Zach Condon is the !! Having officially triumphed over both the troubled Lebanese capital and the popular collegiate drinking game with which Zach s band shares its name, -- aka the No.
1 Google Search Result for Beirut -- are celebrating their world wide web victory with a few world wide engagements.
The jaunt, if you can really call it that, kicks off in Austin this week, as part of . Zach and friends next make up some New York dates he , then take on the world, coming as close to the real Beirut as Istanbul.
Be sure to corner these little gypsies backstage and ask about The New Album, which is apparently three-quarters complete. Look for it in late 2007 on Ba Da Bing in the U.S.
and Beirut s new overseas home, , in the UK. Also keep your eyes peeled for an Elephant Gun UK single hitting shelves in June, and score those two exclusive early tracks via in the U.S.
or in the UK (bonus: the latter has a third old-school cut called Monna Pomona ).
In related news, hear Zach and company on the , and watch out for that . Louisville weirdoes will go concept-free on Buncha Beans, their first album in five years.
Though previous records have included storylines about a caveman and his love for a yak and a spaceman and his obsession with the imaginary Planet Kong, Beans is simply a collection of songs with some of the requisite King Kong themes, including animals and weather.
will release Buncha Beans on March 20, when King Kong will not coincidentally begin a little tour of the Midwest and East Coast in their hometown. After years of waiting, long stretches of silence, and the ramping up of fan expectations, recording artists have finally announced.
..a Canadian tour!
With Interpol s third album tentatively scheduled for release early this summer , the first people to hear new material won t be the crowds at Coachella or NYC s hipster elite. Rather, they will be the citizens of Ottawa, Ontario, where the band will launch a brief pre-Coachella trek in mid-April. Interpol are working on the album right now with producer Rich Costey, who has worked with everyone from Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party to Rage Against the Machine and My Chemical Romance to Fiona Apple and the Swirlies.
Should be interesting.
Yo La Tengo, Ted Leo Play Requests for WFMU Benefit Say what you will about the critical quality of last year s , the trio s summary of nearly ten years of playing extemporaneous covers for dollars on New Jersey s 91.1 FM-- it s cute, wholly unpretentious, and for a damn good cause.
Tune in this Friday (March 16) from 8-11 PM Eastern to hear put the fun in fundraiser once again, as the trio takes more requests on the fly on WFMU. Ira, Georgia, and James treat fans and listeners to the impromptu on-air performances to raise money for the venerable radio station (also home to the excellent ), serving the New York City and Jersey City areas. If you ve ever wanted to hear Yo La Tengo attempt SexyBack , Laffy Taffy or Trapped in the Closet , this is your big chance.
And be generous: the more you pay, the more they play.
But first, the fundraiser continues tonight with a request marathon session from another offbeat covers guru, ever-likable . Ted takes a swing at whatever you throw at him from 8-11 PM Eastern on The Best Show on WFMU , co-hosted by Tom Scharpling and Matador country chanteuse Laura Cantrell.
Jersey City/NYC radio listeners can tune in at 91.1 FM, while Hudson Valley-area folk should set their dials to 90.1 FM.
Don t live within broadcast range? Don t sweat it! WFMU will stream both events-- video and all-- on the station s .
R. Kelly Reveals Album Details in Phone Message s new album is , and he has recently revealed quite a bit of information about it in a ridiculous, six-minute long phone message you can hear by calling (312) 278-3965. The number patches callers directly to the Chocolate Factory, i.
e. a tinny recording of Kelly introducing snippets of songs from the album, which he says is called Double Up.
Two hands holding on to each other: that s how I look at r b and hip hop, says Kelly, explaining that Double Up s focus is on just the kind of gray area between the two that has been such fertile ground for him recently.
He goes on to say the record is about 70% hip hop, which makes sense since his guests include Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Young Jeezy, Ludacris, Rick Ross, and Young Dro.
As for the songs themselves, they sound pretty awesome, given the circumstances. Titles include Double Up , Rock Star , Put Some Money on It , Freakin in the Club , and Blow It Up , which may also be called Blowin Up .
..it s hard to tell.
And the title of the Kanye song seems to be Hook It Up . (As previously reported, the album s first single is ).
Our favorite two song titles/concepts, however, are Pull Your Hair , which Kelly says is for the ladies ( Y all gonna love it, mentally and physically ), and Leave Your Name , a song about phone messages.
Only the kind of guy who says things like I feel real Hollyhood right now could get away with this. Mr. Kelly, we salute you.
After the message is over, callers can leave their own messages for Kelly or join some sort of phone fan club. And while we don t necessarily recommend doing either of those things, the message alone is worth whatever long distance charges your phone company charges you to call Chicago.
The video trailer for the album, which includes the phone number, is below.
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.
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