Music legends rock the Hall of Fame

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rock ‘n’ roll royalty held court on Thursday night as Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Sting and other music legends staged a marathon show to celebrate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary. The six-hour concert at Madison Square Garden included over 50 songs and also featured performances by Crosby, Stills and Nash, blues great B.B. King, Smokey Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and others. Actor Tom Hanks introduced rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, who kicked off the show with his classic “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” “This is the music of our generation, this is the music that we grew up with, this is the soundtrack of our lives,” Hanks said to reporters before the show. Some of the biggest acts played several of their hits before bringing out featured guests who sang their own well-known songs. Crosby, Stills and Nash began their set with “Woodstock” and “Marrakech Express” before inviting Taylor, Browne and Bonnie Raitt to the stage. Paul Simon, who performed selections from his solo catalog before introducing and performing with his former partner Art Garfunkel, gave the spotlight to early rock heartthrob Dion DiMucci and his hit “The Wanderer.” The audience enthusiastically greeted some of the best-known songs, but emotional high points were registered during tributes to deceased Hall of Fame members. David Crosby and Graham Nash harmonized with Simon on “Here Comes the Sun,” written by former Beatle George Harrison. Stevie Wonder, who brought out singer John Legend to perform Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me,” was so overcome with emotion while singing the late Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” that he was unable to sing one of the verses and briefly laid his head down on his keyboard.
Springsteen and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty shared vocals on Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” and “The Boss” followed with “London Calling,” in tribute to The Clash. The show’s energy level peaked during Springsteen’s set.
He brought out Sam Moore, half of the soul/rhythm and blues duo Sam and Dave, to perform “Hold On, I’m Comin’” and “Soul Man.” The only unannounced performer of the night was Billy Joel, who performed three of his songs as well as Springsteen’s signature rock anthem “Born To Run.” A second concert celebrating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary is set for Friday night with scheduled performances by U2, Aretha Franklin, Metallica, Annie Lennox, Lou Reed, Ozzy Osbourne and others. U.S. cable television network HBO will air a four-hour special containing highlights from both nights on November 29.

The Dead Weather appeared live on NME Radio yesterday (Oct 29) and – Jack White revealed that the band have “15 or 20″ songs ready to record for their second album.

White said that the band will be getting together in December to record the follow-up to this year’s debut ‘Horehound’, and that the band would “maybe finish the record if we can”. Watch the video interview now by clicking on the right.

“We’d love to have the second record out within a year of the first one,” said White.

Flying in from Paris that morning, the four-piece band joined Iain Baker in the NME studio and When asked if there were going to be any surprises for the London crowd for their O2 Academy Brixton show in the capital that night, to laughter from his bandmates White deadpanned: “We’re just gonna hold everyone hostage and threaten them to be energetic, chain them up and fire blanks, machine gun blanks across their heads. We won’t tell them they’re blanks.”

He then jokingly told bandmate Alison Mosshart not to stop him from saying things, adding: “This shit doesn’t happen in The White Stripes, I’ll tell you that much.”

White then talked about the Third Man Records pop-up store, which is open today and tomorrow in Shoreditch Church in London, which White said will bring “what we have happening in Nashville to London”.

The shop will be selling limited-edition vinyl which is only available at the store, with only 100 records of each design on sale. “We’ve been blowing our minds back in Nashville for the last couple of weeks designing it,” said White of the records.

The London Third Man Records pop-up store follows similar events in an “abandoned porno theatre” in Los Angeles as well as New York.

The band also revealed details of their free show at the Shoreditch Church tomorrow (October 31), starting at 8pm.

London Times:

Google’s announcement will be seen as a direct challenge to Apple’s iTunes, the download store that has become the world’s leading digital music retailer….Although iTunes currently offers over 11 million songs, it requires the installation of free software and the opening of an account to function. If Google is successful in marrying its normal ease of search to music retailing, it could take a slice out of Apple’s business.
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New York Times:

Google users who put the name of a song into the search engine will get, as the top result, information about the musician and an opportunity to stream the song from one of two services, Lala and MySpace Music. People who click on that link will, in most cases, get a pop-up window that allows them to play the full song once, for free, along with a link to buy the song….Entering an album name or band name into Google yields similar free listening opportunities.

The service could significantly change how people look for music online. Music searches on Google, heretofore, have typically generated links to Wikipedia, random ad-filled lyrics sites and, in some cases, YouTube videos. But it usually took a few hops across the Web to actually sample a song. Not anymore. (It will be interesting to see, in this new environment, whether the music labels are truly comfortable with allowing all these free streams on Google.)

Los Angeles Times:

One of the more enticing new features is the ability to find a song for free streaming based on a lyrical query alone. MySpace and LaLa.com will provide the music, and search results will include album art and a special Google-branded player….The player will come with a “buy” button. The user will purchase the music from the online retailer providing the stream. Thanks to Google licensing Gracenotes lyrics, Billboard also reports that a search for lyrics will now direct users to an authorized database, allowing users to stream or buy a track.

Arcade Fire’s partially re-recorded version of “Wake Up” pulled on all of our heartstrings recently in the Where The Wild Things Are trailer, but the song isn’t actually in the film, you see, nor is it on Karen O and the Kids’ official soundtrack.

No worries, though, director Spike Jonze feels your pain: The trailer version of “Wake Up” and 19 other jams are available for free download as Sound Advice 23: We Love You So, a mixtape curated by Jonze and his blog contributors (Dallas Clayton, Graham Kolbeins, Molly Young, and Matt Rubin).

Click here or head on over to The World’s Best Ever to download the hour-long mixtape from Jonze & company, which features the following killer tracklist:

01 Lust For Life – Girls
02 Wake Up (WTWTA trailer version) – Arcade Fire
03 I Want a Dog – Pet Shop Boys
04 Hey There Stranger – Pamela Blue
05 The Wimp – Capybara
06 Animal Crackers (in Cellophane Boxes) – Gene Pitney
07 Yekermo Sew – Mulatu Astatke
08 Water To Wine – Saintseneca
09 Tong Poo – Yellow Magic Orchestra
10 Rumpus – Karen O and The Kids
11 Overnight Religion – Kurt Vile
12 Green Bean (Binki Shapiro) – Green Bean
13 No Time, No Hope – Times New Viking
14 Ode to an African Violet – Mort Garson
15 Como Pudiste Hacerme Esto A Mi – Alaska y Dinarama
16 Overmuch – The Long Lost
17 Turkey Sandwich – Mika Miko
18 Poet, Fool or Bum – Lee Hazlewood
19 Hultsfred ‘98 – Jens Lekman
20 Seigneur Apprends Moi – Hermas Zopoula
(via twentyfourbit)

AC/DC have told their fans in Italy to not buy tickets for shows in that country because, well, they aren’t scheduled to play there. An Italian newspaper recently claimed that they were set to play Olympia Stadium in Turin next June 8 and 9 and the news spread across the web. The band’s Italian promoter, Barley Arts, quickly issued a statement before the underside of the ticket scalping industry could get into high gear.

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Paul McCartney played Broadway Monday night as part of a salute to the late composer Frank Loesser. McCartney has owned Loesser’s catalog for some time and put on the show with Jo Sullivan, the late composer’s widow.

A long list of Broadway stars sang songs from Loesser’s shows, including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Guys & Dolls and The Most Happy Fella. Also taking the stage was Art Garfunkel, performing Two Sleepy People, and McCartney himself singing On a Slow Boat to China.

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Health Report:

Morrissey has announced he will play his Royal Albert Hall show tonight (Tuesday) in London after canceling last night’s performance. The singer had collapsed on stage Saturday night and was hospitalized for a short time with breathing problems.

On the other hand, Elton John is still too ill to perform at London’s Wembley arena. His promoters hope to reschedule for sometime in December.

