October Needle Magazine by Gary Hammerschlag

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DANCE THE BLUES AWAY The last time Corin Tucker Band played in Philadelphia, its frontwoman and namesake realized it was time for a change to reclaim its voice

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PHOTO BY JOHN CLARK

“WE HAD A SHOW in Philadelphia,” says Corin Tucker. “I distinctly remember this one guy— God bless him, he was drinking out of a paper bag the entire show. He was so completely ready to dance, right through the quietest acoustic songs. I thought, ‘Man, it just seems like people really want to be moving around, so maybe we should make a record that’s a bit dancier.’” The first Corin Tucker Band album, 2010’s 1,000 Years, was dominated by moody, thoughtful songcraft—quite a left-turn coming after Tucker’s last album (to date) with groundbreaking trio Sleater-Kinney, 2005’s furiously distortion-heavy The Woods. But now, 1,000 Years’ follow-up, Kill My Blues (Kill Rock Stars), is another sonic shift. The rhythms are more hip-shaking, it’s true. “I definitely never spent so much time playing a disco beat,” laughs drummer Sara Lund, formerly of Unwound. Tucker says the band was influenced by “the entire 1980s. I was a teenager then, and that music was just emblazoned on my b r a i n .” She

also cites the likes of “early Roxy Music or even some of the Patti Smith stuff, all that great guitar stuff that still has a good danciness to it.” But in addition, on Kill My Blues, the guitars are louder, the textures more extreme. Her Sleater-Kinney bandmates, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, have garnered plenty of media attention with their projects together (Wild Flag) and separately (Brownstein on Portlandia, Weiss in Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks). Kill My Blues serves as a timely reminder of Tucker’s inimitability. On much of 1,000 Years, she sang in a more muted register than usual. Kill My Blues marks the return of Tucker’s trademark wailing vocals, which she says can only be captured by certain vintage microphones. “My voice is super-dynamic,” she says. “It’s not an easy thing to get if I’m singing something really quiet or something that’s really loud. I think some of those really super-sensitive tube mics are the best ones for a singer like me.” Her lyrics on the album cover an amazing gamut—from clarion calls to teenage memories to more elliptical pieces. Leadoff track “Groundhog Day” is a call to arms, addressing current women’s issues head-on. “Did I lay down, did I fall asleep/On the backs of women who have come before me?/Tell me almost equal, almost good enough/Almost had a woman go and run the White House.” The song’s placement at the beginning of the album is no coincidence. “To me, that was key in sequencing the record,” says Tucker. “It’s just how I feel right now. We cannot let Republicans roll back the gains that women have made in the past two generations in terms of reproductive rights and the other gains that women have made.” At times, the LP brings to mind S-K’s post-September 11 album, 2002’s One Beat, a collection of rock anthems for troubled times. Throughout Kill My Blues, Tucker writes—and the band plays—like something important is truly at stake on every song. “I lost some really amazing people in my life in the past couple of years,” says Tucker. “Music is a place for me that’s like natural therapy. My feelings come out whether I want them to or not. It’s just an incredibly cathartic place for me. A kind of brutal emotional honesty, I think, comes out on these songs, because of losing people and things just being kind of heavy in the past few years. But then we wrote this dance music. It’s kind of a weird combination of things, but I think that’s sort of what being 40 is sometimes like. [Tucker turns 40 in November.] So, it makes sense to me in a weird way.” The title track is an intense love song, proclaiming, “You’re the one, you are/No one else hears the call.” At the

same time, it’s one of a number of songs on the album that makes room for surprisingly seamless reference to modern technology. “You’re the noisy surprise/You’re my new ringtone.” Another song, “Summer Jams,” wryly muses, “Life may be sweet, but it’s short as a Tweet.” Tucker says such references occurred “subconsciously. But it really has snuck in to the baseline of the way we deal with things. Finding out the most crushing news—sometimes you’ll find out someone died on Twitter. Wow, how did that technology change so fast? The most important people you’re communicating with, those are the people you’re texting with. Those are the messages like, ‘I’m OK!’ That kind of emotional, fast response relates to the intensity of some of the songs.” Despite the often personal nature of these songs, they were written in a deeply collaborative process with the rest of the band—Lund, guitarist Seth Lorinczi and bassist Mike Clark. “I usually come in with a riff and an idea for a song,” says Tucker. “I’m like a really spare writer when I write music. And they’re all such great musicians—they’re much better musicians than I am—that they’ll write around that in a way that really brings it together as a song.” “I think collaborating is incredibly important and satisfying to her,” says Lund. “I think like a lot of musicians who developed in a band situation, not as a solo artist, being able to bounce ideas off other people is incredibly useful, so you’re not creating in a vacuum. And having other people’s input, and having other people steer the song in a direction they weren’t intending in the first place.” Adjusting to this style of songwriting was challenge for Lund. “I come from a very different background in collaborative songwriting, like Unwound, where we spent a lot of time jamming things out and not a lot of time talking about structure and what was happening,” she says. “And with this record, we did spend a lot of time discussing the structure and battling things out and negotiating and making compromises and having multiple opinions. Often, Corin was the tiebreaker. She ultimately often had the final say. And Seth likes to say, ‘Well, it is your name on the band title.’” You can hear that attention to detail and structure on a song like “Blood, Bones And Sand,” with its rich, layered guitar parts leading into powerful, dramatic choruses. The final track, “Tiptoe,” is even more extreme, with a stuttering, bluesy opening riff at one end and an effectively door-slamming close at the other. The song “pretty drastically changed from when we first started playing it,” says Lund. “We just said, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s take it more like a Tom Waits version of bluesy, as opposed to Buddy Guy’s version of bluesy.’” And, just in case you were wondering, there are no plans for a Sleater-Kinney reunion in the immediate future. “We’re on hiatus,” says Tucker, adding that the three members still share “just utmost respect for (each other’s) work and for everyone as people as well.” —Michael Pelusi

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NONE MORE BLACKED OUT The Raveonettes have no idea how they managed a triumphant return to form Sune Rose Wagner knows that he made a damn good record with Observator (Vice), the sixth effort from his Danish duo the Raveonettes. From his classic Nashville harmonies with bandmate Sharin Foo on opening twang-a-thon “Young And Cold” through dark piano fugue “Observations” and Foo’s jangling ’60s-pop exercise “The Enemy” to growling gear-grinders “Downtown” and “Till The End” and the techno-looped “Curse The Night,” it’s a fine return to garage-rock form for the group, more in line with its definitive 2003 masterpiece Chain Gang Of Love than last year’s experimental, filmscore-inspired Raven In The Grave. But there’s just one little problem. He can’t really recall much about how he did it. Not much at all. Wagner—a tall, rail-thin moptop who always dresses in black and flaunts a gallows wit that’s even darker—wishes he was joking this time. But he’s not. The circumstances leading up to Observator were grim, indeed. “I don’t even know how I was able to mix the album,” says the guitarist. “I think at one point I actually sent an email to Sharin and Scott, our manager, saying, ‘I just want to let you know that this new record might not happen, because I’m just too fucked up right now.’” Their responses? He can’t recall that, either. Something about going to rehab, perhaps. He’s not sure. But he knows that he didn’t respond to them. “It’s a miracle I was able to make an album, though,” says Wagner. “I still don’t understand why, and I still don’t remember much of the actual writing process. Not that I was drunk doing it, because I can’t write when I’m drunk. But I was probably really Xanaxed out or something. Yet I was actually able to pull it all together, which I think is pretty impressive.” What went wrong, exactly? In some ways, it all started back in Wagner’s childhood in Denmark, when he first discovered alcohol at age 13. He started drinking then and never really stopped, he says. Although there are occasional month-long periods where booze, by choice, gets relegated to the back burner. It’s a social lubricant, he swears—a stimulant/depressant that unlocks some great, thought-provoking conversations with his

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closest confidantes. On an average day, the now-New Yorker will start imbibing early, then schedule dinner with friends. Then he’s home by 1 a.m. No staggering blindly, no waking up on the floor with last night’s outfit still on. And when he wakes up sober, the first thing he’ll do is scroll through his cell phone. “I get a lot of song ideas when I’m out, and I just type them into my phone,” says Wagner, who then runs everything by Foo, who resides in Los Angeles with her husband and baby daughter. “And I do end up using most of those ideas—the next day I’ll try them out, and they usually work.” The equation is simple, he says: Alcohol equals Good Mood, equals Outgoing Chattiness, equals Eventual Inspiration. “And that’s why I like to go out,” he explains. “I don’t go to clubs, I don’t go dancing, I don’t go to concerts. I don’t go crazy—I just sit in a corner and talk.” The first time the Raveonettes (who met in Copenhagen before relocating to the U.S.) sat down at a pub for an interview in San Francisco, to discuss their surf-sudsy, Jesus And Mary Chain-edged debut EP Whip It On more than a decade ago, Wagner was itching to try the legendary local beer, Anchor Steam. While Foo nursed a single demure pint, he plowed through three, only a few hours before showtime. That’s how high his tolerance level has gotten, he chuckles: “I can easily drink half a bottle of vodka and go onstage, and no one will even notice—it’s easy.”

And Foo’s reaction? “I think she probably feels bad for me sometimes, and she’s probably worried, too, at some points,” says Wagner. “But when we’re on tour now, I’m actually pretty good at not being wasted anymore, because I think that it’s more fun to play when I’m sober. I mean, I just did a whole tour of Australia completely sober, and it was my own choice. But when I’m not on tour?” He pauses, then sighs somberly. “That’s where it gets worse.” This, then, was the setting for Observator. The abyss was already beckoning. Wagner tumbled headlong into it courtesy of debilitating lower back pain. Pain so bad he wound up in the hospital, paralyzed for three excruciating days. It was a herniated disc, but he declined an operation, choosing physical therapy instead. Back home, he stayed in bed most of every day, did a minimum amount of exercise and—with so much downtime—grew clinically depressed. Which led to more drinking. Believing a change of scenery would do him good, he booked a quiet bed-and-breakfast out in Foo territory, in Venice Beach. “I thought it would probably be good to get away from friends and just spend some time alone and start work on the new album,” says Wagner. “That was my theory, at least. But it, uh, didn’t really work out. I think because I’d been secluded for so long, I really didn’t need more seclusion. So, it just got me deeper into being in a very sad

PHOTO BY JAMES KELLY

mood all the time.” Foo drove out to visit him there, and they had dinner and bounced around some fresh song ideas. And that’s basically the last thing he remembers. Wagner checked out of the B&B, headed into Hollywood, hooked up with some drinking buddies and partied for four days straight. “And I just continued that when I got back to New York,” he says. “With the business I’ve chosen to operate in, most of my friends are always drinking, so it just goes with the territory. I wish I had a friend who worked at the library who I could go hang out with, but it’s just not the case, unfortunately.” He wishes he had a girlfriend, too. “But I’ve tried that for a decade now, and it really doesn’t seem to work for me,” he says. “I mean, I’m always up for it, but I don’t really meet that many people besides the ones I already know. I don’t really go out and meet a lot of strangers, you know?” One new track, the deceptively chiming “She Owns The Streets,” was inspired a Bowery street dancer Wagner met during one of

his nightly outings. And “Young And Cold,” with its eerie, cautionary chorus of “So many times I’ve lost control/I don’t wanna be young and cold,” was conjured stone-cold sober at the L.A. studio the band booked for a week, the legendary Sunset Sound. “I really wanted to write a song there while we were recording the album, because it’s such an iconic place,” says Wagner. “So, I went in at eight in the morning one day, before the other guys showed up, and wrote ‘Young And Cold’ right there, in the studio. I just had to, you know?” Wagner urged Foo to trill “The Enemy” because her icy, deadpan delivery gave it an extra urgent edge. But aside from that, the evenings on the town that led to Observator “were just a big blur,” he says. “It was basically just the same night repeated over and over again, in different settings, different towns. It really was just the same old day, just waking up, feeling like

shit, having your first drink at noon, then just drink all day and wake up and do the same thing again. That’s why I think it’s a miracle that we actually managed to do this album.” Wagner has also started a production business—he just helmed the new Dum Dum Girls EP, End Of Daze. And he’s happy that other artists trust his (no longer cloudy) vision. What has he learned from his Observator experience? He laughs. “Well, I know now that no matter what state of mind I’m in, or how fucked up I am, or how late I wait for a deadline, I can still manage to write a really fucking great album,” he says. “So that, at least, was very good news.” —Tom Lanham

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PHOTO BY JAIRO ZAVALA

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN A fertile partnership yields Calexico’s most melodic—and moody—album to date WITH THE ARRIVAL of twin girls, it started getting harder for Joey Burns to find time in the studio. There were long nights and diaper changes and cleaning and shopping, and when his chores were done, there was always more to do. So, instead of recording close to home, Burns and John Convertino moved 1,400 miles away, from Tucson, Ariz., to New Orleans, where they found a recording studio in a former church, spent 12 hours a day writing the new Algiers (Anti-) and came up with a masterpiece. “Being away from home and recording in a different space with a different ambience and a different environment really inspired our thoughts,” says Burns, back home at his 1950s ranch house. “Like right now, it’s really dry, and I’m looking out my window at indigenous cactus and Palo Verde trees. But in New Orleans, there’s grass everywhere, grass growing every place it possibly can, and little things like that become part of your daily ritual. You wake up, step outside and think, ‘I’m really in a different place here.’ I loved being in that bubble, walking around the neighborhood feeling inspired. And being so far away, we’d think about home and write about home in a different way.” Named after that neighborhood on the west bank of the Mississippi, Algiers doesn’t sound like New Orleans. There’s no syncopation, no second-line rhythms, no jazz horns. But it doesn’t sound like the old Calexico either, which was so deeply rooted in the sounds of the desert, the dust and the border. Instead, it’s another chapter—tuneful, memorable, singable—in the story of a band that’s been evolving steadily since Burns and Convertino met in Giant Sand, set off with Bill Elm to form Friends Of Dean Martinez, then left to find a new direction of their own At first, that meant experimenting with unconventional structures and arrangements as a band, while also backing up singers like Richard Buckner, Vic Chesnutt, Lisa Germano and Victoria Williams. But over time, the romance of mariachi-noir-Western instrumentals has given way to unconventionally conventional songs built on verses and choruses, and after years of muted, murmured vocals, Burns’ voice and acoustic guitar are increasingly taking center stage. The sound of a collective, a legacy of their years in Giant Sand, is long gone, and there’s no question that Burns and

Convertino are in charge, with the remaining 18 musicians on the album following their lead. It’s a unique songwriting partnership, with Convertino drumming the outline of the songs and Burns filling them in with words and melodies. “John and I will get together in the studio, sit down at our instruments and just start improvising, which is how we come up with song ideas,” says Burns. “John might have a rhythm he’s been working on, and through that rhythm, I’ll write the chords. Through those chords will come the melody, and through that melody comes the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll come into the studio with an idea, or I’ll just sit down at an instrument and start banging out some chords and humming a tune. We use that studio time as our writing time, because when we’ve done demos and then gone back to record them later, the songs just don’t have the spark they had when we created them.” They open Algiers with “Epic,” written in Tucson and transformed in New Orleans, as Burns plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar and piano while singing about “Hearts holding out waiting for the bells to/Send my love to all my friends and if I never make it back/ To hold you in my arms again not letting go this time.” There’s more solitude on “Splitter,” with its chorus of “holding on, holding on to no one,” regret on “Maybe On Monday” and remembrance of absent friends on “Sinner In The Sea,” until the album ends with “The Vanishing Mind,” set in the gray light of a sealed room beyond time or memory. “The first surprise was realizing what a dark, moody record we were making,” says Burns. “So we said, ‘OK, let’s just follow this and see where it takes us.’ And the second was realizing how different it felt to record on analog tape. When you record on a computer, you tend to get a little lazy, saying, ‘Oh, we can fix that later,” or, ‘We’ll work that out in the mix.’ But as soon as I heard the basic tracks coming off the two-inch analog tape, I couldn’t believe the difference. The sound was more three-dimensional than two-dimensional—the frequencies that resonate in your chest when you’re standing next to a drum set were all there. I was sold. And a lot of this process, a lot of the conversation while we were recording, was about the joys of returning to analog tape.” Longtime members Jacob Valenzuela

(trumpet, vibes), Martin Wenk (trumpet, accordion, theremin) and Volker Zander (bass) continue to push the music toward the borderlands, where the band has always seemed most at home, while newer members Jairo Zavala (vocals, guitar, bouzouki) and Paul Niehaus (pedal steel) keep the music grounded in that vanished past, never sounding richer. In the four years since their last studio album, Burns and Convertino have scored a pair of film soundtracks (one for Aaron Schock’s documentary Circo, set in rural Mexico, and the other for John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard, set in rural Ireland), compiled a boxed set of live performances called Road Atlas 1998-2011 and recorded with friends and family as disparate as Danish pedal-steel guitarist Maggie Björklund, country siren Neko Case, Brit indie rocker Susie Hug, soul folkie Amos Lee, Spanish singer/songwriter Amparo Sanchez and jazz singer Lizz Wright. These days, Burns and Convertino are producing a new album by Zavala and creating the soundtrack for a PBS documentary about Arizona’s immigration laws. Burns is finding more ways to keep the twins dancing around the kitchen, reaching out to touch the guitar as he plays it, and searching for melodies to sing to them. Months after recording Algiers, he can hear the echoes of earlier albums, with passages that remind him of Carried To Dust or Garden Ruin. “We’re not trying to repeat what we do, but we are trying to be true to ourselves,” he says. “There are elements that have been distilled over the course of putting out our albums, but John and I are always thinking of ways to come up with new songs, new styles, new rhythms, new instrumentation. We’re in this for the challenge of coming up with new material and new directions. “The moment the twins were born, or even before then, I was focusing on melodies and singing them songs,” says Burns, before heading out to another recording session with Case. “Going into the studio, I really wanted to come up with some songs that had strong sense of melody—I don’t know how to describe it, but my songs don’t usually feel very simple or easily memorable. Sometimes I get lucky, and there are a couple of songs I can think of where that’s not true. But my goal on this album was to sing some songs that have a definite melody.” —Kenny Berkowitz

