Cowbell Magazine, September 2011

meg

thundercat

baird

wooden

shjips

AND

reggie watts

this is not an indie rock magazine

cowbellmagazine.com

Laura Marling Darling Creature

Debbie Harry Talks Girls and Sexuality

“I’ve created what’s mine.”

Beirut Once nearly devoured by runaway success, Zach Condon mans up on The Rip Tide.

St. Vincent, Archers of Loaf, Balam Acab, Mekons, Hugh Laurie(?!), Dum Dum Girls, Spindrift & more!

$4.95 | ISSUE no. 15

SEPTEMBER

Check us out for exclusive video, contests, album trailers and more icular button GET DETAILS ON: a free RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS lent TLES poster

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COWBELL

an exclusive, limited edition BEA a rare covers EP from UMPHREY’S MCGEE JIMI HENDRIX SINGLES— exclusively at indie record stores RADIOHEAD REMIX SERIES— exclusively at indie record stores

Your home viewing device needs some new food.

ORES IN ST

9/6

IN STOR

ES

9/20

S

ORE IN ST

9/13 Rated R for Strong Violence and Language Throughout Copyright @2011 Georgia Film Fund Two, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Rated R for Language and Some Sexual Content Copyright © 2011 Everything Must Go, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2010 Hesher Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved.

COWBELL

1

> music

> movies

> reviews

08 Earth goddess Meg Baird

46 The Year Punk Broke broke just right

32 Lead Review St. Vincent, difficult but worth it

47 Now Screen This Sam Adams with the best of what’s in theaters

34 Album Reviews Active Child, Archers of Loaf, Alias, Balam Acab, Barn Owl, Blood Orange, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, John Doe, Dum Dum Girls, Erasure, Girls, Juliana Hatfield, Ladytron, Nick Lowe, Mates of State, Megafaun, Mister Heavenly, Primus, Screaming Trees, Patti Smith, Tunnels, A Winged Victory for the Sullen and more.

10 Glenn Jones, fingerpicking good 12 Brevity is the soul of Wooden Shjips

26

pg.

The Sound of Settling Beirut’s Zach Condon—the freshfaced drifter who burst on the scene in 2006 plying oldsoul Balkan folk pop—finds his home, and his true voice, on The Rip Tide.

by Jakob Dorof

on the cover Zach Condon photographed for Cowbell by Gordie Ball on June 19, 2011, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

2

COWBELL

14 Apocalypse Meow: Thundercat bring the bass 18 S ome Kind of Creature: Don’t let Laura Marling freak you out 22 Sweating the Small Stuff: Girl talk with Blondie’s Debbie Harry

48 Love Your Work:

Jonathan Banks as Mike

on Breaking Bad 50 Spindrift score imaginary films

> comedy 52 Why’s Reggie Watts’ S#!+ so crazy?

45 Worn Copy Jakob Dorof’s vinyl shorts

> dispatch 64 Rodney Anonymous The Hotel Chloroformya

VOiceS OF a GeneRatiOn? PeRhaPS. VOiceS OF DiStinctiOn? DeFinitely.

VOiceS With SOmethinG tO Say? abSOlutely.

Patti Smith

St. Vincent

OutSIDe SOcIety In StOreS nOW On cD anD VInyl

Strange Mercy In StOreS 9/13 On cD anD VInyl

Muppets

the Green AlbuM

Bestselling Books About Music at Indie Bookstores for September ’11

n T e o p T e Th i Smith ids Patt

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➌ ran Du u Sui D o l t l u e C bo ➍ The g to Girls A (Plume) J. Levitin n l i ie k n l a a D e) sic ➎ T eld (Plum on Mu tle Brown) n i a Rob Sheffi r Your B ht Bob Mould (Lit s I s i e Lig ➏ Th intage) Brown) a Littl Sacks (V e r e e v li ka (Little S

O

n y r a T ➐ i l l u i a man P sicoph (Norton) ➑ Mu Bowie: Star Preston Lauterbadcehnding August 7, 2011. it id k perio ➒ Dav hitlin’ Cirkcstoures for the four-wee C ie boo ➓ The sed on sales in ind Ba

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Visit IndieBound.org for more great reads and to find an indie bookstore (or other great indie business) near you.

COWBELL

3

> from the editor

publisher

Alex Mulcahy alex@cowbellmagazine.com editor-in-chief

Traveling Band it was no small task

arranging this month’s cover story on prodigy-turned-lost boy-turned-responsible-adult Zach Condon, if only because the Beirut frontman’s so darned busy. There was the get-to-Brooklyn-and-shoot-him-yesterday-because-he’s-flying-out-tomorrow photo shoot that sent our art department scrambling. And then there was the full-scale European tour schedule, which required our writer, Jakob Dorof, to play a game of international cell phone hopscotch with Condon and his band. Not that Condon seems at all unsettled by the flurry of activity that surrounds him.

“While it may have been a challenge to get the preternaturally globetrotting Mr. Condon on the phone for you,” says Dorof, “on my end he was every bit the charming, mature old soul the folks in his camp told me he’d be. It was really enjoyable to talk with him—especially when he gave me some pointers on what Cambodian pop and Greek Rebetiko to check out— and I now understand why he’s got such a rabid fan base, especially among the ladies.”

The result is a story that reveals Condon—who emerged as the boy genius behind Gulag Orkestar in 2006, very visibly buckled under the pressure of his sudden fame, and embarked upon a few years of sonic experimentation—returning from a Justin Vernon-esque wintercabin sequestration with The Rip Tide, an album that’s sunny and breezy and warm, essentially Bon Iver’s antipode.

Elsewhere in the magazine, we’re pretty stoked to have Jeanne Fury going tête-à-tête with Debbie Harry, wherein the iconic Blondie frontwoman is wonderfully frank about the challenges the band faced finishing their excellent new album, the benefits of long-term lovers and sexuality.

Patrick Rapa talks poltergeists with another blondie, the impossibly pixie-esque Laura Marling, and then gets into it with big-haired and brilliant musician/comic Reggie Watts, the guy who warmed up for/stole some thunder from Conan on his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour.

Justin Hampton discusses the finer points of anime and slap bass with Thundercat; Joe Gross deconstructs the character actor magnificence of Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks; and Shaun Brady speaks with L.A.’s Spindrift, who write soundtracks to movies, some of which exist only in their heads.

To say nothing of Two Minutes of Hate columnist Rodney Anonymous’ Moby-induced performance anxiety.

Hope you dig it.

Brian Howard

Brian Howard brian.howard@ cowbellmagazine.com 215.625.9850 ext. 115 managing editor

Andrew Bonazelli andrew@redflagmedia.com art director

Jamie Leary jamie@cowbellmagazine.com designer

Melissa McFeeters production artist

Lucas Hardison distribution

Claire Connelly claire@cowbellmagazine.com 215.625.9850 ext. 107 bookkeeper

Alicia McClung writers

Sam Adams A.D. Amorosi Rodney Anonymous Brian Baker Shaun Brady Raymond Cummings Jakob Dorof Neil Ferguson Jeanne Fury Adam Gold Joe Gross Justin Hampton K. Ross Hoffman Devon Leger Sean L. Maloney Michaelangelo Matos j. poet Patrick Rapa Bryan C. Reed Eric Schuman Elliott Sharp Sara Sherr Rod Smith Lee Stabert Kevin Stewart-Panko Matt Sullivan John Vettese photographers

Gordie Ball Lucas Hardison illustrator

Gluekit

interns

Lindsey Colferai T.J. Gunther published by

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850

Music to drink blood, shapeshift and howl at the moon to. new and

WIELD THE HAMMER

classic tracks from the hBo original series true Blood. the Blood-letting Begins 9/6

Rolling Stone’s 2005 Producer of the Year and former Marvelous 3 member steps back in front of The Black Widows for more rock masterpieces.

featuring some very intriguing couplings: neko case and nick cave // karen elson featuring donovan // pJ harvey and gordon gano // JakoB dylan and gary louris

STARTING 9/13 © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

DAVID GUETTA

NOTHING BUT THE BEAT

GIVE THE PRODUCER SOME

This French producerextraordinaire takes the reins of his own music again and doesn’t spare the DJ expertise.

BUTCH WALKER AND THE BLACK WIDOWS THE SPADE

Rolling Stone’s 2005 Producer of the Year and former Marvelous 3 member steps back in front of The Black Widows for more rock masterpieces.

COWBELL

5

Through the past, snarkly

Cowbell peers into the way-back machine. by T.J. Gunther

2006

Five years ago this month, Elton John released his 29th(!) studio album, the autobiographical The Captain & The Kid. According to Cowbell’s very unscientific guesstimate of 10 elaborate costumes per album, Sir Elton’s worn nearly 300 different and flamboyant outfits, single-handedly keeping the rhinestone and feather markets in the black.

2001

We sometimes forget the effect 9/11 had on music, with Clear Channel banning certain songs deemed inappropriate after the attack.

One was System of a Down’s September-released “Chop Suey!” Thank god the media giant hasn’t continued homogenizing the airwaves. (At least that’s what we’re assuming—we only listen to college radio on the Internet).

1996

Tupac Shakur died 15 years ago after what was deemed a driveby shooting. The tragedy robbed the world of a singular talent and who knows how many more albums of recorded material. Wait, he what? How many posthumous albums? Well, the singular talent part stands.

That’s Our Jam Cowbell staff faves right...NOW!

TJ Gunther, Intern →→1.

→→2.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver The Hold Steady -

Boys and Girls in America M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming →→4. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor →→3.

→→5.

The Throne (Kanye West and Jay-Z) - Watch the Throne

1991

It’s nearly impossible to imagine a world without Nirvana’s classic Nevermind, but it wasn’t until an early autumn day in September 20 years ago that grunge evolved from something found under one’s fingernails into a full-blown pop cultural phenomenon. With full MTV support, Kurt Cobain’s aesthetic heirs have spent the last two decades milking the grunge cow dry.

Lindsay Colferai, Intern →→1.

Alex Winston - Sister Wife EP Little Dragon - Ritual Union →→3. Joywave - 77777 →→4. Typhoon - A New Kind of House →→5. Teen Daze - A Silent Planet →→2.

Claire Connelly, Distribution →→1.

tUnE-YarDs – WHOKILL Stephen Malkmus - Mirror Traffic →→3. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues →→4. Thurston Moore →→2.

Demolished Thoughts

→→5.

They Might Be Giants - Join Us

Lucas Hardison, Production Artist

Contributors

→→1.

Guster - Easy Wonderful Restorations - Restorations →→3. My Morning Jacket - Circuital →→4. The Black Keys - Brothers →→5. Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out →→2.

Jamie Leary, Art Director →→1.

Jakob Dorof

Justin Hampton

Gordon Ball

(Beirut cover story) is a freelance writer living up and down the East Coast. He spends most of his free time driving unreasonably, composing and playing collage music with his orchestra-sized band, twirling his hair, and performing cryptic ritual.

(Thundercat feature) has found himself lost in the funhouse of the urban music tribal experience since his first national byline in 1993.

Entranced by the connection between pop culture, intentional living and DIY spirituality, he slaves away on his first book on festival culture, a “travel fantasy” of sorts called Heaven In The Disaster Area. You’ll read it, won’t you? :-)

(Beirut cover shoot) was born in Montreal, Quebec.

He comes from a long line of artists.

Gordon currently lives in NYC with his wife Zyanna and special needs wiener dog named Sophie. He keeps a girl on the side in Toronto, her name is Andrea Dinner.

Leonard Cohen is Gordon’s favourite artist.

6

cowbell

Sam Adams

(The Year Punk Broke feature) writes for the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Onion A.V. Club, Time Out New York, Time Out Chicago and the Philadelphia City Paper. His writing has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, the Boston Globe, the Hollywood Reporter, Salon and Film Comment, as well as the National Society of Film Critics anthology The B List.

David Bazan -

Strange Negotiations →→2. Brixton Saint - E Pluribus Unum →→3. Cults - Cults →→4. The Head and the Heart - s/t →→5. My Morning Jacket - Circuital

Andrew Bonazelli, Managing Editor →→1.

Warrant -

→→5.

Temple of the Dog -

Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich →→2. Amanda Blank - I Love You →→3. ††† (Crosses) - EP † →→4. Curve - Pubic Fruit Temple of the Dog

Brian Howard, Editor in Chief →→1.

Dan Deacon -

→→2.

Chain and the Gang -

→→4.

Cliffie Swan –

Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat

Music’s Not for Everyone →→3. Googoosh - Googoosh

Memories Come True →→5. De La Soul - Bulhoone Mindstate

k c o r st e a d y IN STORES

IN STORES

9/13

9/13

STAIND

PRIMUS

STAIND

GREEN NAUGAHYDE

THE SEVENTH ALBUM FROM STAIND

THE FIRST NEW STUDIO ALBUM FROM PRIMUS IN TEN YEARS.

IN STORES

9/13

MONSTRO

PUDDLE OF MUDD

ANTHRAX

MONSTRO

RE:(DISC)OVERED

WORSHIP MUSIC

WITH FORMER MEMBERS OF BLOODSIMPLE, DANZIG AND TORCHE, MONSTRO IS A PSYCHEDELIC HARD ROCK HAZE AS HYPNOTIC AS IT IS HEAVY

SOME SUPRISING COVER CHOICES FROM THE ‘70S, WITH A “PUDDLE OF MUDD FLAVOR”

ANTHRAX IS BACK WITH NEW MUSIC AND THE RETURN OF JOEY BELLADONNA. GET A SPECIAL ANTHRAX GLOWIN-THE-DARK ROSARY AT PARTICIPATING STORES NOW AND GET $1 OFF ON 9/13

ROBCK oF ALL TY PE S. R A N D N E W IN S E P T E M B E R .

Spring Forward

T

he stage is empty except for a microphone and

the stool Meg Baird is sitting on.

She’s playing to a club crowd a few blocks from her Philadelphia apartment in characteristic stance: right leg sharply crossing her left one, guitar resting on her knee, waist-length hair brushing the instrument, All the elements are accounted for on eyes closed, thoughts focused on nimbly finger-picking Meg Baird’s Seasons on Earth / by John Vettese the song at hand.

It’s a cover of “Friends” by ’60s folk duo Mark-Almond Band, a tune that Baird appropriately enough discovered when a friend (Jeff Conklin of East Village Radio) put it on a mix a few years back.

“I’m drawn to songs that come my way in that fashion,” she says. “From people I know, people who are passionate about music.”

Seasons For Baird—one-half the songwriting team on Earth behind Drag City mystics Espers—music September 20 [ Drag City ] can be an introverted, solitary pursuit. But friends and collaborators are vital.

Her first album, 2007’s Dear Companion, was a lot of Meg unadorned, tackling traditional numbers (“The Cruelty of Barbary Ellen”) and ’60s folk nuggets (New Riders of the Purple Sage, Fraser & DeBolt) with a handful of originals mixed in.

Seasons on Earth, her second solo outing, to be released in September on Drag City, is the opposite. It offers eight exploratory originals, and only two covers (the aforementioned “Friends,” as well as “Beatles and the Stones” by House of Love). The adventurous songs unfold in expansive layers, her guitar blending with harpist Mary Lattimore, guitarist Steve Gunn, and Marc Orleans of Sunburned Hand of the Man on dobro and pedal steel.

Baird didn’t even know there was going to be a second solo album; she simply began to accumulate songs, written very much like she often performs: herself, her guitar, alone. Some date back to 2007, and evolved over years—though not drastically.

“The songs have pretty strong bones to them,” Baird says. “They’ve changed a lot, but they stayed close to the original core idea.”

The record calls to mind past Baird collaborations: the ghostly pedal steel Americana of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s 2010 offering The Wonder Show of the World, the traditional Appalachian music played with her sister Laura (as the Baird Sisters). Playing alone is absorbing and highly personal, Baird says, but working with an ensemble brings out elements that are otherwise lost.

Seasons brings her solo work into that realm, a bandoriented album from a solo folk performer.

“That’s one thing that makes playing with other people fun,” Baird says. “You can surprise each other with your phrasing, with your interpretation of melodies and parts. Everybody I picked to play gave me lots of pleasant surprises… it’s part of the process.”

More at megbaird.com.

8

cowbell

IN STORES

SEPTEMBER 6

DVD IN STORES

AUGUST 2

deadmau5 live @ earl’s court

One of the most popular, original, innovative live acts becomes the first electronic artist to headline the legendary Earl’s Court in London.

THIS IS YOUR TICKET TO THE SOLD-OUT SHOW. AVAILABLE FOR

THE COMPLETE SAGA

I, II, III

IV, V, VI

TM & © 2011 LUCASFILM LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED UNDER AUTHORIZATION. STAR WARS AND ALL CHARACTERS, NAMES, AND RELATED INDICIA ARE TRADEMARKS AND © OF LUCASFILM, LTD.

COWBELL

9

Walking in His Own Shoes

Neo-Takoma School guitarist Glenn Jones trips himself up

B

oston-based guitarist Glenn Jones

began a musical odyssey in the early ’70s when a high school teacher turned him on to John Fahey. Soon after, he saw the guitarist perform at a concert in Harvard Square, and when Fahey asked the audience which composer had written the song he’d The Wanting September 13 just performed—it was Brazilian guitarist [ Thrill Jockey ] Bola Sete—a young Jones shouted the correct answer. They spoke after Fahey’s set, became friends, and collaborated several times, including on The Epiphany of Glenn Jones (1997). Though Fahey died in 2001, their musical conversation continues.

Jones is the greatest living practitioner of the “American Primitive” guitar style Fahey founded and nurtured on his Takoma label with fellow guitarists like Robbie Basho and Harry Taussig. With its mixture of country-blues finger-picking, avant-garde experimentation and neoclassical flourishes, the “Takoma School” introduced a modern composerly orientation to traditional American musics.

While compositionally and technically sophisticated, Jones found the Takoma School’s expressiveness most compelling. “Fahey looked for emotion in music and didn’t deny his darker emotions,” Jones explains. “There’s joy and melancholy at once, vulnerability and also 10

cowbell

/ by Elliott Sharp

the will to be invulnerable, which are very complicated emotions to express musically.”

On his fourth solo album, The Wanting (Thrill Jockey), Jones’ debt to Fahey is evident, but, as always, these 11 new compositions for guitar and banjo show him successfully charting his own course. “I never set out to ape anyone else’s style, and always look for ways to trip myself up and make it difficult to walk totally in anyone else’s shoes.”

One way Jones does this is by experimenting with unorthodox tunings, which he compares to “exploring new landscapes.” It’s fitting that he uses this language, as his exuberant, mesmerizing and wideopen pieces evoke the feeling of barreling down a country road with the windows down on a warm day. Several songs, in fact, are inspired by places he has personally explored, like “Menotomy River Blues,” the old name for what is now called Alewife Brook, which runs miles away from his Boston home.

“The brook wends its way through the neighborhood,” Jones says.

“But few of the thousands of commuters who zip by every day are aware of its existence. I’ve strolled there a few times. Fahey went there looking for turtles years ago. He didn’t find any, but one night I saw a huge one crossing a street near there.”

More on Glenn Jones at myspace.com/glennjonesguitar

photo by tim bugbee

BONUS TRACKS

NEWS OF THE WORLD 1. Feelings Feelings (TAKE 10, JULY 1977) 2. Spread Your Wings (BBC SESSION, OCTOBER 1977) 3. My Melancholy Blues (BBC SESSION, OCTOBER 1977) 4. Sheer Heart Attack (LIVE IN PARIS, FEBRUARY 1979) 5. We Will Rock You (Fast) (LIVE IN TOKYO, NOVEMBER 1982)

BONUS TRACKS

JAZZ 1. Fat Bottomed Girls (SINGLE VERSION) 2. Bicycle Race (INSTRUMENTAL) 3. Don’t Stop Me Now (WITH LONG-LOST GUITARS) 4. Let Me Entertain You (LIVE IN MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 1981) 5. Dreamers Ball (EARLY ACOUSTIC TAKE, AUGUST 1978)

BONUS TRACKS

THE GAME 1. Save Me (LIVE IN MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 1981) 2. A Human Body (B-SIDE) 3. Sail Away Sweet Sister (TAKE 1 WITH GUIDE VOCAL, FEBRUARY 1980) 4. It’s A Beautiful Day (ORIGINAL SPONTANEOUS IDEA, APRIL 1980) 5. Dragon Attack (LIVE IN MILTON KEYNES, JUNE 1982)

Queen 40th Anniversary Reissues continue. Rocking you on 9/13 ≥

GLEN CAMPBELL Ghost on the Canvas

1. Flash (SINGLE VERSION) 2. The Hero (OCTOBER 1980? REVISITED) 3. The Kiss (EARLY VERSION, MARCH 1980) 4. Football Fight (EARLY VERSION, NO SYNTHS! - FEBRUARY 1980) 5. Flash (LIVE IN MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 1981) 6. The Hero (LIVE IN MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 1981)

HOT SPACE BONUS TRACKS

CELEBRATE 40 YEARS of QUEEN

BONUS TRACKS

FLASH GORDON

1. Staying Power (LIVE IN MILTON KEYNES, JUNE 1982) 2. Soul Brother (B-SIDE) 3. Back Chat (SINGLE REMIX) 4. Action This Day (LIVE IN TOKYO, NOVEMBER 1982) 5. Calling All Girls (LIVE IN TOKYO, NOVEMBER 1982)

SOMEONE’S BEEN BUSY. 3 NEW ALBUMS. 3 NEW SOUNDS. PURE HANK 3.

3 Bar Ranch

Ghost On The Canvas is the Wichita Lineman’s “farewell album,” a deep, meaningful look back at his career/life with contributions by the artists he continues to inspire such as Jakob Dylan, Paul Westerberg, Brian Setzer, Billy Corgan, and Chris Isaak, among others. Simply put, Ghost On the Canvas is the album of Glen Campbell’s life.

ALL IN STORES SEPTEMBER 6

Cattle Callin’

Attention Deficit Domination

A new mind-bending ‘Cattle Core’ sound, featuring Hank 3’s speed metal woven in and around actual cattle auctioneering.

All Hank, on all instruments. A pressuredropping doom rock statement.

Attention Deficit Domination

Hank 3

Ghost To A Ghost/ Gutter Town A double album epic featuring guest appearances from Tom Waits, Les Claypool, Alan King, Hank’s dog and more.

