Yesterday was a pretty exciting one as the new issue of The Big Takeover arrived at Why Make Clocks HQ. Because These Things Are Ours was reviewed in it. Normally you don’t want to take reviews too awful seriously (but still appreciate them), but when it’s a publication you respect this much, it means a lot when they say your album is pretty cool. For those not familiar, Big Takeover is a really great magazine that we’d recommend to all music nuts. It only comes out a couple times a year, but the issues are so thick and jam-packed that when it arrives you’ll still be enjoying your battered copy of the previous issue. Check out what they had to say about the album here and check out the magazine and get yourself hooked up with a subscription here.

As for what we’re up to, well, to quote a line from the new Poison Control Center album, if you haven’t seen very much of us around, well, check the shadows. I myself have a digital album from my “solo” project Distant Trains coming out on Sleep On The Floor late this month, and will be attempting a live performance during the early show at Vaudeville Mews on July 16, with Blutiger Fluss and some other interesting fellow who probably has an Echoplex. Then, that same night, Why Make Clocks plays the late show with The Autumn Project, Andrew Weathers, and a cool post-rock band from Cedar Falls called Stubborn Tiny Lights vs Clustering Darkness Forever OK?. I think there may be former members of the excellent Giants and some people from Former Thieves involved in that, so expect big epic sounds.

I also started a music blog called The Centipede Farm because I thought that I was doing so many shout-outs to good bands that Why Make Clocks plays with on here, that maybe writing about other bands was something I should do on another site. I recorded some trumpet for a Coolzey track that I have no idea what’s to become of, and Andy from Map Of The Woods keeps talking about he and I doing some kind of sci-fi funeral doom metal side project.

All of us in Why Make Clocks are also involved in one way or another with a “reunion show” of two of Dan’s old bands, Fetal Pig and Going To Grandma’s, that’s going on at the Mews on July 23, to coincide with Kim’s birthday. Old-schoolas of the Des Moines music scene will remember these bands, hopefully fondly, and are advised to come check it out because it will be awesome. Will and I will be filling in for original members who weren’t able to be involved; I’m playing bass for Fetal Pig and Will is playing bass (of all things!) for Going To Grandma’s. So we’ve been rehearsing the heck out of that stuff. Each of those bands, by the way, also has a member of Blutiger Fluss in it.

None of this is to say that Why Make Clocks itself has been inactive. Quite the contrary, we’re simultaneously working on about the next three records; writing, rehearsing, hashing out arrangement ideas in 4-track demos. We think we might still be playing the Mews on June 28 but it’s not on their calendar, but we do know that It’s True backed out of that show and I’m quite bummed out about that fact. And after I went and wrote that nice article about their CD, too. But Giant Radio are still in, and they’re great too. Then there’s the aforementioned July 16 event, then back at the Mews again August 3 with Electric Leaves, Serf, and Map Of The Woods. Of course we want to make it worth your while to come see us, so we still want to bust out a new or rare song each time.

And you can imagine we’re itching to get out of our hometown a little bit too, so there’s talk of a one-week tour in late July or sometime in August. Cross your fingers, and we’ll be sure to let you know all about how that idea is coming along.

I’m also hoping to have the web store here at this site working again sometime very soon. I’ve reinstalled the plugin and am going to give it another go.