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PHOTO BY CYNTHIA WOOD

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SELF-AWARE Mark Eitzel would only like you to believe he’s a Stranger to sincerity WHEN MARK EITZEL started work on his new album, he posted on his blog that he would call it The Bill Is Due. Like much in Eitzel’s vast catalog, the title would have been both humorously ironic and sadly melodramatic. Both as leader of American Music Club and as a solo artist, Eitzel has penned some his generation’s most affecting and expansive songs, tunes that veer from naked sincerity to cryptic impressionism within a line or two, and with some of the best titles ever, such as “What Godzilla Said To God When His Name Wasn’t Found In The Book Of Life” and “Johnny Mathis’ Feet.” He has a cabaret singer’s ability to inhabit a character, and his baritone croon can soar through Goffin & King classics or skillfully anchor AMC’s churning rock ‘n’ roll. Eitzel says there was originally talk of making another AMC album, a follow-up to 2008’s The Golden Age, but the economics didn’t make sense. “I was broke,” says the 53-year-old Eitzel, who had a heart attack in May 2011. “I decided no American Music Club record for awhile because in AMC we have to split everything equally, and it requires big studios. Democracy is expensive, you know?” So, the idea was to “make a little simple EP and put it on Bandcamp and make a little money maybe, maybe not. And then, of course, I kept rewriting and rewriting the songs, and then it had to be a record.” That record turned into what he eventually titled Don’t Be A Stranger (Merge), a softly moody, gently orchestrated collection of bruised love songs and character studies, some of which have autobiographical roots. In “Break The Champagne,” he claims, “My boohoo voice just annoys,” and “Why Are You With Me” opens by declaring, “I’m the sad clown that sings,” before listing a litany of selfrecriminations. But although his voice sounds earnest, there’s ironic distance and self-mockery in the melodrama. “I’m just making fun of it,” Eitzel says of “Why Are You With Me.” “That song is sort of a joke. By the end of this process, none really are autobiographical because I kinda took all of that out, maybe good or bad. I’m a huge Replacements fan, and I used to be like, ‘Paul, be even more personal. Come on, dig in there!’ And then, you kind of think, ‘Well, wait a minute, Eitzel. Why? That’s kind of fucking weird,

because (Westerberg)’s already as personal as he could be, so shut the fuck up.’ And that’s kind of where I’m at, too: Shut the fuck up.” That distance distinguishes Eitzel from some younger artists, such as Bon Iver or Iron & Wine, who also embrace soft-rock melancholy and melodrama. Eitzel’s songs can sound as achingly sincere, but then he’ll throw in one of those lines that undermines or questions or serves as a reminder that he knows he’s being over-the-top. Not that he doesn’t appreciate youthful sincerity. “The singer is just young enough not to be self-aware,” he says. “He couldn’t make fun of himself because he didn’t have the distance. He’s just trying to do his best. Which is why rock ‘n’ roll is for the young: They’re just trying to do their best, and that’s why it’s exciting, that’s why it’s true. For me, if I don’t include a little bit of self-awareness, I’m not being true to myself, because I am self-aware.” That confluence of sincerity, irony and humor can also work the in the opposite direction on Don’t Be A Stranger. “Costumed Characters Face Dangers While At The Workplace” starts with a title Eitzel lifted from a newspaper story about random violence against people wearing costumes to advertise stores. But the song turns into an empathetic, partly allegorical, dramatic monologue: “I know it’s my job to smile and wave/Hey, can you tell me my crime/Honestly, dear, it drains my soul/To be the mean focus of your fake good time.” The album is peopled with clowns and ghosts (“Lament For Bobo The Clown,” “I Love You But You’re Dead”), enough to make it seem like a song cycle. “I chose a limited palette in order to say something,” says Eitzel. “Otherwise, I’ll just go totally off the rails and say random shit. I like expressionistic lyrics; I like things that seemingly don’t mean anything. But on this record, it was like, ‘Come on, Eitzel, say something that means something to yourself.’ So, that made me have a lot more limited range of things that I could say. I didn’t try to come up with anything clever, basically.” Dislocations and absences are often the themes, but the music, especially what Eitzel calls the beautiful “Arcadian” playing from jazz pianist Larry Goldings, gives the album a gentle, easygoing tone. To fund the album, Eitzel “got a little seed money from a guy who won a lottery,” and producer Sheldon Gomberg used

his connections to get folks such as Goldings and Attractions drummer Pete Thomas to work inexpensively. What was originally going to be a spare solo work blossomed. Says Eitzel, “Sheldon brought in real musicians to replace my bad MIDI piano tracks and to replace my bad drum samples, because the idea was, ‘You know, Mark, no one wants another laptop record from you.’” The laptop record Eitzel refers to is 2001’s The Invisible Man, one of his numerous experiments outside of American Music Club, including a jangly album with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck (1997’s West) and an album of AMC songs done with a band of traditional Greek musicians (2002’s The Ugly American). Don’t Be A Stranger sounds more natural than any of those, more akin to 1996’s great 60 Watt Silver Lining or the more orchestrated moments of 1998’s Caught In A Trap And I Won’t Back Out ’Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby while being distinct from the rootsy side of AMC, which still may reconvene, although the recent death of drummer Tim Mooney could have called that into question. “It’s not the end of anything,” says Eitzel. “It’s just really fucking sad. I thought I would have a little more time with Tim; I thought there was going to be a second chapter with him. The idea of American Music Club is really just what we can do at the moment, and as you grow older, people change and people grow apart and people do different things, and they also live in different cities. It just becomes more and more difficult. And when you’ve never been a successful band in the first place, no one is going to throw any money at you to help you to overcome those difficulties.” That self-awareness about economics was the idea behind calling the album The Bill Is Due, but late in the game, Eitzel thought better of it. “That title ended up being a little too bleak,” he says. “It wasn’t as expressive, and it just didn’t scan as well somehow.” It’s hard to imagine the man who wrote AMC’s “The Dead Part Of You” and “Dallas, Airports, Bodybags” rejecting anything for being too bleak—he’s not one to shy from despair. “Yeah, I’m not, but the rest of the world is,” he says. “You kinda want to make a record people want to listen to for the rest of their goddamn life, because I never have yet, you know what I mean?” —Steve Klinge

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YOUNG DUDE AT HEART Ex-Mott man Ian Hunter rants, revolts, rules WHEN IAN HUNTER’S NAME appears in print these days, it’s usually preceded by the words “legendary” or “iconic,” which makes him chuckle. “It’s a polite way of saying I’m old,” he says. “And I am old, but age has its advantages. When I was young, I was able to see Sam Cooke, Little Richard and Buddy Holly in their prime.” Hunter credits Holly’s performance as the inspiration for his own musical career. “He was amazing,” he says. “He had two Crickets with him, but you couldn’t hear the snare or bass over the sound of his Stratocaster. We’d never seen electric guitars in England before, and he had eight of them lined up onstage. He only played with a 30-watt amp, but it seemed like the roof was falling off the place.” In that moment, Hunter knew he was going to be a musician. Hunter grew up in Oswestry, Shropshire, a small British town, but moved to London intent on becoming a songwriter. After answering an ad placed by a band looking for a lead singer, he became the frontman of Mott The Hoople, a group known for its incendiary live shows. With Hunter on board, Mott took off. David Bowie wrote and produced the band’s first international hit, “All The Young Dudes,” but the group imploded just as it was starting to build an audience in America. “You need balls of steel to maintain the kind of touring and recording life we were leading,” says Hunter. “We got tired of living in a goldfish bowl, where everything you do gets magnified in the press. It was a relief when it came to a finish.” Hunter moved to the U.S. in 1975 and began a successful solo career, turning out a series of powerful albums—including Ian Hunter, You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic and All

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The Good Ones Are Taken—marked by potent, grinding rock, his howling, emotional vocals and brilliant songwriting. On When I’m President (Slimstyle), his latest opus, Hunter’s songwriting remains vital. His love songs to his wife are full of passion, his political songs continue to challenge the powers that be, and his songs about the rock ‘n’ roll life are given extra poignancy by his reflections on aging and mortality. “I’m writing better these days,” he says, “which is the opposite of what usually happens at my age. I’m not gonna become a cover band for my old hits. I’m an old guy, and it’s always been in my nature to debunk the myths and be contrary. “The Rant Band is a band, not a singer’s backup group, and we make albums the way I’ve always done. We sit in my basement, and I play them my songs. Then we decide how they’re going to sound and get into the studio and play ’em live. Everything on the record is a first or second take; you don’t want to drive it into the ground. We recorded it in four days, without caring about anything but the music. It was a painless process.” Hunter has embarked on an extended tour to support President, though he looks at the trip with mixed emotions. “I like the gigs,” he says. “It’s the getting there that wears you down.” —j. poet

PHOTO BY JOHN HALPERN

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THEY WILL SURVIVE Annoying neighbors, intra-band romances and general self-destruction can’t keep Family Of The Year down

THEY WEREN’T LOOKING FOR a pot of gold, exactly. But guitarist/vocalist Joe Keefe and his drumming kid brother Sebastian did have unusually high hopes when they moved their Boston outfit Unbusted to Hollywood several years ago. “It was a rock band, we had three guitars for a while, and we were loud as hell,” Joe recalls of the Strokes-influenced group. “We liked the East Coast and were really enjoying it, but we figured moving to California would be a good idea, because we wanted to play the Viper Room and sign to a major label.” Their dreams of stardom were shattered in short order. Unbusted struggled valiantly, but splintered. The elder Keefe still recalls the group’s final traumatizing concert—an opening slot on a five-band warehouse gig, and its disgusted guitarist didn’t even bother to show up. Things got worse. The siblings’ next combo, the Billionaires, met a similarly dreary fate. “My girlfriend was in the band at the time, and she and I broke up, but then tried to keep

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the band going,” says Joe. “So, then we spent a year not playing music. Sebastian got a job in TV, and I decided I was so sick and tired of trying to make it, I took a year off and didn’t really do anything.” It was a wild, bacchanalian 12 months, wherein Keefe gave up his apartment, lived out of a backpack and admittedly “hung out with some very unsavory characters—it was some weird stuff, stuff I should probably never talk about. But I survived it all.” And in the process he arrived at Family Of The Year, whose ocean-shimmery new Loma Vista (Nettwerk) is built on a winning formula this time. With Sebastian on percussion, Christina Schroeter on keyboards and James Buckey on guitar, the members all join in on sunny four-part harmonies over the jangling surffolk schematics of “Buried,” “Diversity” and “The Stairs.” The songs—all written and recorded while the members were living together in a Silver Lake apartment on, you guessed it, Loma Vista—also drip with wicked irony. “The Stairs”

may seem like a Partridge Family-innocuous sing-along, but it actually concerns an angry neighbor who repeatedly left nasty noisecomplaint notes on the band’s doorstep. “Super-long, very passive-aggressive letters, and kind of personal about judgments of lifestyles,” says Joe. “So, it was hard not to have some kind of reaction to them.” How did Joe discover the Family sound? Again, there was a girl involved—Schroeter’s pal Vanessa Long, whom he began dating, then home-recording with as a duo, which grew into Family, Mach 1. “Vanessa was doing a lot of the singing—I was just a backup guitar player and singer,” says the 30-year-old Joe. When the couple broke up, “everyone had to step up—we just all started singing after she left, and it became all about the harmonies for us.” He laughs, looking back on his time off; Joe was originally planning on a five-year sabbatical. “But it was such an important year for me, for us, for everybody,” he says. “And now I’m so glad that it happened.” —Tom Lanham

PHOTO BY CLAIRE VOGEL

MAGNIFIED

OF FLORA AND FAUNA On Stranger, Austin’s Balmorhea charts vibrant new territory

IN BOTH A LITERAL and narrative sense, instrumental troupe Balmorhea (pronounced Bal-more-ay) has covered a great deal of ground since forming in 2006. Tales of 19thcentury explorers rapt with wonder amid their first sight of Texas (All Is Wild, All Is Silent), meditations on astral reaches (Constellations) and reveries flowing from a fleeting sense of home (Rivers Arms) have moved listeners from Spain to California and most places in between with a hushed, yet deeply moored power. The stories, however, are ultimately tangential, a framework within which to experience the affecting compositions emanating from this Austin-based six-piece with a grace that at times seems effortless. On Balmorhea’s first four albums, founders Rob Lowe and Michael Muller cultivated a distinct aesthetic with the assistance of various string players and percussionists. Crisp, longing Americana met classical influences from Satie to Richter, the collections stretching from cascading to nearly silent in an elegant dance that felt less like music than aural cinema. Faded, shape-shifting images drifted slowly around the minds of listeners as sound and light poured in at cautious intervals, the

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ensemble telegraphing its wide-eyed awareness of the ephemeral and historical often with the pace of a morphine drip. Stranger (Western Vinyl), the band’s fifth and most ambitious album, takes that aesthetic and filters it through a strikingly different lens. “Beginning with the Candor/Clamor seveninch a couple of years ago,” says Muller, “we wanted to utilize our then-new percussionist, as well as explore new instruments that we could weave into our music.” Indeed, mostly absent here are the classical influences and acoustic refrains that defined so much of the band’s prior work, replaced instead by invigorating electricguitar passages, adroit rhythmic elements and the infusion of bright new colors: Steel drums, ukulele, vibraphone, synthesizers and loops work to significantly alter the setting Balmorhea operates within. Instead of Texas’ majestic largesse, for instance, Stranger feels like a study on some untouched Eden, the minute details of the band’s surroundings coming into the same rich focus as storied figures of past endeavors. “Something more summery and uplifting

felt like the right direction,” says Muller, when asked about the influences that informed the new effort. “The process of conceptualizing ideas and seeing the end result was very gratifying. We had fun exploring these textures (while) maintaining a common underlying thread that somehow relays our older ‘sound’ to these new compositions.” Interestingly, Stranger arrives at a time when more people are paying attention to Balmorhea than ever. Tours at home and abroad, plentiful word of mouth, critical favor and ad syncs for Toyota, Volvo, Bottega Veneta and Intel (among others) saw to that. But instead of seeing this as a reason to toe the line, the band decided it was a perfect time to try something new—a gamble, sure, but one that reinvents our understanding of its potential. Stranger points to the near limitless possibilities inherent when a group of separate yet entirely connected individuals aren’t hemmed in by anything but their own willingness to grow, a willingness that feels a lot more like eagerness after a few listens, and one bearing the kind of fruit that suggests exciting things to come no matter where Balmorhea chooses to take us next. —Ryan Burleson

PHOTO BY KARI ROSENFELD

ON THE RECORD

THING KEEP GETTING WEIRDER and better for Annie Clark, the noisy guitarist and scaredbird-like singer known as St. Vincent. After leaving behind the boys of Polyphonic Spree and the touring ensemble of Sufjan Stevens, Clark—the niece of Tuck Andress of Tuck & Patti fame—found her mojo in eerie pop records with an expressionist lyrical base and a distorted, trebly guitar sound that should make Neil Young green with envy. In quick succession, St. Vincent (the band) dropped

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2007’s Marry Me, 2009’s way more dramatic Actor and 2011’s Strange Mercy. St. Vincent (the singer), though, wound up as art pop’s go-to girl voice, a collaborator to Bon Iver on the song “Roslyn,” which appeared on the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: New Moon, forever cementing her goth wild-child rep. She appeared on albums by rapper Kid Cudi and violinist Andrew Bird, as well. But like most things in obtuse pop circles, all roads lead to David Byrne. Along with record-

ing vocals as “Imelda Marcos” for a song on Byrne’s 2010 collaboration with Fatboy Slim, Here Lies Love, St. Vincent pushed the boy/girl pair into a union where spirit-raising lyrics and brass-driven arrangements would be the order of the day. Love This Giant (4AD/Todo Mundo), the recorded fruit of their labor, isn’t just an album, but a tour motif where the duo sings each other’s songs, waltzes around this third Giant person they’ve created and surely dances with limbs akimbo. —A.D. Amorosi

PHOTO BY FRANK VERONSKY

You’ve had quite the 16-month whirlwind, what with dropping Strange Mercy, singing on the new Andrew Bird record (Break It Yourself) and releasing this thing with David Byrne. You started recording with Byrne long before you recorded Mercy, right? I did actually start Love This Giant before Strange Mercy, but just barely and in pieces. The horn section in brief chunks, for which he had four songs … what year is it now? 2012. I think we started getting the horn parts down in 2010. I don’t remember what we did next, but I do remember we met again in 2011. Talking about chronology is boring, I know. It was just so spread out because our schedules were mad, and we really wanted to refine what we had started. Thinking about Strange Mercy, did you see that as any sort of departure from Actor and Marry Me? Did any of what you had started with Byrne trickle into Strange Mercy in any recognizable way? Not a full departure. Rather, it was a refined version of what I had started with a while ago. I think Strange Mercy was me trying to combine the sweet and the salty things that I do. Would you say that, as someone who seems to write and work more through texture and abstraction than form, structure and linear narrative, that you had a leg up in working with Byrne? A desire maybe to seek similar collaborators? I don’t know that I’d categorize my strengths strictly via abstraction and texture. I think that I have a pretty analytical mind, and so when I think about songwriting, I think about fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together. I didn’t think of being analytical and abstract as mutually exclusive perspectives. I think that David—not that we worked in identical ways, by any means—and I work in a complementary sense. I think one of the things that we both came in with was a lot of the same sort of melodies and chord progression in our heads. He also came from a space of great energy, and had an ability to take some of the more disparate elements of what we came up with and turn them into something solid. The record you did with Byrne has a totally different sonic palette than the rest of your stuff. Was that sound in your head before you met? Was this an idea you were working toward, and meeting him just pushed it forward? I think when we met and discussed what would make for a successful collaboration, we need-

ed some sort of predefined structure, and that structure came when I mentioned that perhaps we should work with a brass band behind us. That was because originally we had planned a live event, a charity affair, in a small charming bookstore with no PA. I mean, how do you make that effective? Optimal? An all-brass band in my mind seemed sharpest, the most succinct use of the acoustics. There wouldn’t be much to bring—just mics for vocals and guitars. The brass became the palette that you’re talking about. But as we got further and further away from that particular night, it became clearer that what we were playing with was scales. Brass has a quality that can sound so majestic no matter what the melodies. Then we started testing out topics that we’d conceptualize lyrically. Some of those lyrics sounded silly with brass behind them, so the lyrical themes became about micro/macro Teutonic shifts and metaphors for universal consciousness. Writing quiet little love songs didn’t work at first. Those became the first challenges. Sounds like you wanted more out of this, to take this beyond the realm of a “project.” That’s so true. I think the general feeling was, at first, that this would be a fun little art project, something that I would like, but wouldn’t want to listen to. [Laughs] Soon after that, though, something hit me, and I decided that we should gear it to more song-oriented stuff. That was the most fun challenge, when things got cooking. Things got interesting when the melodies came. When we steered it away from being just a project—an art thing—is when we began to have a blast. It’s the intersection of accessible and strange. That’s really where I am most interested in residing going forward. This made for a great first step in that direction. I don’t know. I think that you live there to begin with—maybe you’re just leasing. Anyway, it’s interesting that you’re talking about careful songcraft and melody. I don’t know if you or he conceived of it, but the last tune on the album, “Outside Of Space And Time,” may be the prettiest melody either of you have ever come up with. There are songs on the record that we both worked on together, and there are songs that we wrote alone for the project. David came in with that song, and it was so pretty and so well-rounded, I simply didn’t know what I could do with it. [Laughs] I remember telling him, “Just go for it. It’s so beautiful. It doesn’t need another thing of mine.” And it ends the album very nicely, don’t you think? Yes indeed.

That was the sort of record it was meant to be: ours together and individually, you know? Did you find yourself writing things for your own voice that suddenly turned into something for him? I think that I found myself writing more for him than me, melodies that would suit him or apply to him. Then there’s something like “Weekend In The Dust,” where I wrote that vocal melody for him, and suddenly he’s like, “Why don’t you take that one?” Definitely a fun stretch for me, especially because at the start I was thinking—in a funny way—what would David Byrne do? It’s like a board game. What Would David Byrne Do? Figuring out what he might do or want became a mission of mine throughout the process. David is an optimist. He can make anything work—for him and for you. That should be his business card. I would ask the same thing of Byrne if he was here, and damn him for not being so: Were you a big fan of his music coming into this? Yeah, all of his records were probably a part of my childhood in one way or another. The real first time I remember a Talking Heads song was probably “Burning Down The House.” I loved it. Remain In Light was a real event. Once we started working together, you put all that you remember aside, and he’s a collaborator and an equal. Your relationship to someone changes when you’re working with them. But I can’t lie: Every once in a while, I remember thinking to myself, “Oh my God, that’s David Byrne over there, singing my melody. That’s so cool.” Surely, though, at some point, I’m sure he had to say something to himself like, “God, I’m working with Annie Clark.” It’s a twoway street. Did you guys get to know each other? Did you bring something out in him by project’s end that you didn’t hear at its beginning? Do you think you found a neutral space that doesn’t belong to either of you? I honestly have to say that this record is an actual third person, someone not me and not him. It’s both of us. There are pieces where I was halfway through to that third person, or it was more me, or I could go in an opposite direction from of all of it. But the most exciting part of this was that I was getting pushed, and I hoped and I thought that at times I was doing the pushing. I don’t mean that at all acrimoniously. It was really nice. Really challenging. It was really about trying to figure out this puzzle we made for ourselves together.

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/music

Lion King

In his 37th year with Iron Maiden, U.K. metal royalty Steve Harris finally waves his solo scepter by KAREN BLISS

IRON MAIDEN

bassist and songwriter Steve Harris is sitting in a small office at concert promotion company Live Nation, backstage at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre where his legendary metal band will soon be taking the stage to perform to a dedicated sold-out crowd of 16,000. But the 56-year-old Brit who has been rocking away for Maiden since 1975 — that’s 37 years — and sold more than 85 million albums worldwide, is being interviewed about another project: his very first solo outing with his band British Lion. It’s not just unusual that this man waited so long to release something on his own; what’s more amazing is that British Lion actually began close to 20 years ago. 26

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“I can’t believe how long ago it is, really, to be honest with you,” Harris tells Needle, laughing, bringing this up not as a result of a question, but because all this talk about the band’s history has given him a moment to pause, in disbelief. “It’s almost embarrassing, but it’s scary because it’s just taken forever. I mean, God!” The singer in this melodic hard rock band is a man named Richard Taylor, whom Harris calls Richie. He’s a man of 50, but “looks a lot younger;” he runs 8 miles a day, can run a half-marathon and is “as fit as a trout,” Harris relays. While Taylor doesn’t wail heavy metal style like Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson on British Lion (though it’s evident he could), his voice is dark and mysterious on the fitting track “This Is My God,” with its melodic chorus; almost creepy and commanding on the more wiry, psychedelic number “Karma Killer,” and gentler and conversational in “Us Against The World.” His singing has personality, easily conveying various moods. “He’s a fantastic singer and really, I suppose, it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do this as well because I knew how good he is and I just think that he needs to be recognized. “It’s also because I came up with the songs and they need to see the light of day because this goes back to mid to early ‘90s when I first got together with these guys. I was helping them, producing them, managing them, writing some stuff. PHOTO BY JOHN MCMURTRIE

“Unfortunately, the whole thing sort of fell apart. I don’t know why. They’re all nice people; they’re all good people, but they couldn’t seem to keep it together. Maybe they could do now because they’re older. It was a shame. It all imploded in true Spinal Tap fashion, I suppose.” At the time, they weren’t called British Lion — a name Harris chose, as well as doing all the artwork for the album. The line-up wasn’t exactly the same then either as the five pictured in the promo photo. “Richie Taylor and Grahame Leslie were in that band. Barry Fitzgibbon, who also plays [guitar] on a couple of songs, he was in that band at the time. Ian Roberts, he plays drums on a couple of tracks and he was also in that band. “So if I did some live shows with the Lion, it would be Richie on vocals, Graham, and David Hawkins [guitar, keys] who was a real lynchpin as well for a lot of the material later on and Simon Dawson who played in a band called Dirty Deeds who supported Maiden on a couple of tours [during Virtual XI]. So I’ve known

“

“That’s the thing, the whole album sounds cohesive. It doesn’t sound the way it was put together, as bits and pieces over a period of time. I think it’s a really strong album. I wouldn’t put it out if I didn’t think it was that strong, but at the end of the day I know some people are gonna love it and some people may hate it.” British Lion is Harris, who wrote many of the lyrics, available now from EMI Music Canada as he does in Maiden, says Taylor was a “big part” of the writing as well. “He wears his heart on his sleeve a little more than I do, which I think is healthy. I tend to disguise stuff. I open myself up to things, but I disguise them in little stories and things, whereas this is a little bit more open, so he’s had a lot of input obviously.” The songs aren’t thematic, but religious mentions surface in such songs as the opening track, “This Is My God,” “A World Without Heaven” and “Judas.” “There’s a lot of references to religion, but then Maiden’s been doing that lately too,” says Harris. “I think the older you get the more you start thinking about these type of things. Obviously, ‘Eyes Of The Young’ does hearken back to when we were young. The essence of you as a person is the same, but it’s almost like you were someone else.” Is Taylor a religious person, as far as Harris is aware? “No, no no no. Obviously, I worked on some of the lyrics as well and I’m not particularly religious either. Neither of us. We don’t necessarily believe or not believe; we’re very open about things. You start questioning all kinds of things as you get older, you just do.” And as Harris gets older, he’s well aware that a 20-year pace to put out a side project doesn’t look good for a follow up. “No, not like this,” he laughs. “Yes, there is other material, but I’ve got so many ideas, it’s ridiculous. It’s unbelievable. I’ve got bags full of them, which is a nice problem to have because with some people it’s the opposite, but I suppose in my lifetime I’m never going to get them all out of the door. But I’m talking about even with Maiden.” Follow up or not, Harris says he would like to play some gigs with British Lion. “We just have to let this album come out and see what happens with it because it’s such an unknown quantity,” Harris says. “How do I know what people’s reactions are gonna be and how many people are even gonna like it or buy it? You can’t book a tour, you can’t book anything, unless you know what you’re dealing with, so we have to wait and see. “It’s going to be clubs, but that’s exciting to me because I haven’t played clubs in years, so I can play clubs and then I can play big places in the world. It’s a nice place to be.”