COWBELL

11

Fire Sail

Brevity becomes Wooden Shjips on their best album yet

W West

September 13 [ Thrill Jockey ]

12

cowbell

ooden Shjips don’t know when to stop—in the

very best way imaginable. Newly out on Thrill Jockey, West provides a fresh perspective on (alien) terrain once broached by the likes of Chrome and Spacemen 3. But the San Francisco-based (still, kinda) psychedelic quartet pursues their mission with a restless inventiveness that makes seven minutes seem too short, and seven songs too few.

“When it came time to record the album, we really didn’t talk about how long we wanted songs to be,” organist Nash Whalen explains by phone as he prepares for a string of tours that’ll last into late fall. “We just played them in the studio, and then later on, we were like: ‘Wow! That was only four minutes?’”

Granted, they were working in unfamiliar surroundings. Recorded and mixed in six days by Phil Manley (Trans Am, Oneida, the Fucking Champs) and mastered by psych/experimental legend Sonic Boom, the band’s third album (not counting two singles collections) is the first they’ve recorded away from their practice space.

The added clarity brings West’s constituent parts into sharper relief without sacrificing anything in the way of immediacy.

/ by Rod Smith

As always, Whalen, bassist Dusty Jermier and drummer Omar Ahsanuddin mostly contribute momentum and texture—though Whalen occasionally steps to the fore. Founder, singer and guitarist Ripley Johnson’s spectral croon sounds more disembodied than ever, a perfect foil for solos that unfold like some cosmic rupture the Hubble might capture a glimpse of.

With the likes of Animal Collective introducing the indie rock masses to psychedelia and events like Austin’s annual Psych Fest enhancing their visibility, it’s no wonder that demand for the band is rising.

“It’s one of those kinds of music that’s always going to have hardcore fans,” says Whalen. “But when more good bands come along, the genre expands and more people are able to get excited about it. It seems like right now a lot of bands are tapping into it, and I think it’s a good thing.

Everyone’s coming at it from a different place. It’s not a one-trick pony, not a one-dimensional genre at all.”

Wooden Shjips are on tour in the U.S. and Europe through November. More at woodenshjips.com.

T H E

F A C T O R

N E W M U S I C T H AT HITS THE SPOT

We Are Augustines

Red Hot Chili Peppers

RISE YE SUNKEN SHIPS

I’M WITH YOU

IN STORES 9/6

MIRROR TRAFFIC IN STORES 9/6

STARRING BRIAN FALLON OF THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM

The Rapture IN THE GRACE OF YOUR LOVE

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

IN STORES 9/13

The Kooks The Horrible Crowes

JUNK OF THE HEART

ELSIE

IN STORES 9/13

IN STORES 9/13 IN STORES 9/20

Girls FATHER, SON, HOLY GHOST

Blitzen Trapper

Pearl Jam

AMERICAN GOLDWING

PEARL JAM TWENTY Original Motion Picture Soundtrack COWBELL

13

Apocalpyse Meow

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Thundercat feels fine / by Justin Hampton

N

ot just a week back from touring in Australia, and Ste-

phen Bruner has a lot of adjusting to do. ¶ For the past two weeks, he’s been playing bass for Suicidal Tendencies, and for most of his life, he’s been making music for other people—George Duke, John MacLaughlin, Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg and whoever else cares to pay him for his versatile fretboard sprints. But in two months, he’s got a debut album, The Golden Age of Apocalypse, coming out on his pal, producer/laptop musician Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, and with it, an entire reconsideration of who he is. As his girlfriend drives him and his 4-year-old daughter to the neighborhood Chick-fil-A, he considers that maybe his dad had it right all along.

Drawn & Quartered Thundercat may be the only jazz bassist/anime aficionado on earth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be one, too. Alright, maybe you can’t, but even if it’s way too late to start a new musical career, Thundercat can at least help you out with the anime part, as he’s selected a mind-warping introduction to the format for the adventurous non-otaku in mind:

14

cowbell

Neon Genesis Evangelion [ series, 1995 ]

In which a classic warrior “mecha” story turns rancidly Freudian at light speed.

This has got to be one of the most amazing series I’ve ever watched in anime EVER. It’s like conceptually, artistically, animation-wise and everything… it’s like mwah.

Paprika [ movie, 2006 ]

A bizarre psychological private eye movie set in the realm of dreams.

This was the first Inception—on DMT. This is amazing.

And a matter of fact, I think the director of this, he died or killed himself after this. [Note: director Satoshi Kon died of pancreatic cancer while working on another film, The Dream Machine.]

Fist of the North Star [ series, 1984-88 ]

Buckets of blood are shed in this manga, featuring a hero that can make people bleed profusely just by touching them.

This is one of the most classic anime ever made. You can just see it in the character. Post-apocalyptic, kind of has a Jesus complex to it, like The Book of Eli, but the proper way. There’s no boundaries. Computer graphics are allowing for less boundaries, so there’s no limits.

Mezzo Forte & Kite [ series, 1998 ]

Tightly wound adult action and female mercenaries. Not for kids or the faint-of-heart.

Just great directing and great animation with the hentai part of it and the action part of it. It’s hentai because the scenes are so in-depth. But it’s not really just hentai. It’s just in-depth sex scenes, but it’s more the action and the fluidity of the fighting stuff that’s just really, really good.

Perfect Blue [ Movie, 1997 ]

Thundercat may not want to change careers anytime soon— this film’s pop star protagonist invokes unintended and unpredictable consequences.

It’s almost like watching a good episode of CSI in its prime, not like, “NOW we’re moving to Miami. NOW we’re moving to Vegas.” CSI where it’s like, “Holy crap!”

COWBELL

15

“

Naturally, when you’re a kid, you wanna be Superman or something like that.

As I was getting older and artistically developing, it was something that I held onto because I enjoyed it so much.”

—thundercat

“My dad had to tell me I was an artist. towards jazz music orthodoxy.

That s not something that I knew I was do“He was at a club in NYC once. He gets up ing,” Bruner explains. “[For me], it was like, onstage right in the middle of somebody’s solo I would do music, and I’d be this character. and he goes, ‘Ladies and gentleman, John Col[And] he was like, ‘Stephen, you have to look trane is dead. Stop this,’” Bruner chuckles. at yourself a little differently, understand that His mother was a jeweler and born-again this is what you’re doing.’ Now it’s turned into Christian with a mohawk. In this environthat, finally. Even for me, it still feels weird.” ment, Bruner had the freedom to explore himself more fully than most, and above all, Bruner understands how unfair the game can be for outliers such as himself. As we he embraced the fantastical panoramas of are talking, the hype surrounding Tyler, the anime—a lifelong love that still consumes Creator and his Odd Future collective has him [see sidebar on p. 14]—alongside jazz reached a fever pitch, and Thundercat sees music. much to be admired in Tyler’s success. Yet The two are still intertwined for him. I Tyler is a skate kid and hip-hop artist that become very attached to things emotioncan count on a vast youth culture industry ally,” he recalls. “Naturally, when you’re a to back him up. Thundercat is at heart a kid, you wanna be Superman or something jazz bassist named after an old ’80s cartoon like that, I connected to it like that. But as series. Not so much a demand for that, but I was getting older and artistically developwhen Bruner describes his oriing, it was something that I held gins, one immediately sees that onto as to identify with because I that’s not the point. enjoyed it so much. And not just Thundercat grew up here in that; creatively, I felt like it was Los Angeles, his aforementioned inspirational.” father a session drummer for Bruner’s introduction to FlyGladys Knight, the Temptations ing Lotus (as it turns out, the and many other R&B groups great nephew of John Coltrane’s known and forgotten. His brother late wife Alice) at SXSW began Ronald followed directly in his his metamorphosis, first with The Golden Age of Apocalypse their collaboration “Mmmhmm” father’s steps as a drummer for will be available and finally with The Golden Age Stanley Clarke, and he also deAug. 30 from Brainfeeder. of Apocalypse. Already tweeted veloped a willful temperament 16

cowbell

by the BBC’s Gilles Peterson as “the most important bass player’s LP since Jaco Pastorius’ Jaco, the LP carries a sunny, positive vibe missing from the post-Lex Luger gladiator dystopias of hip-hop and the overblown pomp of modern R&B. FlyLo’s production accounts for some familiar sonic tics and clicks on “Fleer Ultra,” but there’s time out for more accessible moments like the ’80s R&B track “Walking,” as well as the cover of “For Love I Come” by George Duke, one of Thundercat’s mentors.

Many of Bruner’s family and friends—his brother Ronald, Erykah Badu and Shafiq Husayn from Sa-Ra, to name a few—show up, but it’s easy to miss them. Thundercat’s bright musical palette is the star here. “It’s such a melting pot of stuff, you don’t know where stuff is coming from,” he says of his work.

In the current musical milieu, Bruner admits, “Jazz is a scary word for most people.”

Yet the potential reward for articulating a unique vision, Thundercat knows, is much greater. “The first time I heard ‘Portrait of Tracy’ by Jaco, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it. It was like, ‘Dude, that’s possible?’

And that’s what I want this album to do for people. I want them to hear it and go, ‘Ahhh.

I didn’t know that this was possible.’”

For more from Thundercat, hit thundercattheamazing.tumblr.com

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17

“

After the second take, you’ve forgotten why you ever wrote a song ever. You’ve forgotten what it’s all about, and why you care about it.”

—Laura Marling

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Some Kind of Creature British folkie Laura Marling sincerely does not want to freak you out / by Patrick Rapa

Laura Marling doesn’t do loud.

On a trip through India last year with her old backing band Mumford and Sons, the young British folk-popper found herself against some loud, rude crowds in small pubs. Her graceful voice and poised guitar were no match for the drunken din of one gig in Calcutta. After shouting her way through four songs, she left off the stage, defeated.

Call it a learning experience for the 21-year-old.

“It was amazing, but it wasn’t right. The reason for being there wasn’t right.” She sighs into her cell phone. “If you’ve paid to go watch music over there, you want to be entertained. It’s not about going to watch an artist that you love; it’s being entertained for an evening. Which is totally legitimate, [but] it’s something I’ve never come across. I’ve never ever considered myself as some form of entertainment. And I don’t think I really want to be that.”

Marling’s sound—the one that drew so much attention for her first two albums and will do so even more on her stunningly gorgeous third, A Creature I Don’t Know (Virgin) — is best known for its moments of odd delicateness and defiant crescendos. She does raise her voice and strum hard, when the time is right, but that’s not her wheelhouse.

For her, it’s not about volume or vigor anyway.

“In music that I like, music that I listen to, I think the most powerful thing is sincerity. A certain amount of sincerity. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be baring their soul to you. It’s just, when you believe what they’re saying to you, that’s what makes it powerful,” she says. “In a very unromantic way, the reason my songs are delicate is because I can’t sing very loud.”

That said, A Creature I Don’t Know does find Marling rattling the bars of her gossamer cage. “The Muse” kicks things off with a galloping pace and some jazzy swagger, and the album goes down swinging with the old-timey, steady-strumming singA Creature I Don’t along-able “All My Rage.”

Know will be “Just before we went into the available Sept. 13 from Ribbon Music. studio, my dad gave me his old electric guitar, and then I went and bought—really stupidly; you should never do this before you go into the studio—I bought a POG [effects pedal] and a Kaoss Pad [midi effects processor],” she chuckles. “And we nearly came out with, like, a grunge album.”

Not really. Creature is steadfastly pristine and

assured in its folk cred, be it the traditional campfire-onthe-heath variety or something more spooky or poppy.

“I demoed it all at home and did the foundations of the arrangements, and then took it to the band. We worked out ways of accentuating lines that I thought were more important and slightly hiding lines that I thought were a bit pants. That’s my process,” she says. Then it was off to RAK Studios in London to work with producer Ethan Johns (whose CV includes albums for Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright, Emmylou Harris). “I always had it drummed into me that the craft of making music is precious and has a value. I don’t begrudge home recording, but I think music has to have value and it has to be treasurable.”

That said, her process does have some caveats. Like, she doesn’t edit or rewrite a song once it’s done. And, in the studio, she prefers the honesty of laying down the vocals in one or two takes. “After the second take, you’ve forgotten why you ever wrote a song ever. You’ve forgotten what it’s all about, and why you care about it,” she reasons. “My voice is always better the first time and not the 10th time.”

Creature’s first single, the charming and chilling “Sophia,” finds Marling tracing each crystalline note she sings with a couple gently plucked strings. “Who’s been touching my skin / Who have I been letting / Shy and tired-eyed am I today.” And later: “Rarely I weep / sometimes I must / I’m wounded by dust.” Things float toward the abstract when a swooning cello and a celestial choir show up, but the acoustic guitar and head-bobbing beat help pin your ears to the earthly realm.

And she’s right—her sincerity is what really sells it.

All the more magical when she goes on about her preference for storytelling over heart-on-sleeve confessional lyrics. “I’m not sure I have the innards. I’m not sure I’ve got the guts to get up and sing that kind of stuff,” she says.

“I’m also somewhat of a magpie, I guess. I like watching people. As creepy as that sounds.”

Creepy? Nah. But if you search for “Laura Marling” and “haunting,” you’ll come up with a million and a half results. (And climbing. The number seems to have risen by hundreds of thousands during the two weeks between conducting the interview and writing this article. Google moves in mysterious ways.)

Marling ponders this information. “I think I’m very comfortable with that. A personified haunting that’s… I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to freak people out,” she says.

Well, nobody’s calling you a poltergeist. You just write songs that seem to stick with people long after they’re over.

“Oh, okay. Great. Then I’m fine with it.”

Laura Marling will be on tour in the U.S. and U.K. through October. More at lauramarling.com.

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Talking Girls with the ever relevant and radiant Debbie Harry / by Jeanne Fury

“D

ie young, stay pretty,” Blondie proclaimed in 1979. But

singer Debbie Harry flipped the bird to the first part of that sentiment long ago. At 66, she’s still sex on wheels with a voice that makes loins seize and buckle. The New York City band never needed to reinvent itself in order to stay relevant.

Panic of Girls, their ninth studio album, is a terrific reminder that songwriting and fearlessness are what sustains Blondie’s iconic coolness. They’re a band that can cover Beirut’s “Sunday Smile” without sounding like a novelty act, while continuing to mine their chic New Wave roots. Core members Harry, guitarist Chris Stein and drummer Clem Burke have zero desire to flounder in the glory of their past—that’s called “die young, get old.” Cowbell spoke to Debbie Harry about mothering the club kids, what it means to be too “girlie girlie” and the benefits of long-term lovers.

Let’s start by talking about your video for the new song “Mother.” The band is performing in a dark, freaky club, presumably an homage to the old Club Mother in New York City [which closed in 2000], but then zombies show up and eat everybody.

Hilarious.

Like you said, it’s about the club, the nightlife and tapping into the huge cult interest in the zombie business. That new movie… is it Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp is gonna do that new zombie movie? I’m terrible about names. [Brad Pitt is set to star in next year’s post-apocalyptic horror film World War Z, based on the book by Max Brooks.] But anyway, we’ve always sort of paid attention to all the cult things; I guess because we come from that background to some degree, it seems very relevant. And the whole idea that that particular club scene is sort of, the people that were there were potentially or theoreti22

cally zombified, you know, so it’s sort of like tongue in cheek.

You’re still very influential to a lot of artists, and Blondie’s sound is heard in plenty of indie-pop and dance acts of today. Do you feel like a mother figure to the younger generations?

Uhhhh, yeah, I guess in some ways, not really precisely. I always get inspired by a lot of the things that younger bands are doing. It’s sort of circular in a way, what goes around comes around, that kind of shit. As difficult as it is, I always want to be encouraging to people.

In that respect, I think it’s maternal to some degree because I’m a woman, but I feel like, you know, I feel like I’ve always had a bi- kind of sexuality to some people, because I’m not sort of overtly girlie girlie nor overtly butch, but somewhere in between. And I feel comfortable about that.

Lots of bands try Panic of Girls to ride trends will be available and they flop.

Sept. 13 from But Panic of Girls Five Seven. sounds very fresh and very Blondieish. How do you stay true to your sound, but still be contemporary?

I think primarily it has to do with the style of Chris’ guitar playing and the sound of my voice. Clem has a specific style of drumming.

We’re recognizable. Those are core elements that are there. I think that we’ve always had an experimental edge, so that gave us a lot of freedom for styles and for experimentation for bringing in modern sounds. I think we were one of the first bands to bring in synthesizers and more technical, materialized, theoretical sounds, so this has given us an edge; it has given us an identity for doing that. We can reach out; that’s what we’re interested in. I don’t think we ever wanted to make another “Dreaming” or another “Heart of Glass.” We wanted to keep on doing what we did and still do. That’s what keeps us interested. I never wanted to just go out and do oldies. That was one of the constraints—I said I didn’t want to be in an oldies band. I was only interested in recording new material before we went out again [on tour], and that’s what we did.

Even the most seasoned bands encounter roadblocks. What were some of the biggest challenges with this album?

I think two things: We were trying to get a label interested initially, and that just didn’t happen. So, we ended up doing it ourselves, which was kind of expensive. Then the other thing was getting some kind of distribution photo by scott schafer

23

“

I feel like I’ve always had a bi- kind of sexuality to some people … And I feel comfortable about that.”

—Debbie Harry

and getting some kind of release going. We actually finished the record at the beginning of the early part of 2010, and we haven’t been able to get it out for a year, so it’s been difficult. With the changes in the industry and the power of the Internet, the industry practically doesn’t exist. So, we had to contend with that and be creative. We have management that is capable of doing that forward thinking and [coming up with] new ways of marketing, so we lucked out in that respect.

Regarding the song “Love Doesn’t Frighten Me,” how do you get to a place where love isn’t so intimidating?

I sort of feel like that lyric was a bit tongue in cheek. But I think with experience and maybe desperation you just sort of say, “Well, I’ve got to throw my hat in the ring. I’ve gotta give it a try, and the worst thing that can happen is that I’m gonna get rejected and feel shitty for a while.” You risk nothing, gain nothing, that’s what they say. That song was actually written by our keyboard player Matt KatzBohen and his wife Laurel. So, I guess it just rings true. That’s what makes a song really happen: It just rings true and everybody can relate to it.

24

Where did the song “Girlie Girlie” come from? At first I thought it was about a very effeminate gay man, then I realized it was about a globetrotting gigolo.

Ha! We liked it because of that aspect; it could be both, you know? It could be a girlie-girlie guy or a guy who’s a lothario. That was one of the attractions to the song. That was an old British hit way back when.

Oh, really? Who sang it?

Don’t ask me that. I should know, but if it’s not in front of me, I don’t know. [It was a hit

by Sophia George in 1986.]

What about the song “The End the End”? It’s a very sweet tune, that whole “Take my hand and help me stand” part.

That song was written … did I have a hand in

that one? I may have had a little bit of hand in the lyric in that… but that was written with this guy Ben [Phillips] who is actually in Taylor Momsen’s band [the Pretty Reckless]. The idea was about couples who have been together a long time. People that are in couples relationships aren’t really as celebrated as much as perhaps they were at one time. Back in the ’50s or ’40s, people stayed together. That was the standard. Nowadays’ standard, you stay with a person for five years, you’re doing good. This was about appreciating a longtime relationship, a friendship even, that you’re willing to look at this person, at this relationship, and treasure it.

Sort of like Blondie?

Yeah, I guess so!

Blondie will be on tour through October. More at blondie.net. photo by scott schafer

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25

On his new album, The Rip Tide, Zach Condon, Beirut’s one-time prodigy, grows up, and finds a home—and himself—in the process story by Jakob Dorof photos by gordon ball

t’s a sunny afternoon at the end of June in London,

and Zach Condon is stepping onstage at the legendary Hyde Park with his bandmates. Most of the 60,000 people there to see Mumford & Sons and the Arcade Fire have already filtered in, and even those latecomers stranded a couple football fields from the front can see and hear every detail, aided in part by the high-def JumboTrons flanking the stage. As Beirut begin their set and the cameras fix their gaze, it’s clear that the frontman can feel the myriad eyes upon him.

26

The Explorers: Zach Condon in his Brooklyn home with Cousteau, his beagle.

“I’m not afraid to admit I spent the first couple songs visibly shaking,” Condon later sighs from a phone in Slovakia. Of course, it didn’t help that he hadn’t seen his friends in the band—let alone rehearsed with them— in over two weeks, thanks to a particularly itinerant slate of interviews he’d begun for Beirut’s new record, The Rip Tide.

Those in the crowd watching Condon and company work through a tentative take on fan favorite “Nantes” might be quick to think of the guy they’d read about in various features and news flashes. The 20-year-old kid whose fleet fame outran him in 2006; the one who had to cut out on his first international tour because he couldn’t handle the panic attacks mounting by the day.

But the casual fans and skeptics in attendance—the type of folks who remember Condon mostly for the Balkan brass and Slavic sonorities that shaped his take on pop music back then—are in for a big surprise. For one thing, Condon’s famously populous and ragtag orchestra of yore has been stripped down to a tight and economic backing band of five fluent multi-instrumentalists. And the setlist of tuneful landmarks mapping the breadth of Beirut’s career rings clear with an identity and provenance all its own, including all the old love letters written to Condon’s favorite cultures and genres over the years.

But more than anything, the jitters that haunt

to admit I spent the first —Zach Condon couple songs visibly shaking. the opening moments of the set fade fast, and Beirut turn in a relentlessly passionate set that surely wins over a thick chunk of the massive throng on the green. Even the biggest fans there see a Condon they likely never have before.

In conversation, he’s pretty different from what I’d been led to expect, too. Formerly a notoriously tight-lipped and cheeky interview—“he had a habit of making things up,” smiles manager Ben Goldman—Condon now reveals himself to be charmingly personable, generously talkative and deeply thoughtful.

Chatting from a cell phone while prowling the streets of Madrid for some tapas with his buddies in the band, he speaks with the calm confidence of a Hollywood star on holiday between blockbusters, hardly showing any wear or tear from what is his most ambitious world tour (and promotional regimen) to date. He reflects contentedly on his “healthier relationship” with live performance, his

28

familial base in Brooklyn (wife, cats, dog), and the long year spent on his new album in an upstate New York cabin, a homely pro studio and his parents’ crib back on the New Mexican soil he has finally come to love. Zach Condon has settled down and grown up—and his music, believe it or not, is all the better for it.

f course, Condon’s life—and his approach to music—used to be fraught and restless, and for that he has his wandering youth to thank. Born in Santa Fe, NM, he moved to live by the ocean in Virginia at age 3 when his parents opted for a change in scenery. Taking up residence in the strangely named city of Newport News, the long-landlocked family found themselves marooned between the mouths of the James River, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic.

