The MataBlog is edited by Matador Records’ co-moaner Gerard Cosloy and individual entries are the work of whoever’s name is next to them. If you enjoyed something in the MataBlog, thank you very much! If there was something you found particularly troubling, please be advised that a) maybe you should read it again and b) the contents of this blog do not necessarily represent the opinions of Matador Records, Beggars Group, the combined staff of either company, nor the Matador artist roster. Opinions are like friends — hardly anyone has one worth listening to.
Yo La Tengo have announced a handful of fall US dates, including shows across the East Coast as well as performances at the Huichica Music Festival in Sonoma, CA and two nights in Portland, OR. The new US dates will come on the heels of the first anniversary of the band’s latest effort, Sleepless Night EP.
After a 17 month live performance shutdown ALGIERS are back in action this September, kicking off a full US tour in Kingston, NY and concluding in Atlanta, GA a month later. The complete itinerary can be found below. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10am local time.
Belle and Sebastian have announce new tour dates for 2022. Beginning in January, the band sets off on a sixteen date UK run (their first since 2019) that includes back-to-back shows at The Roundhouse in London.
The group then hits the road again in April, for dates in Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium.
Tickets go on general sale on Friday (June 18) at 10:00 BST / 11:00 CET, while a fan pre-sale for the UK shows begins Wednesday (June 16) at 10:00 BST / 11:00 CET.
Monday, January 31st Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen UK Tuesday, February 1st Usher Hall, Edinburgh UK Thursday, February 3rd University Union Asylum, Hull UK Friday, February 4th De Montfort Hall, Leicester UK Sunday, February 6th Great Hall, Cardiff UK Monday, February 7th Academy, Manchester UK Wednesday, February 9th Olympia, Liverpool UK Thursday, February 10th O2 Guildhall, Southampton UK Friday, February 11th The Dome, Brighton UK Sunday, February 13th Corn Exchange, Cambridge UK Monday, February 14th The Roundhouse, London UK Tuesday, February 15th The Roundhouse, London UK Thursday, February 17th O2 Academy, Birmingham UK Friday, February 18th 02 Academy, Sheffield UK Saturday, February 19th O2 City Hall, Newcastle UK Monday, February 21st Concert Hall, Motherwell UK
EU
Monday, April 11th Tonhalle, Munich, DE Tuesday, April 12th Fabrique, Milan, IT Wednesday, April 13th Co-op de Mai, Clermont-Ferrand, FR Thursday, April 14th X-tra Limmathaus, Zurich, CH Saturday, April 16th Tempodrom, Berlin, DE Sunday, April 17th Laeiszhalle, Hamburg, DE Wednesday, April 20th Sentrum Scene, Oslo NO Thursday, April 21st Tradgarn. Gothenburg, SE Saturday, April 23rd Filadelfia, Stockholm, SE Sunday, April 24th Vega, Copenhagen, DE Tuesday, April 26th Tivoli Grote Zaal, Utrecht, NL Wednesday, April 27th Casino de Paris, Paris, FR Friday, April 29th Les Nuits Botanique, Brussels, BE
Spoon have announced new headlining shows that will bring them back to the stage for the first time since 2019, including dates in the Northeast, Colorado, Iowa and North Dakota. A list of all upcoming Spoon performances, including a recently-announced West Coast run with St. Vincent, is below. Dates in bold below are on sale Friday at 10am local time.
After announcing a two week December tour with Jeff Parker last month, Steve Gunn has added a set of dates alongside William Tyler in the Northeast surrounding Newport Folk Festival in July 2021. Dates in bold are on sale this Friday at 10am ET.
Perfume Genius aka Mike Hadreas has announced a run of tour dates this year that will see him playing venues in Big Sur, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego and more. He will also play special dates at The Gorge in Washington with Tame Impala and Red Rocks with Death Cab for Cutie. Tickets are on sale this Friday, June 4 at 10am local time and a full rundown of dates can be found below.
