STREAM: “A Note To Self” –
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VIDEO: Privilege Commercial #1 –
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Privilege Commercial, part I from Parenthetical Girls on Vimeo.
[/media]Parenthetical Girls will tour the US this Spring (including a stop at SXSW) in support of their forthcoming album, Privilege, which is out Feb. 19 via Marriage Records and the band’s own Slender Means Society label. See full tour dates below, and check out the first in a series of commercials for the album here.
Bio:
Unconventional is probably the most succinct way of putting it. Obsessive, eccentric, indulgent: they’re all equally fair. If Parenthetical Girls have learned anything over the course of their bewilderingly unorthodox discography, it’s that they are-for richer or for poorer-a necessarily singular pop group. It’s a peculiarity that they’ve learned to embrace-a single-minded conviction that pours itself over every corner of their latest album, Privilege.
Having taken pop extravagance to its logical conclusion with their critically acclaimed, orchestral pop
opus Entanglements, Privilege finds a newly emboldened Parenthetical Girls giving the orchestra their leave-a
brazen reinvention as immediate as it is inspired. Returning to its core membership of vocalist/creative director
Zac Pennington and producer/arranger Jherek Bischoff (composer and collaborator with David Byrne,
Amanda Palmer, Xiu Xiu, etc.), Privilege retains the group’s signature ambitions-visceral intimacy, camp
austerity, lurid eloquence-while confidently embracing the perfect pop pastiche their previous records only
alluded to. Anchored by Pennington’s distinctively lilting vibrato, Privilege is a cascade of grim particulars and
gallows humor-an unflinching treatise on privilege, indiscretion, betrayal, sex and class politics, failure, and
resignation. This is Parenthetical Girls in fighting trim: unbridled, unambiguous, and with a new creative candor that’s felt in both its words and music.
Originally recorded and self-released as a sequence of five self-contained, extremely limited 12″ EPs (each
heroically hand-numbered in the blood of the group’s members, and available only through direct mailorder)
the ambitious Privilege series was a grand and unequivocally impractical achievement. Privilege condenses the 21 recordings of the original series to a single, 12-track, remixed and remastered statement of purpose: a bold,
strikingly cohesive pop clarion call that further solidifies Parenthetical Girls’ place amongst the most surprising
and uncompromising pop groups at work today.
(Parenthetical Girls photo by Angel Ceballos)
Selected Notices for Privilege:
history, and very probably the angels themselves. Arguably.”
-Britt Daniel, Spoon
“Music is pointless. Life is meaningless. Death is rushing towards us constantly. Everything is falling apart. Still, Privilege by Parenthetical Girls has emerged from the chaotic void and taken the form of a raft.”
-Phil Elverum, Mount Eerie
“Privilege is riveting… [like] a dream of walking on a foot-long fluffy cashmere carpet, or flying thru the monster size, ice cream-shaped cloud.”
-Satomi Matsuzaki, Deerhoof
“We never meant you any harm.”
-Parenthetical Girls
PARENTHETICAL GIRLS
03/06 San Francisco, CA – TBA
03/07 Berkeley, CA – Starry Plough
03/08 Los Angeles, CA – The Smell
03/09 Phoenix, AZ – Trunk Space
03/10 Albuquerque, NM – Low Spirits
03/12 San Antonio, TX – Korova
03/13 – 03/16 Austin, TX – SXSW
03/17 Dallas, TX – Spillover Music Festival
03/19 Birmingham AL – Bottletree
03/20 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
03/21 Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506
03/22 Washington, DC – TBA
03/23 Philadelphia, PA – PhilaMOCA
03/24 Hamden, CT – Outer Space
03/25 Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands
03/26 NYC – Bowery Electric
03/27 Montreal, QB – Divan Orange
03/28 Toronto, ON – Double Double Land
03/29 Ann Arbor, MI – Arbor Vitae
03/30 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
03/31 Minneapolis, MN – TBA
04/02 Denver, CO – Hi Dive
04/03 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
04/04 Boise, ID – Flying M
04/07 Seattle, WA – Chop Suey
Parenthetical Girls
Privilege
(Slender Means Society / Marriage)
Street Date: Feb. 19, 2013
Formats: CD/DVD, LP/DVD, Digital
Track list:
1. Evelyn McHale
2. The Common Touch
3. Careful Who You Dance With
4. For All The Final Girls
5. The Pornographer
6. Sympathy For Spastics
7. Weaknesses
8. A Note To Self
9. Young Throats
10. On Death & Endearments
11. The Privilege
12. Curtains
plus: DVD featuring 7 promotional films, blood draw documentation, live performances, & other ephemera
PARENTHETICAL GIRLS LINKS:
Twitter – http://twitter.com/pgrrrls
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/
Press Materials – http://slendermeanssociety.