Dancing About Architecture 08.29.06
Posted by Ian Wright on 08.29.2006
Radiohead, The Shins, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Dylan and Weezer arent splitting up apparently.
The bit at the start
I'm unwell and all I want to do is talk about Radiohead.
I caught their gig in Dublin last Thursday, Beck opened, Deerhoof opened, what could go wrong?
Absolutely fucking nothing. It was an amazing gig, 3 brilliant performances. Radiohead were astonishingly good, Thom Yorke was in great voice, new songs were fantastic (a little perturbed that they didn't play "Bodysnatchers") and "Videotape" sounds like it's going to be amongst the best things that they've ever done.
I want the new album NOW!!!
I also really wish people in Ireland would stop cheering for that "I float down the liffey" line.
Beg, borrow, buy, steal or download this album.
Ninja High School Young Adults Against Suicide.
"You're going home in a fucking ambulance." Love it.
You news, you lose
DVD in it's right place.
It wasn't just Thursday's gig in Dublin that was special, apparently Radiohead's performance at this year's Bonaroo festival was pretty damn mindblowing. So much so in fact that the band are planning on releasing it as a live DVD at some point in the future.
In an interview with BBC 6 Music Thom Yorke told Tom Robinson, "We did this festival called Bonnaroo. We did 2.5 hours. And there's 80,000 people, admittedly they've been smoking the sticky green all day-- probably wouldn't go anywhere anyway. It was just amazing. We played loads of new stuff. We did whole sections of quiet piano songs and it sounds like the most grotesque, self-indulgent nonsense, but it probably is my favourite gig for years and years and years. It was a really mellow evening. Actually it's all being filmed, but we're sitting on it because there's loads of new stuff on it. Because we're mean like that. It will come out eventually."
If they're planning on releasing the entire gig this means that the tracklisting will be the following:
01 There There
02 2+2=5
03 15 Step
04 Arpeggi
05 Exit Music
06 Kid A
07 Dollars and Cents
08 Videotape
09 No Surprises
10 Paranoid Android
11 The Gloaming
12 The National Anthem
13 Climbing Up the Walls
14 Nude
15 Street Spirit
16 The Bends
17 Myxomatosis
18 How to Disappear Completely
First Encore:
19 You And Whose Army?
20 Pyramid Song
21 Like Spinning Plates
22 Fake Plastic Trees
23 Bodysnatchers
24 Lucky
25 Idioteque
26 Karma Police
Second Encore:
27 House of Cards
28 Everything in Its Right Place
That's a pretty amazing setlist there folks, it certainly blows the last live video (that's right video, it was that long ago) that they released pre-The Bends out of the water.
Kicked in the...
We may have to wait till next year to hear it but they have given some details about it to billboard (and why not me? Fuckers). It'll be out in January and it's called Wincing The Night Away.
Billboard is reporting that apart for some backing vocals the album is recorded and ready for mixing. There'll probably be ten songs on it including "Phantom Limb", "a hypothetical, fictional account of a young, lesbian couple in high school dealing with the shitty small town they live in," according to James Mercer, "Red Rabbits" which is "a strange psychedelic piano number with this really tweaked out sound", "Sea Legs", "Spelling Lessons", "Spilled Needles", and "A Comet Appears". That's some odd descriptions there; but one of the things that I love about The Shins is that they can sing about really dark stuff while making it sound incredibly sweet.
The album is their last on their current contract with Sub Pop and Mercer is well aware of that, "We really like the more creative sort of ways people have been putting out their records lately," Mercer said. "People are owning their own masters and having distribution deals. That's real attractive. It's an expensive business. It's probably more expensive for the artists than anyone else."
Well that's ... interesting. Expect the Shins to sign with Interscope (because everyone else sure as shit is) sometime in the middle of next year.
I am trying to sell you a DVD.
Some people think Jeff Tweedy is a genius. Ryan Adams is not one of them.
Nonetheless there'll be plenty of other people to buy his upcoming solo live DVD featuring material from his 2006 solo tour. It's called Sunken Treasure and it features Tweedy playing material by Wilco, Uncle Tupolo and Loose Fur in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Arcata, and San Francisco.
According to the Wilco website the DVD also addresses the "isolated bleakness" of touring (that's what groupies are for dude) and the "sense of community" that arises at Tweedy's gigs (he's the Mayor). Sounds like a barrel of laughs, at least there won't be any hugely passive-aggressive exchanges between bandmates this time around.
01 Sunken Treasure
02 Theologians
03 The Ruling Class
04 How to Fight Loneliness
05 Summerteeth
06 The Thanks I Get
07 I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
08 ELT
09 Shot in the Arm
10 Black Eye
11 In a Future Age
12 Laminated Cat
13 (Was I) In Your Dreams
14 Airline to Heaven
15 Heavy Metal Drummer
16 War on War
17 Acuff Rose
The DVD is out on October 24th on Nonesuch.
Apparently Rivers isn't in Japan, he's in opposite land.
I reported a few weeks back that River's Cuomo told MTV that "Really, for the moment, we are done And I'm not certain we'll ever make a record again, unless it becomes really obvious to me that we need to do one."
Seems pretty categorical right? Well not if you read between the lines, the band have since posted the following statement online "...A Public Service Announcement from the weez: We right here!
(except for Pat who's on a family vacation right now)
this PSA has been brought to you by the fine guacamole dip at Scott Shriner's house, co-sponsored by a ring of fine cheese, and a dish of fresh figs from the back yard. Now please, take those 'weezer split?' headlines and place them firmly into the 'Don't believe the hype' bin. And have yourself a fine afternoon now."
So now you know.
Pat is on vaction.
The rest seems up in the air.
Well you certainly haven't made a decent one in about 3 decades.
Bob Dylan has slammed, that's right SLAMMED the quality of modern records. In an interview with Rolling Stone he said that, "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really."
Dylan also rubbished modern formats by saying "CDs are small, there's no stature to it", while the music had "no definition of nothing, no nothing, just like... static".
Surprisingly he did say he was in favour of music downloads but for an unusual reason. When asked about file sharing "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
Legend that he is I really think Dylan should shut up, go back to selling woman's underwear and performing gigs in the manner of a bad Bob Dylan impersonator, I'm sorry his hands are so fucked he can't play guitar anymore but just because he's got an album coming out there's no need to make such blatantly publicity seeking statements.
If you can you should go to these gigs.
Apparently no one good announced dates this week.
Writing under the influence
Without which this column would not have been possible:
Talk Radio
Sunset Rubdown I'll believe in anything, you'll believe in anything (No, it's not just a Wolf Parade song).
Tapes n' Tapes The Loon
We Are Scientists With love and squalor
The bit at the end
There won't be a column next week. I'm going to a music festival. See you in a fortnight.
