Steve Gunn - "Morning Is Mended" Video, New European Dates

May 2nd, 2019 at 10:13 am by Gerard

Snail Mail - New August Dates

May 1st, 2019 at 10:43 am

Announcing: Kate Wallich + The YC x Perfume Genius 'The Sun Still Burns Here'

April 29th, 2019 at 6:38 pm

Interpol - Additional North American 2019 Dates

April 23rd, 2019 at 10:01 am

Kurt Vile - New Spotify Single, More North American Dates

April 17th, 2019 at 10:26 am by Gerard

Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus - Austin City Limits TV Taping, Tuesday July 30

April 16th, 2019 at 11:01 am

Austin City Limits is thrilled to welcome two remarkable artists under the age of 25-years-old.  Lauded singer/songwriter phenoms Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus join us for the first time on July 30 for a taping highlight—a one-of-a-kind co-headline evening with these two accomplished solo artists.

Memphis native Julien Baker’s chilling solo debut, 'Sprained Ankle', was one of the most widely acclaimed works of 2015. The album, recorded by a then 18-year-old and her friend in only a few days, was a bleak yet hopeful, intimate document of staggering experiences and grace, centered entirely around Baker’s voice, guitar, and unblinking honesty. Sprained Ankle appeared on year-end lists everywhere from NPR Music to The AV Club to New York Magazine’s Vulture. With 2017’s 'Turn Out The Lights', Baker claimed a much bigger stage, but with the same core of breathtaking vulnerability and resilience. From its opening moments — when her chiming, evocative melody is accompanied by swells of strings — Turn Out The Lights throws open the doors to the world without sacrificing the intimacy that has become a hallmark of her songs. The album explores how people live and come to terms with their internal conflict, and the alternately shattering and redemptive ways these struggles play out in relationships. “Turn Out The Lights is beautifully crafted throughout,” noted Spin, “full of the kinds of songs that linger long after they’ve ended.” Under the Radar declared, “Baker is writing faultless songs that will always have a home in our hearts because finding comfort in even the saddest moments means we're still feeling. And if we're feeling, there's hope for us yet.”



2018 was a milestone year for Richmond, VA’s Lucy Dacus.  Her widely celebrated sophomore record, Historian, was met by a cavalcade of critical elation, with NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NBC News, Slate, The Atlantic, Billboard, Paste, Stereogum, and more choosing it as one of the year’s best albums. Dacus' remarkable sense of melody and composition are the driving force throughout, giving Historian the immersive feel of an album made by an artist in full command of her powers. "This is the album I needed to make," says Dacus, who views 'Historian' as her definitive statement as a songwriter and musician. "Everything after this is a bonus." She played revelatory sold-out shows at clubs and festivals alike, along with multiple high profile television appearances.  A glance at her worldwide touring schedule in 2019 shows little sign that Dacus is slowing down, and in fact, she will release a series of songs titled 2019 to celebrate.  Recorded in here-and-there studio spurts over the last two years, 2019 will be released later this year as a physical EP on Matador Records, and will be made up of originals and cover songs tied to specific holidays, each of which will drop around their respective date: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day (and Taurus season!), Independence Day, Springsteen’s Birthday, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s.

Want to be part of the audience?  We will post information on how to get free passes a week before the taping. Follow Austin City Limits on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast episode will air on PBS later this year as part of ACL’s upcoming milestone Season 45.

VIDEO : Steve Gunn - "Chance", Summer Northeastern Dates

April 10th, 2019 at 11:57 am

Interpol - September US Dates With Morrissey

April 9th, 2019 at 8:02 am by Gerard

Interpol

Lucy Dacus - Spring '19 European Tour Announcement

April 1st, 2019 at 9:46 am

SNAIL MAIL - New North American Summer Dates, Splattertastic Version Of 'Lush' Available Now

March 19th, 2019 at 12:21 pm by Gerard

(poster by  Jesse Feinman)

In addition to the major festival appearances below, there's 3 new headlining Snail Mail shows on tap including July 31st at Brooklyn Steel. Tickets for the dates in bold go on sale this Friday at 10am local time.

