You can also read an interview with director Matt Richards on the Vine

Pikelet’s national tour begins this Saturday. Dates are:

Pikelet Bandcamp

Pikelet Facebook

Not so surprisingly, after their recent nomination for the 2010 Australian Music Prize, Melbourne pop psych wonders Pikelet are currently in hot demand.

This Saturday the band play a one-off show at the Famous Spiegel Garden in Melbourne. Then they  head up to Sydney for the AMP Alive Shortlist Showcase on Weds March 2, alongside fellow nominees the Holidays and Richard In Your Mind. They will also appear the following night at the AMP winner announcement party (cross your fingers for us!). And now Pikelet have announced a double headline show for Saturday March 19 at Melbourne’s Toff In Town, with ascendant chanteuse Brous.

It’s been a big 12 months for Pikelet and the band’s dazzling frontispiece Evelyn Morris. Whether it’s Pikelet supporting bands like Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Broadcast and the Dirty Projectors, or Evelyn touring Australia in Clare Bowditch’s band supporting Leonard Cohen, or drumming for Japanese noise icons Boredoms, neither have stopped moving. This show will be one of the Pikelet band’s last Melbourne appearances before heading away to work on their next album.

So here’s a list of Pikelet’s upcoming shows:

Saturday Feb 26, 10.30pm Melbourne – Famous Spiegel Garden, Southbank

tickets $15+bf from http://spiegel.theartscentre.com.au/

Wednesday March 2, 6.30pm Sydney – Annandale Hotel, Annandale

AMP Alive Shortlist Showcase, with the Holidays and Richard In Your Mind

tickets $16+bf from www.annandalehotel.com

Saturday March 19, 8.30pm Melbourne – Toff In Town, city

with Brous- tickets $10 on the door

RICHARD IN YOUR MIND + PIKELET NATIONAL CO-HEADLINE TOUR

September/October 2010

They’ve both put out second albums this year, both won heady praise and adulation around the nation for their musical brilliance, and now Melbourne’s Pikelet and Sydney’s Richard In Your Mind join forces for a national co-headline tour of earthshaking incredible-ness.

The wildly eclectic, patently amazing and ridiculously entertaining Richard In Your Mind are still a little puffed up from all the plaudits heaped on My Volcano, which earned albums of the week around the nation and handsome Triple J rotation on its release in June. They smashed a national launch tour in July and are now slavering to get back on the road.

Meanwhile Melbourne’s dazzling, incomparable Pikelet have enjoyed a similarly meteoric trajectory with Stem, which was released to the sound of a million jaws dropping back in February. Flogged by community radio and Triple J alike, and showered in critical superlatives, Stem hit the spot and kept hitting it until a thrilling musical climax echoed across the land.

Separately they were unstoppable, but together Richard In Your Mind and Pikelet are INDESTRUCTIBLE.

RICHARD IN YOUR MIND/PIKELET CO-HEADLINE TOUR

Geelong

Friday Sep 17

The National Hotel

tickets $12+bf from www.mohshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

or $15 on the door if still available

Melbourne

Saturday Sep 18

Curtin Bandroom

tickets $12+bf from www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

or $15 on the door if still available

Canberra

Friday Sep 24

ANU Bar

$15 on the door – door sales only

Sydney

Saturday Sep 25

The Gaelic Club

tickets $12+bf from www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

or $15 on the door if still available

Katoomba

Sunday Sep 26

Gearins Hotel

tickets $12+bf from www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

or $15 on the door if still available

Toowoomba

Thursday Sep 30

Spotted Cow

free entry

Gold Coast

Friday Oct 1

Coolangatta Hotel

tickets $12+bf from www.oztix.com.au and www.moshtix.com.au

or $15 on the door if still available

Brisbane

Saturday Oct 2

The Clubhouse

tickets $12+bf from www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

or $15 on the door if still available

Stem Album of the Week at 3RRR, 2SER, 6RTR, EDGE FM, SYN FM
‘Weakest Link’ single playlisted at JJJ

“She’s an astronaut” The Age EG
“The palette of Pikelet is so wide and expressive, and it’s the thing that makes listening to the entirety of Stem such a joy” Dom Alessio, Mess & Noise
“Bewitching. Sumptuous, somersaulting summer music” 4/5 Herald Sun
**** (four stars) Sydney Morning Herald
“Pikelet took the audience on a journey through death and pain, to the simplicity of love and life” Fasterlouder
“Stem is a musical for modern wonderment” 4/5 The Sunday Age
“A wondrous Lewis Carroll-styled musical excursion” Time Off
“Prodigious pop talent” MAG
“toybox soundscapes” Who Weekly
“Beneath all the carefully placed bleeps, bird noises, ticks and shuffling drums are some very fine songs indeed” 4/5 Alternative Media Group

As brilliant reviews like these pile in for Evelyn ‘Pikelet’ Morris’ second album Stem, the Melbourne psych-pop wonder is shaping up to become one of the artists of the year.

After a busy summer spent as national support choice du jour for the cream of international touring bands including Dirty Projectors, Devendra Banhart, Patrick Watson, Frida Hyvonen and Kaki King, Pikelet now has a string of national launches for Stem lined up with her full four-piece band.

Pikelet Stem Tour

MELBOURNE ALBUM LAUNCH
Saturday-Sunday April 10-11
Northcote Social Club
Saturday wth The Twerps + Parking Lot Experiments + DJ Jens Lekman
Sunday with World’s End Press + Love Connection + DJ Jens Lekman
tickets via www.northcotesocialclub.com / 9486 1677

PERTH
Friday April 23
Amplifier Bar
with Pond + Guy Blackman + Wind Waker
tickets via www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

SYDNEY
Thursday April 29
Oxford Art Factory
with Songs + The Maple Trail
tickets via www.moshtix.com.au / 1300 438 849

ADELAIDE
Friday May 28
The Metro
with guests to be announced

The name comes from Evelyn’s mother, who used to spoil her kids with pikelets when she was a little strapped for cash. “She always had eggs, she always had flour and powdered milk in the cupboard, so she would just throw together pikelets,” Evelyn told Mess + Noise Magazine. “It was a really big deal for me, but I found out later that it was just what she did when she had nothing else.”

After her acclaimed self-tited debut in 2007, Pikelet has expanded into a four piece live band, taking her wide-eyed pop sailing into the psychedelic stratosphere. New album Stem is an incredible expansion of vision, filled with a kind of cosmic space-prog clearly the work of a woman enchanted.