Private Eleanor blog

Two bits of news:

1. I made a solo record that's available for free download at AustinStahl.net. It's a record I made by myself at home, just for fun (much like the earliest PE stuff) but I liked it enough to want to share it with you. This is the first music I've ever released under the name Austin Stahl. Go download it! If you like Private Eleanor music at all, I think you'll enjoy it.

2. Private Eleanor's back catalog is now available digitally at our new digital store: privateeleanor.bandcamp.com. Our first three records had never been available digitally, until now... And our first album, Deciduous, had been out of print completely, unavailable in ANY form, for over five years. Well, we've remedied that at long last. Go get them all! 

They're name-your-price for great-sounding high-quality files (320k mp3s AAC, FLAC, and more!). 

Posted by Austin at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been a while... The news here is that we're on a new compilation CD from The Beechfields Record Label, which features two previously-unreleased Private Eleanor recordings. (One is a new song we recorded at home late last year, and the other is a Pupa's Window cover recorded during the Sweethearting sessions.)

The compilation is called This City of Neighborhoods, and it's FREE! Find out more and get your copy at http://www.thebeechfields.com/thiscity.html. (You can stream the whole thing there too.)

I've been helping to put this thing together (and promising it to you all) for nearly a year now, and I couldn't be happier that it's finally done and ready for you to hear. Most of the songs on it, including our two tracks, are unavailable anywhere else. All of them are good. Go get one!


In other news, I just finished co-producing and playing drums on a full-length record for Small Sur. We're really proud of it. It'll be released at the end of the summer via a cool little Portland label called Tender Loving Empire. It's been fun working on "someone else's" music for a change, and being able to influence the result in a different way... There will be some more of that this summer, on a couple other friends' projects, if all goes according to plan.

There might be a low-key live appearance or two of our own music too. Stay tuned.

Posted by Austin at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a long interview with me on BrightestYoungThings.com, posted earlier this week.

Posted by Austin at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Year-end list season is definitely over, but I don't care. Here are my favorite records of 2007. No commentary this year, because I am lazy. Note locals at numbers 5 and 11!

1 Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge)
2 Iron and Wine, The Shepherd's Dog (Sub Pop)
3 Radiohead, In Rainbows (self-released)
4 The Clientele, God Save the Clientele (Merge)
5 Monarch, If Children (self-released)
6 St Vincent, Marry Me (Beggars Banquet)
7 John Vanderslice, Emerald City (Barsuk)
8 Nina Nastasia & Jim White, You Follow Me (Fatcat)
9 Blonde Redhead, 23 (4AD)
10 Menomena, Friend and Foe (Barsuk)
11 Neil Cotterill, Moonshot (The Beechfields)
12 Dr Dog, We All Belong (Park the Van)
13 PJ Harvey, White Chalk (Island)
14 Sloan, Never Hear the End of It (Yep Roc)
15 Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)

I will also take this opportunity to note that Marian and I will be playing a duo set, consisting mainly of covers of songs we like, at Arlington VA's fabulous Galaxy Hut on Feb 25. As you may have gathered, we're not playing a lot in public these days, so if you're able to make it out to that, you should.

Other than that -- we're doing well, relaxing, working mostly on things non-musical (jobs, art, grad school) and a bit on things musical (writing songs in our living room that will probably stay in our living room for a while, getting that long-rumored Beechfields compilation finally finished). Hibernating is pretty nice in the winter.

--Austin.

Posted by Austin at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been popping up on some best-of-2007 lists!

Al at City Paper's 'Noise' blog puts Sweethearting at #15 on his top local albums list, and our April Walters Art Museum show at #9 on his best live shows of the year list.

And local blog Feed My Face calls Sweethearting the #8 local record of the year.

If you've seen others, please let us know.

And if you'd like to check out the record, we'll remind you that it's still available for the special price of only $5, at our special CD sale page.

Posted by Austin at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The big news: We've already discussed this in person with a number of you who know us, but for everyone else, it's time to make the announcement: We'll soon be going on an indefinite hiatus. We all still like each other, and we're not thinking of this with the finality of a "breakup"... but after early 2008, there will be no more Private Eleanor shows planned for the forseeable future.

There are a lot of reasons for this decision, but the short answer is that we feel we need a break from being in a band, and some time to try other things. I won't speak for my bandmates, but I personally am quite excited about hibernating for a while, writing and recording at home, and focusing on just making music for myself again. In the meantime, though, there are a couple of final shows in the works, and two compilation album appearances: Love Goes On, the tribute album to Grant McLennan, on which we cover a Go-Betweens song, is out now on Rare Victory Records; and two new PE recordings will appear on the Beechfields Record Label compilation this winter.

CD clearance sale! Here's the biggest thing for now: We're also trying to make sure all the remaining copies of our CDs make it to good homes... So we're having a big clearance sale on all three of our remaining titles: Only $5 per CD when you buy them directly from us (at http://www.privateeleanor.com/cdsale.html), and we'll even ship them to you for free! We have a limited number left of Sweethearting, No Straight Lines, and My Pious Friends, and we won't be getting any more pressed when they're gone, so go snap them up now! If you have friends who might enjoy our music, please forward them the link -- or just buy them a copy!

(Note that Sweethearting will remain available digitally through iTunes, but we have no control over what they charge, which means it will remain $9.99. I'd say it's better to pay us half that and get a CD with uncompressed sound quality and a cool foldout poster... but the choice is yours.)

We are incredibly grateful to every one of you who has come to a show, bought a CD, or offered words of encouragement (or a floor to sleep on) over the past few years. Having the opportunity to meet so many great people has been one of the best things about being in this band. Thank you.

Posted by Austin at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Going out of print!

The three Private Eleanor albums that are currently available as of this writing (Sweethearting, No Straight Lines, and My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions) will likely be going out of print soon! When the current pressings of these records are gone, we do not plan on repressing them -- probably ever. Once they're gone, they're really GONE.

So if you have ever thought about picking up one of our records... or you've been meaning to check out that one you don't yet own... or you've always enjoyed the songs on our site or myspace, but never got around to buying a disc -- Now would be a REALLY good time!

All three CDs are available directly from the band, here on our website. Buy more than one CD and we'll throw in some extra free stuff!

Oh, but there's new music coming!

That's right, as the Private Eleanor catalog passes into out-of-print-ness, new PE music is on its way, in the form of two compilations.

First, Love Goes On (a tribute to Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens) is released in October, featuring our cover of the title song -- alongside tracks from the Clientele, the Bats, Portastatic, Ivy, Stars, and a bunch of other great bands. Rare Victory Records is taking preorders for the album now!

Then, at the end of the year, The Beechfields will release its first compilation album. Private Eleanor is contributing two never-before-heard recordings: Our cover of an unreleased pupa's window song called "Capitan" (recorded during the Sweethearting sessions at Silver Sonya last fall) and a new song called "Scare Yourself to Death". We're excited to have both of these out for everyone to hear. More info about this release coming soon...

On another note: A thank-you...

 ...to everyone who came out early to HampdenFest for us last weekend; it was so nice to see so many friends out there supporting us.

Posted by Austin at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)