July 11-4 - Winnipeg Folk Fest, Winnipeg, MB
July 15 - First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
July 21 - Pitchfork Fest, Chicago IL
Saturday, July 27 - MoPop, Detroit, MI
Sunday, July 28 Rex Theater, Pittsburgh, PA
Wednesday, July 31 - Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn, NY*

OUT NOW: Stephen Malkmus - "Groove Denied"

March 15th, 2019 at 10:16 am

VIDEO: Steve Gunn - "Vagabond" (Acoustic)

March 12th, 2019 at 1:05 pm

Snail Mail - MTV Asia & Australia / New Zealand Tour

February 25th, 2019 at 6:07 am

Lucy Dacus - New May US Dates

February 19th, 2019 at 10:06 am by Gerard

Belle and Sebastian - North America Summer 2019

February 12th, 2019 at 10:09 am by Gerard

In addition to August's hotly anticipated Boaty Weekender cruise with guests Yo La Tengo, Mogwai, Japanese Breakfest and many others, Belle and Sebastian have confirmed 8 summer appearances in the US and Canada. Tickets go on general sale this Friday at 10am local time.

Belle and Sebastian on tour (new dates in bold)

Thursday, July 11 Sprint Pavilion, Charlottesville VA
Friday, July 12 Union Transfer, Philadelphia PA
Saturday, July 13 House of Blues, Boston MA
Monday, July 15 M Telus, Montreal QC
Tuesday, July 16 Danforth Music Hall, Toronto ON
Thursday, July 18 The Warhol at Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh PA
Friday, July 19 House Of Blues, Cleveland OH
Sunday, July 21 Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak MI
Thursday August 8 The Boaty Weekender, Barcelona ES

Stream / purchase 'How To Solve Our Human Problems'

Belle & Sebastian online

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Spoon - Summer Dates With Beck, Cage The Elephant

February 11th, 2019 at 4:56 pm by Gerard

Spoon spent nearly two years touring in support of 'Hot Thoughts' so what better way to commemorate the summer of 2019 than by visiting the continent's finest ampitheatres and multi-purpose entertainment venues on a package tour alongside such show business titans as Beck and Cage The Elephant? If an answer to this question pops into your head, please don't bother sharing it as the shows are already booked and tickets go on sale rather soon (Friday at 10am local time, in fact).

stream / purchase 'Hot Thoughts'

Thursday, July 11 Sunlight Supply Amphitheater, Ridgefield WA
Saturday, July 13 Gorge Amphitheater, George WA
Tuesday, July 16 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View CA
Wednesday, July 17 FivePoint Amphitheater, Irvine CA
Friday, July 19 Park Theater, Las Vegas NV
Saturday, July 20 North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, Chula Vista CA
Sunday, July 21 Ak-Chin Pavilion, Phoenix AZ 
Tuesday, July 23 Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater, Denver CO
Friday, July 26 Austin360 Amphitheater, Austin TX
Saturday, July 27 The Dos Equis Pavilion, Dallas TX
Sunday, July 28 The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, Houston TX
Tuesday, July 30 Hollywood Casino Amphitheater, St. Louis MO
Wednesday, July 31 Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island, Chicago IL
Friday, August 2 Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati OH
Saturday, August 3 DTE Energy Music Theater, Detroit MI
Sunday, August 4 Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center, Indianapolis IN
Sunday, August 11 Budweiser Stage, Toronto ON
Monday, August 12 Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs NY
Tuesday, August 13 Darien Lake Amphitheater, Darien Center NY
Thursday, August 15 Xfinity Center, Mansfield MA
Friday, August 16 Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion, Gilford NH
Saturday, August 17 Forest Hills Stadium, Queens NY
Tuesday, August 20 PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ
Wednesday, August 21 BB&T Pavilion, Camden NJ
Thursday, August 22 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
Saturday, August 24 Coastal Credit Union Park at Walnut Creek, Raleigh NC
Sunday, August 25 PNC Music Pavilion, Charlotte NC
Tuesday, August 27 Oak Mountain Amphitheater, Birmingham AL
Thursday, August 29 Midflorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa FL
Friday, August 30 Coral Sky Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach FL

stream / purchase 'Hot Thoughts'

