total of 15 minutes like this, allowing the sweet potato to brown but not blacken and uncovering and stirring every five minutes. At this point, the sweet potato should be softening. Add the vegetable broth—ideally homemade—and cover again, cooking until the liquid is fully absorbed, usually 5-10 minutes. Once that happens, check the consistency of the sweet potatoes. They should be very soft and easy to mash. If they’re not, add a little more broth or water and cook covered until they are. Transfer the sweet potatoes to a large mixing bowl and allow to cool.
While that’s happening, halve the onion and peel the papery outer skin off. I personally used to be totally hung up on sweet onions like the seasonally dependent Vidalia and it’s winter sisters from southern hemisphere, but, of late, we’ve really been appreciating our local NY/NJ onions, which are less sweet, but very deep and earthy. So, your call on what kind to use, but make it yellow. Slice each half into strips and toss into either the same skillet or a new one over medium heat with a little olive oil. Allow the onion to caramelize and brown slightly at the edges, stirring as you go and cooking for 5-7 minutes before throwing in the garlic, which should be smashed, peeled, and minced. Cook for 10 or so minutes, allowing the mixture to become fragrant and lowering the heat if either the onion or garlic start to blacken.

Keep an eye on all of that as you start in on the gnocchi. After the sweet potatoes have cooled enough for you to work with them, mash them with a potato masher or a fork in the mixing bowl until you’ve got a smooth, lump-free consistency. Now add your two flours and the corn starch and mix together until you’ve got a smooth but stiff dough that peaks a bit when you remove the fork or whisk. For the flours and the starch, we tend to use Bob’s Red Mill. If you’re gluten-free or just experimenting with lessening your gluten intake, you should definitely check out their extensive line of gluten-free flours. Basically, if you can grind it up in a mill, Bob’s sells it.

In another skillet, warm a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Using a spoon or just your hands, begin to roll the gnocchi dough into small dumplings, roughly an inch in length. They should hold together pretty well. If they don’t add a little more starch and/or flour and mix thoroughly. Roll enough dumplings to cover the skillet bottom without having them touch and then add them to the warm oil. Allow the gnocchi to brown, carefully flipping to cook on both sides, usually sauteing for about five minutes per side. Remove and set aside as you move on to your next batch, repeating until you’re out of dough or have as many dumplings as you want.

Back at the cutting board, take the well-washed Maitake and cut it into chunks of about one or two inches square. When you’re cutting the mushroom up, be sure you remove + discard all of the woody material at the base of the stem. We usually get our Maitake from our weekend Greenmarket, which features Orange County, New York’s Madura Farms mushroom vendor as a mainstay. So, yes, we’re a bit spoiled. But you can find them at higher end grocery stores too if you don’t yet have a trusted mushroom supplier, though they tend to cost a lot more and not be nearly as fresh. If you can’t track them down, substitute your favorite other mushroom. Don’t like mushrooms? Eh…I’m not sure why you read this far. So, add the mushroom to the onions + garlic and increase the heat a bit. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes or so, stirring and allowing the mushroom to reduce and brown, maybe even blacken a little. Once that’s happened, add the half cup of a dry white wine—nothing too sweet; maybe a pinot or sauvignon blanc. The heat should be high enough for you to hear an audible sizzle when you add the wine. Lower the heat a little and cook until the wine’s reduced to a nice sauce.

Now take the washed spinach, chop into large strips, removing the stem if you tend not to like it, and wilt for two minutes or so in the covered skillet. Plate with the gnocchi + onion-garlic-mushroom mixture and enjoy.

Not sure which is cuter, the kid or the shirt.

You can get the shirt over at the Etsy shop COUP, a one-woman NYC-based design studio run by FIT fashion design grad + self-described silkscreen addict, Elektra.

Danke to Perelandra Natural Food for finding this one.

There’s no denying that we all go through musical phases, Reader. Be us a casual listener or the most serious of audiophiles; be us fair-wether dabblers in music-making or seasoned musicians selling out stadiums; our tastes change. It’s a good thing.

I personally tend—both as a listener and as the occasional music-maker—to find a new sound or genre and then latch on to it, sinking my claws fully in and pulling as much as I possibly can from it. Then I move on to a new thing that I’m utterly excited about, keeping what I found earlier as part of this new appreciation. When I was in high school, it went from Brit pop to shoegaze. In college, early emo + hardcore. Then after college + a short stint in the Peace Corps, I got really really into glitchy electronic pop. I doubt that’s a cause-result correlation, but who knows.

I think my ‘gateway drug’ for this excitingly weird but still very much accessible genre was the ever-odd Björk. But, through what was a then religious reading of the Other Music newsletter (which still exists and is still highly recommended), I soon came across Morr Music. Morr Music is a small, Berlin-based independent label that was started by Thomas Morr right around that time—1999—and very much reflects his personal musical tastes, being “intelligent” dance music, the occasional shoegazing, dreampopping type, and beautifully glitchy electronic music—or “Plinkerpop” as he called it.

Through Morr I found such amazing groups as múm, Styrofoam, The Notwist, and the superb Lali Puna, among others; groups that entirely changed the way I approached music.

Fitting then that Sin Fang‘s Flowers—an album that has me entirely floored right now—is being put out by Thomas Morr + co.

Sin Fang is the moniker used by Iceland’s Sindri Már Sigfússon, founder of the indie folk group, Seabear, and maker of DIY beards. Oddly. Flowers—Mr. Sigfússon’s third solo full-length—is an album full of deep, lush layers of glitched out electronic melodies, choral chanting, sweeping orchestral movements, driving tribal rhythms, and beautifully approachable vocal hooks. Some songs build to dramatically epic peaks and then suddenly break into tiny, quietly elegant moments while others have you chasing after them in head-nodding, foot-tapping bliss as crunching, plinking electronic tones surround you.

Honestly, we write about a lot of music in this space, and I’ve never posted anything that I didn’t like, but it’s difficult to communicate how excited I am by this album without coming across like a gushing schoolboy. By all rights, if there is any artisctic justice left in the world—which I’ve been assured there is not—this album and, with it, Sin Fang, should be known and loved in every household in America.

Listen to the album opener, “Young Boys”, below—a catchy, chorus-driven number that sounds like a Gotye song making out with a Sigur Rós song while the Animal Collective back catalog watches. Or something. Then listen to the truly sublime “Look at the Light” via the official music video, also below.

Though the US iTunes store shows an expected release date of tomorrow for the digital version of Flowers, we’re told it won’t be state-side until the following Tuesday, February 16, when you’ll be able to order domestic CD + Vinyl as well. In the meantime, you can listen to song samples via iTunes or the German distro site, ANOST. We’re told a European tour is in the works and they hope to bring Sin Fang stateside later this year.

Photos by fellow Seabear member and artist, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir.

2.5.13 Update: You can indeed now buy the digital album on iTunes and via Amazon. It seems the physical versions of the album are hitting our shores on the 19th. You can also pre-order those at Amazon.

Old Holga from Chinatown in San Francisco.