Pocket of Lollipops and Painting Soldiers Hit Speakeasy and Dada With Art and Music in Couples

The last time Pocket of Lollipops played Dada.
Our thoughts on Pocket of Lollipops' Cute Chaos video.

New York's Painting Soldiers and Miami's Pocket of Lollipops have a lot in common. They're both duos. One dude, one lady, and they're all a bunch of artists with instruments. They're all bringing their artsy and sonic talents to PBC to provide us with a sensory and cultural overload. Speakeasy Lounge and Dada will showcase not only their experimental yet melodic sounds but also you'll see work by Painting Soldiers' Anthony Deathvalley-Vitale, appropriately called Florida Kills Your Friends, and POL's Maitejosune Urrechaga's new drawing from her Animulz Collection.

You probably know a little bit about Pocket of Lollipops already. We've examined their "Cute Chaos" video and spoken with Urrechaga when it recently performed at Dada, also for an art gathering. No one keeps as busy as these two. Seriously, both of them actually work human jobs, and they've put out three albums this year alone; the latest is Broken Balloon -- here's the Kickstarter they created to get it pressed in vinyl. They collaborated with Miami basshead Mr. Feathers and supercute hip-hop kids Metro Zu on this venture. They toured 100 cities in the past three years. POL exhibited during Art Basel Miami Beach gain this past year (Urrechaga's been doing this for years) and in Chicago's Antena Gallery this March. Whew! Wait... There's more.

Tony Kapel, the masculine aspect of POL, is releasing his fourth novel, The Halls Ways, on July 21 at Swampspace Gallery in Miami. The duo tells us, "This event will invite the curious readers to a look inside of the notebooks, sketchpads, and found treasures collected and used during the book's conception." You'll see the whole bookmaking process, including Kapel's own artwork. The book's premise? A middle-school security guard witnesses the crap state of affairs in the public school system, and no one seems to care. We're talking FCATS and crappy parents, but from a unique perspective.

Miami New Times said of them: "This husband-and-wife tag team (writer-slash-filmmaker Tony Kapel on drums and visual artist Maite Urrechaga on guitar) is an adorably angst-y indie rock kinda thing. Just imagine if pre-divorce Kim and Thurston of Sonic Youth took a couple's retreat to Japan, got real deep into Tokyo cat cafe culture, and decided to record a concept album in the hotel bathroom."

This leads us to Painting Soldiers, in a way. Their recent album Wet Woods was produced by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo (talk about those credits!). After performing with Tommy Ramone, the band's bio claims he described their music as "beautiful and was impressed with their original songs."

Both acts will be hitting Delray and Lake Worth with a heavy dose of star-approved sounds and performances and tons of visual culture. It's not every day that a crew like this storms through town. And, think about this: Once you hang out with Painting Soldiers, you're like two degrees of separation from Thurston Moore. Pretty neat.

Painting Soldiers and Pocket of Lollipops play on Friday, July 13, at Speakeasy Lounge, 129 N.h Federal Highway, Lake Worth, and Saturday, July 14, at Dada, 52 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach.

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