has scheduled a handful of U.S. dates beginning in April and including stops at Coachella and Bonnaroo, where fans can see tracks from performed in their natural habitat: outside.
Things begin April 23 in Portland, and if Shadow s recent tour partners are any indication, he s likely to show up with half the current hyphy scene at any given date. So please, don t forget your stunna shades.
Hey remember that suspicious April-long gap in the middle of those tour dates ?
The one that happens to encompass both the April 16 release of new single Brianstorm and the April 23/24 of Favourite Worst Nightmare (both on )? The one they couldn t possibly spend just sitting around twiddling their opposable thumbs? Well, duh, they re touring then.
As announced today, Sheffield s favourite ruffians Arctic Monkeys will play a string of smaller, blink-and-they re-sold-out shows across England and Scotland throughout April. The trek leads up to their Coachella appearance and subsequent tour of the States with fellow whipper-snappers Be Your Own Pet. There s a fairly convoluted ticket pre-sale going on via the Arctics website/mailing list.
for details.
In related news, following in the footsteps of the Wu-Tang Clan, Lily Allen, Pete Wentz, and pretty much everyone else, Arctics drummer Matt Helders will debut a fashion line in May via UK-based . Oakland sextet -- playing here as a quintet, minus Dax Pierson-- brought its unique and wildly inventive brand of hip-hop surrealism to Chicago s , opening a sold out show for TV on the Radio.
Like some postmodern prestidigitator, emcee Doseone-- whose ringmaster/musketeer/aristocrat/whatever getup apparently ate a cassette tape backstage and left its crimped contents dangling around the man s neck-- let forth varied verbal flurries and hopped from prop to prop almost as quickly as the music skipped from idea to idea. He settled on a zebra-striped skull perched atop a busted bust resting on a pedestal, did his best alas-poor-Yurik, then abruptly reached inside and flung the contents across the audience, unleashing a clattering rain of-- say what-- plastic forks!?
Despite desultory hysterics like this, there s something extremely sly and calculated about Dose-- who s blessed with, among other things, a comedian s sense of timing (naturally, he told jokes too). Taken altogether it leaves one with the fun notion that by entertaining every random thought that enters the mind, patterns-- sometimes even profound ones-- invariably emerge.
The uninitiated might well have been flummoxed by the whole schizophrenic affair, but those willing to suspend disbelief for 45 minutes witnessed a born showman, shimmying somewhere between left field and oblivion, and beckoning the rest of us to join him there.
Subtle s stretch opening for TVotR continues through March 25.
To where do mutants migrate? We re not sure, but we do know that are back from wherever they ve been with another round of shows scheduled for this summer.
And by round, we mean pair, at least for now.
The Tropic a lia pioneers will take their show on the road to Los Angeles and New York City in July. The NYC show is part of the .
Here s hoping they stay out for a while before returning to the psychedelic swamps they must call home.
I know that Jonny Greenwood really likes guitars. So maybe that's it: there are guitars in our band.
Patrick Carney s 2006 included , , and . And that was just on the side of things. Between all of that and the Keys , Carney still found time to work on his own label, .
On May 15, Audio Eagle will put out its : s High Strangeness and s Let s Get Simplified. The former band is from the Black Keys hometown of Akron, Ohio, and the latter is from Kent.
We caught up with the drumming half of the Black Keys recently to talk about the scene in northern Ohio, his own musical history, his love-hate relationship with Norah Jones, his hate-hate relationship with the National League, and what this year holds for his label and the Black Keys, including a collaboration with Ike Turner and Danger Mouse.
Pitchfork: What is with the slogans under the Audio Eagle Records logo on the Houseguest and Beaten Awake CDs? There are two different slogans. One is True Catsup and the other is Seriously Folks.
Patrick Carney: When me and my brother laid out the records, we decided that we would put a different slogan on each of the records. Those were the only two that we could think of, and they are really fucking stupid.
Pitchfork: Where did they come from?
PC: I don t know. It was pretty much the stupidest things we could think of. I think the one on the next record is going to say We Live to Kill.
There s an exterminator in Akron [and] I think that s their motto, so I think we ll steal that one.
