Pitchfork: Latest News

New Release: Aloha: Home Acres

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:10:00 -0600

Artist: Aloha
Album: Home Acres
Release Date: March 9
Label: Polyvinyl

Tracklist:

01 Building a Fire
02 Moonless March
03 Microviolence
04 Searchlight
05 Everything Goes My Way
06 White Wind
07 Cold Storage
08 Blackout
09 Waterwheel
10 I'm in Trouble
11 Ruins

Note: Newest album from this long-running experimental indie band that includes drummer-about-town Cale Parks (Passion Pit, White Williams).

Spencer Krug Goes Solo as Moonface

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:35:00 -0600

Spencer Krug is having a busy year. First Swan Lake, the side project he shares with Destroyer's Dan Bejar and Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer, released their Enemy Mine album. Then Sunset Rubdown, the outfit he fronts, dropped the BNM'ed Dragonslayer. (No activity from Wolf Parade, though.) And early next year, Krug will release a brand new EP from his solo Moonface project. (Via MBV.) Unlike Enemy Mine and Dragonslayer, this one is not named after a sci-fi/fantasy movie from the 80s, unfortunately.

On January 26, Jagjaguwar will release Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums, the second record from Krug's Moonface alter-ego. The EP will only be available digitally and on a one-sided vinyl 12". According to a press release, the vinyl version, as well as some digital ones, will come with "a dream journal, on which the music is based." Huh!

xx to Tour With jj

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:50:00 -0600

Before they head out on a U.S. tour with Hot Chip come April, sultry electro-rock quartet trio the xx are now set to do seven American dates with fellow lowercase, double-lettered group jj starting in March. These shows mark the first U.S. live appearances ever for enigmatic Swedes jj. The xx are currently on tour in North America with Friendly Fires.

Now if they could only get CC DeVille, Aa, ZZ Top, dd/mm/yyyy, LL Cool J, and GG Allin's corpse to open select dates.

All upcoming xx and jj concerts listed in chronological below:

The xx:

11-21 Hollywood, CA - Henry Fonda Theater #^
11-20 San Diego, CA - Casbah #^
11-23 San Francisco, CA - The Independent #
11-24 Sacramento, CA - Sacramento State University #
11-25 Portland, OR - Doug Fir #
11-26 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom #
11-27 Seattle, WA - Neumo's #^
11-30 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club #
12-01 Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge #
12-02 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix #
12-03 Montreal, Quebec - Le National #
12-04 Boston, MA - Paradise Lounge #
12-05 New York, NY - Webster Hall #
12-15 Belfast, Ireland - The Speakeasy
12-16 Galway, Ireland - Roisin Dubh
12-17 Cork, Ireland - The Pavilion
12-19 Dublin, Ireland - The Button Factory
01-11 Stuttgart, Germany - Longhorn
01-12 Hamburg, Germany - Grunspan
01-13 Frankfurt, Germany - Batschkapp
01-14 Groningen, Netherlands - Eurosonic
01-15 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega
01-16 Aarhus, Denmark - Vox Hall
01-18 Oslo, Norway - Garage
01-19 Stockholm, Sweden - Debaser Slussen
01-20 Gothenburg, Sweden - Pusterviksbaren
01-21 Malmo, Sweden - Debaser
01-22 Berlin, Germany - Astra
01-29 Brisbane, Australia - Laneway
01-30 Sydney, Australia - Laneway
01-31 Melbourne, Australia - Laneway
02-01 Auckland, Australia - Laneway
02-05 Adelaide, Australia - Laneway
02-06 Perth, Australia - Laneway
02-07 Singapore, Singapore - Laneway
02-11 Lille, France - Grand Mix
02-12 Angouleme, France - La Nef
02-13 Nantes, France - Olympic
02-14 Toulon, France - Midi Festival
02-16 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
02-17 Brussels, Belgium - AB
02-18 Paris, France - Cigale
02-20 Saint-Malo, France - Route du Rock Winter
02-21 Strasbourg, France - Laiterie
02-23 Rome, Italy - Brancaleone
02-24 Milan, Italy - Magazzini
02-25 Munich, Germany - Backstage Werk
02-27 Cologne, Germany - Essikfabrik
03-01 Brighton, England - Komedia
03-02 London, England - Shepard's Bush Empire
03-03 London, England - Shepherds Bush Empire
03-05 Birmingham, England - Birmingham Academy 2
03-06 Manchester, England - Manchester Academy 2
03-08 Leeds, England - Cockpit
03-09 Edinburgh, Scotland - Studio 24
03-10 Liverpool, England - Kazimer
03-22 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon !
03-24 Atlanta, GA - The Earl !
03-25 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle !
03-28 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue !
03-29 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary !
04-05 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center !
04-06 Bloomington, IN - Buskirk-Chumley Theater !
04-16 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater *
04-19 Chicago, IL - Riviera Theatre *
04-20 Toronto, Ontario - Koolhaus *
04-22 New York, NY - Terminal 5 *
04-24 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club *

