Pumpkins, Arcade Fire, NIN to Rock Reading/Leeds
Also: Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, Klaxons, CSS, Maximo Park, the Gossip Though we Yanks have been playing catch-up these last few years when it comes to big summer rock festivals, those Europeans still have us beat on quantity alone. The quality s nothing to scoff at either, if the gigantic talent pool of the just-announced Carling Weekend and Festivals is any indication. Still, you ll excuse us a touch of the smugness when we point out that two of your three headliners hail from our side of the pond.
Plus, we so totally won the Revolutionary War. Just sayin .
Over the weekend of August 24-26, the rock shall be simultaneously brought to both aforementioned UK locales, with bill-switcheroos ensuring a complete and total artist overlap betwixt the two.
Capping both lineups are the recently-reshuffled Smashing Pumpkins, those nutty funksters Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Razorlight, who, like a Region 2 DVD, don t seem to translate to American ears. Also edging in amongst these monsters of rock are the Arcade Fire, Interpol, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, Klaxons, CSS, and others. For a complete artist list, press this red thing right here.
Panda Bear Preps "Pills", Pitch LP, Plays Portugal Let s not mince words; s , out this week on , is fantastic. Dense and delicate, it s the kind of record that breeds something akin to obsession in its fans. Trouble is, at a paltry seven tracks (even if two of em are like 12 minutes long), it can leave one wanting more.
Noah Lennox must know what we Person Pitch addicts need just to get through the day, as on June 19, Paw Tracks will bless us with the fourth single from the album (who does he think he is, Kelly Clarkson?!).
Cautionary tale and Pitch highlight Take Pills will grace the A-side of the 7 , backed with a live version of non-album track Bonfire of the Vanities. No word on whether the song has anything to do with the 1987 Tom Wolfe novel of the same name, but for the record, we d kinda like to see Panda Bear in a white three-piece suit. Is that weird?
Person Pitch finally made its way into stores yesterday in CD form, and the album will be out on vinyl on June 19, the same day the Take Pills 7 drops. ..
.acoustic? That s odd.
The hard-partying rock n roll juggernaut isn t exactly the kind of band known for toning things down ( ), which makes their new EP all the more interesting. Live at Fingerprints, out April 17, showcases five songs recorded at the record store in Long Beach, California. The EP costs a mere five bucks, but here s the rub: it s limited edition, and is only available from independent record stores that are part of the consortium.
Stickin it to the Man! The Hold Steady wrap up a U.S.
tour tomorrow night in happenin Lancaster, Pennsylvania, head to Europe in April, and play Sasquatch! and Bonnaroo this summer.
aren t just bros-- they re actual brothers too, not to mention an internationally acclaimed tech-house production powerhouse and remixers extraordinaire.
The brothers Schwarz commemorate ten years of dancefloor conquests with the two-disc best-of compilation Black Musik: 10 Years of Tiefschwarz, due out in late May via .
On the first disc, Tiefschwarz mix a bunch of favorites and personal influences-- including James Figurine, Sebastian Tellier, and even Marianne Faithfull-- into a head-nodding cocktail, while the second disc boasts a pristine collection of Tiefschwarz classics. As an added bonus, the vinyl version of Black Musik includes additional remixes from Carl Craig, Matias Aguayo, Drama Society, and Radio Slave.
To celebrate a decade of Tiefschwarz goodness, our dapper brothers jet around the world all year long, setting club-fiends feet on fire from Buenos Aires to the United Arab Emirates. Flaming Lips' Yoshimi: Broadway Bound! They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway, but maybe those aren t lights at all.
..maybe they re laser beams from GIANT PINK ROBOTS!
They say the women treat you fine on Broadway-- but do they do battle with those diabolical pink machines?
That s right: Broadway will soon get just a bit battier, as Wayne Coyne revealed in a recent interview with EW.com that 2002 LP will be transformed into a Broadway musical.
Described Coyne, There s the real world and then there s this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital.
And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.
On Broad-waaaay!
