On March 9, XL will release The Monitor, the sprawling, blown-out, vaguely Civil-War-themed sophomore album from Jersey rockers Titus Andronicus. And up above, you can download the album's charged-up seven-minute opener "A More Perfect Union". If, after hearing that one, you're not totally convinced about the album, click below to watch the stirring YouTube trailer for it.
In the coming months, Titus Andronicus will engage in an insane amount of touring. Go see them and let them crash on your floor.
Joanna Newsom is notoriously mysterious; she's not the type you'll find Tweeting about her life, or even giving very many interviews. She seems to exist outside of the traditional music industry hype cycle, to a certain degree. So it's a nice surprise to discover that she will perform on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" next Friday, March 5. Newsom will perform "Soft as Chalk" from the recently Best New Music-bestowed Have One on Me.
Unfortunately, Newsom won't be joined by "Fallon" house band the Roots (now there's a team-up we'd love to see). But you know who will? ErykahBadu, when she performs new single "Window Seat" on "Fallon" on Wednesday, March 3. (The Roots will also back up Hall and Oates doing "I Can't Go for That" on Monday's episode of "Fallon". Busy guys.)
Among her bounty of new, more "dance-oriented" songs is a "rap duel" with Snoop Dogg, a track produced by Röyksopp called "None of Dem" that she says sounds like a Timbaland song, one called "Fembot" that's about "30-year-old women who want to get pregnant" (Robyn turned 30 last year), another one called "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do", and "Dance Hall Queen", which was produced by Diplo and mysteriously found its way onto the internet earlier this month. So yeah, feel free to get excited.
Bon reports the first LP is due this spring, with the following two out in summer and winter, and that Klas Åhlund, Andreas Kleerup, Patrik Berger, and Savage Skulls also worked with Robyn on the new material.
The lengthy interview (which is not on Bon's website at the moment but is definitely worth seeking out) has Robyn talking about trying to make pop star machinery work for her, Lady Gaga ("I don't like her music"), Fever Ray ("It's good music. But that's the tastemaker world ... I am talking about the commercial music world, which is my world."), feeling self-conscious while taking African dance lessons, Michael Jackson, Obama ("It's better that [the U.S.] voted for Obama to be their king instead of Bush, but to believe that Obama has some power or some real effect on our society-- that is just silly, right?"), along with her Stockholm dance party, Konichiwa Bitches Goes Tutti Frutti, which recently featured a middle-aged woman performing a version of the song "Tutti Frutti" with an accordion while dressed up in fruits.
These days, it feels like Magnetic Fields leader Stephin Merritt has been a sardonic elder figure in indie pop ever since the beginning of time. But believe it or not, Merritt actually was a teenager once upon a time, and he was recording even then. The blog the Mythic Signifier has proof.
According to the Mythic Signifier, back in 1986, future Magnetic Fields principals Merritt and Claudia Gonson formed the Zinnias, the band that would go on to become the Magnetic Fields. They self-released a cassette called Sand Dollar, which Merritt later remixed and rereleased as Compost. And over on the Mythic Signifier, you can download both of them. Magnetic Fields fans should have fun seeing how much of the current Merritt they can hear in the much younger version.
Arcade Fire's connection to Haiti runs deep, and the band has been active inraising funds forand awareness of the devastation wrought by the country's mid-January earthquake. According to director Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense, Silence of the Lambs, various Neil Young projects), the band and Demme were planning on filming a documentary in Haiti this year, but the earthquake thwarted their plans.
Demme told The Boston Phoenix (via the Playlist), "I was heading for Haiti last Friday with the band Arcade Fire. We were going to do a music driven, kind of music documentary, against a backdrop of carnival in Jacmel-- the great, now devastated, south coast Haitian city. We had our final conference call the morning of the day the quake struck. We were gonna go down anyway until we realized we can't really get there. My personal feeling was, those who go down two months or three months from now, with a specific mission in mind, will be valuable in their own way, as the people that are going now. So I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go within the next six months, but I haven't been yet."
Demme also has experience in Haiti. In 2003, he released the film The Agronomist, about the Haitian journalist and activist Jean Dominique.
Destroyer, the art-pop project of big-haired New Pornographer and word-splattererDan Bejar, changes so much from album to album that it can be hard to keep up.
Merge, however, will make catching up a little easier when the label reissues remastered versions of three of the band's early albums on April 20: 1998's City of Daughters, 2000's Thief, and 2001's cultishly beloved Streethawk: A Seduction.
City of Daughters and Thief will be available on CD, and Streethawk is coming on both CD and vinyl. All the CDs will come in new packaging.
A while back, Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle had some nice things to say about Destroyer on his Last Plane to Jakarta website; you can read that here.
