smittens news!

July Looks Good to Us!

2009-07-13T15:54:00.007-04:00

The Smittens Go Away on Summer Holiday!

Hi there Friends! We here at Smittens central are busy packing our bags and making final preparations for yet another amazing Summer Adventure! This year will see us overseas in The UK (with our good pals One Happy Island) and in Sweden playing at two awesome festivals and releasing a new split 7” single with Glaswegian pop geniuses The Just Joans on WeePOP! It’s gonna be a mega yow!

Details will be available soon for the pre-order here: http://www.weepop.net/

Here’s the track listing, tho:
The Smittens:
What Do We Do Now? (written by the Just Joans)
Summer Sunshine

The Just Joans:
Gin and Platonic (written by the Smittens)
I Hear You’re the Man, Now, John

The single is coming out in a limited run of 500 on colored vinyl and will also have a short run on 3” cdr for those who don’t do the vinyl thing.

We’ll be having an unbelieveably awesome shindig in Glasgow on Monday, July 20th!
(and it’s a Half My Heart Beats event! – yow!) http://www.halfmyheartbeats.blogspot.com/

In addition, Happy Happy Birthday To Me declared last week “Smittens Week” over at their blog and posted a bunch of videos and our tour dates – see it all over here: http://www.happyhappybirthdaytome.blogspot.com/

As an added bonus, just before Smittens tour kicks off, you can catch a Colin solo show (with Brad from One Happy Island’s Secret Charisma, Ich Bin Finn, and The Sunny Street) and a Let’s Whisper show (with the always amazing Allo, Darlin’ and Sweet Baboo) in London this week!

And it’s also David Smitten’s birthday this week! Everybody David! whoo-hoo!

We are all very excited to see so many of you can so many bands in the coming weeks – and can you believe the unbelieveable line-up for this year’s Indietracks? check it: http://www.indietracks.co.uk/

Wow!

Our final stop on tour will be in Stockholm! We are still amazed that we’ve gone from wishing to play Sweden to actually heading over so soon! Here’s the poster for our show in Lasse I Parken at the Cosy Den 5 Years anniversary fest! You can find more details about that whole fest here: www.smallstepforward.com/cosy

See the list that follows for all of our dates in the UK and Sweden!

UK
7/15 – Colin Clary, The Secret Charisma, Ich Bin Finn, The Sunny Street @Buffalo Bar, London

7/17 – Let’s Whisper, Sweet Baboo, Allo, Darlin’ @The Betsey Trotwood, London

7/19 – the Smittens, One Happy Island, Pale Man Made, Frankie and the Heartstrings@ The Head of Steam, Newcastle
7/20 – The Smittens, The Just Joans, The Specific Heats, Maple Leaves, One Happy Island @ the Flying Duck, Glasgow
(7” split ep release show!)
7/21 – The Smittens, One Happy Island, Pete Green @ the Victoria, Birmingham
7/22 – The Smittens, One Happy Island, Standard Fare, The Melting Ice Caps @ the wilmington arms, London
7/23 – The Smittens, One Happy Island, The Wednesday Club, The Seven Inches @ Packhorse, Leeds

7/25 – Let’s Whisper @ Indietracks festival
7/26 – the Smittens @ Indietracks festival (lot more info here: http://www.indietracks.co.uk/ )
Other bands playing Indietracks include Teenage Fanclub, Camera Obscura, Stereo Total, Art Brut, Au Revoire Simone, Tender Trap, BMX Bandits, Northern Portrait, Pocketbooks, Butcher Boy, One Happy Island and a bunch more!

Sweden:
7/28 – The Smittens in Gothenburg (details here: http://www.snap-tight.se/)
7/29 – The Smittens, Nils Folks Valdemar @ Insikten, Jönköpings Kulturhus, Jonkoping

7/30 – Let’s Whisper, Johan Hedberg (from SKWBN), MJ Hibbett @ The Southside Cavern, Stockholm
7/31 – The Smittens, Would-Be-Goods, Burning Hearts, Strawberry Fair @Lasse I Parken, Stockholm

Anyhow, we so look forward to seeing as many of you as we can this month!

xoxo,
the Smittens

2009-06-26T15:44:00.005-04:00

Hello All!
Last weekend The Smittens were very lucky to be a part of Bernie Fest 2009. What is Bernie Fest you might ask? Well Bernie is Dana's uncle and the whole family threw him a surprise 60th Birthday Party on Father's Day. It was such a treat being part of such a special family event. Family skits were performed, stories were told and testimonials we spoken of Uncle Bernie. The Smittens were asked to played a set and we even did a cover of one of Bernie's songs. Bernie joined us up on stage and sung along. It was a blast! I think though one of the biggest surprises for Uncle Bernie perhaps was legendary Richie Havens walking into the party to perform following The Smittens. It was definitely a first for us to announce Richie Havens during our set! What an amazing performer he is and Uncle Bernie couldn't of been more happier to see one of his idols play his surprise party! Afterwords we got to hear some of Bernie's own songs. The Smittens had a great time and want to thank Dana's family for asking us to play and be a part of such a special day. Below are a few pictures from the party.