“Literally, for recess, me and my classmates would go down to the beach and fling dead jellyfish at each other like Frisbees,” Condon recalls. “We’d drop crab traps down at the pier at the end of the schoolyard, and at the end of the day, we’d bring home our dinner.”

The Condons never managed to feel at home in Virginia, but tried to stick it out for the good job Zach’s mother had found there.

She was a city planner, while his father kept his gig as a mapmaker for the state of New Mexico—an intersection of interests that perhaps inspired in Zach the fascination for distant lands that would later be a muse for much of his travel and songwriting.

After six years in the water, the family moved back to Santa Fe, but Condon never found a way to reconnect with his birthplace.

As he hit adolescence, he developed a crippling case of insomnia, a hatred for all things school and an uneasy sense of always being on the outside.

“My opinion on this has changed drastically, but back then Santa Fe was two things to me: a tourist town, meaning it was on display for someone else, and a home for lots of

Hispanics and Native Americans, of which I am clearly neither,” Condon explains. “I was living in a city where I felt nothing belonged to me, and I could claim no ownership over any part of the local livelihood or culture.

Adding in all the sleepless nights, I started to take on the role of a recluse.”

Condon’s vagrant spirit expressed itself in a few major ways, the most immediate being a streak of teenage delinquency. As the middle child of three boys, Condon recalls that his older brother Ryan had “all the rules crushed down on him” before his parents realized that wasn’t a healthy approach—leaving Condon free to play hooky and stay out all night without as much recourse as a single allowance cut. Pretty soon, he was skipping months of school at a time, rarely turning in homework and often plagiarizing the little that he did. Once, in the fall of junior year, he even got caught—on an analysis of The Jungle he had hired a girl he knew to write, whom he suspects simply grifted a readymade from the Internet.

“It was a horrible experience, but not because I was embarrassed; I thought I was right, that every minute in school was a waste of time and that I should be out in the world trying to be someone,” Condon remembers.

“The bad part was how earnest this social history teacher of mine was. It hurt him, and that’s what felt bad, what felt wrong. How can you do that to someone who takes what he does so seriously, who expresses a real concern for you?” Still, Condon was not long for Santa Fe High School: he dropped out later that year.

Throughout these troubled times, Condon sought solace in music and culture—though again, that of Santa Fe only further alienated him. His elder brother Ryan was not always supportive of his musical pursuits (both fondly recall the day back in Virginia when Ryan smashed to bits Condon’s first and favorite cassette, a Beach Boys greatest hits, because he was sick of hearing his younger brother sing along), but in taking him to his first shows Ryan helped to shape Condon’s formative sense of aesthetics—even if only to help him figure out what he didn’t like.

“By age 15, he had already decided he couldn’t stand the punk rock/indie scene,” Ryan marvels in a slow, gentle drawl. “He didn’t like loud guitars or screaming— which went against the grain in Santa Fe, because every band was a hardcore band.

People were into that, or metal music. But he quickly decided that that was not what he liked, which I thought was pretty unique for someone so young.”

If Condon couldn’t find salvation (or at least some kind of home) in local rock halls

like Warehouse 21, then he sought it in himself. Holed up in a nook of the house where only his poor little brother could hear him, Condon began making his first recordings— dancey, IDM-influenced beats and synth pop under the guise of Realpeople—at a prodigious rate of, by Ryan’s count, a completed song per day. Condon hadn’t been playing much of his primary instrument, the trumpet, since he had already stopped going to school frequently enough to have a real presence in the marching band, though he began incorporating it into his electronic recordings when he heard Iceland’s glitchy group Múm use some acoustic instruments on their 2000 debut, Yesterday Was Dramatic—Today Is OK. Condon insulated himself for countless hours in that sequestered room of his, grasping for something solid.

Another place he went searching was the nearby cinema, Plan B (now the Center for Contemporary Arts). Working there from age 15 and onward as a popcorn popper, the young aesthete happily paid his hot butter dues in return for unlimited access to the foreign films they screened there. Having exhausted his hopes of identifying something he could claim as his own in the local culture, he began to scour all the distant ones he could find.

“There was this French film noir festival every year that I loved to death. I’d just spend six hours a day in the theater, not moving,” Condon recalls. “And then there was this Italian film [by Gianni Amelio] called The Way We Laughed. It’s about two brothers, and it kinda hit close to home in an interesting way.”

“That was my contribution; I showed Zach a lot of records and movies,” Ryan adds.

Among the deepest impressions were Neutral Milk Hotel, and Yugoslavian flicks like Emir Kusturica’s Underground and Black Cat, White Cat—the latter two of which marked, quite significantly, Condon’s first exposure to Balkan scenes, scores and scales.

Unsurprisingly, none of these things quite amounted to a home or peace of mind. After dropping out of school, his parents—whose quiet and unyielding support remains something of a mystery for Condon—permitted him to indulge in a quick trip to New York City and a longer, four-month stay in Paris, both accompanied by Ryan, who was then taking a year off college and reconsidering his direction as an English major.

“I took trains here and there around Europe, but always got the heebie-jeebies from all the transit and constant confusion of being lost, and not speaking the language,” says Condon. The way Ryan remembers it, his younger brother’s attentions in Paris were

focused far more on booze and girls than anything music-related, though Condon did hang with the hip Parisian kids long enough to pick up on their taste for Balkan acts like the Kočani Orkestar and Šaban Bajramović.

“I just heard that brass and my fucking jaw hit the floor,” he enthuses. “I couldn’t believe anyone was using brass like that, so bittersweet and epic.” As an American trumpeter, he says the only reference points he had until then were the jazzman Clifford Brown, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Godfather soundtrack.

Yet upon his return to the States, Condon felt no less lost. For the most part, he stayed stationed in his room, recording new and primarily acoustic material inspired by what he had heard abroad, layering dozens of takes of himself playing different horns on top of each other in an insomniac haze. A stint at Santa Fe Community College was dismissed after a swift dropout, and another at the University of New Mexico would soon meet the same fate.

If nothing else, though, it was at UNM that Condon met Jeremy Barnes, the Albuquerque-based musician formerly of Neutral Milk. One night, Condon wound up opening the CD release show of his current band, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and the nervous teen’s simple laptop-trumpet set encouraged Barnes to send a trusted friend the rough mix of Condon’s first bedroom opus, the Balkaninspired Gulag Orkestar.

“When I first told him I wanted to put out his album, he was just kind of like, ‘Eh, alright,’” Ben Goldberg laughs, reflecting on the call that signed Beirut to his label, Ba Da Bing! Records. “He was very laid back about it, kind of nonplussed. ‘Yeah, great. Glad you liked it.’ Afterwards, I was like, ‘I… guess he’s interested?’” The musicians Condon was meeting around then likewise noticed a strange distance about him, as though he were always looking towards some faraway goal or place.

“He was playing a back-to-school costume party at this bar called the Half Rack one night, and I could tell right off the bat he was a really serious, thoughtful kid,” says drummer Nick Petree, who had been eager to meet Condon ever since hearing his demo for “Postcards From Italy.”

“I don’t think he was too impressed with me that night, ’cause I was dressed in a football jersey and slamming Milwaukee’s Finest.”

ranted, everything certainly worked out well enough. Condon recruited Petree and a few other local young guns to join him

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in New York, where the amassing band blew up after Goldman, disheartened by the lack of response Gulag was getting from his press contacts, submitted an MP3 of “Italy” to the Catbirdseat blog late one night about a month before the record’s May ’06 release. The track garnered an exceptional 1,000 downloads in its first day, and it spread like wildfire from there, culminating in a glowing feature on Pitchfork, and another on NPR for “Mount Wroclai (Idle Days).”

But of course, all this attention didn’t do much to help Condon get rooted anywhere. A European tour with Calexico that November shorted abruptly when Condon was hospitalized after falling unconscious from a series of panic attacks (at the time, he feared he had a brain tumor), and in the following weeks, his bandmates wondered if it all might have ended as fast as it had begun.

As if to convince them, his fans and himself otherwise, Condon began working at a furious pace: the following year saw the release of a full-band EP inspired by Long Island (via F. Scott Fitzgerald), a couple of singles and The Flying Club Cup, a full-length of mostly solo recordings (ornamented occasionally by band members and producer Owen Pallett, a.k.a. Final Fantasy) in the period clothes of French chanson music. Condon signed an international deal with the legendary 4AD label, did plenty more globetrotting, wrote plenty more tunes. 2009 began with the release of March of the Zapotec, an EP influenced by Mexican funeral bands and even backed by one Condon had met in Oaxaca.

He simply loved to experiment with different genres and styles of music, no doubt—but there’s certainly something poetic about the way Condon continued to spend most of his life as a tourist: of cultural musics, of travels, of actual touring. Explaining his assimilation of multiple styles not commonly played (let alone so popularly) by a white American, Condon asserts that he is “just an admirer, not an ambassador”—but for the bulk of his career, that may well have been truer than even he himself realized. After all, how can you be an ambassador when you don’t even know where to call home?

o, for those wondering where the prolific songsmith has been these past couple of years, there’s your answer: He’s been building a place of his own. He started with the basics and bought a house in Brooklyn, where he’s been living for almost two years.

And then he found himself a lucky woman to help fill all that space, getting hitched in the summer of 2010. Goldberg first realized

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that his young prodigy had become a man that Thanksgiving when he visited Condon to find not the familiar old Bushwick loft littered with withered socks and crumpled long cans, but rather a cozy abode filled with friends, family and freshly cooked food.

But Condon is a musician at heart, and he had some unfinished business to resolve in Beirut before he could truly feel settled.

“I knew that when I was doing the Mexican brass music, or releasing my old electronic pop music, that I wasn’t trying to go in either of those directions. They were just meant to be playful experiments, a way to hear my voice on far-ranging palettes,” he explains. “But I knew this new one was going to be much more true to myself. It was like I woke up one day and was like, ‘Well, yeah, I may have been trying to sound like someone else for all these years, but in the meantime, I’ve created what’s mine.’” He set out making The Rip Tide to prove it.

Though a solid blueprint for “East Harlem”

you couldn’t cross.”

After getting his fair share of the Walden experience—Condon admits, with a smile, that the “almost cliché romanticism” of the sojourn suited him well—he returned to Brooklyn to show his bandmates his fresh demos, which they scrapped shortly before going into “submarine mode” at Old Soul Studios (recent recording home of Ratatat and the New Pornographers) early this year in Catskill, New York. After years of obsessively micromanaging his bandmates’ already limited contributions to his recordings, Condon wanted Beirut to make their most collaborative record yet.

“We all had more of a say in the arrangements this time around,” says Kelly Pratt, who, like the rest of the five members currently backing Condon, has been in the group since the first New York show. “The Rip Tide is certainly more of a ‘band’ record, even to the extent that several of the songs were done live with the rhythm section—which is defi-

and my fucking jaw hit the floor. I couldn’t believe anyone was using brass like that, so bittersweet and epic. —Zach Condon has been floating in the band’s set since 2009, Condon was mostly working with a blank slate when he checked himself into a log cabin in Bethel Woods, two hours north of NYC, to write the album by his lonesome late last summer. Less the trip down to Brooklyn to see his wife and another familiar face or two every couple of weekends, he stayed there for six months. As the weather grew colder and the snow piled high, Condon wisely promised himself one thing: not to write a wintry cabin album. (The transatlantic reception gets spotty here for a moment, but it sounds like Condon says something about Bon Iver…)

“I ended up getting a beagle, actually, to keep me company,” he recalls, speaking of Cousteau, the proud pup he named after the French explorer. “Being there was amazing and horrible at the same time; I don’t consider myself a nature person, so it’s quite a shock to be in it on your own all the time. There was nothing there but woods. You could walk for miles without hitting anything but creeks

nitely a first for Beirut.” Petree, the drummer, recounts that a couple of the songs, “Payne’s Bay” and “Port of Call,” were arranged by having the band jam around nothing more than a ukulele and vocal melody from Condon.

After a couple weeks of living communally and tackling a song a day, Beirut disbanded for the moment to allow Condon to fly back to his hometown Santa Fe and finish lyrics—as always, the melodies came first, the words saved for last.

“I was trying to be much more personal, and much more open to lyric-writing in general, while still keeping a lot of fun little moments of musical intuition. Like at the end of ‘East Harlem,’ where it’s all about the random twists in syllables of the vocal as an instrument in its own right.”

Given that Condon has since minimized the role of lyrics in his music to the extent that he’s often wished he could do nothing but wordless vocals, it’s no surprise that this particular muscle was a bit difficult to

stretch: Condon loved the new recordings so much that he was afraid to besmirch them with unworthy words. After a brief spell of writer’s block, producer Griffin Rodriguez flew down to New Mexico for the express purpose of “knocking some sense” into Condon, who wound up taking the plunge by penning his most direct and honest lyrics yet.

With the record in the can, Condon still had a lot of work left to do in order for The Rip Tide to be a pressed and printed reality; the album is the inaugural LP from his new label, Pompeii Records, and with a small staff of trusted friends he’s taking on the brunt of distributing and promoting what could well be one of indie rock’s biggest releases this year. It’s true that starting a vanity imprint is something most established bands do once their contracts run up, but for Condon, taking a stab at total independence is something a bit more meaningful.

“There’s this element to my personality that, whenever the pressure comes from outside, from some kind of authority, I immediately get all huffy-puffy and just run the fuck out,” Condon self-deprecates with a laugh, thinking about his track record with academic institutions as much as with the music industry. “I was on 4AD for a few years, and they were great, I loved them—but the more pressure I felt to perform for them, the more it came back to the fact that I just can’t deal with that.” But as Goldberg stresses, 4AD has a rich history of success with musicians far more difficult than Condon, and they never asked him to do anything more than what was well within his comfort zone. For the most part, Condon is taking full responsibility for The Rip Tide simply because he believes in it more than anything he’s ever made.

with Zach Condon

age 9

I remember one day my dad decided he wanted our living room [in Virginia] to be about a half a foot wider than it was, so him and my uncle spent the entire summer reconstructing this one room of a house we were about to leave later that year. I don’t know why they did it, but all day long they would blast—just blast—the Beach Boys, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen. I had this class assignment around then to write about your favorite song, and I chose “Born in the USA.” The first cassette I ever got was a Beach Boys greatest hits, which I played on a Fisher-Price karaoke-type machine. “Surfer Girl” is [still] my favorite. I’m a fan of Pet Sounds, but the Beach Boys for me will always be the older stuff.

the classics

age 13

The first CD that my brother brought me was probably Smog or Neutral Milk Hotel, but before that, it was a lot of hip-hop. I was super into Living Legends, the Pharcyde, Hieroglyphics and everyone involved in Souls of Mischief… that was all mixtapes and shit.

battle tapes

age 17

The first record I bought was Boards of Canada, an EP called In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country, and I played it at the wrong speed. It was supposed to be played at 45 rpm and I did 33—and I completely and utterly fell in love with it at that speed. I can’t listen to it any other way.

With Boards, it just works like magic. “Zoetrope,” the last song on it, is like one of the best modern classical pieces ever written at that speed. It’s like a Philip Glass opus—it’s amazing.

intelligent dance music

age 19

As far as the Balkan stuff goes, number one would be Kocani Orkestar, Alone at My Wedding.

Below them is Boban Markovic, Live in Belgrade. Saban Bajramovic is a great singer, and so is Dona Dumitru Siminica—this Bulgarian guy who sings in a beautiful falsetto.

heading east

o matter what fate befalls Condon’s financial investment, his artistic one has already paid dividends. When Petree says the album’s nine tracks sound, for once, like “straight-up Zach songs,” it’s the truth: After years of incorporating blatantly ethnic and foreign aesthetics “just ’cause it sounded catchy,” Condon has indeed made a record that is unmistakably his own. Goldberg, for his part, marvels at how spontaneous and vital the album sounds, despite being Condon’s most measured and labored record by a great distance, and he’s on point as well. From the opening fanfare of “A Candle’s Fire” and the bounty of hooks in “East Harlem” to the elegiac tones of “Goshen” and “The Peacock,” these songs drip with life in the words and performances both. It is, for my money, Beirut’s best work—and though fans of any great

just bought the new Antony age 25 Iand the Johnsons [the Swan-

going south

lights EP]—I love that guy—but I’m still mostly listening to a lot of Brazilian music these days. [Beirut are so big in Brazil that fans used the social networking site Orkut in 2009 to organize Beirutando, an event in which musicians formed a constellation of Beirut tribute bands to play together in the streets of seven major cities. Recently, Beirut have contributed a cover of a song by Brazilian psych-tropicalia legend Caetano Veloso for the Red Hot + Rio 2 compilation.] I’ve heard that the Brazilians are really excited about that! We’re hoping to get down there for at least a few weeks soon.

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band will always favor different moments in their discography, early reports on the leak from the fan forums and shoutboxes of the digital world have been overwhelmingly ecstatic.

Even Condon’s joke about not wanting to make a wintry cabin album resonates with meaning upon hearing the finished product: Despite having had trouble avoiding the clichés of his various muses in the past, this time Condon managed to write a record that feels like those lovely breezes and sunsets that happen just as summer breaks into fall, despite all the snow mounting just outside his window. There’s a new mastery and self-restraint shown towards Condon’s influences on The Rip Tide, and it benefits the music immensely.

So it makes sense that Condon’s suddenly got the confidence to kill it in front of 60,000 people who may or may not have heard his music before: He’s got a tight band, a fantastic new record, and a happy home to back him up. Pratt claims he’s got “way more self-assurance now,” Petree remarks on how much more social Condon is as a musician these days (now a true fiend for being both in front of and in the crowd at concerts, there was once a time when he only liked to stay at home and make or listen to records), but it’s Goldberg who’s got the most to say about the change he sees in his close friend and collaborator.

“Well, now I know an adult,” he says. “He’s a completely different person in that way.

Ever since meeting him I’ve noticed a wisdom in him beyond his years, but he’s applying it more than ever now across the board.”

Something funny happens, though, when I ask Condon about the title of the record.

“It’s not too subtle when you think about it, is it?” he asks with a wry grin. These nine new songs are, for Condon, a reflection on all that’s happened in the five years since he finished his first record. The Rip Tide, then, refers to getting caught up in a force bigger than yourself, finding yourself at its mercy.

“I’m almost embarrassed by how not subtle it is,” he admits, sighing again for a moment. “But it’s another one of those things where, once again, I just said, ‘Fuck it, it sounds catchy to me—I’m gonna use it.’”

What do you know? Some things never change.

Beirut will be on tour through November. More at beirutband.com.

The Rip Tide will be available Aug. 30 from Pompeii

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new music reviewed and graded for your aural pleasure

Forgiven & Unforgettable Annie Clark toys with extremes on St. Vincent’s latest

photo by Tina Tyrell

“C

St. Vincent

Strange Mercy 4ad

ome cut me open,” croons Annie Clark on her third St. Vincent re-

cord. Like the album itself, it’s part seduction and part dare, an invitation to get closer than might be altogether wise. Prefaced by a picture of a wide-open mouth pressed against a latex sheet, perhaps screaming, perhaps

about to bite, Strange Mercy hints at self-exposure, but never quite lets down its guard. It’s probably an accident that the cover evokes a dental dam, but the sensation of shielded intimacy is entirely apt.

Clark sings in the first person on most of Strange Mercy, but it rarely seems to come from the same source: Can the singer who laments telling “whole

lies with a half-smile” be the same who observes, “I make a living telling people what they want to hear”?

(The latter is hardly an apt description of Clark’s métier in any case.) The songs are built on bucking waves of synthesizer and off-kilter rhythms, wobbly foundations that give way without warning. The frenzied instrumental break of “Northern Lights” 33

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sounds like a ham radio trying to tune in a distant signal, although whether it’s from outer or inner space is impossible to say.

Perhaps even more than Clark’s guitar, which comes to the fore on “Surgeon”’s glorious, Gilmour-esque solo, the key instrument is Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith’s kit, whose lurching, lag-behind beats lend the songs a groggy glaze.

“Chloe in the Afternoon,” its title drawn from the last of Eric Rohmer’s Moral Tales, is laced with swirling funhouse organ and backwards burbles, a primordial stew that gives life even as it threatens to suck Clark back into the ooze.

As she nears 30, Clark seems intent on sorting through her past selves, like the high-school athlete of “Year of the Tiger” who “always had a knack with the danger.” At this age, youthful delusions can get you killed, but caution can make life meaningless. The airy musing of “Cheerleader” gives way to snarling guitar and a rock-hard beat as she proclaims, “I don’t want to be a dirt-eater no more,” repeating the first word as if rounding up every last “I.” At times, Strange Mercy is deliberately uninviting, or at least its welcome mat extends no farther than the foyer. After that, walls become gnarled thickets, and well-kept entryway opens into the unruly forest of the heart. —Sam Adams

Active Child

You Are All I See Vagrant

20/20 with a bullet R&B’s in a pretty strange place right now. With just one mixtape to his name, Odd Future affiliate Frank Ocean is already racking up collabs with legends like Jay-Z, Kanye, Beyoncé and Nas. Somebody keeps making lavish, unofficial videos—runway models and all—for the few songs Toronto’s the Weeknd self-released this past spring. And Paula Abdul, of all people, listens to the spectral freakshow that is How to Dress Well’s home recordings.

With this, his debut album, Active Child makes a fine case for being the strangest—and best—of the lot. Incorporating icy, harp-plucked melodies and a Nordic falsetto, Patrick James Grossi pioneers a chilling, desolate kind of R&B that belies his sunny L.A. origins. But between arctic ballads like the title track and “Way too Fast,” Grossi finds warmth aplenty to get intimate—like on “Playing House,” which, with its killer assist from How to Dress Well, is one of the year’s best bangers.

Tough act to follow, fellas. —Jakob Dorof Addis Acoustic Project

Tewesta “Remembrance” World Village

Delightfully lost in translation This strange record is an acoustic re-envisioning of

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Mettle Heads Yes, Archers of Loaf were that awesome

I

f you’re just now coming around to Archers of

Loaf, they might sound a little dated. Maybe you had to be there. When the band busted out of the gate in Archers 1993, the horrible, slacker-alluding name didn’t seem quite so of Loaf overwrought. Or maybe it did, but after the first five snare hits Icky Mettle of Icky Mettle opener “Web in Front,” none of that mattered. merge Frontman Eric Bachman sang in his gravelly drawl, “You’re not the one who let me down, but thanks for offering.” Two songs later: “No, I do not think that you could like me anyway because you are inferior to me.”

Slackers or not, the Archers could write a fuck-off song like nobody’s business.

