The dangerous ladies of Japan s -- led by Boredoms Yoshimi-- cruised through Chicago s last night in support of their recent LP and . If the album comes across a little unfocused, this gig was nothing of the sort, with OOIOO cutting out the wankery and keeping things crisp, hypnotic, and engaging. It helped that the quartet was bolstered by an additional drummer-- which still only made for half as many drummers as Boredoms presently use.
Chicago scene icon Rob Lowe opened under his guise, his all-too-brief set consisting of just two pieces. The first-- a calming psych guitar meditation-- set the spiritual tone for the second, which Lowe constructed entirely from loop pedals and his own ventriloquist-worthy voice. That voice built gradually from gutteral Ommm s to the sort of nasal yelps Lowe occasionally busts out on 90 Day Men s material.
He closed the short set in memorable fashion, wandering through the crowd while chanting, his multi-tracked vocals coming at us from all directions. Eerie.
OOIOO have a few more U.
S. gigs lined up before they return to the East.
Decemberists, Thermals, Daniel Cover Classics on Comp
Plus: Christopher Walla, the Joggers, the Minus 5, the Dandy Warhols, Viva Voce, Talkdemonic If you love covers, irony, and good causes, boy does have a hat trick for you!
The Portland-based label with the ironic name serves up on April 17.
The title don t lie: this 19-track monster collects 19 Portland-associated artists bridging the distance between the past and present with eyebrow-raising covers, all to benefit , which helps homeless and transitional youths bridge financial and class distances through its mentorship programs. Also, Portland has a lot of bridges!
We re talking layers upon layers of profound meaning here, people!
Plenty of your Rose City favorites have signed on for this one, including the Decemberists, who take on Fleetwood Mac s Think About Me , the Thermals, who do Led Zeppelin s Tangerine , and Britt Daniel, who closes out the comp with a rendition of Sam Cooke s Bring It on Home to Me .
Other highlights include the Joggers committing their live-favorite Yes cover to tape, Death Cab for Cutie s Christopher Walla giving us nothing but Johnny Hates Jazz s Shattered Dreams , and the Dandy Warhols re-investigating the Cult.
Toss in even more covers by Talkdemonic, Viva Voce, the Minus 5, and the Minders, and you ve got one hell of a blue light special.
Basically, Bridging the Distance should appease id, ego, and superego alike. Click more for the complete tracklist, with original artists in brackets.
have expanded their overseas. After finishing their U.S.
dates at Coachella on April 27, they will fly to Norway for a May 1 date in Bergen. They ll spend the ensuing month in Europe before eventually returning here (right here, actually) for their date at the in Chicago.
The band will make their network television debut on Late Night With Conan O Brien on April 12.
Two days later, their show in New York will feature them as a backing band for live karaoke in addition to a full set. Flosstradamus and comedian Michael Showalter will also appear at the show, which is a promotional event for New York magazine titled . Wah wah.
In anticipation of their The Remix of the Remix LP, planned for a fall release on /ToneArm Records, are holding a remix contest in collaboration with the folks at . The contest s title? The Judges of the competition include Ghostface Killah, Hot Chip, Diplo and his Hollertronix partner Low Budget, Spank Rock, and Plastic Little themselves.
Killah, MF DOOM, Spank Rock, Amanda Blank, and Plastic Little MCs Pack of Rats, Jon Thousand, and No Body s Child via . purposes until April 20, when the contest s semi-finalists are announced. The semifinalists will then receive the full a capellas to remix, and a panel of The contest s full rules and prizes, taken from a press release, are listed below.
No serum can cure all the pain have endured, but the free gin sure to line their green room on the just-announced tour probably won t hurt. Malice and Pusha T will ride around shining with cat-eyed R B cooer -- whose ass, when last we checked, was still like wo -- and newcomer on eleven dates through April.
Much like the bargain-priced spirits that bear its name, the Seagram s jaunt promises to pack a wallop, with podcasts of selected shows to be posted on the Seagram s Live website and runway-style photos of attendees blowing up on screens throughout each venue.
If you ve ever wondered what pasty blogger types-- truly the fiercest of Clipse fans-- look like stretched to billboard size, you know what to do.
And this information I must pass to the homies: Clipse, along with pretty much every other band you might want to see, are playing this summer s . That s so trill.
Just in time for April showers to wash our springtime hopes away, melancholic indie-poppers will arrive signed, sealed, and delivered to a North American city near you.