Richie Havens with Dylan, Dana's niece and Dana.

Uncle Bernie, Richie Havens and The Smittens.

Zoe! A new fan is born!

2009-06-08T16:17:00.001-04:00

The Smittens are on two new releases on Make Do and Mend independent record label out of London,UK.We are so very excited and honored to be playing at Indie Tracks again this year!

TWO new Smittens videos debut on Three Imaginary Girls

2009-06-01T14:34:00.006-04:00

The Smittens have Two New videosandour Pals over at Three Imaginary Girls were nice enough to debut them for us.

Both made by Rob Koier with "One Hundred Roses" filmed at the VCAM studio and incorporating a lot of David Zacharis’ (that's me!) artwork – drawings and felt dolls – and "Magpies and Eccles Cake" using footage filmed at our last local VT show. One looks like a candy confection and the other looks more like a 70’s rock film in slow motion. Interesting contrast, and different sides of the visual representation of the band.

Enjoy!!!

Music Video for The Smittens - "100 Roses" from rob koier on Vimeo.

Smittens show tonight!!!!

2009-05-27T16:37:00.004-04:00

Hey kids!
Last minute news but we've got a show tonight at Monkey House in Winooski with Lady Bright and Torpedo Rodeo. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm. The cover is $5.00. Come on out for a great night of music!
xo, Holly
p.s. San Francisco Popfest was a blast. We'll post more about that later but here is a video to hold you over.

Footage From NYCPopfest!

2009-05-19T09:13:00.001-04:00

May is already going bonkers!

2009-05-08T11:25:00.001-04:00

Seriously, we were starting to feel like we weren’t that busy lately, but when presented with our own facts, well, we guess we were wrong – we’ve got tons going on this month! Popfests on 2 coasts, 2 songs recorded, and 2 videos, and a host of guest appearances all over town!

On the Recording front, we Smittens have been hard at work recording a couple songs for a new summer single and now it’s turning into a split with The Just Joans!

The single will feature 2 new Smittens recordings and 2 recordings by one of our favorite bands in Glasgow, The Just Joans, who are also our WeePOP! label mates – you may recall that Dana and Colin had brief cameos in the Just Joans video for their song “Hey Boy, You’re Oh So Sensitive” last summer – anyhow, the Smittens have a new song, “Summer Sunshine” and a cover of a Joans tune, “What Do We Do Now?” on our side and the Joans will be covering a Smittens song and contributing one of their own as well. Should be aces and sure to sell out fast! The single will be released on the lovely WeePOP! label (www.weepop.net ) hopefully just in time for the Smittens UK tour (with Boston pop friends One Happy Island) – we are especially looking forward to our show in Glasgow, which we may use are the official release party – since we will be playing with the Just Joans and it’s hosted by the Half My Heartbeats crew (www.halfmyheartbeats.blogspot.com) super yow!

Fingers crossed that all the stars align for that to happen!

On the Video front, we’ve recently completed a couple more videos to continue with the promotion of our most recent album, The Coolest Thing About Love on the Happy Happy Birt hday to Me imprint (www.hhbtm.com ).

The two videos (which will be available soon) are for the songs “One Hundred Roses” and “Magpies and Eccles Cakes” both made by Rob Koier (who has been on a video making tear lately ) with One Hundred Roses filmed at the VCAM studio and incorporating a lot of David Zacharis’ artwork – drawings and felt dolls – and Magpies using footage filmed at our last local show at Parima restaurant. One looks like a candy confection and the other looks more like a 70’s rock film in slow motion. Interesting contrast, and different sides of the visual representation of the band. We can’t wait to share them with you!

On the Festival front, we are thrilled to tell you about 2 awesome popfests we are honored to be playing this month! First we will be playing at the NYC popfest held over the 3^rd weekend in May We are playing the Sunday all-dayer at Cake Shop which should still have tickets available at the door (though we were informed that the presale tix are all gone already!) and will be totally awesome – the fest includes a lot of bands we love, including the Radio Dept, Suburban Kids with Biblical Names, Rose Melberg, The Ballet, The Icicles, Knight School and more! The whole thing kicks off on Thursday May 14^th and runs thru Sunday the 17^th. Tickets and lineup are available thru the NYC Popfect website (www.nycpopfest.org ).