The West Wing / Sports Night scribe Aaron Sorkin has signed on to script the Yoshimi musical, while director/producer Des McAnuff will guide the production, according to EW.com.
When Des heard the record, said Coyne, he heard a lot about death and loss and the triumph of your own optimism...
he had an emotional attachment to it.
The musical, which may well include other songs from across the Lips catalogue, is still far from opening night, but the pink robot cogs have been set in motion.
The Lips, meanwhile, play a brief tour of the Southeast in April.
Mr. Coyne has occupied his time of late , and during this year s SXSW festival. And keep peeping Forkcast for a trailer from another Lips multimedia foray, the forthcoming live DVD UFOs at the Zoo.
So now that the Ides of March has come and gone, many of you are no doubt asking important questions, such as: Wasn t that mighty intriguing supergroup comprised of members of Les Savy Fav, Islands, and Wolf Parade supposed to play on March 15? Indeed they were, and indeed they didn t.
, LSF s Syd Butler, Wolf Parade s Hadji Bakara, and Islands Nick Diamonds will join forces-- now with WP s Dante Decaro (and no Dan Boeckner), Islands Jamie Thompson, and Black Mountain s Amber Webber along for the ride-- to rock The World, Explained , an off-kilter, McSweeney s-sponsored benefit for Dave Eggers favorite creative writing centers, and .
Scheduling conflicts thwarted the original March 15 event date, but breathe easy, as Eggers and co. have rescheduled the bonanza for April 10.
As before, it features the supergroup, along with host Eugene Mirman and assorted interesting people talking about such interesting topics as lightweight arm-wrestling, retiring at age 28, and humor.
The hilarity ensues at NYC s at 8 p.m. and tickets are .
Also, remember how all those fairly brilliant musician folks came up with the fairly terrible band name Internet? Well, they heard your cries of frustration and went ahead and made their band name even more ridiculous and confusing and terrible. The fruit of these men and women s loins will now be known as .
:-( It s gonna take a lot of garment bags to transport all the tweed blazers Colin Meloy and his merry band of will need to get them through the month-and-a-half long tour they ll begin tonight in Jersey City, New Jersey. Thesaurus-thumbing grad students hither and yon will get their chance to gaze longingly at the much-beloved geeks as they worm their way through these United States of ours.
As previously reported, the band will bewilder the bearded masses at , fit in rather nicely amongst their ilk at , and make a stop at the world-famous in early July.
Curious nerds-- and heaven knows there s plenty of you amongst the Decemberists-loyal-- should be aware that Colin Meloy s turn at novel-ranking in 2007 has come and gone, with . Cram it up your word-hole, Chatterjee.
Jeff Buckley Greatest Hits Comp, DVD in Works
The bottom of my Grace CD: Scratches from my roommate, the drunk Though there s been no shortage of posthumously-released material in the decade since the swoon-inducing singer-songwriter s drowning in 1997, the ultimate earthly tribute-- a greatest hits compilation-- has eluded him until now.
Columbia/Legacy will collect 14 Buckley tracks on , which will be released on May 22, a week before the 10th anniversary of his death.
The collection features a handful of tracks from Buckley s back catalog, an acoustic rendering of its title track recorded in Japan, and a Smiths cover. Everything from the tracklist to the artwork of So Real came together under the watchful eye of Jeff s mom, with brand-new liner notes penned by veteran rock scribe David Fricke.
(Hey, at least they re not giving him the Biggie/Puffy treatment and adding guest verses from Jack Johnson or something.)
Not coincidentally, hitting stores the same day is , an hourlong docu-DVD touching on the life and legacy of Mr. Buckley from first-time filmmakers Laurie Trombley and Nyla Bialek Adams.
Combining archival footage with new interviews with Buckley s friends and family, the film is sure to leave one wondering why this burgeoning talent had to leave us while John Mayer marches forward, unscathed.
Ellen Allien Tours, Compiles New Camping Mix tonight in Miami Beach, Florida. The label head has a ton of mix (and remix) projects coming up this year, so relish your chance to Allien, however, as she bookends her trip to our shores with a March 25 date in Miami.
