NEW ALBUM:
Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World
Orange vinyl + digital
Released: September 22, 2023
Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records
ORDER LINK
BANDCAMP
MIDHEAVEN / REVOLVER USA
BANK ROBBER MUSIC
Album Listening Party!
Saturday, October 7, 2023
4:30 PM
The Government Center
ALBUM PREMIERE:
IT’S PSYCHEDELIC BABY MAGAZINE
FOLLOWING ME SONG + VIDEO PREMIERE:
RAVEN SINGS THE BLUES
LEFT ON COAST SINGLE + VIDEO PREMIERE:
THE SPILL MAGAZINE
A STREET CALLED FINLAND SINGLE PREMIERE:
GOD IS IN THE TV ZINE
THE STARFISH SONG SINGLE PREMIERE:
WEEK IN POP
THE GARMENT DISTRICT is music by multi-instrumentalist Jennifer Baron, a founding member of Brooklyn’s The Ladybug Transistor (Merge Records). The Garment District has released albums on Night-People Records, La Station Radar and Kendra Steiner Editions, and has contributed songs for compilations on Moon Glyph, Crash Symbols, Crafted Sounds, Esopus and others. The Garment District has performed at the VIA Music & New Media Festival, The Andy Warhol Museum, Ladyfest, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Music SPACE series, THRIVAL Festival, Deutschtown Music Festival, Spirit's Summer Recess, Strip District Music Fest, and more, and has recorded live for The Andy Warhol Museum’s Silver Studio Sessions and Doug Aitken’s STATION TO STATION video series. The Garment District also features vocals by Jennifer’s first cousin, Lucy Blehar, a writer/producer/actor based in Los Angeles. The band also features Dan Koshute (guitar & vocals), Greg Langel (synthesizer), Corry Drake (bass), Shivika Asthana (Papas Fritas; drums), Sean Finn (drums) and Alex Korshin (vocals). Music and lyrics are composed and arranged by Jennifer.
Jennifer has worked with legendary English musician and producer Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum, E.A.R.), and her prior releases have featured contributions by Jowe Head (Swell Maps and Television Personalities) and Kevin C. Smith (The Artificial Sea). She has also composed original soundtracks for the SYNC'D film series, contributed music and photography to ESOPUS Magazine, and participated in acclaimed artist Doug Aitken’s Station-to-Station project. She has also created an audio installation and cassette tape and photographic work release for group exhibitions curated at SPACE Gallery in Pittsburgh's Cultural District, and her music has been featured in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's podcast.
As a founding member of Brooklyn’s The Ladybug Transistor (Merge Records), Jennifer co-wrote, performed and recorded original music for several full-length albums, compilations and singles; toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Scandinavia; performed at international music festivals including SXSW, CMJ, The Bowlie Weekender, Hultsfred, Emmaboda (Sweden), Loud Music (Halifax), Athens Pop Fest, Oy (Norway) and more. With The Ladybug Transistor, Jennifer has also collaborated with Soft Machine co-founder Kevin Ayers; performed live on national Swedish TV and Norwegian Radio; contributed to the Velvet Underground tribute CD, Rabid Chords; and toured and performed with bands such as Of Montreal, Superchunk, Yo La Tengo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Luna, The Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, St. Etienne, The Silver Apples, and many others. With Pittsburgh’s The New Alcindors, Jennifer played organ and percussion, performed in East Coast and Mid-Atlantic venues; performed at the Mattress Factory Museum’s Urban Garden Party; and recorded a full-length album at the legendary Castle Studios in Nashville.
Songs of Gilded Cloth: The Garment District
If you’ve ever walked the streets of a certain nondescript section of midtown Manhattan — positioned roughly between Times Square and 34th Street, extending a few blocks on either side of Broadway — you might have admired the many clothing-centric stores you can find there. These are not shops where people go to buy a new coat or pair of pants, but to procure the raw ingredients from which such clothes are made; the stores are stocked with a staggering array of fabrics — seemingly imported from every time and place — along with the buttons, threads, ribbons, feathers, snaps, and whatever else you might need to construct something incredible to wear. Known as the Garment District, it’s been the center of the fashion industry in New York City for the better part of a century; appropriately — even perfectly — it’s also the name of a Pittsburgh-based band (albeit one with NYC roots) that, on their debut LP, If You Take Your Magic Slow, offers a collection of songs that seems to be fashioned from a similar array of musical artifacts, collected by bandleader Jennifer Baron in her travels across the landscapes of popular and underground music. Each song by The Garment District, in other words, is like an ornate evening gown, carefully designed and intricately tailored into something that’s improbable, surreal, pleasurable, and most of all original. The band’s music, like the best fashion, offers us a glimpse into a world we want to belong to, one we value for its strangeness,
its mix of commercial chaos and beauty, its ability to mesmerize and to jar us from the tedium of daily life. The Garment District hasn’t reinvented rock as a form — but to listen to this album is to hear things you never imagined ... While The Garment District may be provocative, they are never preachy; like any great writers of pop music, they are always — on some important level — fun. The instrumental numbers have a frenetic (though constrained and highly orchestrated) exuberance reminiscent of the great film and television soundtracks of the ’60s and ’70s, which doesn’t mean these songs need images to accompany them. The music is complex enough to stand on its own; it offers its own narrative. The instrumentals also display a remarkable spectrum of mood, from an ominous, don’t-fuck-with-me quality (“Cavendish on Whist”) to a space-age bachelor(ette)-pad vibe (“June’s End”) to a Christmas carol reimagined in a classical/baroque style (“Song for Remy Charlip”) to a new-wave Flock-of-Seagulls dirge (“Velvie Woolvine”). Yet despite this range of sound, each of the songs has the unmistakable imprint of The Garment District, which is a remarkable feat for a band making its full-length debut. At the same time, this album will make you look forward to what the band is going to do next.
– Matthew Gallaway, New York City
[Photo by John Columbo]
“Electronic dream pop nuggets.”
“At once approaching Krautrock frenetics, the band would swerve into ‘60s California Spector-rock and then AM Gold pop before careening back into terrestrial psychedelia.”
“A beautiful and richly atmospheric collection of tunes that have hints of Eno, Bowie and Vangelis running through them; more listens reveal more layers until you realise there is plenty going on at which point it is hard to get the thing off the turntable.”
