Blackroc feat. Mos Def + Jim Jones “Aint Nothing Like You”

Blakroc: Ain’t Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo) Ft. Mos Def and Jim Jones
Blackroc is a collaborative album between former Rocafella head honcho, Dame Dash, and the Akron based duo, The Black Keys. The first single finds Mos Def and Jim Jones jumping on board

Before he donned his gold lamé hot pants and played wild shows like the unholy offspring of Little Richard and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, King Khan made a pair of loose, lewd, lo-fi albums with fellow Montreal ex-pat and former bandmate BBQ—a.k.a. Mark Sultan. Three years after their lip-smacking What’s for Dinner?, the duo re-teams for another set of R&B-inflected, ’60s-influenced garage rock with its juvenile-delinquent charms and dirty minds intact.

“Tastebuds” is both ridiculously raunchy and insanely catchy, while “Anala” only hints at deeper indiscretions with its lascivious doo-wop backing vocals. “Third Ave” is a girl-group ballad writ small, but the limitations of the line-up—just Khan’s skuzzbucket guitar and BBQ’s primitive drums—make it sound bigger and more immediate than a retro retread has a right to be. More than just revivalists, the duo plays these decades-old styles like they never went out of fashion, which makes Invisible Girl a satisfying and strange record.

When Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire spotted Jack White among the crowd of a London bar, the pair were determined to catch the ears of the famous Third Man Records CEO, White Stripes, Dead Weather, and Raconteurs member, and worthy candidate for the “Savior of Rock” title. According to God Is In The TV, Davies and Blamire, the singer/guitarists behind folky duo the Smoke Fairies, convinced the DJ to spin one of their tracks before passing Jack White a CD and glass of Whiskey. Well played, ladies.

Jack called them up later, offering plane tickets to Nashville to record with himself (on drums, guitar, and timpani), “Little Jack” Lawrence, Corey Younts, and Shelby O’Neal as a backing band for what would become a “Gastown”/ “The River Song” 7” due out on iTunes and limited vinyl Dec. 7th.

For more details go here and to stream a preview (that went live on their MySpace while I was writing this post), go here.

In the Mix
The DJing community and the greater dance music scene mourns the loss of a clubbing staple today. No, Steve Aoki hasn’t hung up his record bag, but rather news has emerged that iconic turntable manufacturers Technics will be stopping production on their universally loved Technics 1200s and Technics 1210s.

In a statement re-posted on dance board Global Hardstyle, the company behind the production of the Technics turntables Panasonic announced that they would cease the manufacture of Tehcnics turntables in February next year, citing an increasing decline in sales as the motivation behind the line’s demise.

The Australian arm of Panasonic issued a similar statement today, expressing their disappointment that the brand’s 35 years-and-running legacy was to be put to bed.

“It is a sad day today but due to low sales globally in analogue turntables a decision to stop production has been made on Technics Turntables,” Panasonic spokesman Ian North explained. “For Australia this means we will receive our last shipment in March.”

Pocket Lint:

We’ve seen a couple of reports on message boards that seem to indicate that the iconic Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210s may be about to be discontinued. If true, it would be a surprise, as both models represent iconic turntables and are widely considered the industry standard in nightclubs.

The rumours appear to originate from a New Zealand DJ shop called DMC World, which says on its product page: “Panasonic (the manufacturer of Technics) have announced that production of the world famous Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210 DJ turntables will stop at the end of February 2010”.

The turntables have been around for more than 35 years, and are featured in the London museum of Science and Technology as an important step in how music has been played and presented over the last century. Their popularity has ensued due to their tank-like construction, high torque and effective insulation from acoustic feedback.

Are you a struggling actor who keeps getting rejected due to your uncanny resemblance to Ringo? Or perhaps you’ve been growing a massive beard whilst practicing unofficial college dorm room bed-ins. We’ve got just the gig for you: The folks who turned Jim Carrey into Scrooge and Tom Hanks into a train conductor are casting their remake of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

This Saturday and Sunday, an open call audition will take place in Stamford, CT, which claims to be for an animated feature film called The Fab Four, “a motion-capture feature like the current Disney release of A Christmas Carol.” That title is just a ruse, though, as the reliable /Film reports, “this is Robert Zemeckis‘ remake of Yellow Submarine.”

There is some speculation that these auditions, which are going down at a Beatles convention called BEATexpo, are some kind of publicity stunt for the film and Zemeckis did claim recently that he hadn’t “gotten the word yet on the two surviving Beatles, whether they’re interested in doing it or not,” but that would only account for half of the lead roles anyway.

Still want to give it a shot? Check out all the details, video references for scenes you’ll need to play, and more here, but be sure to read the fine print: “IMPORTANT: We are looking for the vocal quality they had from 1967-1970.”

Hahaha… Good luck with all that.

How much money do artists really make from Spotify? According to Swedish paper Expressen, 2009’s standout breakthrough artist Lady Gaga and her songwriter Redone made just SEK1150 (£100.76; $166.56) in songwriting royalties from one million Spotify plays of her hit Poker Face in Sweden in the first five months after Spotify’s launch in October 2008, according to figures from the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM).

STIM told paidContent: UK that Universal Music-signed Gaga actually generated SEK 2,300 (£201.53) through plays of Poker Face—she keeps half while the other half goes to STIM, which handles songwriters’ copyright payments in Spotify’s native Sweden. STIM points out to us that Gaga has her own separate deal with her label when it comes to streaming—I asked Universal to tell us what that relationship is, but have yet to receive an answer. Spotify has also yet to answer our questions.

Update: Spotify told us in a statement that any STIM payment “would only represent a fraction” of the money that goes to rights holders from the service. The company stresses that it pays “not only collecting societies, but also publishers and the record company to play their music.” It also argues that the $167 is from “way before we’d established ourselves as a music service and built up a large user base”. Actual payment amounts for individual artists remain confidential but Spotify calls this one “certainly wide of the mark”.

