Pitchfork

I challenge you to find a live photo of Brooklyn-based indie-pop duo Matt and Kim in which neither Matt nor Kim is beaming. Not just smiling-- beaming. Like they just stole the world's biggest gobstopper. The grins are infectious, apparently-- the couple have been spreading toothy, feel-good vibes to bigger and bigger crowds for a couple years in support of their self-titled 2006 debut. Their second album, Grand is out on Fader Label this Tuesday, January 20. Typified by buoyant single "Daylight", the new songs will likely elicit even more deliriousness when Matt and Kim hit the road with Cut Copy this spring.

But it's not all googly eyes and super cute videos for this pair. As a DIY-bred band trying to stay afloat and build an audience in 2009, there are lots of tough choices to make. Raise ticket prices or hook up with corporate sponsors? Indie or major? Floor or stage? In this interview, singer-keyboardist Matt Johnson talks about the conundrums facing indie bands aiming to make a decent living while retaining some semblance of credibility. He also tells us about a meeting with the sage-like Rick Rubin, his secret to beatific happiness, and why Matt and Kim recorded Grand in his parents' house.

Matt Johnson: Hi! I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a Red Bull.

Pitchfork: Wow. I've never combined those two.

MJ: This was my first experiment with it. It's a killer combination. Just don't do it too early in the morning.

Pitchfork: Noted. Well, this is kinda Red Bull-related: Are you guys always so upbeat?

MJ: We have our ups and downs, but it's not just a stage persona. I think there was a time when looking bored on stage was the thing to do. But that's totally not honest and extremely boring to watch.

Pitchfork: So you're not just hopped-up on Red Bull and PB&J-type stuff all the time?

MJ: There's some of that involved in the a.m. hours. We've been making an effort to not wear ourselves out-- there are bands who have good stuff go their way and then they overdo it and don't like it.

Pitchfork: Speaking of stuff going your way, I wanted to ask about the corporate sponsorships you guys are involved with, like Converse and Mountain Dew's Green Label Sound. Do you guys worry about credibility when you're asked to do those kinds of things?

MJ: We thought a hell of a lot about it, especially since we came from the DIY circuit where a lot of the people are opinionated about that sort of thing. We did a Virgin Mobile campaign in Canada and people came up to us and said, "I used to DJ your song but I'll never put it on again." When you take something that people think is theirs and connect it to some big corporation...that type of negative reaction makes sense to me. When I was a teenager and really into political punk I would definitely turn my back on a band that connected with some corporation.

But, on the other hand, we're really making an effort not to bring up ticket prices even as touring becomes more expensive. With the Green Label Sound thing, they were willing to do a marketing campaign and pay for us to do all these five-dollar shows with the Cool Kids, who we really like. We couldn't see how that was hurting anybody.

Pitchfork: Lots of indie bands in the 80s and 90s turned down most of those types of offers, though. Do you think there's been an evolution of the idea of selling out?

MJ: It's definitely a different world now. You're not selling records. The idea of actually getting money back from releasing an album is a complete surprise to me. So you have to be open to other opportunities...but it's a slippery slope. Still, I wouldn't foresee any Camel-sponsored tours-- I wouldn't do anything with a company like that.

Pitchfork: Do you have to like the product to team up with a company?

MJ: I'm not a Mountain Dew drinker so I guess it's not necessarily what I do or don't like. But the plan they laid out was very tasteful. It wasn't like a big Mountain Dew logo over and Kim and my faces [laughs]. At the end of the day they're just trying to sell more of their product. But at the same time, they are supporting the arts. If you're willing to do it elegantly I think it helps both parties.

Bizarrely enough, I had a conversation with Rick Rubin about something very similar-- not to just drop names or whatever! This was years ago and we still had an outlook like, "Man, I love how Fugazi had their five-dollar-show rule." And Rick said, "I knew Ian MacKaye well and I know that one of the reasons Fugazi had to stop touring was because they kept their ticket prices so low and, since they got families and stuff, it didn't really work anymore."

And I know plenty of bands-- even Kim and I-- that have a passionate thing about playing on the floor instead of on the stage, like Lightning Bolt. You do it because when you start out you don't want to be exclusive like, "Oh, we're the band and you're the crowd." But when you're playing to 500 people...I mean, I don't go to see Lightning Bolt anymore. I enjoy watching Brian Chippendale play the drums...but I can't see him. I get it: When you're used to only seeing the first 15 people and those first 15 people are the ones going craziest then it's much more comfortable for you. But playing on stage is really putting yourself on the line.

You have to love T.I.'s lawyers. The guy gets himself caught trying to buy machine guns and silencers, and his attorneys somehow turned that into a one-year sentence and 1000 hours of community service even though he's a convicted felon. And now, Tip is turning all that community service time into a new reality show, just so it doesn't, you know, go to waste.

