Picture Atlantic
Change is Coming

We say goodbye to a musical part of Picture Atlantic history. On February 13th, our first EP 'Change is Welcome' will be saying goodbye on our online stores!

Change is Coming

FREE Download of “I Need Some Sleep” cover by The Eels

When you are in a band it’s undeniable that you will make friends with people in other bands, and a lot of time, some fun and sweet collaborations come out of that. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Ash Maynor, lead vocalist, and mastermind behind Ghost and The City, for about 6 years now. Pretty much any time Picture Atlantic and Ghost and the City play a show together he will ring me and say “Wanna do something random and last minute with me?” and I will say “Who is this?”. Once he explains who he is , I quickly remember that we are old friends and then Ash and I get down to covering a song, or doing acoustic versions of each others tunes. Basically homie stuff.

This time around though, he suggested we cover “I Need Some Sleep” by The Eels in preparation for our show together on Nov. 30th at Bottom of The Hill in SF. The track..well..damn..it sounds amazing in my humble opinion. All recorded by ASh.

So please enjoy! You can also download the song for free too, so be sure to do that if you dig it! Thank you to Ash and Ghost and the City! We hope to see you Friday.

-Nik

Sometimes, we get asked questions. And sometimes we don’t have a place to answer them in an official capacity. This is now that place. Welcome to the first installment of Question Corner. I decided to create this little forum so any of you can…

Sometimes, we get asked questions. And sometimes we don’t have a place to answer them in an official capacity. This is now that place. Welcome to the first installment of Question Corner. I decided to create this little forum so any of you can shoot us a question (Via Twitter, Facebook , or Tumblr) and then we can answer it. So enjoy this first question, which we received as a Facebook wall post.

Adrian Discipulo Asked Via Facebook:

Always wondered; where does your guys’s Mod influence come from? It never donned on me until I saw Nik bought a fisthail parka from the surplus I work at, haha.


Well Adrian, This is a good question. I am going to have to sort of blame Ryan for this one. Maybe ‘blame’ isn’t the right word, but this Mod genesis really started with him honestly.

Growing up, Ryan and I would always talk about how cool it would be to wear fitted suits, ride around on vespas, and genuinely be suave dad-guys. We had no idea about Modernism at all, at this time. We just liked the way those things looked aesthetically and we kind of clumped them all together. 

Time went on though, and Ryan (who’s mother was a sweet college DJ and exposed Ryan to all kinds of hip music) began to tell me about this band, The Jam. As many people know , The Jam was a late 70’s, early 80’s, New Wave band from England, which was fronted by ‘The Modfather’ Paul Weller. They essentially single-handedly helped spark The Mod Revival of the late 70’s/Early 80’s. Ryan exposed me to a lot of their music, and because of that I decided to check out what this Mod thing was all about; and it blew my mind. It all fit for me like a Jigsaw puzzle for people with cataracts: easily. Really from there it was Mod all the way. 

In a greater response to your question though, the reality is that we are not a ‘Mod band’ in the sense of the word. Let me clarify. There are a lot of ‘Mod bands’ out there who essentially either sound like rip offs of The Jam, or The Who, The Small Faces, or some other Mod affiliated musical act, and who dress Mod and essentially use every angle or ounce of energy in their band to be..well..Mod. They push it as though if you are a Mod, you have to only play 60’s revival music to be in a band. Not the case at all with us. We like to dress classy and sharp, and that is where the Mod thing comes into play.

And also, your Army Surplus store is amazing. The only place I CAN find a fishtail Parka without paying $100 online. In fact, they are so rare, your boss offered to buy the parka I was wearing right off my back since he said he had someone waiting who would pay big money. Great store. People should check it out for all their Army Surpus Needs - The Mountain View Army Surplus.

From the archive

So a little while ago Daniel compiled some footage he took from our Summer tour of California with Cold Eskimo and then we promptly forgot about it. Here it is now, for your viewing enjoyment. We hope you dig this fun little behind the scenes sneak peek from the lens of Daniel’s malfunctioning camera. Expect a lot more, and higher quality versions, of this kind of stuff when we hit the road this Winter!

Also, don’t forget, if you’re in San Francisco we’ll be playing Bottom Of The Hill on November 30th. You can still get tickets here.