The weather-obsessed Miami trio-- bolstered to a six-piece live, and led by the airy croon of doe-eyed vocalist Tim Yehezkely-- kicks off a jaunt celebrating their recently-released on April 14. Along the way they ll have those tears wiped away by fresh-faced indie duo , who also play the first stretch of dates.
They ll later weep into their chamomiles with , aka the project of Stars lead-romantic Torquil Campbell and pal Chris Dumont. Hooray! U.
S. audiences will have over a dozen more opportunities to get lost in Morrissey s sweaty torso this spring, as the son and heir of nothing in particular has annexed a bunch of dates onto his Stateside tour. Most lie along the Eastern Seaboard, and the good news comes courtesy of Moz fan mecca .
Said website also reports that Morrissey s touring band-- who will dress in matching attire, if this is anything like last year s tour-- will consist of Boz Boorer and Jesse Tobias on guitars, Michael Farrell on keyboards and trumpet, Solomon Walker on bass guitar, and Matt Walker behind the drumkit.
One, two, three: swoooooooooon!
God cursed me-- I can't even grow sideburns!
Hungry for the scoop on s nearly-complete sophomore LP, Pitchfork recently phoned up ever-excitable Eddie Argos for a chat. In typically charismatic fashion, the declamatory vocalist regaled us with tales of facial hair, his perfectionist ways, and all those juicy album details.
First up, the album.
The follow-up to Pitchfork s third favorite LP of 2005, . The dread sophomore LP. Well it s very nearly finished, reported Argos.
It s being mastered on Thursday. But they ve left it a little bit open; I m quite a perfectionist. I wake up and go, I need to change those words all the time.
Indeed, difficultly with decisions is a topic Argos returns to often. One gets the impression that if everything were left completely to him, no Art Brut song would ever reach completion. I m obsessive, Eddie continued, so I can t ever stop thinking about things.
I should be saying it s finished. It is finished. I try to keep it open-ended because I like fiddling around with it.
At least one thing s pretty much set, and that s the title: It s a Bit Complicated. Explained Argos, half in jest, It s not as straight-ahead as the first one. I don t know, I found it a bit complicated when I was writing it?
[Laughs] It s all about ex-girlfriends and whatnot again, innit? And those issues are a bit complicated. It s vaguely more complicated than the last one.
Also, it sounds nice as a title. Okay, so maybe a trip to this summer s just isn t in the cards for you, for reasons of proximity, financial dearth, or serious illness (any other excuse just doesn t cut it). Maybe you re a mite bummed about missing .
Well hang tight kid, because there s still hope for you yet.
Thurston, Kim, Lee, and Steve have tacked a few more extra special Daydream Nation engagements onto their summer itinerary, at which they ll play their masterpiece from start to finish. In addition to the previously reported stints at the festival, , and-- -- the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, SY will also give folks in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Munich, and Berlin a chance to teen age riot at a public station near them.
Londoners who didn t score tickets also get one more chance to do so, as a third ATP date has been added in the English capital.
and present the Berkeley and L.A.
shows, which go down, respectively, at the Community Theater (July 19) and Greek Theatre (July 20). Prior to that, SY rock Daydream at Munich s Tollwood Festival (June 21) and Berlin s Columbia Halle (June 27). Not content to simply dwell in the past, our daydreamers also play a bunch of regular dates in the coming months, including their .
Striking while the iron s shit-hot, the band will reissue Daydream Nation in deluxe two-disc format (with bonus tracks, liner notes, the whole nine yards) in June 2007, a wee bit shy of the 1988 LP s impending 20th anniversary. mask (remember when he was just another member of the Wu-Tang?), seems to turn up everywhere recently: , , , .
And if he s on the new Postal Service album, per Jimmy For now, Ghostface will content himself and the rest four-headed video sketch comedy beast-- which consists of Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, and director Jason Woliner-- has finally nailed down a timeslot on the network: Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Times.
In a nice piece of rapper symmetry, MTV s Thursday night timeslot also features Tony Hawk, comedians Brian Posehn, Patton Oswalt, and Rob Riggle, and former Freaks and Geeks star Linda Cardellini. The first of the show s eight episodes airs April 5, but two days earlier, it will be available for free download via iTunes, Amazon, and XBOX. Later episodes will be available for download the day after Do you have a news tip for us?
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