And then, on the weekend after the NYC Popfest, The Smittens will by flying over to the west coast to play at the San Francisco popfest – (www.sfpopfest.com) playing at the Rickshaw shop on Saturday, may 23^rd! That fest runs from Thursday-Sunday May 21-24 and the tix are available along with all details and lineup and locations at the festival website. Let’s Whisper will be also playing a set during the free Sunday picnic show in the park, too!

We are sad and honored to be playing at what is reported to be Tullycraft’s last ever live show – holy molee! – and excited to finally make good on our promise to come to the West Coast – obviously, one show isn’t going to satisfy all our friends out there, so we promise (again) to make another effort soon to play some more shows out there – all apologies to our pals in Portland and Oly and Seattle and Joshua Tree, and San Diego, and everybody else on that coast. If you can make to the the SF fest, well, that would be awesome – apparently much of the fest is being filmed, so hopefuly you can still feel like you were there at a later date!

In other Smittens and Smittens-related happenings, here are some cool things we’ve been involved in lately:

- Colin, Dana, David, and Holly spent a wildly amusing night in the studio here last week taking part in backing vocal sessions for our friend James Kochalka’s new gameboy music album, Digital Elf! Not sure when that will be coming out, but we had tons of fun with James and a couple of the Jazz Guys, plus a handful of other wonderful singers both tall and small!

We’ll let you know when it’s coming out!

- Max and Colin and Dana had a short visit to London to rock out at the London Popfest at the end of February – delivering an inspired trio performance and being inspired by the other fab acts on the bills! Let’s Whisper even kicked off the whole thing on the first night of the festival and a good time was had by all.

- Dana and Colin had a new Let’s Whisper song come out as part of the latest compilation set from the Eardrums label – and all 4 volumes are available for free download here: www.eardrumspop.com ! The Whisper track, titled “All Happy Endings,” is in very good company with loads of good indiepop from all over the globe. The comp is titled Birdsongs, Beesongs and we recommend it highly. There’s also a Colin solo song on there, “I Miss the Bubblegum,” which is about a time that Colin missed Smittens practice because he was in Portugal with his friend Isaac – a new recording of an old fave.

- Our good friend Steve Williams, who mixed our first two albums and whom you may know as a Magog or even more recently as the bass player for Rough Francis, just completed a new video for his awesome MFDOJ song “Count Me in, I’m Good to Go,” which was filmed by Rob Koier and which also features brief cameos from Colin and David and a handful of our friends here in town! It’s inspired by Goddard’s classic film Breathless and incorporates text from the film and new footage shot in homage to the original – very nice!

- And Colin has a new mini album out on the Weepop! label, too! His latest is titled “Every Little Thing Counts” and features 10 songs in just about 22 minutes with some cute handmade artwork and you can order it here: www.weepop.net – word is it’s selling briskly and could be sold out soon. Alas, the Let’s Whisper ep, “Make Me Smile” is already all gone! So please hurry up if you don’t wanna miss out!

-and this just in - Max and his friend Gillian are also now moving folks on dance floors in the UK! Keep an eye out for dj sets from GMAX! Early reports are in, and yes, the kids do just love it!

Check back here soon for dates and details of our summer adventure plans, too! This year we will be returning to the UK for a short tour (with our friends One Happy Island) which will find the Smittens playing in London, Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds and making a return trip (this time to the main stage) to the Indietracks festival July 24-26 at the Midland Railway, Butterley, Derbyshire – one of the hottest and nicest summer tickets in the UK this summer. Full line-up, details and a festival blog with links, interviews and mp3s can be found if you start here: www.indietracks.co.uk – it was the highlight of our summer last year – and this time Let’s Whisper will be playing a set on a train, too!

We’ve also got half a mind (and three quarters of a plan) to hop on a plane and visit Sweden for a few shows in Gothenburg, Jonkoping, and at the Cosy Den 5 year anniversary festival in Stockholm! Once we get all that stuff sorted and confirmed, you all will be the first to know! (and we’ll tell you about a top-secret gig we have planned, once that information becomes declassified, too)

Anyhow, have an amazing run up to summer and we’ll be sure let you know when our single has a release date set and when our Sweden plans are confirmed – and check back soon to see one or both of our new videos!