Yes, there is other material, but I’ve got so many ideas, it’s ridiculous. It’s unbelievable. I’ve got bags full of them, which is a nice problem to have because with some people it’s the opposite, but I suppose in my lifetime I’m never going to get them all out of the door. But I’m talking about even with Maiden..” —STEVE HARRIS them all for a very long time.” Credited on the album are Harris and Taylor on all 10 songs; Hawkins on all but three; and Leslie and Dawson on three. Fitzgibbon, Roberts, and another drummer, Richard Cook, are also on three a piece and given “special thanks to.” All the tracks except “The Chosen Ones,” “A World Without Heaven” and “Eyes Of The Young” were co-produced by Harris, Taylor and Hawkins, the other three by Harris alone. The main reason is that some of these songs date back to the ‘90s, such as “Eyes of the Young,” the album’s most pop-sounding track, which kicked the whole project off. “I just thought it was such a great song. It’s the most commercial song. As long as commercial isn’t a dirty word, but it’s good. I don’t think it’s anything more commercial than say ‘Running Free’ or ‘Run To The Hills,’ even ‘Wasted Years,’” Harris says listing off some Maiden singles. He doesn’t think it’s more pop. “Maybe you might think that from this side of the pond, but for me it comes from early ‘70sinfluenced stuff in the UK.” Interesting that even though the material is from the ‘90s, it sounds modern. No doubt, having all 10 tracks mixed by Maiden mixer Kevin Shirley with Harris assisting, helped bring the tracks together.

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All In The

JASON LYTLE INDULGES IN DOUBLE-MARATHONS, DOUBLING DOWN ON GRANDADDY AND SOLO WORK. story by Jud Cost photo by John Garner

“ WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD,” smirks a deadpan Jason Lytle as I pull into the potholed parking lot next to The Sound Co., a faceless band-rehearsal building tucked away behind a Jack In The Box and a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the frazzled outskirts of Modesto, Calif. “You’ll have to call me once you get that far, so I can tell you where to go next,” the 43-year-old Lytle had said the week before. I’d dialed his number from the asphalt confluence of the fast-food establishments and got the dreaded “service not available” message, instead. With only a few likely options in the vicinity, and the keen tracking ability of a former Eagle Scout, this was not the epic wild-goose chase it could have been. Lytle, the man whose haunted flight-plan, eerie guitar, burbling keyboards and fragile voice gave Grandaddy license to strafe the indie-rock landscape for more than a decade, has temporarily reunited with his former bandmates to play a headline slot at San Francisco’s prestigious Outside Lands Festival in August, with almost a dozen more shows in Europe to follow all the way through September. “I was pleasantly surprised at how well it’s gone so far,” says Lytle of the first three days of practice. “I told them what I wanted to play beMAGNET NEEDLE

fore I even drove down here, and they really did their homework.” It’s 97 degrees, a mild summer afternoon by Modesto standards, where temperatures in California’s sprawling central valley usually keep the thermometer needle embedded in the red, registering triple-digit readings for weeks on end. Four well-placed standing fans are doing little more than circulating the hot air around the windowless rehearsal room as Lytle, guitarist Jim Fairchild, keyboardist Tim Dryden, bassist Kevin Garcia and drummer Aaron Burtch are plugging in. But before they begin a spotless rehearsal of their current set, Lytle wants to tell everyone about his recent encounter with a wild animal in his Bozeman, Mont., home. “I found a muskrat had moved in under my SUV one morning,” he says. After getting tips from a local animal shelter, he tried for three days to trap the critter in a steel cage, to no avail. After being repeatedly doused with a garden hose as a last resort, the exhausted rodent finally surrendered. “I picked him up by the scruff of the neck and drove him 10 miles into the woods to his new home,” says Lytle, adding that no animals were harmed in this catch-andrelease endeavor. As a pack of kids nearby touches off a salvo of M-80s and cherry bombs in preparation for tomorrow’s Fourth of July holiday, Lytle and I motor down to the shade tree-dotted downtown area of old Modesto, a former agricultural center that is now a bedroom community of 200,000 for commuters to San Francisco, 95 miles to the west. After nearly scraping the mountain bike off the top of his SUV at the low-hanging entrance to a nearby parking structure, Lytle finds an open space in front of a quiet wine bar whose purring AC is a welcome relief. In contrast to the large amounts of alcohol he once consumed (he admitted, years ago, he drank heavily to lubricate his musical inspiration), Lytle orders a half glass of chardonnay. “I was just talking about this to Tim the other day,” says Lytle. “I have to be doing something that really excites me on a daily basis.” As Grandaddy began to run out of juice, Lytle would handicap himself before a live show, like putting extra weight on a thoroughbred horse. “My game became, ‘Let’s see how completely wasted I can get and still pull this off,’” he says. “Sometimes it ended in a big disaster. I could see what it was doing to the rest of my life. I didn’t want to become a fucking drunk who lives on the road and hates my whole life.” With his solo career in full blossom, things have changed for Lytle. “There’s so much less pressure doing this now,” he says of the stripped-down, living room-style shows he 30

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played to promote his first Anti- LP, Yours Truly, The Commuter. “I am no longer at the mercy of things I can’t control,” he says. Under no false pretenses, the Grandaddy boys realized the reunion gig was temporary. “Actually, that was the big selling point: that it wasn’t permanent,” says Lytle. With a steady job in Modest Mouse over the past four years, Fairchild was wary, at first, of playing the Grandaddy shows, when they were first proposed to celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary. “I had this initial sense of apprehension,” he says. “It was an old relationship that had been off the heat for a long time. To be honest, I was kind of dreading sitting down and revisiting those songs.” Grandaddy officially broke up in 2006, but Fairchild insists the band hadn’t played together since a show in Ireland in 2004. “The break-up was pretty bad,” he says. “I was really bummed, really pissed at Jason for a while. He’s a super-great songwriter and arranger. But, for one thing, I always felt he never gave enough credence to the idea that bands are very sensitive ecosystems. You have to be aware of that, even if you are the leader and you make all the creative decisions.” Fairchild firmly believes it to be a myth that Grandaddy was always just Lytle, anyway. “If that’s the case, tell me why there’s so much difference between the Jason Lytle solo records and the Grandaddy records,” he says. “The commonality of those five people is pretty important to how the music winds up sounding.” When Lytle decided that Grandaddy had run its course and he would begin a solo career, according to Fairchild, “some of the ways I acted and he acted were not the coolest way to do it. I really thought he was a dick. But he’s a really good musician and, of course, that’s exactly what he should be doing. My hat’s off to him.” If comedy really is just tragedy plus time, eight years have sanded off most of the rough edges to the awkward demise of the band. “That first night we played those songs we’d played so many times before, in Modesto again, it sounded really good,” says Fairchild. “Grandaddy is so much a part of who we are.” He is also thankful that everybody is still in the room. “It’s no small feat that we’re all still here,” says Fairchild. “Believe me, every one of us, at some point or another, should have been dead. I love all those dudes so much. To be around them again, even if it’s just only for a few months, it’s a treat to be a part of it again. I’m really happy we’re all here and enjoying

the moment.” There were many reasons Lytle moved from Modesto to Bozeman, almost none of them musical. Always an outdoorsman, ready to trek into the outback with a sleeping bag and meager provisions, Lytle has recently kicked it up a notch. He now participates in something called ultra-running. “It’s become common for people to not bat an eye at running the 26-mile marathon distance,” he says. “Nobody really knows what humans are capable of in myriad categories.” Lytle recently ran an endurance race over a rugged trail deep in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. “It was 52 miles, all nonstop, and I did it in 12 hours and 28 minutes. My time was in the middle of the pack,” he says, noting there’s a recovery process afterward. “I couldn’t walk for three days, couldn’t run for a week.” No matter how many 100-mile mountainbike races he enters, there will always be new musical terrain to conquer, as well. Lytle recently returned from France where, thanks to a teacher named Patrice Cleyrat, he scratched an itch that had been nagging at him for four years. “He’s about my age, and he really likes my music,” says Lytle. As they are in America, art and music are under assault in France from school administrators with shrinking annual budgets. “Patrice is an ambassador for keeping music alive,” says Lytle. “He’ll teach the young kids in his choir the songs he loves, then he’ll ask the artists if they’ll come perform with his PHOTOS BY GEOFF BARNETT

“ COMPLETELY WASTED I CAN GET AND STILL PULL THIS OFF.’ SOMETIMES IT

MY GAME BECAME,‘LET’S SEE HOW

ENDED IN A BIG DISASTER. I COULD SEE WHAT IT WAS

DOING TO THE REST OF MY LIFE. I DIDN’T WANT TO BECOME A FUCKING DRUNK WHO LIVES ON THE ROAD AND

HATES MY WHOLE LIFE.” —Jason Lytle kids … It was like, ‘This is so unique I have to be a part of it.’ I would be an asshole not to honor all of their effort. It was tugging at my heartstrings, this underdog kinda thing.” Next stop: Cognac, a town two hours away from Paris, for three live shows with Cleyrat’s kids, billed as the Young Rapture Choir. “The kids were super-sweet,” says Lytle. “Patrice wanted to do a lot more songs, but I whittled

our set down to 15. We played one show in their town, one in a club in Bordeaux and a final one at a cathedral in Angoulême.” The after-party, however, didn’t quite go as expected. “I was half-exhausted and halfdrunk, and they put me on the train to Paris to catch my plane home,” chuckles Lytle. He slept through his intended stop and didn’t wake up until he was in Lille, a couple of hours

past his destination. “I roamed around in this town,” he says, “late at night, with my homeless-guy brain working hard to get somewhere where there was no rain.” Of all the musical influences that so-called experts have detected in Lytle’s work (Radiohead, Neil Young) and the ones Lytle readily cops to (Pavement, the Beach Boys), the one that’s stuck to him like a favorite tattoo is that of Jeff Lynne. “I’ve spent so much time hanging on his every word,” says Lytle of the Electric Light Orchestra guru. “There are deep-rooted, fundamental reasons why Jeff Lynne is the guy. Sometimes, I think he’s my dad, and he actually looks a little like my dad. Even though I’ve never met him, he was my mentor. He was the wise guy who lives down the block, the guy who could fix anything. When I needed guidance, he was there to steer me in the right direction.” Dept. Of Disappearance (Anti-), Lytle’s second solo LP, has its Jeff Lynne moments, but it also reaffirms Lytle’s love of Romantic classical piano. A previous infatuation with Beethoven’s piano sonatas now also embraces the gossamer sound of Frédéric Chopin. Lytle says he couldn’t resist adding “shitty punk-rock drums” to the Polish composer’s Nocturne In E-Flat Major. The short work “Chopin Drives Truck To The Dump” scratches two itches for Lytle: It was a chance to jam with one of his favorite 19th-century composers and to revisit a cherished haunt of his childhood. “I guarantee nobody on that dumb Kardashians TV show has ever been to the dump,” he says. “Your Final Setting Sun” is one of Disappearance’s high-water marks. Soaked in the indelible ink of film noir, “it comes from the raw and unflinching writings of Cormac McCarthy, whose sun-bleached, tough-as-nails characters have a ‘this could be you’ feeling,” says Lytle. “It was the one song on the album that had a film playing along in my head. The chorus came to me while I was driving down a deserted Montana road into a beautiful and spooky sunset.” Lytle is well aware that music as subtle as his sometimes takes a while to burst into flame, something like a peat fire smoldering underground for weeks before igniting. “It’s some kind of torture for me to make an album like this—the slow-burner,” he says. He compares the songs on Dept. Of Disappearance to a roomful of “strange, brilliant autistic kids with very peculiar social skills. There are a few conventional, good-looking ones who go out and shake hands and get the good jobs. Then they come home and help take care of the other weird, wonderful ones. Perhaps I will figure it all out someday, but for now I’m OK with it still being one big, elusive journey.” MAGNET NEEDLE

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BACK BLACK

Three years after its debut won the Mercury Prize and the hearts and minds of indiedom—not to mention the likes of Drake, Shakira and Rihanna— London’s little band that could has released a new album of hushed, lovesick melodramas that are sure to play out in latenight teenage bedrooms around the globe. STO RY BY

JONATHAN VALANIA P H OTO S BY

GENE SMIRNOV

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I found comfort in singing with Romy. No one wanted to sing first. It was too much of a thing. This was my oldest friend. It was like a compromise, singing together. And through singing together we gained the confidence to sing alone.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D;OLIVER SIM

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you would ordinarily see on the head waiter of a Chinese restaurant, his thick bottle-blonde hair slicked back; judging from the smell of things, he nearly drowned in a vat of fancypants Frenchy cologne. “It was a perfect night,” he says, grinning broadly, justifiably pleased that such an ambitious show has gone off without a hitch. Croft waves as she strolls across the moonlit lawn arm-in-arm with her girlfriend, clothing designer Hannah Marshall. They seem very lovey-dovey.

the next day, I meet all three band members for breakfast at Gemma, the restaurant situated inside the Bowery Hotel, where the group is staying. Smith’s presence is somewhat unusual, as he rarely does interviews, and for good reason. He is preternaturally reticent and has that look in his eyes that says, “I’m bored, and mostly I blame you.” Fortunately, he’s a terrific beatmaker, having furnished the rhythm and loops for Drake’s “Take Care” (featuring Rihanna), which went to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The video for the song on YouTube has 43 million views and counting. Drake is, improbably enough, a mega fan of the xx, and has told interviewers that Smith will have a “big presence” on his next album. The hip-hop/R&B crossover doesn’t end there. Shakira covered “Islands,” and Rihanna sampled “Intro” as the musical bed for “Drunk On Love” from 2011’s platinumselling Talk That Talk. Talk turns to the xx’s origin myth, and how and when each member became musical. Smith started the earliest. “I started playing instruments when I was six, but I never really enjoyed being taught, so I used to give up pretty quickly and start working things out for myself,” he says. “I started making electronic music when I was about 13. Just wanted to work out how it was made because I didn’t understand when I was listening to it how it was done.” It was Smith who furnished Croft with her first guitar, a gold Epiphone Les Paul his uncle was awarded by a radio station for coming in first place in a go-kart race. “It was signed by a failed English rock band called Rooster,” says Smith. “He just wiped off the signatures and gave it to me,” says Croft. All three seem blessed with interesting parents. “My dad’s done everything,” says Sim. “He was a fisherman for a time, and then a professional boxer, and now he works for a charity.” Croft’s parents were friends with Sim’s, and in arranging play dates, they inadvertently birthed one of the preeminent bands of the indie-rock scene. “We all grew up about five or 10 minutes away from each other,” says Sim. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know her. You know, at that

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age your parents kind of choose your friends for you. They made a really good choice! I mean, our parents were friends first, and they pushed their kids together, and I’ve been friends with Romy ever since. We went to primary school, secondary school, college, and now this.” Smith became fast friends with Sim and Croft on the playground. All three attended the Elliott School, a sprawling London foundation school (the English equivalent of a stateside charter school) with a teeming student body of 1,000 and change. A number of bands have come out of the Elliott School, including electroclashers Hot Chip, enigmatic dubstepper Burial and post-rocker Four Tet. Much has been made of the Elliott School in the trio’s press coverage and how it served as an incubator for the likes of the xx. The group isn’t so sure about that. “I was unaware of the bands that were there until after we left,” says Sim. “We were given a lot of freedom, but I wouldn’t call it intentional freedom. I would call it neglect at times. It was a huge school with sprawling grounds. There were loads of different kinds of kids. There were some pretty troubled kids, and I think the teachers had to concentrate on them quite a bit. We were just left alone, so we’d go into the music rooms and just do what we wanted. You got a lot of freedom, but I think it was actually neglect.” Apparently Britain’s Office For Standards In Education shares that assessment, giving the school an “inadequate” rating back in 2009 and invoking “special measures,” a sort of double secret probation applied when a school fails “to supply an acceptable level of education, and appears to lack the leadership capacity necessary to secure improvements.” A pivotal moment in their development as musicians came when Sim’s mother took Croft, Smith and her son—all three the ripe old age of 13—to their first gig: the White Stripes at the Reading Festival. “My mom had a musical awakening in her 40s where she got that passion that you’ve got when you’re a teenager, and you seek out music and go to gigs and stuff,” says Sim. Mum proved to be a far fiercer festival warrior than her young charges. “She wanted to be right up front for the White Stripes,” says Sim. “And she eventually got there after wading through Dropkick Murphys and Libertines fans for four hours.” When Croft and Sim started jamming around the age of 15, they were both obsessed with gnarly guitar bands like the Distillers and Queens Of The Stone Age. Sim would use a distortion pedal on his bass to give it teeth, and

both he and Croft competed to be the loudest in the room. “Neither of us were singing at that point, so it didn’t matter if it was too loud to sing over,” he says. “It was basically a competition between me and Croft to be the loudest.” This loud-rock direction was further encouraged by Elliott schoolmate Baria Qureshi (an avowed acolyte of bands like the Bronx and Pretty Girls Make Graves), who had recently joined their loud-offs. From there, the band began goofing around with cover songs flaunting unlikely, bordering-on-ludicrous arrangements. Drummerless at the time, they slapped a house beat on their cover of the Pixies’ “Gouge Away” and began scrounging up gigs at venues Croft describes as “shit pubs.” Around this time, they asked Smith to become the band’s drummer, but he declined, citing two concerns. “I didn’t want to be onstage; I hate the idea of

It is the tail end of another hot, dog-breath day afternoon in early August. Mercifully, we are on our way to some place that is, for one night anyway, cool: Staten Island. There are many locales that you might associate with the sound, the look and the vibe of the xx—London after dark, Tokyo circa Lost In Translation, Manhattan around midnight, capitals of cool each and every one— but Staten Island is most assuredly not one of them. There is nothing young or cool or stylish about Staten Island, which even residents refer to as “the forgotten borough.” And yet here we are, standing on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, motoring across the Hudson for a semi-exclusive audience with London’s black-clad indie-pop darlings, who are playing a hastily announced concert on the island that is Staten. Behind us, the Manhattan skyline recedes into the distance. Off the starboard bow, the sun dips behind the Statue of Liberty like a solar eclipse, giving Lady Liberty a corona of brilliant white light that sets the twilight reeling. In advance of the release of Coexist, the xx’s much-anticipated follow-up to 2009’s beloved xx debut, the band is capping a sold-out pre-release promotional tour of select West and East Coast dates in the U.S. with a performance at the little-known Snug Harbor Cultural Center, a sprawling complex of botanical gardens and majestic Greek-revival buildings situated on Staten Island’s north shore. Erected in 1801 as a retirement facility for sailors, Snug Harbor has in more recent years been repurposed to serve the arts. Tonight it will serve the xx and serve them well. I’m huddled on the deck amidst a de facto posse of employees from the Beggars Group, which, in addition to providing the care and feeding of legendary indie institutions like 4AD, Matador and Rough Trade, serves as the

