100 GREATEST HORROR MOVIE QUOTES (Happy Halloween)

The most twisted, chilling, haunting, and down right creepy quotes ever be uttered in a horror film…

Prior to Broadcast singer Trish Keenan’s death in January 2011, the band composed an original soundtrack for the recent Warp-produced film Berberian Sound Studio, which will get its own vinyl, CD, and digital release by the label on January 7 in the UK and January 8 in the U.S. Preview a cut from the score, “The Equestrian Vortex”, above.

Berberian Sound Studio, directed by Peter Strickland, is a psychologically complex film-within-a-film that pays homage to 1970s Italian horror. Toby Jones (The Hunger Games, Captain America) plays a sound engineer with a “slowly degenerating mental state” who creates sound for a low-budget horror film, recording “bloodcurdling screams” and “limbs being severed.” Broadcast’s James Cargill wove bits of sound from the film back into the soundtrack.

As mentioned last year, Cargill is also at work on a new Broadcast album using vocal recordings Keenan left behind..

Check out the trailer, after the tracklisting.

Berberian Sound Studio:

01 A Breeze Through the Burford Spur
02 The Equestrian Vortex
03 Beautiful Hair
04 Malleus Maleficarum
05 Mark of the Devil
06 Confession Modulation
07 Monica’s Fall
08 Teresa’s Song (Sorrow)
09 The North Downs Dimension
10 Collatina Is Coming
11 Such Tender Things
12 Teresa, Lark of Ascension
13 Monica’s Burial (Under the Junipers)
14 Found Scalded, Found Drowned
15 Monica (Her Parents Have Been Informed)
16 The Fifth Claw
17 Saducismus Triumphatus
18 The Gallops
19 They’re Here, They’re Under Us
20 Collatina, Mark of Damnation
21 Treatise
22 A Goblin
23 The Equestrian Library
24 The Serpent’s Semen
25 Burnt at the Stake
26 All Chiffchaffs
27 The Curfew After the Massacre
28 Poultry in Mind
29 The Sacred Marriage
30 Valeria’s Burial (Under the Fort)
31 Edda’s Burial (Under the Clumps)
32 The Game’s Up
33 It Must’ve Been the Magpies
34 The Dormitory Window
35 Anima di Cristo
36 His World Is My Shed
37 Collatina’s Folly
38 Here Comes the Sabbath, There Goes the Cross
39 Our Darkest Sabbath

Cat Power’s list of problems just keeps getting longer and longer. The singer has been struggling with angioedema, a tissue disorder, and has had to declare bankruptcy. As a result, she’s considering canceling her upcoming European tour while she gets her shit together. Via Contact Music:

“Heart broken. Worked so hard. Got sick day after (latest album) Sun came out and been struggling to keep all points of me in equilibrium: mind, spirit, body healthy, centered (sic) and grounded. I am doing the best I can. I f**king love this planet. I refuse to give up. Though I may need to restrategise for my security and health.”

Best of luck, Chan. Hope things get better..

The signature Crazy Horse move is The Huddle. No matter how big the stage, Neil Young, Billy Talbot, and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro will inevitably find themselves tightly packed in front of Ralph Molina’s drums, bobbing and flailing in such close proximity that it’s a miracle they never crack guitar necks. It’s an aggressively insular move for a band playing to thousands, an unambiguous signal that the feedback storm they are conjuring is often more about them than us.

That self indulgence is the beating heart of each time Young deigns to bring the Horse back out of the barn, even as the decision excites his fanbase like no other. To the point, the latest Crazy Horse reunion was announced with the leak of an instrumental jam on the chords to “Fuckin’ Up” and “Cortez the Killer” that ran over 37 minutes. Then there was the first official leg of the comeback: Americana, where Young fed old-as-dirt traditionals such as “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” into the Crazy Horse engine, followed by an arena tour that filled nearly half the setlist with unreleased material..

But Psychedelic Pill might be the most accurate studio portrayal of The Huddle yet. Three songs gallop past the 15-minute mark, and the opener “Driftin’ Back” approaches a half hour, quickly weeding out the faint of heart. They are the three longest songs ever released by Young (if you don’t count Arc) and they feel like it. “Driftin’ Back”, in particular, is nearly trance-inducing as it locks onto the same chord progression, interrupted only occasionally by mini-rants about hip-hop haircuts and mp3 sound quality..

Yet other than these marathon challenges, playing with Crazy Horse is playing it safe for Young: You know exactly what you’re going to get, and there are none of the pleasant surprises of 2010′s excellent loop-dabbling Le Noise. One song, “She’s Always Dancing”, even sounds like the band just took an instrumental rehearsal of “Like a Hurricane” and added a new vocal track over the top– which is good enough to make it the second best jam on the record. “Ramada Inn” is paint-by-numbers Crazy Horse, indistinguishable from any of their late-period outings beyond its refusal to end.
It will also surprise no Neil Young fan that most of the songs here are about aging, continuing a roughly 50-year streak of obsessing over getting old. So much of Psychedelic Pill is Young looking back, from the long-married couple of “Ramada Inn” to the classic rock name-dropping of “Twisted Road”. He even reminisces his way back to the cradle, with “Born in Ontario”, a brief country-rocker that’s a welcome breath-catcher, even though it bears a giant hole in the shape of deceased longtime collaborator and auxiliary Horseman Ben Keith’s slide guitar.