Say hello to your mothers for us,

The Smittens

xoxo

MONDO The Smittens tonight in NYC!

2009-04-17T11:03:00.003-04:00

MONDO returns to Don Hill's on TONIGHT!

Come join us!

DJs Miss Modular, Kevington, and Dr Maz spin all your favorite indie, britpop, twee, post-punk, girl groups, and more!

+

** LIVE **

We're giddy to welcome The Smittens, a self-described DIY twee pop explosion, to the Mondo stage. The five-piece, hailing from Vermont and the UK, create catchy indie pop overflowing with sunny melodies and clever lyrics. The group's boy-girl vocals and smart vs. cute approach harkens back to classic bands like Beat Happening and Tullycraft.

* * * * *

@ Don Hill's
511 Greenwich Street (at Spring St.)
11:00 pm - 4 am
$5 Cover / $ 3 with Flyer or Invite

more info @

http://www.mondo-nyc.com
http://www.myspace.com/mondonyc

Review from Three Imaginary Girls

2009-04-16T20:47:00.001-04:00

The Smittens —The Coolest Thing About Love

The Smittens are a sugary mound of twee girl-boy pop, and if you are a fan of A) indie pop, or B) being in love -- you just might become smitten yourself. After all, as the title suggests, The Coolest Thing About Love celebrates all the good things about love, missing your better half from a long distance, and knowing that they're the one. I found the coolest thing about the Smittens wasn't just their penchant for writing catchy keyboard melodies, but that they have 3 singers with distinctive tones and thus go beyond the usual boy singer/girl singer indie pop modus operandi. Singers Dana Kaplan and Colin Clary man the helm as the main singers, and sometimes Max Andrucki's baritone pops up out of nowhere, sounding eerily similar to Stephen Merritt (never a bad thing, really).

Out of the 14 songs on the album, a few stand out above the rest, including "Something Sassy" and album closer "The One For Me." The next time you're looking for the words to say "let's just have fun and not analyze things," just have your partner listen to the former, in which Kaplan and Clary declare "I don't want something drastic/i'm just looking for something sassy." The sweetness is in full swing with "Gumdrops," a horribly catchy tune (trust me, you won't get the chorus out of your head for days) that starts with Andrucki singing the puzzling lyric, "I really like you/my new librarian/but where you been?" before the equally puzzling gleefully sung chorus, "bubble floss heart-shape candy shell/something's started/can't you tell?"

The laidback and downtempo "Magpies and Eccles Cakes" is a welcome respite from the upbeat pop of the rest of the album, and sounds like a collaboration between the Magnetic Fields and Belle and Sebastian. The final minute is a breath of fresh air, a concession that everything changes while we keep pressing on: "but the planes are turning round/and the world keeps spinning round/and your head keeps spinning round."

Overall, The Smittens are like a trip to the candy store, full of extremely sweet and sometimes overwhelmingly saccharine morsels -- definitely not for the faint of heart, or at least the un-indie-pop-initiated. But if you're indeed not up for anything serious, just looking for something sassy -- look no further.

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For online blogpost at Three Imaginary Girls go here.

Popfest Fever!

2009-02-16T16:24:00.002-05:00

Hi all! We certainly do hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day weekend! We've been spending these chilly days making BIG plans to figure out how to come and visit some of you!

Next week Colin and Dana are flying over to London to play a stripped-down Smittens set with Max and a Let's Whisper set as part of the first London Popfest! Let's Whisper will be kicking off the festival on the Thursday night and Saturday will see Dana and Colin joined by Max (coming down from Leeds) for a softer version of some of your favorite Smittens tunes! It should be a fantastic festival all-around and a good teaser for when all of us head back over to the UK in the summer for Indietracks '09! We're still trying to sort out if we can make it to
Sweden on our summer trip as well, or if we will have to plan a separate trip to the continent at a later date - stay tuned for more news on that once we get a few more ducks in a row! For now, details for the London Popfest can be found at www.londonpopfest.com

We hope to see some of you there!

Check out this fantastic flier, too!

After that, we are heading back into the studio at Twee Valley Manor in mid-March to begin work on a couple songs for a planned 7" for the WeePOP! label - hopefully we can capture some of our fresh energy and summer dreams - planting the audio seeds for a summer bloom!

Max will be around in April for a couple shows - including our first NYC show in over a year - at the fabulous Mondo disco on 4/17!

Details should be available at www.mondo-nyc.com/news.html and on our MySpace page/last.fm page/and facebook page!

