DTCV

French-American post-punk outfit DTCV was formed in Los Angeles in 2012 by Guylaine Vivarat (ex-Useless Keys, Tennis System), James Greer (ex-Guided By Voices), and Chris Dunn, a recent transplant from Chicago. A music writer wrote recently (paraphrasing here) that the band sounds like Debbie Harry fronting post-Nico Velvet Underground, and while that’s wildly inaccurate, it’s less wildly inaccurate than a lot of things that people have written.

DTCV has thus far released two EPs, Very Fallen World and Basket of Masks. A full length album, However Strange, was released in late August 2012 on cassette by Burger Records to coincide with a national tour opening for Guided By Voices in September of that year. All three of these earlier releases will be reissued in January 2014 by Mock Records under the title The Early Year. The group recently released Hilarious Heaven, an ambitious (read: contains free jazz saxophone skronk and flute solo(s), a piano ballad in French, synth-pop, a Monks cover, and two songs that surpass the eleven minute mark) double album recorded by Steve Kille of Dead Meadow, on Xemu Records. The brilliant artwork was supplied by Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices. DTCV will be touring extensively throughout 2014 in support of both Hilarious Heaven and The Early Year. (The title for the former was taken from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. FYI.)