Car Seat Headrest - New Summer 2019 Dates

February 11th, 2019 at 11:05 am by Gerard

Though Car Seat Headrest's current North American run recommences this Thursday in Boston, MA, the band have confirmed 9 additional summer show. Pre-sale begins Tuesday at 10am local time.. You can sign up for the presale (password TODAY ONLY) at https://carseatheadrest.com/tourdates. You'll receive a text and email 10 minutes before tickets go on sale. General onsale begins Friday at 10am local time.

stream / purchase 'Twin Fantasy'

Car Seat Headrest on tour (new shows in bold)

Thursday, February 14 Royale, Boston MA
Friday, February 15 Mass MoCA, North Adams MA
Saturday, February 16 Madison Square Garden, New York NY *
Sunday, February 17 Rams Head Live, Baltimore MD
Monday, February 18 The National, Richmond VA
Wednesday, February 20 Georgia Theatre, Athens GA
Thursday, February 21 The Moon, Tallahassee FL
Friday, February 22 The Beacham Theater, Orlando FL
Saturday, February 23 The Orpheum, Tampa Bay FL
Tuesday, February 26 Tipitina's, New Orleans LA
Wednesday, February 27 White Oak Music Hall, Houston TX
Thursday, February 28 Emo's, Austin TX
Friday, March 1 Canton Hall, Dallas TX
Saturday, March 2 Paper Tiger, San Antonio TX
Wednesday, May 1 Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison CO &
Saturday, June 22nd College Street Music Hall, New Haven CT
Sunday, June 23rd Firefly Festival, Dover DE
Tuesday, June 25th Asbury Hall at Babeville, Buffalo NY
Wednesday, June 26th House of Blues, Cleveland OH
Thursday, June 27th Deluxe at Old National Centre, Indianapolis IN
Friday, June 28th Cannery Ballroom, Nashville TN
Saturday, June 29th Bogart’s, Cincinnati OH
Tuesday, July 2nd Wooly’s Des Moines IA
Wednesday, July 3rd The Waiting Room, Omaha NE
Sunday, August 11th Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles CA +

* with Interpol, Snail Mail
% with Interpol
+ with Death Cab For Cutie

Car Seat Headrest Online

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Matador Artist Page

Snail Mail - North American/European Tour - Spring/Summer '19

February 4th, 2019 at 10:23 am

Interpol - "Fine Mess"

January 30th, 2019 at 10:18 am

Coming March 15 : Stephen Malkmus - 'Groove Denied'

January 22nd, 2019 at 10:03 am

When Stephen Malkmus first arrived on the scene in the early Nineties, as frontman and prime creative force in Pavement, the area of music with which he was associated couldn’t really have been further from the techno-rave sounds of the day. Electronic dance music, then as now, was about posthuman precision, inorganic textures, and hyper-digital clarity. Whereas the lo-fi movement in underground rock championed a messthetic of sloppiness, rough edges, and raw warmth - a hundred exquisitely subtle shades of distortion and abrasion. “Imperfect sound forever” was the rallying cry for a micro-generation of slacker-minded dreamers and misfits.

