Wednesday, March 12   9:30 p.m.
Maggie Mae's Gibson Room   (512 Trinity St)

  Slaraffenland - Polaroids
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Slaraffenland, a five-piece from Denmark, are still gathering critical acclaim for their album "Private Cinema", released on Hometapes back in June 2007 (and featuring crazy packaging by toy-makers and installation artists Friends With You). They've been described as "Sun Ra meets Broken Social Scene" and "Animal Collective meets This Heat." They tend to remind us of a free-jazzed up Sonic Youth. Others have even likened them to Radiohead - and, interestingly, they were chosen to do a track on Stereogum's recent tribute album to OK Computer (alongside John Vanderslice, Vampire Weekend, Cold War Kids, The Twilight Sad, David Bazan, etc.!). Slaraffenland expertly expanded on the guitar-bass-drums standard with brass and woodwind instruments, various racket-makers, and transfixing gang vocals. Most of them childhood friends (and Mike and Christian identical twins), they've spent years developing a sound that conjures everything from tumbling jazz to noise to melodious addictive building rock. After a summer of shows, including the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, Slaraffenland came to the US for their first nationwide tour in October 2007 and they, ahem, f**king slayed. They might be the best live band you see this year.