Midnight Movies give the Moody Blues moody treatment in their fairly faithful cover of “Nights In White Satin.” Faithful, except that it’s sung by a woman, Gena Olivier. The dark L.A. psychedelic pop-rockers wisely left off the spoken-word poetry “Late Lament,” which you can hear at the six-minute mark of the original recording. (We always thought that moment was hilarious when we heard it on rock radio.) Anyhow, this is part of the Movies’ upcoming six-song, digital + vinyl Nights EP, which follows their sophomore album, Lion The Girl. The EP also includes “Nights In What Satin” sung in French (“Mes Reves Satin”), two remixes of a pair of Lion tracks (Nick Zinner on “Souvenirs” and James Iha on “Patient Eye,” which you can download here), and two previously unreleased Lion session tracks. Up to date? Take it away Gena…

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Don’t feel bad for Iha’s not getting a call from Corgan about the Smashing Pumpkins “reunion”; first of all, he’s everywhere at once (literally, you will see both him and Moby on every street corner of the LES on any given night), and he’s got that burgeoning remix career to tend to. Last time, we posted James’s knob-twiddling of the Postmarks’ “Goodbye.” That one fell short for a couple of reasons: the original’s damn near perfect, and the Postmarks sad-hued sun pop doesn’t have lateral space for Iha’s electro-overhauling remix conceit.

But Iha turned in something considerably more refined for Midnight Movies’ “Patient Eye,” from the band’s forthcoming release Lion The Girl. James appears to understand this cut better, embellishing the beat perfectly, upping the ante with swarthy slides and the odd electric shriek.

Midnight Movies – “Patient Eye (James Iha Remix)”

Midnight Movies’ Lion The Girl is out 4/24 on New Line Records.

Not sure what the contributing factors were, but it seemed like everybody was a little frustrated yesterday down at SouthBy; people showing up to the right day party at the wrong time, jumbling their schedules, taking wrong turns in what’s otherwise the most easily navigable downtown you’ll ever see. And our day was no different. (Okay, we were actually describing our day right there — but we swear other people were bitching, too!) Somehow, though, despite the late start and the wonky show mojo, we escaped our Thursday in Austin with a good number of great bands under our belts.

After whiling away precious daylight hours blogging the previous day’s goods for ya, we ambled down to the Tag Team party in time to catch Andrew Bird whistle sweet nothings into the Emo’s punters’ ears, with our other favorite multi-instrumental madman Martin Dosh behind the kit. After taking in a few Armchair Apocrypha tunes, we broke in our boots with the LONG walk to Todd P’s party at Ms Bea’s on 6th St. for the fret-blazing exploits of one Ms. Marnie Stern. We’re huge fans of the Sleater-Kinney-meets-Shreddie Van Halen sound Marnie’s concocted on her excellent debut In Advance Of The Broken Arm — and had no idea she was so dreamy in person — but playing (and singing) along with a fully-arranged version of her tunes from her nano (which was impressive only when she’d harmonize her tapping, and uncomfortable when she’s miscue the track) didn’t impress. Wish she had a karaoke version of the record to play with, but no matter; we remain steadfast Stern champions. (She also rocks a note-perfect Rodney Dangerfield impression to kill time: “Get in the caaaw, these heels are killing me!”)

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