# with Friendly Fires
^ with Holly Miranda
* with Hot Chip
! with jj

jj:

03-22 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon #
03-24 Atlanta, GA - The Earl #
03-25 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle #
03-28 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue #
03-29 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary #
04-05 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center #
04-06 Bloomington, IN - Buskirk-Chumley Theater #

# with the xx

News in Brief: Pablove Foundation, Odetta, Dukes of Stratosphear, Tristeza

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:05:00 -0600

-- Band of Horses, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, Against Me!'s Tom Gabel, and Black Rebel Motorcycle club are some of the acts playing "stripped-down" sets at a benefit gig for tomorrow, November 21, at Hollywood's Avalon. Proceeds go to the Pablove Foundation, which fights pediatric cancer, and is run by Dangerbird Records' Jeff Castelaz, who lost his son to the disease. Click here for more info.

-- Folk pioneer Odetta passed away a year ago, and to celebrate her legacy, artists including Marissa Nadler, Ane Brun, Linda Draper, Liz Durrett, and Pepi Ginsburg have contributed tracks to the tribute album Beautiful Star: The Songs of Odetta. It's out November 30 in the UK and December 1 in the U.S. via Wears the Trousers. Proceeds from the record benefit women's charities. Check out the project's MySpace to sample a couple tracks.

-- Fans of XTC's 1960s-sounding side project the Dukes of Stratosphear, this is your day. A deluxe, limited, very special (etc.) box set of the band's entire output called The Complete and Utter Dukes is due November 30 on XTC mastermind Andy Partidge's Ape House imprint. Along with vinyl, CDs, and a fancy box, the package boasts a "mindbendingly difficult" 500-piece puzzle.

-- Post-rockers Tristeza have a new LP coming out on December 1. It's called Fate Unfolds and Better Looking is the label. Download new song "Manitas" here.

Video: Neutral Milk Hotel Live in 1998

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:20:00 -0600

As previously reported, Merge has just reissued Neutral Milk Hotel's two albums, 1996's On Avery Island and 1998's stone classic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, on 180-gram vinyl.

To mark the occasion, the folks at Merge have posted two live Neutral Milk Hotel videos on Merge's blog. They were filmed at New York's Knitting Factory in 1998. We aren't sure if these videos are entirely new, but we've never seen them before, and they're certainly worth a view regardless.

In those two videos, which you can watch below, Jeff Mangum plays "Two-Headed Boy" and "April 8th" with the sort of fearsome intensity you rarely see from any performer, in any genre. Even without his band behind him, he wails everything at full-force, and the look in his eye seems like it could knock over mountains. Even on a tiny YouTube window 11 years later, it's something to behold.

"Two-Headed Boy":

"April 8th":

Blur to Release Live CD With UK Paper

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:35:00 -0600

Following in the steps of everybody from Prince to Sigur Rós, Blur are set to release a free CD with a UK newspaper. The November 22 edition of the Sunday Times will come bundled with a 10-track disc featuring songs recorded live during Blur's summer reunion tour.

According to the Times, you'll be able to download five additional free songs on iTunes on November 29, too.

Tracklist for the CD is below:

Blur Live 2009:

01 She's So High
02 Girls & Boys
03 Badhead
04 Beetlebum
05 Parklife
06 Out of Time
07 Song 2
08 Pop Scene
09 Tender
10 The Universal

Real Estate Bassist Alex Bleeker Recruits Other Real Estaters for Debut

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:55:00 -0600

We're in the midst of an absurdly productive few months for Jersey lo-fi up-and-comers Real Estate. The band's self-titled debut album dropped this week and scored a BNM from us, and they've got a new EP called Reality coming December 18 via Mexican Summer. And the Real Estate brain-trust still has a whole 'nother album coming before the month is out.

On November 27, Black Friday, Underwater Peoples will release the self-titled debut album from Alex Bleeker & the Freaks, the band led by hirsute Real Estate bassist Alex Bleeker.

If Alex Bleeker & the Freaks sound a lot like Real Estate, don't be too surprised; the two bands' lineups have a 75% overlap. The Freaks also include Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney IV and guitarist Matt Mondanile (aka Ducktails). The only Real Estate member who doesn't do double-duty as a Freak, in fact, is drummer Etienne Pierre Duguay. Fellow Jersey lo-fi guy Julian Lynch rounds out the Freaks' lineup.

The Alex Bleeker & the Freaks album will be the first-ever LP release for Underwater Peoples. We've got "Animal Tracks", a cover of a song by the Vermont band Mountain Man, up for download here. Click here to see video of the Freaks performing live. That's the album's cover art above, and we've got the tracklist below.

