If you’re reading this on Sunday night (THE April Fool’s) or the early parts of Monday morning, Tilly and the Wall are knee-deep in jetlag, groggy and incoherently dragging their way to the end of a 26-hour trip to Portugal where they are meeting up with Sub Pop artists CSS and set to begin one of the gnarliest dance parties that’s ever befallen the modern world. At the centers of the now seven Tillies – a guitarist and live drummer have been added to the live mixture – are mirror balls for hearts that slowly rotate counter-clockwise, sending out white shards of reflection. There are also tattoos and an impossible to ignore amount of unparalleled joyousness swimming around in everyone in this band of longtime friends. It’s almost sinister how much fun they’re able to have with a music that is most impressive in the way it’s able to rouse up such passion and fervency with such minimalism. The band was playing a short run of shows through its/our native Midwest in early October when they stopped in at a fairly early hour on a Sunday – coming from home in Omaha en route to a gig in Madison that night. It wasn’t jetlag when they came, but the early morning start time to reach Rock Island by the noon hour had them rightfully struggling with tiredness. It’s incredible how quickly that feeling is discarded by the Tillies and replaced with a form of effervescence that is electric and youthful, but realistic and time-tested. They sing songs that are warm and soft to the touch. They perspire and glisten. They have pulses that could chop up the concrete of an old road that needs to be destroyed and replaced. They hammer home the finer points of life – that nothing bad lasts forever and if you want to sing as loud as your lungs can take or dance your ass completely off without a care in the world, you can do that with reckless abandon. So they shook off that sleepiness and pulled from the services of a piano that we’d just got into the studio that same week. It wasn’t completely in tune, but the Tillies made the first use of it on a session with great results. Kianna played some darts and Jamie was tapping in her comfy lounge clothing of tights and a T-shirt. What put Daytrotter over the top in luring them into the studio was Of Montreal playing Jamie and Derek’s wedding last year. They talked about having already done a session with us and that was that. Let the record show that Kevin Barnes is a good man. Now, if Tilly would just play Conor Oberst’s wedding (should he get married anytime soon) and repeat history, we’d be happy about those results too. – Sean Moeller
 
First song
Bad Education (Tilly and The Wall) [4.31MB] [4896 downloads]


– original version appears on Bottoms of Barrels
A flamenco, world beat, song about sexual identity

Second song
Love Song (Tilly and The Wall) [3.12MB] [4854 downloads]


– original version appears on Bottoms of Barrels
A song about falling in love

Third song
Nights of the Living Dead (Tilly and The Wall) [3.70MB] [4767 downloads]


– original version appears on Wild Like Children
A song about finding hope, and deciding to live your life, even after losing a close friend

Fourth song
Rainbow in the Dark (Tilly and The Wall) [3.99MB] [4673 downloads]


– original version appears on Bottoms of Barrels
A song about growing up, up to what we are dealing with now, and how it’s all beautiful.