CASS MCCOMBS is reissuing early favorites Not the Way, A&PREfection via 4ADon September 6, & Orindal is releasing a companion cassette of rarities from the era. 2000-2004 Demos, Live and Radio is now available for pre-order HERE.
Watch the music video for "Sacred Heart (Demo)" from 2000-2004 Demos, Live and Radio, directed by the skater Jerry Hsu.
Cass McCombs is touring select US cities w/ Papercuts (West Coast) & Advance Base (East Coast) in September. Ticket links are HERE.
It's the 21st anniversary of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's 2003 album Twinkle Echo
& Orindal Records is reissuing the album on "Corolla Blue" &
Classic Black vinyl. Pre-order your copy now to receive it before the
August 9 release date & read Owen Ashworth of Casiotone for the
Painfully Alone's personal essay about Twinkle EchoHERE.
To celebrate the new 21st anniversary vinyl edition of Twinkle Echo, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone will perform a one-off live set at the Hideout in Chicago on Wednesday, July 31 opening for Sinai Vessel & Little Kid. He'll be playing Twinkle Echo songs on the same dusty old Casio keyboards that they were originally recorded on. Tickets are on sale HERE.
Later this summer, Toronto, ON's own Little Kid will hit the road with Keeled Scales' latest signee, Sinai Vessel (Asheville, NC). They're kicking their tour off in Chicago before heading east through Ontario to Montreal & then down the eastern coast of the United States. Don't miss these two powerhouses of gentle poetic expression live on stage! Get your tickets HERE.
Little Kid will have vinyl & cassette copies of their stunning Orindal Records debut A Million Easy Payments for sale on the merch table. Here's the band performing "Bad Energy" from A Million Easy Payments live at a church in Toronto.
The Cool Cloud of Okayness, the divinely psychedelic new album by Tara Jane O'Neil, is out now!
"At times atmospheric, at other
moments rhythmically pulsating, and with O’Neil’s vocal and instrumental
presence lending cohesiveness to the whole, the set can be described as
retro-futuristic but in an invigorating way, avoiding retread." -
The Vinyl District
"O’Neil has been a rock musician for over three decades, and she sounds just as free and driven as she did at the beginning." - Rosy Overdrive
Find The Cool Cloud of Okayness on your preferred streaming service HERE.
Purchase "cloud" color vinyl, classic black vinyl & downloads direct from Orindal HERE.
The Cool Cloud of Okayness vinyl is also available from our distributors available for wholesale purchase from our distributors The Business& Revolver/Midheaven.
UK customers can purchase The Cool Cloud of Okayness vinyl from Juno Records.
Customers in Europe can purchase The Cool Cloud of Okayness vinyl from HHV (DE) & Clearspot (NL).
CD edition of The Cool Cloud of Okayness is available in Japan from Sweet Dreams Press. (Imported Japanese CDs will be available to US customers from Orindal soon.)
Watch the music video for "Glass Island" directed by Harry Dodge:
Duffy x Uhlmann are hitting the road in May, taking their intuitive & meditative guitar duets down the Eastern & Midwestern United States. Don't miss these rare & intimate instrumental duo shows! You'll find ticket links HERE.
**Please note that the May 9-11 shows will no longer include Tara Jane O'Neil, who unfortunately has to postpone her Midwest tour. Instead, Lia Kohl + Whitney Johnson will now support the May 9 Chicago show, Nathaniel Russell will support the May 10 Bloomington show & Jungle Boogie will support for the May 11 Louisville show.
Fellow Orindal Records recording artists & real life friends Advance Base (Chicago, IL) & Karima Walker (Tucson, AZ) are embarking on an extensive tour of the American Southwest & Pacific coast in May & June! The tour will include three California shows with Tara Jane O'Neil & two British Columbia dates with Dan Wriggins (of Friendship). All of these people are also friends, by the way. Everyone is friends! We're slowly collecting ticket links for all of these shows on the Orindal tour dates page.
(Owen Ashworth of Advance Base, Karima Walker & Dan Wriggins on tour in Milwaukee, WI a couple years back)
After the British Columbia dates with Karima Walker, Advance Base & Dan Wriggins will continue east through Canada, playing shows in Alberta, Saskatchewan & Manitoba, ending with a June 9 show at The Handsome Daughter in Winnipeg. Before you know it, all of the Canadian ticket links will be up on the Tour Dates page.
The Cool Cloud of Okayness
was written amidst the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since
her last song based album (although there has been a fascinating array
of collaborations, tributes, rarities, and experiments released in the
interim). Recorded by TJO at her home studio in Upper Ojai, California, a studio built on the ashes of the home lost to the Thomas Fire.
