Mittens on Strings are a band of friends who have been playing music together in some shape or form since 2000. While the line-up has shifted around since its inception, the bonds are still there, with everyone, past and present, putting their musical two-cents into the newest and most accomplished recording they've made, Let's Go To Baba's, released digitally & on vinyl on September 29th on their own SOUNGS label.
Recorded by the band during off-hours in various studios over the better part of a year, Let's Go To Baba's is an album lush with string arrangements and assorted overdubs, while striving to retain the immediacy of each individual song. The album is a true group effort, where each member played an active role in it's birth and rearing - no songwriter reigns supreme. As the narrator in the song "Lou Reed Says" reveals, "If you write songs, you can sing songs. If you don't write songs, you can't sing songs."
Mittens on Strings take the DIY aesthetic to heart, determined to do everything for themselves. From recording their own album, to putting it out on their own label (Let's Go To Baba's is being released on vinyl by their own SOUNGS label and will be made available digitally through a pay-what-you-want model on the SOUNGS website), to making their own one-of-a-kind, hilariously non-sequitur T-shirts. One of the stories here is self-mobilization and self-fulfillment. Not relying on a record label for "royalties", Mittens has decided to shirk the dinosaur that is the compact disc and follow in the steps of Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Girl Talk and allow people to pay what they feel the music is worth to them in a digital format, while simultaneously avoiding the expense and waste of manufacturing physical copies as disposable as CDs and embracing the truly tangible and collectable vinyl.
The members of Mittens on Strings were weaned on the narratives of Neil Young, Lou Reed, and Jonathan Richman; warped by the pop experiments of Brian Eno, Phil Spector, and George Martin; and inspired by the surge of Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr., and Sparklehorse; with a healthy dose of classical upbringing for good measure.
Mittens on Strings made this stop-motion video for the song "The Flaming Pig" using dollar store purchases:
Check out their homemade, one-of-a-kind, hilariously non sequitur T-shirts here and here.
Let's Go To Baba's (out 9/29 on SOUNGS)
1. M2 (Big Black Car)
2. Big Brother
3. Hearts and Mines
4. Lumbering Giant
5. The Flaming Pig
6. Fireball's Revenge
7. The Middle Ages
8. Lou Reed Says
9. Thanks, Vern
10. The Incensed Sleeper
11. Mountain of Light
12. Vacation
Recorded by the band during off-hours in various studios over the better part of a year, Let's Go To Baba's is an album lush with string arrangements and assorted overdubs, while striving to retain the immediacy of each individual song. The album is a true group effort, where each member played an active role in it's birth and rearing - no songwriter reigns supreme. As the narrator in the song "Lou Reed Says" reveals, "If you write songs, you can sing songs. If you don't write songs, you can't sing songs."
Mittens on Strings take the DIY aesthetic to heart, determined to do everything for themselves. From recording their own album, to putting it out on their own label (Let's Go To Baba's is being released on vinyl by their own SOUNGS label and will be made available digitally through a pay-what-you-want model on the SOUNGS website), to making their own one-of-a-kind, hilariously non-sequitur T-shirts. One of the stories here is self-mobilization and self-fulfillment. Not relying on a record label for "royalties", Mittens has decided to shirk the dinosaur that is the compact disc and follow in the steps of Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Girl Talk and allow people to pay what they feel the music is worth to them in a digital format, while simultaneously avoiding the expense and waste of manufacturing physical copies as disposable as CDs and embracing the truly tangible and collectable vinyl.
The members of Mittens on Strings were weaned on the narratives of Neil Young, Lou Reed, and Jonathan Richman; warped by the pop experiments of Brian Eno, Phil Spector, and George Martin; and inspired by the surge of Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr., and Sparklehorse; with a healthy dose of classical upbringing for good measure.
Mittens on Strings made this stop-motion video for the song "The Flaming Pig" using dollar store purchases:
Check out their homemade, one-of-a-kind, hilariously non sequitur T-shirts here and here.
Let's Go To Baba's (out 9/29 on SOUNGS)
1. M2 (Big Black Car)
2. Big Brother
3. Hearts and Mines
4. Lumbering Giant
5. The Flaming Pig
6. Fireball's Revenge
7. The Middle Ages
8. Lou Reed Says
9. Thanks, Vern
10. The Incensed Sleeper
11. Mountain of Light
12. Vacation
