Best New Tracks
- Nodzzz: "Is She There?"
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Skeletons"
- Phoenix: "1901"
- Bat For Lashes: "Glass"
- Japandroids: "Young Hearts Spark Fire"
- Cymbals Eat Guitars: "Wind Phoenix"
- Animal Collective: "My Girls"
- Bill Callahan: "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" (Kath Bloom cover)
- Real Estate: "Black Lake"
- tUnE-yArDs: "Sunlight"
Friday, November 7
Ryan Adams Beefs Up Cardinology for Vinyl Release
Duets with Leona Naess, writes for MIT journal, gets book publication date, helps out sick cat
Awww, looks like my old pre-algebra notebook! That right there is the cover of the vinyl edition of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals ' Cardinology , out now in the States from Lost Highway and due November 10 in the UK from Mercury Records Ltd. The first pressing of the wax finds the disc pressed into red translucent vinyl and accompanied by a download card (U.S. only), a bonus 7", 17 postcards from the current tour, and a lyric book and limited-edition t-shirt both designed by graphic novelist Leah Hayes (who also designed the alternate cover you see above.)
Of course, we're talkin' Adams, so that's not all. Preorders for Ryan's book, Infinity Blues , start shipping next month from Akashic Press , with the official publication date set at April 1 of next year. On the Akashic site , the collection of poetry and fiction is described as "the jewel of my life's work" by Adams.
Ryan appears on an iTunes exclusive bonus cut on Leona Naess' latest LP Thirteens , duetting on a song entitled "Leave Your Boyfriends Behind". And Ry also wrote a new article in the latest issue of MIT Press' World Policy Journal called "How to Save the World From Doom: Where You And I Are Headed". You can read the whole thing here for free through the month of November. It's, um, really something?
Finally, if you're in a charitable mood, bid on an Adams autographed guitar strap up on eBay right now that benefits The Best Little Cat House in PA , a feline shelter currently caring for Buster, a sick kitty rescued from NYC's East Village. (Appropriately, Adams signed the strap with the words, " easy tiger .")
Ryan and the Cardinals are out in the UK for the next few weeks before
returning to North America with fellow louts Oasis
.
Email LinkStars of the Lid, Matmos, Silver Apples Do Brainwaves
Plus: Marissa Nadler, Windy Weber, His Name Is Alive, J.G. Thirlwell, DJ Steve Stapleton
Hey, it's a live music festival, time to get omg totally crunk to teh maxxx rite?? Well, you do what you like, but something tells me the 2008 Brainwaves Festival will be best taken in sober and sitting down.
This year's event descends on the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts (just outside Boston) from November 21-23 and brings with it the likes of Matmos, Marissa Nadler, Silver Apples, Windy Weber (of Windy & Carl) with Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard), His Name Is Alive, Foetus guy J.G. Thirlwell's Manorexia, Coil offshoot the Threshold HouseBoys Choir, the reclusive Gary Wilson, the underrated Rivulets, Major Stars, Little Annie, Meat Beat Manifesto, and a 15th anniversary Kranky celebration featuring Stars of the Lid, Lichens, Nudge, Boduf Songs, Strategy, and To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie. Woo doggie that's a nice bill right there.
What's more, on the ones and twos, a party-starter if there ever was one: Nurse With Wound's Steve Stapleton. So I guess you'll be getting down after all, just not in the way you think.
Posted by Matthew Solarski on November 7, 2008 at 12:05 p.m.
Tags: Benoît Pioulard, Boduf Songs, Coil, Foetus, Gary Wilson, His Name Is Alive, J.G. Thirlwell, Marissa Nadler, Matmos, Nudge, Nurse With Wound, Silver Apples, Stars of the Lid, Strategy, Windy & Carl
Loney Dear Signs to Polyvinyl for New Album
Comma in band name has run off with Panic at the Disco's exclamation point
That Swedish dude Loney Dear whose name isn't "Loney" or "Dear" (it's Emil Svanängen) has signed to Southern Illinois label Polyvinyl for the release of his sophomore album. The follow-up to last year's Loney, Noir is called Dear John, and it comes out January 27. (He sure likes guys named John.)
Mr. Svanängen will launch a U.S. tour next year in support of the album, but until then, he's got a European tour and a pair of NYC shows.
P.S. Yes, dude deleted the comma from his band's name since we last heard from him. Smart man.
