Pitchfork

Photo by Kathryn Yu

Scottish fuck puppies Franz Ferdinand now have three albums of gloriously spiky new wave to their credit, and even those of you who don't like their really-pretty-great new joint Tonight have to recognize that something like "Ulysses" is going to get it done onstage. (The album just debuted at #9 in the U.S., so at least 31,000 Americans are still jamming them, naysayers be damned.) And the band has always been efficiently awesome onstage; when that "Take Me Out" riff kicks in, heads explode.

Come April, when they get done with their current European tour, Franz Ferdinand are going on a proper full-scale North American trek. Those of you who started hoarding Sparks before the overly concerned authorities of the world convinced MillerCoors LLC to stop making it might want to break into your supply right now, since nothing goes better with Franz Ferdinand than citrusy caffeinated malt liquor. Get excited:

-- The forthcoming Red Hot benefit compilation Dark Was the Night (out on 4AD February 17 in the U.S. and February 16 in the UK) features, like, every band Pitchfork covers. A few of those bands will be on hand this Friday, February 6, to DJ the album's New York release party. The party jumps off at the downtown bar Stanton Public, and members of the National, Blonde Redhead, and Yeasayer will man the ones and twos. So which band do you think will have the most feedbacky DJ set?

-- The beef between absurdly rich kingpin-type rappers 50 Cent and Rick Ross has been building quickly over the past week or so, and it came to some sort of unprecedentedly appalling and entertaining climax when 50 posted this video, wherein 50 and a woman claiming to be Ross's baby's mother talk shit on Ross. Also, 50 takes her shopping and intimates that he's going to fuck her. Incredible. This is how people get shot.

-- Stones Throw and Kid Robot  have teamed up to make this already-sold-out vinyl toy of Madlib's squeaky-voiced alter-ego Quasimoto. And it's a pig? Did everyone realize Quasimoto was supposed to be a pig?

-- The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the gauzy New York dreampop band who you're going to be hearing a whole lot more about, will spend the rest of the winter touring the U.S.

-- Also touring: The decidedly more abrasive, awkwardly-named NY shoegazers A Place to Bury Strangers, who will do a few shows at American colleges before spending April in the UK and Europe.

Photo by Kathryn Yu

Admit it: Viva la Vida, Coldplay's first trip into the Eno-verse, has held up pretty well. These guys are some of the last honest-to-God stars on the face of the Earth, and they would've been just fine if they'd just kept biting "Clocks" over and over. They didn't have to head into the studio with a legendary genius producer who pushed them to tinker with their epicness in all sorts of unexpected ways, but they did it, and it worked out. When that chorus kicks in on "Lost!", forget about it. Game over. (Also, because of Viva La Vida, this happened.)

Last month, we reported that Coldplay were striking while the adult-contempo arena-alt was hot and hitting the studio with Brian Eno once again. And thanks to a post on Coldplay's website, we now have some insight into what, exactly, these guys all do in the booth. The post is credited to the mysterious "Roadie #42", and according to this guy, Eno's not done monkeying with Coldplay's formula.

Apparently, the band usually builds on frontman Chris Martin's demo recordings. But Eno's trying something else out: Banning Martin from the studio, keeping just his vocal track in most cases, and letting the other three dudes build the rest of the songs themselves. The other dudes, understandably, are amped.

Reports Roadie #42: "Often, they come in first thing in the morning and listen to Chris's idea once, before going out into the live room and working up something based purely on how the song 'felt' to them on first listen, paying little heed to what chords he chose or how the melody sat." Chris Martin better watch out because pretty soon these guys might start demanding their own close-ups in the videos.

Martin, meanwhile, isn't using his time off to think up even more ridiculous baby-names with Gwyneth Paltrow. According to that post, "he's up the road at another studio pouring out songs in a writing project with another artist." Roadie #42 doesn't say who the other artist is, but it's probably a rapper.

America's self-righteous obsession with real-time musical integrity never ceases to surprise me. We already know Jennifer Hudson and Faith Hill's Super Bowl performances were sung along with backing tracks, and now the Chicago Tribune reports that the E Street Band were playing to a pre-recorded track for their halftime appearance. Producer and Grammy Awards audio supervisor Hank Neuberger told the Tribune that Bruce Springsteen's vocals were the only live audio element of the show.

Potentially indignant fan: "Next thing you're gonna tell me Clarence was a hologram!" (We're almost positive Clarence was not a hologram.) Really, this is not a big deal. If you're seriously peeved by this news and feel absolutely betrayed, hear me out.

On the 1972 Afro-funk jam "Soul Makossa", the Camaroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango opens things up by muttering "mama-koo mama-sa maku ma-ku-sa" before his ridiculously pimped-out sax riff kicks in. New York loft party DJs picked up on the song, and it ended up becoming one of the staples of the just-revving-up disco scene. A decade later, Michael Jackson tweaked that chant for his eternal pop-funk banger "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", turning it into "mama-say mama-sa mama ma-ku-sa." According to a Guardian report, now Dibango is suing a bunch of people over that perceived swipe. Because it's 1983. Oh wait. No it isn't.

The reason for this particular burst of litigation: Rihanna's dance-pop burner "Don't Stop the Music", Pitchfork's #70 single of 2008, sampled Jackson's "mama-say" chant to great effect. As the Guardian reports, Dibango actually already sued Jackson back in the day, and the two settled out of court. But when Rihanna's people cleared the Michael Jackson sample, they didn't get Dibango's permission, and now he wants his. Dibango is now suing Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI over the use of that chant.