All the ’90s indie rock touchstones are here: The guitars are jagged and dissonant; the lyrics are sarcastic, funny and self-referential. Between “Plumb Line” and “Might,” the Archers could write an indie rock song about indie rock like nobody’s business, too (no disrespect to Sebadoh). But Icky Mettle is more than just a Gen X scrapbook—it’s a blast of unhinged cacophony that the band was somehow able to bend into sweat-drenched, fist-pumping sing-alongs. It’s a debut rivaled only by the very best bands of the decade, deserving of a space on Slanted and Enchanted’s perch. As good as Pavement’s debut is, nothing there rivals the urgency these loaf mongers sold on this album. Even when Bachman’s singing about toast, the band sounds like it could rip your head off.

IM comes with a bonus disc containing the Vs. the Greatest of All Time EP (which is completely awesome on its own) and a slew of singles and B-sides originally released around the time of Icky Mettle. It’s less a scrapbook and more what I wish indie rock still did. —Matt Sullivan

the urban Ethiopian music of the mid-20th century. Ethiopian music in general has become popular recently thanks to the Éthiopiques compilations of 45s from the 1970s, but Girum Mezmur, the leader of Addis Acoustic Project, looks to the earlier decades of the ’50s and ’60s for inspiration. Rather than the sax, electric guitar/bass, keyboards and psychedelic-drenched vibes of the Éthiopiques series, here we have mandolin, clarinet and accordion trading leads, with a soft jazz backing that

owes a heavy debt to Latin music.

The intent is to recreate the nostalgic acoustic songs of 1950s Addis Ababa through the modern lens of Mezmur’s arrangements. It’s a sound that’s caught between worlds; between the Ethiopian originals, mostly rendered here as instrumentals, and the mellow jazz of today’s world music crossovers. It’s a compelling approach, but somewhat disorienting. Like being lost in a foreign city. —Devon Leger

photo by sandlin gaither

Alias

Fever Dream Anticon

And the beats go on, and on, and on Not much has been heard from Brendon Whitney’s Alias project since he beat his retreat from Anticon’s Oakland base for his hometown of Portland, ME. It doesn’t sound from his latest effort like he was in any hurry to follow up predecessor Resurgam, as all of the tracks mosey along at a leisurely, even pace.

Steady mid-tempo beats gallop through these tracks’ gentle psychedelic textures, disembodied echoes and spacey grooves like birds flying past the window of Whitney’s studio room. Some tracks, like “Wrap,” smack of the vaguely ’80s synth-pop touches the hipsters seem enamored with, but occasionally, one will hear the sorts of hip-hop stutters that remind you of Whitney’s past.

However, there’s far less range than there was on Resurgam, with many of the tracks settling into a sort of complacency. So, there’s few surprises and opportunities for real excitement here. —Justin Hampton Apparat

The Devil’s Walk Mute

The inevitable Artist’s Album Sometimes, an electronic music artist wants to be taken seriously. Maybe for the course of one album, or maybe for the remainder of his/her career, he/she decides it’s time to start writing songs and getting all emo and pretentious on his/her given audience. Such a time has come for Sasha Ring, a.k.a. Apparat, who has been fiddling around on the fringes of German techno for some time as the leader of the Shitkatapult label and erstwhile collaborator with Ellen Allien and Modeselektor.

Recorded in Mexico with a handful of collaborators, most notably Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv, The Devil’s Walk trades mainly in beatless and moody poetic ramblings often driven by pianos and guitars, positioning itself as far away from the dancefloor as possible. Nothing wrong with that; however it comes off as drab and a bit lifeless.

—Justin Hampton The Bangles

Sweetheart of the Sun Model Music Group

Neither manic nor mundane The Bangles, now down to the trio of original founding members Susanna Hoffs and Vicki and Debbi Peterson, return with a new album that sounds remarkably like all their old albums, which is not a bad thing. The trademark crystalline harmonies are intact, and they’re still writing sunny, timeless, three-minute tunes that could be hit singles from an earlier era.

“Under a Cloud” is a funky, shimmering track that suggests Petula Clark fronting the Beatles,

they combine rockabilly reverb and girl group spunk on “Ball and Chain,” a spirited kiss-off to a rotten boyfriend, and even try a little bit of country L.A. style on the poignant ballad “I Will Never Be Through With You.” The stylistic shifts sound like they’re coming from a young band in love with pop music’s endless possibilities. This record is a fine return to form, and a welcome antidote to 2003’s lackluster Doll Revolution. —j. poet

Barn Owl

Shadowland Thrill Jockey

Thoroughly grounded, cosmic as fuck Even if everything they’ve done from 2009’s The Conjurer forward hadn’t limned runaway growth, Barn Owl would be America’s fastest-rising drone entity—if only by dint of rendering an esoteric genre friendly to innocent bystanders without alienating current fans.

As with last year’s Ancestral Star, Shadowland’s appeal resides largely in Jon Porras and Evan K. Caminiti’s aptitude for building elegant microcosms around snatches of stately melody. While the title track hearkens to frequent Barn Owl touchstones—Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack and post-comeback Earth, especially—“Void and Devotion” and “Infinite Reach” catch the guitarists in the act of expanding their palette with constantly evolving synth parts.

It’s not just new toys that fuel their latest giant step. Every single gesture the duo make— every textural and tonal tweak (tons per frozen moment, BTW)—helps elevate the whole to an extent they’ve never before finagled so well. —Rod Smith Beirut

The Rip Tide Pompeii

Sonic snapshots from the road Zach Condon, the leader of Brooklyn-based Beirut, finds connections between music and places. With extremely dramatic arrangements of bellowing brass, ecstatic choruses and funeral procession percussion, 2006’s Gulag Orkestar superbly summoned the sights and sounds of Eastern Europe.

The Lon Gisland EP brought Balkan folk to the U.S., The Flying Cup Club’s 13 songs were each homages to different French cities and March of the Zapotec was inspired by a trip to Mexico.

The Rip Tide continues to explore these geosonic relationships, but it’s more of a road diary than an encounter with one particular place. With song titles like “Santa Fe,” named after the city in New Mexico where Condon was born, “East Harlem,” “Goshen,” “Payne’s Bay” and “Vagabond,” this third full-length’s a celebration of rootless travel. With shifts between accordion waltzes, xylophone twinkles, horn jubilations, marching drums and towering, evocative melodies, the drama’s once again on high as Condon captures a glorious musical snapshot of his own nomadic wanderings. —Elliott Sharp

Blondie

Panic of Girls Eleven Seven

Long live highly excited states of overstimulation Blondie’s Debbie Harry has a mouth that still dispenses coolness like soft-serve ice cream, whether she’s singing in Spanish, French, English or with a Jamaican lilt, all of which she does on Panic of Girls, the band’s ninth studio release. Even the weakest tracks here boast better-than-average melodies; the cascading New Wave glam and glimmering beats that put Blondie on New York City’s It List back in punk’s early years are as irresistible as ever.

But Panic is a variety pack that also includes playful reggae (“Girlie Girlie”), Latin club music (“Wipe Off My Sweat”) and a lusty accordionpowered Parisian fling (“Le Bleu”). Contrary to the album’s title, there’s little worry here. The anxious alarm in Harry’s throat from the “Call Me” era now exudes a terrific, knowing poise. She’s so locked in, she barely flinches at the jerky boyfriends who let her down. They should be the ones panicking.

—Jeanne Fury Blood Orange

Coastal Grooves Domino

Funky moves at light speed After releasing two albums under the name Lightspeed Champion, the restless Devonte Hynes has taken on a new identity: Blood Orange. Having already shown that his tastes and ambitions go far beyond the elegant country-pop of his debut, Hynes’ first album as Blood Orange is a natural progression from the punchy orchestrations of last year’s Life Is Sweet!

Nice to Meet You. Coastal Grooves is meticulously crafted, from the reverby stomp of “Suthphin Boulevard” to the sparse and moody “Can We Go Inside Now.” Diverging from the mixtape he released earlier this year, Hynes doesn’t always take Blood Orange into danceable directions. When he does, though, as on “I’m Sorry We Lied” and “The Complete Knock,” the results are thrilling. There’s a constant feeling of uncertainty throughout Coastal Grooves that stems from Hynes’ fidgety nature. However long he holds onto this moniker, Hynes has proven his skills several times over. —Eric Schuman Braid

Closer to Closed Polyvinyl

The return of Hey Mercedes?

No band ever broke up as reluctantly as Braid.

When the emo luminaries disbanded in 1999, they conscientiously canonized themselves with a twovolume rarities retrospective, a live CD/DVD and a new single—a vainglorious slew of posthumous releases that trumped Boyz II Men in the So-Hardto-Say-Goodbye Department. Save for co-frontman Chris Broach, former members formed Hey

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Mercedes—a decidedly more commercial outfit that jettisoned the quirky curveballs and tightly wound, frenetic urgency that were Braid’s signature. And when Hey Mercedes hit the skids, cue the inevitable Braid reunion tour.

So, it almost comes as a surprise that they didn’t regroup in the studio sooner. On this EP, Braid are 12 years older, and it shows. While the odd time signatures are still in play, the trebly dueling guitars still make up for Bob Nanna’s flat caterwaul and Broach’s sharp shriek. The band has obviously kept up their chops, but they’ve forgotten to do what they did best: rock. These four tepid heart-on-sleevers feel much longer than the 16 minutes it takes to listen to them, begging the question: Did Braid really reform, or did Chris Broach just join Hey Mercedes? —Adam Gold

Brilliant Colors

Again and Again Slumberland

Blots for sale On 2009’s Introducing Brilliant Colors, the San Francisco group—singer/guitarist Jess Scott, bassist Michelle Hill and drummer Diane Anastasio—came out of the resurrected murk of mid-’80s indie-pop lo-fi with enough agitation to make their short, ramalama hooks stand out.

Tracks like “Mythic” and “I Searched” stomped right up front. That doesn’t happen nearly so much on Again and Again—this time out, the pulse is more subdued, the tunes airier, the overall tone more daydream than wake-up.

And ultimately, the result is duller: splashy snares and cymbals and nervous guitars that create more of a smear than a vital impression.

Listen closely and it becomes clear that those lazy strokes often help obscure sophisticated constructions that build slowly and then reach contained climaxes, such as the rumbling “’Round Your Way” and the anxious “Back to the Tricks.” But those climaxes’ containments are also their own limitations. —Michaelangelo Matos Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Hysterical Wichita

Cut Off Your Hands

Hollow

Frenchkiss

Choose wisely Lost amid the Pitchfork-hype backlash and far too much critical analysis of frontman Alec Ounsworth’s whine was the fact that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-titled debut was a whole lot of fun. The melodies were bright, the instrumentation summery—or, as legendary music critic Robert Christgau put it way back in

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Cute Is What She Aims For Eclecticism and a knockout voice almost save Zee Avi’s sophomore effort

Zee Avi

A

pint- size, ukulele- strumming, vintage dress-wearing Malaysian-born songbird who rose

to prominence via YouTube videos, Zee Avi fairly screams cute, quirky whimsy. If that description raises any Brushfire warning flags or cynical twitches, Ghostbird might just not be your glass of agave-sweetened hibiscus tea. (Should it be held against her that both she and her music are the stuff of marketing directors’ dreams? It’s an open question...)

But you’d have to be at least a little cold-hearted not to be pleasantly lulled by the warm, gentle breeziness of Avi’s music; its evident charm, predictably familiar though it might be, is modest enough never to feel cloying. If nothing else, the album consistently sounds wonderful: helmed by longtime Beastie Boys associate Mario Caldato Jr. (Bebel Gilberto, Jack Johnson) with a genially eclectic textural expansiveness—drawing freely from folk, swing jazz and soundtrack-friendly pop, with a twist of South Pacific tropicalia—it boasts a particularly vivid variety of percussion elements (shakers, fingersnaps, crisply mic’d congas, brushed snare drums, bullfrogs, rhythmic vocal chanting and discreet turntable scratches).

As for Avi herself, her personality often takes a comfortable backseat to the sound—and her lyrics, save for the occasional pithy sun-dappled observation (“every good fisherman has a pelican watching over him”) tend to stand out for vague syntactic awkwardness (“even my lover’s no longer enamored by me”) or blatant factual inaccuracy (“thirty-one days in June”—from a song whose refrain also asserts “my love will pay the rent”) if at all—but her voice, a gorgeously honeyed, legitimately jazzy warble (recalling the Bird and the Bee’s Inara George) that belies her 25 years, is simply beyond reproach. —K. Ross Hoffman Ghostbird

2005, “Gee, whatever this is, it moves.” Maybe that’s why their sophomore effort, 2007’s Some Loud Thunder, was such a bummer. Rife with hamfisted dissonance and self-conscious weirdness, it often felt like something you were supposed to appreciate rather than enjoy.

In the intervening years, solo projects came and went, and now here comes album number three.

Good news: It’s awesome. From the opening hum of the fantastically vibrant “Same Mistake,” Hysterical moves. Ounsworth is a clever songwriter, and here the melodies shine (especially since his trademark take-it-or-leave-it howl has mellowed considerably). Standouts include the swirling “Into Your Alien Arms” and the dynamic “Ketamine and Ecstasy.”

Competing for CYHSY’s old gig as buzz-worthy band of the moment is Cut Off Your Hands, a group of Kiwis who also embrace shuffling rhythms and tight production. Their sophomore album, Hollow, is at its best when they ramp up the power pop jangle—as on the opener “You Should Do Better”—and at its most forgettable on a few

lethargic ballads. —Lee Stabert

John Doe

Keeper

‘n’ roll than anything he’s done in a while, with Smoky Hormel’s inventive guitar work particularly impressive as it veers between searing aggressive leads and quiet shimmering chords. —j. poet

Ana Egge

Yep Roc

X marks the spot On his ninth solo effort, Doe revisits the sounds of his entire career, moving between crunchy rockers like “Don’t Forget How Much I Love You,” honky tonk tunes like “Walking Out the Door” and heartfelt ballads like “Lucky Penny.” Songs like “Never Enough,” “Handsome Devil” and “Jump Into My Arms” hark back to the sound of X with Jill Sobule, Patty Griffin and/or Cindy Wasserman filling in for Exene to supply the female harmonies.

Doe is in fine voice here, and sounds happier than ever before on “Giant Step Backwards” and “Sweetheart,” songs that have a bit more sunshine than his usual love songs, although they’re not without the traces of darkness that typically mark his work. This album is louder and more rock

Bad Blood Ammal

One good Egge Ana Egge’s career is defined by remarkable accomplishments. She built the guitar she plays when she was 17 and within two years secured a record contract, co-wrote with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, released her 1997 debut album River Under the Road, and scored Austin Music Awards for Best Singer/Songwriter and Best Folk Artist.

Since then, Egge has toured with the likes of Ron Sexsmith, Joan Armatrading, Richard Thompson and Lucinda Williams (who called her a “folk Nina Simone”), and released six acclaimed albums.

Egge’s seventh album, Bad Blood, is something of a song cycle, partially detailing her family’s

Submission to Submersion Wander/Wonder evokes a whole new world under the sea

Balam Acab

Wander/ Wonder

Tri-Angle

T

hales of Miletus, a pre-Socratic philosopher,

argued that the world started from water. Others thought it all began with fire, air or the Gods, but Thales was convinced it was water. Balam Acab shares a similar obsession with the substance.

Balam Acab’s the solo-recording project of 20-year-old Alec Koone, who was born somewhere in Pennsylvania and studies music education somewhere in New York. Aside from that, he’s shrouded in mystery, much like the “witch house” artists (e.g., Salem, Creep, oOoOO) with whom he initially emerged. He doesn’t play trad instruments, but

collects and modifies samples, creating blurred textures and eerie soundscapes that hover like ghosts above hyper-protracted beats. The See Birds EP (2010) showed him taking cues from dubstep, hip-hop and ambient artists, and mutating those sounds into a unique and otherworldly chopped and screwed universe.

Like Clams Casino, who has made beats for Soulja Boy and Lil B, Balam Acab represents the new generation of sonic pluralists lingering in the borderlands of pop and defining its trajectory.

On this debut LP, the sound of water flows throughout: dripping, splashing, sprinkling, rumbling, lapping. It’s like Koone’s having a primordial encounter with the peculiar liquid, returning to the life-giving source and tapping its musical capacities. A bubbling opens “Welcome,” as curtains to an underwater lair are pulled back. Voices shift between operatic baritones (“Oh, Why”) and Chipmunk squeals (“Apart”), and, though distorted beyond recognition, they somehow remain familiar, as if summoned from some universal pop-consciousness. —Elliott Sharp

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struggles with mental illness, most potently on the electric twang-and-ramble of “Driving With No Hands,” the bluegrass ache of “Hole in Your Halo” and the insistent pulse of the title track.

Egge writes about love with equally laconic fervor (“Motorcycle,” “Chestnut Tree”) and sometimes intertwines her two subjects with brilliant simplicity (“Shadow Fall,” “Your Voice Convinces Me”). Produced by Steve Earle, Bad Blood is further evidence of Egge’s towering roots/country gifts and a signpost of her potential direction from here.

—Brian Baker

Erasure

Tomorrow’s World Mute

We’ll give them a little respect Consider the spectacle of a paunchy, middle-aged man clearing a disco floor and it’s not hard to see why dance music is especially tough on its aging practitioners. Vince Clarke and Andy Bell have been at it for 16 years, and the wear shows on their 14th album.

Gone is Bell’s thrilling falsetto, replaced by a wobbly alto, and the ’80s synth-pop revival ironically makes Clarke sound like he’s stealing from his imitators. That leaves the songs, which peak with the slow-building groove of “A Whole Lotta Love Run Riot.” The ecstasy of “Be With You,” where Clarke croons, “Touch me, everything is beautiful,” feels a tad off-the-shelf, but it’s put across by a soaring melody and an elastic beat. Perhaps it’s not ideal for the dancefloor, but Tomorrow’s World could provide the soundtrack to a perfectly lively brunch. —Sam Adams The George-Edwards Group

Archives

Drag City

Generic only in name Somewhere between 1977 and 1978 in the vast wasteland of the Midwest, Raymond M. George and Edward S. Balian recorded a privately pressed LP of esoteric psychedelic pop, Moog-moody acoustic music, souped-up prog rock and a few ambient piano-filled songs named 38:38 that benefited from lo-lo-lo-fi production and distant vocals, trembling and oddly timbered. Because everything once-unknown eventually becomes legendary, the George-Edwards Group’s material became highly collectible, then release-able, and now picked over with additional material found.

Weirdly enough, the newly issued Archives is a denser, more easy-on-the-ear rock-out, with fuzz tones and feedback familiar to those who love the garage psychedelia of 13th Floor Elevators and the Martian noise guitarist that Roky Erickson would eventually tackle. There’s also a radical shift toward more oblong slow songs, electronic

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Deal With It The Dum Dum Girls you fell in love with are moving on

W

hat’s happened to our Dee Dee? On

2010 debut I Will Be, the Dum Dum Girls’ high priestess—nee Kristen Gundred—preached a gospel of too-droll detachment draped in girl-group pastels Only in Dreams and garage-rock umbers: delirious rave-ups and bummers delivered so laconically that they seemed to arrive fully sub pop formed, first take. Be was the kind of slow wonder that rewarded patience and a sly wit, an earthy, female answer to the first Vampire Weekend album.

Only in Dreams, by contrast, often feels like the work of a totally different band, lacking its predecessor’s uncannily subtle shifts in tone and perspective. Traces of the hybrid Dum Dum sound remain, but this isn’t the kind of record where psych-ward bubblegum à la “Jail La La” can coexist with an ugly duckling lullaby like “Blank Girl”; perversely, much of Dreams sounds like Melissa Etheridge covering Pat Benatar numbers. As Gundred’s narrative perspectives jerk from an observational remove into the foreground, a tremulous, husky quality suffuses her vocals.

There’s a lot to like here: the booming, epic “Hold Your Hand” blows a hospital room communion into something widescreen; the smoldering, narcotic blues of “Coming Down” is tremendous, and will blow minds in intimate live settings; “Wasted Away” sounds like a remake of an outtake from Green Day’s Nimrod.

They’re all fine songs in their own rights, but I’d be hard-pressed to ever think of them as Dum Dum Girls songs. —Raymond Cummings Dum Dum Girls

sound collages and pre-cold wave synth-sonics than there was on 38:38 (to say nothing of their usual adenoidal vocals), leaving listeners to won-

der happily if there isn’t more experimental pop ahead from the George-Edwards cupboard. —A.D. Amorosi

photo by shawn brackbill

Halloween, Alaska

All Night the Calls Came In Amble Down

Also twinned with Eerie, Indiana and Intercourse, Pennsylvania There’s actually a town called North Pole, Alaska (death/thrash metallers Turbid North hail from there), so why couldn’t there be a town called Halloween? Disappointingly, there isn’t. Halloween, Alaska actually call St. Paul/Minneapolis home and play a rollercoaster combination of swishy, swirly indie rock, ambient breaks and electronic washes, with “Analogue” being the exemplary centerpiece of their approach, as James Diers’ guitar jangles morph into driving post-punk before beatless waves harshly conclude the song in a Young Gods-esque fashion.

Geographical straw-picking aside, the more pertinent disappointment is that this quartet doesn’t step far enough out of the box to make All Night the Calls Came In essential listening. The pensive indie pop/ambient serenity/keyboard drones mix (“More to Come,” “The Jealous Ones”) too often sound like a band playing along with a haunted Casio keyboard instead of truly creating something definitive. —Kevin Stewart-Panko Juliana Hatfield

There’s Always Another Girl

Ye Olde/Pledge Music

You get what you pay for There’s Always Another Girl was apparently 100 percent funded by fan-contributed money, a move previously and successfully executed by Marillion and Einstürzende Neubauten. One issue always lurking in the background with fan-funded releases, however, is whether the artist finds themselves at the subconscious mercy of the wants of their deep-pocketed fans instead of doing their own thing. That seems to be the case here, as this album is vintage Juliana indie pop/slacker rock, but not much more and definitely nothing anyone hasn’t already heard her do.

The album pings and pongs between sitting-onstool acoustic bleakness (“Change the World”), transistorized indie pop (“Sex and Drugs”) and pulsating rockers (“Candy Wrappers”). Hatfield’s voice still has that coquettish, slightly brash and off-key quality, and she conveys emotion as well as ever. It’s just that it’s the same old shit she’s conveying. —Kevin Stewart-Panko Hotel Lights

Girl Graffiti Bar /None

The Lights are on and everybody’s home The past decade should be footnoted as the era of the musical drummer, and Darren Jessee could be the period’s poster child. After co-writing the Ben Folds Five’s biggest hits (“Brick,” “Song for the Dumped”), Jessee responded to their dissolution by forming Hotel Lights and moving to the front

of the stage where he clearly belongs.