Alex Bleeker & the Freaks:

01 Summer
02 Epilogue
03 Spring Jam
04 Animal Tracks
05 Prisoner of the Past
06 Dead On
07 Common Sense
08 Part 2

Spoon Reveal First Transference Dates

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:20:00 -0600

Photo by Autumn de Wilde

Spoon's next album, Transference, is due January 25 in Europe via Anti- and January 26 in North America via Merge. And in the coming months, lucky folks in the U.S. and Europe will get a chance to hear Spoon play some of these songs live. Spoon's catalog of spiky new wave jams is already pretty huge, and they've always been totally smooth and on-point onstage, so you're pretty much guaranteed a good night out if you hit up one of these shows.

All dates are below.

Spoon:

12-03 Kansas City, MO - Midland Theatre
12-04 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre #
12-11 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom *
12-12 La Jolla, CA - RIMAC Arena
12-31 Milwaukee, WI - Riverside Theatre !
02-14 Glasgow, Scotland - King Tut's
02-15 Manchester, England - Academy 3
02-16 London, England - Electric Ballroom
02-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
02-19 Cologne, Germany - Luxor
02-20 Berlin, Germany - Frannz Club

# with Phoenix, Passion Pit
* with Black Joe Lewis
! with Jay Reatard

Listen: The Big Pink Cover Beyoncé

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:55:00 -0600

Photo by Tim Saccenti

Shoegaze-y British duo the Big Pink are no strangers to pop. Their 2009 anthem "Dominos" aims for the charts with one of the year's best, most massive hooks, and they remixed Lily Allen earlier this year. So it's not a huge surprise that they like Beyoncé enough to cover her I Am...Sasha Fierce track "Sweet Dreams". (Via Stereogum.)

The redo-- recently recorded for the BBC's Radio 1-- obliterates the original's Hi-NRG pulse, turning it into something a lot moodier and creepier. Download the MP3 at Stereogum and watch Beyoncé's outstanding performance of the tune at this year's MTV Europe Music Awards below:

Califone Drop New Video, Add Dates

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:20:00 -0600

There's something comfortable about ramshackle roots veterans Califone's new video for "Funeral Singers". It's pretty minimal, with footage of dudes sitting in a circle playing acoustic guitars cut with flickering Super 8 footage. All the better to focus on the song, which, as Pitchfork's Aaron Leitko writes, is pretty great. Check out the video below or on Pitchfork.tv.

As we told you back in July, Califone frontman Tim Rutili has directed a feature film, which, like the band's new album, is titled All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. On tour, the band has been playing a live soundtrack along with the movie. That's what they'll do when they hit the West Coast next month; those dates are below:

Califone:

12-03 Seattle, WA - Husky Union *
12-04 Vancouver, British Columbia - Rickshaw Theater *
12-05 Portland, OR - The Mission Theater *
12-07 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *
12-09 Los Angeles, CA - Hammer Museum *

* All My Friends Are Funeral Singers film performance

Director's Cut: Jarvis Cocker's "Further Complications" Video

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:45:00 -0600

From Radiohead's "No Surprises" to Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Can't Stop", great music videos are bursts of sound and vision that leave an indelible impression. Director's Cut is a Pitchfork News feature in which we chat with music video directors about their creations. The men and women behind the camera are often overlooked in today's YouTube era, but this feature aims to highlight their hard work while showcasing the best videos currently linking around the internet. A little behind-the-scenes dirt couldn't hurt, too.

In this installment, we checked in with up-and-coming French director Stéphanie Di Giusto, who helped bend, stretch, and squish Jarvis Cocker in his "Further Complications" video. Di Giusto specializes in clips that accentuate a performer's raw personality, and this one is no different-- the entirety of the video consists of Jarvis against a white background (with some nifty "folding" effects gracefully added at key moments). The director is smart enough to let Jarvis be Jarvis, which is brilliant in and of itself.

Click on to watch the video and read about the "tortures" Di Giusto put her star through during the making of the video:

Jarvis Cocker: "Further Complications" [Director: Stéphanie Di Giusto]

Pitchfork: How did you meet Jarvis? Are you a big fan of his?

Stéphanie Di Giusto: Who isn't a fan of Jarvis? I thought if I could do a video for him it would be the best ever, so I told this to [production company] Partizan London, who spoke to his label. Then one day I received an e-mail from Jarvis asking me to do his video. I was in a meeting and I screamed like a little girl! Before meeting him I tried to clear my head of all the things he'd done before but that didn't work at all! I was very intimidated-- the first time I met him I could only look at his hands and he thought I was crazy. But he's an elegant, sophisticated, and quick-witted guy, so we got on well even though I speak English badly.