But Neil’s particular flavor of nostalgia has always been a little on the sour side. When he references the Woodstock Generation, he tends to do it with a scowl, angry about the failure of the hippie dream even as he still clings to its promise. Psychedelic Pill suggests a softening of that harsh stance, particularly on the saccharine “Twisted Road” with its irony-free shout-outs to Dylan and the Dead and the distracting “trippy” effects that ruin the title track.

Thankfully, the album’s final epic, “Walk Like a Giant”, scrawls a jagged line through that cuddly history with a single chord change, coming immediately after an immensely dopey verse about how Neil and his friends were gonna save the world. In fact, “Walk Like a Giant”, is easily the best studio Crazy Horse performance since Ragged Glory. Once again, the formula is unchanged– it even swipes pretty heavily from the “Hey Hey My My” riff– but between the verses the Horse is whipped until it foams at the mouth. Everything great about Neil Young, electric guitarist, is on full display, his singular tone veering from feral growls and feedback to blistering fury while the other three egg him on with subtle, perennially underrated counterpoint.

Despite the patience required to get there, the track underlines the greatest trick of Neil Young’s long career: that his most self-indulgent mode can also be his most crowd-pleasing. At this point, the “these old guys still know how to rock!” angle for Crazy Horse is itself old enough to collect Social Security. But there’s enough life and fuck-you attitude left in Psychedelic Pill to remind a listener that “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” wasn’t necessarily about dying young, so long as you avoided phoning it in. If circling the wagons is what it takes to keep Neil Young’s fire raging, then just be happy he lets us pay to watch..

For decades, referring to an interfering spouse as a “Yoko” has been commonplace, but the time may have finally come to drop it from the pop culture lexicon. Paul McCartney says that Yoko Ono didn’t break up the Beatles in an upcoming interview with David Frost. Via Rolling Stone:

“She certainly didn’t break the group up,” McCartney says, countering the commonly held belief that Ono caused the Beatles’ dissolution. “I don’t think you can blame her for anything,” McCartney says, adding that Lennon was “definitely going to.

The Walkmen will continue touring in support of their 2012 record Heaven next year, taking ex-Fleet Foxes drummer Father John Misty along for a January trek through North America. Misty released his own Fear Fun LP this spring.

Earier this month, the Walkmen also announced a new 7″ single, “Dance With Your Partner” b/w “Vermeer ’65″, out November 6 via Fat Possum.

Full tour schedule

10-29 Dublin, Ireland – Vicar Street ^
10-30 Manchester, England – HMV Manchester Ritz ^
10-31 London, England – Rough Trade East
11-01 London, England – HMV Forum ^
11-02 Paris, France – Pitchfork Music Festival Paris
11-03 Amsterdam, Holland – Paradiso
11-04 Lisbon, Portugal – Coliseu dos Recreios
11-07 Barcelona, Spain – Bikini
11-08 Madrid, Spain – Arena
11-24 Santiago, Chile – Primavera Fauna
01-11 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
01-15 Montreal, Quebec – Corona Theater %
01-16 Toronto, Ontario – Danforth Theatre %
01-17 Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall %
01-18 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre %
01-19 Madison, WI – Capitol Theatre %
01-21 Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre %
01-24 San Francisco, CA – Fillmore %
01-26 Portland, OR – Roseland Theatre %
01-27 Seattle, WA – Neptune Theater %
01-28 Vancouver, British Columbia – Commodore Ballroom %

^ with Wild Nothing
% with Father John Misty

“Song CPR” is how Death From Above 1979 described their current Canadian tour when they announced it last month. They are resuscitating a batch of brand new songs– their first since 2004′s You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Last night, they kicked off the tour in Hamilton, Ontario, and Consequence of Sound has rounded up footage of performances of a few new tracks…

Christopher Owens: “Lysandre’s Theme” / “Here We Go” (via SoundCloud)

Just a few months after Christopher Owens announced he’d leave his own band, Girls, the singer-songwriter has confirmed details of his debut solo LP. Out January 15 in the U.S. and January 14 in the UK, and titled Lysandre, the record will be released via Fat Possum/Turnstile.

Check out the first two cuts, “Lysandre’s Theme” and “Here We Go” above, via Owens’ website.

The record takes on the narrative of “a coming of age story, a road trip, a love story,” according to a press release, following Owens from San Francisco to New York to France, where he falls in love with a girl named Lysandre. That’s the cover art, above, shot by Ryan McGinley..