Arcade Fire Demoing New Record, Hit Up Obama Rally
Arcade Fire/Beirut/LCD Soundsystem members and associates join forces for Team B
Photo by Drew Angerer
Apart from a little electioneering and some rumor-policing, rather popular Montreal band the Arcade Fire have kept mighty quiet here in the oh-eight, understandable considering their whirlwind 2007. But quiet doesn't mean dormant, as suggested by a piece of tantalizing Arcade Fire news dug up by none other than David Byrne.
"Arcade Fire drop by," Byrne writes in his online journal, referring to his October 30 show at Metropolis in Montreal. He then adds, as an aside, "they're in the very early stages of beginning a new recording." The Arcade Fire's manager has clarified that "very early stages" translates to "doing home demos" and that there's no word just yet when the proper recording will begin-- but hey, still, excitement!
Thanks to reader Zach Brockhouse for the Byrne tip-off.
In other news, Win Butler recently took to his "Scrapbook" on the Arcade Fire website to post a few grainy but artful photos from Tuesday's massive (and massively awesome) Barack Obama victory speech rally at Grant Park in Chicago.
"What a beautiful day," writes Win. "I will be sustained by that one for a while."
Win then reports that he's heading off to Haiti to visit clinics run by Partners in Health, and encourages you-- yes, you-- to donate to the health care aid organization via its website.
And while we're on the AF beat, meet Kelly Pratt, multi-instrumentalist and onetime Beirut member who, as the Beirut MySpace cutely puts it, "deserted to join the Arcade Fire." Pratt, along with wife and current Beirut member Tracy Pratt, other Beirut members Jon Natchez and Jason Poranski, and a couple more cool folks, has fired up a new band appropriately named Team B [via Stereogum].
The NYC outfit has a self-titled CD-- featuring contributions from LCD Soundsystem/Special Disco Version guy Pat Mahoney and core Arcade Fire member Richard Reed Parry-- available right now through its MySpace, and a lone show scheduled for November 10 at Union Pool in Brooklyn. Check out an MP3 for "On My Mind", featuring Mahoney, below.
Posted by Matthew Solarski on November 7, 2008 at 10:45 a.m.
Tags: Arcade Fire, Beirut, David Byrne
Lindstrom Schedules Dates, Special Edition of New LP
You know that guy Lindstrøm? He's kind of a follower. At first, he only threatened to stalk you with his latest album Where You Go I Go Too. But now, he's taking it a step further, and coming straight to your town. That is, if you live in one of the seven towns Lindstrøm plans on visiting, electronic doodads in hand, in the coming months. And hey, if you've got an extra ticket, I know this Lindstrøm guy you could take off my hands for a minute...
Speaking of extras, come early December, Smalltown Supersound will issue a special edition of Where You Go I Go Too with a bonus disc sporting edits of the album tracks done by frequent Lindstrøm cohort Prins Thomas. Three of the four tracks are edits that appeared on the limited edition vinyl version of Where You Go I Go Too, while the remaining cut is a radio edit. These edits mean they'll be shorter, right? 'Cuz man, they ain't getting any longer.
Mouse on Mars' St. Werner Preps Arty LP as Lithops
Mouse on Mars plan shows
From the galleries of the world to your music playing contraption comes Ye Viols!, the latest LP from Lithops. Lithops is the solo project of Jan St. Werner of Mouse on Mars, and Ye Viols! is a collection of pieces St. Werner crafted for a number of art installations all over the planet.
The set arrives January 27 from Thrill Jockey as both a CD with a recycled paper cover hand-printed with vegetable inks, and an LP coupled with a download. Each is available in an edition of 1,000, and each comes with a poster so you can do your own little installation at home while jamming out to Ye Viols! Awww ye.
Jan has been working up tunes for a new collaboration with Croatian artist David Maljkovic to be shown in Geneva next year, but he'll take a break to hit the road with Mouse on Mars for a few dates this month.
ZTT Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Box Set
London label ZTT gets quite the 25th birthday party with Zang Tumb Tuum: The ZTT Box Set. The box set, available November 17 from Union Square imprint Salvo, features 50 tracks and 18 videos from across the label's history scattered across three CDs and a DVD. The package also comes with a 72-page book featuring rare photos, artist interviews and biographies, and writing from label co-founder Paul Morley. (Morley founded the label in 1983 with manager Jill Sinclair and überproducer Trevor Horn, whose production is all over the set)
Zang Tumb Tuum's tracklist is packed to the gills with awesome artists: There are multiple appearances by Art of Noise, Shane MacGowan, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 808 State, the Frames, and Propaganda, as well as contributions from Björk (singing on an 808 State track), Afrika Bambaataa, Sinead O'Connor (with MacGowan), and Johnny Depp (as the director of and actor in a MacGowan video...how about that dude's friends, huh?).
