Dancing About Architecture 03.20.07
Posted by Ian Wright on 03.20.2007
The quietest week of the year, Antony, The Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, I know all and Lily Allen.
The bit at the start
Hi. The indie world kind of took a break from making news last week for SXSW and as I wasn't there I can't tell you who was good and who wasn't. Although judging by the number of drunken texts I received from my friend who was in Austin it was a lot of fun. Apparently Jape were marvellous though which pleased me a lot. I've been a big fan for a couple of years now and having heard much of the next album live I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be something of a minor masterpiece.
Beg, borrow, buy, steal or download this album.
Bruce Springsteen – Live 1975/85
Three and a half astonishing hours of the boss.
The Dancing About Architecture MySpace band of the week.
Elephant 6 mainstays back touring with a new album this year.
Recommended song: 7 Stars.
You news, you lose
I told you so .
Last week I reported that this year's pitchfork fest in Chicago would see the North American debut of ATP's "Don't Look Back" series. I also speculated that the band likely to be playing would be Sonic Youth and that the album in question would be Daydream Nation.
WELL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME BITCHES FOR I KNOW ALL.
Taking place in Chicago's Union Park on July 13th the Youth will perform their seminal 1988 album in it's entirety. But that's not all, Pitchfork announced last week that there will be 2 more bands taking part in the Don't Look Back portion of the festival. They haven't announced who the bands will be but I've got a feeling that it'll be Slint performing Spiderland and either The Melvins performing Houdini or Comets on Fire performing Blue Cathedral.
Tickets for the Friday night of Pitchfork Fest are available for $15, individual day weekend passes are $25, full weekend passes are $35 or you can go to all 3 days for $50 which seems like good value to me.
It's not really news.
But there's not much news this week and I never really need much of an excuse to write about them. Arcade Fire's Neon Bible charted at #2 in the US and the UK in its first week of release selling over 92,000 and 67,000 copies in each country respectively. It was beaten in the US by a dead rapper and by a really shit band from Yorkshire in the UK.
There were no such "close but not close enough" talk in their home country of Canada or in my home country of Ireland where the album went straight in at #1. We're also the only country to give Interpol a #1 album.
On the other hand we kept David Gray's career afloat for a number of years.
Better than the parade that went through Dublin on Saturday.
Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug has been pretty busy in the past 12 months what with recording and touring with Sunset Rubdown as well as playing with Frog Eyes but despite keeping a slightly lower profile than his bandmate Dan Boeckner has been keeping himself busy with his own band Handsome Furs but the good news is that in spite of all these extracurricular activities there is a new Wolf Parade album in the works. Boeckner (a.k.a. the shouty one) spoke to Pitchfork about it last week.
"If everything goes according to plan, we're going to start recording the record over the next couple of weeks into the spring," said Boeckner. "I'd like to be finished with this record by May.
"Everybody's back to the same city and I think we're ready. I know everybody's chomping at the bit to get this record recorded. And I think we're going to do it really, really fast, and record it ourselves. "To be totally honest, we've been working on this record since the last record was finished. We have more than an album's worth of material that anybody who's come to see us live in the last year has heard. And the way it's going right now, I don't think a lot of those songs are going to get put on the record. We started writing brand new stuff, and we kind of re-arranged the way we were writing, which is really exciting.
"[Co-frontman] Spencer [Krug], [drummer] Arlen [Thompson], Hadji and I have been just getting together and jamming for hours at a time without stopping and then putting it on tape. I think we're always looking for a way to do things democratically in Wolf Parade, because we've all got our fingers in other things. And I think this way we've achieved this total, idealistic, Marxist mindset, where we're just recording stuff as it gets written, and then going over it, saying 'That's a song, there.' And then playing it and adding lyrics to it."
Hope there's someone who'll listen to me.
Posting on a fansite dedicated to him recently Antony asked fans to stop bootlegging his gigs and threatened to stop making music if people continued to do so.
The post on the site Just One Star reads "Now I have one favour to ask you. Please stop recording my concerts and trading them, it makes me feel terrible."
"I feel like the thing I have to offer an audience is the live experience. But for them to record my concerts sort of feel like I am being stolen from. It's kind of like inviting people over for dinner and before they leave they go into your fridge and clear you out, take everything you have, on their way out the door."
"This year I was hoping to develop ideas for the new album and some live concerts, but at this rate I am feeling discouraged because of the bootlegging," he wrote. "So do me a favour...be my fan and my friend and don't record my shows."
In this day and age it's pretty unusual for indie acts to be anti-bootlegging as they can often be a tool for spreading the word about an artist but I suppose if one were planning on using gigs to experiment with new material the thought that unfinished material might wind up on the web could scupper those plans
Not as sick as I am of hearing them love.