Finally, Rod Stewart canceled his Tuesday appearance on ABC’s The View after catching a viral infection from his 3-year-old son Alastair. He recorded an apology for the show, saying “Viewers and ladies, I woke up this morning to do a vocal warm up and there was no voice. It’s just one of those things. It’s a viral thing that’s going around at the moment.”

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The Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman has given up smoking after 55 years after being advised by his doctors warned him about the health effects (really? Now is the first time?). Wyman said “They told me: ‘If you carry on, you are going to get emphysema.’ So I thought: ‘Sod it! I’m going to stop.’”

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Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon are set to host next Monday night’s WWE Raw broadcast.

Whenever news gets slow, it seems Faces, Led Zeppelin, and many more classic rock band reunion rumors start taking over the internet. These days, however, the artists themselves aren’t doing much to quell the gossip—If anything, they’re fueling it.

“[Faces had] a reunion… in London without me because I’m promoting this album, and they’re got Paul Rodgers to sing — who is the lead singer of Bad Company, and Free, and of course with Queen,” Rod Stewart told CNN in response to Faces reunion rumors. “Hopefully, I’ll get me old job back. It’s on the cards. I’ll do it eventually.”

And if that wasn’t blatant enough, drummer Kenney Jones concurred after a recent Faces minus Stewart gig that “it’s just down to getting the schedules right for all of us to do it at the same time,” he said, “because everyone’s doing different things at different times.”

Zeppelin reunion talk is much more speculative, but a small quote from Robert Plant has done anything but dash the hopes of fans hoping to see Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Plant reform for a one-off at next year’s Glastonbury Festival. “I’ve just been talking to Michael [Eavis],” Plant told BBC 6. “There’s [a] place for me there, but I have no idea who with.”

Plant could have ruled out the iconic rock band’s potential for a headlining set at the festival’s 40th anniversary, but instead we might get a vague quote from Page shortly, perhaps a non-denial from Jones (now of Them Crooked Vultures), and the reunion rumor mill will grind away nicely for a bit. Meanwhile, at least we’ve got that Creed reunion to help bide our time.

The rest of his tour is still on, though.

The bad news: Following his onstage collapse at a show in Swindon, England on Saturday, Morrissey was forced to cancel his planned gig in Bournemouth, England tonight “on medical advice,” according to his site.

The good news: Moz’s spokesperson says the singer is doing much better and will resume his current tour tomorrow night at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Morrissey’s world tour is set to run through December. Check here for dates.

“Why wouldn’t Preservation Hall do a project with Tom Waits?” mused Ben Jaffe, musical director and son of Preservation Hall founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe, in a 2006 piece on the post-Katrina New Orleans music scene in the NY Times.

U2’s the Edge had just performed “Vertigo” with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at a benefit to replace instruments destroyed by the hurricane, including those of five Preservation Hall members who had lost their homes. The famous French Quarter music club was one of the first to reopen after the tragedy, but they needed (and still do) more star power to stay financially afloat.

Well, Jaffe and company got at least one of their wishes: Tom Waits is in New Orleans right now, recording a benefit track for and with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Also, according to a news bulletin on Waits’ official site, he will be recording a song for an upcoming 2nd volume to Anti’s sea chanty series while in town. The first installment, Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys, included contributions from Nick Cave, Bono, Bryan Ferry w/ Antony, Lou Reed and more, so a planned follow-up is great news in and of itself.

Though I’ll admit I wish Marc Ribot played guitar on every Waits recording, one listen to Preservation Hall’s “St. James Infirmary” and I’d say he’s got a perfect new backing band, complete with tuba.

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Morrissey has been discharged from hospital after collapsing on stage in Swindon last night (October 24) with breathing difficulties.

The former Smiths frontman fell to the ground as he was performing opening song ‘This Charming Man’ at the Oasis Leisure Centre before two of his band members carried him offstage.

“Good evening… probably,” he said before opening the show with what would be his only song.

Onlookers said he appeared to be “straining” to perform, “wincing” as he did so, and when the song came to the end he sagged to his knees and slumped to the stage.

He was then taken to Great Western Hospital, at around 9pm where he was kept in overnight.

A Great Western Hospital spokeswoman said he was kept in overnight as a “precautionary measure” but was “much improved” and had been discharged, reports BBC News.

A statement posted on his website itsmorrisseysworld.com also read today: “Morrissey is in stable condition after his collapse in Swindon Saturday night. Thanks go out to all his well wishers, more information will be posted as soon as it is available.”
(via: NME)

The whimsical career path that the increasingly enigmatic singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens has embarked upon takes another unconventional twist with the release of his mixed-media tribute to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a move that will turn heads and raise suspicion in equal measure. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music in late 2007, the project began as a series of live performances complete with a 36-strong orchestra, a throng of female hula dancers, and Super 8 footage that Stevens filmed and directed himself. Despite this well-received string of sold-out performances, it has taken almost two years for an official CD release of these coveted orchestrations. The BQE, then, is another feather in the capricious cap of this endlessly exciting talent, a singer-songwriter who shows very little interest in singing or writing “songs” these days.

As Stevens’s most elaborate endeavor to date, BQE should be admired for its sheer ambition alone. Pretentious song titles aside (“Interlude I: Dream Sequence in Subi Circumnavigation” and “Movement III: Linear Tableau with Intersecting Surprise” are surely his most ghastly tongue-twisters to date), Stevens seems remarkably comfortable in this environment, crafting each track with an air of confidence and grandeur. Following two preliminary flourishes, “Movement I: In the Countenance of Kings” plays as a faultless pointer to the album’s lush scope and elegance. The track’s hollow, melancholic piano melody meanders along a subdued overture before tremolo bass work rouses urgency from the string and brass sections. The clamor intensifies and wanes back and forth, gathering steam for a climatic fanfare that never arrives. The piece instead saunters en route for “Movement II: Sleeping Invader” with its charmingly sullen ivory hook, a splendid twist to the tale.

The album moves sinuously through its series of movements and interludes, executed with understated grace for the most part, but this rule is shrewdly breached whenever Stevens sees fit. “Movement III: Linear Tableau with Intersecting Surprise,” for instance, is a swelling woodwind arrangement that inflates and expands relentlessly, gradually mingling with the orchestra’s string, brass, and percussion sections before exploding into an electronic tour de force with “Movement IV: Traffic Shock.” Here, the orchestra’s piccolo and alto flute duel with an electronic symphony akin to Enjoy Your Rabbit, a flurry of cacophonous screeches and deep thuds. Even when stretching his chops in these new environments, Stevens retains a flair for daring and innovative musicianship.

Some will find it unfortunate that traces of Stevens’s indie-folk roots are scarce; the bubbly piano melody of “Interlude III: Invisible Accidents” toys with his erstwhile sound, arriving as a welcome change to the album’s byzantine nature, but this is merely a pit stop. The most ostentatious arrangements are reserved for the home stretch and “Movement VII (Finale): The Emperor of Centrifuge,” banishing his beguiling melodies altogether in favor of the album’s most grandiose compositions. It’s no coincidence BQE begins to lose momentum here, caught in a traffic jam of overblown sonatas that unfortunately highlight the pretentious side of Stevens’s highly wrought venture.

If one can ignore this overexcited curtain call, though, BQE can be deemed a hugely successful gamble for Stevens. His ideas are realized with the confidence of a seasoned composer, comfortable with implementing all corners of the orchestra to wondrous effect. From here, there’s no telling where his fanciful and bizarre career path may take him, though calls to backtrack a few steps to his Illinois mindset will plague this immensely gifted singer-songwriter wherever he decides to go.

Ever since the triple-headed stomp-rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures whirled into existence, we’ve been keeping up with just about every little scrap of whomp-ass they’ve released into the world.

Finally, on November 17, Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones will leave the shadows and come into the light. That’s when their self-titled debut album will finally hit North American shelves, via DGC/Interscope. (It’s out November 16 in the UK on Columbia.)

