MusicRatty: Thunderbirds Are Now! Side Project Mania!

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Thunderbirds Are Now! Side Project Mania!

2008-04-07 15:35:00 by Matthew Solarski in Pitchfork: News

Photo by Jon Shaft

Dedicated Pitchfork news readers should already know of at least two Thunderbirds Are Now! offshoots/associates-- Friendly Foes and Javelins-- and now the time has to welcome a couple more.

Arranged Marriage is a relatively new project combining the powers of TAN! keyboardist Scott Allen and his dad, 53-year-old Brad Allen. The cross-generational pairing shares singing, songwriting, and playing duties, and hopes to release a self-recorded album this very year. The senior Allen, Brad, has previously helped Thunderbirds Are Now!, Javelins, and other Detroit area acts lay albums to tape in the Allen family's basement studio, and he put out an EP called Nifty at Fifty back in 2005. Um, cool dad alert!

Scott's brother and TAN! bandmate Ryan Allen, meanwhile, still has his previously mentioned Friendly Foes. The trio plans to hits the recording studio next month, with designs on putting together an album and maybe an EP too with producer Dave Feeney (who twiddled knobs on TAN!'s 2005 LP Justamustache). Friendly Foes have a few gigs lined up as well, listed below.

The non-Allen half of TAN!, Matt Rickle and Julian Wettlin, of course have their Javelins project. That trio will issue the previously mentioned LP Heavy Meadows on July 1 via Suburban Sprawl Music. Check out an MP3 for Heavy's "Out in the Sand" below, and look for a few Javelins dates down there too.

Restless musical souls that they are, Rickle and Wettlin have yet another trio up their collective sleeve, Sword Legs. In Ryan Allen's words, this crew crafts "pretty funky, smooth, yacht rock type stuff," so watch out for them.

And speaking of Suburban Sprawl Music, the label recently issued a seven-track remix EP from Detroit's Child Bite featuring four remixes by, yes, Scott Allen.

Finally, Thunderbirds Are Now! (hey, remember them?) have begun writing and cutting demos for the follow-up to 2006's Make History, tentatively due next year on Frenchkiss. To help pass the time until then, the spastic quartet has two local shows on the docket with Enon.

Whew! [MORE...]