The record features Owens on guitars/vocals as well as Evan Weiss (guitar), Matthew Kallman (keyboard), Vince Meghrouni (saxophone/flute), David Sutton (bass), Seth Kasper (drums), Hannah Hunt (vocals) and Cally Robertson (vocals). It was recorded with Doug Boehm, who has worked with Girls..

After the tracklisting, watch Chris Owens perform several Lysandre cuts at Matador’s 21st anniversary celebration in Las Vegas in 2010. (The first seems to be “A Broken Heart”, but that’s unconfirmed.)

Lysandre:
01 Lysandre’s Theme
02 Here We Go
03 New York City
04 A Broken Heart
05 Here We Go Again
06 Riviera Rock
07 Love Is in the Ear of the Listener
08 Lysandre
09 Everywhere You Knew
10 Closing Theme
11 Part of Me (Lysandre’s Epilogue)

Smiths and Modest Mouse guitarist Johnny Marr has announced that he will join Dinosaur, Jr. on stage for a special performance in New York this December. Via NME:

On December 1, Dinosaur Jr. will celebrate the 25th anniversary of “You’re Living All Over Me” at Terminal 5 in New York City. The band will play the album in its entirety followed by a second set spanning their catalogue with very special musical guests joining them onstage. We’re excited to announce the first of these special guests: Johnny Marr, known for his work in The Smiths, Modest Mouse & The Cribs. Marr will sit in with Dinosaur Jr. for a song or two, and we’re thrilled he’ll be celebrating with us. More special guests to be announced.

This is what we love about Johnny Marr. In addition to being a rock genius, the man continues to throw himself into new projects at almost 50 years-old. Not only that, but they’re almost always good. He should run a seminar for other rock stars on how to age gracefully..

Information Retrieved is the sort of album you want to listen to with headphones on, so as to make sure not to miss a single pluck of the guitar string or tap of the snare drum. In the five years since 2007’s Autumn of the Seraphs, California duo Zach Smith and Rob Crow have developed a tightly controlled, almost minimalist collection of songs that remains singularly Pinback while sounding unlike much of their previous work.

Whereas Seraphs found Pinback often moving through their math-rock motions at a moderate clip and even playing with punky energy on tracks like “From Nothing to Nowhere,” Information Retrieved is in no hurry. Tracks like “A Request” and “Sherman” seem almost to mosey out of the speakers rather like a spring bubbles up from underground—“of itself so,” as the late philosopher Alan Watts might say.

Information Retrieved’s arrangements are stripped down, especially by Pinback’s standards. As a result, listener’s ears are drawn into a fuller awareness of, say, Smith’s bass-playing on “His Phase,” which seems to both drive the beat forward and glide the melody along at the same time. But slow-and-steady songs like “Diminished,” with its twinge of ’70s folk in the vocals, are balanced by the toned-down power-pop of opener “Proceed to Memory” and album closers “Denslow, You Idiot!,” with its vintage frenzy of guitar picking and clipped drumming, and “Sediment,” which may be as close as the duo will ever get to arena rock..

From start to finish, Information Retrieved sounds confident and deliberate, a consummate release from two deft musicians who’ve made every note count.

To mark the ninth anniversary of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith’s death, a group known as the Punk Rock Marthas staged a benefit and gave the mural a much-needed face lift after years of vandalism, including Roger Waters’ poster campaigns, left it decrepit. The mural famously appeared on the cover of Smith’s 2000 album, Figure 8. Via Spin:

Acknowledging no restoration of the mural could be permanent, the Punk Rock Marthas embraced temporariness in their choice of tools. Rather than simply repaint the mural, they incorporate recycled paper. For the red part of the mural, they hand-wrote every line from every song on a Smith album; for the black, they used maps, album covers, and other Smith-related items, plus 1,000 paper cranes for black; and for the white, they posed a sampling of fan messages.

“Angeles” by Elliott Smith.

Mick Jagger will be co-producing a biopic on James Brown with Brian Grazer. The Help‘s Tate Taylor is is talks to direct, according to Deadline. Jagger is thrilled to be joining Grazer on his passion project, which also involved the late Brown before his death in 2006. Via Rolling Stone:

“It’s a great honor to be involved with a project as rich as the story of the legendary James Brown,” said Jagger. “He was a mesmerizing performer with a fascinating life.”

Brown’s widow, Tommie Rae Brown, can’t imagine two better people to be heading the project…

“I am deeply honored that Mick Jagger and Brian Grazer, two of my husband James Brown’s favorite people, have entered into a partnership to bring his inspirational story to the big screen,” she said.

The soundtrack to RZA’s directorial debut, The Man With the Iron Fists, is out tomorrow. It features a collaboration between RZA with the Black Keys called “The Baddest Man Alive”, which now has an action-packed video directed by Chris Marrs Piliero. It stars both RZA and the Black Keys, who battle in an Asian restaurant..

RZA slaps Dan Auerbach in the face with a dead fish, tears a guy’s arm off, and rips a woman’s blouse off– right before he raps about how The Baddest Man Alive will “date rape beauty right in front of the beast.”