Following last year's release of Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, Perfume Genius released IMMEDIATELYRemixes which sees every song on the album remixed in original running sequence by an all-star cast. In addition to Boy Harsher and A. G. Cook the lineup includes Jaakko Eino Kaleivi, Jim-E Stack, Planningtorock, Jenny Hval, Initial Talk, Boy Harsher, Nídia, Danny L Harle, Westerman, Actress, Koreless and Katie Dey. The IMMEDIATELY Remixes vinyl is being released on June 12 (Record Store Day).
Recent Matador signings Horsegirl will embark on their first US tour (ok, 4 shows) this July - ticket links below, all dates on sale starting today (Thursday, May 27).
This morning Mdou Moctar has announced a full list of European tour dates for 2022. Moctar and his band will play almost thirty dates in almost as many days, spanning the entire month of April (and then some).
Full details and ticket links below. Tickets are on sale now
Friday, April 1st Het Bos, Antwerpen [BE] Saturday, April 2nd AB-club, Brussels [BE] Sunday, April 3rd Bumann, Köln [DE] Monday, April 4th Paradiso, Amsterdam [NL] Tuesday, April 5th Effenaar, Eindhoven [NL] Wednesday, April 6th, Komedia, Brighton [UK] Thursday, April 7th Hare & Hounds, Birmingham [UK] Friday, April 8th The Sugar Club, Dublin [IE] Saturday, April 9th Ulster Sports Club, Belfast [UK] Sunday, April 10th Drygate, Glasgow [UK] Monday, April 11th The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds [UK] Tuesday, April 12th YES, Manchester [UK] Thursday, April 14th Oslo, London [UK] Friday, April 15th : La cave aux Poètes, Roubaix/Lille [FR] Saturday, April 16th Le Hasard Ludique, Paris [FR] Sunday, April 17th Doornroosje, Nijmegen [NL] Monday, April 18th Molotow - Hamburg [DE] Tuesday, April 19th Alice, Copenhagen [DK] Wednesday, April 20th Nefertiti, Gothenburg [SE] Thursday, April 21st Blaa, Oslo [NO] Friday, April 22nd, Fasching, Stockholm [SE] Saturday, April 23rd Plan B, Malmö [SE] Sunday, April 24th Frannz Club, Berlin [DE] Monday, April 25th UT Connewitz, Leipzig [DE] Tuesday, April 26th Meetfactory, Prague [CZ] Wednesday, April 27th Kapu, Linz [AU] Thursday, April 28th Rote Fabrik, Zurich [CH] Sunday, May 1st De Post, Oostende [BE]
Meanwhile, NPR have premiered a new Tiny Desk session from Mdou Moctar. Recorded late in 2020, this new offering melds the gorgeous lilt of tracks like 'Tala Tannam' with the front-footed and scorching title track 'Afrique Victime'. See the full clip below:
Last Friday, Mdou Moctar released the new record 'Afrique Victime' to a chorus of praise:
Today, Mdou Moctar’s sixth album and first for Matador, 'Afrique Victime', finally takes off.
Recorded across four studios and two continents, the album has already drawn universal praise as a powerful rallying call – a melding of guitar pyrotechnics and full-blast noise with poetic meditations on love, inequality, and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers.
Moctar and his band have also announced a full U.S. tour, which will begin in September and will include stops at Bonnaroo and the Treefort Music Festival. Find the complete itinerary below
Lucy Dacus presents “VBS,” a new single/video from her forthcoming album, 'Home Video', coming June 25th . Like the previously released “Hot & Heavy” and “Thumbs,” “VBS” starts the way a memoir might - “In the summer of ‘07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS” - and presents the compassion, humor and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. “VBS” features Dacus on vocals, Jacob Blizard on a slew of electric and acoustic guitars and Jake Finch on drums and organ. The song’s opening melody is contained, feeling as intimate as whisper, before erupting into a wall of reverb and static, and eventually falling away as Dacus carries it out with only her voice. The beautifully animated “VBS” video was made by Dacus’ longtime creative collaborator and 'Home Video' visual director Marin Leong. It perfectly complements the song’s pacing and 'Home Video'’s overall visual presentation .
