Aussie pop duo An Horse have announced a Fall tour of the States, starting 16 September at Austin City Limits Festival. The headline US tour follows a busy year already for the band, having already played dates in Canada, USA, Germany and Australia. Their sophomore album Walls was released in April this year.

An Horse are also set to play Osheaga festival in Montreal this coming weekend – (catch their set at 2pm on Sunday 31 July, and look out for coverage from Osheaga on Music Vice) – before heading to Chicago for Lollapalooza.

Tickets for the US tour go on sale to the general public this Thursday, 28 July at 12pm local time. Pre-sale tickets are available via AnHorse.com.

Full dates below:

Tour dates (US MM/DD/YY date format):
8/6/11 – Chicago, IL @ Lollaplooza
9/16/11 – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits
9/18/11 – St. Louis, MO @ The Old Rock House
9/20/11 – Akron, OH @ Musica
9/21/11 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop
9/22/11 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
9/23/11 – Iowa City, IA @ The Mill
9/24/11 – Lawrence, KS @ The Jackpot
9/26/11 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
9/27/11 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
9/28/11 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux
9/30/11 – Seattle, WA @ El Corzon Lounge
10/1/11 – Portland, OR @ Bunk Bar
10/3/11 – Oakland, CA @ The New Parish
10/4/11 – San Luis Obispo, CA @ S.L.O. Brewing Company
10/15/11 – Jacksonville, FL @ Underbelly

© Brian Banks, Editor, Music Vice

Australian indie duo An Horse have released a free teaser track taken from their forthcoming sophomore album Walls.

Yesterday, Tuesday 18 January, An Horse announced via Twitter that “Trains and Tracks” was available for free download. Initial demand was so high that the band’s website crashed but things are working again now and the song is available as free download at AnHorse.com by subscribing to the band’s email mailing list.

Walls will arrive in stores in April on Mom + Pop Music.

An Horse are set to return to North America in April to play Bamboozle festival in New Jersey, with further US and Canadian tour dates expected to coincide with the new album.

© Brian Banks, Editor, Music Vice

Related links:
Gig review and photos – An Horse in store at Criminal Records, Toronto, January 2010

Gig/Concert: Tegan & Sara with An Horse in Montreal
Venue: Place des Arts, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, Montréal, QC
Date: 18 January 2010
Headliners: Tegan and Sara
In one word: Heartbreak

Tegan and Sara at Place des Arts, 18 January 2010

Monday night it was my fellow Calgary ex-pats Tegan and Sara, playing at Place des Arts (“Akin to playing the Starship Enterprise,” they later post on their website) touring in support of their latest album, Sainthood. A show that started with heartbreak (… for me: ever seen a camera lens bounce? No? That’s because they don’t) later ended with songs about heartbreak, interspersed with plenty of sisterly rivalry in between.

I missed out on opening act An Horse, but thankfully Brian caught them in Toronto…

Growing up in Calgary, I vaguely remember seeing their names up on the whiteboard announcing upcoming shows at a local coffee shop where I spent the majority of my adolescence in a smoky, caffeine-infused haze. I never did see them back then, despite everyone around me picking up on their music early on. Only now, with one-half of the duo (the Sara half) living in Montréal, do I finally check them out.

The twins are many things during the show – adorable and talkative, talented and goofy – and even without their respective collections of tattoos it’s fairly easy to tell them apart – Tegan’s the one always taking the piss out of her sister, while Sara’s the “shy… weak” one, in her own words (awww). Tegan amiably tries to pimp her sister out the crowd (“… She’s 5’2”, has asthma…”) after Sara mentions she never gets recognized in Montréal, despite living here almost 8 years. Tegan, however, tells the crowd that on visits to her sister, she’s always bumping into people who recognized her; they’re twins, so she has only one explanation: “I think you get recognised, you’re just not that friendly … She’s so shy.” Double awww. I’d be mortified, but Sara is clearly used to it; and at least more than a few in the crowd seem more than willing to take her up on the offer.

Their music taps the rich vein of indie pop/rock and the lyrics are solidly crafted reflections on love and heartbreak; both girls take turns writing their own songs, overlapping their personalities in the music. I really like both their singing styles – it’s only in this aspect that I have a hard time telling them apart on recordings – somewhere on the scale between melodic warble and twang, rising a bit more forcefully on louder songs like “Hell”.

The set is mostly taken from Sainthood, bookended by tangential sisterly banter; good stories are half the show, with Sara sometimes resembling an adorable five-foot female Milton affecting a sheepish mumble when threatened with being married off to *someone* in the Montréal crowd. From what songs I managed to check out before the show, I can pick out “Hell”, and “Alligator”, and “Walking with a Ghost,” (yes, the one covered by The White Stripes, and no, I don’t care who you think did a better job, YouTube commenters).

