Still riding high on the success of her sophomore album, Let it Die, as well as winning plum opening slots on tours with Bright Eyes and her buds Broken Social Scene, Leslie Feist has announced her own North American headlining trek, which will carry her across the U.S. and Canada in January and February.
The thinking man's new Canadian pinup (sorry folks, Neko Case is American!) will take on her snowy homeland through late January, wrapping up with two dates with Broken Social Scene in Toronto. She'll then set her sights on the U.
S., playing 14 dates in February before returning in late March for a performance at the California radio station KCRW's Evening Becomes Eclectic concert. Opening all of the U.
S. shows (except the KCRW one) will be Feist's Arts Crafts labelmate and fellow Broken Social Scene collaborator Jason Collett, touring in support of his third album, Idols of Exile, which will be released in the States on February 7. Guests on Idols of Exile include Feist, Broken Social Scene members Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, and Justin Peroff, Metric's Emily Haines, and Stars' Amy Millan and Evan Cranley.
So basically, it's just like another BSS album. Television Personalities Prep First Album in 11 Years! Post-punk has bred few sons more enigmatic, charismatic and straight-up erratic than Mr.
Dan Treacy, frontman for the Television Personalities. And even fewer more endearing. When Treacy miraculously resurfaced last year after serving jail time on a British prison boat (allegedly for burglary), TVP acolytes the world over rejoiced, and when Treacy went on to declare he'd "written [his] best and most meaningful music of the last couple years" and wanted to release a new record, those acolytes wet themselves with glee.
Championed by Kurt Cobain, John Peel, Jens Lekman, and Creation Records founder Alan McGee among others, the Television Personalities exert a lifetime hold over those whose lives they touch. And that jolly lot is about to grow with exponential furor. Domino Records recently announced that they will release the fruit of Treacy's foreshadowing, entitled My Dark Places, on February 27 in the UK and March 7 in North America.
It will be the first record of new Television Personalities material in eleven long years. Fixin' for a taster? Domino drops the first single on February 6, the oh-so-cheekily-entitled "All The Young Children On Smack, All The Young Children On Crack".
Featuring a cover of the Who's "All Love Is Good Love" on the b-side, the song was inspired in part by Pete Doherty. We jest not. 02 All the Young Children on Smack, All the Young Children on Crack Turns out the cool kids aren't watching "The O.
C." or "Gilmore Girls" anymore. They're watching "Veronica Mars", a TV show on UPN about a teenage detective.
This teenage detective happens to frequent a karaoke bar where rock stars show up and sing covers of classic rock songs. A couple months ago, Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols (who are responsible for the show's theme song, "We Used to Be Friends") crooned "Love Hurts", made famous by Nazareth. And coming February 1, Britt Daniel of Spoon will perform Elvis Costello's (you guessed it) "Veronica".
Pitchfork spoke to Daniel earlier this week about his brief moment of small-screen glory. Apparently, the "Veronica Mars" people called him up "out of the blue" and requested his services. "I'd never seen the show before," Daniel said.
"I thought it could be a hoot." He added, "It was actually pretty cool to see how that world works. I had a good time.
It's a huge production, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise, but it's just...
wow...
such a big deal to make one of those shows." In addition to wooing teenage mystery-solvers, Daniel also recently won the heart of superstar author Stephen King, who declared Spoon's "I Summon You" his favorite song of 2005 in last week's issue of Entertainment Weekly. "14-year-old Britt would have blown a gasket," Daniel enthused.
"It's an honor." Spoon will wrap up a strenuous year of touring with a December 19 benefit show for Habitat for Humanity, taking place at the Parish in Austin, Texas, and hosted by the radio station KROX 101X. Stellastarr*, Morningwood, and Alpha Rev will also perform.
Daniel said that the band is planning a February tour of Japan, but otherwise, "it's time to be creative again instead of playing shows." He's currently working on a batch of songs for Spoon's next album, but no timeline has been developed yet. "I want to have like fifty songs done by the end of the year, but who knows?
" Daniel is currently in the process of relocating from Texas to Portland, Oregon. "My girlfriend lives up here, and I kept visiting and was like, 'Ahh, that's it, I'm going to move.' I knew I liked it before I moved here, but I'm finding more and more reasons why this city is amazing.
I haven't moved my stuff but I've been staying here whenever I'm off tour. I've got a couple coats and guitars up here." In other Spoon news, the band's rare 30 Gallon Tank EP, as well as Daniel's solo EP as Drake Tungsten, Six Pence for the Sauces, both released on the Peek-A-Boo label, were recently made available for download through eMusic and iTunes.