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stateside outpost of the xx’s British home, XL Recordings. Everyone is, to put it charitably, over 30. Crouched nearby is a tender-aged, barely twentysomething couple leaning against the wall and discussing, improbably enough, the exigencies of aging. “Life sucks more the older you get,” says the male to the female, who nods knowingly. He looks left and right to make sure this conversation is going unnoticed before adding, “I won’t say it too loud because everyone here will just be like, ‘Shut up, we know.’” We all hear it, but pretend we didn’t, feeling no particular need to provide confirmation. He’ll find out soon enough, the poor bastard. Just like we did. Just like everyone does sooner or later. I bring this up because the distinguishing characteristic of the xx—beyond the tar-black wardrobe and deep debt to the darkly emotive guitar bands from the ’80s and the high-shine chart-topping ’90s R&B that provided the background noise of their childhood—is how impossibly young they are: barely 20 years old when the hushed nocturnes of their debut LP won the Mercury Prize, the British music biz’s equivalent of the Oscar, and sold a whopping 1.5 million copies. It feels a little like we are all on our way to see our little brother’s (and sister’s) band, which—after patting them on the head

somewhat condescendingly upon learning of their ambitions for world domination—has somehow grown up to do just that. When the band takes the stage in a haze of dry ice, a giant milky white X pierces the darkness like the Bat-Signal, as singer/guitarist Romy Madley Croft launches into the ghostly arpeggio that opens “Angels,” the leadoff track and first single from Coexist. The capacity crowd is transfixed from the get-go, and will remain so for the next 90 minutes. The band is flawless in its execution of choice selections from its debut, leavened with a generous helping of new material, and the light show is visually stunning, resembling nothing so much as an indoor version of the Aurora Borealis. The three years since the release of its debut have clearly been kind to the band. They have shed the baby fat, downmarket haircuts, low-budget goth wardrobe and awkward posturing of their earliest press photos. They look poised, confident, stylishly coiffed and impeccably groomed, with all three dressed head to toe in their trademark ink-stained black. They have, by all outward appearances, grown into their fame. In short, they wear it well. At the end of the night, when they kick off a three-song encore with “Intro,” they somehow trigger the fire alarm. The audience rises to its feet, but nobody leaves, and the band keeps playing. The klaxon sounds like just another sample dropped into the mix by DJ/percussionist Jamie Smith. Sometimes where there is smoke, there is no fire. Just a screaming alarm blissfully ignored by 686 not-so-secret admirers. Afterward, in the men’s room, the guy at the urinal next to me offers an unbidden but no less astute summation of the band. “They don’t make any wrong moves. It’s kinda like poetry— they give you as little as possible,” he says before flushing. “Anyway, I’m gonna go home and watch stuff on VCR.” The xx hosts an after-party for friends and family in a charming two-story Victorian bungalow that serves as the band’s backstage area. The weather is about perfect: cool and dry. The sky is hung with stars. Out on the front porch, singer/bassist Oliver Sim is chatting up his sister Gemma, who has come over from London— where she works as a hairstylist for Madame Tussauds wax museum—to join the band on this short promotional tour. Sim is dressed in an upmarket version of the kind of black tunic

I don’t feel that we’ve had to adapt ourselves to fit a mold, and I’m so happy about that since that’s something we would never do. It just happens that people are open to it at this time, which is something that could definitely not have been that way. I really appreciate that so much.” —ROMY MADLEY CROFT performing in bands,” he says. “Plus, I didn’t want to ruin all they had, since they had such an original thing going. I didn’t think I was a good enough drummer.” And then something happened that changed everything: They turned the fuck down. “The competition to be the loudest wasn’t really going anywhere, and we decided to maybe try singing and writing songs,” says Sim. “And, you

know, me and Romy didn’t really have very loud voices, so it didn’t make sense to make a huge noise that we couldn’t compete with vocally. So we found the ‘off ’ button.” Something else happened around this time that would play a central role in the evolution of the band’s sound: Croft discovered the reverb switch on her guitar amp. Suddenly, a single guitar chord strummed in a cramped, shitty re-

hearsal space could sound epic and mysterious. They set up a Myspace page, as quaint as that sounds today, and forced to come up with a name, they settled on the xx, just because they liked the way it looked. Both Croft and Sim were given to dressing head-to-toe in black, and there was an unspoken agreement that this would become their look. “I hate to think of it as a uniform, you know,” says Sim. “But my teenage years was literally like a descent into the dark clothes. I don’t know anything different, to be honest. A lot of my family wear all black, and I always thought it was quite chic, I suppose.” “We never had that sort of, ‘by the way, everyone wear black’ moment,” says Croft. “I never said, ‘Oliver, you can’t wear that brown top.’ I would hate to have that sort of conversation, but you know, I’ve worn black since I was about

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15, basically—just, it’s all I’ve worn. And I’ve never thought too much about it. I don’t actually own anything that’s not black now.” Shy about their nascent vocal techniques, or lack thereof, Croft and Sim insisted on singing everything together so that neither would have to take the blame for bum notes. “I found comfort in singing with Romy,” says Sim. “No one wanted to sing first. It was too much of a thing. This was my oldest friend. It was like a compromise, singing together. And through singing together, we gained the confidence to sing alone.” They began writing and recording song segments at home using GarageBand on their laptops and emailing and IMing the snippets back and forth. “There’s that certain shyness about having to express yourself, and it’s quite openly emotional,” says Croft. “What we used to do is we used to just speak to each other on Instant Messenger from our respective houses, and we’d kind of share music and things like that. Then if I came up with something or I wrote these lyrics, I’d send it over to him and he could take it in on his own and react and send it back to me. That’s kind of how we wrote a lot of the first al-

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bum.” The hushed singing style emerged from necessity. Often writing and recording late at night in their bedrooms, they didn’t want to wake their parents. You would be forgiven for thinking that, when Croft and Sim duet about the twilit vagaries of post-teen romance, they are singing about their relationship. But you would be mistaken. Their relationship has never trespassed the borders of the platonic—they are, in fact, singing past each other. “Our songs were kind of disjointed, and that was something I always kind of liked because I think one thing that is different about us is that we’re not your normal male/female duet, you know?” says Sim. “Not in the same vein as, like, Ike and Tina. We’re just the best of friends; though we’re singing these love songs, it’s kind of aimed outwards at different people, and it was fine to have that disjointedness.” Both Croft and Sim are gay. It’s not something they go around advertising, nor do they shy away from it when the topic comes up. “I was outed

in the first interview we ever did by a friend, and, um, I was frustrated about that at first, because I didn’t want it to become something that defined us,” says Sim. “Then I was just happy with it because it was just out there, and it wasn’t a big deal. From the beginning it was out there, and if people wanted to know, they could do their research. And I’m kind of happy with how it is, you know? It hasn’t become a big thing.” “It’s not a big deal,” says Croft. “I kind of never shout about it because it’s not something that seems like it changes me in any way. So, it’s kind of like, when I’m writing a love song, it … doesn’t feel to me like if I was writing about a boy I would be writing it any differently. I really don’t put it out there as the first thing about me. I guess that’s the only sort of message I’d like to get across: It doesn’t have to define you, by being gay or lesbian. It’s just a part of you.” Eventually Smith acceded to Sim and Croft’s repeated entreaties to join the band and provide much-needed propulsion to the songs, but, he made clear, he would not be playing a drum kit. His role would be more like DJ than a drummer, and his addition to the band took the live show to the next level. After a gig at one of those “shit pubs,” the group was approached by Caius Pawson, a show promoter and owner of a tiny-yetinfluential imprint called Young Turks, which is part of the XL label roster. “They just approached us at one of our gigs and just offered us gigs and a rehearsal space,” says Croft. “I knew they were serious when they bought us (subway) travel cards,” says Sim. “We thought that was the most glamorous thing ever.” After two years of writing and gigging, Young Turks judged the xx ready to make an album. The band was paired with a number of highprofile producers, including Diplo, but nothing came out of those sessions that the band was in love with. “Working with Diplo was a lot of fun,” says Sim. “But you can hear Diplo in everything he does, and as cool as I think that is, it was exactly what we didn’t need. The space in our music had ended up being filled by his token sounds.” The band decided to record itself in XL’s in-house studio with Smith and XL engineer Rodaidh McDonald behind the mixing desk. Sessions were scheduled on the fly, whenever the studio was available, which often meant recording in the dead of night when everyone else had left for the day. More than once, the band was mistaken for interns by XL staffers. The xx’s debut was released in fall 2009, not with a bang but a whimper. “People were positive, but it wasn’t like, ‘Wow!’” says Croft. There were internal problems as well. A personal rift had developed between Qureshi and the rest of

the band members, and two months after the release of their debut, it was quietly announced that she had quit the band and would not be replaced. Qureshi would later take to Twitter and explain that, contrary to official reports, she had not quit the band, but been fired—and to add insult to injury, she was notified via text. (Sample tweet: “talk about back stabbing and hiding behind record companies. If anyone needs any advice on being an evil prick then message the xx!”) The band no longer shies away from these facts. “It wasn’t a decision she made; it was a decision me, Romy and Jamie made,” says Sim. “She didn’t just walk away from the band. And also, it wasn’t because of touring. Touring made it a bit more visible, and we were about to go on longer tours in even closer quarters, even further away from home, so it was kind of something that needed to happen for us to keep going.” “It was personal,” says Croft. “It sort of came to a head whilst we were on our first intense bit of touring, like after the album. We were in New York

actual voting, but, against pretty heavy odds, they won. The album shot up to number three on the British charts, and the xx’s sells skyrocketed from a respectable 225,000 to 1.4 million to date. There would be no mistaking the band members for interns anymore. Still, the physical and emotional toll of their uphill climb was starting to show. After a year solid on the road, they were ready to come home, and the plug was pulled on a scheduled American tour. They needed a break not just from the grind of touring, but from each other— or so they thought. “I thought we might want to take a break from one another and also take a break from work,” says Sim. “But I think we realized when we came home that we are the best of friends. When we want to be chill at home and just have a good time, we will be together. So, we started hanging out within the first week of being back. We started writing as well; I got reintroduced to the idea as well that this isn’t my work—this is what I love to do. It’s how I relax, it’s a release for me. I really vented a lot in my writing; it’d

I started playing instruments when I was six, but I never really enjoyed being taught, so I used to give up pretty quickly and start working things out for myself. I started making electronic music when I was about 13. Just wanted to work out how it was made because I didn’t understand when I was listening to it how it was done.” —JAMIE SMITH and were really tired, and CMJ is obviously a very, very intense thing, and we were a bit overwhelmed and exhausted, and it came to light then. It seemed like the best thing to do.” The band regrouped and went back on the road, gamely taking opening act slots for Florence + The Machine in the U.K. and Friendly Fires in the U.S., and while both tours drew sizable crowds, they could never be sure if anyone was actually there to see them. It wasn’t until they went out on their own in spring 2010 that they realized how much word of mouth momentum the album and the touring had garnered. “I’d say around the time of Coachella, we came to a really big realization that we’d come from touring small clubs to this huge outdoor stage with thousands and thousands of people,” says Croft. “It was quite a moment to step back and say, ‘Oh, wow! Something’s happening.’” It was around this time that the band found out its label had submitted xx for Mercury Prize consideration, and it had been shortlisted, along with records by artists like Paul Weller, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. Croft remembers sweating the red carpet way more than the

been such a long time. It’d been three years since I’d written. As much as I’d grown to love touring, my big problem is that I hadn’t found it very creative. I needed to write and also just be still. That’s two luxuries that just don’t exist on tour.” By Sim’s reckoning, songwriting for the new album began in October 2010, while actual recording started 11 months later. Originally slated for release at the beginning of the summer, Coexist wasn’t mixed and mastered until the beginning of August. Despite the protracted gestation, all three are pleased with the result. “I did an interview on our last American tour,” says Sim, “and the interviewer sat me down and was just like, ‘This second record is going to be an awful experience for you. You’re going to be constantly second-guessing yourself. Do you stay true to your sound at risk of being boring, or do you try to do something very different, but lose yourself? The pressure’s going to be awful,’ That turned out not to be true.” Sim is fairly confident the xx avoided pandering to people’s expectations—realistic, reasonable or otherwise.

“We created this album making the songs that we wanted to,” he says. “It wasn’t contrived. We weren’t trying to be different, but we weren’t trying to be same. We’re still the same band, but we’ve grown. And we managed to do what I thought was the impossible, which was just forget about what was going on outside.” They are well aware of the fact that the runaway success of their debut was a matter of the zeitgeist bending their way instead of the other way around. “I don’t feel that we’ve had to adapt ourselves to fit a mold, and I’m so happy about that since that’s something we would never do,” says Croft. “It just happens that people are open to it at this time, which is something that could definitely not have been that way. I really appreciate that so much.” Early indicators suggest the planets are still aligned in their favor. Their pre-release tour in the U.S. was completely sold out, including a date at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles that sold out in minutes, as did their New York show at the 3,000-capacity Terminal 5 a few days later. The Snug Harbor concert was announced only days in advance, and tickets were snapped up in an instant. Still, they worry, perhaps justifiably so, about finding that sweet spot between effectively promoting the new album and overexposure. “I think we came close to risking it on the first album with just really being shoved in people’s faces, you know?” says Sim. “I know the way I react to that kind of thing. Even if the music’s good, it can make me want to just stay away from it just to prove I can think for myself. I just don’t want people to grow sick of us.” With that, we wrap things up. The trio has to jet off to a photo shoot for this story, then back to the hotel for band meetings and rounds and rounds of interviews with journalists. Tonight they fly to Croatia, where they will be headlining a giant rock festival. I get exhausted just thinking about it, but the kids in the xx, all now pushing 23, are hardened veterans. The density and the demands of their promotional schedule do not seem to faze them. When I suggest that that schedule sounds utterly exhausting, Croft tells me I haven’t heard the half of it. “This is nothing,” she says. “This is not nearly as insane as the time we flew to some little town in Finland, took a heliplane to Helsinki, then got on a plane to London, hung out for four or five hours, then got on a plane for 23-hour flight to Melbourne.” All indicators point to Coexist outperforming its predecessor and the xx having a lasting and productive career. But given how well-adjusted the band members are to the bottomless demands of fame, and their cheerful willingness to labor long hours in the machinery of that makes it all possible, no matter what fate greets the release of the record, this much seems clear: The kids are all right. M

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GRIZZLY BEAR p. 44

AIMEE MANN p. 46

MATT AND KIM p. 48

BETH ORTON p. 50

All Too Human N

TAME IMPALA. p. 51

An uneasy gamut of emotion imbues another exceptional Mountain Goats effort

“Some things you do just to see how o one writes human frailty with the nubad they’ll make you feel,” he sings on ance of John Darnielle. No one can better put the horn-encrusted “Cry For Judas,” you in the head of a lover with a gun, a husband combining two of Darnielle’s sturdiest hobby horses, religion and the unforgivwith a long, slow death wish or a ticked-off teen half-cocked able. “But I am just a broken machine,” on bottom-shelf whiskey. Maybe it was the years he spent he continues, “and I do things that I don’t really mean.” It’s a money line, one that as a psychiatric nurse, or something even darker and more The Mountain people will shout at concerts, but it could intimate, which he’s hinted at. Or perhaps it’s that Darnielle also be the motive statement for scores Goats of Darnielle’s prior antiheroes, from the is possessed of a hair-trigger sense for every last tremor the Transcendental alpha couple to the dude from “Going To human psyche puts out into the cosmos. ¶ That blessingYouth Georgia” to William Stanaforth Donahue. slash-curse has produced a body of work some 600 songs Like Craig Finn, Darnielle casts a M ERG E sharp analytical eye on our tempestudeep, depicting characters at the height of bliss, on the ous formative years. But where Finn, verge of ending it all and at all points and combinations his Hold Steady BFF, will romanticize a between. On Transcendental Youth, his 14th studio album as the Moun- night where half the party ended up at the ER, Darnielle’s view is a bit more jaundiced, as if to suggest those of us tain Goats (and the first with a brass section), Darnielle deconstructs a who made it out alive were more lucky than deserving. theme he’s touched on often throughout his career: the manic-depressive On “Harlem Roulette,” Darnielle sings wistfully, nodding to fallen child star Frankie Lymon, who OD’d at 25, “The early-adult years, years when staying alive is all you can do and all you loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones can stand to do, when agony and ecstasy follow often and in short order. you’re never going to see again.”

PHOTO BY DL ANDERSON

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REVIEWS In the world of Transcendental Youth, darkness is an entity imbued with malice (as on “Night Light,” where “the small dark corners breathe like heavy animals”) and desires can be killed with one’s hands (“Hold my hopes underwater, stand there and watch them drown,” he sings on “Until I Am Whole”). It’s a world in which transcendence can mean multiple things—slipping into adulthood and competence, or slipping into oblivion. A world where the opening verse of lead track “Amy A.K.A. Spent Gladiator 1” (“Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive/Do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away”) is more than just a thrill-seeker’s mantra; it’s a prescription for survival. —Brian Howard

Alt-J

An Awesome Wave CANVASBACK

And a disappointing wipeout

For a group geeky enough to name itself after a Greek character and/or a Mac keyboard shortcut (albeit erroneously: the actual keystrokes for typing ∆ are option+J—so there!) and give its debut the horrifically dorky title An Awesome Wave, Alt-J plays it pretty cool. Sure, the lyrics, if you catch them, tend toward bookish brain-splatters of poetic quasi-abstraction, but sonically speaking, it’s all smooth surfaces and achingly artful sophistication. And while much has been made, in the breathless Britpress, of their genre-hopping unpinnability, the album’s sound is actually fairly constant—conjoining the elegant moodiness of Wild Beasts, the xx and TV On The Radio (particularly on slyly erotic standouts “Tesselate” and “Dissolve Me”) to the acoustic earnestness of England’s neo-folk throng (and anchored by Thom Green’s oddly tinny jitter-funk drumming). As with both of these camps, the quartet flourishes largely on the merits of its vocal prowess, which—if you can forgive frontman Joe Newman’s mildly cloying, Corgan-ish cragginess—is considerable: layered, blended and swoony in broad, cleverly deployed harmony. Still, for all its filigree, Awesome remains firmly on the polite side of prog. It’s all very impressive (and pretty), but that doesn’t necessarily mean it leaves much of an impression. —K. Ross Hoffman

Black Moth Super Rainbow

Cobra Juicy RAD CULT

romantic night

Songs for a deranged,

Twisted. Perverted. Agitated. Skronky. All could be used to describe Black Moth Super Rainbow. Now, with Cobra Juicy, there is a new, somewhat unexpected term to add to the list: romantic.

