Stereogum » DM Stith

Sufjan Plays Fallon

Scott — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:15:42 +0000

A year ago, our own Brandon Stosuy interviewed Sufjan Stevens about art, the internet, and lots of other stuff. Note this passage:

STOSUY: I’ve never seen you play any Late Night TV shows. Everyone does those now. You just not want to do them?

STEVENS: I don’t understand why bands do that. It seems really tacky to me. I get asked all the time .Those shows are just promoting insipid comedies. Who watches those shows? And whoever does-I don’t think my music would speak to those people. I don’t even want those people to hear what I’m doing. I think musicians should stay off television generally.

Guess he changed his mind.

New DM Stith Video – “Pity Dance” (Stereogum Premiere)

brandon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:49:45 +0000

It’s hard enough disposing of a body. Things get increasingly difficult when the thing your dragging down the staircase, through the city, and toward a pier is still living. This is what we get in the Ryan Jeffery-directed video for “Pity Dance,” the first single from My Brightest Diamond collaborator and holiday cheer bringer DM Stith’s forthcoming Asthmatic Kitty full-length Heavy Ghost. Jeffery has a background in installation art (he’s repped by PDX Contemporary gallery) as well as music videos. You’ll get that sense in the carefully paced narrative conceit and strange pathos that unfolds across “Pity Dance.”

The ‘Gum Drop LXIX: Hear New DM Stith, Win A Smashing Pumpkins iPod

brandon — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:08:30 +0000

Brooklyn-via-Buffalo songwriter DM Stith entered the Asthmatic Kitty stable via the design work on Shara Worden, aka My Brightest Diamond, albums and the vocals and piano he contributed to her Bring Me The Workhorse. He released the Curtain Speech EP earlier this month (12/9). Stith’s full-length debut Heavy Ghost, which includes no songs from the EP but does include appearances from Worden and Sufjan Stevens, is out 3/10 on Asthmatic Kitty. “Ecstatic Only Static Peace (Peace to Me),” though, is a holiday song he wrote especially for this yuletide ‘Gum Drop. Listen here.

This week we also have a cool Christmas present for one lucky subscriber: an 8 GB iPod Nano that includes the entire Smashing Pumpkins catalog including rarities, B-sides, and a brand new unreleased song, “Translucent” (studio recording). Not many bands release new songs via an iPod. The giveaway is in support of the Pumpkins’ new double 20th anniversary DVD, If All Goes Wrong. The winner also gets a copy of that.

DM Stith – “Ecstatic Only Static Peace (Peace to Me)”

brandon — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:05:00 +0000

What’s this song about?
I imagined a cartoon Christmas special like the ones I grew up watching, and in this one, there’s a musical number featuring a dilapidated old house who is singing about a dream of being dressed in Christmas lights. For him it’s like the ultimate act of honor. So I imagine this old house watching the other houses on the street get all decked up for Christmas and he’s left without, no glory in the winter weather. I think David Bowie is playing the voice of the old house.

Any Christmas plans?
I’m heading to upstate NY to celebrate Christmas with my family. They live way out in the country, 45 minutes from a Wal*Mart, in a town with no traffic lights and only one restaurant (which is Chinese). So that’s the plan, although this plan has been made more complicated by a suddenly incapacitated Ford Escort. I have a dead car in my driveway and hopes for a plane ticket to Buffalo. Holiday travel always feels so desperate. Why are holidays always rackets of desperation?

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Heavy Ghost is out 3/10 on Asthmatic Kitty. This song isn’t on it.

K Records Turns 25

Stereogum — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:44:36 +0000

Don’t know about you, but there was a time we basically purchased anything with the shield ‘n’ the K log affixed to it … we’re talking early/mid 90s in those glorious days of Beat Happening, Some Velvet Sidewalk, Lois, the Softies, Tiger Trap, Karp, etc. Believe it or not, K Records the little Olympia D.I.Y. label that could, was founded twenty-five years ago this month. To celebrate, the folks at Asthmatic Kitty are hosting a “cyber-party” that started yesterday with a real-life cake delivered to K Records’ office via Secretly Canadian.

Since we can’t offer you a slice of the sweet stuff, head over to the AK website and stream a bunch of covers of K artists. There are tracks by Danielson, Adam Gnade, Half-Handed Cloud, as well as a couple we’d like to share with you now: My Brightest Diamond collaborator DM Stith — he did the artwork for Bring Me The Workhorse — putting a world-weary, but somehow breezy spin on the Microphones “You’ll Be In The Air” and Vermont popsters Hello Shark nailing that old K bedroom vibe with a cover of Tender Trap’s “Marry Me.” Total Six Cents & Natalie flashbacks…