Hotel Lights’ eponymous 2006 debut and 2008’s Firecracker People were minor masterpieces of quietly beautiful and achingly melancholy bedroom pop, but Girl Graffiti finds Jessee and his crack band in brilliant form, bridging the distance between Wilco’s scuffed but epic roots rock and baroque pop head trips (“Headboards and Aspirin,” the title track) and Eels’ twisted basement pop explorations (“Through the Crowd,” “Dave Sharkey to the Dance Floor,” “All My Asshole Friends”).

With a delicately powerful sense of songcraft and a melodic gift as addictive as crack, Jessee and Hotel Lights seem prepared to match the Shins and New Pornographers in the unbroken-stringof-great-releases category. —Brian Baker

Joel Rubin/ Uri Caine Duo

Azoy Tsu Tsveyt Tzadik

Accept the complement Often the best way measure an artist is to listen to them in a duet. There’s no room for games— no room for error—when you’re playing music face-to-face, and the true personality of a musician can shine through. Azoy Tsu Tsveyt, the new album from Jewish klezmer clarinetist Joel Rubin, is a stripped-back series of duets with jazz pianist Uri Caine on Rhodes and Hammond organ. It’s a stark album, with just clarinet and piano, but it gives these master musicians room to explore the depths of klezmer music.

Released on John Zorn’s record label, this album isn’t avant-garde as much as a work of collaboration. Opening track “The Pianist,” for example, is a 13-minute masterpiece of subtle interplay. Rubin has been at the forefront of the modern klezmer revival for decades, and this new release proves he’s still got plenty to say. —Devon Leger Ladytron

Gravity the Seducer Nettwerk

A great thaw Ladytron’s expansive fifth release could be the music that David Bowie’s character listens to while watching a wall of TVs in The Man Who Fell to Earth or a soundtrack to a late ’60s/early ’70s movie about a haunted mansion and its dark secrets—especially Gravity’s centerpiece: the haunting, orchestral “Ambulances,” musing in Cocteau Twins sighs about love and death (“Oh why the slightest whispering / As pistol sirens ring goodbye”).

Ice princesses no more, vocalists Mira Aroyo and Helen Marnie, have the ability to render a lyric both creepy and beautiful at the same time.

Opener “White Elephant” sets the tone musically and lyrically by announcing, “Surrender with me / We’re walking in our sleep / And won’t come around for your surrender.” But even in a trance, you can still dance. “Ace of Hz” is like ABBA’s goth sister, too tender to even write out the vowels in the “hearts,” and “Ritual” percolates like vintage Giorgio Moroder. —Sara Sherr

Hugh Laurie

Let Them Talk Warner

Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges Blue Note

Seth MacFarlane

Music Is Better Than Words

Universal Republic

Sometimes it’s OK to not know your place Hugh “Dr. House” Laurie says it best on his website: “Worst of all, I’ve broken a cardinal rule of art, music and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That’s how it works. You don’t buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor’s music?”

Hearkening back to the days of Eddie Murphy partying all the time, the three actors here haven’t so much broken a cardinal rule as provided ammunition for prejudicial haters and critics. The fact is, as Laurie celebrates his obsession with traditional New Orleans blues, as Jeff “The Dude” Bridges taps his inner Cohen, Earle and Springsteen, and Seth “Family Guy” MacFarlane exhibits big band love by basically aping Sinatra (chintzy tux and all), none of these guys embarrasses himself as badly you’d expect. Or hope.

Laurie’s ever-morphing voice, accent and interpretive approach are quite soulful. Bridges may be trying too hard to represent Americana, but his adult-contemporary style is competently functional as the milquetoast dinner party background music it’s designed to be. MacFarlane may be overwrought and arrogant, but he has a velvety— albeit completely unoriginal—voice. Ultimately, if there wasn’t already notoriety behind the names, these releases would fall into the pack. They’re competent, but nothing to write home about. The phrase “don’t quit your day job” comes to mind.

—Kevin Stewart-Panko Mariachi El Bronx

Mariachi El Bronx ATO

Putting the rad in trad As soon as the Bronx, the Los Angeles hardcore act named for New York City’s rowdiest borough, became the not-so-faux Mexican ensemble Mariachi El Bronx, all hell broke loose. Not just because the thrashers were playing the music of traditional South of the Border multiculturalism, and not because they were wearing the appropriate ethically tinged uniform. Rather, it was that they were doing so with such heart, such passion, such originality—something their sounds as the Bronx had rarely had (sorry for the backhanded compliment, gentlemen).

That said, beyond all question of hokum and novelty, Mariachi El Bronx benefits from the brood-

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ing muscle and irked energy of the band as it was originally conceived. Only now, after one other Mexicali effort under their barrio-born belt, the septet uses the MEB ideal less as an alter ego and more of a superego, and doubly superlative sound.

—A.D. Amorosi

Mates of State

Mountaintops Barsuk

Lovebirds crashing into windows When Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel of Mates

of State tied the knot in 2001, they pioneered what has since become one very crowded field: the lovebird synth duo. Most recently, popular (and younger) counterparts that have become IKEA-style staples of Valentine’s mixes everywhere include Matt & Kim, the married couple best known for filming a video nude in Times Square, and Pomplamoose, the dating Californians who make YouTube hits out of real hits in their home studio. It’s become such a common dynamic that even platonic duos, like the Bird and the Bee, are often assumed to be at least knocking boots.

That said, the old Mates have had a hard time

keeping up with their successors—though dang if they don’t try. Last year’s garish Covers mixtape (which concluded with a historically miserable misread of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End”) picked a hopeless fight with Pomplamoose, and now the band comes equipped with a record of “Daylight” wannabes that can’t touch Matt & Kim’s runaway hit. This is syrup-saccharine poptimism at its most spitshined, and all the sappy sloganeering wears fast enough to render any would-be hooks worthless.

“You’re not in hell,” they keep shouting on the opening track. That really depends on who’s listening. —Jakob Dorof

Playing to the Back Row Girls’ ambition gets the better of them

T

he idea of Girls as a scrappy garage band seems to

haunt them as doggedly as leader Christopher Owens’ harrowing biography. But Girls have never shied from Girls ambition. As if introducing your band with a seven-minute first Father, Son, single isn’t evidence enough, 2009’s Album steered hard toward the Holy Ghost likes of Elvis Costello, Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison—references that aren’t merely influential; they’re iconic. 2010’s Broken Dreams true panther Club EP smoothed whatever rough edges Album might’ve had with lush full-band arrangements and crisp, polished recording. Owens called it “a snapshot of things to come,” but it seemed as if Girls already had become the pro-model band they’d always wanted to be.

But over the course of Father, Son, Holy Ghost’s lengthy 54 minutes, Girls try on a seemingly endless array of sounds, still finding their footing. Awards-show gospel choirs run headlong into Slumberland-pop songs; the band even bares their teeth with the fuzz-blasted proto-metal jam “Die.” When it sticks, it can be thrilling. “Honey Bunny”’s

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early Beach Boys pep begs for the grit of the surf-punk guitar fill that shoots across it. “Vomit” turns a spare singersongwriter’s lament into a dramatic eruption of brassy soul. But too often, it feels like a slapdash shot at mainstage posturing. Owens’ fey vocals are disarmingly appealing, but he’s too often content to repeat a hook past its point of usefulness (all the better to learn and sing, perhaps). “Just a Song” drifts away with Owens softly musing, “Seems like nobody’s happy now / Nobody’s happy now.” The album mostly fades likewise. —Bryan C. Reed

Megafaun

Megafaun

Hometapes

Chilling out The last time Phil Cook, Brad Cook and Joe Westerlund recorded an album in their native Wisconsin, the product was DeYarmond Edison’s 2005 LP, Silent Signs. But having reunited DeYarmond Edison for a one-off SXSW gig last year, and recorded their eponymous fourth album in former bandmate Justin Vernon’s Eau Claire studio, Megafaun suddenly seem to relish reflecting on their past.

It’s their left-field instincts that produce standouts like the pop-concrete beauty “These Words” and the spacious slide-guitar-and-electronics meditation “Postscript,” and which have fueled (to varying degrees) Megafaun’s prior three albums.

It’s also what provided a catalyst for DeYarmond Edison’s demise. Here, though, quietly dramatic folk-rock outweighs the band’s experimental tendencies. From the Dead-worthy opener “Real Slow,” all tight harmony and meandering guitar, to the jaunty “Second Friend,” emboldened by effervescent strings, to the tender apology “Kill the Horns,” Megafaun’s prevailing winds point to a more straightforward approach and, probably, wider appeal. —Bryan C. Reed Mister Heavenly

Out of Love Sub Pop

True sounds of doom Even if you didn’t know that Mister Heavenly is the creative union of Islands’ Nick Thorburn and Man Man’s Ryan “Honus Honus” Kattner, you’d find out quickly enough. Out of Love, their full-length debut, sounds like a head-on collision between each band’s music.

Rounded out by Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, the key to Mister Heavenly’s sound is in the dueling vocalists’ contrasting tones. Thorburn’s smooth tenor sets up seemingly romantic tales (“Hold My Hand”), and Kattner’s booming growl provides the menacing counterpoint (the threatening refrain in “Bronx Sniper”). Musically, both leaders’ styles are healthily showcased: the jittery funk of Islands on “Pineapple Girl” and the honky-tonk cabaret of Man Man on “Charlyne.”

Out of Love succeeds by letting its members be their own strange selves, as well as letting them share their common passion for outsider retropop. —Eric Schuman Natalia Kills

Perfectionist

audiobooks Slow Fade

by Rudolph Wurlitzer, read by Will Oldham and D.V. DeVincentis Drag City

There’s a weary, worn-out resolve in Will Oldham’s singing voice that’s made him a hero to alt-folk aficionados of a certain age and temperament, a determined, idiosyncratic loneliness that inspires breathless hosannas on YouTube clips of his performances. As it happens, he’s also got an amazing reading voice—warm, dry, tender—with which he’s able to gearshift easily from dialogue to exposition, complaint to confidence, insolence to resignation.

To listen to Oldham lay into Slow Fade—the 1984 novel by author/screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer—is to hear a novice reader working on the level of audiobook veterans like Len Cariou, Betty Buckley and Tom Bodett. It helps that Wurlitzer’s deconstructed-Western yarn is peopled with characters near the ends of their respective ropes and told with ponderous, cinematic flair.

Fade opens out-of-focus: A.D., a graying down-and-out hustler, losing an eye in the Santa Fe desert; Walker, the sunburnt, dazed son of a famous director returning from the Far East; Wes, the famous director going Charlie

Sheen as a mysterious disease consumes him slowly; and Evelyn, the famous director’s simmering trophy wife. As Wurlitzer connects the dots and nudges the story forward, his dramatis personae become inextricably linked: When A.D. threatens a lawsuit for an accident that halves his vision, Wes enlists him to enable and cajole the emotionally removed Walker to translate for the screen his doomed sojourn through India to find a disappeared sister.

It’s a potentially redemptive tale for all; the author shines a light into these fictional psyches and those of bit players, and the reader brings them to life with distinct drawls, inflections and tics, trailing the cast across chaotic movie sets, casino floors, palatial estates and headlong into the suffocating darkness of their neuroses. Oldham’s rich narration prevails even as Fade collapses into acrimony and anarchy, any chance at redemption is scotched, and the manner of the sister’s death is at last revealed; you haven’t lived until you’ve heard him voice a bored Eurasian prostitute or a pampered English movie financer, or say, “The room looked like it’d been shaken down by a junkie” or “His disorientation was so extreme that it was impossible to tell if he was just stoned, or just one of the crazies that show up on Pan Am flights from the East” as though murmuring a prayer. —Raymond Cummings

Cherrytree

Unjustifiable homicide Now that Lady Gaga has provided the template for the Internet Age Pop Celebrity, a host of glamour rebels have trundled down the assembly line. Little Miss Natalia KeeryFisher knows the part—like Drake, her introduction to performance came through television roles as a child actor. And just like any genre actor in either

film or music, Natalia knows certain things are expected of her, and she predictably follows through on her major label debut.

Even the titles of tracks like “Love Is a Suicide” show her irritating tendency to push feral metaphors of transgressive passion to histrionic, even absurd extremes. Never fear, for Natalia recog-

nizes that her ephemeral ability to look good on the street can help her through the hard times on “Free,” for whatever that’s actually worth. Can she sing? Well, yeah, but not well enough to make up for these hackneyed scorned-woman revenge fantasies and the generic synth-pop production that accompanies them. —Justin Hampton

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Primus

Green Naugahyde ATO

The walrus/race car driver was Jerry Primus turned a propensity for acid-burnt storytelling and Zappa-meets-Rush experiments into unlikely commercial success, but when bassist Les Claypool found more satisfaction in even odder side projects, the trio withered. The long Primus drought ends with the return of late ’80s drummer Jay Lane (he also played with Sausage and other Claypool diversions) and the release of Green Naugahyde, a set that hearkens back to the giddy psychedelic rumble of 1990’s Frizzle Fry, while injecting plenty of Primus’ accumulated dark weirdness into the proceedings.

Larry LaLonde’s guitar lines are as fabulously frenetic as ever, from the pistol-whip march of “Last Salmon Man” to the Latin jazz-punk of “Extinction Burst,” while Claypool’s bass runs are sinewy life forces all their own—the detective thematics of “Moron TV,” the loping “Lee Van Cleef,” the funk/jazz thump of “Hennepin Crawler”—as if he’d strung his guitar with four electric eels. Green Naugahyde is the original Primus manifesto sharpened to a contemporarily moody edge and played with adrenalized abandon. —Brian Baker Razika

Program 91 Smalltown Supersound

Dance hall crashers?

Pssst! You wanna hear a secret? You gotta promise not to tell any of our record reviewer buddies— we’ll get kicked out of the cool kids club—but we’re kinda hoping for a fourth wave of ska. Crazy right?

But we’re not talking about the marching-bandrefugees-in-matching-Hawaiian-shirts variety that has made our love for ska a sorta-secret shame.

No, we prefer our ska to fall more on the sleek and sexy side than the sweaty and awkward side, stylish and suave in a way ska hasn’t been since they let Dicky Barrett lose from his monster cave.

Luckily, the ladies in Norwegian outfit Razika share our vision for a New Ska Order—sorry, we still love bad ska puns—and turn in a stunning, hipshaking slice of poppy, dance party-ready tunes that land somewhere between the coy naïveté of Minnie Smalls and the New Wave snarl of the Selecter. —Sean L. Maloney

With a Whimper New tricks are not abundant on Nick Lowe’s disappointing return

N

ick Lowe makes fully fantastic albums

infrequently, but when he does—with 1977’s Jesus of Cool, 1978’s Labour of Lust, 1990’s Party of One and 2007’s At My Age—they seem like they fell out yep roc of him. Rocking (the first three) or crooning (the fourth), Lowe’s songs tend to run smoothly along until you notice what, precisely, he’s saying, from the dog-eats-star “Marie Prevost” to At My Age’s is-he-kidding “I Trained Her to Love Me.” But both craft and execution—especially the latter—are in short supply on The Old Magic.

Lowe’s latter-day resurfacing as a guitar-toting troubadour who murmurs where he once moved gave him new life as a writer: the aging roué is a perfect fit. Lowe has always had a wide country streak, and there’s an autumnal feel (the brushed drums have a lot to do with it) on the twangy “Checkout Time.”

But the material sounds more automatic than usual—“House for Sale” goes for a ’40s cocktail feel, and it makes the lyric (“I feel like I’m getting out of jail”) go down sour, with the wrong kind of twist.

So does the increasingly pronounced frailty of his singing. Lowe is 62—it happens. But it’s distracting. The album’s low point is a cover of his old confrere Elvis Costello’s “Poisoned Rose” (from King of America, one of the few classic-era E.C. records Lowe didn’t produce), whose author bellowed it. Lowe attempts to finesse, and misses—it’s painful to hear, in more ways than one.

—Michaelangelo Matos Nick Lowe

The Old Magic

Saves the Day

Daybreak

Razor & Tie

Ruins my day Granted, New Jersey’s Saves the Day have come a long way since their days as righteous Lifetime doppelgängers on Can’t Slow

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photo by Dan Burn Forti

Down and Through Being Cool, but the transformation they’ve made on Daybreak—into a pitiful bubblegum pop band gunning for prog-rock-lite standing—is nothing short of ear canal torture.

On this supposed third in a trilogy of albums, the five-part title track meanders, with the only direction seemingly being to amateurishly explore every genre of music they’ve discovered in their post-melodi-punk days. Chris Conley’s voice is a hideous whine that sounds like Coheed and Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez sucking on expired helium and trying to imitate the Beatles, especially on “Let It All Go.” The reconfigured lineup clumsily shifts from attempts at sugary, stadium-sized hooks to the faux-angst and simplistic progressions that somehow keep Clear Channel’s homogenized “new rock” radio stations alive and breathing.

—Kevin Stewart-Panko

Screaming Trees

The Last Words Sunyata

We nearly lost this Seattle’s Screaming Trees had their all-too-brief moment in the early ’90s, but enduring success passed them by, most likely because they played shamanistic rock music that was a dimension away from Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The Last Words was recorded during the very end of the 20th century, but no label was interested, so the tapes sat dormant. The band broke up shortly after. Twelve years later, drummer Barrett Martin and producer Jack Endino are releasing them on Martin’s own label.

“Don’t you look back and hate me, or imagine how it coulda been,” Mark Lanegan’s brooding baritone gently sings, while the sweetly sad music pierces a foreboding sky like a sliver of warm sunlight, comforting all the world’s hangovers, be they from booze, broken hearts or good old-fashioned chemical imbalances. It’s a mellower, more Americana-sounding assortment than ’96’s Dust, but it holds up infinitely better than that flannel shirt in your closet. —Jeanne Fury Patti Smith

Outside Society Columbia /Legacy

Visionary, crazy cat lady, or both?

With the overwhelming success of last year’s memoir, Just Kids, plus a newly released biography and additional fictional works in the pipeline, Patti Smith has become somewhat ubiquitous of late. And now comes Outside Society, a shiny new compilation supervised and complete with suitably literary liner notes by Smith herself. Cynical cash-in or not, Society does a damn fine job of rounding up much of the best of her work, and serves as a suitable gateway for newcomers curious to find out more about the high priestess of art rock, who gorged on Baudelaire, the Beats and Keith Richards, and in turn proved an immeasurable influence on the likes of Michael Stipe, PJ Harvey and Thurston Moore.

It’s not without faults—Horses, her revelatory

deadmau5

Live @ Earl’s Court mau5trap/Ultra

In case you didn’t feel like showing up Nowadays, every EDM producer with some money in their pocket has made the sound investment on visuals in their live performance.

Amon Tobin, Daft Punk, Plastikman—and of course, Joel Zimmerman is gonna want in bigtime, too. Filmed at a sold-out show U.K. gig mere months ago, Zimmerman preserves the current iteration of his live show for posterity, playing all of the crowd faves (“Ghosts ‘N’ Stuff,” “I Remember”), donning mouseheads that run LED animations and giving the crowd seizures with a nonstop onslaught of blinky lights and overwhelming visual displays.

Zimmerman does his best to keep things lively; at one point, he shifts over to a Turbolemur console for some Minority Report-style eye candy, and Sofi Toufa comes out almost cute enough to make up for her dopey raps on “Sofi Needs a Ladder.” Overall, though, this works best as an advertisement for Zimmerman’s show, because for all of the camera movement and constant bob-and-weave of the editing, one still feels performances like this are best experienced in person. —Justin Hampton The Death of Andy Kaufman Wild Eye Releasing

Thanks a-Latka; muchas Gravas A fringe conspiracy theory was introduced to mainstream audiences in the final moments of Milos Forman’s 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.

What if Andy Kaufman, the late performance artist who everybody mistook for a comedian, was still living? What if his 1984 death was all part of the act—which had included absurdities such as inter-gender wrestling and Great Gatsby recitations? Director Christopher Maloney chases this hypothesis in The Death of Andy Kaufman, and his approach feels not like a documentary, but a film school report.

The inquiry overwhelmingly rests on archi-

val footage—lively, but apparently culled from warped VHS tapes. Through pensive narration, Maloney presents the case that Kaufman faked his death, negates those arguments, and then wistfully hopes he’s wrong. Meanwhile, original research feels scant. A sum total of four talking heads appear in the 80-minute film, including prankster Alan Abel (who may have been acquainted with Kaufman, and at the very least spoke with him on the phone once) and a spokesperson for a holistic retreat in the New Mexico desert (Maloney actually straight-up asks the baffled guy if Andy was a regular visitor). A candid conversation with Kaufman’s brother Michael is Maloney’s value-added to the Andy lore, but he milks it for over 10 minutes. By the end, viewer and sibling probably feel equally uncomfortable and exhausted. —John Vettese

The Jesus Lizard

Club MVD

Then came David, David, Duane and Mac As ’90s underground kingpins, the Jesus Lizard had one of rock’s most innovative guitarists, most punishing rhythm sections and one of its most deranged frontmen. Eventually splitting in ’99, Club documents the first show of a reunion tour a decade later. The Nashville gig featured most of the Lizard’s staples—“Mouth Breather,” “Boilermaker,” “Seasick,” “Killer McHann,” David Yow’s dick—and the band still directed focus more on playing through its audience than to them. And in the case of frontman Yow, on them.

About half a measure passes in set opener “Puss” before Yow is in the audience. After three songs, he’s half-naked. While Yow abused some audience members and made out with others, David Wm. Sims and Mac McNeilly maintained the battering ram for nearly 90 minutes. Guitarist Duane Denison’s relative restraint and precision underscored just how much all these pieces rely on one another. By the end, the front row of the crowd—at least 20 years younger than the band—looked like their asses had been kicked. And mostly, that’s what happened. —Matt Sullivan

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reviews

debut, which, more than anything perfectly crystallized her whole performance art/hipster poet shtick—is criminally underrepresented. Later performances tend to pale in comparison, lacking the sheer visceral punch of the likes of “Rock N Roll Nigger,” and a lot depends on the listener’s tolerance of sub-par Beat-influenced stream of consciousness ramblings, which stray perilously close to cringe-inducing pretentiousness. That said, it’s a minor gripe when dealing with a performer so unabashedly passionate, poetic and downright inspirational. —Neil Ferguson

Sun Araw

Ancient Romans Sun Ark

Eternal Tapestry/ Sun Araw

Night Gallery

Thrill Jockey

Lightly altered states Emanating from SoCal’s Not Not Fun-centered experimental scene, Sun Araw is a brand that carries a reputation for dependability.