We’ve got the tracklist below, but all you really need to know is that Dave Grohl is back behind the drums and that there’s a song called “Mind Eraser, No Chaser”:

Them Crooked Vultures:

01 No One Loves Me & Neither Do I
02 Mind Eraser, No Chaser
03 New Fang
04 Dead End Friends
05 Elephants
06 Scumbag Blues
07 Bandoliers
08 Reptiles
09 Interlude With Ludes
10 Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up
11 Caligulove
12 Gunman
13 Spinning in Daffodils

Bringing Chuck Klosterman’s memoir to the big screen

As much as any writer in America, Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn is equipped to tackle provincial fandom of hair metal. He’s an expert at combining screamingly triumphant guitar solos and bleary Minnesota hardcore show reminisces in the same song. So it’s pretty awesome news that Finn, along with “Late Show With David Letterman” writer Tom Ruprecht, will adapt Fargo Rock City, rock writer Chuck Klosterman’s memoir about being a teenage metal fan in North Dakota, for the screen, as The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Business blog reports. (Via Idolator.)

According to Risky Business, Finn and Ruprecht acquired the rights to Klosterman’s book, and Finn, Ruprecht, and Klosterman will all produce the film adaptation together. The blog reports, “The 1980s-set screenplay will revolve around a group of high school seniors facing graduation as they try to find success with women and generally break out of their geeky cocoons.”
So: Dazed and Confused but with Aquanet? That sounds promising!

Finn says, “Seventeen or 18 is the perfect age for characters in a movie like this, because it’s at that age that you have drivers licenses and a certain amount of independence, but you’re still young enough that you can totally make terrible decisions. And you’re still young enough that you can have a two-hour argument over whether Mötley Crüe would beat Guns N’ Roses in a fight.” (Mötley Crüe would totally beat Guns N’ Roses in a fight, at least before Matt Sorum joined GNR.)

Ruprecht and Finn are still working on the script’s first draft. Risky Business reports that they’ll seek studio and third-party financing.

After nine months of surfing the Pacific and recording in a Malibu home studio, MGMT member Andrew VanWyngarden is paddling back to shore and suiting up for the band’s sophomore release, “Congratulations.”

The album is slated to drop in early 2010, as VanWyngarden told the San Francisco Examiner when the band performed at last weekend’s Treasure Island festival. “Congratulations” is produced by Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember of Spacemen 3/Spectrum, and Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux contributes vocals.

MGMT’s 2007 debut “Oracular Spectacular” created a tidal wave that carried the psychedelic indie-pop duo from Brooklyn buzz band to international fame. The album has sold 508,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

MGMT’s ricochet to popularity was inevitably accompanied by mass attention and a share of ordeals, including a recently settled lawsuit with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. VanWyngarden and bandmate Ben Goldwasser headed west in January to escape the commotion and focus on recording. There, VanWyngarden learned to surf and found solace in the waves, as he told the Examiner.

Fans can expect “Congratulations” to ride a bleaker edge than the happy-go-lucky “Oracular Spectacular,” as the duo reflect on their journey.

“The song ‘Congratulations’ itself is pretty dark,” VanWyngarden told the Examiner. “It’s us trying to deal with all the craziness that’s been going on since our last album took off. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel natural

While U2’s Bono and the Edge are still prepping their Spider-Man musical, Green Day’s American Idiot musical is finishing up its run in Berkeley, and Regina Spektor is penning songs for an upcoming Sleeping Beauty adaptation, a couple of hip-hop pioneers want to get their piece of the musical theater pie.

Rev Run, aka Joseph Simmons, and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels are teaming up with Tom Cruise’s film producing partner, Paula Wagner, to pursue a Broadway musical about the group’s career, reports Variety’s Liz Smith. “I feel their story lends itself perfectly to the stage,” Wagner says. “This project has been a passion of mine for some time and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with them.”

As U2 found out the hard way, Broadway musicals can get very expensive and difficult to pull off, so there’s no guarantee that Run-DMC’s story will make it all the way to the stage. Of course, Wagner did manage to produce Valkyrie and Death Race, so anything’s possible.

One of many unsatisfactory things about end-of-decade retrospectives is that musicians are rarely so accommodating as to plot their careers in nice, convenient ten year cycles. Nonetheless, that’s how posterity tends to remember them, regardless of finer details. Thus the Kinks are Sixties artists, the Clash a Seventies act, Talk Talk an Eighties band, Nirvana from the Nineties, and you’d comfortably stick a punt on The Strokes and Sufjan Stevens ending up defined by this decade we’re exiting.

But what of Bradford Cox? Even if you were aware of Deerhunter’s raucous 2005 debut ”Turn It Up Faggot” at the time, you’re a wizard or a liar if you foresaw how their frontman was going to fill the years 2007 to 2009. That is to say: three Deerhunter albums (‘tis a fool indeed who views Weird Era Cont. as anything other than a record in its own right), two EPs, and a solo project as Atlas Sound that’s yielded God-know-how-many free downloads, as well as last year’s Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and now – an epic 22 months later – Logos. That all of this bar the odd freebie has been good to exemplary is simply astonishing, and points to an artist whose profligacy and cult popularity has him nicely set up to be a defining artist of the next decade.

And yet… anomalous as ”Turn It Up Faggot” may seem, such scabrous origins are indicative of a palette that has been cooling and quietening ever since Cox first intersected with the limelight. The soundbite-friendly ‘ambient punk’ aesthetic never really lasted beyond Cryptograms, with Microcastle canning the abrasiveness in favour of reasonably straightforward shoegaze set off with dreamlike Fifties flourishes. Having arrived at something like a commercial sound, another artist might have stopped there; however, Cox has ploughed right on through, this year’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange far and away Deerhunter’s most introverted work, a retreat into quiescent childhood reverie.

Logos has much more in common with Rainwater… than Let the Blind…, for the most part ditching the dissonant electronics in favour of delayed acoustic guitars and old-time pop structures. On the face of it, it sets out Atlas Sound’s stall as simply being whatever Cox may do sans Deerhunter. Yet in a way the ‘ambient solo project’ tag still kind of makes sense. Strictly speaking ambient music is defined not by instrumentation, but by its evasion of the consciousness. Whole swathes of Logos are blurred and indistinct – technically melodic, hooky songs treated and delivered in such a way that they all but self-negate, leaving nothing but fleeting impressions: the winsome viola that arrives in ‘Attic Lights’, just as Cox mutters ”maximum pain, maximum effect”; the gay singer’s unsettling yearning for traditional marriage on ‘Sheila’ (“we’ll die alone, together”); the barely discernible mantra ”all is love” that briefly ghosts through ‘Washington School’.

This might sound like a way of romanticising an unmemorable album, but that’s far from the case. These songs are bunched together into two dreamy, fog-like passages that serve as a backdrop for a handful of the most tangible tunes Cox has ever written, soaring atmospherically above the misty dreampop. Opener ‘The Light That Failed’ roots itself in the consciousness through eerily torpid glitching, Cox’s disconcerting use of something approaching a falsetto, and the doomy langour of its titular lyric. It sets up an album that frequently drifts into disquieting areas, yet never quite follows through on this early moment of dread. Indeed, delightful Panda Bear hook up ‘Walkabout’ serves as definitive proof that the light hasn’t failed at all. While much of Cox’s early pop obsession speaks of a desire to creep out of the now entirely, ‘Walkabout’ is far more tangible and good natured, thanks largely to Panda Bear’s high, comforting tones and the appropriation of the hook from actual vintage Sixties pop gem ‘What Am I Going To Do?’ by The Dovers. Ironically for a song built around a 40-year-old tune, nothing, else on Logos has ‘Walkabout’s immediacy, though the excellent title track comes close, a rattling Strokes-alike number slightly removed from the world by Cox’s arsenal of floaty FX.