Both dates coincide with the . Afterward, she has dates scheduled in Germany as well as the rest of Europe. Okay, maybe she s not exactly the hole-up-in-a-loft-somewhere type after all.
In fact, she has recently revealed the tracklist for one of those previously reported mix projects. The third edition of the Bpitch series is out March 26. It features tracks and remixes by Sascha Funke, Modeselektor, Feadz, Safety Scissors, and Ellen herself.
year, will return March 26 with a street album (i.e. a mixtape of sorts) titled Rules Regulations Vol.
1. their own Roll Deep Recordings, and they are streaming the album in its follow-up to their first album, In at the Deep End, for the end of and April. The first is a solo show by producer Target.
The second is their album launch party, and the final show is a school visit through . show on April 21.
Marice, this bastard who works the night desk at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on North IH-35, organizes room numbers like a very, very smart dog.
Toss a million bands, two million industry mongrels, three million gallons of free booze, a couple evangelicals, and a few dozen kids handing out complimentary condoms into the SXSW blender, and somebody s bound to get arrested. Turns out one of the unlucky souls to land behind bars this past weekend in Austin was none other than s vertically imposing vocalist with the aristocratically imposing name, Hamilton Leithauser.
Old Ham, it seems, had been hitting the bottle and returned to his hotel quite late (approximately 4 a.
m., according to his publicist) on the morning of Friday, March 16. After some kind of verbal altercation with the fellow behind the desk, Leithauser found himself in Austin s Travis County Jail for 12 hours, according to NME.
com.
Said Leithauser in a statement to Pitchfork, Marice, this bastard who works the night desk at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on North IH-35, organizes room numbers like a very, very smart dog.
He was released in time to perform with the Walkmen at the /Burnlounge SXSW showcase Friday night at Emo s Annex, and even found a moment to draft a rather humorous of the jail facility where he spent the night.
( As far as underground dungeons go, the Travis County Central Booking Office is pretty convincing. ) Scribe and Walkmen roadie Giles Morris, who s been documenting the band s tour on his Westing website blog, shed a little more light on the incident:
The story of Hamilton s woe is not really that interesting, but funny enough in its way. He was drunk and got back to the hotel late.
Matt [Barrick] had left keys for him and [Walkmen sound engineer] Stretch at the desk. The desk guy screwed up the room number when he wrote it down, [so] when Ham told him the room number he didn t believe him. Ham got frustrated and asked if he could go up to Matt s room and knock on the door.
He did that but it wasn t Matt s room. They asked Ham to leave. Ham got mad and the manager called the cops.
I guess they gave the door one more try, the wrong door, and then Ham and the cops got crosswise with each other and the next thing you know our hero is cuffed. Meanwhile canny Stretch has slithered into the back of the van and avoided drama.
The funny part is after a night in jail, and probably a very long morning in jail, Ham had to go back to the same desk that night and get his key.
You know the only reason I went to jail is you got the room number wrong? The guy gets squirrelly and says, No..
. not til right now. But no apology or anything.
The next day, after fielding phone calls from concerned relatives and getting some actual sleep, Ham had a sense of humor about it. Before he went on stage we talked about how every rapper has a moment, a show, right after they get out of jail and that they have to decide how to approach it. What would ODB do?
ODB would likely or something, but the Walkmen will have to settle for . Take that, authority!!
Ugh!
, the venerable Seattle label, is offering current high school seniors in Washington and Oregon a shot at the first-ever . No, it s not like that time George Costanza sought out a C-student modeled in his own slovenly image to take over his ex-in-laws inheritance.
Rather, the good people at Sub Pop are giving $5750 to a senior interested in music and/or the creative arts in some way.
So read between the lines, people: Johnny Football Star need not apply. Unless Johnny Football Star also has a noise band.
From now until May 1, the college-bound are invited to send Sub Pop digital portfolios or hard copies of their artwork, along with a one-page essay. The prize money will be applied towards the winner s college tuition. Do you have a news tip for us?
Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered?
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