Prolificacy, too. A couple new releases—one on Cameron “Sun Araw” Stallones’ own imprint and a live collaboration with like-minded Portland crew Eternal Tapestry—find the psych-maven bending minds in different modes.

The Sun Araw approach is to jump in the water headfirst and let the current take you. Sometimes that means just bobbing around for a little while.

Much of Night Gallery is content to drift. Often the players sound too courteous, too reluctant to invade someone else’s space. Save for the second track, they never lock together. It’s a pleasant record, but not an especially memorable ride.

Ancient Romans also suffers from an occasional lack of direction, but it’s brimming with ideas. From the Middle Eastern-tinged “Crete” to the 15-minute disco deconstruction on “Impluvium,” the mantraminded swirls of sound are better headspace for getting lifted. —Matt Sullivan Tinariwen

Tassili Anti-

The Taureg rebels unplug Guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib formed Tinariwen (“People of the Deserts”) in the late-1970s with fellow Tuareg rebels who had fled Mali and were living in refugee camps in nearby Libya. Initially playing weddings and other neighborhood events, the collective fused indigenous Tuareg music, the radical folk musics of Morocco (Chaabi) and Algeria (Raï), and the Western rock of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. With its fiery electric guitar phrases, ebullient polyrhythms, celebratory ululations and anthemic choruses,

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Let’s Span Time After all these years, the Mekons are still the punkiest punks around

I

t’s been 34 years since the Mekons assembled at a Leeds art school and released “Never Been in a Riot,” The Mekons a tongue-in-cheek response to the Clash’s “White Riot,” Ancient & effectively outpunking one of the greatest punk bands in hisModern tory. After a decade of freewheeling and uneven recordings, sin/bloodshot the Mekons discovered country music and translated their newfound love into Fear and Whiskey, one of the harbingers of alt-country in the ’80s. Ever since, the Mekons have spiced their sonic gumbo with a kitchen sink ethic, mixing country, punk, roots rock and dancehall pop into a sound that transcends mere genre tags.

Ancient & Modern, the Mekons’ 26th album, is a perfect evocation of the band’s entire history, roiling with a vibe that evokes Nick Drake folk (“Warm Summer Sun”), blistering rootsy new millennium punk (“Space in Your Face”), Tin Pan Alley-meets-Marianne Faithfull gypsy pop (“Geeshi”), gospel with twists of Robyn Hitchcock and John Cale (“I Fall Asleep”) and punky acoustic/electric blues (“Calling All Demons”), and that’s just the first five songs. The cover art resembles a foilembossed cover of an antique folio containing 78s from a bygone era. and the music on Ancient & Modern occasionally conjures up sensations of a similar vintage, but the underlying inspirations and executions are all undeniably contemporary.

In 1977, punk was the alternative to bloated corporate rock, and the Mekons were the punk alternative to punk. Three and a half decades later, the Mekons are still the indescribable alternative to just about everything. —Brian Baker

2007’s Aman Iman earned Tinariwen attention from audiences outside Northern Africa.

On Tassili, recorded in the desert of Southeastern Algeria, Tinariwen return to traditional acous-

tic instrumentation. The multi-guitar acrobatics of Aman Iman continues, but these 11 contemplative cuts are lunar blues sessions that softly, coolly unfold after midnight. They also brought some Amer-

photo by francesca allen

Worn Copy Ja kob Do r o f o n wax

R

ight off the bat this

month we’ve got a couple of plates from the two names most folks associate with soulful, Auto-damaged croon—though of course, neither of them play to type. On his new self-titled, Bon Iver 1 is distancing himself from the digitally processed hooks he slung for Kanye on the art rap giant’s masterpiece of yesteryear, and so the lead single is spring thaw hymnal “Calgary.” No surprises there, though he equips the flip with a piano cover of Bonnie Raitt’s confrontational classic “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” For its part, it’s a predictably bare and beautiful version, though a welcome surprise does come in the form of an optimistic twist ending—courtesy a quick quote from another Raitt hit. (Jagjaguwar) On “Order/Pan,” the ever-amorphous young James Blake 2 likewise foregoes what he’s best known for these days— the bleak, concise poetry of his barren dub-soul debut album—but doesn’t return to any of the winning tricks of last year’s EPs, be they piano sound collage (Klavierwerke), tranny IDM schizophrenia (CMYK), or pre-post-dubstep Pembroke.

Instead, the A and B both are strikingly minimal, repetition-heavy instrumentals best suited for expensive-ass car stereos and the largely imaginary nightclubs of the Europe inside your mind’s eye. Subtle stuff, acquired taste, whatever—another winner from one of the U.K.’s biggest talents out.

(Hemlock) Then we have not one, but two waxen examples of

“the remix single,” that classic excuse for big name bands to add another 12inch to their discography with little effort expended and scant replay value for the purchaser. Radiohead, 3 however, buck the trend with the third and by far best installment of a series in honor of this year’s The King of Limbs LP. Lone turns “Feral” into a tropical forest inside polyrhythmic U.K. garage, Pearson Sound scatters “Morning Mr. Magpie” about the dancefloor, and, best of all, Four Tet serves up an alternate take on “Separator” perhaps even prettier than the original. (Ticker Tape) Same can be said, mostly, for this 12-inch dedicated solely to remixes of Interpol’s 4 new snoozer “Try It On.” Ikonika’s is the would-be dancefloor bait, and the clearest failure of the trio.

Salem’s witchhouse blowout is at least interesting in the way it annihilates all but Paul Banks’ 1 voice (leaving little DNA of that, either), but it does little to counterweight or justify the original’s melodrama.

The Banjo or Freakout mix has an uncomfortable 2 middle section that sounds like Coldplay taking a stab at house, but the cold and lonely landscape the producer sculpts makes a fine resting place for Banks’ “no3 where to stay” refrain. Scrap the physical, but scoop an MP3 of this one track if you can. (Matador) Keepers and rejects alike, these are some pretty icy sides here. I thought win4 ter was at least a few more months away?

Got vinyl? Email vinyl@ cowbellmagazine.com

ican friends along: Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and, on “Tenere Taqqim Tossam,” the resplendent moonlit harmonies of TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone.

—Elliott Sharp

Tunnels

The Blackout Thrill Jockey

Portland man falls to Earth, survives Nicholas Binderman has never been one to let his solo work gather moss. As Tunnels, the Eternal Tapestry and Jackie-O Motherfucker guitarist has traveled through drones, DIY psych and beatbased confrontationalism like a planet evolving from molten mass to leafy Eden. On The Blackout, he gets condos. Not literally—but Binderman anchors his first foray into dark electropop with moves gleaned mostly from the late ’70s and early ’80s, when well-heeled dystopians first started buying high-rise hidey-holes in droves.

Opener “Crystal Arms” recalls Kraftwerk at their most robotic, and “Volt 1979”’s lo-res machine drums and brittle guitar help make it one of the decade’s most effective Tuxedomoon tributes to date. Despite his mastery of period moves, it’s Binderman’s moments of engagement with the present—as when the otherwise Bowie-esque “Without Light” breaks down to antimatter synth and alien falsetto vocals—that the path he’s taking really gets its shine on. —Rod Smith A Winged Victory for the Sullen

A Winged Victory for the Sullen Kranky

The wind beneath their bling By comparison with your typical Stars of the Lid output—like 2007’s epochal And Their Refinement of the Decline, whose languorously protracted tones and drones might still not have finished reverberating four years after its release—this new collaboration pairing Adam Wiltzie (half of that Texan duo) with “post-classical” composer/pianist Dustin O’Halloran offers something a little more lively. By any other measure, though, A Winged Victory for the Sullen could hardly be more utterly, ineffably tranquil.

Building from Refinement’s graceful, majestic swells of sound, and expanding on that album’s orchestral inclinations with an even broader symphonic palette—encompassing strings, organ, harp and O’Halloran’s sturdy, meditative piano—articulating a carefully selected compass of harmonic and melodic information, these seven pieces feel at once structurally minimal—almost formless, albeit deliberately controlled—and sonically maximal. Where much ambient drone, and Stars’ in particular, seems to take form from residue and a near-spectral suggestion of absence, Wiltzie and O’Halloran’s richly sonorous clusters rise toward an emotive power that can only stem from engaged, emphatic presence. —K. Ross Hoffman

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movies

Sold Out and Radical

Shifting ethics and incredible music collide in The Year Punk Broke

T

he problem with most concert movies is that they come along too late. The Last Waltz is a grand valedictory, but imagine if Martin Scorsese had captured the band in their heyday, rather than their last gasp?

The grainy, low-gauge film stock of Year of the Horse is a perfect visual analogue to the crude beauty of Neil Young and Crazy Horse; it’s too bad Jim Jarmusch was still in school when they were at their best.

1991: The Year Punk Broke, getting its belated first issue on DVD this month, is little more than a tour diary, tagging along with Sonic Youth on a two-week European jaunt at the end of the festival season. But its blurry snapshot was taken at a pivotal time, as the underground music of the 1980s was becoming the stuff of mainstream airplay and massive sales. The list of

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Punk Brokers: Sonic Youth circa 1991

/ by Sam Adams

bands they share stages with reads like a college-radio Top 10: Dinosaur Jr. and Babes in Toyland, plus elder statesmen Iggy Pop and the Ramones. But by the time the film was released the following year, they’d all been eclipsed by Sonic Youth’s touring partners, a rising Seattle trio named Nirvana.

By an accident of timing, The Year Punk Broke captures Nirvana at the cusp of their epoch-defining breakthrough; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released to radio stations in the U.S. a few days before the end of the tour. They’re at the peak of their powers as they rip into “School” and “Negative Creep,” and as Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl clown around with the snack trays backstage, they seem utterly untroubled by the prospect of fame. Even though a stage-trashing montage includes footage of a kneeling Kurt Cobain repeatedly head-butting his amp, he’s a fleeting but

photo by Dave Markey

movies generally high-spirited presence throughout the film, puckering up as Kim Gordon puts lipstick on him and dictating the nonsense words to be scrawled in Sharpie on his white lab coat.

Offstage, Thurston Moore is the dominant presence, often an overbearing one.

During a moment of relative sincerity, he frets about being a major label signee moving into his 30s, and it’s as if he has to balance the scales by acting as juvenile as possible the rest of the time. He’s constantly grabbing a handheld mic and spitting out impromptu rants, free-associating like a bad Beat poet. Fortunately, director Dave Markey keeps the interludes brief, but the cumulative effect is grating.

Moore’s most lucid spiel is a rant about “modern punk, as featured in Elle magazine,” zeroing in on the sickening spectacle of Mötley Crüe playing a “candyass” version of “Anarchy in the UK” for a stadium crowd.

The double meaning in the title, presumably a riff on some unidentified trend piece, is deliberate: 1991 is the year punk, or some watered-down descendent thereof, breaks into the mainstream, and also the year it breaks beyond repair.

During a man-on-the-street interview with an impromptu panel of young rock fans, Moore prompts them to endorse his theory that the only way to regain control of the culture is to destroy the major record labels, but what’s especially telling about The Year Punk Broke is that every one of the bands it features was signed to a major at the time. Most have long since broken up, but Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. have returned to the indie fold, a sea change that marks the passing of decades as neatly as J. Mascis’ graying hair. It’s almost disconcerting to return to an era when band would give the finger to MTV News in their hotel rooms and then take their questions in the press tent because there was no other way to spread the word. The Year Punk Broke wasn’t meant as a time capsule, and perhaps it’s not; The Year Punk Broke DVD it’s more like visiting hits stores another world.

September 13

Now Screen This Sam Adams with the best of what’s in movie theaters this month

Brighton Rock Rowan Joffe’s grim adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel about a young thug in 1960s Britain hinges on the magnetic performance of Sam Riley (Control) as the razor-wielding Pinkie. Even better is newcomer Andrea Riseborough, as the smitten waitress whom Pinkie marries to keep quiet after she witnesses a gangland murder. Her slow-witted romantic swallows Pinkie’s brutish behavior to a point, but then the acid comes out.

The Interrupters Steve James (Hoop Dreams) followed the gang-intervention specialists at Chicago’s Cease Fire for years before making this gripping portrait of ex-convicts trying to prevent young people from following in their footsteps. Their method is to treat violence like an epidemic, setting aside moral judgments in favor of pragmatic attempts to defuse disputes before hot words turn into a hail of gunfire. Although it’s trimmed from the Sundance cut, the movie still feels like a miniature epic, including some astonishing reversals and a few tragic disappointments.

Shut Up, Little Man! Proof that viral sensations d i d n’ t b e g i n with the Internet, the surreptitious recordings of drunken feuds between two elderly San Franciscans grew into a series of CDs, comic books and even a theatrical production. Matt Bate’s documentary, told through the lives of the neighbors who taped and merchandised their rants, grows more fascinating as the ethical waters grow murkier.

Warrior Breaking hearts and smashing bones, Gavin Hood’s story of estranged brothers (Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton) on a path to meet in a mixed martial arts tournament is a fist-pumping crowd-pleaser with integrity, a rare and uniquely thrilling combination. Hardy hangs his head like a wounded pup and punches like a Sherman tank, and Edgerton, as a washed-out fighter heading back to the hexagon to save his family’s house, is the soul of well-muscled decency.

The regulars at his Philadelphia gym mockingly ask if he forgot to bring Mick and Paulie, but the Rocky comparisons are no joke.

from Geffen Records.

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movies * Directors often get

all the credit when it comes to great films, and great TV shows are often seen as ensemble pieces. But what about the actors who help elevate a flick to classic status, or the unsung stars who take a show to the next level? Each month, Love Your Work looks at the actors who rescued a project from failure or added that extra layer of awesomeness.

Jonathan Banks

Love Your Work* Jonathan Banks as Mike on Breaking Bad

by Joe Gross

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F

or those of us who love hard-working character actors who

appear everywhere, the late, brilliant website Fametracker inspired a mix of awe and jealousy with its “J.T. Walsh Memorial ‘Hey, It’s That Guy’” feature. “Hey, It’s That Guy” was a compendium of frequent flier character actors, its existence a forehead-smacking moment to all of us who didn’t think of it first.

From Caroline Aaron to George Wyner, “Hey, It’s That Guy” provided smartly written, well-argued mini-tributes to dozens of character actors from years past to, well, that guy you saw as a judge on Law and Order: SVU last night. Such a site is designed as an argument starter, mostly of the “what about this guy?” variety, but most of us were too busy loving it to argue.

Now that Fametracker has gone to that great server in the sky and is no longer updated, it can be asked: Where the hell was Jonathan Banks? Born in 1947, raised in Sil-

ver Spring, Maryland, Banks kicked around stages until getting bit parts here and there in the ’70s. There must be something about his face that is oddly forgettable; he scored a hat trick on Lou Grant, Hardcastle and McCormick and Simon and Simon, playing three separate bit parts in three different episodes.

He was a bit player in a couple of iconic comedies (Airplane!, Stir Crazy) before hitting the character actor mother lode in both 48 Hours (friend, dies) and Beverly Hills Cop (foe, dies).

By that time, Banks settled into his niche:

photo by ben leuner/amc

movies He was either going to be a bad guy or a cop, and found a talent for blurring the line between the two. My father was a high school friend of Banks—disclosure: I’ve never met him (Banks, that is)—and dad once said that a lot of their tougher friends either became cops or criminals.

Banks was a decadent fascist on Otherworld, a clever sci-fi show that nobody saw, and a brilliant cop on the far-more-successful Wiseguy, playing FBI field supervisor Frank McPike. Cynical, blackly humorous, intolerant of incompetence, irascible and fiercely devoted to the job, McPike was a terrific character and Banks played him brilliantly.

There was violence deep inside McPike that was carefully tamped down. He was a good man who was deeply uncomfortable with his own goodness. Banks was nominated for an Emmy in ’89. It’s still his best role.

But Mike is awfully close.

From his first appearance on Breaking Bad, Mike the fixer has been McPike’s dark mirror, McPike with a few wrong turns— where McPike joins the FBI after time as a cop, Mike moved from time as a beat cop to the other side of the fence.

Mike is, in fact, a man increasingly uncomfortable with his own badness. We first see Banks’ amazing face in the final episode of season two, where he arrives at the house of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), whose girlfriend Jane has overdosed. Blowing into his purple latex glove like he’s opening the mail, Mike removes the drug paraphernalia, gets the money for his boss (drug kingpin Gus Fring, played with coiled menace by Giancarlo Esposito) and tells Jesse what to tell the paramedics: “You woke up, you found her, that’s all you know.” You never get the impression his pulse raises above a rest—this is a guy who has seen it all.

Mike becomes a regular in season three.

We learn he has a granddaughter on whom he dotes, but we never learn his last name, never learn if he really respects his boss. He is there to do a job, a job he is good at, but probably not all that proud of. Until the penultimate episode of season three, when the writers of Breaking Bad gifted Banks with one of the best monologues in recent TV history. Sitting with Walter White, he tells a tale of when he was a beat cop: “I’d get called out on domestic disputes all the time. Hundreds, probably, over the years.

But there was this one guy—this one piece of shit—that I will never forget: Gordy. Big boy— 270, 280. But his wife… or whatever she was, his lady… was real small. Like a bird. Wrists like branches. Anyway, my partner and I got called out there every weekend, and one of us would pull her aside and say, ‘Come on, tonight’s the night we press charges.’ And this wasn’t one of those deep-down-he-loves-me

A good pause.

“I’ll never make that mistake again.”

Perfect.

And in season four, the game changes ever so slightly again. In a scene of stomach-turning violence, in order to make a point to Walt and Jesse about taking matters into their own hands, Gus very calmly walks into his meth factory, puts on a hazmat suit and slits the

set-ups—we get a lot of those, but not this. This Jesse Pinkman girl was scared.”

(Aaron Paul), Mike One night Mike chose (Jonathan Banks) and Walter White to confront Gordy. “I (Bryan Cranston) cuff him, put him in the in Breaking Bad car and away we go. Only that night, we’re driving into town, and this sideways asshole is in my back seat humming ‘Danny Boy.’ And it just rubbed me wrong. So, instead of left, I go right, out into nowhere.

And I kneel him down, and I put my revolver in his mouth, and I told him, ‘This is it. This is how it ends.’”

He chooses to let Gordy go. Then: “Two weeks later, he killed her. Of course. Caved her head in with the base of a Waring blender.

We got there, there was so much blood you could taste the metal.

“The moral of the story is: I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way.”

throat of Victor, one of his most loyal henchmen, while looking Walt dead in the eye.

Even Mike flinches—he pulls out his gun and leaps back. Later, Walter tries to make the point to Mike that if that guy was expendable, anyone is fair game. But Mike is too much the pro. He poker-faces his doubts and punches Walt, walking out of the bar.

We’ll see if Mike can keep doing what he does for Gus. Either way, Banks will make it real, knowing full well that right and wrong, good and evil, black and white fade to gray when colored Breaking Bad: with violence.

The Complete Third Season is available now from Sony.

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movies

Western Expansion Imagine Ennio Morricone as a rock band?

We’re sold on Spindrift / by Shaun Brady

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cowbell

movies

T

here’s a chicken and egg conundrum to the psych-

cinematic songs of L.A. band Spindrift. Which comes first— the soundtrack or the movie? ¶ In the case of the band’s own 2008 feature, The Legend of God’s Gun, the answer is “both.” A grungy homage to spaghetti westerns, the film began life as a concept hatched by Spindrift songwriter/ frontman Kirpatrick Thomas, which he fleshed out into an Ennio Morricone-flavored score. The band then hooked up with filmmaker Mike Bruce, who turned the tale of outlaws, vengeance and adultery into a messy exploitation oater full of gore and overlaid with so many scratches, burns and skipped frames that it looks like it served time as a floor covering in a 42nd Street grindhouse.

The preexisting music was retrofitted to the now-existing film for which it was intended, then reconfigured once more for the ensuing soundtrack album.

“

“So, you’re looking at three different versions of the soundtrack for one movie,” Thomas says. “Before, during and after.”

Thomas got ahead of himself again in titling Spindrift’s latest album, Classic Soundtracks, Vol.1, which consists of 14 themes to films in various stages of realization at the time of their writing and recording. IFC. com has since premiered film clips, trailers and videos by eight different directors to accompany each tune. “It’s a musical résumé for film works,” Thomas says of the album, “a vehicle for us to showcase the kind of thing we like to feel that we excel at.”

When Spindrift formed in 1992 in the very non-western town of Newark, DE, it was as a —kirpatrick thomas psychedelically tinged shoegaze/space-rock unit, though occasional instrumentals laced with 007 accents and lysergic surf outbursts Since then, it’s basically been a progression pointed the way towards their eventual diof interest in film scoring and taking things rection. But it was Thomas’ 2002 outside of the normal rock and trek to the country’s film capital roll band ethic.” (which he says was “kind of like There is a ghost town twang moving into a candy store”) that that runs throughout Classic cemented the band’s MorriconeSoundtracks, though the conjured genres range from the go-go sci-fi esque reorientation.

“My trip to the west coast from of “Space Vixens” to the samurai the east coast driving through aftermath of “Japexico.” But it’s the dusty, baroque soundscapes of the desert was the initial point Classic Sergio Leone’s uncanny westerns of inspiration for me,” Thomas Soundtracks Vol. 1 is available that are the strongest influence, explains. “Seeing the American now from Xemu whether in the tense clangor of west and its vast landscapes.

It’s a musical résumé for film works. A vehicle for us to showcase the kind of thing we like to feel that we excel at.”

“Legend of the Widower Colby Wallace” or the gothic high noon sweep of “Showdown.”

Thomas cites influences as disparate as Lalo Schifrin’s score for Bullitt, Vangelis’ new age Blade Runner soundtracks and Wendy Carlos’ Moog-classical fusion for A Clockwork Orange.

“Imagine Ennio Morricone as a rock band,” says Noel Lawrence, caretaker of the J.X. Williams Archive, dedicated to promoting the work of a long-forgotten exploitation filmmaker of dubious authenticity. Lawrence enlisted Spindrift to score sequences from two of Williams’ films, Space Vixens (1967, allegedly) and Hollywood Play-Girls (1966, ditto).

“Sometimes you just know you are going to collaborate with someone at first glance,” Lawrence says. “I met the band’s founder K.P. at a house party in Silver Lake a few years ago. Someone told me his band scored neopsychedelic soundtracks for weird movies. I knew within two or three seconds of talking with him that his band would be a perfect fit for the films of J.X. Williams.”