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Universal Language Grizzly Bear’s three-year hibernation ends with a crooning grrrr

N A WONDERFUL WES CRAVEN-HELMED episode of

the hideously underrated ’80s Twilight Zone reboot, a hapless salesman played by Robert Klein awakens one Grizzly Bear morning to find language mutating around him. His neighbor Shields casually refers to his dog as an “encyclopedia”; his wife wonders why he won’t touch his dinosaur (lunch). By sundown, WARP he’s left flipping through his toddler son’s wordbook to reorient himself in a suddenly incomprehensible world. Listening to Grizzly Bear creates a similar—albeit more alluring than creepy—effect: Which is to say, the elemental aural building blocks are recognizable, but the subsequent songs feel almost flagrantly exotic; indie pop refracted through prisms of free jazz, psychedelia, orchestral folk, skewed post-punk melodicism, Leonard Cohen-esque dark flamenco and more. Definitions blur and churn. Is that guy playing a glockenspiel or a dinosaur? Do those honeyed, otherworldly vocals emanate from a Brooklyn sublet or a cave on Mount Pretty Precious? Shields is not as immediately accessible as Veckatimest; the Beach Boys-goingfor-Baroque harmonies are mostly stripped away, the instrumentation is wide open and, at times, distant, and there isn’t a gateway earworm like “Two Weeks” to lure listeners into the eclectic whole. Yet, taken on its own terms, the record proves every bit as satisfying as its predecessor: If Veckatimest was akin to contemplating a meticulously painted landscape, Shields is like standing outside the museum watching a flowering vine wend and wind its way up a splintered lattice—an organic expression of the beauty that can be found in the fragile, arbitrary nature of communication. —Shawn Macomber

PHOTO BY BARBARA ANASTACIO

This isn’t completely out of left field; BMSR’s overall achievement is atmosphere, which has been used to convey feeling throughout the ages. It’s just that past releases have seemed more of a soundtrack to frenetic urban living, while their newest could be used to woo—provided the target were cool enough. BMSR’s trademark weirdness is still present. Vocoded vocals combine with distortion and general fuzziness to create an interpretation of a Nuggets compilation as played by aliens from the future. Most songs sonically reimagine a world where everyone is on uppers and watching John Carpenter films obsessively. But then there is pullback, and delicate, melodic music seeps in, sounding like (synthetic) waves crashing on a (glass) beach. “The day I met you, I knew you were gonna break me up,” singer Tobacco croons, and admissions like these turn Cobra Juicy into a long-term player. —Jill LaBrack

Deerhoof

Breakup Song POLYVINYL

Fawn fables

The world blinked and Deerhoof turned 20. (Well, almost.) For those wondering where the time went, here’s where: channels crossed, hooves maimed, kitchens sunk, rock stars killed, genders bent, instruments broken, birds halved, death and mankind stunned, alarms sounded, all risen, pros tooled, hearts discarded, nerves shot, men milked, thoughts run, breaths lost, sounds found, jazz freed, kites flown, opportunities knocked, friends offended, evil defeated, minds blown. For those curious what the San Fran-tastic Four has left in the tank, here’s what: false starts, faint praise, fart noises, mischievous grins, horns of plenty, golden deadpanning, papier-mâché dragons, Pentiums processing, problem children, Pong pings, play/pauses, rolling rock, voices rising, moths balling, dissed avowals, drop kicks, behinds left, flower powers, candied hands, Stereolab coats, faux finishes, so-oh-oh-oh-ohs, c’mon come-ons, there-you-go-go-go-gos, blown speakers, wars on war, suspense disbelieved, fresh reborn. —Noah Bonaparte Pais

Dum Dum Girls

End Of Haze SUB POP

In your dreams, lady

With last year’s piston-force pairing of He Gets Me High and Only In Dreams, Kristen Gundred (a.k.a. Dee Dee) defeated the monochromatic murk of Dum Dum Girls’ debut. Singing toughened to the point that one wonders what Chrissie Hynde would think, and with the help of copilots Richard Gottehrer (cowriter of “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “I Want Candy,” among others) and the Raveonettes’ fuzz-driving Sune Rose Wagner, the songs held their own next to the Smiths’ “There Is A Light

That Never Goes Out.” But here Dee Dee even strips the roaring guitar off a lazily tuneful stopgap that’s not quite as revelatory as High. It starts with its worst, the ambling “Mine Tonight,” and ends with the meatier, Loaded-conjuring “Lord Knows” and “Season In Hell.” “I Got Nothing” would’ve fit on the last album, but the reverbsoggy others aren’t altogether convinced that the haze needs to leave just yet. —Dan Weiss

Flying Lotus

Until The Quiet Comes WARP

Commotion pictures

Steven Ellison is a Foley artist for the most vivid Hollywood films never made. As Cali-fortunate beatnik Flying Lotus, Ellison scores storyboards of a magically overactive imagination: rubber-soled footprint 1983, slo-mo racquetball as called by Michael Winslow; night-fallen Los Angeles, a subsonic biological agent; and historically previsionist, post-everything opus Cosmogramma, a graffiti’d music-theory rewrite pirating tweeters as aerosol nozzles, woofers as satellite aortas. That’s a lot to have to follow, and Until The Quiet Comes politely passes. Languid and sometimes lagging, the sensual 47-minute set features recurring, returns-diminished roles for Thom Yorke and Thundercat, Ouijabored palm readings by Laura Darlington and Niki Randa, and a ho-hum Erykah Badu cameo. But certain flashes—stamped via timecode due to a single-track, review-copy hijack—leave palinopsia-inducing afterimages: sutured Jonny Greenwood interlude (35:24), death-rattling Ratatat pressure drop (13:20). —Noah Bonaparte Pais

Holly Golightly And The Brokeoffs

Sunday Run Me Over TRANSDREAMER

Rock ‘n’ roll will never die It may be a slap in the face to the prolific Holly Golightly, but the crux of the fifth LP from her Brokeoffs collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Lawyer Dave can be summed up in their snarky cover of Wayne Raney’s 1960 gospel chestnut “We Need A Whole Lot More Of Jesus (And A Lot Less Rock And Roll).” Here, they do a little word dance, altering the lyrics to “We need a whole lot less Jesus and a lot more rock and roll.” Sunday Run Me Over hosts a collection of Americana, from country and the expressive balladeer work of Neil Young (yeah, we know he’s Canadian) to gospel and dark folk and soul, all wrapped up in a cloak of sinister fun. Covers of obscure country classics are given as much weight as root-rock resonance. Nothing seems to be stopping Ms. Golightly countless albums into the game, and nothing about Sunday Run Me Over should stop fans from flocking to this. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

Patterson Hood

Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance ATO

Storm front brewing Patterson Hood has made it a welcome habit to release a solo album every couple of years, in between work from Drive-By Truckers. These projects provide space for him to focus on detail-laden story songs and personal narratives (not to say that those elements don’t also make their way into DBT tunes), and open up the studio to friends (including Centro-matic’s Will Johnson) and family (his father David Hood, famed Muscle Shoals bassist, makes an appearance on this one). His latest solo effort is a wonderful rumination on late nights, leaving home and selfmedicating. Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance’s sly opener, “12:01,” centers on a group of drunks waiting for the Sunday blue laws to expire and the liquor store to open. It’s melancholy, but also slightly sinister, augmented beautifully by a lone fiddle. —Lee Stabert

James Iha

Look To The Sky THE END

… and open your umbrella

I suppose if I had to choose an original member of Smashing Pumpkins to hang out with, it would be James Iha. We’d talk about rock, guitars and having great hair. I’m not the only person who feels this way. Iha’s second solo album features appearances from Tom Verlaine, Karen O and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as well as longtime Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson, among others. Nathan Larson (Shudder To Think, A Camp) co-produces, and his wife and A Camp bandmate Nina Persson (Cardigans) stops by to sing some backups. Unfortunately, all this hi-watt talent can’t cover up Iha’s weak vocals, which pass from winsome to wan early on and never recover. The twinkly, jangly sound of Look To The Sky works passably on “To Who Knows Where” and “Gemini.” But the less said about the sappy “New Years Eve” and “Appetite,” a disastrous rewrite of Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing,” the better. —Michael Pelusi

Wanda Jackson

Unfinished Business SUGAR HILL

Don’t trust Whitey, Jack

Not dissin’ on the Big J-Dub, the pastiest man in show business and overlord of Third Man Records in Nashville, Mr. Jack White—he’s got a thing, and he does it—but we’re glad that Wanda Jackson recorded her latest with Justin Townes Earle. While we were appreciative of the raised profile that comes with El Jefe popping up on your record, the dude tends to dominate a room and make ev-

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REVIEWS erything sound like a Jack White record. Which is fine. That’s his thing. Whatever. But Earle managed to make a Wanda Jackson record that sounds like Wanda Jackson; the bleed between country, rockabilly and gospel that Earle coaxes out of each performance pretty much sums up her nearly 60-year career. Jackson sounds as vital as ever in front of her live band, and has crafted a definitive album in a storied career. —Sean L. Maloney

Kaki King

Glow

VELOUR

New direction, old tricks

After having an existential crisis following her previous album, Junior, guitar wizard Kaki King is back with a new LP that’s another complete departure. Or maybe a return to the beginning. As an artist, she’s always been known for her innovative guitar playing, which was informed by her early upbringing as a drummer. With Junior, she consciously departed from this style, preferring to focus on her vocals and indie-pop songwriting. Now she’s ditched the vocals altogether and based Glow entirely on her guitar work. The sound is more lush than usual and has clearly matured, but it does come across a lot like indie new-age music. Which isn’t a bad thing—just a strange thing. Opener “Great Round Burn,” with its racing symphonic arrangement, hints at an amazing album that could have been, but King fans should be happy enough with this one for now. —Devon Leger

Bettye LaVette

Thankful N’ Thoughtful ANTI-

Her train hasn’t come in yet

Like all great soul singers, Bettye LaVette is able to tap into the deep, sanctified stream of black-church music to come up with performances that shine with hope, even as she deals with life’s more difficult situations. The transcendent moments here—and there are plenty of them—are quiet declarations of the spirit’s ability to face adversity with a song. Case in point: “I’m Tired,” a Savoy Brown cut from 1969. LaVette’s arrangement borrows a bit from the original, but her visceral growl infuses the lyric with an inspiring passion. When she sings, “The life I’m living ain’t mine and I’m supposta feel that’s fine,” there’s an electric crackle to her implicit anger that’s downright intimidating. The title track, an obscure Sly Stone tune, is the album’s most hopeful song, but once again the message is tempered by LaVette’s acknowledgement of our ultimate mortality. —j. poet

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Charm Schooled

It’s the same old, same old quirky brilliance from Aimee Mann

GREED: AIMEE MANN IS A charmer. That win-

some, statuesque blonde singer/songwriter with the penetrating gaze has been churning out exquisite popstuff since the mid-’80s with ’Til Tuesday. Old Aimee Mann alliances remain notable, particularly her ’90s-era musical Charmer association with producer Jon Brion, as well as her marriage to composer/performer Michael Penn. Mann is also lauded SUPEREGO for maintaining her own record label—and there’s no doubt she’s making albums on her own terms. Which brings us to Charmer. As with most of Mann’s previous collections, the singing, songwriting, performances and production are pretty much perfect. The question then becomes how do you like perfect and how do you like Aimee Mann? I do, but will say it takes extra work to get into this album because there’s so much perfection. I couldn’t get past the opening (title) track until I finally realized that the second tune, “Disappeared,” was tastier and smarter. Mann’s tuneful melodies are pretty and straightforward, her songs are often about the quirks of relationships (using clever metaphors with ease), and her honeyed voice is totally distinctive. A sameness of style makes things feel a little redundant, but taken in discreet portions, these tunes are unimpeachable. Note her sweet duet with the Shins’ James Mercer on “Living A Lie,” which helps mix things up a bit. Almost every song here is a gem, but closing tunes “Barfly” and “Red Flag Diver” shouldn’t be missed by anyone who still values pure pop for now people. —Mitch Myers

PHOTO BY SHERYL NIELDS

Local H

Hallelujah! I’m A Bum SLIMSTYLE

Keeping it copacetic

Here’s an irony the writer of “Eddie Vedder” probably never expected: Local H now ties Pearl Jam as Earth’s longestrunning grunge band. (Shut up, that Mudhoney reunion doesn’t count.) And like Pearl Jam, that means only one thing for Scott Lucas: a morethan-healthy appreciation of the Who. Townshend-ian windmills are all over the distended 17-track Hallelujah! I’m A Bum, from the opening suite of “Waves” and “Cold Manor” to the Quadrophenia-channeling “Say The Word” (Brian St. Clair even attempts those Keith Moon drum rolls) to the truly proggy balladry of “Sad History” that climaxes the record one last time before six-minute reprise “Waves Again.” But it’s greatest when Lucas makes his politics explicit on this record (which he wanted out before November’s election) on the stomping “woo-ooh”-hooked “They Saved Reagan’s Brain,” or breaks musical script for the intense metal-with-horns (of the brass rather than goat variety) of “Here Come Ol’ Laptop.” —Dan Weiss

Lord Huron

Lonesome Dreams IAMSOUND

Getting sleepy

Ben Schneider’s debut LP as troubadouring one-man folk act Lord Huron doesn’t quite sound in line with the Los Angeles-based IAMSOUND label’s typically theatrical output (Salem, Florence + The Machine). But while Lonesome Dreams isn’t exactly stirring stuff on first listen, Schneider’s seamless marriage of wistful Americana to Afro-Caribbean steel-drum melodies and Balinese gamelan imbues the record with a sweeping romanticism, rendered in picturesque widescreen. Informed as much by the ongoing detritus of flannel-clad, cabin-bound indie folk singers as it is, no doubt, by the Putumayo listening station at his neighborhood Whole Foods, Schneider’s knack for rich, reverb-drenched melodies makes for most of Lonesome Dreams’ brightest points, as on the positively buoyant “I Will Be Back One Day.” Even so, his conspicuous overreliance on the same, tired lyrical themes— every other line here seems to mention some variation on wanderlust or “the open road”— does the record in, highlighting just how short on variety the LP is. —Möhammad Choudhery

Lorelei

Enterprising Sidewalks SLUMBERLAND

’90s D.C. vets return intact

Coming out of the same Washington, D.C., scene that birthed unlikely superstars Fugazi,

Lorelei spent the early ’90s playing its dark and dreamy sound to a small-yet-rabid fan base. Although the fuzzy three-piece was armed with tons of critical acclaim, the band never won the indie-rock lottery, calling it quits in ’96 after only a few releases. The band members all went their separate ways until 2003, when the classic lineup released an EP of reworked older tracks, which was followed by a reunion tour in 2006. Enterprising Sidewalks is Lorelei’s first release of new material in more than 15 years and (in a rare occurrence) is arguably better than ever. Opener “Hammer Meets Tongs,” with its alternating/interlocking chord structures, is one of the best songs you’ll hear all year. Throughout most of the album, Lorelei gives off the same shoegaze-y vibe as before, and though it may be a tad mellower, the band has plenty of left turns to keep things interesting. —Bryan Bierman

METZ

SUB POP

excellent debut

Toronto trio kicks out the jams on

Before METZ’s self-titled debut is released, we’d like to make a prediction (besides the fact that there will be many Bleach/In Utero-era Nirvana comparisons): Every cool person you know is going to love this band. Co-produced by Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh, METZ is a pummeling half-hour of giant drums, scraping riffs and pools of fuzz. Not since the Men dropped Leave Home last summer has a young band made an album of pure, hard-edged rock this good or entertainingly lacerating. On “Sad Pricks,” “Knife In The Water” and “The Mule,” the three-piece anchors itself on the crusty metallic bass that monsters like the Jesus Lizard and Shellac built around, bringing an intensity reminiscent of those noise kings. There’s not a song here that doesn’t feature throat-wrecking screams or barge-sized punk riffs that you won’t play air guitar to. We could spend more time making comparisons or throwing adjectives around, but fuck, you should probably just go get it. (And remember what we said.) —Bryan Bierman

this time, didn’t I, my dear?” refrain) made Sigh No More a hit. The long-awaited follow-up doesn’t disappoint. Although Marcus Mumford still sings anthems and ballads alike with the same gruff intensity, Babel is the more subtle and accomplished album. The banjo that drives most tracks seems less like window dressing, and although the biblical imagery can get heavy at times, Mumford is skilled at expressing love’s desperation. Almost every song reaches for a rousing climax—some start full-throttle, some explode like a firecracker at the end—and Babel can be wearying, but tracks like the hurtling “I Will Wait” and the earnest “Ghosts That We Knew” are undeniably powerful. —Steve Klinge

Murder By Death

Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon BLOODSHOT

From the mouths of ex-punks

Full disclosure: The only time I’ve ever heard Bloomington, Ind.’s Murder By Death was when I saw the band at an outdoor festival some six or seven years ago. Hadn’t heard a note of the group before, haven’t heard a note since. As you might imagine, what stood out most was the fact that this supposed “punk” outfit incorporated Sarah Balliet’s cello and wasn’t doing so while playing some chintzy MTV Unplugged crap. Seven-plus years ago is a long time in music, and with sixth album Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, the band has lost most of whatever edge that had people around me referring to it as punk. Murder By Death now sounds more ominous, resonant, epic and dark. Most of this falls in line with Bruce Springsteen campfire crooning combined with the desolate likes of Across Tundras, plus flourishes of bearded “soundtrack rock” like Black Mountain. Sometimes the pace renders parts of the LP a slow-bore, but there’s still enough effective moody dynamics to give ’er a spin. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

Yoko Ono, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore

YokoKimThurston CHIMERA

Mumford & Sons

Babel

GLASSNOTE

This band wants to be your life

In some ways, the success of Sigh No More, the 2009 debut from Mumford & Sons, was surprising: The Pogues and the Waterboys are the dominant strands in the London band’s DNA, and they aren’t exactly trendy source material these days. But impassioned performances, a rousing live show and a signature song in “Little Lion Man” (with its “I really fucked it up

The Heather”

Not exactly “Bull In

“Speak up,” Kim Gordon urges. “Stars rise,” Thurston Moore sighs. “Being left out,” Yoko Ono interjects; the members of this perhaps inevitable trio are cooling their heels at the outset of “Running The Risk.” “Risk” is a relaxed, free-associative session that eventually congeals into a mild tempest: a semidevotional tone-poem for multiple voices and flawed concave guitars, all thule-scarf flutter and Lamaze-method breath control. The song doubles as a metaphor for YokoKimThurston as a whole, for how almost unintentionally

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REVIEWS complementary each element comes across. Every move this unit makes feels intrinsically and unaccountably right in all sorts of inexplicable ways, from the wailing, spindled churn of “Early In The Morning” to the straining groans and endurance drones of “Let’s Get There” to the muted, call-and-response dialogue that transforms “I Never Told You, Did I?” into a chilling portrait of a psyche split asunder. This is one of those great collaborations that’s genuinely ego-free and something more than the sum of its parts: orgasmic operatic trills, ethereal de-tuned strum, no chains on floors. —Raymond Cummings

Rangda

Formerly Extinct DRAG CITY

At ease

Given the nature of its collective résumé, Rangda sets certain expectations. Any collaboration among guitarists Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance) and drummer Chris Corsano is bound to be an eclectic offering with certain recurring notions. Bishop’s well-established fascination with Eastern music and mysticism proves a ready foil for Chasny’s expansive, psychedelic Americana. Corsano, having worked with folks as disparate as Jandek and Björk, is something of a stylistic chameleon, though he consistently enlivens the dynamic of any ensemble in which he finds himself. The trio’s second collection takes some perhaps-unexpected cues from single-note surf melodies (on “Idol’s Eye” and “Night Porter,” especially) and black metal’s brittle cacophony (“The Vault”). “Plugged Nickel” turns a krautrock throb into a psych-noise eruption, and the casual meander of “Silver Nile” belies its almost 12-minute duration. But if Formerly Extinct provides any clear focal point, it’s the intuitive communication among its players. — Bryan C. Reed

Royal Trux

Accelerator DRAG CITY

They stepped on it

Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema’s relationship with their major label was more akin to the deadbeat boyfriend who finally buys you flowers three minutes after being dumped. When 1997’s Sweet Sixteen was turned in with a vomit-filled toilet for a cover, Virgin passed on this follow-up. Since 1998’s Accelerator is the most focused album Royal Trux ever made, it’s safe to say the duo wanted to be taken seriously too little too late. That’s OK—scaling the top of scuzz mountain was never going to give the band a hit.