When we met we talked a lot about the content of the song: the complications of life, the bags which are too full then break, shopping lists, the supermarket and the huge choice of cereals in the aisle. I seemed to understand it, and voila! Soon after I had an instinct to do something simple. Jarvis is a strange and exceptional animal so I was going to shut him in a box, manipulate him and observe him and not let him out.

Pitchfork: Were you inspired by the artwork for Jarvis's Further Complications album?

SD: I loved the artwork; a man trapped on an album cover. The simplest ideas are the best ones. I had a fantastic personality in front of me, above all I didn't want to clutter it up with settings and stories. I wanted to concentrate on him, join the violence and the grace. Jarvis and the white threatening him. I'd been speaking to him about how long he could stay upside down. I told him I wanted to fold him, trap him, and suspend him. He said it was OK. I was very happy.

Pitchfork: Jarvis kind of gets tossed around in the video. Were there any moments when he fell or got hurt?

SD: So many times I said to myself "Oh my God, what am I doing to Jarvis Cocker?!" Before working with Jarvis I rehearsed with a stand in. I had worked out a whole choreography of torture. Everybody said I was crazy and that he was going to hurt himself and tests with the stand in were catastrophic, like some kind of crap Chaplin! Then Jarvis arrived at the studio, and he did everything with grace and energy, which impressed the team. I think a strange force inhabits his body! When he starts to sing, every part of his body lights up.

When I locked him up in the small box at the end of the clip, I loved the image so much that I asked him to sing the entire song like that. I said to myself that the real conceptual clip would be the entire song huddled up in a small box. I saw he understood what I was thinking about and it made him laugh thinking that I could have easily left him in that little box for the whole thing!

Pitchfork: Did you go to Jarvis's art exhibition in Paris earlier this year? What do you think about his music-as-art-installation concept?

SD: I live in a bubble and go out quite rarely but I watched the videos on the internet where he was singing and dancing with children in an art gallery. This approach is natural and logical. Everything is very coherent and experimental with his album. I think he's also trying to break down the artificial myth of a star with his feelings, his actions, and his exchanges. This experimental approach is what called him to me to make his video. He had the ability to choose a big time video director but he went for me because we both make outsider art. For me, Jarvis is a Dadaist like Marcel Duchamp. I think very few artists have the talent to be able to do that-- we are either poets or we aren't.

Iggy and the Stooges to Perform Raw Power at ATP New York 2010

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0600

In 2010, the All Tomorrow's Parties festival will return to the scenic (and kinda creepy) Kutschers Country Club in Monticello, New York for a third year. ATP New York will take place over Labor Day weekend, September 3-5, so you'll have an extra vacation day to work off that hangover you earned playing poker with Steve Albini until 5 a.m.

The first acts announced for ATP NY 2010 are those performing Friday night, September 3, as part of the Don't Look Back series, in which classic albums are played in their entirety. Headlining will be Iggy & the Stooges doing Raw Power, with a pretty heavy undercard: the reunited Sleep performing Holy Mountain, Mudhoney performing Superfuzz Bigmuff plus their early singles, and Australian band the Scientists performing Blood Red River. Whew! Many more acts are to be announced.

For a taste of the ATP NY experience, check out Pitchfork.tv's documentation of No Age's adventures at the 2009 festival. Or if you're in Chicago, come on down to Facets Cinematheque tonight for the Chicago premiere of All Tomorrow's Parties - The Film.

Reminder! Pitchfork Presents All Tomorrows Parties Chicago Premiere

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:45:00 -0600

Reminder! The Chicago premiere of All Tomorrow's Parties - The Film goes down tomorrow night at Facets Cinematheque.

The movie documents the All Tomorrow's Parties music festivals that have taken place around the world for the past 10 years. Co-directed by Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation), the film includes footage shot by over 200 amateur and professional filmmakers. It features performances from Sonic Youth, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Belle and Sebastian, the Stooges, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Portishead.

Pitchfork and Warp Films are presenting the screening, which starts at 11:30 pm. Join us at 11 for complimentary refreshments and then again after the film. Thanks to our friends at Goose Island.

The movie is already out on DVD in the UK, and it'll come out via Warp November 24 in the U.S. In Los Angeles, the film will screen December 1 at Cinefamily.

Pitchfork has previously worked with ATP many times in the past. We collaborated on bringing the Don't Look Back series of performances of classic albums to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, and co-curated the ATP Vs. Pitchfork festival in England in 2008.

Click on the Facets website to get tickets, and check out the film's trailer below.

New Release: Toro Y Moi: Causers of This

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:20:00 -0600

Artist: Toro Y Moi
Album: Causers of This
Release Date: February 23
Label: Carpark

Tracklist:

01 Blessa
02 Minors
03 Imprint After
04 Lissoms
05 Fax Shadow
06 Thanks Vision
07 Freak Love
08 Talamak
09 You Hid
10 Low Shoulders
11 Causers of This

Notes: Debut album from South Carolinian Chaz Bundick's one-man lo-fi project.

