My Favorite, Troubled Hubble, Del Cielo Break Up

Although their debut long-player didn't emerge until 1999, Long Island quintet My Favorite were digging through the pockets of the 80s when that decade's corpse was barely cold. Now the band's 14-year existence has come to an end, according to an announcement from frontdude/songwriter Michael Grace, Jr. "Andrea Vaughn has left My Favorite," Grace wrote in mid-September the band's website, speaking of his longtime singing/keyboarding partner in pop. "And thus, by all rights, that chapter should be closed...She was the Anna Karina to my Jean-Luc Godard, the poetry in my Alphaville."

If that seems like a melodramatic send-off for a bandmate, keep in mind that Vaughn was also his ex-wife. Although the couple divorced several years ago, both stayed in My Favorite, a rare accomplishment among rock n roll divorcees. "Somehow, the band survived for four or five years after we stopped being a couple," Grace told Pitchfork in a phone conversation last week. "I'm proud of it."

So why, with that mess safely in the past, did Vaughn decide to leave? "I think she was just tired of being in an indie band," Grace said. "There's an element of exhaustion to it, always some sort of wall you're trying to break through. She didn't think being a singer in a bad was what she wanted to do any more. If you take her at her word, it was just time to, you know, get some reading done."

Although a planned My Favorite album is "3/4 finished," according to Grace, it's a substantially different affair from the shimmering synth-pop the band was known for. "This was our first, dare I say it, rock n roll record," Grace said. "Our music had always been recorded a piece at a time: keyboards one week, some electronic drums the next week, guitar the next week. This time we just went into the Walkmen's studio [Marcata Recording] and told (drummer) Tod to hit his drums as hard as he could." The unfinished album will form the core repertoire of Grace's next band, tentatively called the Secret History and including most or all of the rest of My Favorite. "It would be a shame not to use those recordings," he said. "It won't be a My Favorite record with a different singer. It'll be somewhere between My Favorite and Hedwig and the Angry Inch - the great Ziggy Stardust art-glam record I never had the confidence to make." Hmm... kinda sounds like the Killers.

My Favorite leaves a recorded legacy of two full-lengths and a handful of EPs. A bizarre postmortem was provided by the CBS daytime soap "The Bold and the Beautiful", when the Faves' song "Homeless Club Kids" was used to soundtrack a scene involving some sort of bridal fashion show. While well-dressed scions of the ruling class look on adoringly at the model's pirouettes, Vaughn sings about "the ghosts of dead teenagers." The only line of dialogue in the scene comes near the end: "Maybe there will be a miracle today."

For Grace, Vaughn, and the scattered coterie of My Favorite, the miracle never came, but Grace was stunned by the outpouring of letters from anguished fans as word about the breakup filtered out. "I wasn't surprised by the amount, but by the emotion and vulnerability that people were willing to reveal, just to let me know the band meant something to them," he said. Band manager and Double Agent Records honcho Peter Green adds, "We were getting these amazing letters from kids, crying 'Katrina devastated my home, now My Favorite broke up.' (The band members) were asking me how to judge if they succeeded or failed as a band. I told them to judge by those letters." We'd insert some kind of snarky comment here, but we just don't have the heart.

In other breakup news, Chicago indie rockers Troubled Hubble called it quits last week, putting an end to their six-year journey due to "physical and personal" reasons, according to their website. That statement is a bit vague, but we can speculate that the financial troubles their record label, Lookout!, has been undergoing recently couldn't have helped the Hubbles' situation.

Troubled Hubble released their Lookout! debut, Making Beds in a Burning House, earlier this year. It followed three full-lengths and three EPs of bouncy nerdcore. The band's final show, which took place in their hometown on September 29, was recorded for both DVD and audio release, and will be available for download on eMusic soon.

Activist punk band Del Cielo also went splitsville in late September. The DC-area trio announced their decision on the website of their label, Lovitt records, with drummer Katy Otto writing, "In the past four and a half years, Del Cielo has surpassed what any of the three of us thought our band would be. It's been an honor to travel around the country and meet people... It's been so fun and we are lucky to have had this experience."

Del Cielo recorded two albums and various singles, and toured with Rainer Maria, Q and Not U, Against Me!, and Mates of State. Their commitment to political causes remained strong up until the very end, as their last show was a Rock for Choice benefit on September 23. Bassist Basla Andolsun's other band, Dischord records' Beauty Pill, is currently on hiatus. Otto's label, Exotic Fever records, is alive and well, with a benefit compilation for Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) featuring Mirah, Mates of State, Murder By Death, as well as full-lengths by Hope and Anchor, Euclid, Rachel Jacobs, Ricky Fitts and Mass Movement of the Moth in the works.

* Pitchfork Review: My Favorite: The Happiest Days of Our Lives
* Pitchfork Review: Troubled Hubble: Making Beds in a Burning House

My Favorite: http://www.lostdetective.com/
Troubled Hubble: http://www.troubledhubble.com/
Del Cielo: http://www.delcielorock.com/