As we’ve known ever since last year’s leak of the Logos demos, the centrepiece is the eight and a half minute, wholly electronic ‘Quick Canal’. Though tamed a little from the leaked 13 minute instrumental, this more mannered, Laetitia Sadier-sung incarnation is a better fit here, and still towers above the skyline. The Stereolab singer adds an inescapably Enya-ish quality to the gentle early stages, but by the time the song’s swooshing, snowy motorik has kicked into full gear she fits in immaculately, an aloof Old World passenger on a song charged with haughty European electronica. It perhaps doesn’t sound so jaw-dropping as it did in isolation, but a lot of that can be attributed to an intentional effect of the surroundings. Those short, subliminal songs serving to filter away reality and focus, like half remembered dreams that leaves the senses baffled and feverish.

Logos is a gorgeous, hallucinatory and somewhat sickly outing. While there’s every chance he’ll wrong foot us, and soon, this record is entirely in keeping with the increasingly self-erasing route Bradford Cox has taken as a musician; it’s hard to stifle a shudder at that blanked out cover image. Maybe Cox will go on to be a star next decade – he’s a gregarious, prolific man liked by critics. But listen to his music, and that doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe he’ll become an icon. Or maybe he’ll finally make his escape from our timestream entirely, leaving us to wonder if he was ever there at all.

Now that Wilco has taken all the proper album release steps (touring, late night television, internet interview invasion, etc.) and the well of Wilco [The Album] puns has finally run dry, Jeff Tweedy and company are ready to bang out Wilco [The Follow-Up]. That’s not the title, sorry. I just couldn’t resist one more.

“We have a big session in January and [sic] start on the new record,” bassist John Stirratt told The Ampersand. “We’re trying to get on the ball as fast as we can because the touring has been pretty much non-stop.”

Stirratt imagines the album won’t come out sooner than 2011, but a fall ‘10 release is possible. The planned upcoming sessions will have to move swiftly, though, as Wilco are set to tour Canada (plus a free show at the Olympics) in February and early March. That shouldn’t be a problem, however, as Stirratt added, “we all have families, and we have to make the time really count in the studio. We work a lot more efficiently now. I imagine it would happen faster, in the way Wilco [the album] did.”

Sounds like Wilco has become quite the well-oiled machine. Here’s hoping they include a couple guitar duels on the new record. Okay, not really.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are means so much to so many generations that Spike Jonze’s film adaptation couldn’t be just a typical kids’ movie — it had to be a movie for the entire family. And on every part of the production, Jonze worked with artists so close to him that they might as well have been a family: while bringing the book’s story to the big screen, he developed a tight friendship with Sendak; for Where the Wild Things Are’s music, Jonze recruited former lover and frequent collaborator Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In turn, O drafted a who’s who of indie rock talent, among them her chief co-writers Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Yeah Yeah Yeahs associate Imaad Wasif and her bandmates Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, all of whom perform under the aptly storybook name Karen O & the Kids. With their help, O uncovers new musical directions. Wildness abounds in her work with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Native Korean Rock, but neither band’s music is particularly childlike. Here, she taps into a rainbow of youthful expression, from “All Is Love”‘s pure joy to the tribal festivity of “Rumpus” to “Animal”‘s feral folk, which puts O’s ferocious scream in a completely different context than her other work. Yet on “Igloo” and “Sailing Home,” her voice is gentler than it’s been almost anywhere else — the only other time she has sounded so soft is on “Hello Tomorrow,” the song she wrote for Jonze’s 2005 Nike television commercial. Likewise, despite the wealth of indie rockers on it, Where the Wild Things Are rarely sounds self-consciously indie, even on the cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Worried Shoes.” Cox’s xylophone gives the album a dreamlike feel, particularly on “Rumpus Reprise,” while Zinner’s guitar is unmistakable on the excellent “Capsize,” which moves from a fierce tantrum to sweeping mystery like its own self-contained story. Balancing abstract pieces with more attention-getting pop songs like the adorable “Heads Up,” Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t resemble a typical children’s film soundtrack, although it will make a great first soundtrack for kids’ music collections. Neither a straightforward score nor a collection of kid-friendly indie rock songs, it lies somewhere intriguingly in between — and it’s just as good, if not better, than the music these artists make with their main projects.

Digital Music News:

What would happen if the majors stopped pressing CDs right now, closed down their plants, and wrote off their physical retail networks? The answer is that they’d lose billions, right off the bat! The lights would start flickering immediately!

But, they’d also quickly shrink unnecessary overhead, ditch ineffective legacy commitments, assume nimbler stances, and refocus all of their energies towards digital formats and concepts. And, start building companies designed to survive in the 2010s.

PopMatters:

I no longer remember album release dates, artwork, and on the whole, albums tend to be less synonymous with ‘events’ in my daily life. Of course, with the advent of album artwork on video iPods, as well as lyric storage capacities, and so forth—the evolving MP3 format is growing to encompass many of the things that were ‘lost’ in the conversion from CD. Without a doubt, this is a wonderful thing, but so much of our musical landscape has changed. Rarely do I invite someone over to listen to an album over coffee, rarely do I make a mix CD for a friend, and what used to be an exciting outing to an independent music store has increasingly become a distant memory, as these autonomous ventures continue to fold.

Faust, the Fall, Quasi to join Pavement in Minehead

The Pavement reunion marches on! The indie rock kings have already announced 2010 shows in New York, New Zealand, and Australia, and they’ll also curate their very own ATP Festival in the spring in Minehead, England. And now they’ve announced a London show: Brixton Academy on May 11.

Pavement has also announced the first round of bands that they’ve picked to play their ATP Weekend, which goes down May 14-16. Those bands: krautrock originators Faust, sardonic postpunkers the Fall, Portland ex-spouse/ex-Sleater-Kinney indie duo Quasi, New York psych experimenters Endless Boogie, and Californian spoken-word crunch-rockers Enablers. Pavement themselves will also play, of course. Tickets for the Pavement ATP are already good and sold out.

Followers of Twitter and some music blog probably read recently that bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes had left Jay Reatard’s touring band ; while said move required the cancellation of some dates on the West Coast, we’re happy to announce Jay will be back on the road shortly, hitting Europe next week and the U.S. in late November, with the newly ensconced rhythm section of Anders Thode (bass) and Jacob Elving (drums), both from Danish punk titans the Cola Freaks, along for the ride.

You’ll note from the dates below that Jay is opening for The Pixies in Chicago, New York, Boston and Washington D.C. There’s also a New Year’s Eve date supporting Spoon in Miwaukee.

Wed Oct 28 Paris,Maroquinerie
Fri Oct 30 Munich, 59 to 1
Sat Oct 31 Berlin, Lido
Sun Nov 1 Copenhagen, Loppen
Mon Nov 2 Oslo, Parkteatret
Tue Nov 3 Malmo, Mejeriet
Thu Nov 5 Prague, Matrix
Fri Nov 6 Vienna, B72
Sat Nov 7 Bologna, Covo
Sun Nov 8 Clermont Ferrand, Coop de Mai
Mon Nov 9 Brussels, Botanique Rotonde
Tue Nov 10 Birmingham, Bar Academy
Wed Nov 11 Glasgow, King Tuts
Thu Nov 12 Manchester, Roadhouse
Fri Nov 13 London, Underworld
Sat Nov 14 Bristol, Croft
Sun Nov 15 Liverpool, Masque
Mon Nov 16 Dublin, Whelans

Sat Nov 21 Chicago Aragon (with The Pixies)
Sun Nov 22 Columbus The Summit
Mon Nov 23 Pittsburgh Brillobox
Tue Nov 24 New York Hammerstein Ballroom (with The Pixies)
Wed Nov 25 Northampton Iron Horse
Fri Nov 27 Boston Wang Center (with The Pixies)
Sat Nov 28 Philadelphia Johnny Brenda’s
Mon Nov 30 Wash DC Constitution Hall (with The Pixies)
Tue Dec 1 Chapel Hill Local 506
Wed Dec 2 Athens 40 Watt Club
Thur Dec 3 Atlanta The Earl
Fri Dec 4 Orlando Backbooth
Sat Dec 5 Tampa Crowbar
Mon Dec 7 New Orleans One Eyed Jacks
Tue Dec 8 Houston Walters on Washington
Wed Dec 9 Austin Emo’s (Outside)
Thu Dec 10 Dallas Granada Theater
Sat Dec 31 Milwaukee Riverside Theatre (with Spoon)

White Stripes’ Jack White gave a surprise lecture at Dublin’s Trinity College last night (October 18).