May might end up seeing the Smittens at 2 popfests on two coasts! We are possibly going to play the Sunday show at the NYC Popfest (5/15-17) and definitely going to play at the San Francisco Popfest (5/21-24)! This will be our first show ever on the west coast and it would be ever so lovely to see some of you there as well!

We'll keep you up to date with more details as they become available - this is already shaping up to be another wonderful year for us and we are looking forward to sharing it with you!

On a different note, keep your eyes out for a new independent feature film called The Graduates (www.graduatesmovie.com ), which has a couple of our songs on the soundtrack! We've not seen it yet, so we are also looking forward to finding out how our work fits in with the filmmakers vision - if you go to the graduates site, you can get info on where and when it is screening near you!

If you find yourself caught in Glasgow, let us also wholeheartedly recommend the fantastic indiepop disco nite Half My Heart Beats - www.halfmyheartbeats.blogspot.com - named after one of our songs (with our full permission, of course!) and featuring some of the best new and classic indiepop tunes to dance to! David Smitten also designed their fliers!

Another fine spot for hearing lovely songs is our friend Camila's blog - www.yourheartstillbreaks.blogspot.com - which features lovely popcasts filled with dreamy and sweet indiepop from all over – her latest includes our version of My Boyfriend's Back and a pile of other fantastic tunes! Check it out!

Have a lovely rest of your February!
XOXO,
The Smittens

2008-12-10T13:35:00.005-05:00

Hi All!
So The Smittens have been getting some lovely press lately. First off our state's paper The Burlington Free Press included us in their end of the year roundup of bands who've put out albums this past year and written a nice little review. Go here to read it online.

Secondly we just found out that Pop Matters included us in their ten top for The Best Indie Pop of 2008!

Here is what they said:
References to flowers, kisses, and summertime abound in their songs, and the Smittens seem like the band most likely to break into a group singalong at any moment. That means they’ll get dismissed by some as too cute, which is a shame, and not just because haters would miss out on fantastic melodies. Their music is more than just happy-go-lucky. It has more to it than just fun (though fun it is). On The Coolest Thing About Love, that happy/cute side of the band seems mostly an idealistic dream of what love can be, one that in real life is felt in passing moments but still worth striving for. Love is complicated by distance, personal failures, and the passing of time. But when everything clicks right, it generates excitement, peace and contentment. The Smittens capture all of that in suitable song forms—classic pop anthems, impromptu doo-wop ballads, the melancholy strumming of a guitar.

Pictures!

2008-11-24T18:16:00.005-05:00

Here are few pictures that our friend Steve took the other night at our show at TASTE.

Friday night, Get Cozy with the Smittens

2008-11-17T15:38:00.001-05:00

Friday night the Smittens and Friends are playing at a new venue in burlington called taste! So come down and enjoy the waterfront and yummy food and get cozy with us as we play songs in a quieter more intimate venue... and if you qualify as a friend, play some songs too!

2008-11-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

Here is a new video online from our show at Popfest! New England 2008.

2008-11-10T19:29:00.004-05:00

Popfest! New England 2008 was this past weekend and The Smittens had a great show on Saturday night.In order of appearance Dream Bitches, Magnus–The Charade/Happydeadmen, Maybe It's Reno and Bunnygrunt.

Here is a picture from our set.

Closing the evening were The Utah Rangers from Sweden. They were super fun. Here are several pictures. Notice one of them bought a Smittens t-shirt and wore it on stage. Awesome.

Thanks William and Christine! We love Skipping Stones Records for making Popfest! New England so much fun every year.

xoxo, The Smittens

Northampton, MA tonight!

2008-11-08T10:39:00.007-05:00

Hi All! The Smittens are playing in Northampton, MA tonight at The Elevens as part of Popfest! New England 2008. If your in the area please come on out!
Last weekend we played at The Monkey House in Winooski, VT. The Burlington Free Press put pictures up on the BSCENE section. On Thursday you can pick up the actually paper copies. Check out the pictures online here.
xoxo, Littlest

UPCOMING SHOWS! INCLUDING THIS SATURDAY NIGHT!

2008-10-30T13:59:00.006-04:00

Hi All!
I wanted to let you all know we have some exciting shows coming up very soon! As David mentioned in our last post this coming Saturday night, November 1st we are playing at The Monkey House in Winooski, VT with Cars Can Be Blue of Athens, GA and our local Super Star James Kochalka who will be doing a Gameboy set...for reals.