Spencer Krug, he's kind of like an experimental indie rock Dave Grohl: successful bands here and there, side projects everywhere. You may know him from Canadian creature bands Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes, but he's also the ringleader in Sunset Rubdown, who have quite an exciting future ahead of them. The Montreal band has just signed to the Berkeley, California-based label Absolutely Kosher, home of the Wrens, Frog Eyes, Goblin Cock, Get Him Eat Him, and many, many others.
Sunset Rubdown began recording their Absolutely Kosher debut this month at Montreal's Breakglass Studio, with a projected release date of May 2. Just in time for a planned national tour supporting Frog Eyes! (Man, is Krug going to be tired.
) In addition, a five-track EP is set for release on the Canadian label Global Symphonic this January. Although the project began as just Krug solo, as on this year's album Snake's Got a Leg (see? creatures.
..) released on Global Symphonic, it has since blossomed into a full-fledged band effort, including Jordan Robson Cramer, Mike Doerkson, and-- not straying far from that whole animal theme-- former Pony Up!
member Camilla Wynn Ingr. In other Wolf Parade news, the band is gearing up to cap off the year in Chicago at Pitchfork's 10th Anniversary Bash on New Year's Eve. (Sorry kids, it's sold out!
) Post-10.0, they'll continue onto California with support from Chad VanGaalen. He's an Illinoisemaker, an Asthmatic Kitty recording artist, and recent EP collaborator with Sufjan Stevens, but dammit, John Ringhofer is his own singin', songwritin' machine.
And that machine is called Half-Handed Cloud. His brand of Old Testament pop on speed will soon get another chance to rise above the Sufjan shadow, as Asthmatic Kitty plans to release HHC's fourth album, Halos Lassos, on March 7. Ringhofer plans to tour middle America with Asthmatic Kitty labelmate Liz Janes and experimental collective Create(!
) in late March/early April, but details are not yet available, as Ringhofer is out gallivanting with the Sufjan tour (which plays New York's Lincoln Center on January 14). It seems that Sufjan's verbosity has partly rubbed off on Half-Handed Cloud's Halos Lassos song titles-- or do we have a chicken-and-the-egg thing going on here?: In the new year, the Plastic Constellations will take their crusade across the States, seeking to smite boringness wherever it may lurk.
Helping them out in their quest will be labelmates the Hold Steady and two-man rocktastical jam Swearing at Motorists. Dates: 01-27 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club (two shows)* 02-01 Washington, DC - the Black Cat % 02-07 Gainesville, FL - the Covered Dish % 02-08 Orlando, FL - the Social % 02-10 Tallahassee, FL - the Beta Bar % The times, they are a-changin'. XM Satellite Radio announced today that Bob Dylan has signed on to become their latest DJ.
Come March, the living legend will host a weekly show on XM's Deep Tracks channel. In addition to a hand-picked playlist by the master himself, the hour-long program will feature commentary on music and other topics, interviews with special guests, and on-air replies to e-mail from XM subscribers. "Songs and music have always inspired me," Dylan said in a press release.
"A lot of my own songs have been played on the radio, but this is the first time I've ever been on the other side of the mic. It'll be as exciting for me as it is for XM." Dylan joins a roster of DJs that already includes Snoop Dogg and Ellen DeGeneres.
We'll just let that sink in for a second. How much money is XM paying Dylan to do this? The answer, my friend, is bl-- ah, you know the rest.
March 6 marks the return of the mighty Mogwai, the Scottish post-rock combo of choice for dreamers young and old. On that hallowed date, Matador will unleash Mr. Beast, the revered fivesome's fifth album proper, featuring ten epic tracks and described by Mogwai manager and erstwhile Creation Records guru Alan McGee as "probably the greatest art rock record that I've been involved in since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless", and "possibly better than Loveless.
" So, like, post-phenomenal. Those in the know are forecasting a return to form for the Mogwai, apparently in part a reaction to 2003's deliberately toned-down Happy Music For Happy People. Stuart Braithwaite declares in a Matador press release that he and his bandmates "really missed making a lot of noise!
" He goes on to admit: "Although only about 25 percent of the new album is actually noise, that's the one thing we consciously had in mind when we set out." Nevertheless, what Mr. Beast ain't is Young Team (Reprise), as Braithwaite and company also strove to expand their sonic horizons with this latest release.
Since the band's inception, says Stuart, "we knew we were in this for the long haul and we knew we wanted to be making worthwhile, important music until the day our hands stop working, so it serves our purpose to challenge ourselves, on every level." And a noble pursuit that is. Recorded in Mogwai's Castle of Doom studios and produced by Tony Doogan, Mr.