To be fair, "Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go," the MTV "docu-reality" show that will chronicle T.I.'s last days of freedom, 25th Hour-stye, won't count toward his community service hours. It also stands to be the rare musician-based reality series that isn't completely shrill and embarrassing, partly because T.I. has a vast reservoir of natural charm and partly because it won't be showing him in fat camp or whatever.

The series will follow T.I. fulfilling those community service hours, as well as spending time with his family and recording Paper Trail. The first episode of "Road to Redemption" will air on MTV at 9 p.m. on February 10.

The Pet Shop Boys don't really need to keep releasing new music; the icily fey British synthpop pioneers have already released a couple discs' worth of absolute classics. But they're still going, and Yes, their 10th studio album, will be out via Parlophone/EMI on March 23 in Europe (no U.S. release date yet). Xenomania, the British production team behind big-in-England hits from the likes of the Sugababes and Girls Aloud, produced the whole thing and co-wrote three tracks ("Love Etc", "More Than a Dream", "The Way It Used to Be") with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

But the duo has also enlisted a couple more indie-leaning collaborators: Smiths/Modest Mouse/Cribs guitarist Johnny Marr, who has played on a number of past Pet Shop Boys tracks and was in the supergroup Electronic with Tennant, lends his luminous axework to a few tracks, and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett arranged the strings on two songs, "Beautiful People" and "Legacy".

"Love Etc", the first single, will be out March 16.

The Junior Boys have released two albums to date, and both of the Canadian synthpop duo's full-lengths are basically immaculately gorgeous pieces of starry-eyed melancholy. This year, they'll try to make it three-for-three.

The duo spent most of 2008 working on Begone Dull Care, the follow-up to 2006's So This Is Goodbye. Because Jeremy Greenspan is still in Canada but Matthew Didemus recently relocated to Berlin, they had to put this one together in a Postal Service sort of way. Begone Dull Care comes out on Domino in Canada on March 24, with a U.S. release set for April 7. "Hazel", the first single, will also be released on 12" and as a download on

So what's up with that album title? "The title is a reference to a short film by the pioneering Oscar-winning Scottish-Canadian animator and electronic composer, Norman McLaren, who was a big influence on the conception and creation of this album," says a press release.

Starting March 28 in Toronto, the two will tour the U.S. and Canada, and they'll bring along Domino labelate Max Tundra as their opener. Just because, you know, a Junior Boys live show isn't enough inventive bedroom pop by itself. They also have a brief Euro trek scheduled for early March.

-- They haven't released any music since their 2006 art installation soundtrack and they still don't have any planned, but the electro-acoustic duo the Books will play a few shows in the coming months.

-- Denver gypsy-punk journeymen DeVotchKa are also hitting the road, touring the U.S. throughout winter.

-- On January 27, electro producer Eliot Lipp will release a new album, the awesomely titled Peace Love Weed 3D, on his own label, Old Tacoma Records. A single, "Beamrider", is out now. Lipp is currently touring America, and he'll be on the road through mid-March.

-- Back when Orange Juice was in its heyday, every British post-punk band wanted to do something like this: Former OJ frontman and "A Girl Like You" Bowie-impersonator Edwyn Collins has finally hooked up with the legendary reggae rhythm section Sly & Robbie. Sly & Robbie will back Collins on a bunch of dub versions of old Orange Juice songs at a show at Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket on January 25. This is part of an event that Future Pilot AKA mastermind Sushil K. Dade (remember that guy?) curated, and it's somehow supposed to pay tribute to the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Thanks to John Caples for the tip.

-- Crate-digging powerhouse the Numero Group will bring its superlative taste to the stage for the first time this spring. On April 4 at Chicago's Park West, the label will present "Eccentric Soul Revue", its first live show. The revue will feature artists from the defunct Chicago soul label Twinight, which was chronicled on the 2006 Numero compilation Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation. Renaldo Domino, the Kaldirons, and the Final Solution will all perform for the first time in over three decades, in addition to performances from the still-active Syl Johnson, the Notations, and Nate Evans.

Numero Group also has a few new releases lined up for the coming weeks. On January 27, the Asterisk imprint will release long-forgotten 1970s folkie Caroline Peyton's albums Mock Up and Intuition, and on February 10, they will inaugurate the new vinyl-only imprint Numerophon with Niela Miller's Songs of Leaving.

On the list of people I wish Jonny Greenwood would collaborate with, Israel's Dudu Tasa is just above Enrique Iglesias and just below Tiny Tim's corpse. But, according to an interview with the Jewish sensation (?) on Israeli news site Ynet (via At Ease), the two buddies worked together on Tasa's new single, "What a Day". Stream the song-- which reminds Pitchfork news editor Amy Phillips of James Blunt-- here (it only works with Internet Explorer, apparently).

The track is sung in Hebrew and lyrics include lines like "I was already drunk/ Now I'm clever/ And again like an idiot/ I tend to argue" according to a free Hebrew-to-English translator I just Googled. Granted, Jonny is prone to unexpected musical moves like scoring movies about oil and milkshakes along with composing modern classical pieces. But still, this is pretty out of left field.

