Radio Exile | Pattern Is Movement Announce Spring Tour With St. Vincent

Pattern Is Movement Announce Spring Tour With St. Vincent

By Shawn M. Smith April 17, 2009 Post a comment | Email the author

In the wake of their acclaimed new album, All Together, Philly’s own, Pattern Is Movement [MySpace] have announced that they are hitting the road with friend and long-time supporter St. Vincent throughout May and June. This should make for one of the best tours of the Spring – if you haven’t heard the new tracks from All Together, you need to come and check them out.

Tour dates, mp3s and more after the jump

[mp3] Pattern Is Movement – “Right Away”
[mp3] Pattern Is Movement – “Jenny Ono”

Tour Dates

5/19/09 Somerville, MA @ Somerville Theatre
5/20/09 New York, NY @ Webster Hall
5/21/09 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
5/25/09 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
5/27/09 San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club
5/28/09 Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
5/30/09 San Diego, CA @ Casbah
5/31/09 Phoenix, AZ @ Modified Arts
6/02/09 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
6/03/09 Omaha, NE @ Slowdown Jr.
6/04/09 Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
6/05/09 Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater
6/07/09 Chicago, IL @ Epiphany
6/09/09 Newport, KY @ Southgate House
6/10/09 Lexington, KY @ The Dame
6/11/09 Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge
6/13/09 Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
6/14/09 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
6/16/09 Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
6/18/09 Dallas, TX @ Granada Theatre
6/19/09 Austin, TX @ Mohawk

A lot can happen in a year. What began with Chris Ward and Andrew Thiboldeaux’s creation of All Together in 2008 has bloomed into the beast of a seemingly-timeless Pattern Is Movement. They stretch, bend, and break on stage — and so many of us have been lucky enough to see them over the past months. Tours with Shudder to Think, Subtle, O’Death, and Maps & Atlases highlight a year of odometer-spinning, heart-pounding, and brain-waking music…all at the hands (and voices, and, some would say, beards) of these two guys from Philly. And that was just their warm-up.

Pattern Is Movement met Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) back in 2006. Annie had heard PIM’s 2005 album Stowaway and it was “love at first hear.” They kept in touch. She finished her debut Marry Me just a few months later and talked to Pattern Is Movement about touring with St. Vincent, as well as being her backing band (a first for the guys – who promptly said “yes!”). Annie, Andrew, and Chris booked an easterly tour themselves, played for some small-but-seriously- enthusiastic crowds, and solidified a musical love affair based on an endless supply of respect and adoration as friends, tourmates, and collaborators. Pattern Is Movement opened for St. Vincent in Philadelphia last year, revealing their newly-minted two-man live incarnation to a subsequently-inspired Annie. She championed All Together and was even the first to review the album in the iTunes Music Store (for real).

Pattern Is Movement will be packing musical heat this tour: new songs, untested and unrecorded, will grace their evolving performance. The chance to reunite with Annie is also a chance to share with audiences all over the country, which Chris characterizes as an opportunity to “help us learn the songs, both structurally and emotionally” before they head into the studio later this year. “This is a new direction for us,” says Chris. We’ll follow you there.

“Their music is best described as modular, building complete songs from sub-units of melody and beat. The result is out there, but it doesn’t seem pretentious because of the giddy single-mindedness with which the band attacks the concept…It takes special musicians to make a sound like this work, but three LPs into their career, Thiboldeaux and Ward seem to have it figured out, creating an accessible album that nonetheless sounds unlike anything any other band is doing.” – Pitchfork on All Together

Pattern Is Movement’s All Together is available on CD, LP, and MP3 from Hometapes [Official Site]