The Flaming Lips: Ringing in Noise Pop's 20th year.

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The final More additions to the lineup for Noise Pop's 20th Anniversary festival were released moments ago, and they were worth the wait: Topping the 2012 bill are the Flaming Lips -- who also played Noise Pop in '98, just before finding a second run of success with The Soft Bulletin, the album they'll be playing in full this year.

Also added were Sleigh Bells, the maximalist electro-pop outfit from Brooklyn whose debut album occupied many critics' Best of 2010 lists (including ours). These are two very exciting additions, but they aren't the only ones. Read on for the Noise Pop 2012 lineup so far -- and note that there are even more additions to come.

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​As part of its world-shaking, time-exploding, two-decade-ringing-in confab and music festival next month, S.F.'s own Noise Pop is offering up no fewer than five gig slots to bands who apply through SonicBids.com. Yes, that's at least five whole paying gigs in front of breathing humans at S.F.'s biggest club-based indie music festival.

They almost certainly won't be headlining slots, but hey -- more people will likely come than can fit in your rehearsal space or your mom's basement. (Trying really hard not to make a dirty joke about your mom's basement here.) The "why" of this is obvious, right? -- assuming you want people to hear your music -- so check out details on applying, etc., after the jump.

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Heather Hryciw

Music and gourmet eats: together at last

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There's a shared culture between musicians and chefs, says Noise Pop Industries marketing manager Dawson Ludwig, ticking off concrete examples, like getting off work at 2 a.m., and the more esoteric shared sense of underground and independent spirit.

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Matt Seuferer

Kid Koala

Kid Koala
DJ Swayzee
Jel
J House
February 25, 2011

@ Mighty

Better than: An evening of mediocre music from DJs with good names.

I arrive around 9:30 p.m. at a very sparsely populated Mighty, wonder why I don't go to Mighty more, and then remember that I don't like to dance. J House, of The Say What, at first appears to be a duo, although I quickly realize that one guy is doing all the work and the other is making modest efforts to engage the non-crowd with encouraging shouts. Nobody is taking the bait. A lot of people are wearing Fernet-Branca sweatshirts, or in any case more than one person, and given that there are only like 20 people max at Mighty this seems conspicuous, to say the least.

J House's set is nice, smooth, a little genre-slippery: there's some old-skool house-hop, some of that de rigueur dubstep, some L.A.-sounding broken-beat electro-funk. He's good on the mic, even, though he doesn't rap so much as rhythmically express concern for our enjoyment of the evening. In any case he's less intrusive than the other guy, who by now I have gathered is the MC, not in the sense that he is a rapper -- and this is also problematic, because he has a microphone to his mouth pretty much every time J House mixes in some rap tracks, which makes it look like he's rapping, but then at one point he has a microphone to his mouth while there's a chick singing a hook and it becomes clear that he just has the microphone to his mouth, whatever his motives -- but in the sense that he's doing his best to whip up enthusiasm from the slowly growing audience. Every time he addresses us as "Mighty" I think he's saying "party."

Matt Seuferer

J House and master of ceremonies

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The Flaming Lips in This Is Noise Pop

​S.F.'s annual Noise Pop Festival is mostly known for bringing a week of awesome indie music shows to the city. But the fest usually pulls in a pretty good selection of new films for music nerds -- and this year is no exception.

With film subjects including the shadowy folk singer José González, Canadian singer/MC Chilly Gonzales, the universally loved Arcade Fire, and the Bay Area premiere of a documentary starring Brazilian pop legend Tom Zé, it's pretty darn likely you'll find something worth watching.

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Noise Pop has revealed the first wave of its festival lineup for 2011, not only coming out of the gate with Yo La Tengo, Ted Leo, Dan Deacon, Wavves, and Best Coast, but also playing a part in bringing the the lo-fi, R&B-minded How To Dress Well out to San Francisco for his first local appearance.

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I don't know you y'all, but we're feeling a heavy Noise Pop hangover from so much back-to-back entertainment over the last week (or, perhaps it's really just tied to that last whiskey we downed during Four Tet on Friday).

Before we close out another year of indie pop festival coverage, though, we have two slideshows from last night's Noise Pop finales up now.

​Christopher Victorio shot Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, the Watson Twins, AB & the Sea, and the Northern Key at Bimbos. Check out those picks here.

​Christopher was also able to capture a little of Dizzy Balloon's gig over at Bottom of the Hill with Visqueen, The Hounds Below, and Laarks. Click through those images here.

The final Noise Pop gig is tonight, of course, when The Magnetic Fields play a sold-out show at the Herbst. If you wanna know what's in store there, check out what Ian S. Port thought about the group's show Saturday night at the Fox.

Follow us @SFAllShookDown.

​Since we can't be everywhere at once--especially during Noise Pop's packed schedule--we're offering a mix of live reviews and slideshows from this week's concerts. Up now, a slideshow from Rogue Wave's show last night at Bottom of the Hill. Click here for more of what photographer Christopher Victorio caught on film. 

Follow us @SFAllShookDown.

