Pitchfork

Your pals in Built to Spill-- who are working on the follow-up to last year's You in Reverse (and, we hope, spending more time on its cover art)-- have made a date with the old countries this spring. Clearly they saw that movie Euro Trip and are looking to score with some hot Euro chicks. Can we blame them?

The May-long trek (which bleeds one day into June) kicks off in the Ganja-lands, then winds through Scandinavia, Germany, England, and a bunch of other places. Along the way our trusty Spillers will play previously reported big ticket events like the fan-curated ATP festival and the ATP-curated portion of the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona.

Meanwhile, the digital sands of Internet time seem to have forgotten the Suffocation Keep, the lo-fi, synth-rock side project of Built to Spill bassist Brett Nelson. Back in 2002, following the release of the quintet's debut (John Hughes Was Never So Wrong, on the short-lived Transistor Recordings), the web world was somewhat abuzz with excitement over Nelson's non-Spill dabbling. Now the band has a 1.5-year-old MySpace page with only 36 friends. :(

We sure hope they're just picky, or Nelson's just too busy rocking the four-string for BTS to click "Approve" all day long. Otherwise it's a shame-- Nelson and his Suffocation Keep posse craft some solid tunes, speckled with hooks, topped with epic choruses, and wholly unpretentious.

Fortunately for you, web-crawler, while the information superhighway may shun them, the Suffocation Keep have not turned their backs on the information superhighway. Instead, they're using it to transmit free digital copies of their latest LP, the follow-up to John Hughes. It's titled A Few Minor Modifications of the Stars and the band actually finished it way back in 2004. Find out how it's aged in these fast-paced times: For a (presumably) limited time, you may download the entire album here.

Be warned, however! A bulletin from the entity in charge of the Suffocation Keep's MySpace made the following clear: "DO NOT SELL! If the CD becomes available, or is announced in the future, the download will disappear off the site and all those who downloaded the copy are urged to delete it." So there you have it. Play nice, kids.

Built to Tour:

05-04 Groningen, The Netherlands - Vera
05-06 Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Paradiso
05-08 Hamburg, Germany - Knust
05-09 Malmo, Sweden - KB
05-10 Stockholm, Sweden - Debaser Medis
05-11 Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
05-12 Gothenburg, Sweden - Sticky Fingers
05-14 Berlin, Germany - Postbahnhof
05-15 Dresden, Germany - Star Club
05-16 Vienna, Austria - Flex
05-17 Munich, Germany - Ampere
05-18 Cologne, Germany - Gebäude 9
05-19 Oxford, England - Zodiac
05-20 Somerset, England - Butlins Minehead (All Tomorrow's Parties)
05-22 Sheffield, England - Leadmill
05-23 Nottingham, England - Rescue Room
05-25 Antwerp, Belgium - Trix Club
05-26 Schondorf, Germany - Manufaktur
05-27 Frankfurt, Germany - Mousonturm
05-28 Winterthur, Switzerland - Salzhaus
05-29 Fribourg, Switzerland - Fri-son
05-30 Paris, France - La Maronquinerie
05-31 Montpellier, France - Victoires 2
06-01 Barcelona, Spain - Parc del Fòrum (Primavera Sound)

[photo by Maria Tessa Sciarrino]