Media: Stream "Blessa" here. Stream/download "Talamak" here.

Fiery Furnaces' Matt Friedberger Writes "Virtual Response" to Beck Song

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:35:00 -0600

So there's this weird and nonsensical semi-feud going down on the internet because the Fiery Furnaces' Matthew Friedberger insulted Radiohead and Beck. (For the whole story so far, click on this link.) It started off marginally amusing, and then Beck put out a song that may or may not be associated with the beef that turned out to be pretty cool, and we figured that would be it. But Matthew Friedberger will not let this thing go, apparently.

The singer-songwriter just put up a couple new MySpace blog posts related to the kerfuffle, including one titled "IMAGINARY RESPONSE!" which he describes as a "virtual response" to the Beck song. He goes on in a very meta, very hypothetical, very screwy, and sorta condescending way, writing circles around himself for a few paragraphs. He makes Kanye's all-caps blog apologies seem downright comprehensible.

If you dare, read the posts here and here on MySpace. We copied and pasted them below, too:

IMAGINARY RESPONSE!

"Somebody (he didn't want his name mentioned (though he did want his new, great band, Circle of Buzzards plugged)) told me that Beck posted a song about Harry Partch on the internet.

A virtual response, therefore.

But doesn't this imaginary feud demand imaginary responses? And therefore, imaginary response songs? Shouldn't we step--isn't now the time to ascend--from the merely virtual to the boldly imaginary?

When I made up my imaginary Radiohead song about Harry Partch (in full knowledge that there was no Radiohead song about Harry Partch, regardless of whatever Dave H. said to people before he talked to me (I love you, Dave)), and was sharply critical of it, I certainly didn't imagine my endeavors in this regard would engender such a response. How tremendously for the best it has all turned out to be

How fruitful an imaginary song proved in practice! So as we all move forward, shouldn't we admit that posting songs on the internet--being virtual, in other words--is so last year? So to speak. Isn't that what every music management company intern from Northeastern recommends that bands do? That can't be right.

I propose nothing less than the liberation and use of only our imaginations for the direct purpose of, not just pop music writing, but pop music production and distribution. And subsequent, now imaginary, blog discussion.

Won't these imaginary songs sound sweet? I imagine they will. Think how adaptable to changing tastes and fashions they'll be. And how many billable hours of intellectual property disputes they'll cause! This thought-experiment rock is no doubt the breakthrough the industry professionals have been waiting for.
The music industry has already gone to the imaginary model in many respects. Bands--at least smaller bands--only get to make imaginary livings. (To say nothing of bands that imagine they are playing rock music by pressing the space bar on a laptop and hitting a floor tom. I am saying nothing about that.) Of course many fans--and fans are always the most progressive element of the rock music community--have long since gone to the imaginary model. They must really be imagining things to admire the music acts they do.

Let's all follow their lead!"

And:

Unedited blog post

"Someone wrote the band an email in which he wrote something about "the music community". I have to write something now, because the music community, which doesn't make much music and fosters even less worthwhile community, conceives itself, so it tells me, to be at the beck and call of whatever the music websites write about.

I am proud to have been raised to seek out, revere, and practice the power of the pun without apology--or explanation. And I am pleased to be in a position where I perceive it useful to write such a thing in such a style, both as a joke and in earnest.

The socially or individually idiosyncratic association of words and phrases on an aggressive, and often aggressively trivial, asemantic basis is so certainly a, if not the, main source of any sort of dynamism that pertains to the ludic, and what perhaps derives from the ludic (that what has often been conceived as the opposite of the ludic)--this is so certainly the case as to release me of my obligation to finish the sentence directly.

That was written in a style I associate with a certain sort of Zappa fan. Of course, if you admire and encourage an art of creative misunderstanding in others, and you practice the art of misunderstanding yourself, in both senses that might be taken, then you certainly expect to be misunderstood.

Which brings me to the next point. As a member of a rock band--a high calling indeed--I certainly cannot be concerned that something I say might be misquoted, taken out of context, quoted without reference to the tone in which it was said or the question to which it was an answer, and therefore be misunderstood, even in an inflammatory fashion, or, from a primitive perspective, unflattering light. To be concerned with such a thing in such a way is the exclusive business of the politician's consultant or the marketing man. A member of a rock band has no truck with their conceptions or their proclivities. (Please don't imagine otherwise on the basis of some extremely crude notion of Pop.) One simply welcomes any such misunderstanding as part of his or her calling. Rock music is a practice in which one explicitly does not control the context in which one's work, in the sense of both objects and processes, is received and used. One does not, therefore, control or seek to control the understanding of one's work, in anything but a trivial sense. And one's work in a rock band includes the performance of 'interviews'.