Then our next show is Saturday November 8th at Popfest New England 2008 in Northampton, MA at The Elevens. We have played this festival for several years and always look forward to it. Check out the great line up and details here http://www.skippingstonesrecords.com/popfest/2008/

Then back here in our home town of Burlington we will be playing for the first time at Taste Restaurant located at 112 Lake Street a Smittens and Friends Show on Friday, November 22nd. Enjoy the waterfront and yummy food and get cozy with us as we play songs in a quieter more intimate venue... and if you qualify as a friend, play some songs too!

Show Announcement

2008-10-16T13:41:00.003-04:00

We have booked a really sweet Pop Show at the Monkey House in Winooski on November First. I am really excited about the show. The stars were aligned and both Cars Can Be Blue and the Besties and James Kochalka can play the show. Both bands are dear friends of ours. It is like a Popfest! New England warm up show.

The Monkey House Presents
The Smittens w/ The Besties, Cars Can Be Blue and James Kochalka
$6/21+
$11/<21
http://www.myspace.com/thebesties
http://www.myspace.com/carscanbeblue
http://www.monkeyhousevt.com/
http://www.smittens.com
http://www.americanelf.com

Thank You UK!

2008-10-08T09:41:00.001-04:00

The Smittens would like to say a great big thank you to all who helped us with the UK tour: Downdime, The Manhattan Love Suicides, Gill Iles, Pete Green, The Seven Inches, Dunc from The Autumn Store (and Deb for the pasta, late night toast, and lovely place to crash), Music Is My Girlfriend, Lynsey Callaghan & Gavin Dunbar, gojonnygogogogo, Red Pony Clock, The Rocky
Nest, the Indietracks team, Neil Shumsky, Vic from Female Trouble, The Roadside Poppies, Ballboy, Pocketbooks, Nils Folke Valdemar, Liz from Loose (for a great night in Cardiff, and squeezing so many of us into your lovely home), Camila from Wee Pop, the fantastic Spiral Scratch team, Pocketbooks, The Deirdres, and Rich from Don't Start Feeling All Romantic. Thanks to everyone who came and saw us and said nice things, and a big hug to all our new friends.

Smittens UK Tour!!

UK Tour Part One

2008-07-25T12:52:00.003-04:00

Allo Luvs!
So it is Thursday and we just finished our gig in Leeds with Ballboy and the Manhattan Love Suicides I thought I would take this time to update you all on our adventures so far. So Colin and Dana arrived a week ago and played a Let’s Whisper gig in London. They were celebrating the release of their new EP on Wee Pop Records. They played with Allo Darlin and they had a blast. The next night they headed to Oxford for a solo gig that Colin had. Colin said the gig was fun even though the sound guy kicked over his whiskey.

Holly and I arrived on Saturday. We all met up in Leeds for some practice sessions. Later that night we made dinner and then we went to a local pub for our first tastes of English beer. It is better here. Our first gig was on Monday night in Sheffield. The Pete Green set up the gig. We played with the Parallelograms and the Seven Inches. Both bands were great and super sweet. After the gig we headed back to Leeds and Dana, Holly and I attempted (unsuccessfully) to watch Project Runway on the internet.

On Tuesday we headed to Birmingham (pronounced BUR-ming-GUMM, rather than Birming-HAM.) Our new friend Duncan from the Autumn Store set up a fantastic line up of international music. He and Debbie were super great hosts--they even cooked us pasta and brought it to the club! The Zebras and our label mates Red Pony Clock both shared the stage with us. After the gig a crazy guy told Max and I that Americans were “Doo Doo” then called me “Grandchild”. He was nice I think.

We woke up in Birmingham and headed to Glasgow. We drove through the Lake District which was breathtakingly beautiful. We arrived in Glasgow around four pm. Colin got his first fish and chips of the tour and I had veggie haggis. I am not going to lie to you, the gig that night was pretty amazing. Music Is My Girlfriend set up a fantastic night of music. The Just Joans opened and they are a charming little sextet that make Colin cry. Zoey Van Goey were really really impressive. If you get a chance to see them don’t wear socks, because they will knock them off. Then we crashed in Glasgow. Oh Oh Oh! On the way home we stopped in Appleby and had our first pub lunch. I got the ploughman’s lunch.

So we just played with Ballboy and the Manhattan Love Suicides and the gig was great. It's was Max's friend Neil's birthday and the show felt like a party. We have three more gigs with Ballboy. We are truly lucky.

Here are some pics from the first leg of the tour.

Xoxo

David

New Smittens Video for Gumdrops!