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Shiny Happy People Matt And Kim go back to pleasant, if predictable basics

OME ACTS SERVE AN IMPORTANT social func-

tion for music fans, no matter what they release. Take Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino. If these two terminally happy, eternal teenagers were to pull a Snoop Lion Matt And Kim on our asses and announce a shift into suicidal emo-goth or Lightning something, half the population of Williamsburg would slink off into their one-bedrooms and slit their wrists, even if it THE FADER were just for the proverbial shits and giggles. So, of course, they’re not gonna do that, at least not at this point in their career. They’re perfectly content on Lightning to give their fan base and the world more of that goofy and excessively eager synth-pop they’ve been known for ever since their 2006 debut, because, goddammit, somebody has to. Unlike the duo’s last LP, Sidewalks, which attempted to flesh out the minimalist synthand-drums approach with more commercial hip-hop production techniques, Lightning returns to the tried-and-true formula that has worked so well for them. Opener “Let’s Go” sets the tone with a feel-good “ooh-ooh” chorus layered atop reassuring piano chords. Also making a repeat engagement is the upbeat lyrical nonsense that anyone with an unresolved Andrew WK obsession will immediately recognize. Any troll who simply wants to punch these guys in the face for the sheer inappropriateness of it all will remain unconverted. But it will be a sad day indeed if Matt And Kim could no longer make their music with the sincerity and integrity they continue to bring to the table. —Justin Hampton

PHOTO BY CALEB KUHL

Outfits like this only have breakthroughs in couples therapy. Amps appear to bite the dust after every line of “I’m Ready,” while “Juicy Juicy Juicy” throws feces at funk. “New Bones” is a random detour into psychedelic Elephant 6 territory, and “The Banana Question” adds wartime bugle to T.Rex glam. Jammy, spontaneous, hideous—it’s only fitting that Royal Trux’s “masterpiece” sounds as freshly inconsequential as it used to. —Dan Weiss

The Sea And Cake

Runner

THRILL JOCKEY

Summer was lost

The comparison doesn’t hold after the first track, when the synth becomes more prominent, but for at least three seconds, “On And On” sounds like a lost Broken Social Scene track. The song, off the Sea And Cake’s latest release, has that BSS all-at-once feeling. When the vocals cut in, the difference is obvious, but still, a long-lost vocalist for a long-lost track? At any rate, the synth holds this album together, the melody in particular, which is what songwriter Sam Prekop has said is kind of the point: “The modular synth parts didn’t always make it through to the final recordings, but the influence is still there.” And I think he’s right. After the rest of the band dissected his recordings, what they end up with is something more akin to, say, Elliott Smith, but airier, and with, you know, synth. —Matthew Irwin

Sea Wolf

Old World Romance

Ty Segall

Sun Airway

DRAG CITY

DEAD OCEANS

Tyspace

The sedative romantic begins to feel

Twins

San Francisco garage rocker Ty Segall boasts the most shameless fake British accent since Jay Reatard. But Reatard ain’t around to crank out snappy, British Invasioninspired psych/punk gems anymore, so it’s a good thing Segall flies that flag. The fun continues with the increasingly prolific Segall’s third full-length of 2012. On Twins, Segall sings like he’s impersonating John Lennon fronting Hawkwind. Despite the album’s open, slicker sound— more along the lines of Hair (recorded with California compadres White Fence) than its abrasive Ty Segall Band follow-up, Slaughterhouse—Twins delivers more distortion than a light bulb in Link Wray’s head. From the opening, could’ve-been-a-Sabbath-outtake “Thank God For Sinners” to the closing, could’ve-been-aCreation-cut-on-Nuggets II “There Is No Tomorrow,” nearly every instrument—from fuzz-sodden bass to speaker-peaking drums—on Twins’ 12 tracks is awash with distortion. In between, Segall makes quite a cacophonous rock ‘n’ roll racket with infectious pop stompers like rousing, four-on-the-floor rocker “You’re The Doctor” and the menacing, rolling riffage of “They Told Me To.” Yet, the headroom in the mix makes so the oceans of pulverizing reverb don’t swallow the hooks. —Adam Gold

Whimper at the moon

Despite a strong debut with Leaves In The River, Alex Brown Church has since struggled to find a distinct voice with Sea Wolf. That Phil Ek-helmed record was a balancing act between tender ballads and haunting mid-tempo rockers. After Mike Mogis made the California singer sound a little too much like Conor Oberst on White Water, White Bloom, Church retreated to compose Old World Romance away from his recruited band. The songs on OWR bear a stronger resemblance to those on Church’s debut, but it’s far from a direct sequel. Opener “Old Friend” finds Church doing his best Sufjan impression as the band disinterestedly vamps behind him. When it’s not pounding out overly mechanical drum patterns (“Kasper” and “Changing Seasons”), the band is crowding the better moments with unnecessary noise (the otherwise lovely “Blue Stockings”). A friendly suggestion for Sea Wolf LP number four: solo acoustic. —Eric Schuman

Jon Barthmus has an edge on his chillwave contemporaries. In a genre that’s often sonically numb and devoid of emotion, he’s a sedative romantic. The lyrics on Nocturne Of Exploded Crystal Chandelier, the 2010 debut from Sun Airway, revealed a profound sadness and longing suffused in the static haze conjured up by Barthmus and his collaborators, and on the band’s new Soft Fall, they take a step closer to letting it show. The album’s first half explores the same musical territories as Nocturne—the chiming euphony of a hundred things happening at once, the guileless melodic patterns that wander up the scale and back—but it does so in lifted fog. From punchy opener “Close,” the beats are more pronounced, Barthmus’ voice is distinct, and there’s a general sense of clarity and invigoration. “I think you wanted to come down,” he sings. “You put an end to an empty sky.” On the joyful “Black Noise” and jagged, symphonic closer “Over My Head,” it pushes even further. The detachment is fading and the stoic is feeling. —John Vettese

Taken By Trees

Other Worlds

SECRETLY CANADIAN

SSION

Bent

DOVECOTE DANGERBIRD

Soft Fall

Disposable hipster hero

Listening to the work of Cody Critcheloe and his ongoing SSION project, you’d be hard-pressed to recall a time when expressions of queer aesthetics in pop music were far less obvious. It’s a shame Freddie Mercury never lived, then, to lend his voice to tracks like “LUVVBAZAAR,” since Critcheloe just might have brought out a brand new side in the man. However, this re-release of Bent, which pairs the originals from 2011’s self-release with four remixes, only distinguishes itself slightly from that of other Gaga-era party monsters like Fischerspooner and Scissor Sisters. It’s all good-natured, utterly accessible dance pop with a meta-awareness of its own shallowness and disposability. And that’s fine, except that Critcheloe keeps telling the same joke for close to 76 friggin’ minutes, after which you’re kinda over it. By all means, it’s a great soundtrack for your next super-ironic PBR-fueled blowout, but that’s probably the only setting where it really works. —Justin Hampton

None dare call it weed

Other Worlds, Victoria Bergsman’s third album as Taken By Trees starts pretty much where 2009’s East Of Eden leaves off, in the sense of being almost exactly its opposite: the tropical vacation any sensible thrill-seeker would luxuriate in after documenting a profoundly rugged (and ruggedly profound) adventure. Well-placed pedal-steel parts, field recordings from her trip to Hawaii and a panoply of dubwise gestures all help make Other Worlds a relentlessly chill confection, but the Concretes alumna’s voice is the album’s strongest unifying force. Sounding not so much detached as newly embodied, Bergsman spends half the album playing palm-tree nymph (per poiWestern/porn soundtrack theme “Horizon”) and half-beckoning from a half-shell (as on mission statement “Dreams”)—never breaking a sweat regardless of how many taboos she violates. Thanks in part to producer Henning Fürst, she succeeds in generating a summer feel-good vibe so potent, it’ll feel all the better come winter. —Rod Smith

NEEDLE

REVIEWS Tilly And The Wall

Heavy Mood

Everything Nice

TEAM LOVE

Calling Peter Pan

For a decade, Tilly And The Wall has celebrated raw, naïve and excitable youth—which is to say the band has been twee as fuck for a long time. But beyond being just another scrappy, earnest indie-pop group, it has also been that band with the tap dancer for a drummer. That percussive trick is still at play on the group’s first album in four years, though it’s augmented more by electronics and live drums. And the 10-song Heavy Mood is eclectic enough to say that the band has matured. Almost. Hearts are still on sleeves, and there are still no hardships that can’t be hurdled without a pep rally. There’s extra bite in places (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs-ish “Love Riot”), a couple torch songs (“Hey Rainbow,” “I Believe In You”) and at least two flavors of bubblegum. One is a Phil Spector approach to “All Kinds Of Guns” that’s a perfect fit. The other is the title track, an indie-pop foray into jock-jam territory that isn’t such a good look. —Matt Sullivan

Why?

Mumps, Etc. Sod In The Seed EP ANTICON/CITY SLANG

“He cannot be bound when the trumpets sound.”

Maybe that line from “Sod In The Seed” overestimates the inevitability of projectile upward motion from Why? and its primary mouthpiece, Yoni Wolf. Yet as the centerpiece of a new LP and EP from Wolf’s ensemble with brother Josiah, the comment seems apt. Even at his glummest, there’s a causticyet-innocent positivism from the driest, whitest emcee since Beck pulled his foot from the grave. The baffle-box blues of “The Plan” and the flittering Latin lilt of “Probable Cause” (both from Sod In The Seed) offer a gentle precursor of what’s to come on Mumps’ main event. Crisper and cleaner than any previous Why? musing, Mumps Etc. is chamber hop for people who buy every remastered reissue of Pet Sounds. Heavenly harps sound creepy next to the anti-boasts of “Waterlines.” The California cool of “White English” nestles nicely against the chilled C&W wonk of “Thirst” and its dim look at redemption, faith and the folk who most look forward to getting next to God. No one gets better, and to Wolf, this is a very good thing. —A.D. Amorosi

NEEDLE

Beth Orton

Sugaring Season ANTI-

Beth Orton’s folk/soul gifts are realized and revitalized

N HER L AST ALBUM, 2006’ s Comfort Of

Strangers, Beth Orton stripped her songs to their core. With Jim O’Rourke producing, Strangers showed Orton at her folkiest and most elemental, and it proved she needed neither the electronics that she’d long since abandoned nor the lush (over-)production of 2002’s Daybreaker. Her collaborations with Terry Callier and Bert Jansch proved truer to her mature character than her youthful guest turns with the Chemical Brothers and William Orbit. Although Strangers’ bride-stripped-bare qualities worked well, the album occasionally felt close to being a set of sketches and demos. Sugaring Season has no such handicap. Produced by Tucker Martine with a stellar band that includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Ted Barnes, keyboardist Rob Burger and drummer Brian Blades, it’s sharply articulated and moodily detailed, hovering in that intersection of soul and folk often found in albums produced by Joe Henry or T Bone Burnett. Orton’s voice is a wistful alto, rarely rushed or forced, with a lovely upper register and an appealing catch that breaks the middle of some notes, and Sugaring Season contains some of her most impressive performances, from the earnest, earthy “Something More Beautiful” to the airy, Sandy Denny-like “Mystery.” As a songwriter, Orton favors archetypal, natural images (birds, stars, seasons) and introspective self-assessments. Although several songs tell of deceit and loss (most emphatically “Poison Tree,” an adaptation of a poem by William Blake with vocal help from Sam Amidon), the general tone is, well, comforting ( jaunty chanson “See Through Blue” is the outlier). Sugaring Season isn’t a breakthrough, but it’s a consolidation of Orton’s strengths. —Steve Klinge

PHOTO BY JO METSON SCOTT

The Woods

Bend Beyond WOODSIST

Past worn searching

Innervisions

Tame Impala goes its own way, floating into space

HEY’RE BELOVED BY THE JESUS And Mary

Chain’s Jim Reid, they tour with like-minded souls MGMT, they collaborate with fellow psychonauts the Flaming Lips. Yes, the members of Tame Impala are on Tame Impala something of a roll at the moment. The band burst into the colLonerism lective consciousness with 2010’s mind-bending, thoroughly MODULAR splendid Innerspeaker, so there’s considerable expectation surrounding the Australian psych-rock quartet’s sophomore release, and for the most part, Lonerism doesn’t disappoint. From the outset—be it the delirious “It’s All Too Much”-era Beatles-meets-Can hypno-groove of “Be Above It” or the final, plaintive, piano-led comedown of “Sun’s Coming Up”—this is an album with phasers set firmly to stun, a sprawling, lysergic slice of sun-dazzled psychedelia, with a gift for melodic hooks second to none. It takes off from the blueprint laid down by Innerspeaker and expands upon it, sounding, frankly, fabulous (the drums in particular are ridiculously good). Credit, in part, must go to coproducer Dave Fridmann, who’s worked similar magic for fellow inner-space travelers Mercury Rev and the aforementioned Lips. If there are any criticisms, it’s that official single “Elephant” and the opening track aside, there aren’t a whole lot of songs here that really stand out on their own—they all seem to melt into one pulsing psychedelic treat. But that seems deliberate in that it’s one of those rare things in this digital age: a distinctly sequenced album that’s designed to be consumed as a whole. Plus, a lot of this sounds so deeply, obviously rooted in the late ’60s, that, for the more cynically inclined, it could be regarded as little more than cleverly executed genre pastiche. But the members of Tame Impala possess such boundless energy and obvious, puppy-like enthusiasm that it would be downright churlish to dismiss them. —Neil Ferguson

Most of the Woods’ album covers trade in cheery nostalgia for a time before anyone in the band was born. Jeremy Earl’s soft, high voice imparts the other side of that sentiment, a creeping sense that things aren’t ever going to be as good as they used to be. He nailed this spirit to the full moon last year on single “Any Other Day,” and if nothing on Bend Beyond reaches quite that high, it scratches a lot of the same itches. Much of the LP will be familiar to anyone who caught them on the road last year, but songs that curled into smoky haze onstage come into sharp focus here. “Cali In A Cup” simply soars, born aloft by a big, yearning harmonica hook; the garage-y “Find Them Empty” blows past you like something off the first Seeds record. They’re still looking back, but what they see is well worth glimpsing. —Bill Meyer

Young Fresh Fellows

Tiempo De Lujo YEP ROC

Pacific Northwest stalwarts en fuego

The Spanish title of the Young Fresh Fellows’ 13th LP translates as “time of luxury,” which, if not ironic, is at least comical considering the garage-y power-pop band’s lack of commercial success and self-admitted avoidance of ambition over its 30-year-plus lifespan. Recorded over 12 hours in guitarist Kurt Bloch’s Seattle basement, Tiempo De Lujo comes out smoking with prototypically Fellowsy opener “Another Ten Reasons,” and it doesn’t lag quality-wise through its dozen tracks. Frontman Scott McCaughey and crew, as always, masterfully spike their oft-depressive worldview with humor and cautious optimism; sweetly skewed love songs (“Margaret”) mix with the likes of “Cleflo And Zizmor,” a demented jingle for a plastic-surgery firm: “Zizmor and Cleflo, above the subway doors/Beacons to your betterment/ Call now, ugly whore.” McCaughey told me in 2007 that the Fellows were perhaps done after a prolonged stretch of inactivity. With Tiempo following somewhat soon after 2009’s I Think This Is, they instead may be on the verge of an improbable, if not lucrative, renaissance. —Matt Hickey

NEEDLE

/movies

You Know It’s A Wes Anderson Film If… In Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, set in 1965 on a fictional New England island, a pair of smitten 12-year-olds—orphan Sam and “troubled” Suzy—run off together, prompting an intensive search that reveals unsightly wrinkles in the community’s social and institutional fabric. Such a story line isn’t new to film (already old by the time Orson Welles started smoking); what’s new is its distinctive telling, stylistic flourishes and curlicues known as the “Anderson Touch” that pervade all his films like a graffiti artist’s tags. Among them: The Anti-Tolstoy Template Is In Place 4 Not only are all families

at the start of Anderson movies unhappy, but his unhappy families are all alike (see Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Darjeeling Limited and now, Moonrise Kingdom) until . . .

NEGLECTED

CRITERION

essay by

STAN MICHNA

and one car? Doesn’t anybody stage Sound Of Music anymore? To how sharp a point does Anderson expect us to shave our heads? No One Smiles Or Laughs Even Though It’s A

Comedy 4 Gene Hackman in Royal Tenen-

baums excepted, any expression of joy, laughter or exuberance is strictly verboten. Relentless deadpan isn’t always funny, any more than relentless slapstick is.

Bill Murray Is In it 4 Moonrise Kingdom

is the sixth time Bill Murray has appeared in a Wes Anderson movie. No One Works 4 Murray and

Frances McDormand (Suzy’s parents) are lawyers who never go to work. Murray looks like the strange uncle who gives kids quarters to sit on his lap, and McDormand like she mops bathrooms for a living. No suits, no briefcases, The Anti-Tolstoy Template Is Reno clients. Bruce Willis (as the moved 4 On the other hand, Ansheriff ) and Swinton are the only Moonrise Kingdom will be available on derson’s sugary cupcake endings, characters with jobs, and governDVD and Blu-ray like an opposite-attracting current, ment jobs at that. Anderson’s film Combo Oct 16 from thrust, then transform, his unhappy universe is peopled with upper, upEntertainment One. families into happy families which per-middle class idlers for whom . . . are all alike. financial worries aren’t extinct, but mythical. (If Anderson ever films Anna Karenina, Anna, rather than throw herself under a train, Sex Is Both Sexless And Creepy 4 Because will live happily ever after with Vronsky in a even his affair-entangled adults never have sex, boisterous household that includes Rasputin, you never see “Warning: Sexual Situations” on Trotsky and a girlish Ayn Rand.) Wes Anderson films. But you should here. Suzy and Sam run away because they’ve Eccentric Characters And Cameos Abound fallen in love (and undergo a kind of wedding Just Because 4 In Moonrise Kingdom Har- ceremony courtesy of Jason Schwartzman). vey Keitel is cast as a scoutmaster and Tilda The critical scene takes place on a beach when Swinton a social services representative for the two discover French kissing. Suzy (Kara no apparent reason. Although it’s nice to see Hayward), in panties and bra- and looking like them, their roles are inconsequential. like she’d set Humbert Humbert’s underwear on fire- says to Sam (Jared Gilman, who looks You Think You’re Watching A Book 4 Ander- about 10): “I think it’s hard.” “Does that bother son’s a brainy, well-read guy, but why rub the you?” asks Sam. “I like it,” replies Suzy/Lolita. viewer’s face in it? You can feel the caterpillars crawling up We can tolerate the Dickensian references your back, the equivalent of hearing a 12-yearand accept (reluctantly) the nods to Rousseau. old Justin Bieber singing Back Door Man. If we swallow hard, we even get the medieval Yuck. passion play (via Benjamin Britten’s) “Noye’s Fludde” as a foreshadowing to a hurricane. You’ll Watch It Even If You Know What To But Noye’s Fludde as a school pageant/play? Expect 4 Or perhaps because you know what On a lightly populated island with one sheriff to expect. It’s how Hollywood careers are built. 54

NEEDLE

Fists In The Pocket 1965 / DIRECTOR

Marco Bellocchio Why It’s Neglected: First film by a director who never again achieved the same level of critical success; it remains overshadowed by that era’s Italian cinema, dominated then as now by the “eenies”: Fellini, Rossellini and Pasolini. The Theme: Rage and frustration at the prevailing Italian institutions— Church, family and government—hellbent on suppressing and suffocating artistic self-expression and political, social and economic mobility. Though he didn’t know it at the time, what Bellocchio captured was the essence of the pent-up, subterranean restlessness in society that would explode in the days-of-rage student revolts that swept Europe—and particularly Italy—in 1968. What It’s About: The focus is a bourgeois, provincial family comprised of a blind, widowed mother; a retarded (that’s what it was called back then) son; a responsible, self-centred breadwinner son; a volcanic-tempered epileptic second son (Alessandro, the “protagonist”); and a hot tamale sister (who’s obviously in a sexual relationship with Alessandro). Ostensibly to free his normal older brother from financial and familial obligations, Alessandro murders his mother (and hops over her coffin at the wake), drowns his retarded brother in the tub, nearly cripples his sister, then dies during a grotesque danceof-death epileptic seizure. What You Get: A crisp cinéma véritélooking print that resembles—chillingly—a documentary; a flesh-crawling Ennio Morricone score; interviews with the director, editor and two of the cast (”Alessandro” and the sister); and an afterward by Bernardo Bertolucci.

/movies/new_releases OCTOBER 2

12 Monkeys 2: Voodoo Academy 2012: Supernova 4 Wedding Planners 90210: Seasons 1-4 90210: The Fourth Season Abba Music Masters Collection Abbott & Costello Show: Season 1

Adopting Terror

Adventure Time: Jake vs. Me-Mow

Adventures of Francis the Talking Mule American Pie: 3-Movie Party Pack Around/House Atomic Brain Invasion Batman Super Villains: Catwoman

Batman Super Villains: Killer Croc Batman Triple Feature: Gotham Knight/Under the Red Hood/ Year One BBC Royalty Beatles Stories Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Vol. 1 Beyond the Myth Big John, Little John: the Complete Series Bonanza: Season 4 Vol. 1 Bonanza: Season 4 Vol. 2 Bonanza: Season 4 Vols. 1 & 2 Boys for Sale Vol. 1 Breast Cancer: The Path of Wellness and Healing ‘Burbs/The Money Pit: Double Feature Captain Beefheart: Lost Broadcast

Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That: Up and Away Chained Cinderella Clancy Clintons: An American Odyssey Crawl Cyborg Daniel O’Donnell: Christmas Wishes – The Yule Log DVD Dante’s Peak/Daylight Double Feature Dark Shadows David Blaine: A Decade of Magic David Bowie: Bowie in Berlin Demetri Martin: Standup Comedian

Detroit Metal City Dino Dan: Dino Trackers Don Knots: Reluctant Hero

Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Royal Rescue Dr. Seuss’s Deluxe Holiday Collection

Drinking Made Easy Elvis: The King and His Music First Christmas Flatline Flying Swords of Dragon Gate For Your Eyes Only From Dust to Dreams: Opening Night at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts Frontline: Alaska Gold Funkytown General Education Ghost Hunters: Season 7 Part 2 Gilmore Girls: Seasons 3 & 4 Girl 6 Give Up Tomorrow Golf: The Inner Game Grassroots Great White Hype Halloween Puppy Hard Target/Sudden Death Double Feature Hart of Dixie: Season 1

NEEDLE

Headshot Heroes: Season 1, 2, 3 & 4 In the Hole Holy Water House: The Complete Series How I Met Your Mother Season 7 Hungry for Change Hypothermia Inside Man Intruders Iron Sky It Takes a Thief: Season 1 James Bond Connery 1&2-V2 Kate Bush: The Only Girl in the World Kevin Hart: I’m a Grown Little Man/35 & Ticking Kidnap and Ransom: Series 1 & 2 Kingdom: Season 1 Lady Legacy: Mac Wiseman – An American Treasure Lexx: Seaons 1 & 2 Lifestyles: A Cultural Look at Gay Male Sexuality Vol. 1 Light It Up Love Overboard Magic City: Season 1 Martha and Friends: Holiday Collection Masterpiece Classic: Downton Abbey – Seasons One and Two Mayo Chicki!: Complete Collection Midnight Horror Theater Miners’ Hymns Missing Lynx Mister Peepers: Season 2 Monk: Season 4-8 Motorhead: The World Is Ours Vol. 2 – Anyplace Crazy as Anywhere Else Munger Road Mysterious Cities of Gold New Girl: Season 1 NFL: A Football Life – Season 1 Night Riders Nikita: Season 2 Nine Inch Nails: Music Milestones – Downward Spiral Nip/Tuck: Seasons 3 & 4 No Way Out Note to Self On the Road With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Out of Sight/Intolerable Cruelty Paranormal Challenge: Season 1 Peace, Love and Misunderstanding

People Like Us Phunny Business

Pink Floyd: Another Great Gig in the Sky

Pocoyo: Dance, Pocoyo, Dance Red Lights Red River Range Reno’s Best of Bluegrass Retro Game Master: The Game Center CX Coll.