Gene Simmons has claimed to The Sun that he was offered $200 million to reunite Led Zeppelin. We don’t believe you, Gene…. (via NME)

“In 2009/10 I was given a few hundred million dollars in an account by a large concert promoter and given the task of reaching out to Jimmy and Robert and trying to convince them to get back together.

“Of course, it didn’t work. Robert just doesn’t want to do it.”

Swans’ behemoth double-LP The Seer is a pretty safe bet to be included in most year-end top 10s, and the album hits its apex at its conclusion: the 23-minute “The Apostate.” Generally speaking, 23 minutes is about the length of a sitcom (sans commercials), not a single, so it’s appropriate that the band edited the thing down for its video; here it clocks in at a brisk 12 minutes. The song is as hypnotic and intense as a peyote ritual, and the live experience captured in this performance video makes that analogy seem especially apt…

10/19 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
10/23 – St Louis, MO @ Firebird
10/24 – Chicago, IL @ Metro
10/25 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
10/26 – Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe
10/28 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/29 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
11/01 – Reykjavik, IS @ Iceland Airways Festival
11/15 – London, UK @ Koko
11/16 – Glasgow, Uk @ The Arches
11/17 – Manchester, UK @ Sound Control
11/19 – Paris, FR @ Le Trabendo
11/20 – Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje
11/21 – Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat
11/22 – Hamburg, DE @ Kampnagel
11/23 – Copenhagen, DK @ Det Kgl. Danske Konservatories Koncertsal
11/24 – Oslo, NO @ Parkteatret
11/25 – Stockholm, SE @ Debaser
11/27 – Prague, CZ @ Lucenra Music Bar
11/28 – Vienna, AT @ Arena Big Hall
11/30 – Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv
12/01 – Gumares, PT @ Sao Mamede Cultural Capitol Village Event
12/02 – Kortrijk, BE @ De Kreun-Sunns Curator Festival
12/03 – Bern, CH @ Reitschule Gross Halle
12/04 – Lausanne, CH @ Les Docks
12/06 – Barcelona, ES @ Sala Apolo (Primavera Xmas Event)
12/07 – Madrid, ES @ Matadero Theatre (Primavera Xmas Event)
12/09 – Sevila, ES @ Teatro Central

It’s not much, but it’s something. In an interview with Dazed, Light Asylum singer Shannon Funchess says she’s singing on a couple songs. It will be The Knife’s first record since Silent Shout in 2006, though they did a collaborative opera with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock in 2010. We’ve been hearing rumors of a new record since April 2011, by the way. Think it would be too much to ask for a new Fever Ray record, too? (via Fact)

I’m also singing on a track on the new Knife album. I recorded with them after we left here last time, and in a couple of days I’m going to Berlin to record some more. That’ll come out in September 2012. They’re totally sweet people!

She’ll be a good fit.

It’s not really surprising that Bruce Springsteen, a man who’s lyrics tend to deal with the plight of the working man, is voting for Obama, but The Boss went a step further yesterday night and officially endorsed the President in a letter posted to his website. Via The New York Times:

The letter states: “This presidential election is different than the last one because President Obama has a four year record to run on. Last time around, he carried with him a tremendous amount of hope and expectations. Unfortunately, due to the economic chaos the previous administration left him with, and the extraordinary intensity of the opposition, it turned into a really rough ride. But through grit, determination, and focus, the President has been able to do a great many things that many of us deeply support.”

He went on to list Obama’s accomplishments, including rescuing the auto industry, guaranteeing affordable health care for more Americans and ending the war in Iraq. He also called out the GOP for resorting “to voter suppression,” through “anti-voter, anti-citizen efforts.”

In addition to the letter, Springsteen has agreed to show his support by playing at Obama rallies in the traditionally pro-Springsteen swing states of Ohio and Iowa….

You can listen to a new track from Sonic Youth’s upcoming 1985 live album on Youtube. Via Pitchfork:

On November 13, Sonic Youth will release a new live album, Smart Bar – Chicago 1985, their first of apparently many in-the-works archival projects. Today they’ve shared a cut from the album via Twitter, “Intro/Brave Men Run (In My Family)”, the leadoff tracks from their 1985 album Bad Moon Rising.

_Smart Bar is out on 2xLP, CD, and digital formats via the band’s own Goofin’ Records. As Lee Ranaldo recently mentioned, it was recorded to four-track cassette by fans who were following Sonic Youth at the time. Drummer Steve Shelley had just joined the band.

You can listen to “Intro/Brave Men Run (In My Family),” below.

Divine Fits, the new Britt Daniel/Dan Boeckner/Sam Brown supergroup, have been working a few covers into their live shows recently. And at a Rhode Island show last night, they debuted a new one: Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange joint “Lost,” which, unsurprisingly enough, sounds a whole hell of a lot like a Spoon song when Britt Daniel is singing it. Thanks to Stephen Crocker for the tip; he recorded a cell phone video of it, and it’s below.

