Art Sorority for Girls

Jubilee will creep you, Griffin will freak you. RSVP

Sat, 26 May 2012 15:26:00 -0400

Jubilee will creep you, Griffin will freak you. RSVP

Via framedfractions: Haunted house show.

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:06:00 -0400

Via framedfractions: Haunted house show.

"I was starting from zero in terms of rebuilding a social circle—so, a lot of nights at home. I’ve..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:13:00 -0400

“I was starting from zero in terms of rebuilding a social circle—so, a lot of nights at home. I’ve been living in a basement bedroom where I can be as loud as I want to, but there’s not a lot of light and you can sort of forget that there’s a world out there.”

- This and other Sorority tales, online now at DCist.

Respondez, s’il vous plait.

Tue, 01 May 2012 06:01:00 -0400

Respondez, s’il vous plait.

“Why don’t we do it short, like this?” Nailing...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:18:00 -0400

“Why don’t we do it short, like this?” Nailing the snare roll, and other delights from the “God Only Knows” session.

Write it down so I can read youWrite it down and I’ll believe youSing it louder — I can play...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:59:00 -0400

Write it down so I can read you
Write it down and I’ll believe you
Sing it louder — I can play it
Don’t make me say it
Don’t make me say it

Half a decade out, the face-clawing, soul-gouging, heart-exploding new album by Dan Fishback is upon is. Get more.

Today is the 2012 deadline for submissions to Fort Reno, the annual summer concert series for...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:00:06 -0400

Today is the 2012 deadline for submissions to Fort Reno, the annual summer concert series for D.C.-area bands. Each applicant is required to write a statement explaining who they are and why they want to play the Fort Reno stage. Here’s what I came up with.

My name is Daoud Tyler-Ameen. I’m a 27-year-old New York native, and a resident of the District of Columbia as of early 2011. Art Sorority for Girls is the name I’ve written songs under for close to ten years. In that time, the project has taken many shapes: a boy-girl duo with keyboards and harmonies, a trio that featured a baritone guitar, a classic-rock-style quartet and a shambling collective with half a dozen rotating members.

These days it’s back to two: myself and drummer Josh Gottesman, 23. Josh and I met at a record fair in Arlington last year, each of us thumbing through the same vendor’s used hip-hop singles. We struck up a conversation, and when I’d learned a little about him—nearsighted, raised in New York by separated parents, slightly awkward but weirdly confident when engaged on the right level—I figured we could get along.

Since Josh and I haven’t recorded together yet, I’ll briefly explain what you’ll find in the envelope. There are two CDs enclosed. The one with the liner card and printed disc is Slow Dance, the first Art Sorority full-length, released online just weeks before Josh and I met. I’ll get to the other one in a minute.

Even though it’s only been out a few months, Slow Dance already feels old to me. Parts of it are: The first drum tracks were recorded in the spring of 2008 and built upon steadily, over the course of what stretched into three years. And the oldest of the ten songs, “Victoria,” I wrote several years before that, when I was a sophomore in college. Listening to it now has the effect of reading an old journal: a document of early adulthood, beginning with the title track (about wishing high school could last forever) and concluding with “Tree of Sympathy” (about finally leaving your hometown, written as I was planning to do so myself).

As it stands right now, Art Sorority for Girls doesn’t sound like Slow Dance. We still play a lot of the same songs, but the big, layered arrangements have been stripped down to the barest elements of rhythm, melody and harmony, as represented by a drum kit, a voice and an amplified acoustic guitar. To illustrate that, I’m including an ancient, no-frills demo of the song “Norma Jean,” which predicts pretty well how we would come to perform it today.

In all this time, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Art Sorority for Girls’ music is and has always been about young people, their desires and their anxieties. My priorities have shifted: These days I’m writing less about meeting girls, finding work and making friends, and more about managing relationships responsibly, doing work that matters, and staying true to the friends who will be there when it all falls down. But in essence, the song remains the same.

We’d be thrilled to play at Fort Reno this summer. We’ll see you there either way.

Warmest regards,
Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Art Sorority for Girls

Seriously, come early — songwriters don’t come much...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:02:00 -0400

Seriously, come early — songwriters don’t come much smarter than Casey.

RSVP on Facebook

1996 was a good year.

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 19:16:34 -0500

1996 was a good year.

This nun, a gift from my friend Mattie, watched over last...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:47:11 -0500

This nun, a gift from my friend Mattie, watched over last night’s show from atop my guitar amp. The message on the back, written in impeccable script: “This is how I look when I am disgusted at something.”

I played my very first D.C. gig at the Doll House just under a year ago; I’d been in town about six weeks. To look out at that same living room last night was about as good a progress report as I could ask for. There was Mattie, who I met buying postcards at the antique shop where she works. There was Bryan, who I chatted up on the street last spring because the guy on his t-shirt happened to be an old acquaintance. There was my roommate Rachel, and there was Jennifer, whose house I interviewed with first (they took a friend instead, but we’ve kept in touch). There were my school chums Jackie, who lives here now, and Zan, who stayed in our college town but came down this weekend to visit. And there were strangers — two dozen or so — who were, by all appearances, genuinely glad to be there.

And you are invited.

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:39:58 -0500

And you are invited.

Sunday.

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:24:18 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Sunday.

Of course, of course, of course this band hooked me in high...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:42:00 -0500

Of course, of course, of course this band hooked me in high school: They’re terrible at asking for what they want, even when they’re coming on to you — and they’ll readily settle for the next-best thing. “I’ll be taking your number home” is “Don’t I look like a Halle Berry poster?” for sensitive-type dudes.

Hang it up, hopefuls. The battle for the District’s...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:17:02 -0500

Hang it up, hopefuls. The battle for the District’s Greatest Vanity Plate is over.

Via ganzer, who I’m really hoping creates an annotated...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:37:00 -0500

Via ganzer, who I’m really hoping creates an annotated version that points out all the Americanisms, Pop-Up Video-style. While I’m waiting for that, a historical antecedent…

…in which our hero fakes his way through a randy song in a made-up language. In both cases, the thrill and delight come from the little bits we can understand, amid all the chaos.

Dear friend of mineBeen way too longWon’t talk to...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:00:05 -0500

Dear friend of mine
Been way too long
Won’t talk to me
Can’t run

Punched you in the
Can’t write a good
Can’t face anyone

New-old music by my darling Yoko.

Come out.

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:12:50 -0500

Come out.

Resolved: There are wrong ways to be semi-nude.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:03:00 -0500

Thumbs down for ladies: Shirtless and bra-less with jeans.
Thumbs down for dudes: Shirt up top, nothing below.

Shirt plus undies is approved for both. (Dudes must remove socks.)

Thoughts?

Via thematerialworld: Cheese On Bread at Pussy Faggot on January...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:50:04 -0500

Via thematerialworld: Cheese On Bread at Pussy Faggot on January 7, 2012. Fearless leader Dan (front right, in shorts) summarizes the evening thus:

Daoud: I’m glad we decided to go with red, cause I happened to pack this, and this is the only red shirt I own.

Dan: I love that this is your version of a red shirt.

Sasha Frere-Jones on Drake and the dissolution of genre: What...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:14:26 -0500

Sasha Frere-Jones on Drake and the dissolution of genre:

What is exciting, beyond the music itself, is how Take Care shows that hip-hop (and pop in general) is in a period of transition in which formal constraints have dissolved almost entirely. How do you even know whether something is hip-hop? Its characteristic rhythms and sounds can be found everywhere in pop these days. We may have finally reached the moment when breaking popular music into genres is pointless.