Rock music owes its current pre-emenince in the contemporary arts to the fact that it is pre-eminent in the art of being made one's own. In this sphere, one is entitled, without regard to standard or competence. Expertise in all matters of operation is conferred automatically. This in the case in principle, but not in practice. The analogy I would draw is to a piece of progressive legislation, enacted but not enforced."

New Release: Savath y Savalas: The Predicate (Dub Version)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0600

Artist: Savath y Savalas
Album: The Predicate (Dub Version)
Release Date: Available digitally now, out physically January 2010
Label: Stones Throw

Tracklist:

01 Adeu Salutation
02 Abri.l Closed
03 Pavo Real Plucked
04 Pajaros En Cadaques Shot
05 The Predicate and the Library
06 Me Voy and Resolved
07 La Loba Collection
08 There Is No Love in Your Heart
09 Me Voy Alone
10 Lamento Pobre Y Salida

Notes: Guillermo Scott Herren's dub remix of Savath y Savalas' 2009 album La Llama.

Notes: Download "Pavo Real Plucked" here.

Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor Talks New LP

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:10:00 -0600

Since the release of their last album, 2008's Made in the Dark, Hot Chip broke the UK's Top Ten for the first time with "Ready for the Floor", put out a stellar EP with experimental rock godhead Robert Wyatt, teamed up with Peter Gabriel for a Vampire Weekend cover, compiled a Bugged Out mix, and brought their now-all-killer setlist to venues around the world. Band co-leaders Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard even managed to put out enjoyable solo albums.

Next year, Hot Chip will return with their fourth album, One Life Stand, due out February 9 via Astralwerks in North America and a day earlier in the UK courtesy of Parlophone. (Listen to new song "Take It In" here.)

We recently chatted with wire-framed singer Taylor about a possible Will Oldham collaboration, cats, and how "Britain's Got Talent" phenomenon Susan Boyle made her mark on One Life Stand:

Pitchfork: After seeing you guys put on really energetic shows over the last few years, I was a little surprised by One Life Stand, which sounds like your most low-key album to date.

Alexis Taylor: Really? Maybe we did something wrong. What about it is low-key?

Pitchfork: Well, there are fewer rock elements.

AT: There were a couple songs that had louder guitars on the last album, but it also featured more ballads than ever before. I feel like the melodies on the new album are much more in-your-face, and it's more coherent. With the last album, I was interested in everything sounding different sonically from one song to the next and embracing that idea of a messy double album. But this record hangs together better and doesn't feel the need to be lots of different things stylistically.

Pitchfork: Do you feel you guys have less to prove as a band now?

AT: I don't have anything to prove to anyone as a band. Perhaps that sounds defensive, but there wasn't any thought in my head like, "this needs to be different from 'Ready for the Floor'" or "this needs to be better than 'Over and Over'." All that's just marketing.

Pitchfork: Right. But "Over and Over" sounded like a reaction to people's early perceptions of Hot Chip as a laid-back band. This album just seems a lot more comfortable in its own skin. You're not making any of those pronouncements anymore.

AT: Well, maybe you're right; I forgot that that was the sentiment of one of our songs a few years ago. It's quite hard to remember what you're thinking about when you make these songs. When you try to look back and figure out what it's about, maybe there isn't really an "about." Maybe there's just a thing that it is.

Pitchfork: Also, there are less and less goofy moments on your albums, and this new one sounds like your most serious. Are you guys conscious of scaling that back?

AT: I'm not really conscious of it at all, but I'm aware of it now that you pointed it out. There was no decision to be more or less comic. I don't feel more or less humorous in my day-to-day. These things are accidental.

Pitchfork: The new song "I Feel Better" features Auto-Tune and reminded me of something from Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak. Are you a fan of that album?

AT: I think [co-writer/singer] Joe [Goddard] was a fan of it. I was definitely a fan of "Love Lockdown" but I only listened to the album once. One of the reference points for that song was actually Susan Boyle. Joe had been listening to her on the TV and thought of this string melody for "I Feel Better" by kind of misremembering that Les Misérables song that she did. Then I wrote the chorus music, which sounds like "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna, which hopefully we don't get sued for.

Pitchfork: Another one that struck me was the ballad "Slush". You guys have done ballads before, but that song takes things into a new ambient-country sort of direction.

AT: Yeah, the backing vocals sound like a vocal exercise, or like "Crazy" by Willie Nelson. It's got the same cadence as many very famous melodies but I liked how simple it was. [This Heat drummer] Charles Hayward plays and sings harmony on "Slush", and that's one of the most special things about the album for me because he's someone that I really look up to and love. It was exciting that he really wanted to do it, and that his children were excited that he was going to play on a Hot Chip album.

Pitchfork: I was also a big fan of the EP you did earlier this year with Robert Wyatt. If you could get someone else to collaborate with like that who would it be?