(via Stereogum)

Cologne, Germany’s Week-End Fest will return this year from November 30-December 2, taking place in a former crane factory in the Ehrenfeld district. Its lineup will feature a special performance by Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, who will honor the 40th anniversary of Can’s legendary Ege Bamyasi with a full album performance. Members of Cologne band Von Spar will back him.

The Week-End Fest lineup also features Scritti Politti, Ty Segall, Deerhoof, the Field, Nite Jewel, Chris Cohen, James Yorkston, Fainting by Numbers (Justus Köhncke and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor), Naytronix (of tUnE-yArDs), Little Wings, Chain and the Gang, and more.

Watch Can play “Spoon” from Ege Bamyasi.

Quotes around Black Sabbath above because founding member Bill Ward was left off the reunion over a presumed monetary disagreement (see below). Vintage Vinyl News reports:

Black Sabbath is in the studio working on a new album with producer Rick Rubin according to Sharon Osbourne.

Founding drummer Bill Ward departed the band just prior to the commencement of the live shows over a legal dispute.

The legacy of famed BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel, is being brought into question after allegations of Peel impregnating a 15-year old girl after a three-month affair, which began after a Black Sabbath in the summer of 1969, have surfaced. There has been much commotion over the conduct of BBC DJs since a documentary focusing on the late Jimmy Savile accused him of sexual misconduct throughout his career. Now, allegations against Peel are being investigated. Via Fact:

“He must have known I was still at school. But he didn’t ask and I didn’t tell him”, claims Nevin. “At the time I was just so happy to be on his arm. I was young and he was famous. All I cared about was that I could make all my school friends jealous. I was insecure and impressionable. I suppose I used him for his fame and he used me for sex.”

The claims are causing the BBC to reconsider honoring Peel with a new tribute wing. Via The Guardian:

A BBC spokesman said: “Clearly, in the event of proven allegations of sexual abuse the BBC would re-consider its decision on the naming of part of our new building.”

Earlier this year the corporation announced that a section of the newly refurbished BBC Broadcasting House in central London would be called the John Peel Wing in tribute to the former Radio 1 presenter, who died in 2004.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actress jammed with the Atlanta band, sort of… Via Rolling Stone:

Actress Rooney Mara joined psych-rockers the Black Lips onstage at Austin City Limits on Friday, backing up the band on guitar – or at least pretending to – as part of a shoot for Terrence Malick’s top-secret next movie. A reporter from SlashFilm caught a brief snippet of the guest appearance on camera.

You can watch Mara onstage in the clip below, perhaps not the most convincing fake guitar playing we’ve ever seen.

14 songs in 26 minutes, sounds about right.

Off’s new video for “Wrong” starring Jack Black! Directed by Whitey McConnaughy

The Rolling Stones will be putting out the hits collection GRRR! in November, a release that will feature two new songs. Today, the first of those two songs debuted on BBC Radio 2, a hard-charging, catchy number called “Doom And Gloom.” Hear it below.

Jack White shared the video for “I’m Shakin’”, his Little Willie John cover from this year’s Blunderbuss. The video, directed by Dori Oskowitz (who also helmed Passion Pit’s “Constant Conversations” clip), features two Jack Whites facing off, accompanied by his all-male and all-female backing bands.

The “I’m Shakin’” single is out October 30 on 7″ vinyl via Third Man, backed by the non-album cut “Blues on Two Trees”. It’s available with two different covers, one of which is available at Jack’s upcoming shows.

(via pitchfork)

группа Pussy Riot@pussy_riot
Освобожденная Кэт всем передает супер-боевые приветы и еще раз подчеркивает, что ни малейшего раскола в нашей группе нет!

That tweet, sent out this morning, roughly (Google-) translates to:

“The liberated Kat sends super-combat greetings and once again emphasizes that there is not the slightest split in our group!”

In an unexpected move, a Moscow court has freed Pussy Riot guitarist Yekaterina Samutsevich on the grounds that she was unable to get her guitar out of its case and join the performance before getting tossed out of Moscow’ main cathedral by guards. From Yahoo:

“The punishment for an incomplete crime is much lighter than for a completed one,” said Samutsevich’s lawyer, Irina Khrunova. “She did not participate in the actions the court found constituted hooliganism.”

Her bandmates, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, had their two-year prison sentences upheld, much to the disappointment of human rights groups.

“To see these two women sent to a Russian penal colony for the crime of singing a song undercuts any claim that Putin and the Russian government have to democracy and freedom of expression,” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Washington.

Yekaterina’s freedom seems to have been the result of good legal advice. The Atlantic explains:

Thanks to her new lawyer and the good sense to ditch her former legal team, Yekaterina Samutsevich became the first member of Pussy Riot to walk free Wednesday.

Khrunova’s success today makes Samutsevich’s decision to fire her legal team on October 1 look like a great one. At the time Samutsevich’s call seemed like a curveball; no one really knew why she’d dismissed her three lawyers.

