Pitchfork

While the TV on the Radio blizzard swirls around him, guitarist-singer Kyp Malone manages to keep a steadfast calm-- a calm that he maintained even as Stephen Colbert stroked his beard on "The Colbert Report" a couple weeks back. After a triumphant 2008, TVOTR is off to another banner year, making their "Saturday Night Live" debut and being hand-picked by none other than David Bowie to contribute a cover of "Heroes" to War Child's Heroes album. (Proceeds from the record will benefit children affected by wars around the world.)

And TVOTR just announced a slew of North American shows that will commence in May, about a month after they hit Coachella April 18 (see dates below). And Malone just put out an album with his other band, Iran. But, talking to him, it seems like the guy has the next four years off. He's like human chamomile tea. But he can still get (relatively) peeved about not-so-great "SNL" sound and senseless global atrocities, as I learned in a brief chat yesterday:

Pitchfork: I read a couple of things online about the sound for your "SNL" performance being subpar, and that show is notorious for having bad sound in general. What did you think when you looked back at it?

Kyp Malone: I never watch any of those things-- it's bad for me. It was a really good vibe, though. But I was immediately told how shitty the sound was by people who were outside the room. All we had power over was the performance; we don't have a sound engineer who's a union guy. I feel like I'm making excuses but we just did what we did. It was fun in the room.

It's funny because I've heard a bunch of people say that the sound is bad there, but they had a lot of great-sounding performances in the 1970s and early 80s-- this one Stevie Nicks performance stands out. There's always things with TV like how you can only play four-minute versions of the singles. But I feel that show has more leeway with the musicians because they can change things around as it goes. The idea that someone can actually get into a performance and not just blow their load in the first two minutes is great. But I guess the 70s were a different time. I don't know what's different about it, but I know that performances on "SNL" can sound good, so it's really frustrating that ours didn't.

Pitchfork: Did you happen to catch the Jonas Brothers last week?

KM: I actually missed that.

Pitchfork: I wonder if they had any sound issues.

KM: The Jonas Brothers probably had Mickey Mouse standing in the control room with a gun. I'm sure it was a handgun, not an assault rifle.

Pitchfork: I'm sure. So were you intimidated to cover "Heroes"-- one of the greatest songs of all time-- for the War Child album?

KM: Since it is one of the greatest songs of all time I think it'll stand on its own two feet regardless of whether or not Bowie's doing it. I hope that we did it justice; I honestly haven't listened to it since it's been mixed because I actually did get intimidated after the fact.

Pitchfork: Have you heard the Wallflowers' version of "Heroes"?

KM: With Jakob Dylan?

Pitchfork: Yeah. They did it for the Godzilla soundtrack in 1998.

KM: No, I've never heard that.

Pitchfork: Have you listened to any of the other covers on the War Child album?

KM: I went to the site and I heard a Clash cover by the singer Lily Allen.

Pitchfork: What'd you think of that?

KM: I think that anyone who's contributing to a cause that's trying to help children affected by war is honorable. I'm not a critic.

Pitchfork: Very diplomatic. Have you guys been approached by other charities to do stuff like this?

KM: I feel self-conscious about waving a flag like, "Look what we did!" It's really gross and outside the point of doing that kind of work.

Pitchfork: Have you had any firsthand experience with people or places War Child would be contributing money to?

KM: I've had friends who were from places where they're doing work-- people who escaped war and have seen the lingering effects of that trauma. I haven't been to Iraq but a lot of my money has-- what we've paid for is pretty much unprovoked mass murder. So anything I can do to try and make that better without picking up a gun is worthwhile.