The encore is mostly stripped down acoustic versions, like “Back in Your Head”, “Feel It in My Bones” and “My Number”, pared back to the emotional core. My Number remains the favourite of the evening – a sweetly keening, melancholic song, sad enough to stick in the back of my throat by the end of the song. It gives an earnest ending to the evening, which then takes off at the end with the slightly-more-buoyant “Living Room”, off of the album If It Was You. If it’s one thing I can take away from the show, I took my sweet time getting to know their music, and at least the wait paid off.

(Props for supporting a good cause: I’ll point out that they’re donating all the money made from the sale of their tour posters to Haiti relief efforts; Médecins Sans Frontières and Partners in Health are the beneficiaries of the sales so yay! for T&S for doing this.)

© Liz Keith

Gig review and show photos by Music Vice editor Brian Banks

Gig/Concert: An Horse in-store show at Criminal Records, Toronto
Venue: Criminal Records, 493 Queen Street West, Toronto
Date: 20 January, 2010
Headliners: An Horse
In one word: Cosy

Tonight on a chilly evening in Toronto one of Canada’s finest musical exports of the moment, Tegan and Sara, were in town for the second night of a double-header in the city during their current tour which is taking them across Canada and then onto the US. I’d hoped to be in attendance to photograph and review that show, but our Montreal reporter Liz had been afforded that privilege just a couple of nights earlier at Place Des Arts (check the review here) meaning that I was going to have to look elsewhere for my hump day fix of live music. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far… Tegan and Sara’s current tour support An Horse were officially having the night off but that didn’t stop them turning up to play an early evening in-store gig at Criminal Records on Queen Street West.

I’ve been really keen to check out An Horse live and they did not disappoint.

For my first encounter with this Australian indie duo the setting was ideal: not least because of the intimacy of seeing them in such a confined space but also because they had once worked in a record store, meaning the band had plenty of stories to share. It turns out that the Brisbane record store where Kate Cooper and Damon Cox met was more than just a geographically polar opposite to Toronto’s Criminal Records, “This place is a lot cleaner than the record store we used to work at.” Kate was briefly hesitant at first to open up more on that topic, telling everyone that she didn’t want to repeat stories already told at other in-store appearances, but her and Damon were soon regaling tales of the decrepit shop they once worked at. They detailed encounters with the cockroaches that infested the place – they would crawl over the  computer keyboard and even made it inside the water cooler – and Kate told of how she had once turned up early for work to hide within the CD display case before leaping out to surprise Damon. “I was scared,” he admitted in deadpan style and with perfect comedy timing.

The banter was natural, charming, and entertaining, and An Horse’s friendly interaction really helped them light up the room. There was a fuzzy vibe throughout the packed out store, with those in the back half of the shop nearest the band sat down huddled on the floor in-between racks of CD’s and vinyl, while all the way to the entrance people stood clambering to get a view. Due to the season, the audience had arrived decked out with winter jackets, tuques and gloves, but of course such necessities weren’t required inside, and if the room temperature wasn’t enough to warm up frozen extremities then the glowing energy emitted tonight from An Horse certainly was. And for all the warmth and positive feelings that An Horse gave out, the good vibes were boomeranged back at them by the crowd of smiling faces.

An Horse played opened with “Camp Out” and continued to play through half a dozen songs from their 2009 debut Rearrange Beds, with Damon on drums (and mouth keyboard thingy for one song) and Kate on acoustic guitar and lead vocals. In-store gigs are stripped-down affairs by default but the sound heard tonight wasn’t far off what you’ll hear from An Horse on record. The band keep it simple with a style that is the perfect archetype for bare bones indie pop, with memorable melodies, foot-tapping beats and lyrics that any indie kid can confidently pick out lines from to write on random possessions or use as their display name on MSN messenger. It’s all disarmingly modest but that’s what makes it so accessible and likeable, and in a live setting the band channel their personalities and positive energy through the music in a way that makes it feel even more appealing.

At the tail-end of their gig, Kate stood up to take photo of the crowd, announcing (and I paraphrase this), “I really have to take a photo of this, my mum keeps telling me to get a real job…” - Mrs. Cooper if you need any reassurance; you have a talented daughter, with an equally talented partner in crime, and together they have a rad band with a fun name, and their music has captured the hearts of many fans here in Canada and An Horse will likely do the same wherever else their music and good vibes take them.

An Horse will be wrapping up their Canadian tour with T&S in Halifax, NS, on 27 January before returning to North America in April for dates with Kaki King.