Other filmmakers have had similar reactions, which has landed Spindrift on the soundtracks of the Quentin Tarantino-produced Hell Ride and the HBO series Eastbound & Down. Next up are Ward Roberts’ feature Dust Up and Mike Bruce’s follow-up to The Legend of God’s Gun, the gold-hunting adventure Treasure of the Black Jaguar (think Sierra Madre), which premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Pieces from nearly all of those projects and others populate Classic Soundtracks, Vol. 1, though Thomas made sure to preserve the album’s listenability by road-testing the material first. “We toured the United States for seven weeks and played the whole album from beginning to end every night,” he says. “We had a lot of different ideas to choose from and this is what finally came to be because it’s the most exciting as a whole record. We didn’t want it to be just another boring soundtrack record. It definitely still has a rock ‘n’ roll element to it, which makes it great to play live.”

Records

photo by Daiana Feuer/L.A. Record

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comedy

He’s With CoCo

All of the comics in the neighborhood wish they could be like Reggie Watts / by Patrick Rapa

In the music world,

there are a few people who kinda sorta do what Reggie Watts does: looping, beatboxing, building up songs with nothing but an acrobatic tongue and an effects pedal. Nobody really walks the same improv tightrope, but fellow knob-twirlers and pedal pushers, like Owen Pallett or tUnE-yArDs, they know what’s up.

As for the comedy world? There he’s very much alone.

In fact, when Watts landed the opening spot for Conan O’Brien’s post-Tonight Show

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cowbell

march across America — the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour — few knew enough about the man to raise an eyebrow.

Watts was the viral video guy, whose “What About Blowjobs” scored 800,000 hits for CollegeHumor. Or he was the dude from Maktub, the straight-up serious jam-soul band from Seattle.

Next thing you knew, the man with the louder-than-Cosby sweaters, the biggerthan-?uestlove ’fro and a voice like Terence Trent D’Arby gone to heaven had landed the hottest support spot in showbiz. Some com-

edy writer friends dropped his name. CoCo watched a few videos on YouTube and gave the thumbs-up. And the ball got rolling.

“Oh, it was incredible,” recalls Watts, on the phone from his childhood home in Montana. “I mean, I don’t know if there’s going to be another comedy tour like it, ever… you know, unless Conan decides to go out on the road again.”

It was a big-time operation: catering, fancy hotels, large capacity houses, props, writers and a crew that operated like a “military operation, but military with compassion,” he says. “It was this crazy marriage of, like, top-notch TV production and top-notch road production.”

Since then, Watts has turned up on the Conan TBS show a dozen times, always landing a few deadpan quips and then launching into some on-the-spot musical weirdness.

“There’s a lot of experimentation and it basically just comes out of a need—me wanting

photo by wendy lynch redfern

comedy Heard

Heard Weekly

With his first album since WTF? became a bona fide podcasting phenomenon, Marc Maron proves he’s still, you know, a comedian (as opposed to a guy who just interviews them really well). Maron is utterly in the moment and completely confident in his material, even if most of This Has to Be Funny (released by Comedy Central Records) is about how paranoid and out of step he feels with the rest of society. It’s not just the big stories, like his hilarious tour through a Creation museum, it’s also the sadly beautiful little scenes: “You’re fuckin’ ridiculous,” he says to himself one day while walking through his empty apartment.

Then he follows it up with, “but you’re no dummy.” It’s like it’s not an act, it’s just him talking.

Which is a really good act. And the uncomfortable laughs are worth double.

also Heard Michael Ian Black’s got an impressive c.v. by when it comes to being funny—The State, Viva Patrick Variety, Wet Hot American Summer and about Rapa a dozen other short-lived, mostly memorable projects—but as a standup, he rubs me the wrong way. His smug, slimy onstage persona makes the everyday stuff about kids and home life on Very Famous (Comedy Central) a tough sell. Are we supposed to think he’s a real person or a douche robot or what? He’s got a telling bit early on about how strangers don’t find him funny. If you’re already a fan of MIB the person, you might dig the album.

to do something stupid onstage, you know, something that I think is ridiculous.” And the goal? “A really confusing and disorienting and just a really stupid experience.”

It’s not all improv, of course. There’s that blowjob song, and the brilliantly esoteric “Fuck Shit Stack,” another viral hit, which starts with some breathy beatboxing and proceeds to dissect popular hip-hop to its component parts. “Yo, uhh.

Word. Adjective. Pronoun.

Adverb. Run on and on and on. Where my gerunds at?”

His rapid-fire mimicry goes from laid-back Del tha Funky Homosapien slowdrawling to some Humpty Hump nasalness to a clunky, Why S#!+ grimy Streets kinda thing. “I So Crazy is like women. I like women. I avaialable now from like the concept of a woman.

Comedy I like to take that concept Central

Too Much Information, on North Jersey’s WFMU, is by no means a hard-c comedy podcast/radio show, but it’s some of the sharpest, most inventive satire going. Shaky-voiced Benjamen Walker acts like he’s doing a This American Life thing (topical interviews with snazzy interstitial music), only you quickly realize about half the stories walk the balance between suspicious and ridiculous.

Unless… maybe he really is under court order to fly over America in a jet-black hot air balloon?

Overheard “She’s a girl comedian. She’ll have to work extra hard.” Actually said out loud by some meathead in the lobby of Helium in Philadelphia, about 45 minutes before one of Tig Notaro’s five shows.

Tig killed it by the way, and made it look easy.

Saw Cute as a bag of bugs, Kate Micucci—you probably know her as one half of the L.A. music/comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates or the Gooch from the latter years of Scrubs—was the opener at Notaro’s show. Her solo standup really hit the spot: catchy, heartfelt and silly songs played on a ukulele, and sung with endearing conviction. Crowd goes wild. After the show, I picked up a copy of her sixsong CD-R, and it reminds me of all those tapes by lo-fi Olympia indie-poppers I used to collect in the ’90s. So awesome. Unlike a lot of funny songs, these don’t get old. But I want more.

Got Bits? Send ’em to Patrick Rapa, comedy@cowbellmagazine.com

and reduce it to an object.”

It’s brainy, and dorky, and biting, but it’s also most definitely a part of the genre it’s satirizing.

“I don’t really know any hip-hoppers, although when I meet hip-hop cats casually around a club or whatever, they seem to be cool with it because we speak the language of rhythm.” he says. “I also appreciate the borrowing nature of hip-hop.”

Thanks to his toy collection, Watts’ favorite artist to sample is himself. He runs down his equipment checklist, and it’s a blur of soundboard nerdiness: the Roland RV-5 reverb pedal, the BOSS RC-5, the ElectroHarmonix 2880, and so on. “If I could make a hybrid between all of those pedals, that would be awesome. But you know, the thing about technology is that you’ll never find something that does everything you need it to do,” he says. “If I could just have a design team, an engineering team and the money to do it, I

could probably create a pretty near perfect looping machine, for at least my purposes.”

In between songs, Watts likes to sprinkle in a few head-tilting bits of fiction—stuff about the supposed good old days touring with the Oak Ridge Boys (in some unnamed capacity), or how he’s BFFs with Thom Yorke.

As with Watts’ music, the comedy comes in slow, like the tide, until finally you get it and get swept up by it. It’s funny because it’s unexpected, a reinvention of the usual concert experience.

“Yeah, I’ve done music, and I can imitate sounds and things like that, but I also have a love for just ridiculous abstract things, inspired by things like The State or Monty Python or The Muppet Show,” he says. “I think with improvisation, for me and other comedians that I know that like to riff, they’re just really playing off of that chaos.”

For more, hit reggiewatts.com

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SEPTEMBER 6

1991: The Year That Punk Broke 300 Cartoon Classics Afterlife Investigations Airwolf: The Movie Alaska: The Edge of Life Alaska’s Wild Denali Aldebaran Mystery and the Eisenhower Briefing Papers: UFO Secrets of the 3rd Reich and World War II All About: A World of Learning Vol. 1 All About: A World of Learning Vol. 2 American Harmony Animal Factory Arbor Assassination Games Babar: Best Friends Forever Babar: School Days Back to the Beyond Bad News Bears Four-Movie Collection Battle for Marjah Bed & Breakfast Bellydance Superstars: Issam Houshan – Introduction to …

Black Blood Brothers: The Complete Series Bleach Uncut Box Set Vol. 1 Bloodwood Cannibals Burst Angel: The Complete Series and OVA Care Bears: Share Bear Shines Children of the Corn Children of the Corn Collection Christina Christopher Columbus Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song Civil War Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Vol. 2 Colors of the Mountain Community: The Complete Second Season Creepshow 2 Criminal Minds: Season 6 Criminal Minds: Seasons 1-6 Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior Death Toll/The Stick Up Kids Destry: The Complete Series Diana Rigg at the BBC Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Adventure Pack Dragon Hill Dragonblade: The Beginning Drak Pack: The Complete Series Elvira, Mistress of the Dark Entitled ESPN Films 30 for 30: The Fab Five Everything Must Go Fringe: The Complete Third Season Genevieve Ghastly Grabs 12 Ghastly Grabs 13 Ghastly Grabs 14 Ghost Stories: Seasons 1 & 2 Halloween Triple Pack Hanna Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 Hellraiser Hellraiser Collection Herman and Katnip: The Complete Series Hide High School Musical: China Hills Have Eyes

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History Classics: America’s Most Haunted Places Hollow Hollywood Classics: The Golden Age of the Silver Screen Honey Horrible Way to Die House House 2: The Second Story International Terrorism: The Global War on Terror Iron Soldier It’s the Rage Jaws Journey of August King King and the Clown King Kong (2005) Kit Kittredge: An Americal Girl Last Kung Fu Monk Legends of the Silver Screen: Onscreen and Off Liar Liar Lovers & Friends Show: Season 4 Ludacris: Southern Smoke Unauthorized Madso’s War Magic Midnight Horror Collection: Stalkers Midsomer Murders Set 18 Miramax Con Man Series Miramax Hip Thrillers Series Miramax Prophecy Series Mr. & Mrs. Bridge National Geographic: Remembering 9/11 – 10 Year Commemorative Collection National Lampoon’s Animal House Nightmare Next Door No Ordinary Family: The Complete Series Nonstop Movie Party: Zombies!

Office: Season Seven Olivia: Princess for a Day On Strike for Christmas Oz and James’ Big French Wine Adventure Parks and Recreation: Season Three PBS Explorer Collection: Dogs – Man’s Best Friend Peacemaker: Complete Series PGA: Highlights of the 2011 Masters Tournament Police Story Season One Predatory Instinct Project Rebirth Return of the Killer Tomatoes Return to Horror High Saturday Morning Cartoon Classics Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur Secrets of Isis Sesame Street: Elmo’s Music Magic Sharks, Piranhas & Monsters Soundstage: America – Live Soundstage: REO SPeedwagon – Live in the Heartland Straw Dogs Street Fighter Round One: Fight!

Street Fighter: The New Challengers Sweet Insanity/Lucky Keyes/ Haunting of 24 Team Umizoomi: Journey to Numberland Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman…

And More Spooky Halloween Stories Thievery Corporation: Live at the 9:30 Club Thomas & Friends: Day of the Diesels Thriller Theater To Love-Ru: Complete Collection Trail of the Panda Transylvania 6-5000 TV’s Greatest Family Collection Two and a Half Men: The Complete Eighth Season Ultimate Dog Tails, Vol. 1

sept 13 Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

All the world’s a stage— literally—for the then-justdeposed redhead funnyman.

This revelatory documentary explores his pathological inability to stay out of the spotlight. [Magnolia}

Ultimate Dog Tails, Vol. 2 Ultimate Scream Collection Utah’s National Parks Vidal Sassoon: The Movie Wake the Witch Weakness Wes Craven Collection Wild Malibu Weekend Wild River: The Colorado World of Sid & Marty Krofft: Sigmund and the Sea Monsters Box Set Wrath of the Titans X-Men; First Class Yellowstone: Fabric of a Dream Yes Sir! Jack Nicklaus and his Historic 1986 Masters Win Zombie Apocalypse SEPTEMBER 13

35 and Ticking 3rd Rock From the Sun: Season 1 3rd Rock From the Sun: Season 2 42nd Street Pete’s Busty Babe Bonanza American Breakdown Angeles en la Tierra Arthur’s Music Jamboree Avenging Eagle Barbie: Princess Charm School Barney: Big World Adventure Battle for the Skies: The Definitive History of the Royal Air Force Beyond the Dunwich Horror/Pretty Dead Things Beyond the Light Switch Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fourth Season Bill Cunningham New York Blades of Blood Blink 182: Never Miss a Beat Blue Bloods: The First Season Blue Mountain State: Season Two Boggy Creek: The Legend Is True Born of Earth Bran Nue Dae C.O.P.S.: The Animated Series Vol. 2 Cagin of Chrysaint Camelot Canine Capers 4-pack Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking

Circus Maximus Citizen Kane Classic Westerns Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop Creature Feature Danny Phantom: Season 1 Death of the Virgin Destroyer D’Myna Leagues: Animated Series Doctor Who: The Day of the Daleks Dog Lovers 4-Pack Dog Who Saved Halloween Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Enchanted Forest Adventures Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Storybook Adventures Dragonball Z Kai: Part Six Eating Ed Sullivan Show: The Best of the Supremes on the Ed Sullivan Show Ed Sullivan Show: The Best of the Temptations on the Ed Sullivan Show Ed Sullivan’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Classics: Motown Gold on the Sullivan Show Emma: The Complete Series Entrelazados Eva Luna Eye of the Future Fania All Stars: Our Latin Thing Farm Firme Un Contrato Al Diablo Fog Gappa the Triphibian Monsters Ghost Hunters Season Six Part 1 Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver Girl Who Leapt Through Space, Vol. 3 Glee: Season 2, Vol. 2 Glee: The Complete Second Season Golden Swallow Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Good Wife: The Second Season Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant Goosebumps: Ghost Beach Green Day: How It Came to Be Grey’s Anatomy: Season 7 Grit & Perseverance Grounded for Life: Season 1 Grounded for Life: Season 2 Gundown Haunting at the Beacon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Complete Second Season Heroes Two Hesher Hide and Seek Hills Have Eyes: Unrated Collection Inspector Lewis: Series 4 It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season Six Jandek: Bristol Wednesday Jet Bombers: Vol. 1 Jet Bombers: Vol. 2 Jimi Hendrix: Blue Wild Angel – Live at the Isle of Wight Jimi Hendrix: The Dick Cavett Show Johnny Test Saves the World Johnny Test: The Complete Seasons 3&4 Just Peck Kekkaishi Set Two Killer Clans Killer Double Feature: Bad Dreams/ Visiting Hours K-On! Vol. 3 La Ley: MTV Unplugged Laid Off Last Lullaby Leading Ladies Little Cars Vol. 4: New Genie Adventures Little Cars Vol. 5: Big Adventures Little Cars Vol. 8: Making a Mess Lost Heritage Lourdes Love, Wedding, Marriage Magical Christmas Sstories

The Man’s Got Something To Say. NEW MUSIC FROM SOME OF THE GREATEST SONGWRITERS AROUND.

STEPHIN MERRITT

GABE DIXON

RY COODER

OBSCURITIES

ONE SPARK

A collection of hard to find recordings, dating back to his time on Merge. Includes 5 previously unreleased tracks.

His solo singer-songwriter debut, featuring tracks with Alison Krauss and Starsailor’s James Walsh

PULL UP SOME DUST AND SIT DOWN These times call for a very different kind of protest song. ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ We’re way down the road from that.”

available

sep. 13

MATT NATHANSON MODERN LOVE Taking his modern music on the road with Train and Maroon 5 throughout the fall.

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE WINTERLAND Available as a single CD highlight disc, 4 CD box set or 8 LP box set

RON SEXSMITH LONG PLAYER LATE BLOOMER Nominated for Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize in 2011. Stop by participating stores and get a special Polaris Prize 7” surprise single (which artists will be combined on your single?) while they last.

TOM MORELLO

THE NIGHTWATCHMAN WORLD WIDE REBEL SONGS Morello rages on this third album as The Nightwatchman, his protest-folk alter-ego.

COWBELL

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/movies/new_releases Mana: Exitos En Video Maria’s “B” Movie Mayhem: Love Me Deadly/The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse Marriage of Figaro Marvel Knights: Thor and Loki – Blood Brothers Me and Orson Welles Meek’s Cutoff Mi Vida Dentro Midnight Horror Collection: Deadly Games MM! The Complete Collection Mobile Suit Gundam: Complete Collection 1 Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space Mystery Science Theater 3000: Manos: The Hands of Fate Mythbusters: Collection 7 National Geographic: Lewis & Clark – Great Journey West Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown Nick Kroll: Thank You Very Cool Nickelodeon Adventure Collection Nostalgia for the Light Olga Tanon: Olga Viva, Viva Olga Outsorced: The Complete Series Paroled Paul Rodgers & Friends: Live at Montreux 1994 Perfect Life Politics of Love Private Practice: The Complete Fourth Season Putt Putt Syndrome Quattro Volte RAF at War: 1918-1939 RAF at War: 1940-1960 RAF at War: 1960-2008 Reach for Me Recipe Rescue Me: The Complete Sixth Season Riki-Oh! The Story of Ricky Rockpalast: Epitaph – Krautrock Legends Vol. 1 Roseanne: 10 Fan Favorite Episodes Roseanne: The Complete First Season Roseanne: The Complete Second Season Roy Buchanan: Live at Rockpalast Sadie’s Signature Combinations Sanctuary Season 3 Scarecrow Triple Feature Scarecrows Scared Shrekless Secret World of Og Secretos De Amor Servant SFO & Caledon: On a Beautiful Scottish Evening Should’ve Put a Ring On It Shunning Silent House Son of Morning Sounds and Silence Spartacus: Gods of the Arena Super Hero Squad Show Vol. 1-2: Infinity Gauntlet Supernatural: The Complete Sixth Season Superplanes Vol. 1 Superplanes Vol. 2 Sweatshop Tempest That 70s Show: Biggest Hits That 70s Show: Season 1 That 70s Show: Season 2 Thor Trainspotting True Legend UFC 132: Cruz vs. Faber Ultimate Guide: Dolphins

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sept 20 The Bachelor Party

Not a remake of the finest work Tom Hanks has ever done, but a way too serious— and assuredly lame—Tyler Perry-style jam. Pretty sure no donkeys snort lines in this one. [Image] Up From Slavery Vandread: The Ultimate Collection Vida La Lucha: Revolution Wainy Days: Seasons 1-4 Weir’s Way Set One Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Wubbzy and the Fire Engine WWE: Summerslam 2011 Xenosaga: Complete Box Set SEPTEMBER 20

4th & Goal 51 Accidental Spy Adam Alejandro Sanz: MTV Unplugged Aliens vs. Avatars All Pro Sports Football Series Vol. 3 All Pro Sports Football Series Vol. 4 Amagami SS; Collection 1 Ambassadors of Hollywood Ancient Secret Agents Ancient Tank Tech Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table Baby Jane?

Bachelor Party Bal Beau Serge Bill Moyers: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith Black Tent Blood Equity Blue Sunshine Body of Proof: The Complete First Season Boys Next Door Braidesmaids Breaking the Press Bride Flight Bridesmaids British Rail Journeys II: Around the Peak District Carbon Nation Castle: The Complete Third Season Celebrity Ghost Stories 9 Celtic Thunder: Storm Christmas Romance Christmas Tech Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2 Chrysanthemum… and More Whimsical Stories

Circo City Island Colin Cousins Curved Air: Lost Broadcasts Dalziel & Pascoe: Season 4 Danger U.X.B. Dead End Drive-In Dead Heat Death Weapons of the East Dick Van Dyke Show: Fan Favorites Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumia Disco Worms Dnangel: Complete Collection Dora the Explorer: Saves the Day!/ The Great Jaguar Rescue Driller/Driller Killer Dumbo Eat the Sun Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World Edward and Mrs. Simpson Parts 1&2 Family Fun 4-pack (Charlotte’s Web 2/Lassie/Andre/Black Beauty) Family Thanksgiving Final Exam Flame in the Streets Flowers in the Attic Forever Plaid Friday the 13th Four-Pack Gary Moore: Live at Montreux 2010 George A. Romero Presents Deadtime Stories Volume 2 George Clooney Gettysburg Glass Window Go Hugo Go Going Postal Gun Slingers 4-Pack Happy Endings: Season One Haunted Hawaii Five-O: The Eleventh Season Hawaii Five-O: The First Season (2011) High Impact: M-16 History Classics: Decoding the Past History Classics: The Battle History of the United States Military History Classics: The States History Classics: World War I: The Great War Holiday Collector’s Set Vol. 4 Holiday Collector’s Set Vol. 5 Holiday Romance Holiday to Remember House of the Spirits How the Toys Saved Christmas Hugo the Movie Star I Don’t Want to Be Born I Want to See I’ll be Home for Christmas In Search of Christmas In Search of Santa In the Weeds In the World of: Jack the Ripper Initiation Innocent Inspector General John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension: The New Universe Music Festival 2010 John O’Donohue: A Celtic Pilgrimage Johnny Cash’s America Judge John Deed: Season Four Kennedys King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Vol. 2 Kurt Cobain La Zombie Lamp Landmarks of Middle English Literature Laura Pausini: Live 2001-2002 World Tour Law & Order: Los Angles – The Complete Series Lee and Grant Little Chief Patoruzito: The Great Adventure Little Nemo: Adventures in

Slumberland Little Rascals: Pirates of Our Gang Little Rascals: Scary Spoktacular Lost Tapes: Season 2 Love Surreal Lovers Mad: Season One, Part One Malena McMillan & Wife: Season Six Mean Girls Mega Tsunami Mentalist: Season 3 Mike & Molly: Season 1 MLB: Baseball’s Greatest Games – Derek Jeter’s 3000th Hit Modern Family: Season 2 Month by the Lake Mountaintop Motel Massacre Muckman My First Scholastic Storybook Treasures Vol. 2 My Life So Far My Run Nature of Existence New Mexico State Penitentiary Nosferatu Olden Days Coat Order of One: Kung Fu Killing Spree Paranormal Haunting: The Curse of the Blue Moon Inn Pennhurst Insane Asylum & Manchac Swamp Pistol: The Birth of a Legend Pokemon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions Porklips Now Questions for Crazy Horse Raising Hope: The Complete First Season Reach Out to Horses: Success Foals in Training Red Green Show: The Geezer Years Reefer Madness Return to Tarawa: The Leon Cooper Story Richard Pryor Double Feature Riddle of the Sands River Monsters: Season 3 River Sorrow Rugrats: Halloween Savage Secrets in the Walls Set Up Shanghai Mystery Sinking a Ship Sister, Sister Slugs Sons of Mistletoe Spongebob Squarepants: Lost at Sea/Tales From the Deep Spongebob Squarepants: Spongebob’s Runway Roadtrip Spooky Buddies Spoon… and More Stories About Friendship Strange Case of Angelica Stuff Sword With No Name Terror Trap That New Animal… and More Stories About a New Baby Timmy Time: Hide and Seek TNA Wrestling: Destination X 2011 Today’s Special Toughest Military Jobs UFC: The Ultimate Fighter Season 13 UFC: Ultimate Matt Hughes Vamp Vampire Knight: The Complete Series Variety Acts & Turns of the 2nd World War 1939-45 Vineyard Visions of 8: The Olympics of Motion Picture Achievement We Are the Night Wonder Pets: Save the Bengal/Save the Wonder Pets Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Yusef Trilogy: Sut Yusuf Trilogy: Yumurta

9-13

Renegade bikers

Show choirs Mutants

General hilarity A little something for every tAste.

sons of Anarchy

it’s Always sunny in Philadelphia, season 6

curtAin cAll 9-13

class begins 9-9

INTENSE SEQUENCES OF ACTION AND VIOLENCE, SOME SEXUAL CONTENT INCLUDING BRIEF PARTIAL NUDITY AND LANGUAGE.