Ah no, Lily Allen is alright, still.
Writing in her MySpace blog the spawn of one of the most disliked men in British entertainment said that she's sick of singing her songs, "Life is weird at the moment. Is it really important to break America? If it is I have to write my life off for the next 9 months, playing the same gig answering the same questions to different journalists and such. It's either that or I could go home, sit on my boyfriend's sofa for a bit, then write a new album. What d'you reckon?"
"As much as I love driving across America and doing the same thing every night, I'm bored slightly. It's the songs. Since January I've toured Japan, New Zealand and Australia, I've done a European tour, gone to Paris Fashion Week, done a UK tour and now I'm on a US tour which goes on until May. I don't know what to do."
Cry me a fucking river, Lily. Must suck to have found an audience for your music and then get to gig to them around the world.
If you can you should go to these gigs.
Modest Mouse
03-19 Fargo, ND - Playmakers Pavilion *
03-21 Seattle, WA - South Lake Union Naval Reserve
04-15 Seattle, WA - Paramount Theatre
04-16 Vancouver, British Columbia - Pacific Coliseum
04-20 Minneapolis, MN - Orpheum Theatre
04-21 Minneapolis, MN - Orpheum Theatre
04-22 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre
04-26 Rochester, NY - Main Street Armory *
04-27 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre
04-29 New York, NY - The United Palace
04-30 New York, NY - The United Palace
05-02 Providence, RI - Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
05-03 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory
05-04 Greensboro, NC - Special Events Center
05-05 Atlanta, GA - Masquerade Music Park
05-06 Birmingham, AL - BJCC Arena Concert Hall
05-08 New Orleans, LA - House of Blues
05-09 Austin, TX - The Backyard
05-10 Grand Prairie, TX - Nokia Live
05-12 Mesa, AZ - Mesa Amphitheater
05-13 Los Angeles, CA - greek Theatre
05-14 San Diego, CA - Cox Arena at San Diego State University
05-16 San Jose, CA - San Jose State University
05-20 Somerset, England - Butlins Minehead (ATP vs. the Fans)
05-23 London, England - Royal Albert Hall
06-01 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Sound
* with Love as Laughter
Grizzly Bear
04-19 Middletown, CT - Eclectic House (Wesleyan University)
04-21 Bennington, VT - Bennington College Student Center
04-29 Indio, CA - Empire Polo Field (Coachella)
05-11 Cologne, Germany - Gebaude 9
05-12 Hamburg, Germany - Prinzenbar
05-13 Brussels, Belgium - Cactus
05-14 Paris, France - L'Etoiles
05-16 Leicester, England - Charlotte
05-17 Glasgow, Scotland - Nice 'n' Sleazy
05-18 Dublin, Ireland - Whelans
05-20 Somerset, England - Butlins Minehead (ATP vs the Fans)
05-21 London, England - Scala
05-26 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
07-14 Chicago, IL - Union Park (Pitchfork Music Festival) *
* with Cat Power, Clipse, Iron & Wine, Girl Talk, Professor Murder
Dinosaur Jr.
05-10 San Diego, CA - The Casbah *
05-11 West Hollywood, CA - The Troubadour
05-12 West Hollywood, CA - The Troubadour
05-13 West Hollywood, CA - The Troubadour
05-15 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
05-16 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
05-17 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
05-18 Seattle, WA - The Showbox
05-19 Olympia, WA - Capitol Theatre
05-20 Bellingham, WA - The Nightlight
05-22 Victoria, British Columbia - Sugar Nightclub
05-23 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
05-25 Calgary, Alberta - MacEwan Hall
05-26 Edmonton, Alberta - Starlite Room
05-27 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Odeon Events Centre
05-28 Winnipeg, Manitoba - Garrick Centre
05-29 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock
05-30 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock
05-31 Chicago, IL - The Abbey Pub
06-01 Chicago, IL - The Abbey Pub
06-02 Chicago, IL - The Abbey Pub
06-03 Ann Arbor, MI - The Blind Pig
06-04 Ann Arbor, MI - The Blind Pig
06-06 New York, NY - Irving Plaza
06-07 New York, NY - Irving Plaza
06-08 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix Concert Theatre
06-09 Montreal, Quebec - Club Soda
* J Mascis and friends
Writing under the influence
Without which this column would not have been possible:
Various cricket and football matches.
The bit at the end
There are unconfirmed reports that Lisa Hannigan may be quit Damien Rice's band. Allegedly there was some sort of falling out prior to a gig in Germany a couple of nights ago and she hasn't been at the band's last 2 gigs.
Apparently Ireland are now good at cricket. The world has something wrong with it.