The guitarist, who is currently touring with his new band The Dead Weather, addressed the University’s Philosophical Society, one of the world’s oldest student societies, that has previously counted the likes of Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and JB Yates among its membership.

White was awarded the honorary patronage from the society, which was founded in the 17th century.

Leaving aside his guitar, White engaged in a highly philosophical discussion, where he talked candidly about his musical beliefs. Students who were expecting a straightforward interview seemed surprised by White’s sophisticated engagement with philosophy, and theories on anxiety and authenticity.

Speaking of the importance of authenticity, White remarked: “I don’t know if Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are as authentic as I think they are. Perhaps they’re not.”

He added: “Sometimes you start thinking that maybe Britney Spears or someone like that who’s doing exactly what they want to do in the way that they best know how, is more authentic than any of those people you could mention.”

White also answered questions about his work with Dylan and Loretta Lynn, as well as his recent film ‘It Might Get Loud’, where he features alongside other legendary guitarists such as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and U2′s The Edge.

Speaking about the experience, White declared: “It was a pretty incredible experience to work with those two guys.”

In an unexpected twist, the guitarist also revealed the existence of a hidden run of EPs, made with his former band The Upholsterers, back when White used to work in an upholstery shop in Detroit.

The records were recorded on clear vinyl, encased in a transparent covering and hidden in 100 pieces of furniture that he upholstered.

“They could be records that will never be found, ever,” he teased the student audience.

According to an L.A. Times report, the Flaming Lips are set to follow-up their life- (and death)-affirming LP Embryonic with a full-album redo of Pink Floyd’s gazillion-selling 1973 psych-rock classic Dark Side of the Moon.

The Lips version of Dark Side is a collaboration with the band Stardeath and White Dwarfs (which includes Wayne Coyne’s nephew Dennis Coyne as a member), and features guest spots from Henry Rollins and Peaches. It will most probably be an iTunes-only release.

The announcement was made last night during a Q&A session with fans at a MySpace show last night at L.A.’s Nike/Ricardo Montalbán Theater. (Check out photos from the gig after the jump and in the photobook here.)

Other tidbits revealed: While Embryonic was the final album of the Flaming Lips’ current contract with Warner Bros., they plan on sticking with the label for future releases.

If new albums by Super Furry Animals, 50 Foot Wave, and the Flaming Lips are any indication, 2009 is smack in the middle of a new psychedelic age. Popism, rockism: please defer briefly to weirdism. The Lips have always been the most chthonic of the nouveau psychsters, and on the Oklahoma vets’ 12th studio album, they dive deep into the netherworld of human duality. This 70-minute epic (marketed as a double album, in the old-school sense) pairs ugliness with beauty on a host of auditory freakouts and creepy meditations: squawks of distortion and instrumental distress nestle up to twinkling Rhodes pianos and breathtaking ruptures of harmony.

In “Aquarius Sabotage,” what sounds like B-movie psychosis is augmented by grand waves of harp — it’s as if Alice Coltrane were to walk into a scuzz-punk bar. Likewise, the descending vocal lullaby in “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine” sweetly complements the rough industrial grind of its rhythm section, and “Silver Trembling Hands” juxtaposes nervous tension with breezy relief.

To add lyrical emphasis, frontman Wayne Coyne muses throughout on the inherent good in evil and vice versa, and how, ultimately, it’s all a gray area: “Man holds a gun/There’s no explanation/He shoots at the sun,” he sings in “The Ego’s Last Stand.” Like the Furries’ Dark Days/Light Years, Embryonic is made mostly of pulsating studio jams, and like 50 Foot Wave’s Power Light, it’s regularly assaultive — the kick-drum mic in “Your Bats” could be lodged in John Bonham’s soul. Unlike those releases, it’s unhinged, fragmented, and at odds with itself.

This is accessible music pushed to the very edge of accessibility, far away from the safety of the band’s song-oriented efforts At War with the Mystics and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. All due respect — the Lips did good as pied pipers for the freak-flagged populace, but this here underneath is some fertile soil indeed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to make radio stations pay royalties to performers when they broadcast their music won the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval Thursday.

Satellite radio, Internet radio and cable TV music channels already pay fees to performers and musicians, along with songwriter royalties. AM and FM radio stations just pay songwriters, not performers.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the bill corrects a glaring inequity. “When we listen to music, we are enjoying the intellectual property of two creative artists — the songwriter and the performer,” he said.

The bill enjoys star-studded support. Entertainers Tony Bennett, Sheryl Crow, will.i.am, Herbie Hancock and Patti LaBelle have all made visits to Capitol Hill to lobby for it. But it also has some powerful opposition, the National Broadcasters Association, which argues that performers already benefit because radio stations playing their work drive listeners to buy music and concert tickets.

The Judiciary Committee’s approval on a voice vote sends the bill to the full Senate, but lawmakers said they still want to make changes before a vote. A similar bill is pending in the House after winning the approval of its Judiciary Committee in May.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the bill a job killer and said it would hurt small and minority-owned radio stations already struggling in the hard economic times. He said he feared many of them will just switch to all-talk formats rather than pay more royalties.

Leahy said he amended the bill to accommodate smaller broadcasters by allowing them to pay a flat fee annual fee ranging from $100 to $5,000 based on their revenues. Public radio and other noncommercial stations would pay between $100 and $1,000 in new royalties.

Larger commercial stations that make more than $1.25 million would pay a rate set by the federal Copyright Royalty Board.

Broadcasters that make less than $5 million would start paying fees three years after the bill becomes law. Stations that make more would have to start paying the fees a year from enactment.

The Senate bill is S.379.

As we told you late last month, chamber pop maestro Sufjan Stevens recently began unravelling his reasons for the lack of output since his career-defining Illinois record. In an interview on his Asthmatic Kitty site, he said, “I’m at a point where I no longer have a deep desire to share my music with anyone, having spent many years imparting my songs to the public.”

Now,Stevens explained the future of his solo work even further. And while there’s a lot to digest in what he says, here’s an excerpt:

I definitely feel like “What is the point? What’s the point of making music anymore?” I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that’s how I’ve always created — I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I’m wondering, what’s the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone’s just downloading music? And I’m starting to get sick of my conceptual ideas. I’m tired of these grand, epic endeavours and wanting to just make music for the joy of making music and having it be immediate and nothing to do with the industry itself, which, y’know is suffering right now of course.

And I think it has to do with a creative crisis too. I’m wondering what am I doing? What is a song even? I’m questioning, what’s the point of a song? Is a song antiquated? Does it have any power any more? The format itself — a narrative song with accompaniment — is really beyond me now. Like, I feel that The BQE is not really a song, it’s not really a movie, it’s not really just a soundtrack. It’s so ambiguous and diversified, it seems to lack shape. And the expressway itself lacks shape, so I feel like it’s all related to this existential crisis: Me versus the BQE, or me versus my work, y’know? And I don’t think I can win; I feel like it’s a losing battle…

Fortunately, Sufjan hasn’t stopped playing music altogether, as his instrumental, collaborative record with his stepdad will be out next month and he’s been actively playing live out on the road. In fact, he’s even been road-testing a few new songs.

To check out a larger chunk of the of the interview and see just what ol’ Sufjan is thinking, you can read it here.

The Third Man Records subscription service the Vault offers exclusive goodies for devout fans of Jack White’s music and label, as previously reported. One of the upcoming offerings is a record featuring alternate versions of the White Stripes’ 1998 debut 7″, “Let’s Shake Hands”, and its B-side, “Look Me Over Closely”.