So that’s royalties, but by how much are artists reimbursed in total for plays on streaming sites? As with much of the murky world of on-demand music rights, it all depends…

Mark Mulligan, VP and research director at Forrester, says digital platforms should give artists the same ratio of rights revenue they get for CD sales—for most indie labels it’s a 50/50 split between artist and label, for the majors it’s skewed more towards the company than the performer.

But there’s another problem: “When you start getting into situations where record label has taken a stake in the service—as is the case with MySpace Music and is heavily rumoured to be the case with Spotify (N.B. Spotify categorically denies this)—once you’re in a JV scenario, the label can take another revenue stream.” So the label gets paid twice: once through its revenue share of the JV and once for its rights payments, while the artist gets a reduced share of the overall pie.

Mulligan also doubts that US music chiefs’ reluctance towards Spotify’s freemium model is down to a mistrust of free music and more to do with an industry-wide fear that streaming sites have failed to convert enough users to paid accounts and haven’t yet had a meaningful effect on still-rampant P2P piracy.

But it’s not all bad news for established artists online: Gaga’s Poker Face was earlier this year declared the UK’s most downloaded song ever is now on some 800,000 PCs and mp3 players (her Let’s Dance is number three), while Universal says she sells far more digital tracks than physical CDs.

However, for emerging acts waiting for their breakthrough, who have to pay back their recording costs before their contracts allow them to start making any decent money, could find themselves out of pocket for a long time if the audience’s primary mode of listening is services like Spotify.

Digital Music News:
Warner Music Group posted substantial quarterly and fiscal year losses Tuesday morning, thanks largely to recorded sales declines and restructuring costs. According to details shared ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street, losses at Warner Music (WMG) reached $18 million (12-cents per share) for the period ending September 30th, a reversal from a year-ago quarterly gain of $6 million (4-cents per share).

Analysts, as polled by FactSet, had expected a quarterly gain of 4-cents per share. Separately, a group of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters called for profits of 5-cents per share. The difference between analyst expectations and actual returns will probably drive share-price declines during Tuesday trading.

A substantial portion of the losses were attributable to severance costs, a downsize that will ultimately minimize losses and overhead. That is inline with efforts at other major labels.

Other indicators were mildly positive. Quarterly revenues edged upward one-percent to $861 million, and 5 percent on a constant-currency basis. That actually beat analyst expectations, which hovered around $820 million. Digital revenue topped $184 million, up 10 percent over the previous-year period, and 12 percent on a constant-currency basis. Digital assets accounted for 21 percent of overall quarterly revenues.

Warner Music Group’s quarterly report
Loss from continuing operations was $18 million, or ($0.12) per diluted share, for the quarter, compared with income from continuing operations of $6 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, in the prior-year quarter. The current-year’s quarter included the Severance Charges, which amounted to $0.09 per diluted share.

The company reported a cash balance of $384 million as of September 30, 2009. As of September 30, 2009, the company reported total long-term debt of $1.94 billion and net debt (total long-term debt minus cash) of $1.56 billion. Net debt at September 30, 2008 was $1.85 billion.

For the quarter, net cash provided by operating activities was $36 million compared to $119 million in the prior-year quarter. The decline in operating cash flow was largely related to our anticipated back-end weighted release schedule, which resulted in negative working capital due to an increase in accounts receivable. Free Cash Flow (defined as cash flow from operations less capital expenditures and cash paid or received for investments) was $20 million, compared to $100 million in the comparable fiscal 2008 quarter. Unlevered After-Tax Cash Flow (defined as Free Cash Flow excluding cash interest paid) was $20 million, compared to $122 million in the comparable fiscal 2008 quarter (see below for calculations and reconciliations of Free Cash Flow and Unlevered After-Tax Cash Flow).

Still no release date yet for The Hot Sauce Committee Part I, but in a hopeful sign that Adam “MCA” Yauch is recovering well after having a cancerous tumor removed from his parotid gland, the Beastie Boy is back to work at Oscilloscope, the indie film company he started with ex-ThinkFilm executive David Fenkel.

The Hollywood Reporter reports (via Flavorwire) that Yauch and Fenkel have launched “The Circle of Trust,” a direct-mail DVD subscription service, just in time for the holidays. As their official site states, here’s what you get for the $150 asking price:

Next 10 Oscilloscope DVD releases
DVDs will arrive about one week before official street date
All shipping and handling charges included
Ability to purchase one of each previous Oscilloscope DVD release for half price (plus shipping & handling)

Sounds like a combination of Jack White’s Third Man Vault and, yes, those Columbia House deals from back in the day. Actually, Yauch embraces the latter comparison:

“It’s kind of like when you’re a kid and get a magazine and you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get, but that’s what makes you so excited about it,” he told THR, joking later on the subject of Columbia House, “Hopefully we can reach that level of harassment.”

As a part of the subscription, future releases may include the Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster-starring drama The Messenger (currently in theaters) and many more interesting films. Check out their back catalog here or go here to join the “The Circle of Trust.”

Spotify’s hopes of launching its online music service in the US are being held up by record labels’ concerns about its ability to convert users of its free service to paying subscribers, according to music industry sources.

The company, which has attracted glowing press and strong interest from venture capitalists in Europe, said last week that a US launch now looked unlikely until early next year because of the complexity of the US market, where it would need agreements with thousands of music publishers.

However, sources in three of the four largest music companies told the Financial Times that record labels’ financial concerns were the greater hurdle. “We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label said. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Daniel Ek, Spotify’s co-founder, acknowledged at the Monaco Media Forum last week that subscription revenues would be critical, saying: “It’s not about the ad service and not about the subscription business, it’s about the two working together.”

However, Spotify has also played up the rates it can charge advertisers, saying that its ability to determine a listener’s mood based on the beats per minute in the songs they are listening to has helped it achieve high click-through rates of as much as 6-7 per cent.

Music industry executives told the Financial Times that they needed to see evidence that Spotify could achieve a mooted conversion rate of about one in 10 users paying for a premium service such as its iPhone application. The number of free users who convert to subscribers is currently well below that figure.

“We’re not asking them to show us a better conversion rate but to at least tell us how they’re going to do it,” another label insider said. The stalemate comes as Spotify is looking at using its relationship with Li Ka-shing, one of its investors, to enter the Chinese market. “In China, the number one thing people do online is listen to music. But it has a minuscule [legal] music industry,” Mr Ek said.