A quotable from The Guardian‘s coverage of the news:

“We don’t have and have never had any religious hate,” Tolokonnikova said. The band’s performance was political and not religious, she argued…

Maybe you’ve heard that Transcendental Youth features horns on a few songs, and maybe you’ve wondered why you should care. After all, it’s been 10 years and eight albums since John Darnielle first signed to 4AD (after a decade of cult-approved home recordings), and started collaborating with other musicians, producers, and engineers in bona fide studios. Still, longtime fans can’t help but hear each musical development as a further tweak away from the spare insistence of those no-fi early records, in the same way that we judge an old college friend’s middle-aged features by their deviation from the face we first met..

And no matter how full and warm the Mountain Goats sound grows, Darnielle himself still embodies the spirit of his earlier work. He’s a presence both effusive and austere, compulsively unburdening himself of stories in an urgent voice that naysayers just cannot be argued out of hating, its stridency unmitigated by folksy mannerism, its certain enunciation and rhythmic deliberateness so characteristic of religious believers and the less docile late-night users of public transit. Both the storyteller and his characters seem incapable of chilling the fuck out.

But on Transcendental Youth, he plays off our vocal expectations. When his voice eases up on the throttle, the lives he describes suddenly lose momentum and purpose. He’s claimed that these songs share a common setting, the gray limbo of rural Washington state, and many of these desperate whispers from existences fading away could indeed have emanated from some drizzly Pacific Northwest of the soul — the dealer of “Lakeside View Apartments Suite” denying your right to judge him as he watches “days like dominos” toppling, or the depressed recluses of “Until I Am Whole” and “In Memory of Satan,” insisting that their wound-licking retreats are just temporary.

Those songs of bleak stasis may explain why Darnielle opens the record with “Amy (AKA Spent Gladiator I),” exhorting us to “Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive”; the songs that follow essentially catalog the consequences faced by characters who either take or ignore that advice, attempting to re-energize either in sullen solitude or through experiments in extreme living. It’s a theme that culminates on “Spent Gladiator II” and its astounding string of metaphors for persistence in the face of despair, from “A village on the steppe / About to get collectivized” to a clock still ticking after the firebombing of Dresden.

Darnielle’s repeated cry on both versions of “Spent Gladiator” — “Just stay alive” — might ring corny if bolstered with empty promises that “it gets better.” But though he does allow for glimpses of the transcendence that the album title references, they’re often wispy epiphanies: the visions that possess the psych patient of “White Cedar” who dreams of resurrection, the tenuous life after death enjoyed by the Frankie Lymon of “Harlem Roulette” when “some no one from the future” hears the last single he cut before his 1968 O.D. “Every dream’s a good dream,” Darnielle sings. “Even awful dreams are good dreams.” But the songs imply an unstated corollary: Every dream’s just a dream. Even amazing dreams are just dreams.

The real relief from despair here is musical. This is the Mountain Goats’ fourth record recorded as a trio, with bassist Peter Hughes and drummer Jon Wurster supporting Darnielle’s insistent strum, its headlong intensity signifying determination rather than catharsis or simple good times. The band’s interplay has grown both more varied and intuitive. “The Diaz Brothers” fleshes out the lives of an unseen rival cartel from Scarface to the accompaniment of pounding ’70s-sitcom-theme piano; the sun-dappled rhythms of “Counterfeit Florida Plates” make the compulsive routine of a homeless paranoiac sound less oppressive than lots of day jobs.

Which brings us back to those horns. As arranged by singer-songwriter Matthew E. White, they hint at a fuller world outside the claustrophobic thoughts of a song’s narrator. Darnielle’s lyrics are too honest to consistently convince us that the life he insists we keep on living is worth the struggle. But with his musical palette expanded, he can make life seem, like the cranky hardcore humanists in Flipper used to sing, to be the only thing worth living for…

After LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy has been goofing around, hanging in the studio with Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitarist, Nick Zinner. Though earlier rumors that Murphy will be producing the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs album proved to be false, the videos are still thoroughly entertaining. Via Pitchfork:

“It’s super Latin,” Murphy says while tinkling some keys.

Unfortunately, Mr. Murphy probably thought the videos incited too many rumors and took them down, but it did happen, we swear.

(We had heard that James is producing the Arcade Fire, only time will tell.)

Sufjan Stevens has announced a month-long North American tour for November and December. It’s called the “Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice”, so you have some idea of what you’re getting into…

Dates are below, via Disco Naïveté. The tour will be supported by Sheila Saputo (an alias of Sufjan collaborator Rosie Thomas).

Sufjan is releasing a new box set of Christmas music on November 13, titled Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas, Volumes 6-10. It collects five EPs with 18 original tracks and many covers, with appearances by the National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, Age of Adz collaborator Cat Martino, and many more. It also includes stickers, temporary tattoos, a holiday ornament, an “apocalyptic” poster, lyric sheets and chord charts, music for playing along, “hallucinogenic photographs and psychedelic graphic design” by Sufjan himself, and liner notes..