Photo by kk+

Ah, college. The intellectual rigor, the self-discovery, the lectures by former gay prostitutes. That's right: one-time Libertine and full-time upholder of rock debauchery Pete Doherty will talk to students at Dublin's Trinity College this Friday, February 6, at the very un-rock star time of 5 p.m. as part of the University Philosophical Society's lecture series (via NME). No word yet on whether this has anything to do with community service.

But to boil Doherty's life down to prostitution seems unfair...the man has also been arrested for car theft, driving under the influence, and a slew of drug-related crimes. So why shouldn't he join the likes of previous Philosophical Society speakers like Oscar Wilde-- who also had some trouble with the law in his day?

It's easy to forget Doherty can be quite the aesthete when he wants to be: along with his rock'n'roll bona fides, he's a published author and noted self-mutilating painter. And, for some context, other recent Trinity speakers include the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan and Naomi Campbell, so it's not like Doherty is sullying some grand tradition all by his lonesome.

When he's not prepping for insightful talks to impressionable youths, Doherty is readying his solo debut, now titled Grace/Wasteland and due March 16 in the UK on Parlophone and March 24 in the U.S. on Astralwerks. He also has a UK tour coming up.

-- Wichita Recordings, the British label that first signed Bloc Party, Peter Bjorn and John, and Simian Mobile Disco, is finally starting up a U.S. branch. That's appropriate because, see, Wichita is actually a city in the U.S. Pretty soon, they'll domestically release material from the British bands Sky Larkin and Lovvers and the Swedish groups Those Dancing Days and First Aid Kit.

-- Justin "Dave" Hawkins, the former lead yowler for British buttrock revivalists the Darkness, has a new band called Hot Leg, and they'll release their debut album Red Light Fever on Tuesday, February 9, in the UK, repulsively ugly cover art and all. Because open-chested jumpsuits, apparently, will never die.

-- Good news for those of us still into grimy bloozed-up post-hardcore: Seattle art-punk greasers the Murder City Devils broke up almost eight years ago, but they're reuniting this month for a quick West Coast tour. Sub Pop, their old label, will reissue all three of their albums and the Thelema EP on vinyl on February 17.

-- Instrumental Baltimore skronkers Thank You, members of which used to be in More Dogs and threw really great New Years Eve warehouse parties (which maybe they still do? I don't live in Baltimore anymore), will spend February and March touring the U.S. with Mi Ami, the new Touch and Go band from two former members of the great DC noise-dance percussives Black Eyes. That first self-titled Black Eyes album? Good lord. The world doesn't know what it missed.

Photos by Kathryn Yu; Above: Patti Smith et al. during the encore

Last night in New York City, Tibet House held its 19th Annual Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall. Renowned composer Philip Glass gathered friends like Vampire Weekend, the National, Patti Smith, Steve Earle, and Antibalas together to play a show raising money for the cultural institution.

The National played two new, untitled songs, Vampire Weekend rollicked through "M79", and Patti Smith paid tribute to Buddy Holly (February 3, 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of his death). At the end of the night, everyone got together for an all-star encore jam.

More photos below.

Vampire Weekend






The National

The story so far: In 2006, Lily Allen makes a really breezy and fun and great debut album. Then she gets very famous very quickly, which somehow leads to her doing stuff like getting sloppy drunk while cohosting an awards-show with Elton John. She says all sorts of saucy stuff whenever anyone interviews her. The BBC gives her a variety show, then cancels it. And she makes a second album which, it turns out, is absolutely butt. Whoever decided to swap out the summery ska of Alright, Still for shiny club-pop needs to lose their job.

And now Lily Allen's about to tour Europe and the U.S. Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, who either have the best band name in history or the worst band name in history (probably the worst), will open Allen's North American dates.

Capitol will release It's Not Me, It's You, Allen's second album, on February 10 in the U.S. (It's out February 9 in the UK via Regal.) It's streaming right now on her MySpace.

Flyer by Seldon Hunt

The first installment of Pitchfork's Show No Mercy series of metal shows went down this past December on basically the coldest night in New York City history. The godawful karaoke going on in other room of the venue, Brooklyn's Public Assembly, bled through the wall whenever bands would pause between songs, which seriously fucked up the vibe. There was this big weird puddle of something on the ground, and everything ran so late that I had to go home before the headliners, black metal iconoclasts Nachtmystium, took the stage. And I still had fun.

Brandon Stosuy, the guy who writes Show No Mercy, Pitchfork's metal column, is now booking a series of monthly shows that will bring some serious underground metal heavyweights to Public Assembly, the Williamsburg space that formerly housed Galapagos. If you read the column, you already know that Brandon knows his shit inside and out, and he understands how to book a show with a whole bunch of bands who fit together stylistically but don't overlap so much that things get boring. At that first Show No Mercy show, I saw three bands I'd never even heard of, and I liked them all. And now Brandon's worked out the kinks in throwing these shows, so no more five-band bills that stretch into the wee hours.

Brandon's got the next four Show No Mercy shows all booked now, and by the looks of things, asses will be whupped. On the horizon: crazy-epic Maine slow-burners Ocean, lo-fi Jersey black metal warriors Krieg, Philly death metal traditionalists Crucifier, and a monster April bill that will bring together the great Philly Aphex-Twin-as-death-metal trio Genghis Tron with NY doom up-and-comers Tombs. Also a whole slew of bands I've never heard of.

Here's the complete schedule. All these shows go down at Public Assembly, located at 70 N. 6th St.:

02-15: Ocean, Salome, Batillus, Riff Cannon.

03-01: Krieg, Woe, and others to be announced.

03-22: Crucifier, Villains, Castevet, Nocnitsa, Dimentianon

04-12: Genghis Tron, Tombs, Wetnurse.