The industry’s disagreements over digital strategy emerged again yesterday when EMI announced it would start putting videos from some artists, starting with Norah Jones, on Hulu, the online video site backed by NBC Universal, News Corp and Walt Disney.

Hulu’s first music industry deal comes as YouTube, Google’s online video service, is planning to launch Vevo , a Universal Music-backed music video site, on December 8.

Universal has support from Sony Music, but is still in negotiations with EMI and Warner Music.

Julian Casablancas sure hasn’t been alleviating fears about the fate of the Strokes’ 4th LP in interviews of late, candidly admitting to “disagreement[s]” over “whether the songs are ready,” saying that “a band is actually a great way to ruin a friendship,” and that—like Noel and Liam Gallagher before Oasis split—”apart from when [they]’re rehearsing, [they] don’t see each other.”

Things got a bit more hopeful, however, when he told Pitchfork, “We’re supposed to get back together in January but don’t hold me to that. We’ve been trying to do it for years.” And now it looks like those January plans are actually coming to fruition:

“While the guys are in LA, I went to scout some studios in NYC with Ryan today for what looks like Jan recording!!! mood = f***ing excited!” bassist Nikolai Fraiture tweeted on Friday. This is just speculation, of course, but if “Ryan” is manager Ryan Gentles and “the guys” are the Strokes, then next year just got even cooler.

Winning “Album of the Decade” by NME and others must be a pretty good motivator, I suppose.

Hitting the U.S. and Europe in coming months

Spoon’s next album, Transference, is due January 25 in Europe via Anti- and January 26 in North America via Merge. And in the coming months, lucky folks in the U.S. and Europe will get a chance to hear Spoon play some of these songs live. Spoon’s catalog of spiky new wave jams is already pretty huge, and they’ve always been totally smooth and on-point onstage, so you’re pretty much guaranteed a good night out if you hit up one of these shows.

All dates are below.

Spoon:

12-03 Kansas City, MO – Midland Theatre
12-04 Boston, MA – Orpheum Theatre #
12-11 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom *
12-12 La Jolla, CA – RIMAC Arena
12-31 Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theatre !
02-14 Glasgow, Scotland – King Tut’s
02-15 Manchester, England – Academy 3
02-16 London, England – Electric Ballroom
02-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
02-19 Cologne, Germany – Luxor
02-20 Berlin, Germany – Frannz Club

# with Phoenix, Passion Pit
* with Black Joe Lewis
! with Jay Reatard

Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders has revealed that the band have already discussed the recording of their next album – although they plan to take time out before gearing up work on it.

The drummer told BBC 6music that the band, currently on tour in the UK, plan to whittle down potential songs for the album further down the line.

“We’re already talking about when we can record again, but I still enjoy being on tour as well,” he said.

He added: “It’s good to have time to work stuff out, then at least you can start doing the quality control before and actually record what you think is decent, rather than recording hundreds of songs to then find out you only like 10 of them.”

Two websites that previously sold and streamed songs by The Beatles have been closed down indefinitely by a US judge.

BlueBeat and Basebeat started selling individual tracks for as little as 25 cents (15p) earlier this month. The band’s record label EMI won a preliminary court injunction ruling the site had been selling the tracks unlawfully.

Now US District Judge John F Walter has prohibited both sites and their owner, Hank Risan, from streaming or selling songs by the Fab Four and other artists, including Lily Allen and Coldplay, for good.

A court date had been set for Friday (November 20) but the judge ruled on the issue beforehand based on pleadings by attorneys for Risan and the music label.

EMI claimed the sites were selling high-quality versions of copyrighted songs, which had never been legally released digitally, reports Associated Press.

Risan defended the company saying the songs being sold had been re-recorded – making them exempt from copyright. He claimed the tracks were both different to the original recordings and identical in sound, thanks to a new technology called “psycho-acoustic simulation”.

However, the judge presiding over the case ruled that Risan hadn’t been able to back up his claim.

Following the initial proceedings, it was announced The Beatles’ remastered back catalogue is set to be released next month on a new format – an apple-shaped USB device.

Truth be told, I’ve been hunting for news like this for weeks now, scouring the Interwebs for new signs of life from Interpol—aside from Paul Banks’ slightly underwhelming pseudo solo album and Carlos D’s film career, of course. And just when the most that I could hope for was a speculative “?” post (Arcade Fire one was a hit, right?), drummer Sam Fogarino dropped the “new record” bomb on Paste. Boom:

“The new record falls back towards the first,” Fogarino told Justin Jacobs. “In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can’t let go of your sonic-defining tag.”

The good news: Interpol’s upcoming 4th LP is due out in early 2010 and it’s a throwback to their breakthrough Turn On the Bright Lights. There is one unsettling new bit about Courtney Love showing up in the studio, but no worries! She simply yelled, “And he was a fucking shrimp farmer!” and walked out. No credit cards were exchanged or anything.

For more deets go thataway.

N.Y. Post

A game of chicken is starting to hurt EMI‘s ability to attract talent. Sources said that artists have become wary of signing with the music company because of the battle between private-equity firm Terra Firma and Citigroup over restructuring EMI‘s debt….According to sources inside and outside EMI, musicians are concerned that the company doesn’t have the money to properly market their material—most of the cash flow EMI generates is being used to service $4 billion in debt held by Citigroup….said one source at the label: “To the extent that they can’t put money behind records, that makes new signings all the more difficult.”…Another red flag for artists is the high executive turnover rate at EMI. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma, has replaced 80 of EMI‘s top 100 executives since taking over the label in 2007. Terra Firma itself at one point had as many as 40 executives at EMI, though that number is now down to 10…Indeed, as music industry outsiders, Hands and EMI boss Elio Leoni-Sceti are seen as liabilities themselves…

TheDeal.com:

Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) remain deadlocked about the capitalization of EMI Group Ltd. But at least one professional observer expects the standoff to end with a shove that pushes the London-based music company into the welcoming arms of Warner Music Group Corp….Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital LLC, posited just such an outcome in a Tuesday research update, citing what appear to be inexorable forces….The bank rejected the offer, leaving Greenfield to conclude “the best way for Citigroup to maximize the value of the debt it holds in EMI is to push for a break-up of the company, selling EMI‘s recorded music division to Warner Music and either leaving Terra Firma with EMI‘s music publishing arm or auctioning the asset to another bidder.”