Robert "Chilly B" Crafton, co-founder of the pioneering Brooklyn electro-rap group Newcleus, died on Tuesday after suffering a stroke, as the NewcleusMySpace page reports (via the Daily Swarm). Crafton sang, rapped, and played bass and keyboards in Newcleus, best-known for the massive (and great) 1984 vocoder opus "Jam on It", as well as similarly spacey joints "Jam on Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song)" and "Computer Age". He was 47.
After the jump, watch the time-capsule "Jam on It" video.
Superfans rejoice! The Pavement reunion tour is now just a few days away from kicking into gear; the first show goes down March 1 in Auckland, New Zealand. And a couple of members of the band giving the world a peek into their tour preparation.
On his blog, guitarist Spiral Stairs has posted a few words and photos (like the one above) about the reunion process: "we recently had two good weeks of practice in portland. it was the first time some of us had been in the same room together for close to 10 years. i think we all were a little nervous. it started off pretty rough, except for our drummer who probably practiced the most. but... by the time we had finished, most of the 40 plus songs we had rehearsed were sounding pretty good." 40+ songs! That's a lot of songs. (Thanks to Guy Shield for the heads up.)
In the same post, Spiral Stairs writes that he also plans to play a few of his own shows during Pavement's off-days this year.
Drummer Steve West, meanwhile, has his own YouTube channel, where he likes to post tour survival tips. Most of the clips are from his most recent tour with his band Marble Valley, but a few recent clips show West in the vicinity of his Pavement compadres, and you even get to hear a snippet of music being practiced in one. You might not learn a whole lot, but if you want to reassure yourself that the tour is actually happening, click below to watch some of the videos.
03-01 Auckland, New Zealand - Town Hall 03-04 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre 03-05 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre 03-06 Meredith, Australia - Supernatural Amphitheatre (Golden Plains Festival) 03-07 Adelaide, Australia - Thebarton Theatre 03-08 Perth, Australia - Metro City 03-10 Brisbane, Australia - Tivoli 03-12 Melbourne, Australia - Palace Theatre 03-14 Melbourne, Australia - Palace Theatre 04-07 Tokyo, Japan - Studio Coast 04-08 Tokyo, Japan - Studio Coast 04-10 Osaka, Japan - Zepp Osaka 04-12 Nagoya, Japan - Zepp Nagoya 04-18 Indio, CA - Coachella Festival 05-04 Dublin, Ireland - Tripod 05-05 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowland 05-07 Paris, France - Le Zénith 05-08 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso 05-10 London, England - Brixton Academy 05-11 London, England - Brixton Academy 05-12 London, England - Brixton Academy 05-13 London, England - Brixton Academy 05-15 Minehead, England - All Tomorrow's Parties 05-18 Brussels, Belgium - AncienneBelgique 05-19 Berlin, Germany - Astra 05-20 Prague, Czech Republic - PalacAkropolis 05-21 Vienna, Austria - Arena 05-22 Munich, Germany - Muffathalle 05-24 Rome, Italy - Atlantico Live 05-25 Bologna, Italy - Estragon 05-27 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Festival 05-30 Quincy, Washington - Sasquatch! Festival 06-19 Toronto, Ontario - Olympic Island 06-25 Berkeley, CA - Greek Theatre 07-02 Gdynia, Poland - Open'er Festival 07-04 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival 07-08 Liege, Belgium - Les Ardentes Festival 07-18 Chicago, IL - Pitchfork Music Festival 08-12 Oslo, Norway - Oya Festival 08-14 Gothenburg, Sweden - Way Out West Festival 09-21 New York, NY - Central Park Summerstage 09-22 New York, NY - Central Park Summerstage 09-23 New York, NY - Central Park Summerstage 09-24 New York, NY - Central Park Summerstage
As previously reported, PoguesfrontmanShane MacGowan has recruited a battalion of punk stars to cover Screamin' Jay Hawkins' song "I Put a Spell on You", with money going to the Dublin charity Concern Worldwide's Haiti relief efforts. The track is released March 7 and is up for pre-order now.
Watch the video for the track, embedded below, via Prefix. It features footage of MacGowan, Nick Cave, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, the Clash's Mick Jones (banging on a fire extinguisher!), the Sex Pistols' Glen Matlock, and more recording in the studio. Sunset Rubdown fan Johnny Depp plays guitar.
This morning, the Twin Cities public radio station 89.3 The Current debuted a new and characteristically batshit Prince song called "Cause and Effect". It features screaming guitar solos, acoustic interludes, rumbling rockabilly riffs, fake crowd noise, and Flea-esque slap-bass, all of which is crammed into about five minutes. The track is now streaming on their website, and embedded below.