AT: Will Oldham would be the first person I would think of. I've been in touch with him recently, and he's someone I would definitely like to do more with, if it's ever possible. We're in the early stages of knowing whether or not he would be involved, but he seems to be interested in us from some perspective, at least.

Pitchfork: The name of the record, One Life Stand, seems joyous because it's a continuation of a one night stand, but also melancholy because of the fleeting nature of a one night stand. What were you guys thinking when you chose it?

AT: It's a very dumb pun in a way, quite an ugly sounding phrase, sort of like Eyes Wide Shut. But I'm talking about turning a one night stand into someone's whole life in the title song and I think that's quite a nice thing to say. I can also hear the melancholy; there's so much melancholy in almost everything I write. I don't know why that is, but I know that it's there, and I know that I can't ever write a song that just sounds completely saccharin. Even if I'm singing about someone being my complete love life, I'm singing about my own inabilities to be as bright as that person.

Pitchfork: My favorite song on the album at the moment is "Alley Cats", which reminds me of "Boy From School". What's the story behind that one?

AT: Joe's the main singer on that one, so he wrote most of it. "Alley Cats" is one of his more private songs. It seems to partly be about his mother and wishing that she was alive to hear this song that he's singing. And I think Joe's words in the chorus relate to when you're feeling something that you really love is coming to an end, and saying that's not really possible. In terms of the music, I think Joe was quite influenced by a song that we both really like, "That's Us/Wild Combination", by Arthur Russell. But the eventual finished version developed into something a bit more Fleetwood Mac-y. For my part on that song, I was thinking about myself and my own cat and the mood he brings to my wife and I.

Pitchfork: Do you just have one cat right now?

AT: He passed away recently, so we don't have any cats anymore. There are quite a lot of stray cats in the garden in the back of our house, though. We feed them, but we're not sure if they're going to come in yet.

News in Brief: The Hot Rats, Kría Brekkan, the Watson Twins, Laura Gibson and Ethan Rose

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:20:00 -0600

-- Back in June, we reported that Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich had teamed up with Supergrass members Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey to form a cover band called the Hot Rats. On Turn Ons, the band's debut album, they take on tracks by the Velvet Underground, the Sex Pistols, and the Beastie Boys, among others. Turn Ons is coming January 19 from Fat Possum, and the band will play a few American shows in January.

-- "Uterus Water". Appetizing, right? That's the name that former Múm member/Avey Tare collaborator Kría Brekkan has given to her latest 7" single, which she'll release January 11 on Paw Tracks. It's limited to 500 copies, thus ensuring that only the thirstiest among us will get to own it.

-- Talking to You, Talking to Me, the second album from luminous harmonizers and former Jenny Lewis backer-uppers the Watson Twins, is coming February 9 from Vanguard. Members of My Morning Jacket and Everest help out.

-- Portland singer-songwriter Laura Gibson has teamed up with her minimal composer buddy Ethan Rose to record an album. Bridge Carols is due February 9 from Holocene Music.

Decemberists Turn The Hazards of Love Into Animated Film

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:25:00 -0600

Photo by Brian Leli

The Decemberists' The Hazards of Love has taken on many lives. First, it was an ambitious concept album/rock opera about forest queens and shape-shifters. Then, the band took it on the road, playing the entire full-length album every night and bringing two of the album's guest singers with them. And next month, Colin Meloy and co. will push The Hazards of Love to full-on The Wall status, releasing the album as a full-length video.

Here Come the Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized premiered at a show in Los Angeles on October 19, and on December 1, it'll be available exclusively via iTunes. Filmmakers Guilherme Marcondes, Julia Pott, Peter Sluszka and Santa Maria created animations to accompany individual sections of music from the album.

You can watch a trailer for Here Come the Waves below. Trippy!

New Interpol Album Coming Next Year

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:45:00 -0600

Interpol haven't released a new album since 2007's middling Our Love to Admire. Since then, the members of the band have been pretty busy with extracurricular activities: singer Paul Banks' solo project Julian Plenti, bassist Carlos D's short film, drummer Sam Fogarino's band with Swervedriver's Adam Franklin, Magnetic Morning.

Now, Fogarino tells Paste that the snappily dressed NYC brooders spent spring 2009 recording a new album, which is due for release via Capitol early next year. According to Fogarino, the new LP will recall Interpol's debut album Turn on the Bright Lights, Pitchfork's #20 album of the decade.

The band recorded the album at New York's Electric Lady studio, and they've focused on returning to the stuff that people loved about the band in the first place. Fogarino says, "The new record falls back towards the first. In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can't let go of your sonic-defining tag. There was an effort in Daniel [Kessler]'s guitar tone; he rediscovered it playing in his loft space for a year without anybody. The quality of that tone, played in a big room, is just beautiful. It creates an atmosphere ... That big wash of reverb? It's back."

