Dancing About Architecture Indie Music News Report 9.29.09
Posted by Ian Wright on 09.29.2009
Live reports on Okkervil River, Future Islands, The Tallest Man On Earth and Sunset Rubdown. The Pavement reunion, a Spiritualized reissue, New Moon's awesome soundtrack, Leaonard Cohen takes ill, a Merge remix compilation, and more.
The bit at the start
Hello. This week I don't really have anything to crib from my blog to put here so by way of experiment I'm going to steal from my twitter feed review of Girls' initially promising debut.
# Late to the party but I just started the Girls Album, "Album" (Girls' album "Album"?) sublime songwriting but I can see it boring me fast.
# Actually upon further listening the only band that can get away with this retro pastiche/vaguely dissonant combo bullshit is Yo La Tengo.
# This morning was a wasted opportunity to be misleadingly provocative. "Why do Girls make such fucking boring music?"
# (Opinion subject to change ... again)
@ihwright you said the song-writing was sublime so you can't be THAT bored, eh?
# @adamprincebilly Yeah but I could get the EXACT same thing from the Elvis Costello records they're ripping off. (Or MBV on one tune)
# @adamprincebilly Anyway, Cat Stevens' songwriting is even more sublime and he bores me to death too.
Beg, borrow, buy, steal or download this album.
The Dudley Corporation – In love with the Dudley Corporation
Fantastic stop-start indie pop from Irish three-piece.
You news, you lose
Fight fight fight.
The morning is coming, and it may just be coming soon when it'll be skinny jeans at dawn between Wavves' Nathan Williams and Jared Swilly of Black Lips. In fact there's already allegedly been violence between the two.
The beef between the pair stems from Williams' drug fuelled meltdown at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier in the year and Swilly's comments to a Norwegian radio station about the incident and Williams personally, "I've heard stories from others that he's like a real dick. And just like a baby, thought he was really cool."
According to the Pop Jew blog Williams allegedly attacked Swilly in the Williamsburg bar Daddy's in New York on Friday night following a Wavves show in the Market Hotel. Or at least that's one side of the story.
"I didn't see the beginning, but I did see people dragging Nathan and Jared apart, and then Jared and a popular DJ running at Nathan again, spilling beer all over everyone (including me), and punches being thrown. The lights at Daddy's were turned on, the cops showed up, but Jared and the chick were not ready to stop fighting and were even trying to fight other people outside the bar. Jared was bloody. Nathan was fine."
Williams then issued a statement to Brooklyn Vegan about the incident saying: "Talking shit about me on the Internet is one thing, I can handle that all day but when some dude is just looking for a fight at 4 in the morning talking shit to my face and his girlfriend is spitting in the face of all my friends it's a whole different story. I have no problem wih [sic] black lips or anybody else that i havent met but jared has been at me every chance he had. I just want to play music and have fun. It was unfortunate that it escalated to that point but he got what was coming to him."
However, Swilly then told his version of what happened to Buddyhead: "First of all, I just wanna say that Wavves was NOT involved in that fight. That faggot didn't even touch me.
I've never 'come after' that kid, it wasn't four a.m., that wasn't my girlfriend, no one was spitting, and I didn't attack him. I don't give a shit about that kid and his music.
What happened was, after we finished our set I went to Daddy's with some friends and saw that faggot from Wavves talking to a photographer friend of mine. The only thing I did was walk up to him and say 'You're that faggot from Wavves and I don't like you'. He smiled a bit but didn't say anything.
After that, I went outside and saw their tour manager hanging around with some guys. They started getting all chuckles with me and so I told them I wasn't gonna have it. After that, Wavves tour manager hit me square in the face with a bottle. Blood started pouring out and six dudes fucking started kicking me until I blacked out.
All I remember is getting hit with the bottle and my friends dragging me to another bar. They wrapped my head up until I looked like a Confederate soldier.
So yeah, I lost the fight.
I also missed three flights. I've been in the airport all day having stewardesses cleaning my head because it kept cracking open. You can't go on board if you're bleeding.
Bottom line is that faggot from Wavves didn't even hit me. Never touched me. And he should've, cuz he had a free shot.
He's coming to Atlanta October 3rd and we're gonna get ugly on him. We're gonna destroy their van, we're gonna destroy their faces, we're gonna get crazy on em'. Nasty style."
So there you have it, it's all terribly undignified but I'll leave it up to you to decide who looks like the biggest asshole in the tale.
Round 2 to take place at a future date and location to be determined.
One for the Vinyl nerds.
As I've mentioned a few times before Merge Records are 20 years this year and they've been very busy mining their back catalogue what with covers and remix compilations. However they haven't ignored the easy way to get some mileage out of their old releases, just repackage them up real nice and stick them back in the shops. In this case they've turned their attention to what is arguably the jewels in their crown.
November 3rd will see the release of Neutral Milk Hotel's 2 full length albums, 1996's On Avery Island and the follow up from 1998 In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, one of the most widely praised indie albums of the last decade or so on 180 gm vinyl. As is standard with these things these days the albums will come with MP3 vinyl vouchers.
The later album is a stone cold classic and if you don't already own it I can't recommend it highly enough, the earlier record, personally I really like it but it's nowhere near as acclaimed.
Typical, you wait 11 years for an album and then 2 come at once.
Just a year after Portishead released their third full length album the band are working on their fourth. In a recent interview with the BBC band member Geoff Barrow said, "We're going to start writing and if all goes well it could be [out] in a year's time," which would be a helluva lot of a shorter gap between albums then fans of the band are used to.