“VBS means vacation bible school, and I went to tons of them. It's where Christian parents send their kids over the winter, spring, or summer breaks from school to get closer to God, maybe learn some outdoor skills, and bring home useless crafts and totems like fruit of the spirit sand art and purity rings. I wrote the song in the van on the way to Nashville to record Home Video after seeing one of those readerboards outside a church advertising a wholesome church camp for kids. I thought about my first boyfriend, who I met at VBS, the resident bad boy who loved Slayer and weed more than Jesus. I took it upon myself to save him, and make him stop doing drugs (with an exception for snorting nutmeg). God, I was so lame.” - Lucy Dacus
"A lot of the album examines navigation of self and how it evolves, and Lucy and I have often talked about bodies, the part they play in our ideation of self, and both connection and disconnection to them. We arrived at this world where her physical self is being distorted by the landscape that she’s present in, both in a beautiful and slightly uncanny way. One of the reasons I find animation and music compelling is the freedom in world building, the ability to translate story and tone, and synthesize it into a visual landscape using imagery that isn’t necessarily rooted in reality. And although I was treating this video like a diptych or braided essay with the song, rather than an overt visual depiction, I was able to make some subtle but direct references to the lyrics as well, so I’m excited for people to find those." - Marin Leong
Yo La Tengo have today announced a batch of UK dates for November (their first since 2019).
Hoboken, NJ's finest musical ensemble return for three dates in Bristol, Canterbury and London. Details and ticket links available below. Tickets for each performance go on sale this Friday (May 21st) at 10:00 BST
Last year the band released a collection of free formed instrumental tracks titled We Have Amnesia Sometimes, recorded over 10 days in late April and early May 2020 during socially distanced sessions at their rehearsal space.
Directed by Mikey Coltun Edit & Animation by Sabrina Nichols
(photo : WH Moustapha)
Ahead of the release of his hotly-tipped new album 'Afrique Victime' this Friday, May 21st, Modu Moctar has released a further preview with the hypnotic new song "Taliat"
“Oh poor girl / She gave him her heart and he broke it / I pray to God to never experience unrequited love and the pain of a broken heart” Moctar sings in Tamasheq over lyrical electric guitar runs and ecstatic rhythm.
“Taliat means woman,” Moctar says. “In our community, women are queens, they have a lot of power, that why I use the term taliat to talk about them. A woman in the Tuareg community has to be protected, but she also has to be treated as equal.”
In December, Steve Gunn will embark on a two-week North American co-headline tour with guitarist Jeff Parker .
Both artists will perform solo sets, with the exception of Bowery Ballroom where Gunn will be joined by a band for a portion of the show. The December tour will follow new music from Gunn, which is slated for release later this year. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am local time.
On May 30th, Gunn will play a socially distant show in Tivoli, New York at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park as part of their Spring Festival, which will also include performances by Patti Smith and Yo La Tengo. A full list of upcoming tour dates can be found below.
"Hot & Heavy", Directed by Lucy Dacus & Marin Leong, Co-directed by Jordan Rodericks.
(photo : Ebru Yildiz)
Lucy Dacus's long awaited 3rd album, 'Home Video', is out June 25th, and today releases the lead single/video, “Hot & Heavy,” which she’ll perform tonight on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". Additionally, she has confirmed a September/October 2021 North American tour (dates below). The follow-up to 2018’s 'Historian 'and her 2016 debut 'No Burden', 'Home Video' was built on Dacus’ interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, Virginia. Many of the songs start the way a memoir might, and all of them have the compassion, humor, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. These songs capture that specific moment in time growing up where emotions and relationships start becoming more complex. They capture the joys, the excitement, the confusion, and even the heartbreak of going through the process of discovering who you are and where people fit in your life and where you fit in theirs. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal.
“I thought I was writing ‘Hot & Heavy’ about an old friend, but I realized along the way that it was just about me outgrowing past versions of myself,” explains Dacus. “So much of life is submitting to change and saying goodbye even if you don't want to. Now whenever I go to places that used to be significant to me, it feels like trespassing the past. I know that the teen version of me wouldn't approve of me now, and that's embarrassing and a little bit heartbreaking, even if I know intellectually that I like my life and who I am.”
The accompanying, self-directed video was shot in the historic Byrd Theatre in Richmond where Dacus often saw movies during her adolescent years.