Pitchfork: Does that record have a release or even a band attached to it?
Pitchfork: So you re not planning on keeping Audio Eagle strictly local to Ohio?
PC: No, the first three bands are from Ohio. And that s mainly because they re the first three bands that I thought of when I thought about putting out records. The ones I see the most.
I think all labels should focus on their base. Every city has a bunch of bands that are really good, but nobody will put out their records for whatever reason. I know from experience it s hard to convince a label to put out a record when you re in a band that no one has ever heard of.
Pitchfork: Is that what got you into running a label? Are you friends with these guys?
PC: Yeah, I m friends with all the guys in the bands, but also, I was a fan of all of the previous bands that these guys have been in since they were like 14.
PC: Some of the guys were in Party Helicopters. A couple of the guys were in a band called Harriet the Spy. They were a pretty popular hardcore band.
And then some of those guys were in a band called The Man I Fell in Love With, which is like the Steely Dan of Kent from 1995. And it s probably one of the coolest records that has ever been made in Ohio, but no one s ever heard it.
PC: The record was called the Dis Yourself EP.
It s really pop, kind of like an indie rock, unpretentious My Bloody Valentine kind of thing...
is how I would describe it.
Pitchfork: You think My Bloody Valentine are kind of pretentious?
PC: Yeah, yeah I do.
Pitchfork: Do you still like them?
PC: Yeah, I do. I like it when bands are pretentious, as long as I don t know them.
It s more believable if it was a band that existed before, or in a different country.
Pitchfork: As long as you don t have to deal with all the egos, then it s okay?
Pitchfork: So Houseguest and Beaten Awake are not pretentious?
Pitchfork: Is that a trade off? Do you have to be pretentious to have a cool haircut?
PC: Well, I don t know.
That band the Horrors, for instance-- I think that s embarrassing. Their music is pretty good, I guess. But you know when you re 20 years old and you move out of your parents house and you get a weird haircut?
And when you go back and look at those pictures when you re 26, you feel a little bit embarrassed. Kind of like when you wake up in the morning after you ve been drinking, and you realize that you sounded like an asshole all night long.
Pitchfork: Yeah, everyone goes through that, but these guys are doing it more in public.
Shara Worden on Madonna: She is a queen with a iron fist and honey for hips. s continues! This week our bard slacked off on his 50 States Project by bandmate and sorceress Shara Worden as part of s Half-Week of My Brightest Diamond (yes, it s officially a trend now).
Sufjan-- who a MBD gig, along with other dabblings in the written word-- talked My Brightest Diamond s just-released Tear It Down with Shara, who declared, Genre is a bit overrated, so I like the concept of taking these tunes out of the indie rock world and letting them breathe in a different context. We can dig it.
Mr.
Stevens also waxes philosophical about the essence of remixing and whether his own tunes are suited to such a treatment. Survey says..
.not so much. I ve never embarked on this before, wrote Sufjan, and I have the feeling my songs don t lend themselves to remixing.
Shara thinks otherwise, and the two basically geek out about remixes and music and clubbing(!) for a few more paragraphs. Plus Shara calls Madonna a queen with a iron fist and honey for hips.
It s cute. Read the whole thing .
While you re around, check out the wacky video for Gold Chains remix of Freak Out , some rare/early/live MBD cuts on Asthmatic s AKRadio, and Shara s list of her favorite electronicish records, which includes Peter Gabriel, Four Tet, the Books, Pierre Boulez, and, yes, Throbbing Gristle.
My Brightest Diamond hits the road with the Decemberists later this month, following a couple SXSW engagements. London bajillion-piece will release Comments of the Inner Chorus May 22 on . It is the group s second album, and they have assembled quite a set of UK and European festival dates in support.
Tonight, they play in Brooklyn before heading to South by Southwest later in the week, though their festival dates don t really kick into high gear until June.
s lobby walls are adorned with pictures of actors that have graduated from Chicago s theater scene to Hollywood success, people like Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, and Frasier s dad. So it s only fitting that the theater would host a rare visit from , Los Angeles human hub of film and music.