TM

© 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Dune Entertainment III LLC. All Rights Reserved. © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, FOX and associated logos are trademarks of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and its related entities.

INTENSE SEQUENCES OF ACTION AND VIOLENCE, SOME SEXUAL CONTENT INCLUDING BRIEF PARTIAL NUDITY AND LANGUAGE.

TM

© 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Dune Entertainment III LLC. All Rights Reserved. © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, FOX and associated logos are trademarks of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and its related entities.

MATUREÊTHEME, VIOLENCEÊÊÊÊÊ

X-Men, all character names and their distinctive likenesses: TM & © 2011 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries.

All Rights Reserved.

MATUREÊTHEME, VIOLENCEÊÊÊÊÊ

X-Men, all character names and their distinctive likenesses: TM & © 2011 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries.

All Rights Reserved.

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SEPTEMBER 6

Celestial Electric SLovo Daydreams Live at Sint Elisabethkerk Seeds We Sow Hanna Soundtrack Takasago Army The Impulse! Albums Red Mars Beyond the Fall of Time The Front Bottoms If Life Was Easy Ghost …/Gutter Town 3 Bar Ranch Cattle Callin’ Attention Deficit Domination This Is Jazz Elsie Hot Sauce Jones Hurricane Hugh Laurie Let Them Talk Paul McCartney Chaos and Creation F Mela & Cuban Safari Tree of Life Miracle at St. Anna Shadow Country Monstro Monstro Augustus Pablo This Is Augustus Pablo Peter Wolf Crier Garden of Arms Jim Peterik’s Lifeforce Forces at Play Pregnant Life Hard: I Try The Rapture In the Grace of Your Love Roberts & Lord Eponymous Tom Russell Mesabi Samiam Trips Saviours Death’s Procession Sinatra & Count Basie Complete Reprise Recs Soundtrack A Cinderella Story Soundtrack Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop Soundtrack Drive Soundtrack True Blood Steely & Clevie Memories George Strait Here for a Good Time Tierney Sutton American Road Luke Temple Don’t Act Like You Don’t Care Various Artists Biggest Ragga Dancehall Various Artists Listen to Me: Buddy Various Artists Ultimate Soca Gold Glen Washington Most Wanted Wilburn Brothers Wilburn Brothers Show Wu Lyf Go Tell Fire to the Mountain AM & Shawn Lee Arkona Ballyhoo!

Balmorhea Lindsey Buckingham Chemical Brothers Chthonic John Coltrane Loren Connors Exmortus The Front Bottoms Roger Glover Hank 3 Hank 3 Hank 3 Donald Harrison The Horrible Crowes Jessy J Grace

SEPTEMBER 13

13th Floor Elevators 2Tone Lizard Kings The 69 Eyes 7eventh Time Down 94 East Gregory Abbott Aerosmith Akin Jan Akkerman Dennis Alcapone Masood Ali Khan Daevid Allen Carlos Alvarez Amen Corner Amen Corner Amen Corner Anathema Animals Animals Animals Anterior Ray Anthony Anthrax Anubis Gate

58

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Reverberation Primeval Bump ‘n’ Grind Alive in You If You Feel Like Dancin’ Drop Your Mask The Essential Aerosmith The Way Things End A Real Elegant Gipsy Wake Up Jam The Yoga Sessions Time of Your Life Discover the Gift Soundtrack Bend Me Shape Me Hello Suzie High in the Sky Falling Deeper Almost Grown Night Time Is the Right Time Raw Animals Echoes of the Fallen Moonglow, That Old Feeling and More Worship Music Anubis Gate

Solar Anus Sympathetic Resonance This Is Our Science Cry Love Dust to Dust Lost in the Glare From Newport to London: Greatest Hits Live Beastie Boys The Lowdown The Beatles 1 (Remastered) Big Harp White Hat Black Uhuru Dub Album Blind Pilot We Are the Tide Blitzen Trapper American Goldwing The Bloody Hollies Yours Until the Bitter End Blues Image Anthology Box 1975-1979 A. A. Bondy Believers Ken Boothe Ain’t That Lovin’ Joe Bouchard Jukebox in My Head Bill Bourne & Free … Bluesland Bronze Nazareth School for the Blindman Dennis Brown Africa Shirley Brown Woman to Woman Chico Buarque Chico Roy Buchanan Live at Rockpalast Bush The sea of Memories Stan Bush Stan Bush Stan Bush & Barrage Stan Bush & Barrage Butcher Boy Helping Hands Michel Camilo Mano a Mano Don Campbell Flex Cant Dreams Come True Ron Carter R Carter’s Great Big Band Johnny Cash Hayride Anthology Cephalic Carnage Lucid Interval Chalie Boy Baby Makin’ Music Kristin Chenoweth Some Lessons Learned Tom Chepokas 42 Christmas Favorites Cherry People Whoopin’ and Awhoppin’ LouChristie I’m Gonna Make You Mine Circus of Power Circus of Power Jimmy Cliff Shout for Freedom Alice Cooper Welcome 2 My Nightmare Corridor Real Late Creole Choir of Cuba Tande-la Trent Dabbs Southerner Das Racist Relax Dead by Wednesday The Last Parade Decemberadio Southern Attic Sessions Desmond Dekker Gimme Gimme Devil Wears Prada Dead Throne Kevin Devine Between the Concrete and Clouds Digital Orchestra A New Age Dillinger Some Like It Hot Carlos Dingo Ska Is Dangerous Celine Dion The Essential Celine Dion The Dirt Daubers This Is My Blood The Dirt Daubers Wake Up Sinners Discharge Disensitise Discharge War Is Hell D-Maub Death Before Dishonour Dobby Dobson If Only I Had Time Dobby Dobson Songs for Ever Mickey Dolenz Plastic Surgery Armen Donelian Leapfrog Doro 25 Years in Rock (CD/DVD) The Dramatics Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get Dream Theater A Dramatic Turn of Events The Drums Portamento East Bay Ray & Killer… East Bay Ray… Killer Smiles Edguy The Age of the Joker Einherjer Norron Alton Ellis All My Tears ELO Part II Can’t Get You Out of My Head ELO Part II Last Train to London ELO Part II Rockaria Epitaph Rockpalast: Krautrock Legends Vol. 1 Jackie Evancho Dream With Me in Concert Eve to Adam Banquet for a Starving Dog Everwood Without Saving Evil United Evil United Chris Farlowe Ride On Baby Melissa Ferrick Still Right Flesh N’ Bone Blaze of Glory Frequency Drift Ghosts Brantley Gilbert Halfway to Heaven Arabrot Arch/Matheos Astronautalis Maya Azucena Ginger Baker Barn Owl Basia

Samiam sept 6 Trips

Contemporaries of the nowsainted Green Day who never went anywhere, yet put a considerably more earnest, insightful and aggressive spin on pop-punk. Glad they’re back. [Hopeless]

Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost Gloominous Doom Cosmic Super V Godard & Subway … We Come as Aliens Golden Palominos Celluloid Collection Golden Strings Greatest Hits Gong Opium for the People The Gourds Old Mad Joy Greenslade Live 1973-1975 Dave Greenslade Routes/Root JJ Grey & Mofro Brighter Days Grouplove Never Trust a Happy Song Gunslinger Unlawful Odds Woodie Guthrie Great Dust Storm Woodie Guthrie Old Time Religion Woodie Guthrie Vigilante Man The Hangmen Lost Rocks: Best Of Harlequin Love Crimes Haste the Day Haste the Day Vs… Hawkwind Urban Guerilla Roy Haynes Roy-alty Hellcore Destruction of the World Jimi Hendrix Hendrix in the West Jimi Hendrix Exp. Winterland Holiday Shores New Masses for Squaw Peak Buddy Holly Raining in My Heart Buddy Holly True Love Ways John Holt Just the Two of Us John Holt One Million Volts Steve Holy Love Don’t Run The Human League Credo Humble Pie Home and Away I Roy From the Top I Start …/Fortran 5 Konnecting Gregory Isaacs Let Me Be the One Gregory Isaacs My Day Will Come Gregory Isaacs Steal a Little The Jacka The Indictment Wanda Jackson Rockabilly Queen Mason Jennings Minnesota Johnny & Hurricanes Beat Johnny & Hurricanes Hot Johnny & Hurricanes Rock Glenn Jones The Wanting Matt. Perryman Jones Until the Dawn Appears Joy Kills Sorrow This Unknown Science Bert Kaempfert Wonderland by Night, Patricia and More Gabriel Kahane Where Are the Arms Kaliya Annihilator Hiromi Kanda Days of Yesterday Conny Kanik Immer Du Katy B On a Mission P Kelly & Modernaire Paula Kelly & the Modernaire Kill Kill (CD/DVD) Carole King Best Is Yet to Come Carole King Crying in the Rain The Kooks Junk of the Heart Krashkarma Straight to the Blood Lady Antebellum Own the Night Ladytron Gravity the Seducer

AMERICANA. ALT-COUNTRY. AAA.

$9.99

WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT, THIS IS GRADE A.

IN SEP

Titles and prices vary by store. More titles $9.99 or less every day at indie record stores.

RYAN ADAMS DEMOLITION

RYAN ADAMS EASY TIGER

OR LES

S

TEMBE

RYAN ADAMS

JACKSONVILLE CITY NIGHTS

WHISKEYTOWN FAITHLESS STREET

R

WHISKEYTOWN PNEUMONIA COWBELL

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Damian Lazarus Get Lost 4 Rusty Lewis Postcards … Third World Liederjan Live Aus Der Fabrik Liederjan Madchen, Meister, Monche Liederjan Volksmusik … Heilen Welt Little Richard Baby Face Little Richard Rip It Up Little Richard She’s Got It Charlie Lloyd Quartet Athens Concert Lotus Lotus Lydia Loveless Indestructible Machine Nick Lowe The Old Magic Keith Lowell Jensen Cats Made of Rabbits Catherine MacLellan Silhouette Madina Lake World War III Magma Uber Kommandoh Malajube La Caverne Man or Astroman Your Weight on the Moon Mantovani Kisses in the Dark, Indiana Summer and More Bob Marley African Herbsman Bob Marley Concrete Rebel Bob Marley Dub Collection Bob Marley Keep on Skanking Bob Marley Natural Mystic Bob Marley Rainbow Country Bob Marley Small Axe Bob Marley Thank You Lord Bob Marley Touch Me Bob Marley Trench Town Rock Bob Marley Volume 1 Lion Laura Marling A Creature I Don’t Know W Marsalis & E Clapton Play the Blues Mates of State Mountaintops Me First and the Gi… Sing in Japanese Mean Street Riders High on the Hog Meat Loaf The Essential Meat Loaf Memoryhouse The Years EP Meters Message From the Meters Mignon Kiss of Death Milagres Glowing Mouth T.J. Miller The Extended Play EP Guy Mitchell Music Music Music Guy Mitchell One by One Guy Mitchell Singing the Blues Mixin’ Marc UC Club Pack Vol. 1 Mogwai Earth Division Mona Mur & En Esch Do With Me What You Want Van Morrison Here Comes Van Morrison Van Morrison Madame George Nation Beat Growing Stone National Health Dreams Wide Kiko Navarro A Long Hot Summer Nawal Embrace the Spirit Rick Nelson Garden Party Neon Indian Era Extrana Neville Brothers Hook, Line & Sinker Nice Hang on to a Dream Nightbringer Hierophany … Open Grave Andrew Norelli A Cut Above Stupid Notar Devil’s Playground Laura Nyro The Essential Laura Nyro J Oblivion & The Tenn… Rat City Only Flesh From the Gutter … Grave Outlawz Perfect Timing Pajama Club Pajama Club Paragons Greatest Hits Paragons Island in the Sun Pathology Awaken to the Suffering Harry Payuta Zacatecoluca Pepper Pots Train to Your Lover Carl Perkins Blue Suede Shoes Carl Perkins Caldonia Carl Perkins Matchbox Lee Perry Enter the Dragon Gene Pitney A Street Called Hope Poets Baby Don’t You Do It Polar Bear Club Clash Battle Guilt Pride Billy Preston Drown in My Own Tears Billy Preston Slippin’ & Slidin’

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Soul Meetin’ Password Green Naugahyde I Think I’ll Just Stay Home The Best Of Flash Gordon Hot Space Jazz News of the World The Game Quicksilver Mess. Svc. Anthology Box 1966-1970 Quiet Riot QR III Chuck Ragan Covering Ground The Raincoats Odyshape Reckless Kelly Good Luck & True Love Red Krayola Hurricane Fighter Lou Reed The Essential Lou Reed Greg Reitan Daybreak Robots in Disguise Happiness vs. Sadness Rococo The Firstorm P Rodgers & Friends Live at Montreux TommyRoe Jam Up Jelly Tight Sonny Rollins Road Shows Vol. 2 John Roth An Acoustic Christmas Rubella Ballet Never Mind the Dayglo Todd Rundgren (RE)Production Sabaton World War Live: Battle Santana Acapulco Sunrise Santana Jingo Santana Latin Tropical E Sardinas & Big Motor Sticks and Stones Saves the Day Daybreak Richie Scarlet Fever Score Frankie & Alice Bob Seger & Silver … Live Bullet Bob Seger & Silver … Nine Tonight Shimmering Stars Violent Hearts Skatalites Independence Ska Slow Club Paradise Sly & Robbie African Culture Small Faces Here Come the Small Faces So Many Ways So Many Ways Socalled Sleepover Soft Machine Shooting at the Moon Soundtrack Boardwalk Empire Vol. 1 Soundtrack Grey’s Anatomy Soundtrack Spy Kids: All the Time…

Soundtrack The Help Soundtrack Warrior Spread Eagle Spread Eagle Spyro Gyra A Foreign Affair St. Vincent Strange Mercy Staind Staind Stemm Cross Roads George Strait Icon The Strand The Strand Gary Stroutsos Oasis Suga Free Why U Still Bullshittin? The Best of Suga Free Superchunk Foolish Terry & The Pirates Rockpalast: West Coast Billy Preston Deva Primal Primus Psychoteria Quantic Queen Queen Queen Queen Queen

Staind sept 13 Staind

Yes, this band still exists.

Aaron Lewis launched a solo career for a while there, and, uh, now he’s back in Staind. Aren’t you glad you come here for hard-hitting journalism?. [Atlantic]

Legends Gol. 5 Lunar Orbit Do the Funky Chicken 2Tone Army Watch Me Dance (CD/DVD) Memphis Hold On Freaking Out Sex Talk For True Chicken Joe Forgets Something Important Tubes Wild West Show Twiztid Cryptic Collection 4 UFO The Chrysalis Years 19731979 Ultravox New Frontier Umphrey’s McGee Death by Stereo Untapped Jawn Murray Presents: Untapped Vader Welcome to the Morbid Reich Townes Van Zandt Buckskin Stallion Blues TownesVan Zandt Live in Texas Townes Van Zandt Poncho & Lefty Various Artists 100 Irish Hits Various Artists 100 Irish Songs & Ballads Various Artists 20 Years of #1 Country Various Artists 50 Irish Country Classics Various Artists A Little Princess Various Artists A Woman’s Heart Various Artists Academy Various Artists Baroque Christmas Various Artists Best Irish Pub Songs Various Artists Best of Brit Blues Vol. 1 Various Artists Best of Brit Blues Vol. 2 Various Artists Best of Sun Records Vol. 1 Various Artists Best of Sun Records Vol. 2 Various Artists British Blues Breakers Various Artists Christmas Harp Various Artists Classic Memories Vol. 1 Various Artists Classic Memories Vol. 2 Various Artists Dark River: Songs From the Civil War Era Various Artists Do You Remember Various Artists Dublin Pub Songs Various Artists Innervisions Various Artists Let’s Hear It for the Boy Various Artists Life Is Dance Various Artists London Social Degree Various Artists Music Box Christmas Various Artists Psychedelic Chemistry Vol. 1 Various Artists Psychedelic Chemistry Vol. 2 Various Artists Reggae Fever Various Artists Roots of Goth Various Artists Sawdust Caesars Various Artists Shantytown 007 Various Artists Sistas of Reggae Vol. 1 Various Artists Sistas of Reggae Vol. 2 Various Artists The Christmas Collection Various Artists The Other Side of Pink Various Artists This Is London Various Artists Tribute to Glenn Miller Various Artists Woman’s Heart: Then and Now Kenny Vaughan V Tom Vek Leisure Seizure Thomas Vickery Christmas Memories Mike Viola Electro de Perfecto We Came as Romans Understanding What We’ve Grown to Be John Wesley Lilipad Suite Wild Flag Wild Flag Hank Williams The Legend Begins: Rare & Unreleased Jonathan Wilson Gentle Spirit Johnny Winter Love Rockpalast Winter Tree The Winter Tree Wishbone Ash Blowin’ Wolves in the Throne… Celestial Lineage Wolves Like Us Late Love Bobby Womack Preacher Wooden Shjips West Xanadu The Last Subnrise Frankie Yankovic And His Yanks Yardbirds Stroll On With the Yardbirds Yo Gabba Gabba Music Is Awesome V3 Thirsty Moon Rufus Thomas Toasters Toddla T Bill Toms Toots & The Maytals Toro Y Moi T’Pau Trombone Shorty Trout Fishing in Am…

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THE BANDS AND ALBUMS THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE.

Metallica

Nirvana

Pink Floyd

Iron Maiden

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth 1991: The Year Punk Broke DVD

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iron Maiden Flight 666 -

The Film (Deluxe) DVD

nirvana Live At Reading DVD

nirvana Nevermind:

Classic Album DVD

COME TO LIFE.

Metallica Black Album: Classic Album DVD

Pink FloYd Making of Dark Side of

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63

dispatch

Two Minutes of Hate

by Rodney

Anonymous

Hotel Chloroformya Welcome to the Hotel California [Indecipherable hippie lyrics] Plenty of room at the Hotel California [More indecipherable hippie lyrics] —The Eagles (not the football team)

A

little while back our band, the Dead Milkmen,

played an out-of-town gig, and the promoter put us up at the Hard Rock Hotel. Now, if you’re expecting a screed about the Hard Rock’s Disneyfication of Rock ‘n’ Roll, you’re about to be disappointed. We all know that the Hard Rock Hotel, the Hard Rock Café and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame have about as much to do with actual rock music as the Olive Garden does with authentic Italian cuisine. Honestly, I was prepared to hate the place, but the rooms were nice and the restaurant and bar were pretty good. There were only three things that I found disturbing, which will now be duly reported in a hopefully equally disturbing manner.

1) Drunk guy in the lobby at approximately 2:30 a.m. Decades’ worth of touring and frequenting dive bars

have rendered even the most obnoxious drunks nearly invisible to me. That said, there was something truly unnerving about this guy. Basically, we were returning from our show at roughly the same time the hotel’s bar was shooing the more hardy drinkers out the door. This is, obviously, never a good time to return to a hotel. Anyway, just as I rounded the corner near the elevators, I came face-to-face with this clearly plastered man who was crushed at the prospect of the party being over for the evening. I know this because he was waving his arms over his head and shouting, “C’mon; everybody up to our room for more booze!” His enthusiasm was apparently not shared by his wife, who stood a few feet away, arms crossed, scowl covering her entire face. The guy took one look in his wife’s direction and you could actually see the spirit of Dionysus flee from his body and make for the nearest fire exit. The once boisterous drunk just slumped his shoulders, bowed his head and muttered, “OK, Mrs. Killjoy, let’s go to sleep.” I’m still not sure which of the pair I feel sadder for.

2) John Entwistle missing from group photo of the Who, which was serving as the wallpaper in my bathroom. I don’t

know which is the more disquieting concept: that the public would feel comfortable taking a dump as Roger, Pete and Keith look on, or that John Entwistle, who met his drug-fueled demise in a Hard Rock Hotel, had become a “non-person.” Could the Hard Rock possibly employ a Winston Smith whose sole purpose is to remove “inconvenient” 64

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rock stars? I wonder if a photo of Gary Glitter ever had to be removed from the children’s area, or the face of Karen Carpenter once graced the wall in the restaurant.

3) Picture of Moby, the gaze of which followed you around the room. Now this was just plain creepy. On the wall of the room,

just above the TV and directly across from the bed, was a picture of Moby holding his glasses before him so that he was peering through one lens while maintaining the same sort of expression that your sixth grade geography teacher might affect if you told him that Bangladesh is the capitol of Maine. The position of the picture, combined with Moby’s disapproving look, made watching porno impossible. “Hello, front desk? Yes, I just rented Cougars Play With Kittens… it’s, um, a nature film… but I’m having trouble enjoying it to its fullest. Well, yes, I have tried draping a towel of the picture of Moby. ” Rodney Anonymous is the singer for Philadelphia punk rock

legends the Dead Milkmen (though not the guy singing on “Punk Rock Girl”), the hurdy-gurdyist for 25 Cromwell Street and the guy behind the Philadelphia City Paper’s world music column, “Aid or Invade.” He tells you how to live at rodneyanonymous.com.

illustration by gluekit

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