2008-07-13T11:17:00.001-04:00

We have a new video for our song Gumdrops! The lovely Eva Sollberger shot and edited our video. Thanks Eva, we love it! Thanks goes out to Esse Luna who plays the librarian and did an amazing job. Goma started as the Maltese Falcon and was a superstar. This video was shot at Lawrence Barnes School and the kids that participated were amazing. Thanks Lawrence Barnes! Tonight The Smittens are celebrating our new album "The Coolest Thing About Love" with a listening party at 7pm sharp at Parima and we will be debuting the new video as well as having a slideshow of Smittens artwork and photos. Live music will follow the listening portion of the evening with Missy Bly, The 500's and The Specific Heats. Come on down to Parmia for a fun night of music!

The Coolest Month of All!

2008-07-01T16:03:00.002-04:00

The Coolest Thing About Love – Our new album comes out at the end of the month!!!!!! Sometimes it feels like all we can think about, and yet there is a lot of other stuff going on for us this month, too! Places to go, people to see and songs to sing! Hopefully we can share some of our summer with you!

Thank you so much to all of you who came out last month for our split 7” release shows with Tullycraft! It was a wonderful double shot for us as we had our dynamic pals the 500s show up from Portland, Maine to play a few songs with us at the Monkey House and then we got to be rocked by Pants Yell in Somerville the following night! We were so glad the East Coast kids came with their dancing shoes!

July seems to be a month that keeps on getting awesomer and awesomer – we have so much going on that it’s hard to know where to begin – how’s about we start with our Battery Park show next week? Well, we are playing on Thursday, July 10th at Battery park – it’s a free show sponsored by Burlington City Arts and local radio station The Point – bring a blanket and a snack and enjoy the lovely outdoors and some fun tunes – we should be playing around 6:30 and after us there’s a band called Need to Breathe that will be kicking it souther rock style! Should be fun!

After that we are having an official listening party for our brand-new album, The Coolest Thing About Love on Sunday, July 13th at Parima Thai restaurant – come for cocktails and wrap your ears around our latest and best album in a comfortable setting with a sweet sound system! Stick around afterwards and we have some friends coming to celebrate with us – Missy Bly, The 500s and The Specific Heats will all be playing to help us celebrate our new album – and it’s David’s birthday-eve that night, too, so it will definitely be a super fun party!

After that, we’re heading off on our craziest summer trip ever – The Smittens are touring the UK! We are so excited to be able to play for the kids in Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds (twice), Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol, London and Nottingham – and to be spending a couple days at an amazing festival called Indietracks! (www.indietracks.co.uk). If you want to live vicariously, well, let us recommend the brand new indietracks sampler comp from our new friends at make do and mend records (www.makedoandmendrecords.co.uk) – it just came out on Monday!

While we’re in the UK singing and dancing and running about we will be out of out heads happy to know that our new and long-awaited and third album is finally released! Yes, that’s right! According to the fine folks at our Athens, Georgia label, Happy Happy Birthday to Me (www.hhbtm.com) – The Coolest Thing About Love comes out on July 29th! I guess all the awesome albums come out on Tuesdays, but soon you will be able to pre-order the album direct from the label and you may even get some goodies for showing your support so early!

Please feel free to check out our Myspace page (www.myspace.com/thesmittens or our facebook page ( www.facebook.com/pages/The-Smittens/17313842955) to hear a couple songs from the new album!

Things are starting to happen incredibly fast here, so we’ll try to update again soon with more details! Our tour dates are up on our Myspace page as well, and we'll keep them updated with the latest info!

After we get back from Europe, we are going to have an album release show in our hometown (location tbd) and we’re also heading back down to Athens for the HHBTM Popfest 2008 – playing an official Athens release on Saturday, August 16 at the famous 40 Watt club as part of that fantastic fest! We’re also gonna pop in and play a show in Atlanta on Thursday, the 14th – with our pals One Happy Island!

Hope to see many of you very soon! Have a fabulous summer!

Xoxo,
The Smittens

Phoebe Magazine Interviews The Smittens

2008-05-27T20:33:00.003-04:00

Hey Kids! We've been meaning to post for sometime about our interview and photo shoot with amazing new local online magazine Phoebe. The magazine is part of the University of Vermont. We were delighted when Connor Boals the editorial director contacted us to set up an interview. Phoebe magazine covers the life, culture and arts of Burlington, VT. Katherine Robinson did an excellent job with the interview and made it fun and easy. Our photo shoot took place later at Battery Street Jeans where we got dressed in their vintage clothes and pose for photographer Jason Gold. Our lovely stylist was Magdalena Jensen who was fun and comfortable to work with. When the final issue came out online we were so impressed with the slickness and scope of the interviews this first issue was able to capture. Interviews included our friends at Tick, Tick, our favorite sandwich deli Four Corners of the Earth Deli and many more cool people, places and events. David and I stopped by the launch party for Phoebe Magazine at Halverson's Upstreet Cafe where the party took place in their amazing back patio. The party consisted of appetizers, an open bar, live music and deejays. Party goers also got to see the magazine projected on large screens for their viewing pleasure. It was a great party! Check out the party pictures online, that is after you check out our interview on page 28 and 29. Thanks Phoebe Magazine! We love you and look forward to the next issue!