Fast forward to the present and here comes Malkmus with a surprising new project that embraces the very digital tools and procedures he’d have once gone out of his way to avoid. Groove Denied – Stephen’s first solo album without his cohorts the Jicks since 2001 – was made using Ableton’s Live, a software sequencer and “digital audio workstation” that is the preferred tool of discerning techno producers and deejays worldwide. Instead of a human-powered rhythm section of electric bass and drums, Malkmus’s arsenal further includes drum machines, along with a host of plug-in FX and “soft synths” (digital simulations of vintage electronic hardware that inhabit your computer rather than take over your entire living room).

For the first time on record, what you hear here is just Stephen and the Machine(s).

But Groove Denied is not a full-blown plunge into EDM or hiptronica, into the soundworlds of Deadmaus, Villalobos and Skee Mask. In fact, there aren’t any purely instrumental tracks on the album. Every song is precisely that: a song, featuring Malkmus staples like an artfully askew melody and an oblique lyric. But Groove Denied is Stephen playing hooky from his customary way of going about things, jolting himself out of a comfy routine. As Malkmus commented recently in a video interview, “It’s fun to mess with things that you’re not supposed to.”

This departure from the tried-and-tested stems back to earlier in this decade, when Malkmus spent a couple of years living in Berlin and was exposed to the city’s vibrant club scene Back in the Nineties, Stephen had given rave culture a wide berth, in part because of bad personal associations with the drug MDMA (he’d had “a really really bad trip” on Ecstasy in 1987, bizarrely on a visit to New York to see Miles Davis perform). But in Berlin, thanks to a younger deejay friend, Malkmus made forays into the city’s world-famous all-night party scene and became fascinated by techno. “The music can be great… you can zone out, dance, and focus on music - or just get wasted!”

It would not be entirely off-base, or an overly cute rock-historical reference, to describe Groove Denied as Stephen Malkmus’s Low. Although largely recorded in Oregon, the bulk of the album was written while he was living in Berlin. Updating his home studio with Ableton and teaching himself rudimentary Pro Tools, Malkmus “started fucking with effects and loops”. He compares the process of track-construction to the way his kids “used to make these girls on my iPhone - choosing hair colour, dresses, etc. That intuitive swipe and grab thing. Chop and move the waves. Apple computer scroll style of thinking.” It’s a very different way of making music to the feel-oriented way of coming up with chord progressions and rhythm grooves on a guitar alone or jamming with a band. And in fact, electric guitar – while it does feature on Groove Denied – is really “just color for the most part”.

Yet while the methodology behind Groove Denied is absolutely 21st Century, the reference points for the sound-palette hark back to the pre-digital era. “The electronic music side of the album, I wanted it to be sonically pre-Internet,” explains Stephen. “So the EQ-ing is a bit 1970’s, that sloppy DIY sequencing. And the influences are kinda 1981 post punk - actually quite British.” “A Bit Wilder”, one of the stand-out cuts, specifically recalls Cabaret Voltaire, its slack-stringed dank-with-reverb bass a dead ringer for the Stephen Mallinder sound. “Yes, I was thinking the Cabs - and Section 25, whose 1981 album Always Now I think is a serious underdog stoner album. That grey industrial Martin Hannett sound. But also all these cute DIY group that imitated The Cure back then – loners with 4-tracks tape recorders and dreams of “Killing An Arab”.” Malkmus says he was trying to conjure or reinhabit the “fan perspective” on things like Joy Division and the Cure - the sort of “getting it a bit wrong” that unintentionally brings something new into the world.

Groove Denied is frontloaded with this Cold Wave redux sound - a style we’ve never heard from Stephen Malkmus before. Opener “Belziger Faceplant”, for instance, features a most peculiar processed vocal that sounds withered and grotesque, like a deflated wrinkly balloon still lingering on in your house weeks after a party. “I envisioned ‘Belziger Faceplant’ as made by someone off their head after a night out in Friedrichshain,” says Malkmus, referring to a district of the former East Berlin now rife with techno clubs like the legendary Berghain. “Coming back at 5 AM, firing up the laptop in the morning light and trying to make a song, but the instruments are tripping over each other. You can’t even speak because of all the Ketamine or whatever!” Malkmus adds that he’s never tried K but “for some reason I imagine it like that”.