Digital Music News:

One option is to simply liquidate. Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield recently recommended that course of action in a note issued Tuesday. “We continue to believe the best way for Citigroup to maximize the value of the debt it holds in EMI is to push for a break-up of the company, selling EMI‘s recorded music division to Warner Music and either leaving Terra Firma with EMI‘s music publishing arm or auctioning the asset to another bidder,” Greenfield relayed. …Over the next few months, Terra is likely to meet its covenants, thanks partly to Beatles reissues and licensing initiatives. Just recently, the company was described as ‘barely’ meeting its financial deadlines by one well-placed executive, thanks partly to equity injections by Terra.

Former Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule will make an extremely rare joint public appearance on Dec. 8 at the New York Public Library. The three will discuss the Velvet Underground’s music and legacy with rock journalist David Fricke as part of the “LIVE from the NYPL” series.

The unprecedented reunion of the legendary New York band comes on the heels of the publication of “The Velvet Underground: New York Art,” a new compendium of previously unseen photographs, poster and cover designs by Andy Warhol, Lou Reed’s handwritten music and lyrics, underground press clippings and other reviews, flyers, handbills and posters. The book, published by famed Italian book house Rizzoli, contains a recorded conversation between Reed and Tucker as well as contributions from Vaclav Havel and Jon Savage.

The event will take place in New York City at the Celeste Bartos Forum in the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 5th Ave. and 42nd St. General admission tickets are $25, and $15 tickets are available for library donors, students and seniors through the NYPL website.

The original Velvet Underground lineup included John Cale, Sterling Morrison and vocalist Nico. The group’s debut album, often referred to as “the banana album” from its distinctive pop art cover, was produced by Andy Warhol and includes rock and roll classics like “Heroin,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “Venus in Furs,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Femme Fatale,” “Black Angel’s Death Song,” and “Sunday Morning.”. Cale left the band in 1968 and was replaced by Doug Yule. The group split in the early 1970s, though re-formed briefly with Cale in the early 1990s. Nico died in 1988, and Sterling Morrison died in 1995.

As lead singer and lyricist with X, Exene Cervenka was (and is) one of the great firebrands of West Coast punk rock, fusing pure energy and a wild, unfettered eloquence in a way that was totally her own. But after X broke up for a while in the late 1980s, Cervenka recorded a pair of excellent acoustic-based albums, Old Wives Tales and Running Sacred, that proved she could express herself just as strongly without the speed and volume of her old band. After diving back into the fast-loud stuff with her bands Auntie Christ, the Original Sinners, and the reunited X, Cervenka has returned to acoustic music with 2009’s Somewhere Gone, an album that fuses spare folk melodies that suggest she’s been listening to the Harry Smith anthology with bittersweet country accents that somehow make Cervenka’s lyrics cut even deeper. The socio-political insights that dominated much of Cervenka’s music of the ’90s and the new millennium are less obvious on Somewhere Gone, but as a lyricist Cervenka remains a keen observer of the human condition, and her beat-influenced lyrics reveal an intense honesty and emotional force in her sometimes abstract wordplay, while “Honest Mistake” is a story of love which refuses to go right that ranks with her best work with X. And this album is one of Cervenka’s great moments as a vocalist, merging the sweet and sour sides of her voice while displaying a control and a gift for subtle detail that stands comfortably beside the best work of her career. Cervenka produced Somewhere Gone and plays simple but steady guitar on most of the tunes, with Jason Edge, Amy Farris, and Cindy Wasserman helping to flesh out the elemental but often lovely arrangements. Somewhere Gone is a different animal from Cervenka’s acoustic music of the late ’80s and early ’90s, at once simpler, riskier, and more confident, and it captures one of the great wild talents of her generation in strong and impressive form, still unafraid to take her talent in new directions after more than a quarter-century of blazing trails.

Two major news outlets, NPR and CNN, are covering in varying yet similar fashion the handful of Chinese bands coming to the US, both wondering if the whole Communist stigma will affect the Western-influenced bands’ reception in the US. As long as the music sounds good, right?

NPR:

America is used to exporting its culture. It’s called soft power, this ability to dominate the tastes of people in other countries. So an American band touring in China isn’t such a big deal. But a Chinese rock band taking the stage in New York?

That’s new. Everything about China’s emerging rock scene is new — except for its inspiration. And one of the biggest rock bands in China right now has decidedly old-school roots.

Lost In New York

The members of P.K. 14 are lost in Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood. They’re searching for a store that sells used musical equipment. Lead singer Yang Hai Song doesn’t stand out at all here, what with his tight peacoat, black skinny jeans and black framed glasses. Inside Main Drag Music, the band is trying to pick an amplifier for the night’s show. They ask the clerk how each one is different. The floors are crowded with amplifiers, the musicians’ eyes are wide, and they’re giggling madly. The amp they like is bright orange, manufactured by the Orange Music Electronic Company.

They’ll take two.

“It’s quite hard to find secondhand music store in China. Everything’s new,” says Yang. “So it’s very hard to find the ‘70s, ‘60s. We have no history. We have no history, so we just find a new one. But it’s very hard to find orange.”

The ‘60s is widely considered the heyday of rock ‘n’ roll in the West. Yang says that Beijing’s rock-music development is in its own ” ‘70s” now. There isn’t much to look back on.

Yang is 36. He’s restless, jerky, like a character in a silent movie — constantly smoking and jumping about.

“When we were growing up,” he says, “everything’s changing very fast. End of the Cultural Revolution and beginning of the economy revolution. It’s like, you think of the McDonald’s, it’s exist[ed] a long time… Actually, no. Actually, it exists a very short time. Past 20 years, it’s crazy in China. It’s chaos.”

