Story by Ian Joulain

Back in December the music blogosphere got all worked up. Turns out there was a new indie supergroup afoot, with Michael Cera on the bass!

The band was tweely named Mister Heavenly, and it featured Islands' Nick Thorburn, Man Man's Honus Honus, and Modest Mouse's Joe Plummer. Pitchfork had the story, natch, and it was the biggest news on Stereogum since Zooey Deschanel started giving Ben Gibbard foot massages.

Though Pfork's headline was “Michael Cera Joins Mister Heavenly,” it wasn't entirely clear that he was an actual member of the group. In the Stereogum piece, even Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) wasn't sure. “Don't know,” he told them when asked point blank. “We are all Dogstar fans.”

Personally, this story wasn't much on our radar until we heard Mister Heavenly was playing FYF Fest next month. Sure, we would have loved to speak with members of the recently-reunited Death From Above 1979 or South Bay punk legends the Descendents, but, c'mon, this is George Michael Bluth we're talking about. We put in our interview request to Sub Pop's publicist and began preparing a list of questions, which were mainly just jokes about George Michael's girlfriend Bland.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. The publicist, Bekah Zietz, casually noted that Cera is no longer the group's touring bassist and would not be performing at FYF. Not only that, but she says he was never in the group in the first place. “[He] did not record nor was he ever a permanent member of the band,” she wrote to us, “just a friend of the band who was helping them out when they were in need of a bassist.”

So, there you have it. No Michael Cera at FYF Fest, unless he's there watching. It makes us wonder what happened. Could Cera have gotten cold feet after Kattner's disgruntled-sounding comments to Spinner at SXSW this year, where the band — with Cera — performed?

“Michael is a buddy, never toured before, good bass player but he's not playing on the album,” he said. “When the band formed a year ago, we thought it would be fun to have him on the road but it's been kind of a distraction. I hate the girls screaming 'Michael.'”

In any case, so long Michael Cera. We'll always have Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

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