the only children

Josh Berwanger unveils new project

After the second breath of his Lawrence country-tinged rock group The Only Children had a lifespan rivaling that of the Mayfly late last year, Josh Berwanger (The Anniversary) temporarily fell out of sights for the local music area once again. Yesterday, the songwriter revealed his new project that simply uses his own surname as the project’s title. Joining Berwanger is Ricky Salthouse (The Only Children, Cavaliers, and OK-based The Workweek and Sharktooth), Marc Benning (34 Satellite, Carrier), Jim MacPherson (Guided by Voices, The Breeders, The Amps – I know!), and Carly Gwin (The Workweek, Sharktooth).

The new project more or less picks up where his last project left, venturing into a stringy, spaghetti western lull with breathy co-ed vocals, and gives a nice taste of what may be to come from the band’s future studio recordings. Anyone who remembers and still listens in earnest to the early ’00s project Canyon from KC ex-pat Brandon Butler will no doubt enjoy what is heard here. No video to embed unfortunately, but you can stream it on the band’s facebook page, and it is suggested you do so post-haste.

Return of The Only Children; White Flight kickstarter

September 15th will mark the unexpected return of Lawrence’s The Only Children to Kansas City’s Riot Room. The group quietly went on hiatus shortly after the release of their sophomore release, 2007’s Keeper of Youth, and even frontman and Anniversary co-creator Josh Berwanger has kept mostly low-key in that time, unassumingly working in his career as a high school basketball coach. The band has plans to head in to the studio soon to record their third full-length, likely with another revolving cast of musicians.

Opening for the band will be Casey Prestwood & the Burning Angels, the eponymous leader of which once played drums for Hot Rod Circuit and contributes to The Only Children. Also playing is Major Games, a trio best described as a grown-up mix of Lawrence’s Zoom and Panel Donor, and while it would be a stretch to lump the band in with the resurgence of twinkly riffed or reverb heavy shoegaze present in a variety of sounds these days, the members play a spaced out and prog-heavy sound of rock just begging for a conceptual full-length.

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http://vimeo.com/18422993

On the inverse, and decidedly not staying low-key is Anniversary co-creator Justin Roelofs, a man who has seemingly gone from being a mere mortal human to some kind of sentient, dimension-traversing being traveling the known realms of time and space. At least that is what the man would have you believe. Roelofs’ White Flight project is mid-way through a Kickstarter project for his new album, Pyramid of Light. I know not if he truly has the audacity to believe his project can get the over $12,000 in pledges required to succeed, or he created the entire project as a scheme to get people talking about his upcoming album. If he chose the latter, then he is without a doubt succeeding.

The project still has nearly a month left, but one who pledges can expect to get things such as “a 40 min. long sonic collage MIXTAPE made by White Flight in 2011, via mp3 download” for the lowest tier, or an “Amazing Crystal Quartz Necklace made by my partner Daughter of the Sun” for $111. Hell, for a meager $1,111, you can be so lucky as to receive “a CUSTOM larger scale sacred geometry painting, we can determine the image, color, etc. together via a phone conversation or skype session. Also I will share teaching on the I-Ching oracle in this conversation and teach you how to use it to make positive decisions in your life, if you aren’t already familiar with this system.” Sounds like quite a steal, that. Read the rest of the details from the project here.