Dying Alone acoustic at thecheappop.com’s Holiday Acoustic Benefit. Featuring a rare glimpse of a red-headed Sarah Guild. Good fun with a last minute piano part (because the piano was there…)

With winter pressing down, most people are inside, relaxing and reflecting. Not us! 2010 has been busy, productive, and insane, and we intend to keep it that way. A brief recap:

We released our debut LP, The Optimist, produced by Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade. Our song “Afterglow” was the lead track for Charlotte Russe’s summer denim campaign. Magnet debuted our first music video, made for our surprisingly upbeat single, Dying Alone. We topped critic lists at SXSW and CMJ, and Improper Bostonian named us Boston’s Best Band. We toured nationally in March, June, and October, with opening slots for Missing Persons, The Morning Benders, You Say Party! We Say Die!, and The Constellations.

Now, because we hate sleep, we’re finishing the year with a seven-date east coast tour, our fourth of the year. Here are the dates/details:

Thursday, 12/8: Atlanta, GA @ The Earl, w/Goldilocks, 9pm
Friday, 12/9: Pensacola, FL @ Vinyl Music Hall, w/The Constellations, 10pm
Sunday, 12/12: Boston, MA @ WAAF Bay State Rock, 97.7/107.3 (acoustic on-air), 10pm
Tuesday, 12/14: Westchester, NY @ Westchester Conservatory of Music, thecheappop.com holiday benefit, 8pm
Friday, 12/17: Manhattan, NY @ Crash Mansion, 9:45pm
Saturday, 12/18: Dover, NH @ Dover Brick House, w/Superfrog, 9pm
Saturday, 1/1: Boston, MA @ Great Scott, w/Freezepop and Plushgun, 9pm

As I write this, we are prepping our next release, an EP for March or April 2011. Sean Slade has been nodding approvingly at the new songs, and the studio time is already booked. A certain famous synth player may also be involved. It’s an exciting time.

Lastly, if you haven’t yet seen the video for “Dying Alone”, stop by www.newcollisions.com and have a look. You can’t miss it.

(courtesy Jeff Fasano, BlackBook Magazine)

We just had an unbelievable time at the 2010 College Music Journal Music Marathon (CMJ) in Manhattan. CMJ is the second biggest music conference in the country (second only to SXSW) and is always a downtown-Manhattan madhouse. Two shows, tons of press, and we walked away with nine free pairs of converse…not bad!

We received a number of great reviews, and were atop many critic lists as Best of Festival. We were also one of the few bands included on the exclusive CMJ Player CD, given by CMJ to all attendees of the festival.

Top 20 of Festival: College Music Journal
Top 20 of Festival: BlackBook Magazine
Top 10 of Festival: This Week in New York
CMJ 2010 “Band to Watch:” Paper Trail Music

NY Press also posted this very flattering live review. It’s in the second paragraph of the article, click here to read the review.

Big news!

The music video for our single, “Dying Alone,” just premiered exclusively on the Magnet Magazine homepage. Have a look at Magnet or play it below.

Over seven nights, we went to the busiest areas of Manhattan and performed the song in slow motion. In other words, we slowed down the song 4x and learned how to play and sing in grueling slow-mo. (Many pedestrians gave us odd looks. It was because we looked insane).

When the footage is sped up 4x, however, we appear to perform at normal speed. The background, however, speeds past in a blur of color and lights.

Good friend and upstart genius Andrew Nisinson filmed and directed the video. More of his work can be seen here, at Light Matters Films.

Release day! Our debut LP—The Optimist—is online everywhere today, and at Newbury Comics in Boston and Cambridge. Check it out on amazon.com for only $6.99.

The Boston Phoenix has just posted a long and awesome write-up on the album. Read it here

Recorded/mixed in under ten days with legendary producers Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, The Sounds, Dresden Dolls) The Optimist is the next stage of New Collisions—an intense depiction of our live sound, more closely aligned to early punk than new wave, more emphasis on guitar than synth, and lyrics about decline and fall. The lead single, “Dying Alone,” has already been featured by PopMatters, Magnet, FuseTV, CMJ, and more. Enjoy!

There have been a ton of reviews—we’ll post a long list of them tomorrow, when more have posted. So far so good!

Also,  listen to the entire album now on AOL/SPINNER’s “Listening Party!” For the next week, they will be featuring an entire album stream. Click the link above, scroll over, and listen away.

Thanks everyone! More updates soon!