Sporting a thick beard and dressed in a light-gray pinstripe suit, Brion looked like an overcast Wayne Coyne as he ran from instrument to instrument on the Steppenwolf stage, accompanied only by his beleaguered roadie Sammie.
Some technical problems marred the set, most notably in the electric guitar sound, but Brion rolled with the punches, using the unintentionally-muted sound for an on-the-spot mashup of Lithium and Don t Think Twice It s Alright , and cranking out refreshingly uncluttered guitar solos (complete with accompanying interpretative dance). One thrill of Brion s sets is observing the recording process in microcosm, as he spontaneously constructs songs on multiple instruments with extensive looping, like the piano string percussion of Same Thing or the White Album-inspired version of You Don t Know What Love Is .
Mostly, it s just astounding to be in the presence of someone with such unbelievable musical talent-- did I mention the impromptu ragtime-piano cover of Back in Black ?-- particularly since it s cut with enough pop-music loyalty to avoid being merely a technical ability showoff.
Two nights later Brion played the tiny , a more down-to-earth spot than the stately Steppenwolf, where the gleefully manic multi-instrumentalist went nuts for nearly three hours, giving the small crowd an even better glimpse of what the inside of his brain must be like.
A Bee Gees medley followed by most of side two of Brian Eno s Here Come the Warm Jets? Life on Mars? and More Than This ?
The Boys are Back in Town played on eight-string ukulele? Pure pop genius, with added points for Brion remembering all the words to Leonard Cohen s Famous Blue Raincoat and big upping Randy Newman and Willie Nelson. The trainspotters went bonkers trying to stump the savant, but Brion always stayed one step ahead.
It's almost something we didn't have a hand in...
It's this music that was just there. One fateful night in December 2006, decided to do something crazy. They had just seen David Lynch s three-hour mindfuck Inland Empire and found themselves holed up in a New York apartment after a blizzard foiled holiday travel plans.
They had a reel of new recordings lying around. An air of whimsy had descended on the evening. And what happened next just might blow your feeble mind.
They decided to play their recordings...
backwards.
Okay, so not exactly revolutionary. Still, not many musicians take backwards recordings a step further.
Not many make a whole album out of them. Indeed, those backwards versions have become Pullhair Rubeye, Avey and Kr i a s debut that has the message boards abuzz-- nevermind that it doesn t technically come out until April 24. (This is the age of internet, after all.
) Most of the discussion, meanwhile, can be summarized with a single question: Is this a joke?
According to Avey Tare, it s no such thing. There s not really anything behind it or anything, he told Pitchfork recently.
We re not trying to mess around with peoples heads or play a prank or anything like that.
In fact, Avey Tare (known to the IRS as David Portner) and Kr i a Brekkan (known to rock journalists as former M u m member Kristin Anna Valtysd o ttir) happen to like the backwards versions.
We just got really into it, and decided to focus on that as a release.
Avey is ready for the obvious rebuke to his and Kr i a s approach. I think some people would criticize and say, You could flip around any music -- like a Garth Brooks record, and you know, it s just going to sound like Garth Brooks backwards, or equally as crappy or whatever.
But I think to us, the songs have a looser, organic feel anyway that doesn t have a lot of A-B-A-B structure.
So in a way it does work backwards, just because it doesn t lock into...
these tight drum sounds or tight guitar chords.
Plus there s an enticing element of fate at work. That s [part] of why we liked [it] backwards, because it s almost something we didn t have a hand in, in a way.
It s this music that was just there without us planning out so much, kind of this freeform thing that was happening. So that was appealing. founder Jonathan Poneman has started a new label called , presumably taking its name from the lyrics to the Thermals No Culture Icons .
Or, as we d prefer to believe, former Pitchfork staffer (and current Vibe editor) Sean Fennessey s .
Hardly Art will run out of the same Seattle office as Sub Pop, with former Sub Pop publicist Sarah Moody at the helm. Sub Pop and the will handle distribution for the label.
Hardly Art s first signing is Seattle-based duo , the stage aliases for Jimmy Tamborello Grant Olsen and Sonya Westcott. They will release In Camera, their debut for the label, on June 19. Do you have a news tip for us?
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