Pleased to share a new song. Hope you all enjoy! See you soon.

I know many of you have been curious about our new album, so Evan has been gracious enough to set up a small Q&A in order to fulfill your child-like wonder. Thank you all for sending in your questions on Facebook and Twitter - I hope we got to them all!

Find the Q&A here! Or by clicking the image above!

Happy Holidays!

The time has finally come to share the first taste of our upcoming LP, The Slideshow Effect, and—forsaking further unnecessary divergences into Star Wars laced rhetoric—I must say that I’m quite excited. This new Memoryhouse track, titled The Kids Were Wrong, contains all of the tenets of that classic Memoryhouse sound(!) such as rhythm, and at some choice moments…melody.

Alright, it’s December 16th, how many awful press junkets have you read this year? Did any of them actually make you want to listen to the song? I didn’t think so. We have a new song coming out today, it’s going to be on our new record which is coming out on February 28th, 2011. Shut up and put it in your ears, I’ll wait.

CMJ is almost here! Come see us DJ! And play music! And take naps in between!

Thursday, October 20th

Memoryhouse DJ Set
CJLO hosted Medium Rotation CMJ Mixer
Solas
5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

Sub Pop/Hardly Art Showcase
Mercury Lounge
Lame Fest II Eclectic Boogaloo
10 PM

Friday, October 21st

6DB Showcase
The Delancey
1:40 PM

Yours Truly Showcase
Glasslands
10:15 PM

Saturday, October 22nd

BrooklynVegan Showcase
Public Assembly
1:00 PM

AAM Showcase
Knitting Factory
3:15 PM

MTV Hive ‘Live in NYC’
The Studio at Webster Hall
8:15 PM

For those of you non-New Yorkers, we are also doing a East/South/Midwest tour of the US after CMJ. Check out our tour dates.

(Stream The Years in its entirety above featuring new and unreleased visuals from Jamie Harley.)

Here’s a quick reminder that The Years is available just about everywhere today (UK physical release is next Monday). Also, many, many thanks to everyone that came out to see us on our recent trek with Peter Bjorn and John.

Things will remain active for us in the forseeable future with some headlining dates in Canada/U.S. this October, CMJ, The Radio Dept. Tour, and of course, much more music to be violently unleashed, Godzilla-style, upon masses both unsuspecting, and inquisitively in-the-know.

Keep up with our tour dates here.

Finally, here are some trenchant insights on The Years release, written by Denise and I. (You can read the whole thing here).

“As a kind of unifying aesthetic, The Years was created with many references to the author Virginia Woolf. The title of the EP quoting her 1937 novel by the same name, To the Lighthouse a 1927 novel, ‘The Waves’, a song on the original release, another novel written in 1931. Despite popular belief, it wasn’t because of the connection to the beach (why would it be?), but to the theme of the passage of time.

For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated with the illusion of how time seems to overlap over a consistent space. During the recording of the EP I was able to visit a house that I once lived in, but was too young to ever form a full image of it. To my knowledge, no one had lived there in at least sixteen years, but in my own mind, it had not changed since the day I left it. Of course, it was in shambles. A country home, untouched, unentered, in almost two decades. It was like I was watching the paint peel off of the walls, the basement flooding, the wet and cold seep through the windows, and still place my memories in each room they occurred. It was an eery sensation that could only really be interpreted by someone who understood the relationship one has to a specific space and time, to their own static and often distorted memory of something. Somehow Woolf understood this very well.”

Receiving things in the mail can be nerve-wracking (ask the Unabomber). Especially when you just got your first smart phone and you’ve streamed too many videos of cute baby animals. Yet, once in a while, you receive a package from Sub Pop that makes all those data charges drift away like kittens down a slippery park slide.

Stream The Years now at Refinery 29 or MuchMusic on your computers and pre-order your copy of The Years for your enjoyment in the world of physical, touchable matter.

By all accounts, it should have ended with “To the Lighthouse”, like the old one did. There’s an air of finality in the way Denise sang the line “hush the static sound of time dispersing” that appeared to serve the dual purpose of reiterating the main argument of The Years, while shoehorning some vague semblance of closure to the preceding.

Yet the E.P has changed, undeniably, since it made its first, embryonic appearance nearly two years ago. Beyond the physical product with which it will be packaged as, but rather, the idea of what the release means, especially to Denise and I. These feelings, outlined in Quiet America, will vary from person to person—affectionate addendum—precocious post-script—endearing epilogue—or perhaps just curious cash-grab.

I tend to view Quiet America as a sort of “Hello!” to counter Lighthouse’s “Goodbye!”. A “Hello” steeped in ambivalence, and a little self-doubt, but a greeting none the less. I suppose that’s what I mean when I said the E.P. represents something else to us now. Whereas it’s initial release—set loose upon the ravenous bowels of the internet (and what ravenous bowels they are!)— was a resignation of sorts, mired in the kind of disconnection and existential angst that played a large role in defining the aughts for many. The Years now represents the idea that life can improve in the most unusual and fantastical ways if one were to open themselves to experience (something I fought tooth and nail for many years) and that, as always, music has the capacity to grow with us through the many different stages in our lives.

So in short, I think we’ve come a long way from the hospital bed in “Lately”, and I’m very grateful that we have the opportunity to say much more (when the time is right)(…tick tick tick…) but for the time being, I hope a “Hello” shall suffice.

Tour Dates

Download “Quiet America”