CNN:

Two of China’s hottest up-and-coming rock bands—Carsick Cars and P.K. 14—are taking their first steps on a whirlwind American music tour to showcase the Asian giant’s latest export: rock ‘n’ roll.

The bands, along with a gaggle of other musical outfits, will hit nine cities—from New York to Chapel Hill, North Carolina—as they embark on their first official tour of the United States.

“We’re going to play to a different audience and we don’t know if they can accept us, especially as we will sing in Chinese, so we don’t know,” he said.

If buzz is any indication, Yan Haisong has nothing to worry about. The bands’ arrival has generated healthy anticipatory chatter on popular American music blogs and in the media, from Time Out New York to the Village Voice. Reporters and music junkies heaped on pre-show praise, with Time Out calling the tour a “roster of artists” that is “currently at the forefront of a national movement, pushing contemporary Chinese rock toward international acclaim.”

Considered to be largely underground and experimental, the Chinese rock ‘n’ roll scene has come a long way and is expanding fast. Just five decades ago, popular Chinese music was constricted to revolutionary songs and ballads approved by the government. Today, the scene has opened dramatically, welcoming in a variety of genres ranging from classical to heavy metal.

When Jack White produced and performed on Loretta Lynn’s brilliant Van Lear Rose album, he not only proved that his skills as an exuberant frontman could be just as affecting from outside the spotlight, but he also showed the world that a 70-something-year-old country music legend could still rock out as hard as the Guitar Center generation. Well, a lot has happened since then (White’s started two more bands, a record label, a studio, etc.) and now Jack’s found another living legend to work with.

NewOK’s Gene Triplett recently spoke to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Wanda Jackson, aka the Queen of Rockabilly, while she was en route to Nashville to begin work on an album produced by the man behind Third Man himself.

“They had a super album, but he didn’t have her do anything different, you know,” said Jackson, 72, of White’s Grammy-winning album with Loretta Lynn. “She just did her little Loretta Lynn songs. But he told me he’s gonna stretch me some, so we’ll see. We’ll talk later.”

According to Triplett, the pair are planning to release a digital single before tackling a full LP, which will be Jackson’s first album since Heart Trouble, a record that included collaborations with Dave Alvin, The Cramps, ex-Stray Cat Lee Rocker, and others.

While Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar have had their share of differences since the acrimonious breakup of Uncle Tupelo, at least they now have one rather remarkable thing in common — they’ve both had the opportunity to collaborate with a noted American writer who happened to be dead. In 1998, Tweedy’s group Wilco joined forces with Billy Bragg on the album Mermaid Avenue, in which they set a handful of newly discovered poems by Woody Guthrie to music, and now Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie have released One Fast Move or I’m Gone, a collection of songs created for a documentary film about the fabled Beat-era writer Jack Kerouac and the troubling circumstances that inspired his 1962 novel Big Sur. For One Fast Move or I’m Gone, Farrar has taken passages from Kerouac’s book and, with a bit of editing and paraphrasing, set them to original melodies, with Farrar and Gibbard trading off on the lead vocals. Though only a few of the songs actually appear in the movie, Farrar has included 12 tunes on the album, and while they don’t quite tell the whole tale of alcoholic excess and spiritual despair Kerouac set down in Big Sur, the songs honor the spirit of the author, if not quite the letter of his original source. Musically, this material follows the same moody, lonesome, and expansive sound that’s been Farrar’s melodic trademark in his work with Son Volt and on his solo recordings, and if it hardly matches the swinging bebop jazz usually associated with the Beats (one lyric cites digging Stan Getz on the hi-fi), the bluesy undertow of this music is a good match for Kerouac’s long, unblinking look into the emotional void. But while Farrar’s voice is keyed well to the melodies, Gibbard’s lighter and more playful tone captures the restless meter of Kerouac’s writings much more comfortably than Farrar, who somehow manages to make the words of one of the most distinct literary voices of the 20th century sound like outtakes from Wide Swing Tremolo — not bad, mind you, but not all that different from his usual work. One Fast Move or I’m Gone might have evoked Jack Kerouac more vividly with other vocalists besides Farrar, but as a composer and producer, he’s done right by his lyricist, and the results are modest but rewarding.

You may now call Jarvis Cocker Dr. Cocker. The singer, radio show host, and animated banjo strummer received an honorary doctorate from his hometown’s Sheffield Hallam University, where he studied briefly when the school was then Sheffield Polytechnic, reports the BBC.

“I’m called a doctor now. Don’t worry, I won’t open a surgery,” Cocker said in his acceptance speech. “But I guess if you are a songwriter maybe I could have some kind of musical surgery. If you had a song with a swollen chorus, or a varicose verse, or if you need a little bit of help I could try and heal your song for you.”

It’s about time Cocker got an honorary degree, I say, ‘cause he’s been dressing like a college professor for years. Still, I think I’d rather get a lecture from Johnny Marr.

David Bowie, Lou Reed, Talking Heads also tackled on covers album

Peter Gabriel fronted Genesis when they were astral prog travelers. He also did time as one of the weirdest, least likely pop stars of the 80s and early 90s, looking like a bank manager but cranking out hallucinatory art-funk videos like “Sledgehammer” and “Shock the Monkey”. More recently, he teamed up with Hot Chip to cover Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”– a song that namechecks Gabriel himself. Suffice to say, Gabriel’s weirdo credentials are fully in place.

Early next year, he’ll reemerge with an orchestral covers album that will include Gabriel’s versions of songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, and the Magnetic Fields, as NME reports.

According to The Guardian, Gabriel’s Scratch My Back is part of a “song-swap project” in which Gabriel will cover other people’s songs, and they’ll cover his. That means there’s at least an outside possibility that we could hear Bon Iver take on “Red Rain”– which would be awesome. According to NME, Scratch My Back, due January 25, is the first release in a planned series, so maybe the other folks covering Gabriel will come later.