Richie Havens: The Lost Broadcasts

Roseanne: Seasons 5 & 6 Runaway Slaves Scary Movie Triple Feature Sea Level Séance: The Summoning Sesame Street: Preschool Is Cool! Making Friends Shifty Shooting Fish Show Me Your Glory: The Movie

Sid the Science Kid: Sid’s Senseational Adventures Singin’ in the Rain: 60th Anniversary

Six Million Dollar Man: Season 2 Smiths: Glorious Noise Soldiers of Honor Sound of My Voice Sounds of the Underground

Angel in the Family Annie Claus Is Coming to Town Art School Confidential Art 21: Art in the 21st Century— Seasons 1-6 Arthur’s Perfect Christmas Atonement/Pride and Prejudice/ Jane Eyre/Elizabeth Attack Force/Into the Sun/The Russian Specialist/Conspiracy

OCT 2

People Like Us

Competent low-key estranged family drama starring Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks, who could have done a lot worse waiting for the Star Trek and Hunger Games sequels. [DreamWorks]

Superman/Batman Double Feature: Public Enemies/Apocalypse

Tennis: The Inner Game That ‘70s Show: Seasons 5 & 6 This Is Sodom Thomas and Sarah Three Texas Steers

Thundercats: Season One, Book Three

Tom and Jerry: Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse Train of Life Training Day/John Q 2-Pack Transformers: Rescue Bots – Roll to the Rescue U2 Phenomenon for the Record Under the Same Moon Unfaithfully Yours Vexxed: Series VR Troopers: Season 1 Vol. 1 Waltons: The Complete Series We Are the Hartmans Wedding Western Heroes and Legends Whittle: The Jet Pioneer Who: From the Bush to the Valley: The Keith Moon Years WordWorld: Get Up and Move Yes: Yesspeak OCTOBER 9

12 Dogs of Christmas: Great Puppy Rescue 2005 World Series 2006 World Series 2008 World Series 30 Beats 40-Year-Old Virgin/Knocked Up/ Forgetting Sarah Marshall Absolute Fear Adventures of Scooter the Penguin

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Vol. 2 After Porn Ends All Dogs Christmas Carol/ Christmas Carol All Dogs Go to Heaven/Pebble & The Penguin American Christmas Carol Amphibious: Creature of the Deep Ancient Aliens Collector’s Edition

Ancient Egypt Anthology Ancient Rome Anthology

Balto/Balto II: Wolf Quest Barbie: Fairytopia – Mermadia Barrens Basket Case 3: The Progeny Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero/ Batman Beyond: The Movie Batman Beyond: Return of Joker/ Batman vs. Dracula Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour Bedevilled Beethoven/Beethoven’s 2nd/ Beethoven’s3rd Being in the World Best Red vs. Blue DVD, Ever, of All Time Betrayed at 17 Blade Runner: The Final Cut Blood & Chocolate Blood Red Nights Blood Seekers Bloody Bloody Bible Camp Bloody Disgusting: Vol. 1 Bones: Complete Season 7 Born Fighting Borrowed Hearts Cadaver Christmas Capote Casino/Carlito’s Way Casino/Traffic/Miami Vice/ Eastern Promises Casper/The Little Rascals/ Harry and the Hendersons/ Nanny McPhee Cat in Paris Celluloid Bloodbath Chinese Odyssey 1 & 2 Christmas Romance Christmas Tail Cinderella Story Clive and Ian’s Wonder Blimp of Knowledge Coal Miner’s Daughter/Smokey and the Bandit/The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas Colours of the Prism/The Me Combat: Fan Favorites Cottage Courier Crazy Eyes Cry Wolf/The Strangers/The Last House on the Left/The Return

Cry-Baby/Public Enemies/Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Curious Garden… and More Stories About Nature Dawn of the Dead/Land of the Dead/Halloween II/The People Under the Stairs Deadly Fiends Deadman Wonderland: Complete Series Deadmeat: Live at Roseland Ballroom

Death Race/Death Race 2

Definitely, Maybe/Because I Said So Denzel Washington Film Collection Digimon: Digital Monsters – Season 1

Discover Christmas Doctor Who: Episode 53 – Ambassadors of Death E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Expecting Mary

Family Frontier Adventures: 6 Movies

Family Thanksgiving Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not a Fairytale

Legacy of the Drifters Legally Blonde/Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde Liar Liar/Bruce Almighty/Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison Little Shop of Horror Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree Losing Control Lucy Show: Complete Series Lucy Show: Season 6 Magical Mystery Tour

OCT 9

E.T: The Extra Terrestrial— Anniversary Edition Remember when the most egregious thing Steven Spielberg did to an iconic film was turning cops’ guns to walkie-talkies at the end of this? Man, those were the days. [Universal Studios]

Fast and the Furious/2 Fast 2 Furious

Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift/ Fast & Furious Fidel’s Fight Fireman Sam: Holiday Heroes Five Flash Gordon/The Last Starfighter/Battlestar Galactica/Dune Found Footage Festival Vol. 6 Four More Years GaoGaiCar: King of the Braves – Complete Coll. Giant Mechanical Man Great Outdoors/Uncle Buck Happiness Is… Peanuts 3-Pack Fun

Happiness Is… Peanuts: Go, Snoopy, Go Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison

Heaven’s Memo Pad: Complete Coll.

History Film Collection Hobo’s Christmas Holiday Romance Holiday to Remember Holliston: Season 1 Hollow Man/Hollow Man 2/ Fortress 2/The Harvest How the Toys Saved Christmas How to Train Your Dragon I Love Lucy: Season 1, 2 & 3 I’ll Be Home for Christmas I’m Coming Out Immoral Incident In Search of Santa Into the Blue It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 7 Jeff Dunham: Minding the Monsters Jingle All the Way/Deck the Halls

Joyride Kaziah the Goat Woman Killers on the Loose King Kong/The Mummy/The Scorpion King/Van Helsing Lady Gaga: On the Edge League: Season 3

Magnificent Seven: Complete Series

Maid Sama: Complete Collection Mancation Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers/Little Fockers Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story

MLB: 2009 World Series MLB: 2010 World Series MLB: Astros Memories – The Greatest Moments in Astros Baseball History MLB: Essential Games of the Milwaukee Brewers MLB: The World Series – History of the Fall Classic Monster High: Ghouls Rule Mrs. Doubtfire My First Collection Vol. 4 Featuring Robot Zot Nacho Mountain Naruto: Shippuden Box Set 12 National Geographic Classics: Sharks

Nerve Center New Hope New York Yankees: Essential Games of Yankee Stadium Night at the Museum 1 & 2 Obama Effect On the 2nd Day of Christmas Out of Order Comes Chaos

Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project

Photogrammes Pink Panther Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection Piranha-Man vs. Werewolf-Man: Howl of the Piranha Play With Me Sesame: Imagine With Me Play With Me Sesame: Let’s Play Games Raven Rental Magica Part 2 Road House 2 Road to Avonlea: Season 5 Robert Mitchum Film Collection Robot Zot… and More Rhyming Stories Rock of Ages Rocky Balboa Romance & Cigarettes Rooster Cogburn/The War Wagon/The Spoilers/ Shepherd of the Hills

Saving Silverman/Little Black Book/ Hexed/Life Without Dick

Scenes of the Crime/ Relentless/No Mercy/Where Sleeping Dogs Lie Scents and Sensibility

Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood/ScoobyDoo and the Alien Invaders Scooby-Doo! Meets the Boo Brothers/ Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase Scooby-Doo! Big Top Scooby-Doo! Scooby-Doo!: The Mystery Begins/ Curse of the Lake Monster

Seduction of Mimi Semper Fi: Always Faithful

Shaquille O’Neal Presents: All-Star Comedy Jam – Live From Orlando

Shocking Crimes Shut Up and Play the Hits

Sidney Sheldon’s Nothing Lasts Forever Something Big Sons of Mistletoe Space Time & The Universe With Brian Green

Super Mario Bros. Super Show Vol. 2

This Is the Day Thomas & Friends: A Very Thomas Christmas Three Wicked Melodramas From Gainsborough Pictures Time for Miracles Time of the Wolf/The Legend of Wolf Mountain Titanic at 100: Mystery Solved Tokyo Vengeance: Machine Girl/ Tokyo Gore Police/Death Kappa Tom and Jerry Double Feature: Blast Off to mars/The Magic Ring Tom and Jerry: The Movie/Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry Too Many Toys… and More Stories About Problem Solving

Trap Truth or Die Twists of Fate UFC 148: Silva vs. Sonnen II UFO Archives Ultimate Heroes Collection Under the Mistletoe?Holiday Wishes

Universal Soldier: The Return/Knock Off/The Hard Corps/Second in Command

Vertical Limit/Stealth/XXX: State of the Union/Simon Sez Very Merry Daughter of the Bride/A Christmas Wedding Virtuoso Listening War in HD Werewolf: The Beast Among Us What Color is Love

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

What I Did for Love Whitney: Season One Who: Live in Houston, Texas 1975 Wild Horses: 4 Movies Winslow Story Book: The Christmas Bear Woods

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy: Wubbzy’s Christmas Adventure/The Wubb Club WWE: CM Punk – Best in the World Yancy Derringer: The Complete Series

Young Pioneers’ Christmas OCTOBER 16

2 Young 2 Die 2016 Obama’s America

4 Film Favorites: Gene Kelly Collection

8 Movie Western Pack

Acoustic Fingerstyle: Folk & Americana

Airborne Alcatraz: The Complete Series Alien Dawn Angel Who Pawned Her Harp Angelina Ballerina: Celebrate With Angelina Animal Atlas: Pet Party

Atrocities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2

Back From hell Barney: Celebrate With Barney

Beatles: 50th Anniversary Celebration

Becoming Blond Best of Cutting Edge

Big Bad Beetleborgs: Season 1 Vol. 1 Big Blue/Footprints on the Water – The Nan Hauser Story Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas II – Great Thinkers

Bizarre Foods America: Season 1 Block Beataz: The Movie Brave New World

Bush Christmas Casshan: Robot Hunter Casshern Celebrate With Thomas Chappelle’s Show: Complete Series

Chely Wright: Wish Me Away Chernobyl Diaries Chilling Romance Christmas Carol (1951)

Christmas Comes Home to Canaan

Christmas Kiss Christmas Pageant Chroniques Sexuelles D’une Famille D’Aujourd’hui Columbo: The Complete Series Complete Red Green Show Critter Quest Curiousity: I, Caveman D.L. Hughley: Reset Dangerous Beauties Collection: 4 Film Favorites Dead matter Definitive Civil War Collection Degrassi: Next Generation – Season 11, Part 2 Don’t Anser the Phone Duo Shuai Exorcism Exploring Alcatraz Finding John Smith Firm Five Man Army Forgiveness of Blood Free men Funhouse

Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy

Going Home Gone in 60 Seconds Greystone Park Guilty Pleasures Tour Gunsmoke: Seasons 1-6

Gunsmoke: The Sixth Season Vol. 2

Harry Potter: Year 1 & Year 2 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Parts 1 & 2 Harry Potter: Year 3 & Year 4 Harry Potter: Year 5 & Year 6 Haunted Hollows Haunted Spirits Heart of Christmas Heat on the Street: 10 Movies Holiday Comedy Collection: 4 Film Favorites Holiday Engagement Holiday Family Collection: 4 Film Favorites Ice House Idolmaster Xenoglossia: Collection 1

Il Postino Jake and the Never Land Pirates: Jake Saves Bucky Jeremiah Johnson/Mother Lode Kati With an I King Kong Larryboy: The Cartoon Adventures: Superboy Super Hero Power Pack

Last of the Summer Ride: Vintage 1995

Last Ride Legendary Amazons Lemon Letter From an Unknown Woman Lincoln: Trial by Fire – Documentary Collection Live a Little, Steal a Lot/Sudden Death Looney Tunes: Platinum Coll. Vol. 2

Loose at the Zoo Lost in America Mad Men: Season 5

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted Marina Abramovic: Artist Is Present

Mark Martin Scorsese Collection: 4 Film Favorites Mates of State: Two of Us

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Meg Ryan Collection: 4 Film Favorites

WWE: Night of Champions 2012

Midnight Horror Collection: Voodoo Curses

Zig Zag

Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 15 Midnight Horror Collection: Zombies

Miramax Movies With Soul: 6 Movie Pack Vol. 2 Mobster Collection Moonrise Kingdom Mr. Lucky: The Complete Series Mr. Ricco Mythbusters: Collection 8 Nativity Nazi Collaborators

NBA Essentials of the Boston Celtics NBA Essentials of the Chicago Bulls NBA Essentials of the New York Knicks

Neil Young Journeys

Night of the Living Dead: Re-Animation

Nina Conti: Her Master’s Voice Obama Effect Office: Secret Santa Pack

Olmsted and America’s Urban Parks

Out of the Shadows Pandas in the Wild Pete’s Dragon

Pound Puppies: Super Secret Pup Club

Poupoupidou

Power Rangers Samurai: Christmas Together, Friends Forever

Princess for Christmas Prometheus Psych: Season 6 Puppet Master Collection Raggs: Laugh Out Loud Railways Along the Rhine Rites of Passage Road to Avonela: Season 6 Rogue Saints Running With Bulls Santa Clause Santa Clause 2 Scooby-Doo: 13 Spooky Tales – Holiday Chills and Thrills Sitting Target Slasher Films Collection: 4 Film Favorites Slender Thread Someday’s Dreamers II Sora: Complete Collection

Stanley Kubrick Coll.: 4 Film Favorites

Sterile Cuckoo

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Super Villains: The Joker’s Last Laugh TCM Greatest Classics: Cary Grant TCM Greatest Classics: James Stewart TCM Greatest Classics: Lauren Bacall TCM Greatest Classics: Spencer Tracy

Tenchi Universe Terror in America: Preparing for the Next 9/11 Terror Train That’s My Boy That’s My Thing

Thomas Kincade’s Christmas Miracle

Three Secrets Thug Life: All in the Game Tortured Touch: The Complete Season One Triple Terror Collection Trooper & The Legend of the Golden Key Turn me On, Dammit TV Toons to Go Two Hats Undaunted Uptight Villain Walking Stick Waterloo Road Series 1 Wedding Most Strange Women of SNL Wrath of God

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WWE: Superstar Coll. – Rey Mysterio WWE: Superstar Coll. – Shawn Michaels

OCTOBER 23

100 Greatest TT Moments 12 Days of Christmas 247F 4 Syfy Essentials Movies Collection: Encrypt/Bugs/ Crimson Force/Darklight 49th Man 4wd: On the Edge Abba: Thank You for the Music Bolition Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter AC/DC: Dirty Deeds Adele: 22 – The Movie Advocate for Fagdom Agnes of God/Mary Reilly/The Messenger/The Pact of Silence

Ah My Buddha: Nirvana Collection Alien Agenda: Project Grey Ambassador Angel, Alien and UFO Encounters From Another Dimension Apocalypse: Hitler Appointment in Berlin Avenging Waters Bangers & Smash Battle of Broadway Battle of LA Beatles: History Beauty Beijing Punk Best Rappers of All Time: Busta Rhymes & Nas Black Cobra/Big Fight Bloody Christmas Bobby Deerfield/Baby, the Rain Must Fall/The Chase/Ship of Fools

Bon Jovi: Blaze of Glroy Booley Breaking and Entering

Breakout From a Women’s Prison Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1969-1982

Bruno Mars: Just the Way I Am Buchanan Rides Alone Cardboard Dreams Cargo

Carly Rae Jepson: Her Life, Her Story

Change of Heart Cherry Chicago: Beginnings Christmas Angel

Classic Albums: Peter Gabriel – So

Claustrophobia Climb It, Tarzan Comanche Station Conned Crash and Burn Crooked Arrows Cybornetics Dancer Texas David Jefferies Story David Susskind Interview: Henny Youngman Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam: Live at the Gaiety Theatre Decision at Sundown Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters

Disgruntled Employee Dojin Work: Complete Collection Dollman Doors: Live at the Hollywood Bowl Drift it Dropping Evil Duel on the Mississippi Elvis Presley: The King Remembered

Empire Falls Ernie Kovacs Collection Vol. 2 ESPN Sec Storied Vol. 1 Esposito

Experiment in Terror Family Holiday Collection Fanny & Annie & Danny Fantasy Island: Season 3 Fatherless Fear and Desire Five Senses of Eros Four Children of Tander Welch Freight Freshman/Wholly Moses/Vice Versa/A Fine Mess From Beneath Fugitive: The Most Wanted Fushigi Yugi: Season Two Gabe the Cupid Dog Gallant Lady Gerrymandering Going Home Golden Hawk Great Museums Half Angel Happy Endings: Season 2

Hart to Hart TV Movie Coll. Vol. 1 & 2

Heaven and Hell on Earth Heavy Duty Henry Fool Hilary Thacker: Beginner’s Egyptian Dance Holiday Collection Hollywood Homicide/Hudson Hawk/Lone Star State of Mind/The Fan I Am Bish I Can Get It for You Wholesale I.C.E. Cool Imaginary Friend Invisible War Jack in the Box

James Cagney: Silver Screen Legends

Jasper Justin Bieber: Look to the Stars Kaleido Star: Season 2 & OVAs Kamikaze Hearts Key Killjoy Box Set Ladies of Washington Lady Gaga: Born Famous Lady Gaga: Love Games Lamborghini Diablo Lancer Spy Last Detail/Avalon/Gardens of Stone/Birdy

Law & Order: Criminal Intent – Year 8 Lawrence Welk: Christmas Shows Lawrence Welk: Classic Episodes 5 Lawrence Welk: New Years Specials Lawrence Welk: Top Tunes & Talent Show – Christmas Special 1957

Lead Sleds and Low Riders Leave Led Zeppelin: In the Light Legendary Pink Dots: 9 Lives LMFAO: Rocking the Party – Unauthorized Lost Girl Season One Love de Vice: Silesian Night 11.11.11 Love, Speed and Loss Madea’s Witness Protection Marilyn Manson: Close to the Edge Mark Zuckerberg: The Art of Creation

Masterson of Kansas Mates of State: Two of Us Meridian: Kiss of the Beast Metallica: Nothing Else Matters

Mickey Rooney: Silver Screen Legends

Micki & Maude/Hanky Panky/ There’s a Girl in My Soup/ Modern Romance Midnight FM Morgan Mr. Ricco Muse: The Only Ones Who Know My Little Margie 1 & 2 Naruto: Shippuden – The Movie: The Will of Fire

Nighthead Genesis: Complete Coll.