According to a press release, this is “the first time ever that the band has released any outtakes from any past recordings throughout their 10-year career.” In others words, this is some exclusive shit.

The latest mailout for Platinum subscribers to the Vault also includes a double-LP live album from the Raconteurs and a Dead Weather screen print. Subscriptions to the Vault are open through October 22; interested parties should click here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iDjANWsnuc&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Thurston Moore: From Sonic Youth to Book Publisher; “I Hate iPods”

Watch: Patti Smith Performing ‘Because The Night’ in London…

Pete Doherty rushed to hospital; cancelled upcoming Irish tour.

Kings of Leon clash over royalties

Pavement Announce More Shows

Rain Machine to Open for Pixies

Watch Sonic Youth on “Gossip Girl”

Editors ‘hack’ Google Street View for new album stream

Pavement won’t play new material at reunion gigs

For anyone with an interest in L.A.‘s budding pre-punk culture, or fringe-music culture in general, Brendan Mullen’s book We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk is required reading—as is his book on the Germs (Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs). Mullen, owner of original L.A. punk club the Masque, is not only a documentarian on the thriving misfit culture, he also lived within it, and still plays music as both a DJ and in an instrumental duo. I could print pages on Mullen’s unique take on the role of “punk” within the music community, but this is what we have space for—the rest you’ll have to ask him about in person.

What words of inspiration can you give to the next generation looking to start something unique?

Beware of hard-line punk fundamentalism with rules and dogma, like that weird veganist hardcore anarcho-hippie punk thing. Keep record companies out of it. Always make the records yourself and put the time into figuring out distribution. Also, punk DOES NOT OWE YOU A CAREER OR A LIVING. It’s not necessarily your “big opportunity” to get into the music biz. It’s all about creating music entirely for yourself, your family, your friends. No rules. No stereotyping. Your interpretation of punk should be completely open-ended and subjective according to your experiences. Punk is basically suburban “folk music.” Anybody should be able to get in on it, just like a bunch of grisly Appalachian billy goats sitting around their porches playing banjos and fiddles.

Whereas the 2002 Winter Olympics featured performances by Josh Groban, Charlotte Church, Sting, and R. Kelly, next year’s events in Vancouver, B.C. will showcase a much less mainstream lineup (save for Wilco perhaps).

Consequence of Sound reports that performers throughout the February 12-28 run include Broken Social Scene, K’Naan, Stars, Joel Plaskett, Steve Earle, Laurie Anderson, Martha Wainwright, Blue Rodeo, Iron & Wine, Corb Lund, Ron Sexsmith, Joan As Policewoman, and Sun Kil Moon.

We’re still awaiting more details on when/where this killer lineup will be performing, but we do have the deets on Wilco’s set: it’s free! On Feb. 13, Tweedy and the boys will perform at Vancouver’s David Lam Park as part of the Winter Olympic Games festivities. I better go look for my passport now.

Not long ago, we reported that Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo sounded off in an interview with the Quietus about disappointing sales of the band’s celebrity-curated compilation Hits Are for Squares: “We did a record with Starfucks … er, Starbucks,” Ranaldo said, adding later, “it’s the rarest record we’ve ever released. It’s impossible to find in the shops. I don’t know how many they made — literally a few hundred.”

It was the first such accusation against the coffee chain’s record label we’d heard at the time, but in an interview in yesterday’s NY Times, Carly Simon has now spoken out against Starbucks for allegedly mishandling her latest disc, This Kind of Love, the very same way and the stories that both Sonic Youth and Simon tell are intriguingly similar.

Simon called the album her “last chance at bat,” as she had hoped to retire on her share of the album profits. She has now filed a lawsuit, however, claiming Starbucks failed to stock her album at a number of locations and when they finally did, they sold it at a lower price, which “stigmatized Ms. Simon’s album as an album that could not be sold at full price,” the lawsuit states.

Here’s Ranaldo’s “last chance at bat” statement: “When we put it together we thought it was going to be the biggest sell-out of our career.” Weird, right?

Whereas Sonic Youth are content simply dropping a few snarky comments about the issue (Thurston Moore: “Starbucks coffee sucks”), Simon’s taking the dispute to the courtroom. And perhaps SY could be her star witness. For more on Simon’s case, including a statement from Starbucks, check out Stephanie Clifford’s piece here.
(via twentyfourbit music)

For one day only, the Flaming Lips will have its own store in Hollywood.

Warner Bros. Records is promoting the Oklahoma City band’s new album “Embryonic” by opening a pop-up store on Oct. 15. The store, located at the Nike/Ricardo Montalban Theater at 1615 Vine St. in Los Angeles, will offer limited edition merchandise, vinyl and CDs including the “Embryonic Furry Package” set, which features a bonus DVD and fur box.

Visitors to the store will also have a shot at winning tickets to see the Lips at a MySpace secret show being held at a small, undisclosed venue. Tickets for this show are being distributed on a first-come, first-served basis as soon as the store opens.

The two-disc “Embryonic” is being released on Oct. 13. The band will be appearing on the “Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” that day to promote it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3M1D19DNQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Any Iggy Pop interview is guaranteed to please, I say, but Detroit’s Metro Times posted an excellent Q&A recently with Pop and newly-reunited Stooge James Williamson that just blows your standard Fred Durst dis post out of the water. In the lengthy two part chat, Iggy discusses the reunion of the Raw Power lineup for the upcoming All Tomorrow’s Parties concert in London next spring, his hopes to get the band a slot at Coachella, the Iggy Pop biopic saga, and a lot more.

Peter Bjorn & John — Living Thing (Music Video)

Peter Bjorn & John — Living Thing from Shruti Ganguly on Vimeo.

Liam Gallagher Confirms Oasis Split, Plans ‘Next Step’

Liam Gallagher has insisted that U.K. rock act Oasis is no more, following Noel Gallagher’s departure from the group in the summer.

Although the brothers have always had a rocky relationship, Gallagher insisted this split was for good, during an interview with the London Times ostensibly to discuss his new Pretty Green clothing range.

“Well, Oasis is no longer,” he said, speaking for the first time since the split. “I think we all know that. So that’s done.”

Noel Gallagher quit the band Aug. 28 after a row with Liam in Paris, posting a message on the band’s official Web site stating that he was “forced” out of Oasis.

As well as his venture into fashion – the singer said he “loves” clothes and always went on shopping trips while on tour – Liam Gallagher said he intends to still make music, although he was certain Oasis had come to an end after 18 years.

“Without a doubt,” he said. “And it’s a shame but that’s life. We had a good run at it. The thing about Oasis is, no one … we ended Oasis. No one ended it for us. Which was pretty, kind of… cool. I’m thinking of what the next step is musically, which is all my mind’s on.”

He added: “I’ll be doing music to the day I die. People will be able to buy his [Noel's] records. People will be able to buy our records. So everyone’s happy.”

Pulp Deluxe Reissues To Be Released Stateside

Universal Music is set to reissue three albums from Britpop icons Pulp in the U.S. on Nov. 17.

The deluxe packages for 1994′s “His ‘n’ Hers,” 1995′s “Different Class,” and 1998′s “This is Hardcore,” which have been available in the UK since 2006, will contain the original albums plus bonus material selected by former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

All three packages will feature a second disc of single b-sides and previously unreleased session tracks and demos, as well as a 32-page booklet with session photos and Cocker-penned liner notes.

Pulp had existed in some form for 16 years and released several independent albums before their Island Records debut “His ‘n’ Hers,” which was nominated for the Mercury Prize and featured singles “Babies,” “Lipgloss” and “Do You Remember the First Time?” The band’s superstardom came with the 1995 release of single “Common People,” and subsequent album “Different Class” debuted at the top of the UK charts. The more cynical “This Is Hardcore” garnered more mixed reviews on release, but also entered the UK charts at No. 1, and peaked at No. 114 on the Billboard 200.