“I knew I wanted to include some of the home video footage that my dad took of me while I was growing up. I wanted to visualize the moment when you first reflect on your childhood, which I think can also be the moment that childhood is over. For me, I feel like there was a hard switch when I started releasing music, when my identity went from being a personal project to something publicly observed and reflected. I asked my family (shoutout to my grandma) and some of my closest friends to be extras because they're the people that knew me before that switch. I may have dropped out of film school, but I still love making movies and had a really fun time directing this one.”
Home Video Tracklist 01. Hot & Heavy 02. Christine 03. First Time 04. VBS 05. Cartwheel 06. Thumbs 07. Going Going Gone 08. Partner in Crime 09. Brando 10. Please Stay 11. Triple Dog Dare
'Home Video' : a Foreword
There are a thousand truisms about home and childhood, none of them true but all of them honest. It’s natural to want to tidy those earliest memories into a story so palatable and simple that you never have to read again. A home video promises to give your memories back with a certificate of fact— but the footage isn’t the feeling. Who is just out of frame? What does the soft focus obscure? How did the recording itself change the scene?
Some scrutinize the past and some never look back and Lucy Dacus, a lifelong writer and close reader, has long been the former sort. “The past doesn’t change,” Dacus said on a video call during that interminable winter of video calls. “Even if a memory is of a time I didn’t feel safe, there’s safety in looking at it, in its stability.”
This new gift from Dacus, 'Home Video', her third album, was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, Virginia. Many songs start the way a memoir might—“In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humor, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal. “I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache.
While there’s a nostalgic tint to much of Dacus’s work, the obliquely told stories in past songs are depicted here with greater specificity. "Triple Dog Dare" recounts young, queer love complicated and forbidden by religion. The toxic relationship depicted in "Partner in Crime" is filled with pining, deceit, and meeting curfew. (“My heart’s on my sleeve/ it’s embarrassing/ the pulpy thing, beating.”) "Christine" is an elegiac ballad about a close friend vanishing into an inhibiting relationship.
As is often the case with Dacus, these songs are a study in contrast. In "Hot & Heavy " she sings powerfully about blushing and diffidence, while the song "Thumbs" contains an elegant fantasy about the brutal murder of a close friend’s no-good father. After performing "Thumbs" during the nearly nonstop tours for her first two albums, it quickly became a white whale to Dacus fans, who have been counting the days until its release just as we’ve all awaited the end of this endless quarantine.
While all that touring made Lucy long to re-root in her hometown, her sudden acclaim filled Richmond with funhouse distortions of herself. People she didn’t know were looking at her like they knew her better than she knew herself. Strangers showed up at her front door. “You used to be so sweet,” she sings on the opening track, “now you're a firecracker on a crowded street.” That truism, both true and false—you can’t go home again—seemed to taunt her at the very time she needed home the most.
In August 2019, after a too much touring then a month of silence, it was time to go back to Trace Horse Studio in Nashville—Jacob Blizard, Collin Pastore, and Jake Finch, her loyal friends and collaborators were at her side again. Dacus’s boygenius bandmates, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker sang a loving chorus on "Please Stay" and "Going Going Gone" while each recorded solo songs during the same session. Dacus’s resulting record—full of arrhythmic heartbeat percussion and backgrounds of water-warped pipe organ— was mixed by Shawn Everett and mastered by Bob Ludwig.
Loyal Dacus listeners may notice that the melodies here are lower and more contained, at times feeling as intimate as a whisper. The vulnerability of these songs, so often about the intense places where different sorts of love meet and warp, required this approach. “When you told me ‘bout your first time, a soccer player at the senior high,” she sings in "Cartwheel", “I felt my body crumple to the floor. Betrayal like I’d never felt before.” Yet in "Partner in Crime", Dacus marries content and form in a strikingly different way, using uncharacteristic autotune in a song about duplicity and soft coercion.