Then there’s “Viktor Borgia,” a title that playfully merges the name of the comedian-pianist and the ruthless dynasty of Italo-Spanish nobles. With its stately melody and the almost-English-accented vocal, the coordinates here are early Human League or even Men Without Hats. “Yes, I was thinking things like Pete Shelley’s ‘Homosapien’, the Human League, and DIY synth music circa 1982. And also about how in the New Wave Eighties, these suburban 18-and-over dance clubs were where all the freaks would meet – a sanctuary.”

“Forget Your Place” features another eerily wobbled vocal a la “Belziger Faceplant” plus dub-style detonations of submarine sonar and nagging bleeps. Frankly, it sounds pretty darn wasted. “Like ‘Belgizer’, this is a pretty solid Ableton-based track – moving waves around, finding a trippy loop and throwing an echo on it,” explains Stephen, adding that “at times it feels almost childish, working with Ableton - like finger painting. But ‘Forget Your Place’ also makes me think about death – don’t ask me why!”

Alongside the early Eighties “minimal synth” and industrial influences, the other main palette of tone-colors audible on Groove Denied is closer both to Stephen’s comfort zone and to what his fans would expect from him: “warped psych,” as he terms it, that avant-garage tradition of dirty guitars and ramshackle grooves, except that in this case, it’s “one person pretending to be a band.” That illusion is pulled off magnificently on loose ‘n’ swinging tunes like “Come Get Me” and “Love the Door,” although the electronic element manifests still with the crisp and prim pitter of drum machine beats and a spume of Moog frothing all over “Door”. Then there’s “Rushing the Acid Frat”, whose title came from Stephen’s memories of a student fraternity at the University of Virginia that, unlike the typical beery bro frathouse, had a “Grateful Dead druggy tie-dye” vibe. Malkmus imagined “Rushing” as a “Louie Louie”-style shindig rumpus to soundtrack a “Star Wars bar scene in such a frat… It’s kinda 12-bar, but gigged with psych lyrics”.

As the album enters the homestretch, it returns to more familiar Malkmusian terrain, with a warmer, grittier sound. “I did frontload Groove Denied with the stuff that signals “80’s/cold,” he says. “That stuff excited me the most - and it sounded braver. If I had another year, it could have been all in that style.” Still, with the second half offering gorgeous tunes like the hazy-lazy ramble “Bossviscerate” and the glittering “Ocean of Revenge” – both graced with his signature style of odd-angled melodic beauty – who’s complaining? Mellow closer “Grown Nothing” feels like Malkmus easing back towards the sound of his recent album with the Jicks, Sparkle Hard. In fact, although it has been released after Sparkle, 70% of Groove Denied was completed before work on the Jicks record. Indeed, Malkmus’s explorations with sound-processing influenced that album, most notably with the unexpected appearance of Auto-Tune on a couple of tracks.

Groove Denied will shake up settled notions of what Malkmus is about and what he’s capable of, repositioning him in the scheme of things. But looking at it from a different angle, his engagement with state-of-art digital tech actually makes perfect sense. After all, Nineties lo-fi – the sound in which he and Pavement were initially vaunted as leaders and pioneers - was nothing if not insistently sonic – it was all about the grain of guitar textures, about gratuitously over-done treatments and ear-grabbing effects. Noise for noise’s sake. It’s just that it was looking to older modes and antiquated technology. From the Big Muff and the Cry Baby Wah pedal through to today’s deliberately distorted deployment of pitch-correction, there’s really an unbroken continuity: the creative misuse of technology, the aestheticization of mistakes and flaws, wrongness-as-rightness.

As Stephen tweeted recently on the subject of Auto-Tune’s omnipresence in contemporary music-making: “We long 4 transformation....and we humans fucking luv tools.”

Simon Reynolds, Jan 2019