Skipping Stones Records

We were so happy to finally meet Magnus from The Charade at Popfest last November. The best part of running our label is meeting great people from all over the world. Cheers to new friends, sing an Auld Lang Syne!


New Review Highlights of The Charade's 3rd album, "Keeping Up Appearances" - click on the links for a full review:

Erasing Clouds
"The Charade’s third LP continues their path of playing melodic/catchy pop songs filled with melancholy. But it also seems an especially cogent, compact expression of that. The songs are especially melodic and especially melancholy. The first, the title track, has a great hummed harmony tune, and sets up well the notion of putting a happy face forward for the sake of social graces, of not being judged, while feeling blue inside."

SoundsXP
"Keeping up Appearances is classic Scando pop, dripping cheery sunshine melodies from a track short of a full dozen golden eggs. With boy/girl shared vocals, keyboards and even a banjo on one number, there's plenty of variety too as the influences bounce from Saint Etienne, Simon & Garfunkel, New Order, the Housemartins to that old staple, 60s girl groups. One of the best indiepop albums of 2008."

Tasty Fanzine
"There is a phrase that crops up every now and again, in reviews of albums such as this one, a phrase that, for me, always evokes the sounds and images of some half-forgotten moment of actual pop genius. 'A Flawless Pop Gem, Polished to Perfection' is the phrase, and it's my turn to use it while reviewing 'Keeping Up Appearances'."

Take the Pills indie pop blog
Yeah, time has come for Take The Pills!'s best of compilation!
Top 10 of Best Albums:
1. Twig - Life After Ridge (Plastilina)
2. Minisnap - Bounce Around (Pocket Music)
3. Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls (In The Red)
4. The Charade - Keeping Up Appearances (Skipping Stones)
5. Je Suis Animal - Self-Taught Magic From a Book (Perfect Pop)
6. The Autumn Leaves - Long Lost Friend (April Dabbler)
7. Moscow Olympics - Cut The World (Lavender)
8. The Airfields - Up All Night (Humblebee)
9. The Junipers - Cut Your Key (San Remo)
10. The Botticellis - Old Home Movies (Antenna Farm)
Download the VA - Best Songs of 2008: A Take The Pills! Compilation


"Keeping Up Appearances" is now available on eMusic.

William and I are exhausted and invigorated by this year's 5th Annual Popfest! New England that took place in Northampton, MA last weekend. Thanks to everyone who attended and played - it was great!

I had some camera problems this weekend, thanks to contributors Matthew P. and Yoko from the Dream Bitches for filling in the empty spots!

Popfest! New England 2008 Memories:
K.B. from The Up Set is a totally nice guy and has a great sounding CDr release, so go buy it. Also, you should invite The Up Set to play at shows because nothing happens in Maryland.

Surefire Broadcast was awesome as usual.
Lisa and Dan in the background:

Rodney:


The technical difficulty award goes to mat pat, although the specific heats, or specific besties did sound really good when things were working!
Mat Pat / The Specific Heats


Kevin from The Lil’ Hospital plays much better without an Indian chief headdress on. It’s too bad there won’t be any more of that band, it was the best I’ve ever heard them play.

The Utah Rangers did not make it to the Friday show and sat in our driveway drinking a 30 pack of Budweiser from 10pm until we got home at 3:30am. Whew.

Utah Rangers - comfortable at the club on Sunday:


Mark Robinson and his wife, Evelyn Hurley, performed on Saturday as “Cotton Candy.” Everyone got a real treat with Mark’s signature guitar playing and the set was intermingled with spoken word by Evelyn, dramatic performance and television jingles harmonized between Mark and Evelyn, including a Chevrolet and a Lowenbrau commercial. Amazing. Teenbeat is still going strong and Mark has a new comp out which boldly states, “No. 1 RECORD LABEL.” Awesome.
Mark Robinson / Cotton Candy:


Evelyn Robinson / Cotton Candy:


The Smittens were adorable and charming as usual. We still miss Max, but Dana held up the Max doll during their set and he sang along.

The Smittens - dolls! Someone asked - OMG! How much are those? NFS. Dave should really think about mass producing these.


If you flash your popfest staff badge while passing out on the couch at the end of a show, the club manager will leave you alone (Courtney).

The Smittens with Max the doll:


It takes a ton of volunteers to cover the door / back door etc. and to be good Popfest ambassadors – thanks to you all!

Magnus Karlsson from The Charade / Happydeadmen was incredibly grateful to be there and told William that it was a dream come true to come to Popfest and to play. Hopefully he can seize more opportunities to play out live. It was truly wonderful to see him play and to hear The Charade songs acoustic, from his point of view. I have a new appreciation for his music and his lyrics, he really wears his heart on his sleeve.

Magnus with Christine and William:


Jason Bourgeois finished his performance by singing along to a cassette tape of the song “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Everyone sang along with the harmonies at the end and it was one of the best moments of Popfest. One of his special guests was
Abby Barlow, Lou Barlow’s younger sister.
Jason Bourgeois and Tape Recorder:


Many Swedes fit into small spaces.

Lima Research Society


The other best moment goes out to Sean and Lima Research Society. They performed with a blacklight background, the keyboard / guitar player wore a white cat suit and I wasn’t sure if I was watching a band or attending a revivalists-for-peace prayer meeting. It was full-on participatory music with songs where we sang along “Don’t Give Up, Don’t Get Down” and everyone bent their knees down and stood back up along with the lyrics. It was like the indie pop hokie-pokie. They handed out Magic Juice, we tossed pink balloons everywhere and I felt like a child again.

Lima Research Society - Magic Pink Balloons (which came after the Magic Juice)


Lima Research Society - get up!


Lima Research has another show with Math the Band on November 22 at The Grist Mill Café in Andover, NJ. I guess they’re touring again in January, so you should have them in your town, too!