Composer John Metcalfe tells the BBC that the album will be recorded acoustically, and that Gabriel will stick with orchestral instruments rather than drums or guitars. Says Metcalfe: “The songs are not simply covers. They are major reinterpretations of some famous stuff. It’s quite radical …”

NME has confirmed the tracklist, and it’ll be fascinating to hear what Gabriel does with these songs:

Scratch My Back:

01 Heroes (David Bowie cover)
02 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon cover)
03 Mirrorball (Elbow cover)
04 Flume (Bon Iver cover)
05 Listening Wind (Talking Heads cover)
06 The Power of the Heart (Lou Reed cover)
07 My Body Is a Cage (Arcade Fire cover)
08 The Book of Love (Magnetic Fields cover)
09 I Think It’s Going to Rain Today (Randy Newman cover)
10 Après Moi (Regina Spektor cover)
11 Philadelphia (Neil Young cover)
12 Street Spirit (Radiohead cover)

You may as well write “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Presents:” before each year’s Super Bowl halftime show performer announcement, as organizers for the event are allegedly following Tom Petty in ‘08 and Bruce Springsteen this year with The Who.

According to a Sports Illustrated source (via Spinner), the two surviving original Who members, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, will entertain the millions of viewers of Super Bowl XLIV in Miami on Feb. 7 of next year. I realize that classic rock plays well in a stadium and we’re huge Who fans around here, but this seems like a strange choice. The NFL are not making an official announcement yet, so here’s hoping SI didn’t get the full scoop and there are other acts planned for the event as well. Maybe the Faces should get in on this… or Zeppelin?

Beggars have announced initial details of the planned super-deluxe Omnibus editions of The Fall’s back catalogue. The first release will be the brilliant This Nation’s Saving Grace, originally released in 1985.

The reissue will come in a box with accompanying notes and additional tracks from the Beggars archive. Intriguingly, these promise material from what Beggars describe as “two reels of early, rough mixes of the album recordings which lack the polish off the final mixes but have an accessible… well, roughness. Roughsticity. Rough-a-loogability – somesuch lack of refinement.”

These include versions of ‘Cruiser’s Creek’, ‘Rollin’ Dany’ and ‘Couldn’t Get Ahead’ which apparently feature “subtly different sonics”.

Beggars add that “One of the ideas behind the Omnibus releases is to include a contemporaneous live recording of the songs but this won’t happen on this release as the master tapes for two radio recordings, from Clitheroe Castle and Bremen, have been lost or thrown out. Careless.”

There will be three discs, also featuring singles, Peel Sessions and a track called ‘Ma Riley’.

Beggars are currently waiting on approval from Mark E Smith for the tracklisting. Let us hope they do not feel the wrath of his bombast…

Music Radar:

“I just want New York to know, I am not leaving Aerosmith,” Tyler told the crowd at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza.

Then, turning to Joe Perry, who was appearing with his band The Joe Perry project, Tyler said, “Joe Perry, you are a man of many colors. But I, motherfucker, am the rainbow!”

The Simpsons may have landed a Coldplay guest spot for their forthcoming 20th anniversary episode, but Seth MacFarlane’s American Dad! is going a much more indie route for their next musician cameo show. In upcoming episode “My Morning Straitjacket,” lead character Stan Smith will become an obsessed groupie of My Morning Jacket.

Not only that, but, as Stewie’s Playground reports, Jim James and the rest of the band will be supplying their own voices for the animated show, which is scheduled for Nov. 22.

Bono and the Edge have found their lead for the Spider-Man musical, Run-DMC are teaming up with a Hollywood producer for a possible Broadway run, Regina Spektor is writing songs for a Sleeping Beauty adaptation, and now Green Day’s Berkeley-based American Idiot musical is bound for Broadway.

Playbill reports that a Broadway casting notice went public this week and a spokesperson confirmed: “There is a Broadway future for the show, but at this time no dates or theatre are confirmed.” Let’s hope Green Day’s producers have taken notice of Bono and the Edge’s financial troubles and are moving ahead with caution.

Meanwhile, you still have one more week to check out this to-be-Broadway musical live at the Berkeley Rep or watch the trailer below.

Pre Bon Scott AC/DC with their 1st singer Dave Evans and a VERY young Angus and Malcom Young.. Awesome! ( Who is Dave Evan’s you ask? Here is your answer friends )

As things stand as of this minute, the first reunion show that the indie rock big dogs will play on American soil will be at the Sasquatch! Festival, which will come to the Gorge Amphitheatre in Quincy, Washington May 29-31, aka Memorial Day weekend.

At the moment, Pavement is the only band that the Sasquatch! organizers have announced; the full lineup is coming February 16. And no, we don’t know which night they’ll play. Maybe they’ll headline all three!

Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat are developing quite the symbiotic relationship: Cave wrote the script for (and scored) Hillcoat’s The Proposition (one of our favorite movies here at 24b) and scored Hillcoat’s upcoming The Road. Now the pair are working on two new projects: bringing The Death of Bunny Munro to the telly and new film The Wettest County to the big screen.

Cave mentioned to Spinner last month that he’d be interested in taking his latest book, The Death of Bunny Munro, from the page to the screen:

“I want to do a TV series or at least like a three-part TV series. You can go deeper with TV in a way, within actually creating a character. You have more time to live with the character.”
And Hillcoat confirms their progress on that front: “We’re going to turn that into television. We’re going to try and wake up the BBC and, or, actually Channel 4. We’re trying to say to British television,’look at HBO, I mean what the hell are you doing?’” Just as long as we can get Bunny Munro here in the States, I’ll be happy.

Cave’s written another script for Hillcoat’s directorial prowess: The Wettest County. The director was loath to give details (“it’s in the middle of all sorts of stuff”), but did explain it’s “West Virginia, moonshine, backwoods, and Prohibition” and has a “phenomenal cast,” which includes actors Ryan Gosling and Shia LaBeouf.

Well, to hold us over till the series and movie are finally released, you can always check out The Road in a couple weeks, download Bunny Munro’s soundtrack and listen to Cave’s readings. Or come over to our place and we’ll rewatch The Proposition for about the zillionth time.

Well, it’s official.

