Despite all of the New Moon Soundtrack and movie coverage across the net, the album’s artists are large by name, but the songs are fairly weak. With the exception of a few songs, one to be remembered from the list is Longwave’s Steve Schiltz, whose new side project Hurricane Bells has something even greater than any movie could offer.

As 2009 rolled on, Longwave’s late 2008 release Secrets Are Sinister stuck with us throughout the year. It wasn’t until now that we learned more was to come from one of our favorite newfound groups over the course of the last year. Now almost a year to the day later, we find ourselves looking onward to Schlitz’ latest work under the moniker Hurrican Bells. His new album will be called Tonight Is The Ghost and will be released digitally on November 10th via Vagrant Records.

MP3: Huricane Bells – The Winters In New York (buy)

From previewing a few tracks, the album takes Longwave’s veracity and tones it down, almost to a level like that of Fleet Foxes. The harmonizing and relaxed nature of a few of the tracks alongside folk guitar influences pair up perfectly with Schlitz’s vocal persona. Almost at once after hearing “This Year” or “Freezing Rain” something remniscent of Longwave was lingering, yet all previous foundations of the band were dismissed. Based on these few songs, Schiltz’ new work sounds quite promising and we are already licking our chops to hear “Tonight Is The Ghost” come November.

Says Schlitz:

So after months of planning to put “Tonight Is The Ghost” out myself, and talking it over with chris davies, we have decided to release the record through an actual record label.

Vagrant records is home to dashboard confessional, the hold steady, school of seven bells (nice name), paul westerberg, and lots of people i really like. the vagrant people have been very enthusiastic about TITG and HB, and i am really excited about being on their label.

So there it is: vagrant will release “Tonight Is The Ghost” digitally (itunes, etc) on November 10, 2009. there remains to be a discussion about how to put it out physically (in stores, etc) but one thing that is sure is that there will also be a deluxe, fancy style physical package available around february time, when TITG would have come out originally.

It is exciting for me….i hope you like the record.

Hurricane Bells will be playing one show during the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon in New York, NY, on Friday October 23rd at the Planetary Group/Future Sounds Skewer Party at Piano’s (4:30pm set time).

Tracklisting:

1. This Year
2. This Is A Test
3. I Can’t Remember
4. Tonight I’m Going To Be Like A Shooting Star
5. Darkness Is So Deep
6. Crocodile
7. Freezing Rain
8. The Winters In New York
9. The Cold Has Killed Us
10. Tenterhooks

Photo above by Kyle Gustafson

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