Watch a stop-motion clip for a song from it, after the dates.
11-23 Philadelphia, PA – 
Union Transfer *
11-24 Washington, DC – 
9:30 Club *
11-25 Saxapahaw, NC – 
The Haw River Ballroom *
11-26 Athens, GA – 
The Georgia Theatre *
11-27 Chattanooga, TN – 
Track 29 *
11-28 Oxford, MS – 
The Lyric Oxford *
11-30 Dallas, TX – 
Granada Theater *
12-01 Austin, TX – 
Emo’s East *
12-03 Tucson, AZ – 
Rialto Theatre *
12-04 Los Angeles, CA – 
The Fonda Theatre (formerly The Music Box) *
12-05 San Francisco, CA – 
Great American Music Hall *
12-06 Portland, OR – 
Aladdin Theater *
12-08 Seattle, WA – 
Neptune Theatre *
12-09 Missoula, MT – 
Wilma Theatre *
12-12 Minneapolis, MN – 
Mill City Nights (Formerly The Brick) *
12-13 Milwaukee, WI – 
Turner Hall *
12-14 Indianapolis, IN – 
Deluxe @ Old National Centre *
12-15 Chicago, IL – 
Metro *
12-16 Cleveland, OH – 
Beachland Ballroom *
12-18 Buffalo, NY – 
Asbury Hall @ Babeville *
12-19 Providence, RI – 
Fete *
12-20 Boston, MA – 
Royale *
12-21 New York, NY – 
Bowery Ballroom *
12-22 New York, NY – 
Bowery Ballroom *
* with Sheila Saputo

On October 16, Godspeed You! Black Emperor will release their first album in a decade, titled ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND!, through Constellation. (Although it’s available for purchase at the band’s current shows.) Stream the four-song record below, via The Guardian. It consists of two 20-minute tracks and two six-and-a-half-minute ones..

@travismorrison
Yes the Plan is working on a new album! Sorry thought this was somewhat public knowledge

That tweet, from Dismemberment Plan singer/guitarist Travis Morrison (via Exclaim), confirms what we already knew: the Dismemberment Plan is working on their first record since 2001’s Change. Travis Morrison also shared on Twitter that the record is around 80% done, which would probably put it at an early-2013 release.

Here’s footage of one of their new songs, “Mexico City Christmas”, confirming at least that they haven’t entirely lost their teeth.

New York, New York (October 4, 2012) — The nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 are:
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The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Chic
Deep Purple
Heart
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Albert King
Kraftwerk
The Marvelettes
The Meters
Randy Newman
N.W.A
Procol Harum
Public Enemy
Rush
Donna Summer

“The definition of ‘rock and roll’ means different things to different people, but as broad as the classifications may be, they all share a common love of the music,” commented Joel Peresman, President and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “This year we again proudly put forth a fantastic array of groups and artists that span the entire genre that is ‘rock and roll’.”

To be eligible for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released its first single or album at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. The 2013 Nominees had to release their first recording no later than 1987.

Ballots will be sent to an international voting body of more than 600 artists, historians and members of the music industry.

All inductees are ultimately represented in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the nonprofit organization that exists to educate its audiences on the global impact of the rock and roll art form via the museum, as well as its education programs and library and archives.

The 28th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held in Los Angeles at the Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE on Thursday, April 18, 2013. The show will be broadcast on HBO at a later date.

It’s only Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, but the legendary Minneapolis punks the Replacements are back together and about to release some new music. The pair recently got together in a Minneapolis studio and spent a day knocking out an EP of covers. The extremely limited 10″ will benefit Slim Dunlap, the former Replacements guitarist who suffered a stroke earlier this year…

Westerberg tells Rolling Stone that he and Stinson, with drummer Peter Anderson and bassist Kevin Bowe, recorded four covers: Dunlap’s own “Busted Up,” Hank Williams’s “Lost Highway,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “I’m Not Sayin’,” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” from the Broadway musical Gypsy. They’re only printing up 250 copies of the EP, and they’ll auction off all of them online.

Replacements drummer Chris Mars is refusing to take part in the project, of which Westerberg says, “I was not surprised, but I was a little disappointed.”

The Replacements broke up in 1991, though they got back together in 2006, with Mars included, to record a couple of new songs for a best-of collection. Guitarist Bob Stinson died in 1995..

Talking to Rolling Stone, Westerberg says that Dunlap convinced them to get back together: “He’s in rough shape. He’s sort of paralyzed, he can move his leg a little bit. When I mentioned this, it seemed like something he really wanted to happen. ‘You guys get together,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Go play a song.’”

Westerberg is also hinting that the reunion could go beyond the EP: “It’s possible. After playing with Tommy last week, I was thinking, ‘All right, let’s crank it up and knock out a record like this.’ I’m closer to it now than I was two years ago, let’s say that.”

Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville is getting revamped a bit, and as part of its grand re-opening, several live shows have been scheduled at the in-house venue this month. The Shins will go first on October 6, while The Kills will perform October 10. Both shows will be recorded for live albums to be released on Third Man. Seasick Steve will also play a show on October 26, which will be made into an album as well..

Find other information about the shows and other grand re-opening festivities over at the Third Man Records site.

Reports of a Smiths’ reunion for four UK shows in 2013, and possibly a Glastonbury festival appearance, have been hitting the world wide web hard, without any sign of letting up. Via Holy Moly:

We’ve now heard from several credible sources that The Smiths have agreed to reform in 2013 for four UK shows. And despite such rumours turning out to be total balls in the past, this one has enough weight to it that we’re prepared to call it confirmed, and hang the consequences.

What we learned before we stopped watching The Newsroom was that you have two sources before you run with a news story. And we’ve got more than that, so…

What we’re hearing is…. The Smiths will reform in 2013.

Wow! We never thought we would see it happen and apparently we won’t, according to Johnny Marr, a somewhat important piece of the puzzle. Via NME:

Johnny Marr’s manager, Joe Moss, has flatly denied any truth in the latest Smiths reunion rumours, telling NME: “It isn’t happening. We are fully focused on preparing Johnny’s new album for release and booking shows for 2013.”

Well, there you have it. Sorry, folks!

Former REM guitarist Peter Buck has announced his first solo album. On sale this Friday, the album will only be available as a run of 2,000 vinyl records.

“I know I said for years that I would never make a solo record,” Buck admitted on REM’s website. “It was never a plan or a desire, but it just kind of happened.” This is the first solo album to emerge since REM called it quits last September, but Buck has not done it alone. REM bassist Mike Mills contributed to the album, as have Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker, the Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee, Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye as well as long-time collaborators Bill Rieflin and Scott McCaughey. “Not being really confident in my singing,” Buck wrote, he invited several of these friends to sing lead.

“When REM called it a day, I’d spent the last three months on my back with a semi-crippling injury unable to play guitar,” Buck recalled. “With my band gone and unable to use the fingers on my right hand, I started writing lyrics just to have something creative to do.”

While Buck doesn’t sing on all the tracks, “I wrote 95% of the lyrics and most of the music,” he wrote. “It is the first thing I have ever been involved in where I was actually in charge, and the record turned out to be like a trip through my mind; all of the kinds of music I love, played with some of my favourite musicians, in a one-take spontaneous atmosphere.”

Recorded, mixed and mastered on analogue tape, the as-yet untitled work will be released by Portland’s beloved Mississippi Records, which specialises in obscure blues, gospel and folk music. While Buck has not written off the possibility of a CD release, or of a subsequent tour, it’s clear the 55-year-old doesn’t feel he is under much pressure. “This is not a career,” he wrote. “It is something I am doing for fun.”

Last night, the Shins stopped by “Conan” in support of this year’s great album Port of Morrow. They performed “No Way Down” and gave a web-exclusive performance of “The Rifle’s Spiral”.

From the gossip site holy moly:

We’ve now heard from several credible sources that The Smiths have agreed to reform in 2013 for four UK shows. And despite such rumours turning out to be total balls in the past, this one has enough weight to it that we’re prepared to call it confirmed, and hang the consequences.

What we learned before we stopped watching The Newsroom was that you have two sources before you run with a news story. And we’ve got more than that, so…

What we’re hearing is…. The Smiths will reform in 2013.

It’s a done deal.
Dates are booked.

Glastonbury is one of four dates, presumably the Saturday on the Pyramid stage.

However, we have conflicting reports on who exactly is reuniting.

One report says it’s all four. Another says it’s only three (which would mean Mike Joyce still hasn’t been forgiven).

To add even more intrigue, let’s not forget that Coachella Festival promised to go 100% vegetarian next year, in an effort to attract a Smiths reunion. Morrissey himself made the following withering comment about the offer: “Fascinatingly they made it clear that they would ‘not require’ the Smiths’ bass player or drummer… which I thought certainly said something.”

The same festival dangled several million dollars in front of those other dysfunctional 80s indie legends the Cocteau Twins, only to have Liz Fraser pull out of the reunion a month before. So we know they’ve got the cash and the inclination.

And that’s all we know. What we think is that this all makes complete sense. Despite turning down $75 million for a Morrissey/Marr world tour in 2007, that was before Steps The Stone Roses had reformed. And wouldn’t it please Steven immensely to overshadow their third coming by doing the one thing he always said he wouldn’t do? There’d not be a bigger story in music. In 2013, a Smiths reunion would feel like Mozzer’s last laugh, rather than a reheating of past meat-free glories.

And there are few things more guaranteed to get everyone to stop calling you an arsehole than reforming the band everyone likes (it worked for Mike Love. For a bit).

Our guess is they’ll do V Festival too, as they pay the most (Glastonbury pays relatively little) and Morrissey played there in 2006 and 2011. And some kind of secret gig in Salford would probably be appropriate.