Many of The Cool Cloud of Okayness’s nine tracks were developed in the time between the wildfire and the rebuilding, between lockdown and reopening. TJO, her partner (dancer, choreographer and frequent collaborator) Jmy James Kidd
and their dog sheltered from the storms in the high desert of Southern
California and the deep suburbs of Louisville, KY. In these locales were
discovered the improvised bass guitar figures to Kidd’s dance which
transformed into songs during pandemic isolation, then brought to the
ensemble of drummer/percussionist Sheridan Riley (of Alvvays), multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements, and on a couple, guitarist Meg Duffy (of Hand Habits & Duffy x Uhlmann).
They build and gleefully destroy and rebuild again. There is joy in
the ensemble’s shared queer identity- an identity that refuses to be
agreed upon. This record too challenges any easy genre or definition.
This record is sculpture and portrait of times and loved ones gone past.
It is spiritual and it is psychedelic. TJO’s deft production and rock-solid bass playing hold the center, and her spectral guitar and singing voice carry the message.
Listen to The Cool Cloud of Okayness’s first single, "Curling," here:
Find "Curling" on your preferred streaming serviceHERE.
Pre-order The Cool Cloud of Okayness on Cloud vinyl, Classic Black vinyl or digital formats HERE.
Tara Jane O'Neil is playing a handful of U.S. live dates around the release of The Cool Cloud of Okayness, including some May California dates w/ Orindal labelmates Advance Base & Karima Walker. Get your tickets HERE. **Please note that Tara Jane O'Neil's May Midwest tour dates are being rescheduled.**
"Little Kid are a Toronto folk band led by singer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist Kenny Boothby and also featuring drummer/guitarist Brodie Germain, bassist Paul Vroom, and drummer Liam Cole.A Million Easy Payments is the group’s debut for Orindal Records, and Boothby’s delicate but weighty writing is such a natural fit for the label that I was surprised to learn that they’d been releasing music independently since the early 2010s and weren’t just scooped up by the home of Dan Wriggins and Owen Ashworth and Ruth Garbus the minute they formed. Then again, A Million Easy Payments does feel like the work of a band that’s been at it for a while, both in its glove-like renditions of Boothby’s writing and in its impressively-amassed list of guest contributors (Aaron Powell of Fog Lake on vocals, Seth Engel of Options on percussion, Peter Gill of 2nd Grade on pedal steel, Eliza Niemi’s cello). The record’s eight songs range from swirling, multi-layered orchestral folk rock to breezy alt-country to quiet near-slowcore, with contributor Megan Dunn’s banjo, Niemi’s cello, and Boothby’s voice holding it together at the seams."
Watch the video for album track "Somewhere in Between," directed & animated by Aly Levy:
Some words from Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:
A Million Easy Payments is Little Kid’s seventh album, and it’s the one that took us the longest to finish. Our previous three albums were each written and recorded over the span of about a year, and when we started recording this one in 2019, we had plans to keep up that pace.
Of course, the pandemic came along a few months later and led to a lot of changes in our lives: financially, geographically, philosophically… Out of necessity, the album ended up being recorded and written in short bursts, often several months apart, for the next three-and-a-half years. The resulting album is one of our most eclectic, with songs that take influence from more far-reaching sources, recorded in varying styles, circumstances, and fidelities.
Yet, the album feels unified. The title A Million Easy Payments isn’t directly related to any particular song but it feels connected to all of them. The repetition in a lot of these song structures might resemble the mundanity and helplessness of seemingly infinite, regular payments. There’s a certain exhausted despair, mixed with a bit of humour. Some of these songs get more personal than ever, while some of them contain the most ridiculous jokes I’ve managed to work into my writing. The best ones have a bit of both.
Maybe it’s because it took so long to finish, or maybe it’s because it’s our best work yet, but I feel especially excited to finally share this album with you now. Thank you for listening.
Order your copy of A Million Easy Payments on vinyl, cassette or digital formats HERE.
Little Kid will play two A Million Easy Payments album release shows in March. Tickets are moving fast, so get yours now!
March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac(w/ Advance Base & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo(w/ Advance Base & Laughing)
Toronto, ON indie rock bandLittle Kid have released "Somewhere in Between," the third & final advance single from their forthcoming album A Million Easy Payments (out February 23 on Orindal in the US & Gold Day in the UK). A fan favorite from the band's recent live sets, “Somewhere in Between” is as driving & catchy as any song you could hope to discover on alternative radio, showcasing the sunnier side of Little Kid. The single features sterling performances by Little Kid’s core band members Brodie Germain (drums & percussion), Paul Vroom (bass & percussion) and lyricist Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano & Casio SK-1).
From Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:
“Somewhere In Between” was the last song I wrote for A Million Easy Payments, and one of the last ones we recorded. We had been struggling to make a coherent tracklist from the songs we had finished, and “Somewhere” kind of cracked it open for us. I think we needed a song with a bit more energy to lift the second side a bit.