The band are currently without a label and according to Barrow are considering their options with regard to releasing their next album and have "big plans" to work on it "from a different angle."
Not Fucked Up At All.
Canada's version of the Shortlist Prize, the Polaris music prize, was awarded last week. Now in it's 4th year the band and album to follow in the footsteps of Caribou, Final Fantasy and Patrick Watson and take home the 20 grand prize was hardcore band it's ok for indie wimps to like Fucked Up and The Chemistry Of Common Life which beat out the likes of Metric, Great Lakes Swimmers, and Malajube for the prize.
The band weren't too optimistic about the awards going in with front man Pink Eyes saying after the event "We got frisked on our way in and I said, 'This [evening] is gonna suck, but at least we'll get a free iPod.' Well, we won the Polaris. It's a lot better than an iPod."
Early next year the band will release a compilation of their singles from 2001 to 2009 on Matador.
Still left of the dial.o
Ex-Replacement Paul Westerberg released a new 6-track EP called PW & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys. At present the EP is available for MP3 or CD purchase on Amazon.
Tracklisting:
01 Ghost on the Canvas
02 Drop Them Gloves
03 Good as the Cat
04 Love on the Wing
05 Gimmie Little Joy
06 Dangerous Boys
More Built To Spill.
"Hindsight" from the upcoming Built To Spill album There Is No Enemy, which is hitting store shelves on October 6th, has been streaming online for a couple of weeks now but just last week another song "Things Fall Apart" made it's way onto the web. You can listen to it here
Matador Ted.
If history is anything to go by signing Ted Leo & The Pharmacists is a bad move for a record label. Their original label Lookout! Records folded and they then moved to Touch and Go who, in turn, announced earlier in the year that they were going to cease releasing new records.
So it might be bad news for Matador records that they've signed up Mr. Leo and his Pharmacists. Fingers crossed that history doesn't repeat itself again.
09-25 New York, NY - Guggenheim Museum *
11-14 San Diego, CA - House of Blues *
11-16 Seattle, WA - Chop Suey *
11-17 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom *
11-18 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *
11-19 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre *
11-21 Chicago, CA - Metro *
11-23 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club *
11-24 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom *
11-25 Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Bowl *
11-27 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church *
12-01 Dublin, Ireland - The Academy
12-02 Manchester, England - Academy 2
12-03 London, England - Scala
12-05 Brussels, Belgium - Botanique
12-06 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Melkweg
12-08 Cologne, Germany - Kulturkirche
12-09 Berlin, Germany - Festsaal
12-11 Vienna, Austria - Arena
12-12 Milan, Italy - Magazzini
12-13 Paris, France - Alahambra
* with I'm in You
Los Campesinos!
01 Ghost on the Canvas
02 Drop Them Gloves
03 Good as the Cat
04 Love on the Wing
05 Gimmie Little Joy
06 Dangerous Boys0-21 Coventry, England - Kasbah ^%
10-22 Southampton, England - Joiners ^%
10-23 Exeter, England - Phoenix ^%
10-24 Cardiff, Wales - The Gate ^%$
10-26 Manchester, England - Deaf Institute ^%
10-27 Newcastle, England - University ^%
10-28 London, England - Garage ^%
10-29 Oxford, London - Zodiac ^%
10-30 Leeds, England - Cockpit ^%
10-31 Glasgow, Scotland - King Tut's ^%
12-02 Birmingham, England - O2 Academy @
12-03 London, England - Brixton Academy @
12-05 Doncaster, England - Dome @
12-06 Edinburgh, Scotland - Corn Exchange @
@ with the Cribs
^ with Copy Haho
% with Sparky Deathcap
$ with DANANANANAYKROYD
Dan Deacon
10-01 Chapel Hill, NC - Cat's Cradle *
10-02 Atlanta, GA - Eyedrum *
10-03 Athens, GA - 40 Watt *
10-04 Birmingham, AL - Bottletree *
10-05 Nashville, TN - Exit/In *
10-06 Memphis, TN - Hi Tone Café *
10-07 New Orleans, LA - Big Top *
10-09 Austin, TX - Emo's *
10-10 Marfa, TX - The Shade Structure*
10-14 Irvine, CA - University of California-Irvine *
10-15 Los Angeles, CA - Echo *
10-16 Los Angeles, CA - Eagle Rock Center for the Arts *
10-17 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Festival
10-19 Sacramento, CA - Fungarden *
10-21 Eugene, OR - University of Oregon Cultural Forum *
10-22 Portland, OR - Worksound *
10-23 Portland, OR - Holocene *
10-24 Seattle, WA - Vera Project *
10-27 Denver, CO - Rhinoceropolis *
10-29 Northfield, MN - Carleton College *
10-30 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium *
11-01 Gambier, OH - Kenyon College *
11-03 Toronto, Ontario - Sneaky Dees *
11-04 Toronto, Ontario - Great Hall *
11-05 Montreal, Quebec - Il Motore *
11-06 Montreal, Quebec - Eastern Bloc *
11-07 Middlebury, VT - Middlebury College *
11-08 Boston, MA - Mass Art *
11-10 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse *
11-13 Worcester, MA - Clark University *
11-15 Ithaca, NY - Ithaca College *
* with Nuclear Power Pants
Writing under the influence
Without which this column would not have been possible:
Talk Radio
Islands - Vapours
The bit at the end
Jesus Lizard were fucking awesome in Dublin last week. Nodzzz were not quite as good but a lot of fun on Friday.