In May of this year, Cocker released his second solo album, “Further Complications,” a follow-up to 2006′s “Jarvis,” both on Rough Trade Records. On Oct. 1, he announced the Nov. 9 release of a 7-inch single of the “Further Complications” title track plus album track “Girls Like It Too,” limited to 1,000 copies.

Pavement to Headline and Curate ATP

Just in case you took off from the internet last month: Pavement are reuniting for a tour next year. We already know they’re playing four nights at New York City’s Central Park starting September 21, and now comes news that the ultimate 90s indie rock band will headline and curate one of next year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties weekends in Minehead, England May 14-16. We’re guessing there will be a few shows announced between May and September, too.

Click here for more info on the Pavement ATP. Another ATP fest, taking place May 7-9 with a different curator, will be announced soon.

Nick Cave Pens New Film Script for John Hillcoat

When Nick Cave isn’t dropping new Grinderman records, scoring films, writing novels, or erecting gold statues of himself, he likes to dabble in screenwriting. Most notably, Cave wrote the fantastic John Hillcoat-directed film The Proposition and a totally insane sequel to Gladiator, in which Russell Crowe’s “Maximus meddles with Roman gods in the afterlife, is reincarnated, defends early Christians, reunites with his son, and ultimately lives forever – leading tanks in the second world war and even mucking around in the modern-day Pentagon.”

Now Cave is teaming up with Hillcoat again (though he did write the soundtrack to Hillcoat’s new film The Road): “I’ve written another film script for John Hillcoat for a new movie,” Cave told Exclaim’s Vish Khanna. “It’s from a book called The Wettest Country in the World and it’s set in the depression. It’s about… well, it’s a new film and he’s trying to get that together.”

And sure enough, Variety confirms (via Movieweb) that Red Wagon and Columbia Pictures are backing Hillcoat’s project, which is based on Matt Bondurant’s novel about Depression-era bootlegging.

Kraftwerk Remasters ‘The Catalogue,’ Recoding New Album For 2010

With a boxed set of its primary catalog on the way, Kraftwerk is eyeballing 2010 for the release of its first new album since 2003′s “Tour De France Soundtracks.”

Co-founder Ralf Hutter tells said that with the group’s 2009 live shows — including some featuring 3-D background graphics and several with Radiohead — the pioneering German electronic outfit has returned to its Kling Klang multi-media facility in Dusseldorf. “There’s still time to go,” Hutter reports, “but in the winter it’s pretty gray here, so it’s a good situation to go into the studio.” As to what the album — Kraftwerk’s first without co-founder Florian Schneider, who left the group last November — will sound like, Hutter says “it’s still very early. It’s still in its embryonic stage.”

Hutter says he expects Kraftwerk to tour again once the album is completed and released.

Until that time, fans will be able to tuck into “The Catalogue,” an eight-disc boxed set due out Nov. 17 that commemorates the 35th anniversary of Kraftwerk’s breakthrough hit “Autobahn” and contains all the albums it released between 1974-2003. Each of the titles has been remastered and come in “mini-vinyl” wallet card packaging, with large-format booklets that replicate the artwork of the original releases. Additionally, 1986′s “Electric Cafe” has been returned to its originally intended title, “Techno Pop.”

Five of the titles, meanwhile — “Autobahn,” “Radio-Activity,” “Trans Europe Express,” “The Man Machine” and “Tour De France Soundtracks” — have just been released as individual CDs. The other three albums are not currently licensed for separate release in the U.S.

“It’s a piece of work that just had to be done,” Hutter says of the catalog overhaul. “The quality (of previous CDs) wasn’t always as it should have been…especially the artwork was just cut down from the LP format or scanned down, especially in America. Now we found the time to finish it, and we’re very happy. You have everything from Kraftwerk in high (quality) formats.”

Hutter says he also plans to upgrade the three Kraftwerk albums that preceded “Autobahn,” though he won’t predict a timetable for those. “When I find the time and go through the archives again, we’ll do those also in a new format,” he promises. “But my perspective now is forward for the next album.”

Jay Reatard’s Band Quits

“Band quit! Fu*k them!”

“Band quit! Fu*k them! They are boring rich kids who can’t play for ahit anyways … Say hello to your ugly and boring wifes opps I mean lifes guys suck it.”

That’s Jay Reatard communicating the apparent demise of his touring band via Twitter this morning. If or how this will affect his upcoming U.S. and European tour dates is not known at press time. (A rep for Jay did not have any more information.)

UPDATE: It has been confirmed that bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes have indeed quit the band. Reatard is currently looking for new band members. However, no upcoming tour dates have been canceled.

Punk rock, dude. Punk fu*king rock.

(via: Those crazy kids at pitchfork)

MTV Sets DJ AM Reality Series Air Date

MTV is going forward with airing the late DJ AM’s “Intervention”-style reality series “Gone Too Far.”

The show will premiere Monday, Oct. 12 at 10 p.m.

Here’s a statement from Adam Goldstein’s family: “After careful consideration we have decided to air the show. Adam felt strongly that by doing this series he could help other addicts who were at a crisis point to get sober. Adam was fully aware that if it were not for his own sobriety he never would have achieved the level of success and happiness he had found. Helping people in their recovery was a huge part of Adam’s life. It is our hope through airing this show that people will get to see the side of Adam that we knew and loved, not just the celebrity DJ, but the honest and caring person who gave so much of himself to help others. The decision to air the show has been difficult, but we do this with the profound belief that it will inspire others to seek help.”

MTV notably did not include any executive quotes in their release, but did include a quote from Sean Clarkin, executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America: “Recovery can be extremely difficult and requires constant attention. But it’s important to know that it is in fact possible to present examples of people who are recognizing the need for treatment and beginning that journey.”

Madness:: The Liberty Of Norton Folgate (Album Review)

“We are London,” contends Suggs on the bouncy tune of that name, which opens Madness’s first studio album in a decade. Of all the bands in the capital, his sprightly survivors have a better claim than most to “be” London, and the quintessential Camden geezers’ love affair with their city is still going strong. On this album, London is the backdrop for little dramas about capitalism’s deleterious effects (Clerkenwell Polka), departed friends (NW5) and the East End’s status as a haven for artists and eccentrics (the title track). The songs are wordy and disappointingly light on the knock ‘em dead catchiness that was once their forte, but what The Liberty of Norton Folgate lacks in hit singles it makes up for in glorious ska/reggae arrangements and Suggs’s perpetual chirpiness, which is laced with the bemusement of a chap who can’t work out where the years went. A graceful return from the nutty “boys”.

Thom Yorke & Friends at Echoplex: Whole Set on Video

When a supergroup decides to play a surprise intimate show in LA, celebrities flock to the gig, and last night’s Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco set at Echoplex was no different. Even though the ‘superaudience’ included Rick Rubin, Danger Mouse, Spike Jonze, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, actress Ellen Page, Muse (Glenn Beck’s new favorite band), and many more, Yorke wasn’t going to let them talk over him while unveiling four new jams: “If you want to have a chat, go fuck off outside, alright?” he said, before starting the piano intro to new song “Open the Floodgates” and adding, “‘cause you won’t get back in.”

Yorke and Friends played 16 songs in about 90 minutes last night and you don’t have to take the word of audience members or reviewers that it was an amazing set because the Internet has been flooded with videos to prove it.

Here’s the setlist with a link to video from every performance:
The Eraser
Analyse
The Clock
Black Swan
Skip Divided
Atoms For Peace
And It Rained All Night
Harrowdown Hill
Cymbal Rush

New Songs:
Open The Floodgates
Lotus Flower
Skirting On The Surface
Judge, Jury, Executioner

Encore:
Paperbag Writer
The Hollow Earth
Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses

Paperbag Writer

“Cymbal Rush”

Sonic Youth´s Thurston Moore Starts Publishing Company

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has already founded a record label and co-written a few books, including upcoming art photo book Grunge, so it makes sense that he’s ready to start his own book publishing company, as well. Starting next year, Moore’s new boutique publishing company, Ecstatic Peace Library, will begin releasing art books by Raymond Pettibon, Dave Markey, and, his wife/bandmate, Kim Gordon, reports LA Times. The “Ecstatic Peace” moniker marks a continuation of Moore’s record (and cassette!) label by the same name.