That 'Home Video' arrives at the end of this locked down, fearful era seems as preordained as the messages within. “I don’t necessarily think that I’m supposed to understand the songs just because I made them,” Dacus says into a screen, “I feel like there’s this person who has been in me my whole life and I’m doing my best to represent them.” After more than a year of being homebound, in a time when screens and video calls were sometimes our only form of contact, looking backward was a natural habit for many. If we haven’t learned it already, this album is a gorgeous example of the transformative power of vulnerability. Dacus’s voice, both audible and on the page, has a healer’s power to soothe and ground and reckon.
On Thursday, March 4th, Mary Timony will premiere a streamed concert, Live at St. Mark’s. Shot in Washington, D.C. and directed by Brendan Canty, the set is centered around songs from her solo debut, Mountains, reissued in January for the album's 20th anniversary. Timony is joined throughout the performance by musicians Mark Cisneros, David Christian, Amy Domingues, and Winston Yu.
The concert will stream via Bandcamp Live and will launch at 8 PM EST. Tickets are $10. A new Mountains t-shirt (pictured below) will be available alongside the digital album at the show’s virtual merch table. A replay will remain available for 24 hours for global audiences to view. Tickets available for pre-order HERE.
On Thursday, March 25 Julien Baker will perform her first streamed concert in support of her new album, Little Oblivions. The show is taking place via STAGED, Audiotree’s virtual concert series. The fully-produced streaming concert will be broadcast from Nashville’s Analog (at Hutton Hotel), marking the first show from Nashville in the series.
Three screenings will air on March 25 to ensure fans worldwide can tune in during prime time. Screening times are 8pm AEDT, 7pm GMT, and 9pm EDT. Tickets start at $15 and are available exclusively at https://audiotree.tv/streams. Each screening will be available for 24 hours after the completion of the show, on-demand, so fans can watch the show as many times as they'd like. Special guest Mini Trees will be the support for Julien Baker.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:01 am by The Management
Stephen Malkmus presents “Juliefuckingette,” an A-side-worthy B-side off Traditional Techniques, his album released earlier this year. Additionally, he announces a rescheduled North American tour slated for March and April 2021. As with Traditional Techniques, “Juliefuckingette” is new phase folk music for new phase folks. Malkmus’ wry lyricism unwinds over his 12-string acoustic guitar: “Abolish the fanfiction set // I don’t wanna clean up the logorrhea mess // It’s the last brand standing // You know you wanna kill it but you can’t kill that quite yet.”
Traditional Techniques presents Malkmus as attuned as ever to the rhythms of the ever-evolving lingual slipstream. Informed by a half-century of folk-rock reference points, Malkmus drew from a whole new musical palette for Traditional Techniques--including a variety of Afghani instruments--to support an ache both quizzical and contemporary. Alongside gorgeous folk music, Traditional Techniques presents occasional bursts of flute-laced swagger, straight-up commune rock, and mind-bending fuzz. He’s joined throughout by Matt Sweeney and Chris Funk.
Today Algiers announce a batch of rescheduled European tour dates for quarter one of 2021. Nary ones to shy away from hitting the road, the band will be performing twenty seven shows across twenty different territories throughout February and March next year. Tickets go on-sale at 10:00 local times on Friday, July 17th.
Accompanying today's announce, the band have released a live and improvised version of 'Animals' - a track that featured on their second studio record 'The Underside of Power'. 'Animals (Redux)' was performed and recorded in Atlanta last month, and you can watch that new transmogrified take below:
Due to prevailing global events, the previously announced Kurt Vile / Cate Le Bon US tour scheduled to start this April has been delayed until September. All tickets for the original dates remain good, save for the Austin Paramount Theatre date, as that's been moved to the Scoot Inn on September 18 (see below).
King Krule's postponed North American and EU dates in support of the newly released Man Alive! have been rescheduled for September, October and December 2020. Tickets purchased for the shows' original dates will be honored. More info can be found at respective venues, linked below.
The MataBlog is edited by Matador Records’ co-moaner Gerard Cosloy and individual entries are the work of whoever’s name is next to them. If you enjoyed something in the MataBlog, thank you very much! If there was something you found particularly troubling, please be advised that a) maybe you should read it again and b) the contents of this blog do not necessarily represent the opinions of Matador Records, Beggars Group, the combined staff of either company, nor the Matador artist roster. Opinions are like friends — hardly anyone has one worth listening to.