“Psycho-acoustic simulation” is not an acceptable defense for digital music piracy in the state of California. A judge in Los Angeles issued a temporary restraining order Thursday enjoining music site BlueBeat.com from selling and streaming Beatles songs. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter was not swayed by the Santa Cruz-based BlueBeat’s argument that it created “new” recordings by altering the songs through what it called “psycho-acoustic simulation.” But as of 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Thursday, Beatles songs remained up for sale on BlueBeat.com.

“They can’t ignore it,” copyright lawyer Ben Sheffner told DailyFinance, referring to the site. “If they do they will be held in contempt. I bet it will be down — or at least all the EMI stuff — within a few hours.”

The judge slapped the site with a restraining order effective immediately.

“By offering below-the-market-value downloads of Plaintiffs’ Recordings, as well as free digital streaming transmissions of Plaintiffs’ Recordings, Defendants’ actions can cause irreparable damage to the perceived value of Plaintiffs’ music and to Plaintiffs’ digital distribution strategies and relationships,” Judge Walter wrote.

EMI had filed a lawsuit against BlueBeat, a previously obscure music website, claiming it was illegally selling and streaming Beatles songs. The label has accused BlueBeat of “shocking,” “willful” and “overtly defiant” conduct. BlueBeat has denied the charge by saying it is protected by its “psycho-acoustic simulation.”

Walter was not buying that argument, saying the defendants “do not submit any declarations or reliable evidence in support of their claim that they ‘independently developed their own original sounds.’”

The judge goes on to reject BlueBeat’s claim that “because they do not transmit digital audio performances, but ‘audio visual performances with related sounds’ pursuant to their copyrights, they cannot be liable for copyright infringement of Defendants’ digital audio performances.”

No dice, ruled Walter, citing previous case law, which has held that one “cannot invalidate the copyright of an independent and preexisting sound recording, simply by incorporating that sound recording into an audiovisual work. He found a likelihood of irreparable harm.

Sheffner decribed BlueBeat’s defense as “absurd.”

“One cannot copy a sound recording and then avoid an infringement claim by adding pictures,” he said.

In the lawsuit, EMI had charged that BlueBeat “engaged in music piracy of the most blatant and harmful kind.” The suit names Hank Risan, of Santa Cruz, Calif., as the head of the BlueBeat, which claims that it sells “an entirely different sound recording than that copyrighted by Plaintiffs.” The website says it “independently developed [its] own original sounds” that consist of “entirely different sound recording[s]” through a technical process called “psycho-acoustic simulation.”

In the lawsuit, EMI says it is “entitled” to $150,000 “for each copyright infringed.”

Sheffner explained that if EMI “opts for statutory damages, it does NOT matter how many copies BlueBeat sold. Statutory damages are awarded per work — not per infringement. So If they get statutory damages for infringement of ‘Love Me Do,’ the jury can award from $750 to $150,000, whether they actually sold 1 copy or a million.”

Pavement guitarist Spiral Stairs has revealed that the band are planning to release a best of compilation featuring previously-unreleased radio sessions next year.

The guitarist, real name Scott Kannberg, told NME.COM that the album would be likely to feature outtakes as well as the band’s best-known songs, and be released around the same time of their reunion gigs next year.

“There’s talk of doing a best of, with some really cool outtakes on that,” he explained. “The very first radio show that Pavement ever did has never been released. I don’t think anyone’s heard it, so we’ll put that out there sometime.”

Pavement are set to play comeback gigs in Australia and New Zealand next March. They will then play three shows at the London O2 Academy Brixton, headline and curate the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Minehead and headline Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival.

From the opening of ”Breed” through the Hendrix homage that caps ”Territorial 
 Pissings,” this DVD-plus-CD is — no other way to say it — straight-up awesome. Recorded at England’s Reading Festival in 1992, Live at Reading presents the band at its post-Nevermind peak. Watching Kurt Cobain radiate so much life is bound to trigger some tears. But the state you’re most likely to be transported to is one of holy joy, best personified by the crazed guy dancing blissfully on stage for most of the show. Po-go, dude!

Boing Boing:
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet—and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living—if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused—again, without evidence or trial—of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Electronic Frontier Foundation:
…The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws….As expected, the Internet provisions will go beyond existing international treaty obligations and follow the language of Article 18.10.30 of the recent U.S. – South Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Huffington Post:
This week 40 or so countries are meeting in South Korea to consider text for a new international agreement on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. It is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The term “counterfeiting” is designed to demonize the agreement critics as friends of organized crime, much like the name of the Patriot Act seemed better than the “Elimination of Civil Liberties Act.” It is really an agreement that addresses a wide range of intellectual property enforcement issues—involving patents, copyrights, trademarks and other IPR.

If you are a lowly member of the public, the text is secret. The names of persons who attend the meetings are secret. The titles of the documents are secret. If you represent a big firm or law firm—pretty much any big firm it seems, the U.S. government will show you documents after you sign a non-disclosure agreement – curbing your right to speak out on the contents of the documents you see.

Some details of the negotiation have leaked out, most recently from a memo by Euopean Union describing the Obama Administration proposal for a new global system of Internet controls and liabilities. Michael Geist, Gwen Hienz of EFF, and a few journalists—most living outside of the U.S., have written about ACTA.

The entire U.S. tech sector has been publicly silent, as the Obama administration has co-oped them into trading silence for access to the secret documents.

At this point, Congress needs to stand up and put an end to this appalling spectacle of secret legislation on a global scale. How can politicians claim to be all for transparency, and allow this indefensible violation of the public right to know proceed?

A large number of organizations and people have written President Obama asking that he end the secrecy of the negotiation. It is doubtful this will happen unless newspapers write about the issue (aren’t they big advocates of the right to know?), members of Congress weigh in, or if the critics of the secret negotiation can mobilize public opinion.

Variety:
Santa Cruz, Calif.-based BlueBeat.com apparently began marketing the Fab Four tracks—hitherto unavailable from online music merchants—at lowball prices late last week.

EMI, which distribs Beatles recordings via an agreement with the group’s music company, Apple Corps, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles. Company also issued a curt statement: “EMI has not authorized content to be sold on BlueBeat.”