We know who a couple of Moore’s first couple authors are, but what will be the first releases for ‘10? If you attended the New York Art Book Fair this weekend, you may have come across their upcoming catalog, but the rest of us will find out on New Year’s Day at Ecstatic Peace Library dot com.

White directs video for The Dead Weather’s new single

White has directed the video for The Dead Weather’s new single ‘I Cut Like A Buffalo’.

The film mixes vivid colours and black and white footage and was shot at the Nashville headquarters of The White Stripes frontman’s label, Third Man.

The video will be shown in the UK for the first time at 10am (BST) today (October 2) on the VidZone music video application on PlayStation 3.

Meanwhile, The Dead Weather hit the road for a UK tour later this month, kicking off at Manchester Academy on October 19.

They will play in the UK at:

Manchester, Academy (October 19)
Newcastle, O2 Academy (21)
Edinburgh, Picture House (22)
Leeds, O2 Academy (23)
Bristol, O2 Academy (25)
Birmingham, O2 Academy (26)
London, O2 Academy Brixton (29)
London, HMV Forum (30)

Why?- Eskimo Snow (Album Review)

Eskimo Snow arrives on the same train of thought that brought us last year’s Alopecia – both were written and recorded over the same period, and elaborate the same knotty relationship with mortality – but it’s smaller, darker, more obsessively intimate by a long shot. No veneer of abstraction or altruism here, no space for anything or anybody but Yoni Wolf, a character whose contours and psychopathologies are honed into ever sharper relief. Not a stitch of rap, either, but it’s hard to miss it at this point – Wolf has only gotten better since he trial-separated from backpack-hop and took up with the slanted, enchanted pop song. Eskimo Snow doesn’t estrange the two permanently, just dwells on a part of Why? that’s no less integral for having almost nothing to do with the leftfield hipness of the Clouddead pedigree.

Does it work? Of course it works. Wolf is the best unreliable narrator this side of David Berman or John Darnielle or pre-midlife Slug, and it’s a privilege and a pleasure as always to be let inside his head. But it’s also a little scary to be there now, a little unclear why we’re allowed in and very much unclear how to get back out. Even the most anodyne details on Eskimo Snow hook back to death (or to sex, which then hooks back to death). Decay is not only inevitable but the unifying logic of the album inside and out, the way it makes sense of the world. “A man should die gaunt / Not bloated and overdone,” Wolf begins in “One Rose.” “There should be new words hidden in the shadows on his face / And like a wine glass, in a perfect pitch he breaks.”

This is hardly a new preoccupation, just a new intensity for it. Elephant Eyelash and Alopecia were plenty morbid, but they were also generous: darkly funny (“Will I look better or will I look the same rotting in hell?”) or poignant (“And the Monterey birches were bare, raising their skinny arms to the stars in surrender”) or twistedly sweet (“Yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere”). By focusing so narrowly on profoundly personal anxieties, Eskimo Snow excludes the universality that used to let us connect and identify with Wolf. It excludes us. The further the narrator of these songs moves from a befoibled everyman toward a singular, guileless, brutally honest and brilliantly solipsistic character, the blurrier the line gets between entertainment and therapy, roleplay and neurosis, participation and trespassing.

Given those earlier albums’ patchwork approach to their central themes, some of the shock here is simply hearing all of these songs packaged together – songs which, despite their obvious musical affinity, are so unified in their gloominess as to be almost stifling. The band, agile as ever in cautious Americana mode, lends the album an unhurried, sometimes deceptive simplicity that reins in those moments that seem at first like outlying caricatures: the pervy despair of “Into the Shadows of My Embrace,” the maudlin self-doubt of “This Blackest Purse.” It would be legitimate to call Eskimo Snow Why?’s most focused album yet; it just wouldn’t make the nature of the focus any less unsettling.

What is the nature of the focus, then? For all his clever self-awareness – he wonders one moment whether he’s “too concerned with the burn of scrutiny,” brags the next that “the world is my lit confessional marquee” – Wolf doesn’t illuminate much beyond the borders of each meditation. Whether Eskimo Snow is the product of a passing fascination with mortality or a public bid for personal catharsis ultimately makes little difference; the only sense in which it’s even our business is that he’s no longer narrating for us as well, no longer saying what we’re all too bashful or unobservant or boring to think. These are his words for sadness, heavy and multiple “like Eskimo snow on unmanned crosses,” not ours.

And that’s either a relief or a disappointment, depending on how much of yourself you want to see in someone who wears his ex-girlfriend’s dead ex-boyfriend’s boxers and jerks off in art museum johns and doesn’t know what to call his shady compulsions because he messed up and kissed his shrink in a Jersey City hotel room. “That’s right,” he sneers in the clumsily elegant death-ramble “Against Me,” “I’m like everybody else is: ashamed of sleep, I lie when a phone call wakes me.” The immediate inconsistency of Eskimo Snow is its failure to support that claim – Yoni Wolf isn’t like everybody else at all. The lingering one is that it’s starting to sound like his singularity is as much a curse to him as it is a blessing to us.

Stewart Copeland Tells Police ‘War Stories’ In New Book

Police drummer Stewart Copeland doesn’t want to make his new book, “Strange Things Happen: A Life With the Police, Polo, and Pygmies” (HarperStudio) a conventional autobiography. “It really isn’t because of all the stuff I left out, the boring stuff — I was born here, then I moved there, then I went to this school, then that school…Who cares?” Copeland said. “These are war stories.”

Many of those, not surprisingly, come from his days with the Police, though Copeland acknowledges that “the eight years of Police supremacy back in the day (i.e., the 80s) get a little bit of short shrift.” But that, he adds, was by design. “The first part (of the Police), I told that story with my movie (“Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out”). Sting and Andy (Summers) both wrote books about it and covered it very well, I thought,” he explains. “But the last third of my book is all about the reunion tour, which, unlike the first eight years, is untold.”

Copeland adds that he hopes “Strange Things Happen” also portrays what he feels is a more insightful and accurate view of the famous volatility that is part of the Police’s legend.

“I think I did succeed in clarifying the conflict in the band,” he explains. “It has always been too easy to assume it was just a clash of egos, and that was always very frustrating for me because it’s so far from the truth. In fact, we are very selfless in the Police, all three of us; we really leave our egos at the door and go in there and take a pasting from each other — and we take it. That’s what life in the Police was all about. It was always a clash of musical ideals…We were fighting over the right things.”

“Strange Things Happen” isn’t solely about the Police, of course. Copeland writes about his CIA agent father, his youth in the Middle East and England, and his other musical experiences, including the all-star Oysterhead with Primus’ Les Claypool and Phish’s Trey Anastasio, jamming with Rage Against the Machine and Foo Fighters and the time he nearly went on tour conducting an orchestra for the Moody Blues. Copeland also chronicles his transition into film scoring and writing classical and operatic music.

He notes that a large number of his “war stories” didn’t make the cut, but rather than a second book Copeland envisions publishing them episodically in magazines — which, he says, was his original intention for all the tales before he was “persuaded to save them and put them all in a book.”

Copeland, whose score for the theatrical production “Ben Hur Live” that’s now touring Europe, is currently finishing a concerto for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra that will premiere in 2010. He’s also finalizing a commission from a British opera company. As for another Police reunion…

“Who knows,” Copeland says. “I mean, I intend to be on the planet here for another 50 years; who knows what’ll happen. To escape from the Police we had to melt down the cage and…dismantle the huge behemoth that grew up around the band. The three of us had to get away from it. As to whether or not we do it again, who knows.”

Dinosaur Jr. “Over it” (Music Video)
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