Fogarino also tells Paste that the band doesn't have any illusions about the relative wackness of Our Love to Admire: "[The album] was not our most cohesive moment … It was when reality kicked in as to where we were and where we were never going back to." Perspective!

New Animal Collective: "Graze"

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:10:00 -0600

Front page photo by Atiba Jefferson

Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind EP is due out November 23 digitally and December 15 physically via Domino. It opens with "Graze", which can be heard below.

"Graze" is kind of two songs in one. It starts out as a mellow, diffuse vocal showcase. Then, about two-thirds of the way in, a perversely sped-up Renaissance Faire flute loop kicks in, and the track turns into a disarmingly weird hobbit dance jam.

Click below to hear the song, via Stereogum.

Flying Lotus, Skream, Daedelus on Art/Music Compilation

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:50:00 -0600

It's hard to keep track of all the stoned, sputtering beat-driven electronic music coming out these days. It's partly because most of it doesn't fit under anyone particular genre designation (the word "dubstep" only begins to describe a lot of this stuff) and partly because the people making this music come from all over the world.

Bleep.com's new music and art compilation North/South/East/West, out December 1, offers a series of snapshots (literally and musically) of four regional scenes at the forefront of the current avalanche of blunted beat music.

North/South/East/West is a collaboration between Bleep, photographer Shaun Bloodworth, and designer Stuart Hammersley. The comp collects tracks-- most of them previously unreleased-- from producers from four different regions: the North and South of England, and the East and West Coasts of the U.S. Artists like Flying Lotus, Skream, FaltyDL, and Daedelus contribute tracks. But the compilation isn't just intended to showcase these producers; it's also focused on the labels and club nights that helped bring them to prominence.

The limited-edition comp is only available through Bleep, and it will be released in two different physical formats (as well as dititally). The standard edition comes with 14 photographic prints and the CD in a custom-made box. The deluxe edition also includes a poster, and it'll be hand-numbered. Above, you can see what the box looks like. We've got the tracklist and Bloodworth's photos of Skream and Flying Lotus below.

Go here for additional details and to hear samples of tracks from the compilation.

North/South/East/West:

01 Daedelus: "A Bloodworth"
02 Hudson Mohawke: "FUSE"
03 Geeneus: "Ultrafunkula"
04 Flying Lotus: "Comet Course (Matthew David Alternative Mix)"
05 Headhunter: "Collecting Butterflies"
06 FaltyDL: "Some Day My Queen Will Come"
07 Flying Lotus: "Rickshaw"
08 Skream: "Slumfunk"
09 Mike Slott: "Giants Meet"
10 Kotchy: "You Know You"
11 Rustie: "Bad Science"
12 Taz Buckfaster: "Au Revoir"

Skream:

Flying Lotus:

Listen: Beck's "Harry Partch" Song

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:15:00 -0600

Photo by Drew Brown

We're not exactly sure how much a recent Radiohead diss by the Fiery Furnaces' Matthew Friedberger inspired Beck to release a 10-minute-plus tribute to experimental composer Harry Partch, but we're glad this thing exists. And it's up on Beck's site now. (Read about the convoluted quasi-beef here.)

Veering from hip-hop to country to psych to R&B, the brand new song is a one-stop-shop that covers Beck's entire career. (And, considering its intense arrangement, it's also one of the most Fiery Furnaces-y tunes Beck's ever made, in a weird way.)

According to Beck's site, the track is "a tribute to the composer and his desire to make the body and music unified into what he termed 'Corporeality.' The song employs Partch's 43 tone scale, which expands conventional tonality into a broader variation of frequencies and resonances." Why not?! (Also: That brief beat at the 7:27 mark is something fierce.)

Listen to Beck's "Harry Partch" here.

Tom Waits, Andrew Bird, Jim James Team With Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0600

Photo by Cameron Wittig

The Preservation Hall is a 48-year-old French Quarter mainstay known for its deep New Orleans jazz legacy. In honor of the venue and its music outreach program, an impressive group of artists recorded tracks with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a benefit album called Preservation, due February 16 via RED. (Via TwentyFourBit)

Performers on the record include Tom Waits (who does a version of the Mardi Gras song "Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing"), Andrew Bird, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Pete Seeger, Dr. John, Steve Earle, Blind Boys of Alabama, Merle Haggard, Richie Havens, Jason Isbell, and more.

New Vampire Weekend Video: "Cousins"

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:25:00 -0600

Take a trip up and down and up and down (and up and down) a city street in the comedic new Vampire Weekend video, directed by Garth Jennings, for their punky new single "Cousins".

"Cousins" is out now digitally via XL. It'll come out on 7" on December 15. The song is also on Vampire Weekend's new album Contra, out January 12.