TV on the Radio:

04-18 Indio, CA - Coachella
05-12 Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall
05-16 Austin, TX - Stubbs
05-17 Dallas, TX - House of Blues
05-18 Oklahoma, OK - Diamond Ballroom
05-22 Oakland, CA - Fox Oakland Theatre
05-23 Portland, OR - Roseland Theatre
05-25 Vancouver, British Columbia - Malkin Bowl
05-27 Edmonton, Alberta - Edmonton Events Center
05-28 Calgary, Alberta - Macewan Hall
05-29 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Louis’ Pub
06-02 Toronto, Ontario - Sound Academy
06-03 Montreal, Quebec - Metropolis
06-04 Boston, MA - House of Blues
06-05 New York, NY - Central Park Summer Stage
06-08 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

The Indiana indie Jagjaguwar has a pretty thorough roster, as these things go: Bon Iver, Black Mountain, Okkervil River. But now they've scored themselves a major coup: Reunited alt-rock monsters Dinosaur Jr., still comprised of the original three members of J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph, have signed with Jagjaguwar, according to the label. Dinosaur Jr. are currently putting the finishing touches on a new album and they hope to have it out this summer. Nice match, dudes.

Last week marked the third anniversary of space-rap visionary J Dilla's death, and his influence over younger beatmakers like Kanye West and Black Milk probably looms larger now than it ever has. So it makes sense for Rapster Records, the company responsible for those compilations of sampled material from Daft Punk and Massive Attack records, to put out Dillanthology, Volume 1, a sort of Dilla 101 compilation. Dillanthology collects some of the production work that Dilla did for prominent clients and frequent collaborators like Erykah Badu and Busta Rhymes. But it's interesting to ask whether it really serves as an ideal introduction to the man's work.

A huge part of Dilla's peculiar brand of genius was his fractured intensity, the way he'd spend hours in the studio manipulating one old record-loop until it skipped and warped in just the way he wanted. And so most Dilla devotees would probably point to his 31-track Donuts beat tape as the ideal diving-in point for anyone interested in the man's deep legacy. The crew of writers on Brandon Soderberg's No Trivia blog currently paying tribute to the album on a track-by-track basis can attest to that. My own favorite might be the posthumously reissued Ruff Draft EP, where Dilla's likable, awkward vocals sort of charmingly set off the synthetic ripples of his tracks. Point is: Dilla wasn't exactly the seasoned industry-pro type, and it's a bit weird to see him honored with what basically amounts to a standard greatest-hits package.

Still and all, there are some amazing tracks on Dillanthology, which Rapster will release on March 31; Badu's "Didn't Cha Know" is a particular favorite. If nothing else, it'll be good for filling in some iTunes gaps, and maybe it'll inspire the folks at Rapster to dig a little deeper with any future volumes. But curious parties should know that a comp like this is merely the tip of a completely fascinating iceberg.

Here's the tracklist:

01 The Pharcyde: "Runnin'"
02 Slum Village: "Fall in Love"
03 Common: "The Light"
04 Erykah Badu: "Didn't Cha Know"
05 De La Soul: "Stakes Is High"
06 Busta Rhymes: "Show Me What You Got"
07 The Roots: "Dynamite"
08 A.G. [ft. Aloe Blacc]: "Hip Hop Quotable"
09 The Pharcyde: "Drop"
10 Amp Fiddler: "I Believe in You"
11 Steve Spacek: "Dollar"

-- Kelly Groucutt, bassist for ELO during their 1970s heyday, died of a heard attack on February 19, according to his official site. Groucutt was a core member of the group from 1974-1983-- that's his jaunty line on "Mr. Blue Sky". The AP reports that he passed away in Worcester, England.

-- Sophisticated British pop-rock band The Week That Was-- whose self-titled debut received an impressive 8.2 on this very website-- is ready to break the U.S.! Or at least play a few shows here. Their first Stateside trek starts March 7 and will hit Chicago, New York, Toronto, Cleveland, and Austin. Full details here.

-- Washington, D.C. label Carpark Records-- home to Beach House and Dan Deacon-- signed a new electro-pop duo called Ear Pwr. Their debut LP, Super Animal Brothers III, is out May 19.