Madeline Allard

The Baths (L-R): Tanner Griepentrog, Jeremy Cox, Sheila Imandoust, Jigmae Baer

​The Baths haven't had it easy. In a city where garage rock can reign supreme and new bands form and fade away with the blink of an eye, it's tough to get noticed unless your songs can satisfy punk rock attention spans. But with four- to six-minute songs and slow, methodical drum beats, the Baths have won their way into the hearts of even the most raucous audiences--a testament to both the ability that San Franciscans have to recognize talent when they see it, but also to the incredible music and spectacle that the Baths have created.

The band has its obvious influences--the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3--but to define them by these comparisons would be to vastly oversimplify their sound. Songwriters Jeremy Cox and Jigmae Baer draw from psychedelic soundscapes; dark, personal, and esoteric subject matter; and a bit of punk's apathetic humor and exigency. They conjure up haunting, reverb-heavy hymns to the degenerate and the broken. Buttressed by a sturdy rhythm section made up of their doe-eyed drummer, Sheila Imandoust, and their bashful bassist, Tanner Griepentrog, Cox and Baer have assembled a truly unforgettable ensemble.

On the eve of The Bath's free show (with the Odawas and That Ghost) for the Brooklyn Vegan Noise Pop Happy Hour at Benders on Saturday, Feb. 27th at 4 p.m., we interviewed Baer over a mug of Gentlemen Jack on the rocks to get a bit more intimate with the Baths.

Alright, first off, how did you guys pick the name the Baths?

Jigmae Baer: I wanted to pick a stoned-out, druggy name, to be honest, and the image of a bath is kind of solitary and sensual in a very personal way. When I'm writing the lyrics for these songs, it's very personal and comforting to myself, so it made sense. Beyond that...the San Francisco baths are pretty infamous, brutally hardcore sexual hangouts for a lot of people, so it's kind of punk in that sense. 

How did you and Jeremy meet?

JB: I was working in Arcata trimming pot and making a lot of money. Jeremy's from there, so we would play shows together with an old band of mine, and then when I moved back here, we kept in contact. Then he wanted to move to San Francisco so I let him stay at my house for a while.

When [your other band] the Tea Elles disbanded, why did you and Jeremy start to play together again?

JB: Well, we didn't at first. I started playing with Ty [Segall] immediately following that. He called me up and wanted to play music so we started a band with Charlie Moonheart called the Perverts. That band was cursed...all of our shows were cursed. I don't know why. It was a really good band, but we just got fucked left and right. We had to acknowledge that and realize that it just wasn't right at the time. 

Then Jeremy and I decided that we wanted to write really pretty evil...not pretty evil, but pretty and evil songs. We started writing songs in my room and we recorded a few and didn't really expect anyone to be too interested in it. But the reaction was so strong and so supportive that we decided to take it more seriously. We added Tanner, who had been playing with Jeremy since they were like fifteen or something, and got a drummer.

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Helena Price

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Guitarists Joe Spargur and Koley O'Brien of the new indie-pop quintet A B & The Sea moved out to San Francisco from Winneconne, Wisconsin at the end of 2008. They came at the suggestion of the Morning Benders to take a serious stab at the music business. It seems to be paying off.

A B & The Sea recorded a five-song EP at San Francisco's Different Fur Studios, produced by Wallpaper.'s Eric Frederic and Morning Bender Chris Chu. The tunes are available for free download at the band's Web site, where a tiered system unlocks a new track once enough people have traded their email addresses for the previous one. The spunky act's sound is reminiscent of '60s Top 40 radio--equal parts Beatles and Beach Boys. With flawless harmonies and flashing grins, the group has powerful pop weaponry at its disposal.

A B & The Sea plays Sunday, Feb. 28th at Bimbo's Noise Pop Closing Show. They'll also play an acoustic set Friday, March 5th at the Swedish American Hall.

We chatted with Spargur and O'Brien about buddying up to the Morning Benders, recording their version of Beyonce, and choosing the best Beatle.

Why did you decide to come out to San Francisco?

Koley O'Brien: We met the band The Morning Benders when we were recording in San Diego, and they dug our stuff. We ended up doing them a favor and letting them sleep on our floor when they came to Wisconsin. They ended up showing our stuff to their record label, and said that we should really think about coming out to SF and recording.

How did you come up with the name A B & The Sea?

KO: I came up with the name when I started writing this stuff. It was kinda one-man acoustic stuff and I had been in a lot of indie bands before that. I wanted to do something different, write more simple music like the Beatles did back in the day, and the stuff that I was writing was kinda beachy. I though all lyrics come from words and all words come from the alphabet, so A B ... and we kinda have an ocean-y vibe, so A B & the S-E-A.

How long have you been playing your instrument?

KO: I've been playing since I was 9.

How long have you been writing music?

KO: I wrote my first song in 6th grade, so, like 15 years.

Is your first song going to resurface?

KO: I don't know about that. I was with a few good friends of mine from back home and we were digging through some of my old notebooks and man, some of those lyrics were just embarrassing!

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