In other Radiohead news, the band's old label, EMI/Capitol, is currently planning all sorts of reissues for the near future: decked-out versions of their first three albums will hit stores March 24 and vinyl reissues of most of their singles are due April 21. They're playing shows in Mexico, Brazil and Chile in March.

Photos by Francis Chung

2009's first big indie rock American tour launched last night, with Welsh indie-poppers Los Campesinos! and New Jersey punks Titus Andronicus bringing their boundless energy to the Ottobar in Baltimore. According to photographer Francis Chung, Harriet Campesinos! was missing in action due to illness, prompting frontman Gareth Campesinos! to remark that this was the first time the band had ever played as a six-piece. Naturally, a "Los Campesixnos!" joke followed.

The tour continues tonight in Carrboro, North Carolina, and across the States through mid-February. Titus Andronicus have a few shows on their own sprinkled throughout the trek, and they head to Europe for a February-March jaunt when it's over. More photos and dates below.

Los Campesinos!:

Titus Andronicus:

Vegas fops the Killers are about to take their unapologetic theatricality and their eight-or-so great songs on the road, starting tonight in Boulder, Colorado. Day & Age, the band's latest, only includes maybe two of those great songs, not a great ratio for a Killers album (the first one had at least four), but these shows are still probably going to be worth catching, and not just because of what I have to imagine will be a hell of a light show.

At least on the first leg of the tour, shockingly compatible openers M83 will be along for the ride, and it'll be fun to hear their synthgaze epics in an actual arena, even if most of the crowd will still be in seat-locating mode when they're on.

Meanwhile, the Killers have just announced the second leg of their American tour, though they haven't confirmed an opener yet. That second leg goes down after the band gets done touring Europe and Australia.

Here's the complete run of forthcoming Killers shows:

-- Rolling Stone and NME subscribers, get excited. Tennessean classic-rock yarlers Kings of Leon have another round of tour dates coming up in the U.S., UK, Europe, and Australia, include a benefit for the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital on January 24 at Chicago's House of Blues.

-- "After your album flop...you gon' be on Koch." That was Houston rapper Lil Flip slamming crosstown rival Slim Thug in 2005. Well, not that Flip's career is doing any better, but his precognition is on point. Already Platinum, Slim's much-hyped 2005 major-label debut failed to go, uh, platinum (embarrassing!) and now he is indeed a part of the Koch Records ex-major-label rap empire. Slim's already dropped two albums from his Boss Hogg Outlawz crew on the New York indie, and now he's all set to release Boss of All Bosses, his long-awaited follow-up. The album is due on March 24, and the Flock of Seagulls-inspired "I Run", the first single, is already making the rounds.

-- Time to bust out your black turtleneck. On Wednesday January 21, downtown NYC mainstay Laurie Anderson will curate the Laurie and Friends concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House. The bill includes Brightblack Morning Light, the Dirty Projectors, and art-funk screamer (and LaBelle member) Nona Hendryx.

-- Paris/L.A. songwriter Jeremy Jay will release his sophomore album Slow Dance on K Records on March 24, and I have to imagine the folks at K are pretty happy about that incredibly twee title. K will also release Jay's single "Love Everlasting" on 12" vinyl on Tuesday, January 20. Given that Jay's first album came out just last year, that's a pretty quick turnaround. Good hustle, Jeremy Jay! He'll tour Europe this winter and North America in the spring.

Yes, that picture of a horizon line is the cover of U2's new album, No Line on the Horizon. No, it's not filled with minimal techno. The record-- produced by U2 stalwarts Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite-- is out on March 3 (March 2 in the UK) on Interscope with first single "Get On Your Boots" officially landing this Monday, January 19.

The cover (by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto) is easily the band's weirdest since 1993's Zooropa. We're not sure what that means, exactly, but this thing is already looking better than 2004's below par How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. And, based on a recent Rolling Stone preview, Horizon has the potential to be U2's oddest-sounding LP in more than a decade. Along with the requisite stadium anthems, there's some "near-operatic choral music" and a "seven-minute-long track." Generally speaking, U2 are most interesting when they step out of their comfort zone, so the un-U2 art and relatively risky musical ideas seem promising. (Then again, there are two songs on here called "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" and "Cedars of Lebanon," so all bets are off, really.)

What's not-so-promising is the hilarious number of different formats this thing will come out on: there's the standard version with a 24-page booklet, the digipak with a 32-page booklet and "access to the downloadable" Anton Corbijn Horizon film Linear and a poster, the limited edition CD with a 64-page book and access to the film plus poster, the "box" edition which includes the limited edition plus a DVD of Corbijn's movie, a poster, and a hardback book, and a good old double-LP on 180 gram vinyl.

Collect all five! Or, you know, don't. I understand the need to offer tangible assets in the iTunes era, but that shit is just ridiculous.