🥤 SIPSMAN COMMUNIQUE: January 2025
Fusilier • The Convenience • Lily Seabird • Pegg
Skipped last month, honoring my communiqué’s promise of “monthylish.”
Here’s a quick opening monologue before I sit down at my desk…
Thanks to everyone who bought records during the holiday season and helped me donate funds to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
The LA wildfires are brutal to watch from here, from anywhere. The Altadena house I stayed at in August is no longer there, and its owners could use your help rebuilding their lives. Donating to these gofundmes has provided little solace, but some solace.
I booked a show, my first since 2023 and second since 2013: Wednesday before Mardi Gras at the legendary Saturn Bar with The Convenience, SPLLIT, and T.A.C.K. with DJ sets between and after from DJ Jake Orrall aka Earthbound Sound. Tickets on sale now, come on down 🤙
I’m releasing music as a label again in 2025, which I can start telling you about soon. Here’s a timely verse from one of them:
Here’s a new joint, set the price pointAnd tell the kids about what ain’t and what is
Hallelujah, it’s a new year, but you’re still not on the list
That’s how they screw ya, try again in 2026
Okay, we’ve got a really great show!
THE CONVENIENCE
Tuesday, the New Orleans songwriting/production duo shared details of Like Cartoon Vampires, their meticulously messy new album that functions like a total reinvention as well as a return to their roots. Set for an April 18 release date via Winspear, it’s available for preorder now on LP, CD, and cassette. Love bands like Wire, Buzzcocks, Mission of Burma, The Raincoats, XTC, and the Minutemen? This might be for you. Check out the album’s opening cut “I Got Exactly What I Wanted” which has made fans out of Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan for starters. Like Cartoon Vampires does not include the September’s singles “Routiner” and “Postcard,” which saw press from The Fader, Treble, and more.
FUSILIER
Brooklyn’s mainstay art rocker announced an album this week as well: his debut Ambush, coming March 28 via IS NOT MUSIC. (preorder on limited “Tout Est Gore” vinyl on Fusilier’s Bandcamp). If you’ve got records by genre melters like Yves Tumor, Prince, Perfume Genius, or Nine Inch Nails in your collection, would advise making room for Ambush. The Line of Best Fit and Alternative Press heralded the announcement and shared the music video for “Nightmare Muscle,” a biting auto-biography on the narrowing walls of ambition, delivered through the golden age of 90s alternative and pop-punk in all its rapped verse and screamed chorus glory. The single follows last month’s "Birds" also on Ambush, his first solo offering since 2022’s Treason EP.
LILY SEABIRD
Chicago! Seabird makes a solo appearance at Tomorrow Never Knows… ahhh… TOMORROW opening the evening at Gman for V.V. Lightbody and Morinda. Then she heads here to New Orleans for a solo show at Bar Redux with Big Leather and Whip Appeal. Three shows announced with Dead Gowns next month in Portland, Montréal, and Burlington—everyone should check out Dead Gowns’ new singles btw. Always updating Lily Seabird shows here. Big things comin.
PEGG
The highly collaborative Brooklyn project helmed by Xander Duell shared the cheekily titled and indulgently epic “Don’t Forget Pegg” last month—thanks in particular to Apple Music for continued support. The self-described “exhortation to the listener for help in a desperate bid for immortality” is a b-side from Pegg’s self-titled debut, which was produced by Bartees Strange and award-winning Irish composer Alex Dowling. For more on Pegg, read Talkhouse’s recently published conversation between Duell and acclaimed novelist Emma Straub.