Nirvana: The Final Chapter NOVA: Forensics on Trial NOVA: Secrets of the Viking Sword Octaman/The Cremators Ordered to Love Oregon Trail Out the Gate Outlaw Ozomatli: Live at the Hangout Paranormal Calamity Perry Mason: Season 7, Vol. 2 Perry Mason: Seasons 1-7 Peter Gunn: Complete Series Phantom Stagecoach Pop Music Divas: Amy Winehouse & Jennifer Lopez Prophecies and Predictions: Nostradamus UFOs 2012 Purple Helmets: Total Shite Ramones: Punk ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Rap Life: A Day in the Life of Money B

Rap Life: DJ Aladdin Replacement Killers/Truth or Consequences, N.M./Love Lies Bleeding/The Point Men Ride Lonesome Rolling Stones: Hall of Fame – Unauthorized

Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast

Sam & Dave Show Sanctuary: The Complete Series Satanic Rites of Dracula Secret of the Wings Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Selling Shatter Dead Sick Boy Sista’s of R&B: Hip Hop Soul Vol. 3

Sitting Target Sixth and Main Slice Slut Son of Robin Hood

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Season 4

Stephen Stills & Manassas: The Lost Broadcasts Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview Stoner Party (4 Movie Collection) Strawberry Cliff Streets Is Still Watching Stryper: Live in Indonesia at the Java Rockin’ Land Sunday Bloody Sunday Super Pack: Vampires Take This Waltz Tarja: Act 1 Teen Idols of Hip Hop: Bow Wow & Omarion Three Blind Mice Through the Wormhole With Morgan Freeman: Season 3 Thunderstruck Tin God Tokyo Playboy Club Treasure of the Golden Condor Tribute to Miles Davis: The Ultimate Concert – A Night to Remember

Troubleshooter Tyler Perry’s I Don’t Want to Do Wrong Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 7 UFC 149: Faber vs. Barao UFO Encounters: The Real X Files Under the Scares Unlikely Leopard

Vinny the Chin: The Long Island Legend

Wake Me When It’s Over Wizard of Baghdad Wrath of God Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines You Were Meant for Me

/music/new_releases

OCTOBER 2

The Essential Collection The Disease of Fear Chasing Ghosts Gold Dust Better Days Junkyard Hearts Pickin’ My Way/ Superpickers Autumn’s Grey Solace Divinian Axewound Vultures Balmorhea Stranger Buju Banton The Early Years Vol. 2 Nik Bartsch’s Ronin Live Michael Bram Suitcase in the Hall John Cale Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood California Wives Art History David Cassidy Romance The Casualties Resistance Iris Dement Sing the Delta Doug Deming & The … What’s It Gonna Take John Denver The Classic Christmas Album Dion The Complete Laurie Singles DJ Drama Quality Street Music Micky Dolenz Remember Mark Eitzel Don’t Be a Stranger Ensiferum Unsung Heroes CD/DVD Jackie Evancho Songs From the Silver Screen Faith Evans R&B Divas First Aid Kit Drunken Trees EP First Aid Kit The Lno’s Roar (box set) Flying Lotus Until the Quiet Comes Josephine Foster Blood Rushng Eric Gales Live The Gathering Disclosure Rayna Gellert Old Light: Songs From My Childhood Hannah Georgas Hannah Gorgas Glamour of the Kill The Summoning Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 27 – Oakland Coliseum Hammock Departure Songs John Wort Hannam Brambles and Thorns Harp Husks Heart Fanatic Helstar 30 Years of Helstar (2CD/ DVD) Clarence Frogman … Greatest Hits Holy Knights Between Daylight and Pain Honour Crest Metrics Hood Internet Feat How to Dress Well Total Loss Jodis Black Curtain Elton John 5 Classic Albums (70-73) Michael Johnson Moonlit Déjà Vu Kenny G The Classic Christmas Album Kidz Bop Kids Kidz Bop Christmas! The Killers Battle Born (Special Edition) Dave King I’ve Be Ringing You Diana Krall Glad Rag Doll Living by Lanterns New Myth/Old Science Cher Lloyd Sticks & Stones London Music Works Music From the Batman Trilogy Magnum On the 13th Day Tim Maia Nobody Can Live Forever Barry Manilow The Classic Christmas Alum Marillion Sounds That Can’t Be Made Demetri Martin Standup Comedian Maserati Maserati VII Matt & Kim Lightning Maybeshewill I Was Here for a Moment, Then I Was Gone Abba Acaro The Amity Affliction Tori AAmos Another Lost Year Joseph Arthur Chet Atkins

NEEDLE

Papa Roach OCT 2

The Connection Those of you who (wisely) haven’t been paying attention might not know that P-Roach have surreptitiously transformed from nümetal thugs to nü-Bon Jovi. Now you know. [Eleven Seven Music]

Various Artists Various Artists Wall of Voodoo Bry Webb Andre Williams John Zacherle Z-Ro

RAL 25th Anniversary Who Are You Seven Days in Sammystown/ Happy Planet/The Ugly Americans in Australia Provider Life Monster Mash/Scary Tales Angel Dust

OCTOBER 9

Casting for Grfavty Traveling Alone Kaleidoscope Dream Every Day I Tell Myself I’m Going to Be a Better Person Moon Duo Circles Steve Moore Light Echoes Van Morrison Born to Sing: No Plan B The Mountain Goats Transcendental Youth Muse The 2nd Law Willie Nelson The Classic Christmas Album Jerrod Niemann Free the Music Daniel O’Donnell Discover Daniel O’Donnell Christmas Classics Lindi Ortega Cigarettes & Truckstops Beth Orton Sugaring Season Papa Roach The Connection Pendragon Kowtow Piney Gir Geronimo Elvis Presley The Classic Christmas Album Tristan Prettyman Cedar + Gold Public Image Ltd. Out of the Woods/Reggie Song Chris Rene I’m Right here Amber Rubarth Sessions From the 17th Ward Rupa & The April Fis… Build Blake Shelton Cheers, It’s Christmas Shoes 35 Years: The Definitive Shoes Collection Cody Simpson Paradise Skyzoo A Dream Deferred Snap-Her It Smells, It Burns, It Stings Social Unrest The Complete Studio Recordings Vol. 2 Soundtrack Cinderella Collector’s Edition Soundtrack For Greater Glory Soundtrack Pitch Perfect Soundtrack Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You Bill Staines Beneath Some Lucky Star Sly Stone I’m Back! Family & Friends Sun Airway Soft Fall Sybreed God Is an Automaton Taken by Trees Other Worlds Talibam! Puff Up the Volue The Telephone Man The Telephone Man 19921994 Three Days Grce Transit of Venus Tilly and the Wall Heavy Mood Tragically hip Now for Plan A Frank Turner Last Minutes and Lost Evenings Ultraista Ultraista The Vaccines Come of Age Luther Vandross The Classic Christmas Album Various Artists A Tribute to Ministry Various Artists Bluegrass Power Picks Various Artists Cobra Records Story Various Artists Disney Jingle Fun Donny McCaslin Tift Merritt Miguel Miser

The 69 Eyes X The Acacia Strain Death Is the Only Mortal Beegie Adair & Frie… Christmas & Cocktails Beegie Adair/David … Christmas Elegance Adam Ant Best of Adam Ant Edie Adams Edie Adams Christmas Album Aesthetische Powerswitch All Time Low Don’t Panic Alvin & The Chipm… Chipmunks Christmas The Angels of Venice The Angels of Venice Angst Skvadron Flukt Angst Skvadron Sweet Poison Arkaik Metamorphignition Armagedda Echoes in Eternity Armagedda The Final War Approaching The Art Here Comes the War August Burns Red ABR Presents Sleddin’ Hill Daniel Bachman Seven Pines Bad Books II The Beach Boys All Summer Long (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Greatest Hits The Beach Boys Greatest Hits: 50 Big Ones The Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Party! (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Pet Sounds (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Shut Down Vol. 2 (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Smiley Smile (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Sunflower (Stereo) The Beach Boys Surfer Girl (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Surfin’ USA (Stereo & Mono) The Beach Boys Surf’s Up (Stereo) The Beach Boys Today! (Stereo & Mono) Behexen Nightside Emanations Between the Buried… The Parallax II: Future Sequence Beyond All Recogni… Drop = Dead Bjork Biophilia Remix Series 6 Black Marble A Different Arrangement Blackmore’s Night A Knight in York Blase Debris La Morte Mi Tro Otto Blihovde Plays and Sings Blood Raw Raw-Redemption Bloodsworn All Hyllest Til Satan Blut Aus Nord 777 (Cosmosophy) Seamus Brett Celtic Rhapsody Bugs Bunny & Friends Have Yourself a Looney Tunes Christmas Anthony Burger The Christmas Collection Laverne Butler Love Lost and Found Again Callers Reviver The Calm Blue Sea Arrivals and Departures Glen Campbell/Jim… In Session Can The Lost Tapes Carmel Strictly Piaf Celtic Woman Home for Christmas Chrome Canyon Elemental Themes Citizens Here We Are

Converge OCT 9

All We Love We Leave Behind The most forward-thinking hardcore band of all time does it again, trading out predecessor Axe to Fall’s guest contributions for staggering bursts of ferocity. [Epitaph Records]

Coheed and Cambria Shawn Colvin Converge Warren Covington Crack the Sky The Cringe Cunninglynguists Danko Jones Danko Jones Danko Jones Danko Jones Danko Jones Danko Jones Danko Jones The Datsuns Daylight Dies Dead Man’s Hand Dead When I Found… Deathspell Omega Deathspell Omega Defiler Destiny’s Child Dio Django Django Downfall of Gaia Craig Duncan Craig Duncan Jeff Dunham Electric Light Orch… Toulouse Engelhardt Enslaved Epitimia Evohe Ronnie Fauss Don Felder Ella Fitzgerald Freelance Whales The Fresh Beat Band German Pascual Glowsun Holly Golightly & … Ellie Goulding Grateful Dead Jason Gray Vivian Green Grusin and Sharpe Robert Gsaper Vince Guaraldi Gungor Wendel Harrison He’s My Brother … Hidden Orchestra Hillsong

Afterman: Ascension Best of Shawn Colvin All We Love We Leave Behind Big Bands Greatest Hits Ostrich Hiding in Plain Sight Strange Journey Volume One Born a Lion B-Sides I’m Alive and On Fire Never Too Loud Rock and Roll Is Black and Blue

Sleep Is the Enemy We Sweat Blood Death Rattle Boogie A Frail Becoming The Combination Rag Doll Fas – Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice Nematocera Playlist: The Very Best of Destiny’s Child The Very Beast of Dio Vol. 2 Django Django Suffocating in the Swarm of Cranes 15 Handcrafted Christmas Carols A Victorian Christmas Minding the Monsters Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best Of

Martian Riitiir Faces of Insanity Annwvyn I Am the Man You Know I’m Not Road to Forever The Collection Diluvia The Fresh Beat Band Vol. 2.0: MoreMusic A New Beginning Eternal Season Sunday Run Me Over Halcyon Jukebox Christmas Stories: Repeat The Green Room Trans Atlantic Black Radio Recovered A Charlie Brown Christmas A Creation Liturgy (Live) Organic Dream He’s My Brother She’s My Sister

Archipelago We Have a Savior

Honky 421 Horrid Red Nightly Wreaths Hostage Calm Please Remain Calm The Hounds Below You Light Me Up in the Dark Huinca Sic Semper Tyrannis Iamamiwhoami Kin Inhale Exhale Movement Iperyt Totalitarian Love Pulse Alan Jackson Best of Alan Jackson Wanda Jackson Unfinished Business Katherine Jenkins My Christmas Waylon Jennings & … Best of Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson Elton John vs. Pnau Good Morning to the Night George Jones Heartaches and Hangovers George Jones Best of George Jones Edward Ka-Spel Ghost Logik Paul Kelly The A to Z Recordings The Killers The Document B.B. King Mr. B.B. King Carole King Best of Carole King Kaki King Glow Kiss Monster Kutless Believer (Christmas Edition) Langorns Langhorns Karl Larsson Pale as Milk Last Days of April If You Lose It Last Days of April Last Days of April Less Than Jake Borders & Boundaries Lihporcen Illuminate Colin Linden Still Live Logh The Raging Sun Looptroop Rockers Good Things Lord Huron Lonesome Dreams Los Romeros Christmas With Los Romeros Jeff Lynne Long Wave Macklemore & Ryan… The Heist Malfeitor Incubus Malignancy Eugenics Mama Doni Band Emunah Marilyn Manson The Lowdown Ricky Martin Best of Ricky Martin Johnny Mathis Best of Johnny Mathis Meat Loaf Best of Meat Loaf Mellowhype Numbers Metroland Mind the Gap Metz Metz MGK Lace Up Nicki Minaj X-Posed Elizabeth Mis Breakaway Mr. Death Detached From Life My Jerusalem Preachers My Sleeping Karma Soma N-Coded Music Jazz Party Boxset Necroblaspheme Destination: Nullepart Nefarium Haeretichristus A.C. Newman Shut Down the Streets Yannick Noah Homage Nonpoint Nonpoint Laura Nyro Best of Luara Nyro Tim O’Brien & Darr… We’re Usually a Lot Better Than This Obsessions Order of Chaos Old 97’s Too Far to Care Michael Omartan Christmas Moods Onward to Olympas Indicator A Past Unknown Vainglory David Pelps Classic Houston Person Naturally The Prodigy Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned Psychic for Radio Standing Wave

Quit Your Dayjob Sweden We Have a Problem Collin Raye Best of Collin Raye Tommy Ridgley The Collection Bernie Roberts Greatest Hits Kenny Rodgers Amazing Grace David Ruffin David Johanna Saint-Pierre Ultra Elmer Scheid Story The Script #3 Seide Here Is No Truth Seven Kingdoms The Fire Is Mine George Shearing The Collection Silent Path Mourner Portraits Six Fat Dutchmen Great Polka Band Mindy Smith The Essential Mindy Smith Soundgarden 5 Classic Albums Soundtrack Athens, GA. Inside/Out Soundtrack Best of James Bond 50th Anniversary Soundtrack Gambit Southbound Fearing Bad Dreams and Melodies Rick Springfield Songs for the End of the World Starship Best of Starship Barbra Streisand Release Me The Supremes I Hear a Symphony Sylosis Monolith Taj Mahal Playlist: The Best of Taj Mahal Tame Impala Lonerism Ten Foot Pole/Sat… Split Texas in July Texas in July Thunderbolt Apocalyptic Doom Total Hate Depopulating Planet Earth Tracer Spaces in Between Trash Talk 119 Undercroft Ruins of Gomorrah Peter Van Der Sande Age to Age Various Artists A Christmas Story Various Artists A Windham Hill Christmas II Various Artists America’s Greatest Hits 1961 Various Artists Angels on earth Various Artists Angels on High Various Artists British Hit Parades: The Hits Various Artists Carols of Christmas Various Artists Cheesy Moments: Obscure Love Songs Various Artists Christmas for Your Family Various Artists Dubstep Mix USA Various Artists Electrospective Various Artists Electrospective: The Remixes Various Artists First Came Memphis Minnie Various Artists Greatest Songs 1940s Various Artists History of Doo Wop Vol. 1 Various Artists In Search of Angels Various Artists Let’s Hear It for the Boy Various Artists Open the Door Richard Various Artists Polka’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3 Various Artists Polka’s Greatest Hits Volume 2 Various Artists Resurrecting in Festering Slime Various Artists Top 40 Country Vol. 1 Various Artists Ultra Dubstep Various Artists Winter Solstice on Ice Various Artists Zombies: A Record of the Year Suzanne Vega Close Up Vol. 4 Void of Silence Human Antithesis Void of Silence The Grave of Civilization Porter Wagoner & … Playlist: The Very Best of Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton The Wallflowers Glad All Over

NEEDLE

/music/new_releases

Aaron Watson Weapon Wednesday 13 Steve White Stan Whitmire Hank Williams Josh Wilson Amy Winehouse Steve Winwood Witchmaster Xzibit Youngblood Zedd

Real Good Time Embers and Revelations Spook & Destro Steve Ain’t White Christmas Around the Piano The Lost Concerts Noel The Album Collection Arc of a Diver Trucizna Napalm No Retreat Clarity

OCTOBER 16

Night Train American Drive Traveler Vital Stop the World One Live Badger Christmas Who We Are Boracay Planet Dusk Till Dawn Greatest Hits of Boston Spaceships Boys Noize Out of the Black Brandy Two Eleven Carol Burnett Carol Burnett Christmas John Carpenter The Fog Soundtrack Alvin Cash Windy City Workout Craig Chaquico Fire Red Moon Chickenfoot Chickenfoot Child Actor Victory Judy Collins Judy Collins Live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Perry Como Christmas Around the world With Pry Como Correatown Pleiades Current Swell Long Time Ago Daphni Jiaolong Darsombra Climax Community Diva 2 DJ Vadim Don’t Be Scare Elina Duni Quartet Matane Malit Antoine Dunn Truth of the Matter Jackie Evancho Heavenly Christmas Donald Fagen Sunken Condos Freddy Fender Love Songs The Fifth Estate Anthology Vol. 1 A Fine Frenzy Pines Rosie Flores Working Girl’s Guitar James Fortune & Fiya Grace Gift Robert Fripp & Theo… Follow The Fusion Syndicate The Fusion Syndicate Michael Garrick Black Marigolds/The Heart Is a Lotus Benjamin Gibbard Former Lives Paul Gilbert Vibrato Wycliffe Gordon Dreams of New Orleans Gov’t Mule The Georgia Bootleg Box The Haarp Machine Disclosure Ben Harper By My Side Nicole Henry Set for the Season: Live in Japan The Herbaliser There Were Seven Hipower Entertainm… Cholo Love Hipower Entertainm… Latino Southern California Hipower Entertainm… Notorious Life Boxset Hundred Waters Hundred Waters LP Jason Aldean American Drive Trey Anastasio Anberlin Aranda Badger Francesca Battistelli Beyond Threshold Blackbird Blackbird Bobby V Boston Spaceships

NEEDLE

Richard Marx OCT 23

Christmas Spirit Yes, it’s that time of the year: useless holiday album time! That said, Richard Marx looks great for his age and “Don’t Mean Nothing” is one of the greatest coke songs ever. [Zanzibar Records] Blinded by Tokyo: Live in Japan Ildisposed Sense the Darkness In Fear and Faith In Fear and Faith Jano Ertale John the Conqueror John the Conqueror Jamey Johnson Living for a Song Juju In Trance Gabriel Kahane February House Charlene Kaye Animal Love Kem What Christmas Means K’naan County, God or the Girl Steve Kuhn Life’s Magic Lacrimosa Revolution Lady of Rage Necessary Roughness Bill Laswell Means of Deliverance Lil Tweety Juvenile Delinquent Lonesome River Band Chronology Volume Three Lord Infamous & … Land of the Lost Lunch at Allen’s A Lunch at Allen’s Christmas The Luyas Animator Claire Lynch & Front… Hills of Alabama Shelby Lyne Revelation Road CD/DVD Jason Lytle Dept. of Disappearance Majeure Solar Maximum Marillion Marbles Matmos The Ganzfeld EP Scotty McCreery Christmas With Scott Rudolph McKissick Jr. The Recovery Mean Creek Youth Companion Metalocalypse: Deth… Dethalbum III Mika The Origin of Love Ministry Every Day Is Halloween: Greatest Tricks Miss Tes Sweet Talk The Moving Sidewalks The Complete Moving Sidewalks Mr. Criminal Presents Gang Bang Symphonies Pt 2 Ms. Lady Pinks Pres… Frontliners Joe Mullins & The … They’re Playing My Song My Dying Bride A Map of All Our Failures Neon Trees Picture Show Night Moves Colored Emotions No Bragging Rights Cycles Obelyskkh White Lightnin’ Carla Olson Too Hot for Snakes Christina Perri A Very Merry Perri Christmas Pinback Information Retrieved Noel Pointer Phantazia/Hold On Ray Price For the Good Times/I Won’t Mention It Again Earnest Pugh Christmas With Earnest Pugh Putumayo Presents World Yoga Ann Rabson With … Not Alone Regal Degal Veritable Who’s Who Justin Robinson & … Bones for Tinder Omar Rodriguez … Octopus Kool Aid Savoir Adore Our Nature Scala & Kolacny Bro… December Ibria

Benjamin Schoos Seven John River Shannon Elizabeth Shepherd Elizabeth Shepherd Elizabeth Shepherd Huey Piano Smith Smoke & Jackal Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Malka Spigel Stoney Curtis Band Donna Summer Tamaryn Tangerine Dream Terror Danjah That’s Outrageous Thug Pound Jill Tracy Trae Tha Truth Ike & Tina Turner Two Fingers Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Martha Wainwright Katherine Whalen Slim Whitman Widespread Panic Chelsea Wolfe Wu-Block John Zorn ZZ Ward

China Man vs. China Girl Hog Status Time Was a Lie Heavy Falls the Night Parkdale Start to Move It Do Me Good Ep No. 01 Dallas: The Music Story Focus Features 10th Anniversary Fringe: Season Four Person of Interest Sinister Trouble With the Curve Every Day Is Like the First Day

Live Encore (CD/DVD) Tender New Signs Under Cover The Dark Crawler Psycho Bizzy Bone and Bad Azz Silver Smoke, Star of Night Tha Blackprint Edition

What You Hear Is What YoGet

Stunt Rhythms A Special Sesame Street Christmas A Very Special Christmas: Bringing Peace Cascine Standouts 20102012 Celtic Soul: The Very Best of Irish Music Classic Rock Hits Lynyrd Skynyrd & ZZ Top Make Your Mark Ornamental (A Projekt Holiday Collection) R&B Hit Box The Hits Reloaded The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of True Bluegrass Banjo True Bluegrass Fiddle Come Home to Mama Madly Love Straight From the Heart/ Tomorrow Never Comes Wood Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs Wu-Block A Vision in Blakelight Til the Casket Drops

OCTOBER 23

Bar-Kays Clifford Brown Colbie Caillat Cold 187um Alice Cooper Kendrick Lamar Richard Marx Bridgit Mendler Nero Soundtrack Taylor Swift Twiztid

Grown Folks The Emarcy Master Tapes Christmas in the Sand Only Solution Theatre of Death Good Kid, M.A.A. Christmas Spirit Hello My Name Is Welcome Reality + The Mystery of Edwin Drood Red Abominationz

Magical Mystery Tour DVD and Blu-ray • Restored film with remastered audio in 5.1 and stereo on DVD and Blu-ray • 53 minutes of special features packed with unseen footage and new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr • Newly recorded Director’s commentary by Paul McCartney

Deluxe Box Set also contains • A replica of the original 1967 Magical Mystery Tour UK double EP, remastered in Mono • 60 page collector’s book featuring never before seen photos LIMITED THEATRICAL SCREENINGS

Magical Mystery Tour DVD

Magical Mystery Tour Deluxe Box Set

10-09-12 www.thebeatles.com

Magical Mystery Tour Blu-ray