-- Mexico City's Indie-O Fest will take place March 4-7 this year. The south-of-the-border indie-rock spectacular features Los Campesinos!, Clinic, and No Age, along with local favorites Hello Seahorse! and Nos Llamamos. Check the official Indie-O site or their MySpace for full info.

Photo by Kathryn Yu

Maybe it's true that Leonard Cohen has only now decided to tour America because his former manager ran off with all his money. Maybe he'd rather just be off meditating on a mountaintop somewhere. None of that makes this news any less awesome. Last night, Cohen played at New York's Beacon Theatre, his first show on U.S. soil in 16 years, and everyone who was there has rapturous things to say about it. And now he'll embark on a full-scale two-month North American run. Keep in mind that we're talking about a 74-year-old whose shows tend to last nearly three hours. We probably won't get too many chances like this one.

Also great: This trek will take Cohen to some truly gorgeous and historic venues. Radio City! The Chicago Theatre! Red Rocks! The suddenly celebrated Merriweather Post Pavilion! And it's worth noting that Cohen will play nearly as many shows in his native Canada as he will in the U.S. Who would've figured this guy for a patriot?

And as a pretaste, Columbia will release Cohen's Live in London, a double CD and DVD package that Cohen recorded at the O2 Arena last year. This will rule so hard.

04-02 Austin, TX - Michael and Susan Dell Hall at Long Center
04-03 Grand Prarie, TX - Nokia Theatre at Grand Prarie
04-05 Phoenix, AZ - Dodge Theatre
04-07 San Diego, CA - Copley Symphony Hall
04-10 Los Angeles, CA - Nokia Theatre L.A. Live
04-13 Oakland, CA - Paramount Theatre of the Arts
04-17 Indio, CA - Coachella Festival
04-19 Vancouver, British Columbia - General Motors Place
04-21 Victoria, British Columbia - Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre
04-23 Seattle, WA - WaMu Theater at Qwest FieldEvents Center
04-25 Edmonton, Alberta - Rexall Place
04-26 Calgary, Alberta - EPCOR Centre's Jack Singer Hall
04-28 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Credit Union Centre
04-30 Winnipeg, Manitoba - MTS Centre
05-03 Minneapolis, MN - Orpheum Theatre
05-05 Chicago, IL - The Chicago Theatre
05-09 Detroit, MI - Fox Theatre
05-11 Columbia, MD - Merriweather Post Pavilion
05-12 Philadelphia, PA - Academy of Music
05-14 Waterbury, CT - Palace Theater
05-16 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall
05-19 Hamilton, Ontario - Copps Coliseum
05-21 Quebec City, Quebec - Pavillon de la Jeunesse
05-22 Kingston, Ontario - K-Rock Centre
05-24 London, Ontario - John Labatt Centre
05-25 Ottowa, Ontario - National Arts Centre, Southam Hall
05-29 Boston, MA - Wang Theatre
06-02 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Mogwai are a loud band. The Scottish noisemakers will probably make you forget about last year's middling The Hawk Is Howling-- and pretty much everything else, for that matter-- when they turn the knobs way past 11 on a U.S. tour starting in April. The Twilight Sad will open some dates. Until then, they're making their way through Europe and Australia. If listening to your iPod for hours a day will leave you deaf in a matter of a few years, going to any one of these shows will leave you soundless in a matter of a few hours, maybe. So make those hours count:

Mogwai:

