Pitchfork

[Updated Monday, September 8th, 2003 01:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

They don't wear matching outfits, and she's not his sister. He has Supercuts hair and wears homemade "FUCK WAR" T-shirts; she has exactly three identical black tank tops that she handwashes after each show. He writes observant, me-against-the-world anthems of alienation, then runs a keyboard that looks like a high-school shop project through a Rat pedal; she somehow works a kick and snare with half of her body while the other half plinks a keyboard and sings along as though hearing her favorite song on the radio. I'm talking about Quasi, people, and we've just gotten word that there'll be a whole lot of the divorced-yet-too-cool-to-break-up couple in the months to come, what with the pending release of their sixth album, Hot Shit, September 9th on Touch & Go and a 23-date tour all over this Wal*Mart-studded patch of dirt.

But what you don't know is that some of you will actually be enjoying twice the Shit next Tuesday when you crack into that bad boy and find a 19-track bonus disc of Live Shit. The 19-track freebie finds bandmates Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss pounding out a typical set that includes a panoramic overview of their six albums to date, with live readings of four Hot Shit cuts. The bonus disc is limited to the first 2500 copies of Hot Shit domestically and will only be available through indie record stores or from the band on tour, according to Touch & Go. Tracklist:

01 Intro
02 When I'm Dead
03 Seal the Deal
04 Goblins & Trolls
05 Mama Tried
06 I Never Want To See You Again
07 Genetic Science
08 Under a Cloud
09 A Case of No Way Out
10 Our Happiness Is Guaranteed
11 Master & Dog
12 Nothing From Nothing
13 Good Time Rock 'n' Roll
14 Sea Shanty
15 The Sword of God
16 Birds
17 It's Raining
18 I Give Up
19 No One

And the dates... oh, the dates! After a release-date shindig at Larry Crane's Jackpot! studio, the tour proper kicks off on the East Coast in a couple of weeks, running all the way down the jagged knife-edge of the eastern seaboard down to Atlanta. Pregnant pause. Gather your thoughts. Now repeat, down the West Coast this time, from Seattle to San Diego. Deep breath. In fact, take a couple of weeks off; we owe you vacation anyhow. Now, turn your attention to the sternum of the country, if you will. Straight down the middle, that's it. Tour dates:

09-09 Portland, OR - Jackpot Records (release party/free show)
09-16 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse
09-17 Providence, RI - AS220
09-18 Brooklyn, NY - Northsix
09-19 New York, NY - Knitting Factory
09-20 Boston, MA - Middle East
09-22 Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's
09-23 Philadelphia, PA - Khyber Pass
09-24 Baltimore, MD - Ottobar
09-25 Washington, D.C. - Black Cat
09-26 Raleigh, NC - King's
09-27 Atlanta, GA - The Earl
10-10 Seattle, WA - Crocodile Cafe
10-11 Portland, OR Dante's
10-12 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall
10-14 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
10-15 Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland
10-17 San Diego, CA - Casbah
10-18 Phoenix, AZ - Modified Arts
10-30 Minneapolis, MN - 400 Bar
10-31 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
11-02 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
11-03 Newport, KY - Southgate House
11-05 Lawrence, KS - Bottleneck

In related news, Weiss' side project Sleater-Kinney (I've always wanted to say that) just wrapped up a mini-tour in Europe last month. S-K principal Carrie Brownstein even wrote the loopy press release for Hot Shit, a semi-fictional account of a Portland summer spent barbecuing vegetables, listening to Quasi on a boom box with her cats, and obsessing over whether the kid on a bike she hit while driving is okay. "The sounds and lyrics and melodies and soul of this record feel like they have been made by people who want music to be more than a conversation," Brownstein writes of Hot Shit (uh, she's seen the Q*Bert-esque front cover, right?) "They want it to be a language all its own."