The Old Ceremony, the orchestral-pop quintet Django Haskins has led since 2004, just released its fifth album, Fairy Tales And Other Forms Of Suicide. The band’s first LP for Yep Roc is also its first to receive a vinyl pressing, as well as its first to be released in Europe. In other words, it’s the perfect time for a provocative album title. Like many of the reinvented and rejuvenated performers the band now calls label mates (such as Robyn Hitchcock, Nick Lowe, John Doe and Paul Weller), the Old Ceremony makes music unencumbered by the ever-shifting demands of new and now. Haskins will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Old Ceremony feature.
Haskins: Certain cities give off an energy that lets you know that exciting things are happening there. It is just in the air. Detroit in the Big Three/Motown 1960s probably had this. Maybe Seattle in the 1990s. Or Chicago in the 1890s. Well, the air of the formerly sleepy town of Durham has it, too. Unused warehouses turn into art spaces or rock clubs or artisanal bakeries as if by time-lapse photography. New bands form and old bands reinvent. If I could live anywhere right now, this is where I would live. Lucky for me, I already do.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jSnztwKvjM