02-20 Athens, Greece - Gagarin 205
02-21 Thessaloniki, Greece - Mylos
03-03 Brisbane, Australia - The Tivoli
03-04 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre
03-05 Melbourne, Australia - The Forum Theatre
03-07 Meredith, Australia - Golden Plains Festival
03-08 Perth, Australia - Beck's Music Box
03-20 Dublin, Ireland - Dublin Academy
03-21 Dublin, Ireland - Dublin Academy
03-22 Dublin, Ireland - Dublin Academy
04-20 Houston, TX - Numbers %
04-21 New Orleans, LA - Republic %
04-22 Birmingham, AL - Workplay Theatre %
04-23 Asheville, NC - Orange Peel %
04-24 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle %
04-25 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero %
04-27 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg %
04-28 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg %
04-29 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg %
05-01 Boston, MA - Wilbur Theatre %
05-02 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street %
05-03 Montreal, Quebec - Metropolis %
05-04 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix %
05-05 Buffalo, NY - Tralf Music Hall %
05-06 Pontiac, MI - Crofoot Ballroom %
05-08 Chicago, IL - Congress Theatre %
05-09 Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall
05-10 Minneapolis, MN- First Avenue
05-11 Omaha, NE - The Slowdown
05-12 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
05-13 Salt Lake City, UT - In The Venue
05-15 San Diego, CA - Belly Up Tavern
05-16 Los Angeles, CA - Orpheum Theatre

% with the Twilight Sad

-- Vancouver psych-rock travelers Black Mountain are the sort of unrepentant stoner band who actually sometimes forget to show up to their own shows. (Seriously, I once saw them apologize for missing a show, and that was their excuse.) When you do get them onstage, though, they just destroy. They'll tour the West Coast next month with the Sadies opening, and hopefully they won't forget any shows this time.

-- This should be a real yin-and-yang situation: melty Pennsylvania noise-dance duo Black Moth Super Rainbow will spend the first half of the summer co-headlining an American tour with angelically gauzy Brooklyn dream-poppers School of Seven Bells. Just a guess, but the two bands' fans will get into gigantic Quadrophenia-esque rumbles in venue parking lots after every show.

-- On May 18, Border Community will release Hard Islands, the latest LP from British IDM wunderkind Nathan Fake. Fake released his first album at 19, but he's 25 now, so it doesn't seem too weird for him to be releasing IDM records anymore.

-- Next week, ok-ni will release Institute of Joy, the new EP from Balearic London proggers A Mountain of One. And because all the cool kids are doing it, they'll also release a super-deluxe box-set version of the EP, complete with T-shirt, badge, and poster. It's a limited run of 50 copies, each hand-numbered by a member of the band. Pretty soon, every single album that comes out will have one of these limited-edition box-set versions. Like, the Il Divo Christmas album will have one. The next Lil Boosie mixtape will have one. Your cousin's shitty hardcore band's demo tape will come in a gold-embossed fold-out leather booklet. This trend will not end.

Photos by Kathryn Yu

After leaving a Buddhist monastery, where he spent the better part of five years, Leonard Cohen wasted little time getting back to work. He quickly released two albums of new material, and wrote and produced another for his acolyte Anjani. He published a book of poetry and photography, was feted in the documentary I'm Your Man, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And in true rock'n'roll fashion, he fended off and reciprocated several lawsuits, many cleaning up the mess from a former manager that left him just this side of skint.

Yet last night's appearance at New York's Beacon Theatre marked Leonard Cohen's first U.S. performance in more than 15 years, the inaugural American stop of a comeback tour that will soon bring him across the States, including a show at this spring's Coachella festival (where Cohen shares marquee comeback status with the reunited Throbbing Gristle-- do we smell collaboration?). Resplendent in a suit and hat that hid a full head of silver hair (though virtually the whole band wore hats as well), Cohen looked thin and limber, belying his 74 years (and no doubt the product of all that meditation and, if his jokes were to believed, a bit of medication, too) as he led his band through two and a half hours of music drawn from the intersection of folk, rock, pop, and cabaret.