Math the Band completely blew William’s mind. Believe me, that’s a hard thing to do. They were fucking awesome. Period. Kevin told me how he got their name. He had a badge that said “Math” so when people asked him the name of his band, he just used “Math, the Band.” He had merch before he named his band! How brilliant.



Kevin broke several strings on his guitar and while he scrambled for another guitar, Justine entertained the audience by taking requests and speaking through a retro-sci-fi-robotic vocoder. She said “domo origato” and it was hilarious.


Never look into Christine and William’s microwave.

The Utah Rangers were totally terrific. It was like watching Dieter’s Dance Party.
“Now, we play guitars.”
“Now, we dance.”
Elim and Kristoffer had their friend Magnus join them and the songs sounded great live. Magnus was in the Salty Pirates and a band called "The Weather in Sweden."

They were awesome and I wished that we had set-up a DJ or a dance mix afterwards because everyone wanted to dance, but we were too tired to think about the logistics of doing this. At the end, Magnus said, “Do we have dance party now?” And I felt really bad that we did not! The Utah folks went next door to the meat market dance party, but quickly came back for fear of their lives (and rightly so, the scene in the club next door is scary).
Utah Rangers:


The 500s were blessed with no technical difficulties this year – yay Isaac! Sammie on the Farfisa has the best keyboard-playing moves ever and Jonathan is still amazing singing and playing drums at the same time. Their new song is fabulous. They still wear their custom 500s t-shirts, although they were not washed after the last show with the Besties and they had that not-so-fresh feeling.


More 500s:


bunnygrunt rocks, of course! We stayed up until 5am drinking a box of wine and discussing Turducken. Then we came up with new ones, like the Humachog, which is a human stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a frog.

They were going to wake up early and drive to Ohio. I got up at 9:30 and Matt was standing in the kitchen. Uh-oh. Their van wouldn’t start and had it towed to some godawful local corporate car fixing chain. Fortunately they got it fixed and were on their way, but they felt really bad about not making their show.
Ann from the Dream Bitches and Karen bunnygrunt:


bunnygrunt on stage:


The Toothaches sounded great this year. We listened to their new recordings in their gigantor van and they sound really nice. Rose is the greatest person ever and she cracks me up. We had another Turducken conversation that she raised to a higher level by thinking of endangered species, like a beluga whale stuffed with a wolf stuffed with a bald eagle. Wow. Zimmy and Johnny had expired licenses and could not get served inside so they sat in their van drinking PBR and Sparks and later discovered that they ran their battery down with an iPod. Luckily they got a jump and everything was okay. I walked up to them and some random guys were helping them jump their van. I asked who they were and Johnny turned around and whispered, “angels!”


The Toothaches are playing December 12 at the Middle East downstairs – Cambridge, MA.

Two Toothaches, serious as usual


Swedish people don’t understand that you can have a Christmas tree decorated with Tibetan prayers that is completely unrelated to Christmas.

The Dream Bitches were amazing guests and I taught them how to sew the Popfest Comp


I’m looking forward to listening to their CD, the vocal harmonies between Yoko and Ann are fabulous. Julie has an amazing bass that is clear Lucite. Karen bunnygrunt and I were jealous.


bunnygrunt / yoko


This year we had the most people in our house ever and the place is still packed with air mattresses and blankets. Everyone was a really great guest and the place doesn’t look too bad at all. Someone left a Humachog drawing and someone else drew a Hoboken, which I think is a Hobo stuffed with a chicken. Then Courtney said it was a ho stuffed with a bobcat stuffed with a chicken. The Utah Rangers left a little drawing. On Monday, Elim, Kristoffer and Magnus said they needed gas, so I sent them down the street while I went out for French toast fixin’s at the supermarket. They came back almost 45 minutes later looking completely forlorn. They said they wanted to buy us flowers, but got lost, ended up at the mall and in a bad neighborhood and couldn’t find flowers anywhere. I said, “Oh, no! Not the mall!” They were so cute and I gave them a big hug.

The air mattresses made fine hang-out places when you were exhausted and just needed to lie down. Courtney’s butt and a blanket makes a good pillow.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to putting together the 5th Anniversary Compilation booklet: Mat Pat, Keira, Courtney and Brechin.

The Inclined Plane


Boy Genius - is great live


One Happy Island
The new OHI 7" is fantastic and Colin Clary did a great job producing it.


Anorak Scrabble


The Hat Company - Chris Mac filled in on drums


Tasty Merch

We're excited to announce the schedule for this year's Popfest and some late-breaking news that Maybe It's Reno will be playing on Saturday! The band features the members of one of our favorite bands, Unrest, with Bridget Cross as the sole writer and singer. The debut came out in spring 2008 on Teenbeat records - you can read a review on Pop Matters.

Listen to the bands on the PFNE myspace.
Full Schedule:
Friday, November 7: doors @ 8pm
The Fawns
The Up Set
The Lil' Hospital
The Specific Heats
Surefire Broadcast
The Sterns
The Besties

Saturday, November 8: Doors @ 8pm
Dream Bitches
Magnus – The Charade / Happydeadmen
Bunnygrunt
Maybe It's Reno
The Smittens
Utah Rangers

Sunday, November 9: Doors @ 8pm
Math the Band
Lima Research Society
The Hat Company
The 500s
The Toothaches

Sunday Matinee: Doors @ 3pm
Jason Bourgeois (Bourgeois Heroes)
The Inclined Plane
Boy Genius
One Happy Island
*the schedule is subject to change!

All shows @ The Elevens, 140 Pleasant Street, Northampton, MA - USA.
Tickets and more information available on the Popfest! New England website HERE!

We look forward to seeing everyone soon!!!
christine + william