Having completed a broad United States tour and then released their debut album on vinyl, The Curtains came to the sad realization that not everyone in the Americas could make it to one of the shows, or owned a record player. And that’s why they’ve decided to release a few tracks onto the populist partition of the streaming Inter-nets we call AKradio.

Like the rising army of middle-class suburbanites who construct those colorful and carefully cut scrapbooks, The Curtains selected a few pop gems from a variety of sources, including a recent tour EP and an appearance on a live web radio show. Taken together in this new context, the songs combine into a happily offbeat but entirely listenable playlist. Enjoy!

In October, The Curtains released Calamity, and lots of people have since enjoyed its quirky experia-pop. The online music mag Daytrotter called it "smart pop that absolutely satisfies." But it’s now January, a New Year, and those reviews are so 2006.  Yawn. What is an enterprising band like The Curtains to do?

Well, spurred by the holiday season, The Curtains have refueled on happiness left over from Oh-Six and are spreading their musical joy in three forms over the next month. On January 4, The Curtains begin their whirlwind tour of the United S. beginning in Brooklyn and ending in San Francisco on January 19 (see here for complete tour information). Then, on January 23, The Curtains will release Calamity to the anxiously awaiting vinyl world.  The sonic clarity of this finely crafted (and round!)  LP will astound the ears of even the most discriminating music listener. And finally, The Curtains have created a cotton representation of this flurry of energy in the form of a brand new t-shirt, featuring a stylish but quickly moving green top backdropped by pure white energy. Wearing it will cause your friends and co-workers to wonder how you fit so much into so little time. You know, like that one band, The Curtains.

Now that it is finally in outer space, as in the space outside of the inner space of Chris Cohen’s brain where only a shrunken Dennis Quaid could get to it, people are starting to think about the sound of The Curtains’ new album. The Bay Area’s very own Owl Mag diagnosed Calamity with "sugary hiccups." The Internet’s Pitchfork has called Calamity a struggle between "twee pop tendencies" and experimentation. And the American grocer’s Spin wrote that this 13 track album is "boisterous and inventive."

Maybe Calamity is best characterized as walking music for the mildly paranoid. Or maybe it’s minimalism falling apart – can that even happen? Why did the cymbal stop? I think it just did. Did I just see that same car on 13th Street?  Huh. Whatever Calamity is, it’s not tragedy.

Ohp, there’s the cymbal.

[Available Now in our Shop and at your local record store]

The Curtains new album won’t be out until end of October, but in the meantime you can catch them live on tour with Final Fantasy and then Beirut.  They will be touring as four-piece and debuting their new material.  Be sure to catch them in your home town, or a neighboring home town, or a further away town.  Tour dates [here].