While the set comprised such classics as "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Chelsea Hotel #2", "Everybody Knows", "Tower of Song", and other mini-masterpieces, Cohen's show never came across as pat as a greatest hits set. For starters, most of the songs he sang hardly constitute hits, per se. Heck, "Hallelujah" was all but lost amidst Cohen's 1980s output until the likes of John Cale, Rufus Wainwright, and, of course, Jeff Buckley rescued it from obscurity. But more intriguingly, Cohen's songs seem to have transcended the passage of time, with cuts as old as the 1960s and as new as this decade miraculously free from the trappings of nostalgia. And yes, that included the Weimar disco of "First We Take Manhattan" and the somehow not dated "The Future", inspired by the L.A. riots but oddly timeless with its doom-laden prophecy "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder."

Vitally, unlike such erstwhile peers as Bob Dylan, Cohen still respects the power of his words, still tweaking and perfecting his lines to suit his rumbling baritone croak rather than lazily glossing over them. The dude's a poet, after all, and even when his band sacrificed spontaneity if favor of strict professionalism, and especially when the arrangements veered to the smoother side of jazz, Cohen's words and voice remained riveting. As Buddhist monk modest as Cohen may be, he seemed to recognize this as well as he generously invited the crowd back into his inimitable world of sex and spirituality while graciously welcoming himself back in ours.

Photo by Katie Kaars

Hey, Mike Skinner! Nu-rave already happened! You missed it by like two years!

If Streets mastermind Skinner really wanted to make the British music press froth with anticipation, he'd record with Kings of Leon or something. But according to a new MySpace blog post from Skinner, the next (and possibly final) Streets album will be "ravey." Let's hope then that's actual rave throwback (a la Zomby) instead of, say, the Sunshine Underground.

Here's Skinner: "The album doesn't sound like Lou Reed's Berlin because I never said Lou Reed, I only said 'Berlin'. Incorporating some kind of post modernist art house bauhaus row with foul mouths. But it's not that at all. It now sounds ravey. It is a ravey album album that bludgeons you over the head with its stick of 1988 Romford, Blackpool, and Philadelphia rock. It is an insane album."

Philadelphia rock? Like the Dead Milkmen? Need New Body? What's he talking about?

This could go one of two ways. On the one hand, Skinner's 2008 album Everything Is Borrowed was a folk-damaged MOR travesty, his worst by miles and the first time the Streets have ever been boring. It's tough to come back from a piece of shit like that. On the other hand, Skinner is still the guy responsible for "Weak Become Heroes", which is up there with LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" and Pulp's "Sorted for E's and Wizz" in the pantheon of wistful rave-memory songs. So maybe it'll be great. Who even knows with this guy.

-- According to MTV, Lil Wayne has pushed back the release of his terrible-idea rock album Rebirth (which my Pitchfork News colleague Ryan Dombal inexplicably believes will be good) to May 19. Here's hoping he just goes ahead and pushes it back to Never.

-- Next month, button-cute axe-wrecker Marnie Stern will tour the U.S., so here's your chance to chicken out of going up to her kissing booth and then kick yourself over it for weeks afterward.

-- The Hold Steady tend to drink a lot, which means keyboardist Franz Nicolay's tolerance should be in pretty good shape for when he opens for the reunited Pogues at New York's Roseland on March 13. Still, he should probably wear one of those medical-alert bracelets. I'm drunk just thinking about it. Nicolay will also play solo sets at the Delancy's Small Beast night every Thursday for the next three weeks, as he fills in for regular curator Paul Wallfisch while Wallfisch is on tour.

-- 90s electronica doofuses the Crystal Method, who had exactly one really good song more than 10 years ago, will attempt to capitalize on the whole crystal-name trend when Tiny e Records releases their album Divided By Night on May 12. The hilariously titled first single "Drown in the Now" features (yikes) Matisyahu. Other guests: New Order's Peter Hook; Ex-Grandaddy dude Jason Lytle; Metric's Emily Haines; and, in a move that makes all too much sense, Justin Warfield.

-- The weirdly underrated Portland narco-rock duo Viva Voce have added two more members to their lineup, and they've also got another album on the way. Barsuk will releas Rose City, the band's fourth LP, on May 26. So, uh, start paying attention to them.