The lyrics for this one came together quickly once I stumbled on the “somewhere in between” line to end the choruses. A lot of the songs on the album deal in extremes: “What Qualifies as Silence,” “Nothing at All,” “Bad Energy.” It felt important to have a song about the space between those types of binaries. The lyrics depict a person leaving an unsatisfying relationship. It’s not autobiographical, but I pulled a lot of images from my life and from my own (very satisfying) relationship with my partner.
The demo was about a minute longer, with two more choruses at the end, but my friend Keira correctly suggested cutting it down a little and leaning into the “radio-friendliness.” By Little Kid standards, this is a very short and snappy pop song. But when it came time to lay out the lyrics for the album insert, I realized it still has quite a lot of words because every chorus is different. I wrote this one pretty soon after “Bad Energy,” and I was clearly still on my work-in-as-many-internal-rhymes-as-possible kick. The rhythm of the melody really lent itself to that approach, and it’s a very satisfying song to sing.
This is the only song on the album that I did with only Brodie and Paul, who have made up the core of the Little Kid lineup for the better part of the last decade. We had a lot of fun recording it, and I think that comes through. We’ve played it at every show since we recorded it, and it’s always the one people ask about afterward. I am excited to finally share it ahead of the album release next Friday.
A Million Easy Payments “Brick” color vinyl LPs, classic black vinyl LPs & cassettes are shipping now! Order your copy HERE.
Toronto, ON indie rock band Little Kidhave released "Bad Energy," the epic second single from their forthcoming album A Million Easy Payments (out February 23 on Orindal in the US & Gold Day in the UK).
“Bad Energy” features performances by core band members Brodie Germain (drums, guitar), Paul Vroom (bass), Liam Cole (drums, percussion), and lyricist Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards) as well as guest performances from Eliza Niemi (cello samples) and Aaron Powell of Fog Lake (backing vocals).
In Various Small Flames’ premiere of “Bad Energy,” writer Jon Doyle describes the single as "a song that follows
Dylan’s ‘epic song’ tradition. And not only that. It also holds a
similar gravitational body at its centre. However, as the title
suggests, the uniting force here is not a specific event but instead
pervasive mood. The evil seam which has always run through the centre of
the American or Western project... Boothby lays down the
wide-ranging subject matter with a careful hand, drawing on universal
themes via a personal perspective to deepen every topic beyond its
simple surface...
This ability to vary the focal length of its perspective so gracefully is a signature of A Million Easy Payments."
From Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:
“Bad Energy” is a song with many verses. Each verse talks about the concept of “bad energy” from a different angle. My overall goal with this song was to implicate Christianity - or, at least, the twisted, Americanized version of it that I grew up with - in a lot of the evil going on in our world: war, genocide, rape culture, capitalist greed, resource exploitation, climate change… There is some personal stuff in there, and some pretty universal stuff.
I was pretty preoccupied with form when I wrote this one (and the other long ones on the record), and I think I was pulling a lot from Bob Dylan’s approach to his longest, most repetitive songs. David Byrne summed it up well: Dylan lifted the style of his “epic songs… from old folk ballads with their many many verses, but then he added a genetic mutation to the form — surreal imagery and metaphors rather than the traditional narratives of the old ballads” (from this Stereogum feature on Bob’s 80th birthday). I think Gillian Welch’s “I Dream A Highway” (my favourite song) might do this even better than Dylan’s best ones did.
Dylan paints some incredible pictures in those long folk songs, but I often find his rhymes unsatisfying. Or maybe too satisfying. I don’t like perfect rhymes. I spent a lot of time working as many imperfect internal rhymes as possible into each line of this song. It was a rewarding process, but it may have ruined songwriting for me because I no longer feel content rhyming only the last word of each line. Finishing songs has become much harder since I wrote “Bad Energy”... But I’m proud of what I was able to do with this one, and it’s generally the first song people talk about when they hear the new album.
Pre-order A Million Easy Payments on "brick" colored vinyl, classic black vinyl, cassette or digital formats HERE.
Vinyl & cassette orders begin shipping first week of February.
Little Kid will play two A Million Easy Payments album release shows in March:
March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac(w/ Advance Base & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo(w/ Advance Base & Laughing)
In March, Orindal labelmates & twin-brained solo singer/songmakers Advance Base (USA) & Young Moon (NZ) are co-headlining a U.S. tour, bringing their drum machines, reverb pedals & charmingly melancholic poetry to cozy venues across the Midwest & Eastern states. Young Moon will be making their live debut in many of these cities & the tour will be joined by some truly delightful local support acts along the way. Tickets are on sale Friday!
After the U.S. tour with Young Moon, Advance Base will be playing a handful of Canadian dates, including a few shows with Orindal labelmates Little Kid. Here are those dates:
A Million Easy Payments “Brick” color vinyl LPs, classic black vinyl LPs & cassettes are shipping now! Order your copy 
