After years toiling in the trenches, local math-rock five-piece Del Rey are finally charting in Germany with their latest full-length, 2010’s Immemorial. And to what do they owe this sudden surge in popularity? A tour? A hit single? Hardly! Turns out Teutonic shoppers have the band confused with sultry pop star Lana Del Rey, and it’s caused Immemorial to make several appearances in Amazon Deutschland’s top 20—it peaked at number seven earlier this winter. According to Del Rey’s Jason Ward, CD sales jumped to about 500 copies in November—around the time Lana’s “Blue Jeans” hit the European charts—causing their German label, Golden Antenna, to re-press it. Ward doesn’t rule out the possibility that this uptick was caused by Del Rey being awesome, but he gives Lana some credit: “It seems hard to think of another reason a criminally underappreciated band of oldsters such as ourselves would have a sales spike like that, though [Germans] do get all wet over both David Hasselhoff and Die Toten Hosen, so who knows?”
New Band Alert: Danny Black (formerly of the Blacks) is back on the scene with Precious Blood, a new band with songstress Nora O’Connor and former Drapes front man Kevin McDonough. They got together in September to play Bloodshot’s 17th anniversary party at the Hideout, and then they stayed together! On Valentine’s Day they’ll open for the Heartless Bastards at Lincoln Hall.
Local post-emo four-piece Hidden Hospitals recently self-released their debut, EP 001, which is sure to appeal to fans of Jawbox, Cave-In, and Brand New. (There are still people into that stuff, right?) Two members might look familiar: front man David Raymond and guitarist Steve Downs are from defunct emotionally emotional Equal Vision punk unit Damiera, a band that also included Evan Thomas Weiss of Into It. Over It. On Fri 2/3 Hidden Hospitals will play Pancho’s with Channel Four, Black Arrow, and Dari.
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