2008-04-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

April, 11 2008 at The Skinny Pancake
Corner of Lake and College Street - at the waterfront, Burlington, Vermont 05401
Cost : Pass the Hat

Our debut at the Skinny... come enjoy the quieter acoustics, and get all the Max you can!

April, 18 2008 at Toad
1920 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140
Cost : FREE!

With One Happy Island! And Max Smitten too

The Coolest Thing About Love (and other delights)!

2008-03-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

Hey Kids! We have a new title for our new and long-awaited and still forthcoming in the summer third album!

It's going to be called: The Coolest Thing About Love

We are so happy to be listening to the finished master of our album and should be shipping it off to our label soon and then Happy Happy Birthday to Me (www.hhbtm.com) will be announcing our release date sometime after that - most likely sometime in late July! That should give all of you plenty of summer sunshine listening time!

In other Smittens news, we are going crazy with excitement about some of our other big summer touring plans - this year we are going across the ocean to play some European shows!

The first confirmed show is at a fantastic indiepop festival called Indie Tracks (www.indietracks.co.uk) which is a 3-day festival at an old steam train railway station in Ripley, Derbyshire! Bands announced to date are The Wedding Present, The Wave Pictures, Darren Hayman, Comet Gain, Airport Girl, Manhattan Love Suicides, Roadside Poppies, Amida, Ballboy, Dirty Fingernails, The Just Joans, Little Things, The Kabeedies, Kategoes, Lardpony, The Mai 68s, The Middle Ones, Milky Wimpshake, The Occasional Flickers, Pocketbooks, Slow Down Tallahassee, The Smittens, Strawberry Story, The Bobby McGees, Tortoise Shout, Brontosaurus Chorus and Voluntary Butler Scheme. Tickets went on sale on the 1st of this month and weekend tickets are £45 and available now! The Midland Railway, which is set deep in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside, houses a whole range of lovingly restored steam diesels and locomotives. Festival goers are allowed to have unlimited rides on the steam railway over the weekend and full access to other railway attractions. How cool is that?

In addition to this awesome festival, we are also going to be playing a decent handful of other UK gigs and may even try to play in Sweden or Iceland! Wowee! If any of you overseas folks would like to see us play near you, please drop us a line and let us know where you would like to see us play and we'll see what we can do! We have shows in the works in London, Glasgow, Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds, in addition to Indie Tracks. We'll update our shows listings as we get some more things confirmed, but for now a lot of our plans are in the early stages.

In other news - our split 7" with Tullycraft has been sent off to the manufacturing plant and should be available in the next month or so! We will let you know when we get our copies - we will have a small number of them available at our shows until we run out!

We have a couple fun shows in Burlington this month - one on Friday, March 14th at Parima Thai Restaurant with one of our favorite bands and friends - Missy Bly! It's free to get in and bound to be a blast and a half!
The following week we are playing a Rock for Choice benefit in the Davis Center at UVM on Thursday, 3/20!
It will be the first day of spring and what better way to kick off the new season than with us and a handful of other fine bands!

Anyhow, we should have a bunch more good news soon - we are going to do a short tour in mid-to-late April and will be announcing the dates in the next few weeks!

Hope to see some of you soon and some more of you a little bit later than that!

Also, if you live on the west coast or somewhere in the middle of this country, well, we may be coming your way this Fall! Our goal at this point is to rock the UK (and potentially a few other European countries) in late July, pop down to Athens for this Summer's Athens popfest (the 3rd weekdn of August), and then we are going to fulfill our long-ago promise to visit the west coast this Fall after The Coolest Thing About Love comes out!

Super yay,
the Smittens
xoxo

--

ps- if you are in the Boston area, please consider yourselves invited to the Great Scott on Saturday March 15th - Dana and Colin with be playing a Let's Whisper show that evening with our friends One Happy Island, Hand and Knees, and The Piddly Kids, along with a few indie pop DJs in between - it will be a full-on indiepop dance party!