Beast features contributions from composer Craig Armstrong, who lends keyboards to the track "I Chose Horses", and Tetsuya Fukagawa of Japanese post-hardcore epic-mongers Envy (signed to Mogwai's own Rock Action label), who shares his lovely vocals on the same track. And now, the numbers of the Beast: Time to pick that crisp, white nurse's outfit up from the dry cleaners, because the creepiest Christian clan in indie rock is gearing up to fill our hearts and ears with lots and lots of grace in 2006. Pitchfork spoke with Danielson Famile ringleader Daniel Smith last week about the flood of music he plans to loose upon the world next year.
Ships, the new Danielson album due May 9 on Secretly Canadian, is much, much more than a Famile affair. In addition to previously reported collaborators Deerhoof, the disc also features contributions from Sufjan Stevens, Steve Albini, Edith Frost, Emil Nikolaisen of Serena Maneesh, all of the members of Why?, John Ringhofer (Half-Handed Cloud), as well as the entire Famile.
All in all, 34 people worked on the record. Take that, Broken Social Scene! "When I started writing songs for this record, I wrote a list of people I wanted to work with," Smith said.
"My goal was to include everyone possible. I spent a year and half writing and recording and assembling various people. I wanted to explore the idea of creative community and relationships.
That's why this record is credited to just Danielson, not Danielson Famile or Brother Danielson. I wanted it to be inclusive." Smith described Ships as "dense" and "pretty rockin' at times.
" He said eight to ten people perform on each song, and that each track was written with specific collaborators in mind. Deerhoof's five cuts were recorded in a cabin in California's Yosemite National Park, and the remaining six tunes were laid to tape at the Danielson home studio, the New Jerusalem Recreation Room, in Clarksboro, NJ. Smith's collaborative project ended up being so massive that the results have spilled over into three additional 7" singles, which will be released on three different labels in the months before Ships hits shores.
"Dry Goods Dry Power" / "Left-Handed Smoke Shifter", recorded with Steve Albini, will come out on Smith's own Sounds Familyre imprint on March 7, "When It Comes To You I'm Lazy" / "Goody Goody", produced by Kramer (the Bongwater guy, not the "Seinfeld" guy) is scheduled for release on Kill Rock Stars on March 22, and "I'm Slow But I'm Sloppy", produced by Why? and backed by "Did I Step On Your Remix" by Christiaan Palladino, is due on March 28, courtesy of Anticon. Smith said that he has two or three more collaborative 7"s in the works, and that he intends to eventually compile them all onto one CD.
As for who those collaborators might be, Smith's lips are sealed. "I don't want to drop any more names than I already have," he said. Danielson fans will also rejoice in the news that a full-scale Famile tour is being planned for next year, possibly involving Deerhoof and definitely involving new uniforms, according to Smith.
In addition, the Danielson documentary film, in the works for the past five years, is finally complete. Danielson: a Family movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE) will premiere at film festivals in early 2006, including a stop at the SXSW film festival in March. And in case you were wondering: yes, Daniel Smith does talk the exact same way that he sings.
Meaning, in a high and squeaky voice. He is truly blessed. Do you miss tales of ramshackle stables, schoolgirls' knees, and "Fat Kelly's Teeth"?
Do you ache for the "hymns" to coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, the things we didn't do, and Thomas Courtney Warner? Do you miss the British indie rock band Hefner? Do you even remember them?
Although it's a common perception that the band called it a day, we may be a bit premature in throwing dirt on its grave. Judging by Hefner's expected forthcoming output, this doesn't sound like a band who's dancing days are behind them just yet. Or maybe the group just want to leave a better lasting impression than "you know, that band that kinda sound like.
.." Hyper-prolific frontman Darren Hayman has kept busy during this prolonged hiatus (or since the band's split, depending on your view of the situation) by squabbling with former label Too Pure, playing in bluegrass band Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee, toying around in electronic duo the Stereo Morphonium and preparing his first solo album (Table For One).
He's also had time to ponder the apparent afterlife of Hefner and its untapped stash of unreleased songs. According to recent statements from the singer, a Hefner best-of collection is being compiled, as is a 2xCD of unreleased songs called Catfight. Additionally, re-released and expanded versions of the band's four albums, with B-sides, BBC sessions, and live tracks, are being planned.
But you don't need to wait until these the light of day to hear the music, as the there are a number of interesting and tough-to-track-down releases available for download from the online store Simbiotic. Hefner goodies available in mp3 format include every track from the following: the Revelations!, The Hefner Heart, and Orphan Songs EPs, and the hard-to-find live collection Snare, Kick, Hats, Ride.
Also available is the Dagenham EP from Hefner side project The French. In a message board statement regarding the downloads, Hayman gave the following caveat: "Now you and I both know there is nothing stopping you from downloading this and sending it to your friends. All I can say is please don't.
We're trying to be good to you, don't make our pets starve." Think of the pets! Won't anyone think of the pets?
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