In a twist ripe with irony, representatives of Media Rights Technologies [owners of Bluebeat] recently wrote to the Librarian of Congress asking that the webcasting licenses of such firms as iTunes, Pandora and MSN Music be revoked on piracy grounds.

“MRT will not condone copyright infringement nor risk infringement liability for our customers and partners. Until Apple is fully compliant with government regulations, iTunes will not be permitted on our sites,” Risan said at the time.

Wired:
After buying the remastered version of Abbey Road from the site last Friday, we asked EMI and the Beatles’ label Apple Corp. whether BlueBeat, located in Santa Cruz, California, had cleared the necessary rights in order to sell the digital songs, which are not available for sale on Amazon MP3, iTunes, or elsewhere. Bluebeat is selling the songs for 25 cents per track plus a 30 cent processing fee, representing a big discount from what the songs would cost on those other services — were they available.

An EMI source told Wired.com that the label has sued BlueBeat for copyright infringement (owned, ironically, by a company called Media Rights Technologies) in a U.S. district court in California.

The Beatles catalog is still for sale as of this posting.

Or you can buy the USB drive.

Ready for another unusual surprise from Jack White and company? Third Man Records have announced the upcoming 7-inch vinyl release of “A Glorious Dawn,” an Auto-Tuned remix of Carl Sagan’s dialogue from his “Cosmos” television series; the remix, which features Stephen Hawking, first gained notoriety after composer John Boswell uploaded it to YouTube earlier this fall.

“The release is timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Sagan’s birth,” Third Man’s news bulletin says. “Also happening that day is a reception in United States’ Congress with speeches by senators, NASA officials and assorted scientists, all hosted by the Planetary Society, which was co-founded by Sagan.”

Ben Blackwell, White, and the rest of Third Man’s musical A-Team aren’t finished yet: A limited edition “Cosmos Colored Vinyl” version will be sold at their Nashville headquarters and randomly included with mail orders of the record. As the “A Glorious Dawn” 7-inch will not have a B-side, an etching on the flipside will be a replica of the Voyager Golden Record (shown here), which was launched into space in 1977.

I guess Auto-Tune isn’t dead after all. Listen to “A Glorious Dawn” embedded below or download it here:

I’m not sure why people are so worried about the Hadron Collider, especially since Lightning Bolt have been tearing black holes in the fabric of Providence on a regular basis for the past 15 years. If we’re to take their album titles to heart, the Lightning Bolt œuvre has described the steady trajectory of a celestial plummet, from the airy heights (2001’s Ride the Skies) down through the clouds (’03’s Wonderful Rainbow), past the craggy summits (’05’s Hypermagic Mountain), and, here, on Earthly Delights, straight into the dirt below.

For most bands, this perpetual fall would be a downside, but for Lightning Bolt, the ever-increasing density of their sound makes perfect sense. Earthly Delights may be the beloved duo at their most listenable — which shouldn’t be mistaken for accessible. “Transmissionary” is so saturated, so full-to-bursting, so brutal, and so generously portioned that, after four or so minutes, it achieves something close to an ambient quality. “The Sublime Freak” shrieks into being, collects itself, and charges through everything in its path.

Drummer/singer Brian Chippendale still sounds as if he were on a CB radio from a truck barreling through hell, and bassist Brian Gibson’s quickness allows important notes to fling themselves from the song before they tear themselves apart — melodies don’t carry Lightning Bolt songs, they escape them. The LB faithful will crowd around their speakers for the signature tirades “Nation of Boar” and “S.O.S.,” but even casual listeners will find things to enjoy about the fake flirtations with sludge metal (“Colossus”) and redneckery (“Funny Farm”). At its core, Earthly Delights is the sound of a band digging in so deep, they’ve struck something molten.

It is with great regret that Slayer announces the postponement of its “Canadian Carnage” tour with Megadeth, which was due to begin on November 8. In addition, the band announces the postponement of its appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” which had been set for this Wednesday, November 4. More information will be released shortly regarding the rescheduling of the Canadian dates, as well as the ‘Kimmel’ appearance.

Slayer’s Tom Araya is currently under the care of a specialist for a back injury, thought to be related to his on-stage activity, and the physician has ordered an immediate surgical procedure to take place in Texas tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

“What is foremost in our minds right now is that Tom do whatever he needs to to get this taken care of,” said Slayer’s Kerry King. “While all four of us are disappointed that we won’t be able to see through all of our commitments set for the next few weeks, the most important thing is Tom’s health. We thank the fans in Canada and here in L.A., the Megadeth camp, and everyone associated with ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ for their understanding. We look forward to seeing you all soon.”

Slayer’s Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman and Dave Lombardo are looking forward to meeting their fans at a previously announced in-store appearance this Wednesday, November 4 at 3:30PM at the Hot Topic store located at the Hollywood and Highland complex. Slayer’s World Painted Blood is released tomorrow, November 3.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are set to reissue all of their 7 studio albums and release a “best of” compilation next spring, Exclaim! reports. “We’re trying to keep them to single discs,” Jon Spencer told Billboard. “There will be B-sides from singles in Europe, stuff like that. Hopefully it will be an easy way for someone to tie things up and put them all in one place.”

That doesn’t mean they’ll be reuniting, though, as they’re “very much in deep hiatus,” Spencer added. “We’ve thought about it, talked about it, just haven’t done it.”

The band’s seventh LP, Transference, is due out January 26 in North America via Merge and January 25 in Europe via Anti-.

The record features 11 songs produced by the band, including recent single “Got Nuffin”, not to mention tracks called “I Saw the Light” and “Out Go the Lights”. Lights, people, lights! And if you can’t wait that long to hear the newness, we’re sure Spoon will play at least a couple Transference tracks at their upcoming New Year’s Eve gig with Jay Reatard at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater.

Peruse song titles at your leisure below:

Transference:

01 Before Destruction
02 Is Love Forever?
03 The Mystery Zone
04 Who Makes Your Money
05 Written in Reverse
06 I Saw the Light
07 Trouble Comes Running
08 Goodnight Laura
09 Out Go the Lights
10 Got Nuffin
11 Nobody Gets Me But You