Each of the three CDs has its own theme. Disc one, And Suddenly There Came a Bang! represents "the early years, and early hits", disc two, Past Forward, celebrates "ZTT's contribution to dance music, in reverse chronological order," while disc three, From a Wasteland to an Artificial Paradise, is "a fantasy ZTT music festival, or surreal circus." There are also three hidden tracks.
Franz Ferdinand, Cut Copy, Lidell Play Rhythm & Vines
As do Santogold, A-Trak, Ruby Suns
Attendees of the Rhythm & Vines Festival will be among the first folks to ring in the New Year for two reasons: 1) The festival takes place at Waiohika Estate in Gisborne, New Zealand, which is thisclose to the International Date Line, and 2) Rhythm & Vines actually starts on December 29.
The festivities continue until January 1, and this sixth year of Rhythm & Vines will feature sets by Franz Ferdinand, Jamie Lidell, Cut Copy, Santogold, A-Trak, the Ruby Suns, DJ Switch, Digitalism, Busy P & DJ Mehdi, Carl Cox, the Kooks, the Cribs, the Mystery Jets, DJ Nu-Mark from Jurassic 5, South Rakkas Crew, the Datsuns, and Late of the Pier, among others.
Posted by Dave Maher on November 7, 2008 at 7 a.m.
Tags: Cut Copy, Franz Ferdinand, Jamie Lidell
Thursday, November 6
Orange Juice Guys Reconvene for Awards Event, No Gig
The web has been abuzz these past days with news that all four original members of canonical indie-poppers Orange Juice are getting back together again for the first time in ages, as noted in a report from Scotland's Sunday Mail and elsewhere. But this reunion, as it turns out, won't be the on the order of My Bloody Valentine/Pixies/Slint/JAMC/Swervedriver/whichever recently reunited band you may be thinking of-- at least not just yet.
While OJ OG's Edwyn Collins, James Kirk, David McClymont, and Steven Daly will be on hand as guests of honor at the 2008 Tartan Clef Awards ceremony in Glasgow later this month, a rep for Domino Records-- which released a package of early Orange Juice recordings called The Glasgow School back in 2005-- tells us there will be no reunion performance at the event.
The Tartan Clef Awards honor "Scotland's best music talent" and also serve as a fundraiser for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, a favorite organization of Collins' that assisted in the singer's recuperation following his brain hemorrhage in 2005. The ceremony will take place November 22 at the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow, and will mark the first time the above-mentioned Orange Juice guys have shared a stage since 1982.
For fans holding out for a real deal reunion, here's something to cling to: "It's all part of the renaissance of Orange Juice," Collins told the Sunday Mail in regards to the Tartan ceremony. "I have fond memories of the band and am looking forward to seeing them all again."
Posted by Matthew Solarski on November 6, 2008 at 3:45 p.m.
Tags: Edwyn Collins, Orange Juice
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Offer Update on New Album Progress
"Damn are we close to finishing it and only after a year of writing and recording"
Photo by Aliya Naumoff
"GET PSYYYYYYYYYYYYCHED!" There's (a very small bit of) new news about the recording of LP3 from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who have been holed up in the country for some time now, petting a kitty and crafting the follow-up to 2006's Show Your Bones. Today, a new post appeared on the band's MySpace blog updating interested parties on their progress. Kind of.
Here's what we now know: the album's close to done, though we won't hear it until next year. It reportedly sounds very different than their previous work, though if you're wondering, "DOES IT SOUND LIKE THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS??? YOU BET YOU'RE SWEET ASS IT DOES." Thank you very much for the compliment, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Add that to the puzzling missive back in June, and you've got... well, you've got a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs record on the way. And that's about it.
In other, more concrete Yeah Yeah Yeahs news, Karen O and Nick Zinner appear on the N.A.S.A. debut album The Spirit of Apollo, out via Anti- on February 17. And Zinner appears on The Time of the Assassins, the debut LP from Nikolai Fraiture of the Strokes' new Nickel Eye project, which is due January 27 from Rykodisc.
Posted by Paul Thompson on November 6, 2008 at 3:25 p.m.
Tags: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
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