Khaela Maricich, who is more commonly known to the layman as The Blow, will soon end three years of obscurity and return this summer with a new tour and release to boot.
For those unfamiliar with her work, the reclusive musician puts on quite the show. 2007’s Paper Television was an impressive blend of elctro-pop and witticisms that was as humorous as it was beautiful. But since then, after the departure of beat-master Jonah Bechtolt (now of YACHT), Miss Maricich has remained relatively quiet, only now returning with plans for a short U.S. tour in anticipation of a brand new EP, which will come later this year.
Set to launch on May 4th in Buffalo, the upcoming tour is a self-described as a mixture of “a narrative stage performance” and “a workshop, where she can test out and develop performance elements in an intimate setting.”
Last month, CoS had the chance to sit down briefly with Maricich after her set opening for Vampire Weekend in Salt Lake City. During the performance, she showed off a couple new songs, some of which may be appearing on the aforementioned EP. This was obviously a major point of interest for us, so we cut right to the chase:
So, Khaela, you’ve been quiet for the past couple years, so I guess the real question is: Where have you been?
(laughs) I guess that would be the question wouldn’t it? Well, I guess we’ll start at the beginning. Paper Television was released in 2006-ish, and we toured that album for all of 2007 and 2008. And during that time Jonah [Bechtolt] left to pursue his other project, YACHT. Which was understandable, I mean, you can’t be in two touring bands at once, obviously. So after 2008, I kind of just rested. In 2009, I picked up and moved to Brooklyn.
And you debuted some new stuff tonight, have you been writing new material much?
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Like I said I was just resting and I’m way too extroverted to be putting out albums once every two years as seems to be the custom within the industry. I’ve been working on writing songs for other artists a little bit, but as for new material for The Blow, I’ve been writing a lot. Most of the songs are written, and I’m just now beginning to record them. This brief stint opening for Vampire Weekend is kind of like a trial period for those new songs.
Well I was extremely impressed by what I heard.
Aww, thank you. That means a lot.
As far as that new material, you’ve always been one to write awesome quirky love songs like in “True Affection”, should we expect to see things like that in this new stuff?
(laughs) Yeah, I mean, that’s how I write. But a lot of Paper Television and Poor Aim came from what I was feeling at the time. It’s funny you mention “True Affection”, because that one just kinda happened all at once. It was like I woke up one morning, and it was like a cat coughing up a hairball. I had been carrying around this pain from a previous relationship for, like, a year and a half, and just one morning I woke up and barfed it all out. That song means a lot to me because it sort of captured that year and a half of pain and the lyrics just happened all at once.
The Blow 2010 Tour Dates:
05/04 Buffalo, NY @ The Ninth Ward
05/06 Portland, ME @ Space
05/07 Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House
05/08 Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
05/10 Hamden, CT @ The Space
05/11 Providence, RI @ The Speakeasy
05/13 Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands
