June Needle

The classic animaTed 1968 film frame by frame hand resToraTion

g 1968 Subafilms Ltd.

Brighter, clearer and more colourful than ever!

5.1 DTS surround sound, stereo and original mono audio soundtrack Bonus features include Mod Odyssey and the original 1968 trailer.

Package includes expanded booklet, stickers and reproduction film cells.

oUT JUne 5 on dVd, blU-ray & repackaged cd songTrack www.thebeatles.com

PAU L S I M O N GRACELAND 25th Anniversary Edition

Graceland 25th Anniversary Edition CD /DVD (Featuring Under African Skies documentary Film) ✦

✦

Original album plus bonus tracks, including previously unreleased demos from the Ovation Studio sessions and new spoken word The Story of “Graceland” - as told by Paul Simon.

Full-length feature documentary film plus bonus scenes with extended interviews.

Graceland 25th Anniversary Edition CD ✦

Original album plus bonus tracks, including new spoken word The Story of “Graceland” - as told by Paul Simon.

Under African Skies Blu-Ray ✦

Full-length feature documentary film plus deleted scenes with extended interviews.

Graceland 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Box Set ✦ ✦

✦

2 CD/ 2 DVD set plus two deluxe books and collectible poster housed in a beautiful slipcase.

Deluxe book features new and archival photos, new interviews with Paul Simon, and an complete oral retelling of the Graceland story Second book is a replica of Paul’s handwritten lyrics pad.

Available June 5

CD/DVD

BLU-RAY™

BOX SET

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS OCEANIA Return with their first full album in more than five years!

AVAILABLE JUNE 19 www.smashingpumpkins.com

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And Then There Were Three ‌ Again The Cribs bid adieu to Johnny Marr and get back to the streamlined punk of their early days, coupled with an evolving pop complexity

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photo by Steve Gullick

The common reaction to the Cribs’ new album, In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull (Wichita), the follow-up to 2009’s enormously successful Ignore The Ignorant, has generally been to tag it as a return to the vigorous punk tone of the band’s earliest work. Gary Jarman understands the perspective from which that opinion is derived, but he’s quick to sharpen any fuzzy logic surrounding it.

“In some ways, I take it as a compliment; in other ways I find it a bit weird,” says Jarman from his home in Portland, Ore. “We had a year off last year, and we reverted to being a three-piece, so it almost feels like the first record again. So, in some ways, I understand that. But the songs are certainly less simple than the early stuff, and it’s a progression on the last record.”

As Jarman notes, Brazen Bull represents a physical return to the Cribs’ original band-ofBrit-brothers format—Gary on bass/vocals, his twin Ryan on guitar/vocals and younger brother Ross on drums—after the departure of the massively influential Johnny Marr, who added sinewy guitar and a palpable sense of maturation to the band’s already potent sound. Ignore The Ignorant was concrete evidence of the former Smiths/Modest Mouse guitarist’s effect on the Cribs; released the same week as the 13 Beatles reissues, Ignorant immediately shot into the top-10, outselling all but two of the Fab Four albums, a fact that skated across the band’s frontal lobes while making Brazen Bull.

“The third album had our biggest single on it, and the album itself was inside the top10, so that was on our minds when we made the last record,” says Jarman with a laugh. “It was surreal. It’s a bit difficult to detach yourself from that because you become aware of it, but you don’t want it to become your modus operandi.”

After rigorous touring in support of Ignore The Ignorant, Marr wanted work on a new solo project and the Cribs were ready for a brief vacation before embarking on what would ultimately become In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull. Unfortunately, a few interview miscues created a bit of friction in a situation that had not been particularly contentious, but things between Marr and the Cribs were ultimately smoothed over.

“There was a bit of a press fallout after Johnny left the band, and I think people felt the need to take sides, be it ours or Johnny’s, and that fanned the flames,” says Jarman.

“We’ve been as amicable as we could be on this, and it muddied the waters.”

Given the new album’s blend of visceral raw punk energy and full-bodied pop melodicism, Marr’s two-year tenure with the Cribs left an obvious mark on the band’s creative approach.

“We were Smiths fans, and to find out that Johnny was a fan of ours would have been enough,” says Jarman. “He learned from us, and we probably learned the opposite from him. The way we operate was very different from what Johnny had been used to. We’re very hands-on and not afraid of getting our

hands dirty. For us, we were so against the idea of crafting a record and using nice gear to get nice sounds.”

At least part of Brazen Bull’s sonic profile can be attributed to Dave Fridmann and Steve Albini, both of whom provided their signature studio expertise to the project. Working with both boardsmen satisfied a longstanding desire for the Jarmans, who had long been enamored of their iconic ’90s work.

“We’d wanted to work with Dave Fridmann for awhile,” says Jarman. “He’s an ideal producer for us. He strikes that balance; he has a great ambient room sound, which was key to capture the live sound of the band, the bedrock of the record, but he’s a real sonic experimenter, and he pushes you to come up with different textures and ideas. Then we did four tracks with Albini, but only one made the record. That was due to feel more than anything else. We did four tracks in three days. It was really quick. His ideology really fits with the way we like to operate. We really liked the Albini sessions, but we decided to hold back the majority of it for another record, which we’re hoping to record this year.”

Some of the album was also recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studio, and the Beatles drift through those Cribs-produced sessions like friendly old ghosts. “This is going to sound pompous, but we did four tracks at Abbey Road,” says Jarman. “We had a bunch of leftover ideas we wanted to weave into one long 15-minute song, but it’s kind of broken into four songs. We self-produced because we knew exactly how we wanted it to be, then Fridmann mixed it.”

Perhaps the most direct connection between Brazen Bull and the Cribs’ early output is the new album’s in-the-moment feel, a result of working quickly and with a distinct lack of afterthought. “It’s definitely recorded as a live band in the room, so I think that’s probably what helps that resonate,” says Jarman.

“The third and fourth records were definitely much longer recording affairs. We wanted to get back to the immediacy of three brothers playing in a room together and trying to capture that as best as we could, because I think that’s way we work best.”

Part of Brazen Bull’s slight identity crisis may have resulted from the decision to re-

lease the album’s two most stripped-down punk howlers, “Come On, Be A No One” and “Chi-Town,” as the initial singles. And a fraction of Jarman’s sensitivity to the subsequent reaction stems from his sometimes rocky relationship with the British press and its infamous love-you-until-we-don’t attitude.

“The songs are definitely very direct punkrock/pop songs, but I don’t think they’re totally indicative of the arc of the record,” he says. “With the U.K. press, the first songs they heard were the two songs we put out, and you put your most catchy, immediate stuff out there first. If you’re a top-10 band in the U.K., you’re expected to be pop stars. It’s different in America. In the U.K., it’s magnified. It’s like a pressure cooker.”

The relaxed atmosphere on Brazen Bull is a reflection of the leisurely pace the band took in writing the album, one that was all but unknown on the last couple of Cribs LPs. The process of Brazen Bull seemed diametrically opposed to the Cribs’ previous two albums, where writing was shoehorned in wherever it would fit and recording schedules were protracted and drawn out over several months.

“The fact that we had time off made things very different,” says Jarman. “The last two records were written between touring, and I think we were burned in some ways. With this one, it was total fun, messing about with different gear and playing around with different sounds. We wrote two albums’ worth of stuff; there’s 14 tracks on the record, we wrote about eight b-sides, and there’s still a bunch of songs from sessions we did in Switzerland and a bunch of songs from the sessions we did with Albini that we’re holding back. I think we wrote 24 tracks, and that’s because we had the liberty of time, and we were enjoying hanging out and playing and writing. There was no deadline on when we had to be in the studio.

That was the key difference.”

Between the unhurried pace of writing new material, the quick-yet-deliberate recording schedule and the absence of label interference, the Jarmans felt a great deal of freedom in creating Brazen Bull. The one thing that can truly derail any creative endeavor is the specter of internal expectations, which can often loom larger than the external pressure. The Cribs tend not to hang on the cross of critical self-examination.

“As for personal expectations and between me and my brothers, all we want to do is to make a better record than the last one, and that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do,” says Jarman. “Whether it sells more or not doesn’t factor into it. As long as we feel like we’ve done something that’s better than the last one, and we’re prepared to put it out and tour and talk about it and be proud of it, that’s OK. As long as I feel like there’s some validity to it and I care about it, then I can just about get my head around having people look at me and critique me.” —Brian Baker

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photo by shervin lainez

General Malaise Mynabirds heroine puts on war paint, takes garbage culture to task She knows, she knows, sighs Laura Burhenn. She’s heard it all before. “A lot of people get pissed off when artists or musicians want to talk about politics, or want to talk about something real—they just don’t like it,” she says. But a funny thing happened when she temporarily joined the Bright Eyes touring band a year ago, on keyboards, percussion and backing vocals. Whenever frontman Conor Oberst would punctuate his tunes with a left-minded rant, sure, a couple of crowd members would tell him to shut up and just sing his song. But mostly, the reaction to his staunch opinions was resounding applause.

And she found this incredibly inspiring.

Flash forward and the 32-year-old Burhenn has gained enough confidence to unleash her own torrent of green-minded, anti-corporate, pro-Occupy Wall Street views. An entire album’s worth, in fact, on Generals (Saddle Creek), her sonically adventurous sophomore outing as one-woman band the Mynabirds. In her previous incarnations as a solo artist and part of Washington, D.C., folk/rock duo Georgia James—and even on her soulful 2010 Mynas bow, What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood—the closet activist played it relatively safe. But now? She’s mad as hell, and she’s not going to take it anymore.

Musically, the Richard Swift-produced Generals pushes the Mynabirds envelope by tapping into some of Burhenn’s favorite edgy rock masterpieces, like David Bowie’s Low and PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me, plus the grittier work of Patti Smith, Nina Simone and Talking Heads.

It’s awash in waves of spectral synths, barrelhouse piano, rockabilly guitar, jungle-tribe percussion and the singer’s rich, layered trill.

Lyrically, however, it echoes Mike Judge’s prescient film Idiocracy, Daniel Quinn’s definitive Ishmael novel and even Native American mythology to suggest that mankind, in its arrogance in thinking it’s the end product of evolution, might have doomed itself to extinction.

And the end isn’t too far away. “‘Disheartening’ isn’t even a strong enough word for it,” growls Burhenn on the state of today’s shallow, greed-driven society. “And it’s just like, well, what can you do in the face of all this? Is it too late? And maybe it is. But that’s kind of where I started my record, by posing a question. And the first question I asked in the very first song, ‘Karma Debt,’ is, ‘What is my role as a musician? And even if I sing my lungs

out about this, is it going to make a difference?’ And what it comes to is that bridge in the song: ‘I’d give it all for a legacy of love.’ So, it was all very personal to me, and it breaks my heart and makes me want to do something.”

Climate-change deniers who not only ignore science, but actively fight against it.

The blatantly ignorant refusal to accept any kind of universal health care, simply because Obama’s touting it. The surreptitious, and almost prehistoric, war on women being waged by the increasingly conservative right. Vacuous, self-obsessed female celebrities like Snooki and the Kardashian sisters being offered as role models for young girls. Burhenn has so many pet peeves, she doesn’t know where to begin.

“And don’t even get me started on campaign financing—I will blow a fuse,” she hisses.

“I started looking at the statistics of how much money the Republican candidates had spent on their campaigns so far this year, and I had to stop because I was getting so mad—it’s millions and millions of dollars. It’s repulsive, just disgusting to see where we as a society put our money and energy.”

Burhenn was raised Pentecostal, but in a matriarchal clan of strong-willed women, she says. As a kid, she was always told that her great-grandfather on her mother’s side was pure Blackfeet Indian, so she grew up feeling more in touch with the land and aware of her steward-serious relationship to it. Now, having moved to the Bright Eyes HQ of Omaha, she’s even more connected. “Living in the plains and being closer to where the Blackfeet tribe has been located historically, it really made me think in those terms,” she says. “How the elders are respected and admired in Native American culture, and how things for the tribe are done for very specific reasons, like the seventh-generation rule.”

This manifested itself in treatises like “Wolf Mother,” “Buffalo Flower” and “Mightier Than The Sword.” On closing ’60s-retro piano stroll “Greatest Revenge,” Burhenn mourns for “we American sheep,” victims of their own “American greed,” then reprises her “legacy of love” “Karma Debt” mantra. “I tried to pull in a lot of images of animals,” she explains. “I was watching this Nova documentary on dreams, and they were talking about how when you’re a child, you dream in this very visceral imagery that’s about survival, so you’ll dream about

animals and beasts hunting you down. So, I wanted Generals to feel very primal, with a lot of magical animals on the record.”

Burhenn even had herself photographed in a fierce animal headdress for the disc. “It was based on the idea of a Native American warrior portrait,” she says. “I wanted it to be an image of how I’d look right before going into a metaphoric battle for everything I believe in.”

She was also moved by Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf’s latest “handbook for American revolutionaries,” Give Me Liberty, as well as Gloria Steinem’s Revolution From Within. “It’s not about shouting in the streets,” she says. “It’s more about feeling empowered within yourself, feeling like you have some self-worth. I think that’s part of being able to be a revolutionary.”

Can protest singers successfully state their case in this self-entitled, instant-gratification era? Or can we stop texting long enough to actually pick up on what the Mynabirds are putting down? Burhenn hopes so. And she also believes in starting locally. Last year, she and some other female musicians launched the Omaha Girls Rock Camp. The women, she recalls, “were like, ‘You know what? We don’t know what else we can do, so we’re gonna teach some little girls how to play some guitars and how to write some kickass rock songs!’ And it really brought the community together, and it really is making a difference.

So, there are larger acts of revolution, and I tend to get myself involved in a lot of those.

But it’s the neighborly acts of kindness and love that are often the most revolutionary.”

To that end, the Mynabirds maestro has also initiated on ongoing portrait project called the New Revolutionists, wherein fans are invited to submit photos for consideration of gals who’ve made a real difference in their respective fields. “Being involved in the Girls Rock camp, I started thinking about all the women around me who are really inspirational, and who fight their own battles every day,” she says. “Some of them you read about in the headlines, other women you would never even know about. So, I wanted there to be a yearbook of sorts, where there are all these women who are beautiful and strong and powerful— a contrast to all these women you see in the tabloid magazines. We just shot Kathy Valentine from the Go-Go’s, who was nominated by Rosanne Cash. So, I can’t wait to see how this grows.” —Tom Lanham

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All For One A collection of incestuous new noise practitioners keeps Austin wired There are moments—we’ve all experienced them—when the synergy and

possibly fleeting vitality of a city’s music scene snaps into focus and make the idea of being anywhere else on earth a ridiculous proposition to any passionate music fan. Right now, Austin, Texas, and its roster of talented and impossibly interconnected garage, noise and punk bands are producing those kinds of moments on an almost weekly basis. Here is one of them: It’s 1:15 a.m. on February 5, and the Flesh Lights’ closing song (“Too Big To Fail”) at punk stronghold Beerland has devolved into something closer to a tag-team wrestling match than a punk show. On stage left, Jeremy Steen (bassist in the Flesh Lights, the Gospel Truth and Nazi Gold) has handed his instrument to Graham Low (bassist for OBN III’s and A Giant Dog, cellist for local singer Quin Galavis and also the birthday honoree for the evening’s show), climbed atop his bass amplifier and dived into Low, sending both men spilling onto the concrete

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floor while Low does his best to keep playing through the song’s essentially freeform closing stanza. To their right, Max Vandever (guitarist in the Flesh Lights and the Best) attacks his instrument like a spider monkey before wandering into the crowd and handing it off to Orville Neeley (lead singer of OBN III’s, drummer in A Giant Dog and James Arthur’s Manhunt, bassist in the Best and guitarist for Bad Sports), who steps onto the stage and plays the song’s close while holding a cigarette in his fingering hand. Somehow holding it all together behind them all is drummer

Elissa Ussery, who apparently never received the memo that Austin musicians must play in at least two bands at all times. As of this writing, the Flesh Lights is her only group. The city’s creative momentum suggests that will change by the time you read this.

That’s nine bands intertwined in one brief cross-section of a typical Saturday night. At venues such as Beerland, the 29th Street Ballroom (near the University of Texas), pool hall the Grand and old reliable record store Trailer Space Records, an assortment of simpatico but stylistically varied bands has developed over the last three years in the city that’s known more for Stevie Ray Vaughan, 13th Floor Elevators and Townes Van Zandt than noise and punk pioneers like Scratch Acid and the Butthole Surfers—obvious antecedents to what’s happening in 2012.

The list of bands and their intersecting membership could go on for pages—the polygamous example above is typical of most

photos by Renate Winter

Austin Power:

(opposite page) The Flesh Lights; (this page, clockwise from top left) John Wesley Coleman, Orville Neeley, A Giant Dog

punk shows in Austin these days—but bands like OBN III’s, the Flesh Lights, A Giant Dog, Elvis and the Golden Boys are what may be called the lead dogs in a pack that also includes Cruddy, Grape St., the Nouns, Wiccans, Video, Foreign Mothers, Creamers, the Act Rights, Air Traffic Controllers, Dead Space, Lola-Cola, Dikes Of Holland, Shapes Have Fangs and the Young.

One of the biggest and most visible supporters of Austin’s current crop of bands is Gerard Cosloy, co-owner of the influential Matador label and an Austin resident since 2004.

A regular face at shows all over town most nights of the week, Cosloy gave the city’s still mostly underappreciated scene his imprimatur by releasing two compilation albums under the title Casual Victim Pile (an anagram of the city’s “live music capital” tagline) on Matador and his boutique 12XU label in recent years. A third Austin compilation, entitled Bring Beer, was released for April’s Record Store Day as

a benefit for Trailer Space Records.

In the introduction of the first issue of Austin photo zine Rubberneck, Cosloy, who’s witnessed seminal music scenes in his native Boston and elsewhere, summed up his feelings on Austin by writing, “I’d like to think it’s crazy obvious to any person with a modicum of taste, guts or imagination that Austin, TX is currently in the midst of a ridiculously fertile period when it comes to new rock ‘n’ roll.”

Asked for this story how Austin compares to other cities he’s lived in over the years, Cosloy says the almost compulsive ambition of members of established bands to pair off on new projects is special. “I’ve seen similar things take place, but the extent to which certain individuals have little trouble making the transition from band to band—in some cases four bands or more—is pretty impressive,” he says. “Very few of these folks are easily satisfied. If you’re already in two or

three great bands, I’m glad they’re motivated to start a fourth.”

The person perhaps most emblematic of that tendency is Neeley, a native of Dallas metroplex community Denton, who splits time between five bands, serves as sound engineer at Beerland and does an increasing volume of production work for bands including the Strange Boys. He’s a naturally charismatic frontman, and his role as singer of dirty, inyour-face punks OBN III’s has him perched as the mostly likely of all of his friends and contemporaries to become a bona fide rock star in the mold of Iggy Pop. Talking on a recent spring evening after spending the day filming videos for two of his bands, Neeley considers the constant pull of performing in Austin right now, and how hard it can be to turn away new ideas for bands with musicians he admires. “If we were all focused on just one band we might take it all a little too seriously,” he says. “A lot of people my age are doing the multipleband thing; it may stem from cases of severe ADD and being amused by one project for a moment, and using different aspects of your talent.”

Sabrina Ellis, singer of punk band A Giant Dog and soul-pop group Bobby Jealousy, says upon moving to Austin from New York in 2007 she was swallowed up by a community of musicians who were overflowing with creativity and a desire to try new things.

“There’s too much of a concentration of hard-working musicians here, and there’s no way to know which one is going to work best, so you do it all,” she says. “It’s totally incestuous. Different people have different reasons for why they do so many different things, but I think a big part of it is because they want their friends to be in bands so they can experience some of the same things and be a part of something with them.”

One thing that’s noticeably lacking in this generation of bands is any ultimate ambition to “make it” or turn powerful live shows and killer songs into piles of money through large record or licensing deals. Just about every band banging around the city has released a full-length or at least an EP—Matador and 12XU have issued a handful of Austin albums in recent years—and many of them have mounted regional or national tours, but the sole motivation of most seems to be impressing clubs full of friends and fellow musicians who comprise a discerning and supportive network.

“There’s a good 20 to 25 bands in town where I’d rather go to any of their shows over someone like Nobunny or Black Lips or any other band coming through here on a tour,” said Vandever of the Flesh Lights. “It seems like any night if there’s a hole on a show somewhere, someone will throw together a band to play and it will be great, and things are only getting better. Seeing a band like OBN III’s play, it makes me want to do anything I can to top them.” —Chad Swiatecki

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Feeling Swell Band Of Horses’ Ryan Monroe digs that (partly) sunny SoCal vibe Ryan Monroe hadn’t considered himself a control freak by nature. Then he found himself at Redstar Recording in Silver Lake, Calif., with its myriad instruments scattered around, just begging to be fiddled with. For a guy who can play just about anything, it was impossible to resist.

“The second floor is nothing but a bunch of vibraphones and crazy pianos and organs,” says Monroe. “And the bottom floor is a studio with a bunch of the coolest shit you could ever imagine.”

Monroe was taking a breather from his continuing role as the 34-year-old bastion of versatility in Band Of Horses to record A Painting Of A Painting On Fire (RCM). Once he saw the mother lode at Redstar, he had just one request for producer Chris Testa, a multiple Grammy winner for his work on the Dixie Chicks’ Taking The Long Way. “I explained to him that I wanted to play everything on the record,” he says.

Monroe got his wish—and then some: Some of the tunes originally had more than 120 different tracks. “It turned into subtraction more than addition; Chris has a super grasp on arrangements and stuff,” says Monroe, who worked with Testa to purge and consolidate upward of 100 demos. “He really sat down and gave the songs a good haircut.”

Not that a rash notion or two doesn’t occasionally surface on the album’s 11 tunes, accounting for titles like “Doritoys” and “Any Way, Shape Or Deformity.”

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“All lot of these songs I wrote in a pretty crazy state of mind,” Monroe admits. “I’d drink, drink, drink, wake up, then press play and go, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’”

In its finished form, A Painting is a thoughtful, impressively executed, alternately goofy and sinister song cycle. Any of its more excessive tendencies are largely tempered by a toasty, soulful Southern California glow. At times, it’s uncanny how much Monroe sounds like Joe Walsh— pickled disposition and all—in his ’70s-era prime. And Monroe couldn’t be happier with such comparisons.

“Driving into the studio every day, the local radio station was always playing Bob Seger,” says Monroe, a South Carolina na-

tive who now lives with his girlfriend in Boston. “But Joe Walsh—man, bring it on. I also love all that Laurel Canyon stuff.”

Monroe hopes to tour this summer behind A Painting before things get too busy with Band Of Horses, which is finishing its fourth album with producer Glyn Johns and eyeing a September release. “I’m trying to put together some shows,” he says. “Otherwise, like my dad says, I’ll be sitting around eating Cheetos wondering why my underwear is orange.”

Beyond that, he’s predicting a speedy turnaround for A Painting’s follow-up. “I’m kind of playing catch-up right now,” he says.

“The next two or three or four records will come out pretty quick.” —Hobart Rowland

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One Man is an Island It’s ars gratia artis or die for prolific one-man show Wooden Wand “I’m not under any illusions—I’m making the most unfashionable music in the world. It’s lyrically-based, earnest music that requires you to sit down, smoke a bowl and listen to it. You can’t accessorize to it, you can’t shop at American Apparel to it—it’s not a lifestyle music unless you live in an old-age home or something.”

Wooden Wand, known to his parents as James Jackson Toth, is on the back porch of a Nashville dive bar on the first night of his most recent American tour. He’s a lumbering figure, broad shoulders and stout build filling out an old flannel, his three-day beard and disheveled hair making him look more off-duty construction worker than critically acclaimed songwriter. But with 15 official albums and an almost innumerable amount of short-runs and limited editions under his belt, Toth is more about working—hard and often with little reward—than currying favor with the chattering classes. He’s the sort of person who cares entirely too much about music, about making it, about listening to it, about searching for the deeper meanings between notes and lyrics to get caught up in the popularity contests and marketing schemes that have defined 21st-century indie rock.

His latest album—the double-disc Briarwood, available now on Fire Records— makes the convincing argument that following fashions is a fool’s game. Recorded by former Verbena member Duquette Johnson in Homewood, Ala. (one of the most decidedly unfashionable states in the country, but arguably one of the coolest if judged solely on the musicians who live and work there), Briarwood is a rock ‘n’ roll record of the leasthip variety, a symphony of distorted guitars, long nights and bad luck that will do nothing to stroke the egos of the self-obsessed, nothing to prove the coolness of the self-declared cool kids.

Lilting and detailed, there’s nothing about Briarwood that will hit you over your head and make you think you’ve stepped into the pages of Vice magazine; the stories contained in these songs are about normal people and normal problems, everyday concerns in the midst of everyday struggles. Briarwood is an album more working class than “creative class,” an album free of detachment and irony, an al-

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bum free from the affectations of upper-class brats with money to burn and time to waste.

“That shouldn’t be a liability, although now it is, sadly,” says Toth. “And being a pessimist, the transition is going to last my lifetime, or at least my lifetime in music. I mean, Jesus, how many times can you do the same thing and with the same results? I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat, but I can’t work the kind of (creative class) day job you’re talking about. I can do flooring work, I can hang some drywall, do some roofing, because I know that it’s quittable and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I’ll do that for two months, and then I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a tour in April,’ or, ‘I’ve got an album coming out in September,’ and I can just leave and do those things.

“I like those jobs ’cause you run into interesting people: artists, ex-cons, people that basically don’t want a paper trail. They don’t want OSHA training or sexual-harassment videos; it’s just, ‘Give me my money for an honest day’s work and let me go about my business.’ Those are the kind of jobs I like. I just can’t see myself working at the post office. I wasn’t made to do that; I wasn’t born to do that. I’d just as soon live out my days on a cot at the YMCA. I’ve been blessed-slashcursed with this ability to make records and write songs, and that’s what I’m good at, and I … I just wasn’t made for these times.”

All Brian Wilson jokes aside, Toth is right.

He’s of a generation and an inclination that defined their ethos in the last days of analog, in the days when you had to find an actual copy of a record if you ever wanted to hear it, before everything was thrown into an RSS feed and farted into the marketplace, when DIY meant more than “download it yourself.” Whatever tags may have been placed on him by the press—avant garde, freak folk, New Weird American— and however many states and countries he’s roamed through as a touring musician, Toth is essentially still a punk-rock kid from Staten Island, a working-class kid who makes art because that is his vocation, his calling, not a job or a career. Not to sound too much like a guidance counselor, but Toth is an exceedingly intelligent and excessively productive guy (last year’s sixLP Archives Vol. 3 on People In A Position To

Know is a testament to that), and if he’d just apply himself … well, you get the picture.

He’s still—in his 30s, after years of making records—too punk to give a fuck.

“Instead of getting lucky, instead of, ‘Hey, this crazy song we wrote about being dope sick is being used to sell Acuras,’ now it’s the other way around,” says Toth. “I hear people making records to sell shit. I hear people writing fucking jingles. And they might not admit it, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. One of the problems is that there are no more jingle writers anymore, because of licensing.

People that used to go into the studio and sing, ‘Bounty picks up the mess better than the rest,’ those people are out of work.

“It’s a bummer because there is a working class of people who are making music, and there always have been. Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons. There are rich kids—I understand that; there’s always been that—but there’s always been people that came from nothing, and I think that’s the voice that’s going to go away at this rate. If music is just a hobby for everybody, it’s going to be something viable for rich people to do. It’s very simple: In this climate, Charlie Parker couldn’t have happened, Muddy Waters couldn’t have happened.”

Toth is disinterested in ponying up to the next Botox-brat spawn of a billionaire, has no intent to score the teaser trailer for the next Spielberg epic, no desire to write soundbites for encouraging soap sales, and the songs on Briarwood make that abundantly clear.

The tracks resonate with layers upon layers of narrative, filled with the common, everyday weirdos who drift through our lives—the day laborers and car thieves of “Winter In Kentucky,” the churchgoing gossips of “Big Mouth USA”—whose stories may not be inspirational or encourage aspirational consumerism, but are nonetheless important and aching to be told.

Says Toth, “Personally, I’m from New York, but I’ve never lived in a Portland or a Boston or any scene like that because to me there’s something very comforting and romantic about being ‘the songwriter.’ Like, next door’s the firefighter, this guy owns a candy store, that guy is the sanitation guy, and I’m the guy that writes the songs.” —Sean L. Maloney

photo by Leah Hutchison Toth

photo by Benjamin Bronk

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Harbinger of Sorrow

If it’s about to be the end of the world as we know it, Cold Specks feels fine

Reviews of Cold Specks’ music use words like “haunting” and “possessed”— adjectives more in line with black metal and grindcore than the traditional, raw blues proffered by an unassuming 24-year-old from Etobicoke, Canada. Though amused, Al Spx can guess what spooked those listeners.

“It’s really dark and morbid,” she says. “They are sad songs; I guess that’s what it is.”

Spx doesn’t go into great detail when discussing her debut (dubbed “doom soul” by the singer/songwriter), the spellbinding I Predict A Graceful Expulsion (Mute), which was spurred by a self-described crisis of faith.

“I grew up with a religious family,” says Spx. “I had some issues with that. Around the time I was writing the album, I was predicting events

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that were going to happen that hadn’t happened yet. By the time we went to the studio to record, it had all kicked off a bit like … ” Her voice trails off. “I know this is lame, but it was very much like therapy.”

Working through teen angst rarely sounds this un-lame. Albums about disgruntled youth are usually synonymous with howling white dudes in flannel hammering away on noisy, cranky electric guitars that can’t convey half the conviction that Cold Specks is able to conjure. Influenced by the Lomax Field Recordings, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is similar to Spx in its no-frills presentation.

“It took us two years to do all the arrangements,” she says. “It was a lot of arguments, a lot of … it just took a really long time to get

it right.” The tunes hinge on her nylon-string guitar whittling away in a style that recalls pioneering American folkies like Woody Guthrie.

Piano, violin and solemn, stirring backing vocals are placed sparingly, but it’s the tenacity in Spx’s shadowy, slightly dry voice that cuts clean to the bone.

Like early blues greats, Spx is unfettered in her determination to sing herself free.

Such honesty is brutal. On tracks like “When The City Lights Dim” and “Lay Me Down,” she builds up her nerve, steely and steadfast, with no safety net between her guts and the truth.

There is something especially inspiring about the way Spx sings “I am a goddamn believer” on “Blank Maps,” as if she’s stomping her foot before falling to her knees. But perhaps the most cathartic moment comes on “Elephant Head,” when she repeats the album title over and over in the chorus.

“It’s all about a falling out with God,” Spx says. “‘I predict a graceful expulsion’ is the theme—it means it’s all going to be OK ... just trying to convince myself that it’s not the end of the world.” —Jeanne Fury

photo by jim anderson

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Fired Up

Loquat shrugs off personnel shake-ups on the evocative We Could Be Arsonists

Loquat’s Kylee Swenson Gordon is a trooper. Even though she’s still wringing her hair out from a bad-luck encounter with a thunderstorm and clenching her wrists in pain from that morning’s carpal-tunnel diagnosis, the vocalist/guitarist is ready to spill her guts.

“Oh, I’m trying to make it easier for you,” laughs Swenson, a veteran journalist. “I definitely understand that the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer is not all that helpful. Normally, I’m the one who’s picking people’s brains about their lives or interviewing subjects about recycling waste water or talking to people about how to compress a kick drum. It’s really nice to be on the other side and chatting about myself, actually. It’s kind of like a trip to the therapist’s couch.”

Fair enough. Although astute listeners will recognize that Gordon’s been practicing catharsis through writing lyrics since Loquat’s inception. The band’s output has also been notable for the culture clash between dispirited narratives and infernally cheerful soundtracks. 2008’s Secrets Of The Sea chronicled a period of intense per-

photo by anthony gordon

sonal upheaval, and you could literally hear a band splitting apart at its seams. Flash forward four years, and We Could Be Arsonists (Nacional) parallels the circumstances of the last record’s creation to a tee: Three-fifths of the band tired of the rigors of touring and split during the demo process.

Unsurprisingly, one of the major themes of We Could Be Arsonists is “entrances and exits.” More broadly, it’s about coming to terms with heartbreak and loss—and Gordon remains skillful at plumbing the depths of unfortunate events in her lyrics.

“I guess I don’t have an easy time writing music about happy things,” she says. “I remember listening to a track by Ringo Starr and thinking, ‘Really? This guy has nothing wrong with his life?’ Hats off to people like that, but I just don’t have it in me. My lyrics tend to be a little more biting than the music lets on. People might listen to Loquat and think that the band is sugary-sweet, but there’s always a bit of a darker underbelly.”

Musically, though, the group arches toward what Gordon’s husband Anthony (Loquat’s bassist) describes as “finding

a balance between organic and inorganic elements.” Electronic blips and keyboards give tracks like “Rumbling” and “The Legion” a soulful, steady pulse, while “Seeds” (which chronicles Gordon’s struggles with pregnancy) evokes the more straightforward, jangly guitar-driven sound of Bettie Serveert. Loquat’s high-minded approach to lo-fi pop has already won the support of Tijuana-based Nortec Collective, whose ongoing association with the band paved the way for a deal with Nacional, a label mainly known for showcasing artists from Mexico and South America.

“Aside from the fact that Anthony is halfMexican, we really have nothing to show for ourselves in terms of Latin roots,” says Gordon. “But for some reason, they signed us. You never know who is going to get it.

We played in Albuquerque a couple of years ago and this guy approached me after the show. I totally had him pegged for a Pantera fan, but he gushed about Loquat and asked me sign all of our CDs. I think that’s so cool: More proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover.” —Nick Green

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Same Kind of Wonderful Unlikely duo Lux delivers dissonant pop with a vengeance

“I’d never played anyone else’s songs— I couldn’t even imagine doing it,” says David Chandler, the male half of noise-pop twosome Lux. He laughs and quickly adds, “Being in a duo, I guess I have to imagine it.”

Chandler was a loner for most of his musical life. He grew up in Tulsa, Okla. By the time he was 14, he was holed up in his bedroom with his guitar, a drum machine and an old TASCAM four-track recorder.

“My friends were all into sports,” he says. “I was crazy about music and drugs. Everyone that drank was boring. I wanted to experiment; if you haven’t tried anything, there’s a lot to try.”

After graduating from high school, Chandler hit the road. “I’m pretty sure I graduated, but I didn’t wait around for the diploma,” he says. “I wanted to be a songwriter.”

Dallas was the first stop on his crosscountry trek. Chandler played in a few bands, then moved on to Los Angeles. “I had my guitar, drum machine and four-track in my car,”

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he says. “I started a band that played clubs, toured and put out a couple of EPs, but I finally quit. I wanted to do something different.”

Chandler headed for the Northwest, home of K Records, an early inspiration. He finally landed in Seattle. He found Leah Rosen, his partner in Lux, via an ad on Craigslist. Like Chandler, she writes songs, sings and plays guitar and synthesizer.

“I actually had three different ads up, but nothing clicked until I met Leah,” he says. “She had some intriguing stuff on her MySpace page. We met up and went over some songs we’d both written. She’s melodic and new wave-y, and I’m noisy and dissonant. We were so different, we decided to start recording and see what happened.”

Both partners write songs, then work on them together to give them their distinct dark, pop personality. Five months after they met, they put out an EP called Disorders. When they posted it on MySpace, it got hundreds of hits a day from all over the world. They switched to Facebook, quickly garnering thousands of “likes” for their music.

“We decided our album would be more fleshed out than the EP, but it took a long time to record,” says Chandler. “Our hard drives, including backups, crashed twice, which kept us going over and over the songs. We recreated them from memory. There was a lot of work to get them to sound catchy, but scary. We wanted a lot of noise, so the lyrics would be hard to hear. We want to make sure people listen closely to the songs.”

The combination of noise and melody on We Are Not The Same recalls iconic bands like the Velvet Underground and Pavement, but Lux has its own sound. The duo augments its murky drive with a splash of sparkling keyboard work, lively melodies and the interplay between Chandler’s deadpan vocals and Rosen’s sprightly girl-group soul. Despite garnering its share of rave reviews, the band hasn’t played lived yet, something Chandler and Rosen are looking forward to.

“We want to use a live drummer, not programs,” says Chandler. “We’re still trying to figure out how to go about it.” —j. poet

photo by The Ripper

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Board To Death Skating and shoegaze propels Whirr forward

Two of the last things MAGNET figured we’d be talking about when we tracked down Nick Bassett, guitarist in San Francisco’s selfdescribed “’90s shoegaze, dream-pop” sextet Whirr, were skateboarding tricks and black metal. But as contradictory as it may seem for a band inspired by the likes of Slowdive, Lush and My Bloody Valentine, the elements of tearing around on colorful planks of wood and post-black metal (the melodic, ethereal and shimmery permutation of black metal’s original, cold raucousness) play a significant role in Whirr’s sound and existence. The outbound image of a band like Whirr is supposed to be of psychedelic depression, downcast arrogance and muted emotional expression, not skating and headbanging.

“Well, we all have backgrounds in hardcore and punk bands,” says Bassett of the colliding of the worlds of extreme music and shoegaze.

“And I play in (post-black metal band) Deafheaven. A lot of people are calling this a side project, but the truth is Whirr has been going on longer than Deafheaven.”

Formed four years ago and featuring guitarists Bassett, Joseph Bautista and

photo by Bryan Proteau

Loren Rivera (who also sings), vocalist/keyboardist Alexandra Morte, drummer Sergio Miranda and bassist Eddie Salgado, Whirr has just issued its debut full-length, Pipe Dreams (Tee Pee). The 10-song conglomeration of glistening ’90s rock, sweet pop and dreamy shoegaze follows in the footsteps of the June seven-inch and the band’s debut EP, which made a name for Whirr for all the wrong reasons.

“We had a DIY release called Distressor that was originally released online,” says Bassett. “It was then picked up by a label, and it’s been nothing but a nightmare. What happened was he agreed to release it, was taking the orders and money, but not actually sending out the records! On the brighter side, we also did June for Tee Pee Records just before the album.”

The venerable stoner-rock label, which has been branching out beyond its bongwater-stained and pinball-parlor rock/metal, ran into Whirr at SXSW a couple years ago. A mutual understanding and agreement was formed, with the result being June and Pipe Dreams.

“The issue that a lot of people had with Distressor was that it was a Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine worship record,” says Bassett when asked what the band was looking to achieve with Pipe Dreams. “We wanted to step away from that. So, we added our ’90s-rock influence—we’re into anything ’90s—and approached the writing more collaboratively because I wrote most of the early stuff myself. We wanted to do our own take on the shoegaze ’90s with more pop song structures.”

And what of the skateboarding connection? The archetypal shoegazer image is a mopey miserablist who’d never get out of bed to engage in any amount of physical activity, let alone doing so under bright California sunshine.

“The title is a play on life goals, as well as the fact that we’re all into skateboarding and trying to achieve difficult things, like on a halfpipe or something,” he says. “I’ve been attempting a nollie 360 flip for a while now and haven’t been able to land it. It totally bums me out when I see kids at skate parks who are better than me.” —Kevin Stewart-Panko

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on the record

a conversation with the Dandy Warhols’

Courtney Taylor-Taylor

Without a doubt, the Dandy Warhols is a band, a meeting of the Velvet-y minds with Brent DeBoer, Peter Holmström, Zia McCabe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor calling the shots. But drummer-turned-guitarist/ singer Taylor-Taylor is its handsome face and baritone voice who pushed the band from graceful poetic garage music (1995’s Dandys Rule OK) to guileless glam (2000’s Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia) to sleekyet-twisted ’80s-ish new wave (2003’s Welcome To The Monkey House).

While the rest of the 20th century found the group drifting through three additional like-minded albums, the outfit has grown leaner and meaner with the focused, guitar-centric This Machine (The End). Taylor-Taylor, a ruminative lyricist with a caustic lean, makes the most of this particular Machine moment. He allowed novelist Richard Morgan to write the Dandys’ press notes and found his own icy literary voice in graphic set-in-Germany novel One Model Nation. So, what now? —A.D. Amorosi With all the various brands, shapes, sizes and sounds the Dandy Warhols have taken on—to say nothing of side projects—would you say that makes you in particular a restless soul or a victim of aesthetic ADD? I’m gonna go with both. I have a hard time saying no to projects that sound fun and a hard time quitting what I start. These are

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two skills I’m currently trying to develop. I suppose discontent is a built-in part of the human condition and there are those who deal with it by creating, those who destroy and those who just give up. We belong to the first group, but any way you slice it, you’re fucked. Life is mostly hardship and loneliness for everyone equally.

When you started the Dandys, did you want it to last long? As long as 18 years? Not everyone wants to write an epic.

I’ve wanted every band I’ve been in to last forever. Well, at first I did. I’ve been the drummer in a lot of bands, the Dandys being my first writing and singing and playing guitar. Now that it’s come this far, I can tell you that I’d rather have been the drummer. I really like to drink, smoke and generally party a lot, and be incredibly irresponsible with my health. Little did I know that for a singer—or at least one that has to worry about hitting notes—this is not in the realm of possibility. [Laughs] One Model Nation slays me. It is so you, and yet so apart from what I thought you might come up with—a harshed mellow trip and sweetly nostalgic. Why German bands? Why German terrorism? Why German government?

One thing led to another on that one. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, then, of course, kept at it for 10 years until it finally existed on its own. A whole world with its own life. It felt good to get it finished. As far as why Germa-

photo by ELIOT LEE HAZEL

ny—nobody else was doing it. I’ve been into that scene since I was a teen. Personally, I just wanted to see Star Wars and Dr. Zhivago, but set in the ’70s Berlin art scene, so of course I was going to have to do it myself. It’s not exactly the kind of thing that everyone feels mysteriously compelled to take a crack at.

Were you fascinated by German everything before Kraftwerk, krautrock and Bowie’s Low/Heroes?

I’ve always been a bit of a Germanophile, I suppose. After having spent a lot of time there, of course, it’s just a place not unlike any other as far as day-to-day.

How did you hook up with this Jim Rugg character you worked with on the book? He illustrated your thoughts beautifully.

I sent my script to several new up-and-comers whom I thought might do a good job, and Jim was the only “out of my league longshot” that I bothered. His work is in the Smithsonian. Anyway, Rugg said there were levels of subtext that he had never seen in comics, and he’d reorganize his schedule to draw my book, and the others never even responded. I guess Rugg kinda chose me. I must say that the process of making this week by week with he and Jon Fell (the book’s colorist) was one of the most enjoyable collaboration experiences of my life. Jim falls into the “a scholar and a gentleman” category of dude Could you/would you want to bring something even more formidable and fictional to the surface in terms of the literary—less about music folk?

Like Harry Potter? [Laughs] I’ll leave that to those who are more creative than I. I tend to deal primarily in life lessons. I’m either searching the history of film, music or literature for someone’s method of dealing with how totally fucked life is, or I’m trying to pass one along.

As a vehicle to get those across, I can riff on some historical events, but I don’t know that I’ll ever try to totally invent a world complete with its history, flora and fauna.

How did you find dealing with publishing peeps, as opposed to the record-label biz?

Twice as cutthroat? Less than half?

They’re all just trying to give as little as possible and get back the most. I guess you can call that a cheapskate, but biznass is biznass. I’ve found that I actually enjoy putting my money where my mouth is when it comes to things I love and believe in. It’s thrilling and scary. It’s also hard to be patient with results, but I enjoy trying to be patient as well, although I’m not always good so at that part. Anyway, it’s hard to talk other people into doing the same, though, when it’s their job at stake, not their soul.

Do you view the past seven albums—honestly—not just as things and songs you play, but as a legacy, a heritage?

Of course. We have a thing that we do which

nobody else can do. We weren’t good enough musicians to imitate anyone else, so we had to invent a shortcut to music for ourselves.

It’s nothing new since the original punks were doing exactly that, too. We just had a different aesthetic in mind, and now that we’ve done it for so many people for so long, we have a responsibility to continue doing it. Whether you care about our music or not, we have a role to play. I’m just glad that it’s not a hugely important one.

I read one criticism of you where the writer discussed the relative failure of that body of work, as if not selling a million copies of every record was a bad thing. Do you feel that way—other than, say, the reaping of those monetary rewards? Do you feel honestly as if the listeners have missed the point or missed the boat, or rather do you feel by this point that there is a devoted group of Dandy fans you play up to?

We have found we do what we do, and any result of that is purely incidental. I’m both surprised and not surprised that we ever sold a million records at all. One cannot know the result of one’s actions, and being aware of this has given us the absolute freedom to be ourselves all the time. I have no idea who new fans are and who are old, or which of our kinds of music they like the most, or even which record. When you start thinking about the opinions of others is when you start becoming an entertainer. This takes more talent than I have, so I stick to straight-up, gloomy-weather tortured artist. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks of my stuff. Unless, of course, they love it.

At the start of This Machine’s recording, I saw that you wanted something between the Cramps and the 13th Floor Elevators guitar sound, that Pete and you were achieving such crust. Was this something you two discussed, or was it a natural progression after Monkey?

There was a discussion: “Pete, you get that speaker. I get this one.” When you strip back to just two guitar parts, you naturally find that dirtier is better. Actually, I am convinced that what we’re all actually trying to do is to come up with the worst, shittiest guitar tone possible, then make something beautiful with it.

Is it that you had found your voice—anew, again—through some grimy guitar sound?

Yeah, I felt like a toddler. The Dandy Warhols is my first band playing guitar and singing. I had spent the entirety of my life as a drummer: symphonic music, jazz lab, Afro-Cuban beats, marching-band drum line. Those were on the music-scholar side where I learned to read music and play together with other people, and how powerful that could be. I first got addicted to that power whilst playing a tune called the “Lethbridge Overture” when I was in seventh grade. Whenever we had substitute teachers, the drummers would insist we play this. It had a particularly satisfying finale

where the horns are slowly climbing and the woodwinds begin to soar. Now, these chord changes struck us as extremely rock, so the drummers would build a slow marching cadence, and over the minute of this build we would start speeding up and building in volume and building and building and building ’til we were basically beating the hell out of the drums to this awesome rock epic, and at a tempo the band could barely keep up with.

I can see the subconductor waving the stick frantically at the accelerated tempo and trying to turn pages sweating and red-faced. God, it felt good to rock. Loud and hard, the way god meant it. As a guitarist, I come up with very simple parts and I still can’t tell whether it’s the part or the tone or the combination of both that makes it feel like how I feel. Since I didn’t grow up playing guitar, I kinda have to relate to very simple things that come out of it.

What made you want to write with David J. period, let alone something so morose as “Animal Carnival”? That’s a compliment, by the way. Nobody does glum like he.

I was a way-into-Bauhaus kid, and still feel that they are probably the band of my life, so to work with any of them in any way is a big deal to me.

As far as lyric-writing, check out the lyrics to “No New Tale To Tell.” Who wouldn’t want to write with that guy? So, cut to us sitting around at Besaw’s Diner for a couple hours drinking coffee and discussing film and literature like a couple 17-year-olds, ’til we both agreed that Something Wicked This Way Comes really creeped us both out in an elegant and beautiful way. It took us the rest of the day to bash it out lyrically, then I kept editing and tweaking right up ’til we recorded it. I don’t quite remember where it was at when we ended that day, but months later when he heard it recorded and mixed, David told me he didn’t remember it being as good as that. I found that pretty flattering, and a huge part of it is how brilliant the cats in my band are at arrangement.

“Alternative Power To The People” has so many meanings to so many people. What was the last green thing you did?

For one thing, I try to eat like a hippie. I don’t eat anything that isn’t organically and ethically grown, and I’ve reduced my animal product—meat and dairy—consumption to about 10 to 15 percent of my total diet. The agricultural condition of our country is really scary.

We’ve been touring America and seeing and smelling what it does to the environment for like 17 years. Frightening. I also live in a small town where I get in my car about once a week.

Is “I Am Free” a note to studio people and record labels?

Nope, it’s to hipsters/haters the world over. Or rather it was three years ago when I wrote it.

I don’t think there are many hipsters left, and haters seem to be 11-year-old boys on the internet, so at this point it’s a reminder of how it feels to be defiant of the herd mentality. Feels good.

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Getting in Gear Time is on Rush’s side as they prepare to unveil 19th album, Clockwork Angels by philip wilding

Almost 40 years

into their career, Rush are chang-

“As a band, we’re players first, always.

But somewhere along the way we missed ing the way they get things done. that connection on how that playing inBlame last year’s Time Machine tour, which saw them debut the forms the writing. We somehow forgot idea of improvising live onstage. Blame Neil Peart: For the first that’s how we used to write in the old days; time in his career, he didn’t prepare his drum parts, just came in that’s how we wrote ‘The Spirit of Radio,’ and played them live. Seventy-five percent of his playing on Clock- that’s how ‘Tom Sawyer’ was written, all of work Angels is improvised and done in one take. Blame the passing us together in a room jamming. So, without of time. Alex Lifeson says he’s in his late 50s now and he couldn’t realizing it, our playing was informing our writing right from the get-go, and then we give a shit about how people perceive him or the way the band went away from that. We separated that works. Maybe even blame producer Nick Raskulinecz, who first from what I guess is essentially Rush.” worked with the band on 2007’s Snakes & Arrows, and returned to The band’s 19th studio album celebrates another first for the band: a complete conco-produce Clockwork Angels. cept album. The story of a young man’s “We sat down three years ago to talk about making this album,” quest through a world of steampunk, clockwork and alchemy says Raskulinecz, “And I said, let’s make a record for ourselves, borrows from sources as diverse as Daphne du Maurier, Joseph let’s make a Rush album, and all this time later, this is what we’ve Conrad and Voltaire’s Candide; the novelization of the record, cogot. There was never a conscious decision to make a written with acclaimed sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderconcept album or to have it be full of crazy fills and son, should be published sometime in September. Muhave the bass licks, you know. It just evolved; it’s Rush, sically, the album’s as experimental and far-reaching I didn’t restrict them in any way.” as the concept that underpins it, while the intricate With it’s deliberate nod to “Bastille Day” in leadand expansive title track is as good as anything the off single “Headlong Flight,” the band’s willingness band has ever recorded. to experiment and, by their own admission, push the “I hope that’s in the live set forever,” says Peart of songs as far as they could go (Lifeson: “We wanted to “Clockwork Angels.” “Alex gave us a demo way back get back into writing longer songs, to play more and before we started writing and right away I pointed at have more parts”), it’s little wonder that Clockwork that song and said, we’ve never done anything with Clockwork Angels hits stores June 12 Angels, while remaining steadfastly in the present, that feel; as a drummer I so wanted to play it. It’s so from Roadrunner isn’t afraid to hint at Rush’s past. unusual for us, but it still has all the intricacies and “We went away from that place,” says Geddy Lee. techniques, the challenge and the performance.

“You have ways of writing and sometimes you ignore the obvious.”

“It was funny—we never set out to make a concept album. GedIt’s March and the California sun is shining down on the courtdy suggested we make a compilation of our instrumentals and yard of Henson Studios in West Hollywood. After tracking the write a new one to go with it, perhaps something more extended, album at Revolution Studios in Toronto, the band moved to L.A. and that was the trigger for me. I was all hyped on the steampunk aesthetic at the time, you know, what if ? Like the protagonist in to finish the mix. Charlie Chaplin built the original studios—his ‘Caravan,’ I couldn’t stop thinking big, really.” footprints are still embedded in the concrete nearby—though since Jim Henson’s people moved in, it’s Kermit the Frog who “There was a thought that, as it was a new concept album, that dominates the exterior walls. it could go either way,” Lee says. “2112 or Caress of Steel Part II. 28

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We went away from that place,” says Geddy Lee. “You have ways of writing and sometimes you ignore the obvious.” —geddy lee

That’s what we’ve been joking about all this time; we keep saying, it’s Caress of Steel all over again. Get ready for the ‘Down the Tubes Tour’ Part II!” The band’s openness to trying out new ideas is never more evident than in the slick and immediate sounding “The Wreckers” (where Alex and Geddy swapped instruments) and the album’s final song, the grand-sounding “The Garden,” built on a stirring refrain of orchestrated strings.

“One thing we did discover making this album,” says Lee, “is that when we switch instruments, we become the Barenaked Ladies! I started plunking on Al’s guitar, and he grabbed the bass and he wrote a great bass part, and so we recorded it like that. And then when we got to the middle eight, I had this great idea for it and was like, ah, we have to switch back now, I’m not such a great player! It had a very poppy vibe until we Rushified it.

“‘The Garden,’ too, is such a different song for us—it’s a side of the band I’ve always wanted to push more. The melodic side, the orchestration, more thoughtful and reflective, maybe. The lyrics just felt perfect. I loved the fact that it had stepped outside of this concept, dealing with these universal truths, so I wanted it to be heartfelt. It just flowed and we had a good day, as we call it; we had a good six minutes.”

By the time you read this, Rush will be rehearsing for the first leg of their next world tour. Lee and Lifeson are now 58, Peart will be 60 this year, but the infamous three-hour, two-show set is still intact.

“I’ll be honest,” says Lifeson. “Touring takes a lot out of you; you have to be serious about your health. It’s not staying up until four in the morning and having a few drinks; once in a while that’s fine, but on a day to day basis.” He shakes his head. “I’ve got to feel strong for the show, and we’re all like that. We had so much fun making this record. This one has been really special, and I think we’ll make records until we die. I could say we’ll tour until we die, too, but the touring will probably be the cause of our demise, so we really need to think about paring the shows back in some way.”

He ponders the idea momentarily while swirling the ice in his drink.

“But then I’ve been saying that for the last 20 years.” needle

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photo by Todd Fedler

Power-pop progenitors? O.G. DIYers? The last college-rock survivors? No label adequately captures the four-decade journey of Zion, Ill.’s Shoes, who are releasing their first new studio material in 17 years. story by Corey duBrowa

PostTeenage Kicks hoes singer/guitarist jeff Murphy is doing his best impression of the Hedleys, the “hardest working West Indian family” from In Living Color who seemed to take a perverse delight in toting up the sheer number of jobs it was possible to hold down at any given time. When he’s not playing with his band of nearly 40 years, he also has a day gig (fixing electronic gear at a local music store) or is engaged in the kind of activity he’s preparing for today: putting in a guest teaching appearance at Harper College in nearby Palatine, Ill., to help out a professor friend. ¶ “I’m a bit harried because I’m speaking at a Beatles class,” relates Murphy with no small degree of enthusiasm. “We’re gonna try ‘You Can’t Do That.’ I like to try to involve the students as much as possible, so I’m needle

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bringing along a cowbell and a tambourine to pluck a couple of them out of their seats to come up and play along. The prof for the class is Greg Herriges. He’s a writer friend of mine who also did a documentary called Player: A Rock And Roll Dream. And I’ve taught in his class for three or four years now. We did ‘Two Of Us’ last year. I really don’t want it to be about me trying to show off in front of a class full of college kids. Greg talked me into it,” Murphy finishes in what is his—and his band’s—typically self-deprecating fashion. “But I love doing these kind of speaking things, and to be able to talk about the Beatles is a doubleplus.”

Embodied in this guestteaching vignette is literally everything you need to know about Shoes: the single-minded pursuit of perfection, the enthusiasm that only fans can bring to a volunteer endeavor, the desire to support friends who are equally committed to their art or avocation, the self-skewering sense of humor. Not to mention the “Midwest nice” demeanor that colors every conversation with the band on virtually every topic, any time.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Shoes is that this ethic and attitude prevails despite a collection of musicbiz bumps and bruises that could rival Charlie Brown in terms of sheer career futility. In some ways, they’re the Forrest Gumps of rock. Shoes essentially presaged punk’s DIY movement by recording its first, early-’70s albums in Murphy’s living room before garnering enough critical acclaim to merit a major-label contract; recorded three terrific if underappreciated power-pop albums on Elektra before being unceremoniously dumped in the mid-’80s; had the presence of mind to take their separation pay from the label and parlay it into a proper commercial studio (Short Order Recorder) and record label operation (Black Vinyl Records), thus affording Shoes not only cheap access to studio time and readymade record distribution, but also the ability to produce other up-and-coming bands along the way. (Oh, hello, Material Issue and Local H.) That business venture was then shuttered in the mid-2000s and the band members moved their recording equipment back into the basement, so to speak, bringing them full circle in a career that has seen a little of everything the music business has to offer except for one elusive prize: mainstream success.

Nonetheless, the lack of bitterness about

this experience almost defies explanation. Not to mention normal human emotion. “This is my band; they quite literally changed my life,” says Mary Donnelly, an English professor from Binghamton, N.Y., who has just completed Shoes’ first definitive biography, Boys Don’t Lie: The History Of Shoes, due out later this year.

“Shoes were around for all these little transitions that make up the history of the independent music scene for the last 30 years: playing

When Shoes gets together to eat a pizza, nobody ever eats the last slice. We all sink or swim together.

Shoes is, and has always been, a threeman sack race. It’s about us. There’s no ‘i’ in Shoes. And, hell, there’s no ‘the’ either!

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all these little colleges before we knew that circuit as ‘college rock,’ the crash of 1979, the development of the mp3, the indie distribution cycle collapsing around them while they were trying to build a business around it in the early ’90s. And yet, they don’t spend any time on recrimination or regret. It’s refreshing.”

Or as Murphy himself sums up, “Back in the day, when (bassist) John (Murphy, Jeff’s brother) and (guitarist/vocalist) Gary (Klebe) were away at college, Loudon Wainwright III would play all of these cool, one-man shows. Then he had his hit with ‘Dead Skunk’ and suddenly he’s the Dead Skunk Guy rather than this guy who does cool college shows and has a cult following. A single hit, pulled out of context, can really be crippling to a band. For us, it’s great to be in this position: to have all these albums in our discography we can go back and draw from, but not have this one hugely successful song to compare you to every time.”

As Butch once asked the Sundance Kid, “Who are those guys, anyway?”

(come on feel the) illinoise Zion, Ill., is, in many respects, the perfect town from which a band like Shoes could silently issue forth to wage musical war on an unsuspecting universe. The city of 25,000-ish (noteworthy homeboy: actor Gary Coleman) is situated midway between Chicago and Milwaukee near the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, and it’s responsible for a cultural ethos that threads all the way through the very fabric of Shoes since the beginning of the band.

“Zion was founded in the early 20th century as a religious community and was steeped in a very conservative attitude,” Murphy wrote in his 2006 pictorial memoir, Birth Of A Band, The Record Deal, And The Making of “Present Tense”.

“It had absolutely no music scene or even a club to play at. And it was a dry town, so there were no bars, clubs or restaurants that served alcohol. Even the simple possession of tobacco was, at one time, illegal. But it was within radio reception of Chicago, and Chicago’s AM radio in the mid-’60s was a phenomenal influence on every red-blooded adolescent who imagined themselves as a pop star.” Put simply: If you were going to have fun in Zion, you’d have to make it yourself.

Murphy was a young gearhead—he purchased his first reel-to-reel recording equipment at the age of eight—while older brother John and his high-school friend, Gary Klebe, had already decided to form Shoes by 1973, asking Jeff to join later when it became apparent that he was the one with the equipment they needed to realize their vision (one part Beatles, one part Big Star, one part Bowie). The trio, plus a friend of Jeff’s on drums, made its initial foray into home recording with 1974’s Heads Or Tails, a mono-only collection of 10 songs cut to a 10-inch disc that the band printed exactly four copies of (one for each member of the group). Eventually, Murphy moved out of his parents’ home and into a house he called “La Cabane,” a kind of boys-only, music-geek clubhouse that became ground zero for the band’s next three home-recorded albums, Un Dans Versailles (One In Versailles), the unreleased Bazooka (both from 1976) and 1977 leftfield classic Black Vinyl Shoes, which contained just the right mixture of jingle-jangle six-string and creamy, dreamy harmony vocals to capture the attention of influential rock critics such as Ira Robbins and Robert Christgau, both of whom championed it loudly while the nascent power-pop movement of the ’70s (Raspberries, Badfinger, Flamin’ Groovies) was winding down and the next generation of melodists-with-muscle (Knack, Cars, Romantics, Cheap Trick) was gearing up for unprecedented commercial success.

Shoes would eventually get its opportunity to see how the other half lived when its early, home-brewed successes won them a contract with Elektra. The group decamped for England to record 1979’s Present Tense at the Manor in Oxfordshire—an album that would net them minor radio hits with “Tomorrow Night” and “Too Late”—working with noted producers such as Mike Stone (Queen) and Richard Dashut (Fleetwood Mac, during the Rumors and Tusk era) as their follow-up albums Tongue Twister (1980) and Boomerang (1982) landed the group some early MTV exposure (four of their videos were on the network during its first 24 hours of operation) and accorded them no small amount of respect and critical plaudits, even if sales never quite amounted to what both the band and label had hoped for.

Shoes was eventually released from its contract in 1982 and used their parting gift from the label to build a small studio, Short Order Recorder, in a strip mall near its hometown, as well as start up the Black Vinyl label. This enabled them to carry on as a recording act (1984’s Silhouette, 1989’s Stolen Wishes) while producing other like-minded musical acts, such as Chicago’s Material Issue and Zion homeboys Local H (both of whom went on to major-label success) as well as the Sneetches. Shoes had, in effect, created a self-contained universe in which the band could operate as it wished with little of the financial pressures that accompanied a majorlabel contract. The group toured nationally for the first time in support of Stolen Wishes (hard to believe for a band that had effectively been operating for 15 years; but then Shoes had always considered itself a recording act, first) and generally enjoyed the fruits of its two decades’ worth of labor. But something was simmering beneath the surface, both within the industry as well as within the band itself.

“We never liked being a record label, but it was a necessary evil to get our records out there,” explains Klebe of this particular chapter in the band’s history. “We had so many other worries besides making music. But it gave us an outlet we wouldn’t have had otherwise. In some ways it was good, but in others it was really stressful and what suffered the most, in the end, was our work as recording artists.”

It was this realization that eventually led Shoes to wrap up the recording of 1994’s Propeller—a more rocking, higher-energy album than the band had recorded in years—and essentially put the group on ice in favor of other activities for the foreseeable future. Coming as it did at the apex of grunge—the era of big distorted guitars, growly vocals that killed harmonies dead, lyrical anger and its antecedents, rather than the poignant and funny boy/girl relationship stories that remained Shoes stock in trade—this seemed like the end. And yet, it was hardly that, by a long shot.

present tense Given the near-brushes with success and the tireless work ethic that saw Shoes transition from major-label act back to a D.I.Y. way of working (out of necessity more than any deliberate decision on its part), it’s nothing short of shocking to hear the product of all the group’s efforts over the past few years, Ignition: 15 well-crafted pop/rock nuggets as catchy as anything in the band’s previous 10-album catalog.

“The main reason it’s taken us 17 years to put together a new Shoes album is because of timing,” says Murphy. “It’s been difficult to fit it into everyone’s schedule. Gary runs a local business with his brother, and John works there too in the graphics department; they do a massive catalog several times every year and employ 30 people.

But shortly after we started recording again, I said to those guys that it all felt totally natural, like there hadn’t been a huge break between records, and how much I really enjoy writing and recording Shoes music.

“Returning to the home studio after we started there nearly 40 years ago (Shoes recorded Ignition in its entirety in Klebe’s basement studio, a move that was set in motion when Short Order Recorder ceased to operate in 2004) is like getting back to our roots. The fact that this album was recorded over 18 months is because we could only fit in three or four nights a week. So, the actual number of hours spent recording it is still about what we used to average when we recorded full-time; Tongue Twister averaged about 45 hours per song, and we’re spending nearly that on this album as well. Plus, we were writing the songs and demoing them on the fly, just like the old days. Gary would come in with something like ‘Heaven Help Me’ (a song with driving, spidery guitar crawling across its surface) and immediately I was like, ‘I know what I want to do on this. I want this guitar that just sucks you in, zooms in on you.’ Then with a Stones-y thing like ‘Hot Mess,’ I said, ‘Put me in, I know what to do!’ and John said, ‘Well, I’ve got these lyrics … ’” Murphy laughs. (“I sang them with a hand-held mic, like a live performance, and only swore twice!” counters John Murphy of his turn on vocals that evening.) “It was great to still feel that kind of enthusiasm and excitement after 40 years of doing it together. There’s no one else in the world I trust more than John and Gary in terms of their musical opinion.”

“When we sold the studio years ago, we lost not just a place to record, but a rehearsal space as well,” says John. “It was our clubhouse, so to speak, and even though Jeff set up a room in his house to record, it wasn’t the same as having a neutral location where you could come and go at all hours of the day or night, makin’ as much racket as you wanted to. When we started discussing making new music, the question was, ‘Could we pull it off?’ and would there still be an appreciative audience out there for a new

CD? Recording a new album is a commitment, so there was a certain amount of reacquainting ourselves with the process again, from the insular act of songwriting to the collaborative effort of helping each other achieve the potential of that particular song. It was a baptism by fire.”

Between Donnelly’s forthcoming biography (which all three Shoes members agree played a role in getting them back into the studio to record again), Klebe’s state-of-the-art basement studio (if there can really be such a thing) and finding the time and energy to devote to their craft once again, the three boys from Zion have somehow managed to defy expectations once more, unleashing an album that dozens of bands half their age would be delighted to take out and road-test every night. The fact that Shoes likely won’t tour behind the album makes chart success all the more improbable to attain, but is also par for the course with a group that has largely gone about its craft exactly the way it’s seen fit for as long as it has been creating music together, even if that way has sacrificed some of the success the band would no doubt have tasted by now had it taken a more conventional path.

“Music follows trends; people chase success,” says Garbage member, Smart Studios owner and noted producer Butch Vig, who has known Shoes since way back in the days when his band Spooner first crossed paths with them in the ’70s. “Back when Nirvana’s Nevermind happened, labels were trying to sign anything that sounded or even looked like Kurt. But I have way more respect for bands that follow their original love of music and stick to it. Shoes is one of the bands that set the template for power pop: those buzzy guitars, lush vocals, great melodic hooks. They have a sound, a sensibility. And I love it! It’s a testament to their integrity that they stuck with it. I have an immense amount of admiration for them and was so excited to hear the new record. I knew it wasn’t going to be Prodigy or Eminem, you know?” Vig laughs.

“Having a strong sonic identity is an asset, and they’ve had that from the start.”

“Shoes were among my Midwest power-pop idols,” says Matthew Sweet. “Like Cheap Trick and the Raspberries, Shoes epitomize that classic sound of super-melodic, post-Beatles American rock. I love the very personal singing sound, and they have tons of great songs. Great harmonies, guitars, bass, the whole package. And they are super nice guys. I had the opportunity to rehearse in their Zion studio for an early tour of mine, and they were totally cool.”

“I said to my wife the other day, ‘When Shoes gets together to eat a pizza, nobody ever eats the last slice,’” says Jeff of the group’s “all-for-one, one-for-all” ethos. “We all sink or swim together.

Shoes is, and has always been, a three-man sack race. It’s about us. There’s no ‘i’ in Shoes. And, hell, there’s no ‘the’ either!” N

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The

SEEKER Between the tee-ball games, backyard barbecues and Silly String wars, Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller can’t staunch the yearning. story by hobart rowland | photos by gene smirnov

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Rhett Miller misses his glasses.

“I’m always reaching up to the bridge of my nose with my index finger as if there’s something to be pushed,” he laughs. “Getting rid of them was more of a logistical thing—they kept flying off my face onstage.”

It was during a mercifully brief Buddy Holly eyewear phase in 1997 that Miller equated country music to Pennsylvania’s great mystery meat. “I’m sure that, during my youth, I uttered the phrase, ‘I dislike everything country,’” he remembers. “It’s like the artistic version of scrapple up north.”

At the time, Miller and the rest of the Old 97’s were caught up in a well-orchestrated media blitz surrounding the release of Too Far To Care.

It was the band’s first album for Elektra, and it remains the catchiest and most compelling distillation of its cow-punk-meets-Brit-Invasion template. All of 26 and still living in his home city of Dallas, Miller was basking in the glow of 10 years of hard work honing his songwriting chops, that plaintive vocal style and his boyish, eager-to-please front-guy persona. But he was also beginning to chafe at the strictures of the group’s alt-country designation.

“I was making everybody so happy being this country bumpkin,” says Miller now. “There were so many rules to alt-country. I didn’t get into music to follow anybody’s rules.”

Miller can’t recollect how much mileage he got out of the scrapple quote, but he’s sure he must have said it again at some point. “I usually repeat myself all the time and figure people will think I’m consistent—that it might reinforce the idea that I’m telling the truth,” he says with a shrug.

It’s a balmy day in New Paltz, a crunchy college town near the house he shares in New York’s Hudson Valley with his model-turnedhomemaker wife, Erica, and their two kids. Outside beckons, and the conversation shifts from a busy downtown café to a gazebo at a local park near the hilly SUNY New Paltz campus.

A few hours from now, Miller will be 45 miles up the road, performing for a small crowd at Club Helsinki in the arty, musician-friendly riverside hamlet of Hudson. There, he’ll be working up a prodigious sweat as he performs a fast-paced solo acoustic set weighted with a surprising number of Old 97’s tunes, intermittently spinning his right forearm at maximum velocity around the face of his acoustic guitar like a pinwheel in a stiff wind.

“That’s a trade secret,” says Miller, when

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asked to explain the almost comical move. “It’s a lot less difficult than it seems.”

Nothing is difficult about this day. As families play croquet in the distance and a kid works over a violin for his parents at a nearby picnic table, Miller addresses an array of topics with an easy candor. First on the list: The Dreamer, his fifth solo album and the first he’s produced on his own after a series of run-ins with big-name producers. “I really wanted it to be strippeddown, but it wound up being bigger than I’d imagined,” says Miller, non-prescription sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. (He had LASIK surgery four years ago.) “For the template, I went back to Neil Young’s Harvest: real simple and organic.”

Country—of the rootsy variety—is a key component of The Dreamer, a humble mix of homey duets and intimate declarations of flawed love and begrudging self-acceptance. The album is the second release on Miller’s Maximum Sunshine imprint, following 2011 live covers album The Interpreter: Live At Largo.

“The first half of the record is the failed relationships and the flailing through love that almost works,” says Miller. “The second half is about love that works, even though it’s still not perfect. You have to keep working at it all the time, but you also have to appreciate how fuckin’ sweet and beautiful it is. People don’t get that.”

The Dreamer was recorded close to home at Woodstock’s recently resuscitated Dreamland Recording Studios. Its church setting was also the site of mixing and overdubs for Too Far To Care. “Most of the record is us playing live together almost at the point of just discovering the song,” says Tommy Borscheid, who plays on nearly all of The Dreamer and was the first member recruited for Miller’s backup band, the Serial Lady Killers.

Once the guitarist for underappreciated Minneapolis outfit the Honeydogs, Borscheid now handles A&R and acquisitions for the Orchard, Maximum Sunshine’s distributor. “We’ve all been friends for years, even before we met Rhett,” says Borscheid of his chemistry with fellow Lady Killers Greg Beshers (bass) and Angela Webster (drums). “We came to the studio essentially unrehearsed. Rhett had given us acoustic versions of the songs, and each of us learned them with our own ideas of what the songs would sound like. Rhett knew exactly what he wanted, but he was really relaxed at the helm.”

The Dreamer’s cozy, nurturing vibe is partly dictated by a looming female presence. There are duets with Rachael Yamagata and Rosanne Cash, and Heather Robb of the Spring Standards sings on five of the album’s 13 tracks.

One of The Dreamer’s more memorable songs, “As Close As I Came To Being Right,” was co-written by Cash, who provides vocals on it, as well. “I had a couple verses I sent to Rhett,” says Cash of the lilting ballad, which is nudged along nicely by Rich Hinman’s nuanced pedalsteel picking. “He wrote some more, then we did a demo. That day, we had someone take a photo of us, and we looked uncannily like brother and sister. We felt a connection right away.”

On all counts, The Dreamer marks a return to basics for Miller after three studio albums that toned down the twang, ratcheted up the pop smarts and layered on the studio frills. Meanwhile, the Old 97’s have become increasingly more revisionist.

“We’re this garage band,” says Miller, with some disbelief. “It’s been more and more that way, which is sort of where we started.”

“ Rhett needs to be more famous.” Over din-

ner before her husband’s show in Hudson, Erica Iahn Miller may well be stating the obvious. The guy next to her, however, would prefer not to go there. “I haven’t always wanted to be famous— especially in this climate, where the Snookis of the world have really taken it to a new level,” he says. “But I’ve always wanted to make music and have people respect it and even listen to it.”

For as long as he can remember, Miller has had a strategy for being heard. “I guess I’ve always had this overarching idea of my career,” he says. “I had notebooks filled with lists of my ambitions and the ways I could make them come to reality. I was conscious of building my own mythology.”

So conscious, in fact, that he named his littleheard first solo album Mythologies. Fortunately, the one thing that didn’t pan out for Miller was that record’s awkward vocal style. “I was such a Bowie devotee that I sang everything in a British accent,” Miller says of his 1989 debut, which is set for reissue as a digital download. “I was ambivalent about making it available, but I think I’ve made peace with it.”

Mythologies was produced by Old 97’s cofounder Murry Hammond, who’s six years Miller’s senior and served as a mentor, bandmate and sometime caretaker during a turbulent period. Miller’s parents were going through a difficult divorce at the time, and their bookish son was basically left to his own devices. “I was pretty self-sufficient,” he says. “I’d gotten my first apartment the summer after my junior year in high school.”

Though they lived in Dallas’ elite Highland Park district, the Millers were essentially middle

❝ If I ever write a mystery novel,

the protagonist is going to be so cool. He won’t have all the hangups I have—like that constant feeling of walking into a fancy hotel and feeling like I don’t belong there.

❞

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class. “We had money all the way up until my grandfather, Giles Miller, went out on a limb to buy the (NFL’s) Dallas Texans, the state’s first pro team,” says Miller.

The Texans failed miserably, and its owner “basically went bankrupt,” says Miller. But with an attorney for a father and a mother who worked for a noted psychiatrist, he and his younger brother and sister lived comfortably. The family was able to fund Miller’s stay at the exclusive St. Mark’s School of Texas with

money from an Air Force pension left behind by a grandfather.

With his private-school pedigree, Miller landed a full scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, dropping out after just a semester—much to his parents’ dismay. “They said, ‘Look, we don’t have much money, but whatever we do have, you’re cut off from,’” says Miller. “And I don’t blame them.”

Hammond, meanwhile, was happy to have his friend back. Today, he has fond recollections of

❝ I was making everybody so happy being

this country bumpkin. There were so many rules to alt-country. I didn’t get into music to follow anybody’s rules.

Rhett Miller

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❞

the Mythologies period and the other collaborations that predated the Old 97’s. “He was a real little brother to me, but a peer at the same time,” says Hammond, who now lives in Pasadena, Calif. “As for the British accent, I was such a Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett/Robyn Hitchcock head at the time—and ‘head’ is the operative word—that there was no way I was going to even notice it.”

Miller wouldn’t make another solo album until 2002—the Old 97’s had work to do. Following their somewhat derivative 1994 debut,

Hitchhike To Rhome, Miller, Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples ratcheted up the execution and charisma on Wreck Your Life, the 1995 album that, after much wining and dining, ultimately punched their circus ticket to the majors.

Life’s breathless, pounding follow-up, Too Far To Care, remains one of the best albums associated with the alt-country movement (however loosely). It also provided fans an official introduction to Miller’s birth name. “My name’s Stewart Ransom Miller, and I’m a serial ladykiller,” he sings on the album’s second track, “Barrier Reef.”

What comes next is even better: “She said, ‘I’m already dead.’”

Miller is still quite proud of that line. “It’s definitely the one that people sing along to the loudest,” he says. “In retrospect, it could easily be my dad, who’s also Stewart Ransom Miller.

He left the family when I was 17, and it had been a long time coming. Suddenly, in his 40s, he was going to bars and picking up women.”

But Miller won’t fully commit to that theory.

“Real life can be boring, but you can juice it up in fiction,” he says. “If I ever write a mystery novel, the protagonist is going to be so cool. He won’t have all the hang-ups I have—like that constant feeling of walking into a fancy hotel and feeling like I don’t belong there.”

By the time the road-weary Old 97’s reconvened to record their next release, Miller was living in Beverly Hills with a girlfriend and several others. “(The property) had a little house that hung over the cliff in the back, where apparently Jim Morrison had written a lot of songs—so it had some rock ‘n’ roll history,” he says. “There was a lot going on out there. It was good for me.”

Miller’s songwriting voice continued to gel with the encouragement of talented L.A. friends like Jon Brion, whose ongoing “unpopular pop” residency at the Largo nightclub was gaining national notoriety. “There was such a work ethic with that group,” says Miller. “At Largo, every time you went up, you had to play at least one brand-new song. Those acoustic gigs helped me figure out how not to be a character. It was just me.”

Elsewhere, Miller’s relationship with his girlfriend was unraveling, and tensions within the band also surfaced. “I was asserting myself more than I ever had,” he admits. “I was asking them to try things they weren’t totally comfortable with.”

Angsty, dire and littered with hooks, 1999’s Fight Songs directly reflects that friction, title and all. But it wasn’t until the sessions for 2001’s Satellite Rides that Miller began to seriously consider another outlet for his tunes. “Fight Songs and Satellite Rides were the records where I really found the voice that I’m using to this day as a writer and a singer,” he says.

Miller’s The Instigator came along in 2002.

Produced by Brion, it furthered the pop overtures of Fight Songs—and then some. “It was all about me stepping out of the cozy confines of the democracy that is the Old 97’s,” says Miller of his first and last release for Elektra.

Looking back, Hammond acknowledges that Miller asserting his independence had an impact on the band. “At first, it was an anxious time for the three of us,” he says. “We felt like we’d suffered a loss of momentum. But Rhett needed to get The Instigator done to figure out the rhythm of what it was to be both a solo artist and an artist who’s part of a band. Nowadays, we just put it on the calendar and keep everything going forward.”

As the Old 97’s forged on in calculated fits and spurts, Miller found himself on the Verve Forecast label, which gave him plenty to work with, in the form of a fat budget and A-list producer George Drakoulias (Black Crowes, Jayhawks).

Miller took full advantage of this infusion of resources on 2006’s The Believer, a lush, showy singer/songwriter statement. “I love the idea of an album as an event,” says Miller. “We spent months making that record.”

The LP features Miller’s first run-in with Rachael Yamagata (“Fireflies”), plus a more fleshed-out version of “Question,” a fan favorite that first appeared on Satellite Rides. “We recorded it live, and that’s what’s on Satellite Rides,’” says Miller of “Question,” which, more than any tune, inspired him to step out on his own.

Miller landed on reissue-happy indie label Shout! Factory for his self-titled 2009 release.

Quirky and varied, with a mild baroque undercurrent, Rhett Miller made the most of its contributions from an ever-widening circle of musician pals, including Brion, Austin guitarist Billy Harvey and the Apples In Stereo’s John Dufilho on drums.

“I felt like I was making this intimate thing, without all the props,” Miller says. “I had a great band, but it wasn’t hired guns—it was my friends.”

The hedges along the path that lead to the front door of Rhett Miller’s modest split-level home bear the remnants of an Easter Day Silly String battle between his eight-year-old son, Max, and six-year-old daughter, Soleil. The family just spent a week entertaining relatives with backyard barbecues and the like, and dad has escaped the carnage at home to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather.

Back at the gazebo in New Paltz, Miller relates how a Texas kid found his way to the base of the Catskills. “It was a financial decision, really,” he says, noting that he can afford so much more here than in L.A. or New York City. “I know I’m in the top 10 percent of musicians earning money—who can support a family of four in a decent house with no other job. But it’s still

month to month,” Miller says. “There are some people who think I’m a rich guy, and I wish that would be true one day. But I’m also glad my kids aren’t growing up in fabulous wealth, because I’ve seen how many kids that messes up.”

Miller readily admits that women have dictated his every geographical move. And true to form, this latest one had something to do with his wife, whose brother is a real estate agent in the area. “I didn’t care where I lived,” he says of pre-kids self. “I wanted to move around.”

Miller’s trans-Atlantic courtship of Erica Iahn certainly had its moments. The two met in New York through Iahn’s roommate, who Miller had briefly dated. Soon after, they met up in London. “We spent this week together doing all this amazing stuff, but it was totally platonic,” says Miller.

At the time, Iahn was weathering a divorce and staying at the London home of a boyfriend’s parents. It turns out her ex-husband had good taste in music, and he’d taken her to see the Old 97’s at New York’s Irving Plaza. “She had a Fight Songs T-shirt, which was crazy,” muses Miller.

While in London, Miller’s friendship intensified with Robyn Hitchcock, and things started to get weird in the best sense. “Robyn called one day and said, ‘I’m having an emergency party,’” says Miller, resurrecting his British accent. “I said, ‘Oh, what’s the emergency?’ And he said, ‘The emergency is there must be a party.’”

The get-together was in Hitchcock’s London backyard, and food was scarce. “He had this old stone wall covered in vines with all these nooks and crannies, and he’d reach in and pull out this hunk of cheese and say, ‘This cheese has never seen the indoors.’ Then he’d set it down and we’d eat and drink red wine.”

During the course of the party, Hitchcock asked Miller to explain “this whole alt-country thing.” “So, I played him ‘Victoria’ (from Wreck Your Life), and he liked it,” recalls Miller.

Hitchcock and his wife, Michèle, also liked what they saw going on between Miller and Iahn, and on the taxi ride home, the two initiated a bicoastal relationship. Miller spent a year in Manhattan with Iahn, but after a frighteningly close call during the September 11 attacks, they headed for L.A., marrying soon after Miller finished The Instigator.

Ten years later, Miller is coaching tee-ball some 2,800 miles away. The morning after his gig in Hudson, he’ll be attending a parade in town and posing for team pictures with his son.

Then he’ll hop in the car and make the four-hour drive to Ithaca, N.Y., for another show, before heading right back home the next day.

“I like being able to go out in sweatpants,” Miller says of his fairly anonymous life in a place where he’s just another guy with a lawn to mow and a pool to skim. “Although it is nice that, once I’m friends with someone, I can show them what I really do.” N

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sations 90’s Pop Sen

E T T E X O Rith a new album ‘TRrAVELLING’

u r! are back w and a major Canadianwto ith Glass Tige

The new album is a fascinating musical postcard with 15 superb songs, most of which are new, some that are revisited classics and others being pearls that for various reasons haven’t seen the light of day before.

“It’s Possible” is the first taster from Travelling - 2 minutes and 34 seconds of sunny pop music that shows one of Roxette’s many sides in 2012.

There’s more to come.

Roxette / Glass Tiger Canadian Tour Dates August 29 August 30 August 31 September 7 September 9 September 10 September 12

Scotiabank Place Molson Canadian Amphitheatre Bell Centre MTS Centre Scotiabank Saddledome Rexall Place Rogers Arena

Ottawa, ON Toronto, ON Montreal, QC Winnipeg, MB Calgary, AB Edmonton, AB Vancouver, BC

COLIN JAMES Aptly titled FIFTEEN, after almost 25 years in the business of music, this is the Legendary Canadian guitar vocalist’s 15th release.

From the opening chords of the first track “Sweet’s Gone Sour” to a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “OH Well”, the album contains some of the best rock, blues, gospel and pop tracks Colin has written and recorded to date!

Co-produced by Joe Hardy (ZZ Top), FIFTEEN combines nine originals penned by Colin and friends including the lead-off track “Stone Faith” and “I’m Diggin” with Tom Wilson and Thomas ‘Tawgs’ Salter (Lights, Midway State), “Finally Wrote A Song For You” with Ron Sexsmith and “Sweets Gone Sour” with Gordie Johnson along with some very cool Colinesque interpretations of “Jealous Guy”, “Sneakin’ Sally” & “Shed A Little Light”.

Available June 12

THe BeACH BOYS neW AlBuM ‘THAT’S WHY GOD MADe THe RADiO’ legendary Band’s 50th Anniversary Celebration includes new Album and Canadian tour dates The founding members of The Beach Boys, one of the world’s most legendary bands in popular music history, have reunited for a global 50th Anniversary celebration, including a new album release and a major international tour!

The album’s lead single, “That’s Why God Made The Radio,” showcases The Beach Boys’ soaring harmonies in an upbeat, beaming ode to music’s radio champions around the world.

The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Tour Canadian Dates June 19 • Toronto • Molson Amphitheatre June 20 • Montreal • Bell Centre

AvAilABle June 05

DaviD Bowie’s truly grounDBreaking anD hugely influential alBum, the rise anD fall of Ziggy starDust anD the spiDers from mars celeBrates its 40th BirthDay. this 40th anniversary edition is available on cD and limited edition 180g vinyl, which comes with a 5.1 mix and high resolution audio including previously unreleased 5.1 and stereo mixes of moonage Daydream (instrumental), the supermen, velvet goldmine and sweet head.

available from June 5th

! www.davidbowie.com

reviews david bowie p. 46

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Gossip p. 48

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guided by voices p. 50

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The Walkmen p. 51

A History Of Violence I Neil Young uncovers the sinister undercurrent to classic American folk

Sigur Rós p. 53

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Americana

t’s reasonable to be skeptical about Americana: What’s Neil Repris e Young doing, making an album of folk songs, many dating to the 19th century? A long time ago, Dylan used a collection of half-assed covers to end his record contract. Cover albums, for artists as iconic as Young, are often outliers or stopgaps. ¶ But Americana is something different. First, it features Young’s longstanding band Crazy Horse, so you know it’s going to be loud, electric and full of guitar solos; and Young seems happy to ride the lumbering grooves of Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina and Poncho Sampedro in his first outing with them since 2003’s Greendale film/concept album.

Second, Young isn’t interested in exploring roots, reclaiming lost songs or just playing some old favorites.

Much of the track list looks rather tame, as if it could be for a kids’ record—“Oh, Susannah,” “Clementine,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “Jesus’ Chariot (She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain),” among others—but what Young’s really interested in here is murder and death.

The body count includes several hangings, a drowning, a

photo by danny clinch

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death in a mine and communal death on Judgment Day, plus several other characters running from war or violent crimes. So, there’s an eight-minute version of “Tom Dula” (a.k.a. “Tom Dooley”) in which Young, in his cranky oldman voice, relishes repeating “poor boy, you’re bound to die,” followed by a foot-stompin’ take on “Gallows Pole” that’s sweetened with a ragged choir that chimes in throughout the album.

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reviews Young’s done his homework: In the liner notes, he explains the origins of each song and how the Americana version transformed or revisited the sources, whether from the 1840s or the 1960s. In what Young calls an extension of “the folk process,” some songs get new melodies and arrangements. “Clementine,” for instance, is remade with a nearly six-minute grungy groove, and Young uses the incestuous lyric, dated to 1884, that’s from the point of view of a father longing for his daughter, with a final verse that ends, “So I kissed her little sister/And forgot my Clementine.” It ain’t no kids’ song.

While the notes remind us that these tunes have deep histories, the tracks themselves crackle with electricity and portent. And, sometimes, humor. Americana includes a warped doo-wop take on the Silhouettes’ “Get A Job” (a relevant sentiment today), a twangy, countryrock translation of “Travel On” and a strange closing version of “God Save The Queen”—un-

fortunately, not the Sex Pistols’ song, but the British royalty anthem, crossed with a bit of “My Country ’Tis Of Thee,” for a Revolutionary War dichotomy.

Americana doesn’t rival Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Tonight’s The Night (the requiem for original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten) or Ragged Glory, but it’s no stopgap.

Time fades away, but Young makes these old, old songs vital. —Steve Klinge

Damon Albarn

Dr. Dee Virgin

Dee great escape

Damon Albarn likes a good opera, scoring, as he has, several modernmusic pieces that commingle alluring exotic sounds (the Chinese traditional instrumentation of Monkey: Journey To The West) with those of a more Western world. For his take on mathematician/royal advisor John Dee, the Blur/Gorillaz guy presses Elizabethan English instrumentation (recorder, lute, viola de gam-

ba, shawm, dulcian, crumhorn) and voices into the service of mesmerizing and haunting freak folk with large helpings of West African kora.

The music is not unlike Joanna Newsom with an African kink to its proceedings, a heavenly humming but rumbling pastoralism.

Through this wonky weave of influences comes Albarn—the singer and harmonium player—on tender, touching moments such as “The Marvelous Dream.” The whole of Dr. Dee is bucolic yet slightly nervy with Albarn’s chatty croon acting as yet another gentle breeze wafting through the Arcadian affair. It’s not the Damon-pop solo you hoped for this time out, but would you really want Albarn any other way at this point? —A.D. Amorosi

Blues Control

Valley Tangents Drag City

Less noisy, still weird as hell

Blues Control—the duo of Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho—has a strong underground rep-

No Thank You, Ma’am Another redundant reissue of Ziggy Stardust makes the rounds

Y

ou already know that David Bowie’s The Rise

And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars is a classic. Maybe it’s not the 35th best album of all time (according to Rolling Stone), but it’s better than the David Bowie 81st best of the ’70s (according to Pitchfork). The glam-rock The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The guitars, courtesy of the great Mick Ronson, the dramatic strings, Bowie’s histrionic vocals, even the convoluted Spiders From Mars sci-fi storyline are still powerful and thrilling. “Hang emi On To Yourself,” “Suffragette City” and “Moonage Daydream” are some of Bowie’s best pure rock ‘n’ roll tracks, and “Soul Love” and “Five Years” rank with his best cabaret-style ballads. In all likelihood, you own the album.

Ziggy Stardust came out in June 1972; its 40th anniversary provides EMI with an excuse for a reissue and yet another remaster. By my count, this is the fifth CD issue, following RCA’s original 1984 version; Ryko’s 1990 remaster, with five bonus tracks; Virgin’s 1999 remaster, without bonuses; Virgin’s 2002 30th-anniversary remaster, with a second CD of 12 bonus tracks, also available in high resolution and 5.1 stereo mixes. This year’s model is remastered by Ray Staff, the album’s original engineer. It’s available as a standalone album (no bonuses) and as a special set with the new remaster on vinyl and an audio DVD that includes the new remaster, the 2002 5.1 mixes and four new mixes. If things like “5.1 mixes: DTS 48/24 and Dolby Digital/Stereo mixes: 48/24 LPCM stereo” excite you, you probably already have the 2002 ones already. The new remaster sounds great: The strings, percussion and Rick Wakeman’s piano are especially crisp.

But not crisp enough to buy yet again. Do you need Ziggy Stardust? Yes. Do you need this reissue? Not if you own one of the others. —Steve Klinge

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photo by Brian Ward © 1972 The David Bowie Archive™

utation for creating weird music that merges noise, rock, drone, dub and, yes, the blues, without it ever sounding like contrived, posteverything collagism. But this album is certainly the weirdest, primarily due to how clean and downright normal it is in contrast to the twosome’s past work.

Opener “Love’s A Rondo,” with its bongo riddim and spiraling, semi-proggy keyboard and guitar lines, sounds like a mutant version of Steely Dan’s “F.M.” and “Do It Again.”

It’s smooth and airy, then finally plunges into classic-rock/jam-band style guitar licks. Even Valley Tangents’ noisier moments (“Iron Pigs,” “Opium Den/Fade To Blue”) remain uncharacteristically crisp while flirting with new-age zones and b-movie soundtrack wackiness.

Cho’s gorgeous, ghostly piano playing takes center stage on pensive slow-burner “Open Air,” and finale “Gypsum” starts as a playful piano/bass groove, pit-stops at a carnival and transforms into what is arguably the most gonzo saloon tune ever. —Elliott Sharp

and newcomers drool, these 30 previously unreleased tunes feature the original lineup of Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit and Irmin Schmidt, as well as vocalists Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki.

“Midnight Sky” displays Can’s hard-asnails rock/blues tendencies that only Captain Beefheart could rival, and “Waiting For The Streetcar” is minimalist psychedelic/punk par excellence. There’s plenty of weirdo prog noise (“Godzilla Fragment”) and a completely zonked live version of “One More Night” from 1972’s Ege Bamyasi. The highlight is “Dead Pigeon Suite,” a 12-minute jam on the classic “Vitamin C” riff with eerie flutes, creepy LSD organs, Liebezeit’s time-bending poly-beats and Suzuki wilding on vocals. Nothing here is throwaway. —Elliott Sharp

Neneh Cherry & The Thing

The Cherry Thing Smalltown Supersound

Cory Branan

Mutt

Bloodshot

That’s a good dog

Cory Branan is a classic seducer, alternating between bad-boy snarl on “Ballad Of A Bad Man” (lines like “slip off what you don’t want ripped off” somehow work when delivered in his mischievous sneer) and the sensitive introvert, crooning his way through clever heartbreakers like “Darken My Door” and “Hold Me Down.” It’s a beguiling contradiction, like every boy your mother ever warned you to stay away from (at least in the movies).

In the six years since Branan’s last album, the tracks on Mutt have had time to germinate; anyone who’s seen Branan live recently will recognize quite a few. He expertly riffs on the bombast of Springsteen (“Bad Man”) and the summertime swagger of Mellencamp (on poignant ode to nostalgia “Yesterday”), but the best moments are softer and stranger. “The Corner” is a fabulous piece of folk understatement and emotional ambiguity, while the brilliant “Freefall” showcases Branan’s willingness to stretch his voice to odd, ugly places in the service of transcendence. —Lee Stabert

Can

The Lost Tapes Spoon/Mute

Found soundtracks

When legendary West German krautrock band Can sold its Weilerswilt studio after disbanding in the late 1970s, more than 30 hours of master tapes were discovered. Dating from 1968 to 1977, these shelved tracks, capturing one of the best experimentalrock groups at the peak of its creativity, are finally going public. Packaged in a massive three-CD box that’ll make both Can-fanatics

A new stance Neneh Cherry is returning to her roots. Not the ones of her time in an iteration of British punks the Slits; not of the underrated postpunk jazz-funk band Rip, Rig & Panic (although close); not of her solo hit-making hip-hop guise of “Buffalo Stance” from 1989’s Raw Like Sushi. No, she’s digging deeper into her patrimony: She’s teamed with the Thing, the Swedish free-jazz trio that took its name from a tune by her father, avant-jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, for a freewheeling set of covers and a pair of originals.

The Cherry Thing is remarkably coherent, given that it includes songs by Suicide, MF Doom, the Stooges, Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman. They’re hypnotic and ominous (the eight-minute “Dream Baby Dream,” especially) with bursts of skronking chaos (“Sudden Movement,” an original by saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, the Stooges’ “Dirt”). Like a modern-day Nina Simone, Cherry slips from light and soulful to insistent and forceful on this wild hybrid of an album. —Steve Klinge

Crocodiles

Endless Flowers Frenchkiss

After a while …

San Diego’s Crocodiles have been endlessly tinkering with their sludgy brew of noise pop ever since their 2009 debut. Recorded in Berlin, third LP Endless Flowers finds singer Brandon Welchez and guitarist Charles Rowell mining a wide array of influences, from psychedelia to krautrock to no wave, weaving them together with rumbling distortion and spacey reverb.

“Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9)” and “Bubblegum Trash” would have been comfortably at home on the iconic Nuggets boxed set, while “No Black Clouds For Dee Dee” is a lovely dedication to Welchez’s wife, Dee Dee of the

Dum Dum Girls. As if to remind us that they’re still the same weird Crocodiles, Endless Flowers’ best song, the surging “My Surfing Lucifer,” is preceded by a clumsy spoken-word piece (in German, of course). Though no other moment on Endless Flowers is that self-indulgent, it’s a sign that there’s still room for Crocodiles to figure out what works and what doesn’t. —Eric Schuman

Rodney Crowell & Mary Karr

Kin: Songs By Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell Vanguard

In a dark place

After reading The Liar’s Club, Rodney Crowell name-checked writer Mary Karr in a song. Next, he sent her a copy and asked to meet. They did, and recognizing one another as refugees from “the same swampy, godforsaken stretch of East Texas Ringworm Belt,” they started collaborating. A decade later, they have these 10 songs to show for it, sung by the likes of Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones and Lucinda Williams.

Some are funny, some are sad, and the best are somewhere in between, crowded with small-town characters feeling big-time emotions and stuffed to bursting with poetry like “If the law don’t want you, neither do I/I’ve got no time to waste my shine/On a puppet with a clipon tie.” My favorite line, “I heard a siren and you came to mind,” perfectly captures the tightrope between love and desperation, and there are probably a hundred other lines as good. That doesn’t make Kin a great album, but it’s more than enough to make it a great experiment in literate country art. —Kenny Berkowitz

David Daniell & Douglas McCombs

Versions

Thrill Jockey

no more

Ain’t wasting time

When David Daniell and Doug McCombs shared a bill in Chicago with Jack Rose a couple years back, their two-guitar/two-drumkit lineup instigated longings for an Allman Brothers cover. They don’t play one on this double LP, but its studio-disc/live-disc configuration corresponds to Eat A Peach.

However, comparisons to blues-rooted combos—as well as the cover image of a tree’s roots—are misleading; this record inhabits the sky. Daniell and McCombs run their guitars through enough effects to generate their own weather systems, and both the straight concert performances and the layered constructions push away from earth toward a zone where the air is thin and the light is absolutely clear. Their winding leads, ghostly shimmers and stacked luminous sound clouds wheel around each other like elegant skywriting maneuvers, as lyrical as any “Mountain Jam.” —Bill Meyer

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reviews The dB’s

Falling Off The Sky Bar/None

Stands for quality

History has been kind to the dB’s, whose reputation far surpasses their actual impact. That’s partly because the first two albums, which went virtually unheard in the U.S., are much stronger than people realized at the time. And it’s partly because songwriters Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey have kept moving forward, getting better as they’ve gotten older.

Falling Off The Sky isn’t just the quartet’s first album in three decades—it’s its best album, period. The dB’s are still waxing romantic and still singing their hearts out, but the ideas are more complex, the craft more sophisticated, the performances more honest. They’ve morphed their jangle pop into a new rock classicism, complete with strings (“Far Away And Long Ago”), horns (“The Wonder Of Love”) and a shout-out to Delaney & Bonnie (“Collide-ooo-Scope”). It’s pure pop for grown-ups, filled with smarts, experience and a faith in the power of four-quarter time, played with the kind of chemistry that’s only possible in musicians who’ve spent their whole lives together, rocking out as if nothing else matters. —Kenny Berkowitz

Dntel

Aimlessness Pampa

Early Works are here again

Though Jimmy “Dntel” Tamborello’s work as beat-man to Ben Gibbard in the Postal Service (and earlier with Figurine) proved him a downtempo indietronica hookmaker par excellence, even his catchiest stuff has always had as a baseline a deep appreciation for peculiar beats and glitchy giddiness. On Aimlessness, Tamborello eschews the guest vocalist-heavy formula of his last two records to delve deep into dense, IDM texturescapes reminiscent of his Early Works For Me/Something Always Goes Wrong-era stuff.

Opener “waitingfortherest II” is a slow ambient fog, the perfect table-setter/soundtrack for a night under the planetarium stars, while “Santa Ana Winds” (with Nite Jewel) shimmers and streaks like a glow-stick chase on some coastal desert. “Still,” featuring Baths, has a chilly, out-of-phase techno thrum and boasts the record’s thematic heart: “I thought you might like to come home.” And Aimlessness is a homecoming of sorts, a return to the icy beatsmithing days past. There’s some filler in the form of ambient doodling, but JT’s pop sensibilities peek through frequently enough that it’s a fair trade. —Brian Howard

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Higher Soul Caliber A subdued Beth Ditto smartens up Gossip’s pomp

B

ack in 1999, Gossip was a scrappy trio of

Southern kids who bum-rushed the scene with soul-punk songs hitched to the bawdy howls of born star Beth Ditto. The ramshackle DIY energy with a queer Gossip bent made you move ’til you sweated your tits off. Now, after a A Joyful Noise handful of increasingly popular releases and major label backing, Gossip is a platinum-selling, world-dominating dance columbia band. (There is a God.) On their fifth studio release, the fire of youth has been replaced by a sexy confidence that oozes cool. They took the dance-floor energy of Music For Men and finessed it out the wazoo with the help of producer Brian Higgins (Kylie Minogue, Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud). An enticing, pristine medley of funk, disco, pop and modern-day electro are bestowed many aural goodies. “Horns” could be the soundtrack to an old-school ’70s cop caper, “Get A Job” is a booty-shakin’ dance banger, and Ditto’s undulating “oh-whoa”s spit-shine the gleaming pop nugget that is “Perfect World.”

Yet Ditto, for the most part, lays off the ballsy shouts she flaunted on previous releases; her voice is almost silky, with a tinge of wisdom and caution. The majority of the lyrics see her working her way past disappointing lovers who broke her heart or tried to take her down. Though a challenge at times, she never loses sight of her skyward trajectory.

“The smartest words I’ve ever heard/ That the beat goes on,” she utters on “Horns.” Turn it up, bring the joyful noise. —Jeanne Fury

photo by rankin

Jimmy Edgar

Majenta

Hotflush

Purple party eater

The tropes swirling on ex-boy wonder Jimmy Edgar’s third album— electro funk, robots, Prince, Detroit techno, sex (basically the same signifiers that have defined his career to date)—don’t feel totally tired, per se, but they’re well-worn enough that it requires some ingenuity and spark to keep them interesting. Unfortunately, those qualities are in fairly short supply here.

There’s nothing particularly horrible about the tracks on Majenta; for better or worse, the most blatant (and banal) aspects of Edgar’s raunchy streak are largely confined to the predictably tawdry. Save for the fully serviceable acid-arpeggiator strut of “This One’s For The Children,” capped by an atypically charismatic if fairly inscrutable rant/sermon, Majenta is best on the less upfront, more abstract cuts that take up more than half of its run time (“Indigo Mechanix,” the fractured two-step R&B of “Touch Yr Bodytime”), splitting the difference between Dâm-Funk and MachineDrum. Still, considering this is a producer who’s dropped LPs for some of the most respected, forwardthinking labels in the game—Warp, !K7 and now Hotflush—it’s hard to get too hot and bothered.

—K. Ross Hoffman

El-P

Cancer For Cure Fat Possum

Dark man walking

Bin Laden may be catching z’s in Davy Jones’ Locker, and September 11 no longer looms as the harbinger to immediate apocalypse, but as former Company Flow MC/ Definitive Jux head El-P staunchly declares, “I’ll always be the cancer to the cure/That’s who the fuck am I!” After all, he’s got a reputation to uphold as one of indie hip hop’s brightest and self-consciously cryptic doomers.

Checking in with his first LP since Def Jux’s dissolution, El-P splits the difference between old-school bruisers (“The Full Retard”), cyberpunk dystopias (“Works Every Time,” “Request Denied”) and misanthropic noir (“For My Upstairs Neighbor”). The production is suitably sullen, with any traces of multicultural utopian sentiment literally gunned down in cold blood.

Screw emotional availability; the guy’s almost 40 and in no mood to change. Take it or leave it. At least he honestly sounds here like he doesn’t give a fuck. —Justin Hampton

Heavy Blanket

Heavy Blanket

Outer Battery

Take cover

Somewhere between his full-time gig with Dinosaur Jr, last year’s solo album and playing drums in Witch and Sweet

Apple, J Mascis somehow found time to start another new band. This one’s called Heavy Blanket, and it’s an instrumental power trio with childhood friends Pete Cougar and Johnny Pancake. If you’ve ever heard Mascis rip out a sick guitar solo and wished it didn’t have to end, this is your record. Though split into six tracks, this is essentially a 37-minute guitar solo.

And if you’re a fan of heavy psychedelic bands, but wish they’d spend less time writing songs and more time blazing on the fretboard, this is your record. “Galloping Toward The Unknown” opens with a big steaming slab of riff courtesy of a crunchy bass, then Mascis takes off. Not once does he bother touching a chord or any sort of repeating figure. It’s thrilling for about 10 minutes. As is the case with most jam bands, all this is probably more interesting to the members themselves than the rest of us.

—Matt Sullivan

The Hives

Lex Hives

Disques Hives

Back to future’s past

Only the strong survive, and while Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist (anyone else see the hilarious wrong-ness with that particular nom de rawk?) and the Hives may have led the garagerock revival throughout the aughts, they’ve managed to stick it out for some deserved long-term success. Even the most intricate of record-company pie charts won’t be able to predict if they’ll be able to recreate the love the public gave Veni Vidi Vicious, but their fifth album has its fair share of hip-shakin’ fire that combines early punk guitar sonics, drums that sound as if they could’ve been played by Jerry Lee Lewis’ hair and attitude, and loads of hard-hitting, dirty riffs.

Sure, anyone who’s ever listened to 14 minutes of classic-rock radio has heard a good chunk of this—“Go Right Ahead” totally rips off “Don’t Bring Me Down,” and we lost track of the number of borrowed Clash and Wipers riffs—but the energy remains undeniable and infectious. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

and revitalized group is in serious atonement mode: Exister may still press a heavy thumb on the melodic rock end of the scale—the glory days of angry, fuzzy guitars and vocals of the two-burly-dudes-shout-arguing school are well and truly over—but enough Caution-era magic is recaptured for us to welcome these new transmissions from Radio Free Gainesville.

—Shawn Macomber

Jaill

Traps Sub Pop

Lockup raw

What does Jaill’s superfluous “l” stand for? Laconic? Likeable? Lo-fi?

Actually, the trio employs its auxiliary consonant to assuage potential cease-and-desist orders from a decades-defunct German outfit that correctly spelled the moniker. (Hey, it’s a better name than Cann, right?) Hailing from Milwaukee (not Deutschland), Jaill makes offkilter, American-as-apple-pie power pop à la forbearers like the Nerves and dB’s.

Leaving no hook unspared, Jaill’s third LP swiftly delivers another free-wheelin’, psychtinged and succinct set of jaunty, paycheckto-paycheck lifestyle jamz. “Perfect Ten,” the record’s best (or at least most twisted) cut, lives up to its name, wedding discombobulated chord progressions and a driving half-time groove with deadly relationship advice from frontman Vinnie Kircher, imparted in his carefree nasal cadence. “Horrible Things (Make Pretty Songs),” a surf-y, wistful ballad, and “Million Times” are the band’s most sentimental tunes to date, the latter taking a rhythmically disjointed, dark detour into dirge-y, minor-key territory. But most of Traps tracks keep the toes a-tappin’ with happily sung, sad-bastard references to bygone lovers, running out of weed and coming of quarter-age. —Adam Gold

Liars

WIXIW Mute

Hot Water Music

Exister Rise

Cure for the nonexistential crisis

Hot Water Music. Often a great band, never a terribly consistent one. Compile the best tracks from Fuel For The Hate Game, No Division and Caution onto a single disc and you’d have an album of melodic hardcore anthems that’ll make those Avail/Dillinger Four types look like a bunch of forlorn navel-gazing goths. Assemble the worst, though, and it’s all too easy to see why the second-rate-Fugazi-knockoff charge had some teeth. Alas, the band’s purported 2004 swansong, The New What Next, skewed heavily toward the latter, its sound as bored and ambivalent as its title.

Fast-forward eight years. The resurrected

number six

Experimental trio gets pretty on album

Within weeks of one another in February 2004, NYC experimentalists Liars released a jarring, discordant, witchcraft-themed sophomore album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, while their sonic forefathers Einstürzende Neubauten dabbled in comparatively tempered, tranquil tones on Perpetuum Mobile. Perhaps consonance is the endgame of all avant-garde noisemakers, since eight years down the road, Liars are at a similar crossroads.

The band’s sixth full-length is the first in its catalogue that’s describable as downright pretty. Liars have hedged at this before, going alluring on 2010’s Sisterworld and mixing meditative melody with the rhythmic fixations of 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead. But WIXIW (“wish you”) is a wholehearted embrace. Opener “Ex-

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reviews act Color Of Doubt” is a bright atmospheric sunburst; the closing “Annual Moon Words” is a gentle melodic march. In between, “No. 1 Against The Rush” sets a minimal tone with pleasing, Pan Sonic-esque ping patterns, while the title track’s epic pop ripples with harpsichord modulations. The set still gets nervy and weird—“Brats” is an abrasive “old Liars” banger that would have played well on Fins To Make Us More Fish-Like—but the overall tone here is impressively serene. —John Vettese

Dent May

Do Things

Paw Tracks

Grown-up disdain, now with 100% less magnificent ukulele

Oxford, Miss., musician Dent May is the Todd Solondz of retro pop; he can be almost sadistically cruel, establishing mini-narratives, breathing picaresque life into them, then taking aim at the caricatures peopling them with a BB gun.

In this sense, Do Things isn’t too far removed from 2009’s Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele.

Otherwise, all bets are off. Perspectives are now strictly first- and second-person, an expansive sonic palette usurps the intimacy of the ukulele, dude no longer sings like he reveres Morrissey. May piles up cresting false falsettos, disco pulses and Beach Boys wall-ofsound swells and, with the exceptionally sappy “Tell Her,” offers a serviceable “So Happy Together” homage; the “You and me/Are never gonna end” chorus from “Best Friend” is knowingly precious, all love-sick self-delusion.

Yet there’s something somber about songs like “Parents” and “Wedding Day” that suggests that May isn’t laughing at anyone. “Do things your own way,” he intones ludicrously on the title track, sounding as sincere as he does grotesque. —Raymond Cummings

Melvins Lite

Freak Puke Ipecac

Two Melvins and a double bass

Weirdo-metal legends the Melvins have undergone so many lineup changes, collaborations and strange experiments over their almost 30year career that even casual fans are accustomed to the frequent shifts. The latest transformation—as Melvins Lite—features original members Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, along with Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle fame on upright bass. Though adding a double bass might be the jazziest the Melvins will ever get, this is still the dirge-y sludge they’re known for, only with an even lower bottom end.

Whether bowed or plucked, the band pushes the instrument as far as its sonic palette will let it. On “Leon Vs. The Revolution” and the

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Kicking It New School No joke, Bob Pollard and Co. offer serious rock ‘n’ roll instruction

S

kepticism surely abounded when the

Guided By Voices’ “classic” lineup reunion didn’t end with the lengthy cash-grab tour, but instead resulted in an LP, January’s Let’s Go Eat The Factory, and now Guided By Voices this follow-up. (Amazingly, a third outing is already done.)

Class Clown Spots A UFO Doubters of hard-drinking, prolific former teacher (did I miss anything?) Robert Pollard and his old/new cohorts fire were, shall we say, misguided: Factory was a top-notch return, and Class Clown is even better.

To say Class Clown is more focused or streamlined than Factory probably isn’t accurate, but it does seem more cohesive and feels somewhat closer to vintage GBV. The title track, with its lilting “Up, up we go now” refrain and vaguely “My Valuable Hunting Knife”esque beat, and the unstoppably melodic “Billy Wire” are two of the catchiest tunes Pollard has ever penned. (Pause here to marvel at that before continuing to read, if you plan to.) Those nuggets fit perfectly with the likes of “Chain To The Moon,” a minute of acoustic, Pollard-harmonizing-with-himself melancholia, the retro, 46-second blast of “Roll Of The Dice, Kick In The Head” and pummeling closer “No Transmission.” Auxiliary tunesmith Tobin Sprout chimes in with jangly gems such as “All Of This Will Go,” proving again he’s no mere sidekick.

It’s too early to judge where Class Clown will rank in GBV’s voluminous catalog and what it, Factory and other forthcoming product will add to good ol’ Uncle Bob’s legacy.

But a hard-drinking, prolific former teacher once sang, “Live it up before you pass away,” so it’s best not to ponder such things. Just savor what you’re hearing. —Matt Hickey

photo by beowulf sheehan

title track, King Buzzo lays down his standard monster riffs, while Dunn’s scales dance around them. Though the quieter moments are choice tests in eerie tension (“Worm Farm Waltz,” “Tommy Goes Berserk”), the Melvins work best in straight rock ‘n’ roll, especially on the album’s highlight: an utterly badass cover of Wings’ “Let Me Roll It.” —Bryan Bierman

Metric

Synthetica Metric Music/Mom + Pop

System quarterbacks

Don’t know what it is about these Canadian female-fronted pop-rockers.

Like anxious neighbors Tegan & Sara, Metric

boasts airlock-compressed tunes as Pro-Tooled and rigidly catchy as any K-pop. The band also tends to be underrated or absent altogether in the discussion of Where Rock Be. (Is it here? Is it dead? Did the Black Keys bring it back?)

So, here’s a spotlessly produced, classic alt-rock album that recalls Garbage’s golden age of Version 2.0 rather than Garbage’s 2012 comeback. Emily Haines’ professionally gorgeous hooks reach a fantastic peak on curling sex ode “The Void” (“I stayed up all night to prove/I could keep up with you”) and pounding mischief memory “Youth Without Youth” (“We played/Double dutch/With a hand grenade”).

Only mildly epic opener “Artificial Nocturne” doesn’t burrow immediately into your cerebellum. —Dan Weiss

Philm

Harmonic Ipecac

Dishormonic orchestra

Tin Men

The Walkmen celebrate their 10th anniversary with heart

H

ow could they keep it up so long?” Ten

years later, Hamilton Leithauser sounds like a prophet. His Walkmen have been prohibitive favorite, reluctant champion, forgotten also-ran and phoenix The Walkmen rising. After a decade together and holding three consecutive Heaven prizewinners, they’re settling into a new role: American clasFat Possum sic. Lo and behold, everyone who pretended not to like them came back.

Allegiance is rewarded, in Heaven as it was on Lisbon. That this LP is less summit than plateau says more about the level of past work than anything lacking from this one. Since the neurochemical nadir of 2008’s globetrotting, soul-searching You & Me, they’ve climbed out one lozenge-begging anthem at a time (“In The New Year,” “Angela Surf City,” “Victory”).

Heaven, too, is full of them—rousing siblings “Heartbreaker” and “Nightingales” and the square-jawed, U2.0 title track foremost—but the bigger statement is made by a smaller song. Announcing the presence of housekeeper Phil Ek, “We Can’t Be Beat” opens the album sans effect: a babied guitar figure and Leithauser having some fun with a “Duke Of Earl” croon, a barbershop oohing behind him. “Oh, it’s been so long, but I made it through/It’s been so long,” he sings, carrying the last vowels over three measures, and finally, the Walkmen arrive.

The man who once wondered “What’s in it for me” and “What happened to you,” now boasting “We’ll never leave” and “We can’t be beat”? A happy anniversary indeed, and hardly a tinny one. —Noah Bonaparte Pais

Depending on your frame of reference … actually, all frame of references be damned. Who would have ever imagined the drummer who did that sick double-bass break on Slayer’s “Angel Of Death” back in 1986 would ever be in the same room—let alone the same band—with the dude who presently holds down the low end on “Low Rider” and guitarist/vocalist Gerry Nestler from late-’80s experi-metal freakos Civil Defiance?

As you might expect, Harmonic isn’t the most linear or ordinary of listens. It gravitates from Dazzling Killmen-type spazz-metal/ no-wave freakouts (“Vitrolize,” “Sex Amp”) and Zorn-ish ambience (“Way Down”) to San Diego noise rock and Lower East Side, abrasive grooves à la Unsane and Helmet (“Hun,” “Area”)—and all lopsided points in between.

Collaborations where the principals hail from different ends of the musical spectrum usually lack common ground, making their output little more than a curiosity. Thankfully, this is a problem Harmonic trounces with a big sonic shillelagh. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

Pujol

United States Of Being Saddle Creek

Being there

“I’m over the counterculture of feeling good,” Daniel Pujol snarls with a sneering Southern drawl on “DIY2K,” the first of a dozen hook-replete, hair-trigger rallying calls on the Nashville garage punker and his band of fellow beatniks’ sophomore LP. These are songs of youth struggling to steer clear of life’s cul-de-sacs and stopping off at some killer parties to celebrate the hardships and toast the confusion along the way. Unlike most cocksure punks burning through taut, hyper-immediate mini anthems at 220 beats-per-minute, you can actually make out most of Pujol’s literate lyrics, which gleefully appraise and chew the cud of post-modern media, true love, intellec-

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reviews bearded and Birkenstock’d leader of the Magnetic Zeros. I say “plays the role” because it’s a character supposedly based on one in a book Ebert was working on about a messianic figure sent to Earth. I also say that because, two albums in, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros sound just as phony as Ima Robot did.

There are a couple stabs at recreating the goodwill the band earned a couple years ago on conversational duet “Home,” a hand-holding slice of the sunny ’60s that, while contrived, at least had sweet-tooth appeal. “That’s What’s Up” is that song on Here. And like the sentiment of “home is wherever I’m with you,” there are plenty of Hallmark-y moments under the cloud of patchouli smoke. We’re told “love will lead us all” and “God made love,” and the band does a poor Bob Marley impression on “One Love To.” If gypster reggae becomes a thing, Ebert might end up on the front end of a trend for once. —Matt Sullivan

The Hangover Part III When it’s time to party, Japandroids party too hard Japandroids

B

ookending Japandroids’ latest release

is the sound of distant fireworks. The title, the popping firecrackers and the non-stop cacophopolyvinyl ny within all point to this being a party. And it is. Until one tunes in to the lyrics: “We’re drinking/And we’re still smoking/ Don’t we have anything to live for” (“The Nights Of Wine And Roses”). That’s when the celebration shifts, not necessarily away from fun entirely, but to a place where introspection enters.

It’s this internal musing that is the most interesting part of Celebration Rock. While the music drives by in a rush of acceleration, the words take a moment to reflect on themes of responsibility and settling down, only to determine that taking it easy is unnecessary.

On “Younger Us,” the line “Remember that night you were already in bed/Said, ‘Fuck it,’ got up to drink instead” is tossed out as an observation that results in the chorus of “Gimme younger us!” The piece of advice given on “Fire’s Highway” is “Kiss away your gypsy fears/And turn some restless nights to restless years.”

What made Japandroids’ two earlier releases exhilarating was the way the band placed dynamics in an assault of rock ‘n’ roll. There were pockets of space amid the frenzy of drums and guitar. Celebration Rock, while not devoid of these moments, finds fewer openings that aren’t filled to the max. Midway through, it’s already tiresome to hear the anthemic shouting and seemingly non-stop drum fills. It’s a celebratory listen for sure, but one that could do with a breather that shows off this duo’s skills. —Jill LaBrack Celebration Rock

tual evolution and “aristopunk” poseurs.

As a melodist, Pujol is obviously a wellversed pop pupil. Standouts like “Keeper Of Atlantis,” “Reverse Vampire,” “Niceness” and “Black Rabbit” (a song originally recorded with Jack White as producer and released as a single on his Third Man Records) are so effortlessly and relentlessly infectious that it’s impossible to think that Pujol didn’t spend long nights spinning and internalizing Fleetwood Mac and Kinks LPs. —Adam Gold

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Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Here

Community Music/ Vagrant

Send in the clowns

With Ima Robot, Alex Ebert donned a fashionmullet and skinny jeans and jumped on the early-aughts herky-jerky dance-punk bandwagon.

Now he plays the role of Edward Sharpe, the

Silversun Pickups

Neck Of The Woods Dangerbird

Cool kids never have the time

Even before “Lazy Eye,” their ubiquitous Guitar Hero/radio hit that more than a few mistook for a Smashing Pumpkins comeback single, hit the airwaves, Silversun Pickups were dogged by comparisons to Billy Corgan and his Pumpkins.

And it’s not exactly hard to see why; shared initials and nasal-voiced frontmen aside, neither of the Pickups’ first two records—all fuzzedout six-string melodrama and Brian Aubert’s very Corgan-esque whine—did much to downplay the overt similarities between the groups.

On its first full-length since 2009’s Swoon, the Silver Lake-based outfit recruited veteran producer Jacknife Lee (U2, R.E.M., Snow Patrol) to bolster its sound, crafting a surprisingly deep album that fleshes out the vaguely krautish electronica the band only touched on in previous efforts. Lead single “Bloody Mary,” however, proves Silversun Pickups as capable as ever of writing big, sappy guitar anthems. Keysman Joe Lester makes for an unlikely star, his spacious synth work often proving the band’s strongest suit, most notably on brilliant slowburner “Simmer.” But Aubert, who has finally managed to rein in the hi-gain dramatics that hampered the group’s past work, is clearly the real star here. Now let’s just hope he doesn’t shave his head. —Möhammad Choudhery

SpaceGhostPurrp

Mysterious Phonk: Chronicles Of SpaceGhostPurrp 4AD

We want the phonk

Miami producer/rapper SpaceGhostPurrp is a better producer than he is a rapper. In

photo by Leigh Righton

Regina Spektor

What We Saw From The Cheap Seats Sire

All Fjord One

Its hiatus adjourned, Sigur Rós returns with a frigid classic

T

here’s always been an element of the devo-

tional to the music of Sigur Rós, a sense that listening is like patching in with a higher power, even if Sigur Rós the liturgy is in a language you don’t understand. But whether Valtari your deity be spiritual, secular or glacier sprite, each release EMI/XL from the Icelandic quartet was a closer walk with he/she/it.

Some four years after a series of frustrating recording sessions prompted the members to get a little space, Sigur Rós reunited to revisit those sessions. With a little critical distance, the band turned the material into something like a definitive artistic statement, which could explain its difficulty reconciling it.

Bassist Georg Hólm’s admission that “I really can’t remember why we started this record; I no longer know what we were trying to do back then” is perhaps a clue that Sigur Rós had inadvertently struck a nerve. While Valtari is more electronic and ambient than previous releases, there’s something that feels at once infinitely more organic. Opener “Ég Anda” (“I Breathe”) is an existential declaration buttressed by the sounds of human breath; “Varúð” (“Caution”), with its soaring symphonic flourishes and children’s choir, sounds just like church; the title track is glitchy, ponderous and a little bit ominous.

While Valtari is reportedly more of a studio creation than previous work, it feels a bit like the long-lost companion record to the band’s stunning 2007 concert film Heima, in which Sigur Rós played a series of free, unannounced, often outdoor performances for its fellow Icelanders.

While no one track jumps out as a single, the entire album is something of a nearcubist deconstruction of the band’s sound. (Jónsi Birgisson has called it “an avalanche in slow motion”; think Artists Descending A Mountainside.) Valtari is perhaps best enjoyed in headphones, but don’t discount bouncing it off the walls of sanctuaries. Or fjords.

—Brian Howard

addition to appearing on his free mixtapes (Blackland Radio 66.6 and God Of Black Vol. 1), the 21-year-old’s beats have been rapped on by Harlem newcomer A$AP Rocky and Pittsburgh party-boy Wiz Khalifa. His sound is nightmarishly atmospheric, dripping with Screw-flavored Houston syrup—slow and ambient like Clams Casino, but smothered in horror-movie screams, doomsday synths and industrial noise. It’s more like black metal than hip hop.

While the beats set SpaceGhostPurrp apart,

his microphone skills are lacking; his flow, always sleepily riding behind the bass, doesn’t fluctuate. The only exception is “Get Yah Head Bust,” where he briefly displays his double-time capacities. But his apocalyptic perspective is refreshing within the context of pop rap’s obsession with designer clothes, bourgeois cars and ego-masturbation. “I always try to smile, but the world is fake,” he spits on “Mystikal Maze.” “I don’t have money, I don’t have cars/All I got is the truth and a couple of bars.”

—Elliott Sharp

A dark night of the soul Regina Spektor jettisons the glossy production of her last album, 2009’s Far, for the intimate sound of piano and voice. The songs on What We Saw From The Cheap Seats all hint at loss, limitation and aging, with Spektor’s poetic sensibility and passionate singing giving the LP a wrenching sense of vulnerability.

“All The Rowboats” has a thumping club beat supporting her classically flavored keyboards for a visit to a museum and a meditation on the worship of “masterpieces serving maximum sentences.” She explores heartache and unsatisfied desire on three stunning ballads: “Firewood,” “Open” and “How.” The slower tempos show off her classical piano training, and her quiet, understated singing wrings every bit of drama out of the lyrics. “Firewood” likens love to an illness that can never be cured and the pain one feels when they know it’s going to take some time before the hurt will diminish.

She’s especially unguarded on “How,” an ode to a lover she knows she’ll never see again that’s almost painful to listen to. —j. poet

Jack White

Blunderbuss Third Man

Here comes the scattershot

A few years back, Davis Guggenheim forever immortalized the moment Jimmy Page asked Jack White to walk him through the “Seven Nation Army” riff. It’s the sort of royal imprimatur liable to make any musician rethink their limitations, and the ex-White Stripe is no exception: His solo debut opens with a three-song barrage that draws emphatically upon the established White canon—slightly off-kilter-yetprimal riffage, blown-out fuzzy blues breaks, theatrical falsetto fluttering—but quickly veers into a swaggering series of subgenre rock ‘n’ roll drive-bys with targets ranging from ethereal Zeppelin-esque faerie-kingdom balladry to unvarnished, send-Levon-a-check Band worship to early Bowie nods to boogie piano reminders that, yes, White defected from Detroit Rock City to Nashville.

Is White’s nonchalant spectrum dabbling as interesting as the myriad variables of his own quirky sound? Eh, not quite, but I’m rooting for him, anyway. If White’s solo career takes off, perhaps Alison Mosshart will finally give in to a Discount reunion. —Shawn Macomber

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/movies NEGLECTED

No Hanky, No Panky

CRITERION

essay by

Stan Michna

When did Madonna—she of The Girlie Show roiling cravings of promiscuous Simpson World Tour who, on American network tele- and alleged womanizer Edward colliding in vision, invited David Letterman to take a a spume of nosebleeding passion. When even whiff of her panties—evolve into a prudish, the tiniest sensation of a sexual itch is sugfinger-wagging shrew? gested, Edward buys Wallis another piece of This question doesn’t refer to the eco- jewellery. That’s the climax. You’d think an nomic juggernaut known as Madonna, Inc.; inhibited, prune-eating spinster—not sexual whatever and however she’s been selling over renegade Madonna—had made this film. the past three decades, the world has bought.

The story is structured in parallel: in 1998 Love her or loathe her, she’s BIG. New York, an unhappily married woman Rather, the question applies to W./E. (di- named Wally Winthrop (get it?)—Abbie Corrected, co-written and co-produced by Big nish, who did much better work in Bright M herself ), concerning the grand romance Star—finds herself enthralled by the upcombetween pathologically ambitious Wallis ing Sotheby’s auction of Wallis Simpson’s Simpson and dumb-as-a-doorknob King Ed- estate. Thrall turns into obsession with the ward VIII, henceforth known as travails of Wallis and Edward, the the Duke and Duchess of Windstory jumping between past and sor following his abdication (for present. Paint-by-number parallels “the woman I love”) in 1936. ensue. We are supposed to be struck Their saga is the stuff of hisby the ironies. tory: suffocatingly dull (constituA flashback shows Wallis being tional crisis, Statute of Westminkicked brutally by her first husband; ster . . . z-z-z-z); politically exploWally gets beaten by her husband. A sive (keen enthusiasm for Nazis); married Wallis discovers burgeonand salaciously speculative (hering love with Edward; Wally falls W./E. will be maphroditism? homosexuality? available on hard for a security guard at Sothecattle prods?). Given that spec- DVD and Bluby’s, etc., etc. To reinforce the point, June 5 from tacular smorgasbord, who could ray Wallis time travels and appears—in Entertainment One have guessed Madonna would the flesh—to Wally to impart worldchoose . . . nothing? Nothing, except slavish weary wisdom about how hard it is to be a sympathy for Wallis Simpson and lavish at- woman. (They could have saved themselves tention to her clothes and jewels. The Mate- the trouble: Tammy Wynette nailed it in tworial Girl meets Brunette Ambition. and-half minutes nearly 45 years ago.)

(In widely reported comments publicizing The real pity of W./E. is its waste, parW./E., Madonna claimed she was unable, in ticularly of the cast. Fabulous clothes, jewher meticulous research, to find any evidence els and sets provide tempting eye candy, but supporting malicious allegations against cannot compensate for an empty story and Simpson. Madonna attributed them primar- embarrassingly vacuous dialogue. (An artily to jealousy of the haves by the have-nots— fully elliptic five-minute music video would photos and newsreels of the Windsors with have been more dramatic.) James D’Arcy as Hitler at his Berchtesgaden lair, Heil Hitler! Edward has nothing to do, magnetic Oscar salutes and reviewing the Fuhrer’s SS Guard Isaac (as the security guard) pure Harlequin notwithstanding.) romance stereotype, and the rest of the supThat part curtly dismissed, and the abdica- porting cast mere placeholders. Only the tion/constitutional crisis given short shrift, extraordinary Andrea Riseborough (see her one would think there would be at least a hint young Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk of reckless, passionate, kinky or forbidden To Finchley) as Wallis, manages to make, sex. You know: panties on the chandelier, sorceress-like, something out of nothing. bloody scratches, broken whiskey bottles, (Her final scene as an octogenarian twisting or the occasional footman sandwiched be- to Chubby Checker for the dying Edward is tween them. But no, not even a flicker of the mesmerizing.)

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The Ruling Class 1972 / Director

Peter Medak Why It’s Neglected: Limited theatrical release; intimidatingly literate; directed by a Hungarian; and almost three hours long.

The Theme: A ruthless, outrageously funny attack on the class system, it depicts the cream of British aristocrats as thick, rich and curdled.

In skewering, among other things, established religion, psychiatry and law-and-order hardliners, the film underscores the unremitting damage the class system has wrought everywhere.

The Story: When paranoid-schizophrenic Jack (Peter O’Toole), who thinks he’s Jesus (he climbs and sleeps on a giant cross), succeeds his father as Earl of Gurney, his unscrupulous uncle schemes—aided by various confederates, to no avail—to have him committed. When a psychiatrist employs another lunatic (who also thinks he’s variously Jesus, the Electric Messiah and the AC/DC God) to subject Jack to electric-shock therapy, Jack is “cured” . . . and transformed into murderous Jack the Ripper, more warmly embraced by the establishment than Jack as Jesus.

What You Get: Medak’s home movies shot on location; original fulllength feature of the most devastating evisceration of the upper classes ever put on film; and a commentary

by Medak, O’Toole and writer Peter Barnes so spellbinding you can listen without watching the movie.

Yet for all Madonna’s assiduous attention to detail, the credits end with: The events, characters and firms depicted in this film are fictitious . . . .

Ironically, her song “Masterpiece” plays over the credits.

Questions or comments?

Email stan@sunriserecords.com

/movies/new_releases JUNE 5

13 Assassins 1313: Billy the Kid Act of Valor Alfie Boe: Alfie Live American Animal American Pickers Vol. 3 American Pie Andersonville Animals United Anthony Bourdain Collection Apocalypse Aquarium for Your Home Arn the Knight Templar: The Complete Series Around June Babar: Classic Series – The Complete First Season Back to the Future Bad Ass Bad Blood: Hatfields and McCoys Bear Nation Beatles: Yellow Sumbarmine Big Lebowski Boogiepop Phantom: Complete TV Series Boss of Bosses Boystown: Season 1, Ep. 3 & 4 Breaking Bad: Fourth Season Brew Masters Burn Notice: Season Five Campfire for Your Home Carry On 4 Carry On 5 Casino Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: Ocean Commotion CatDog: Season 2 Part 1 Champion Road: Arena Chicago by Boat Civil War Anniversary Collection: Gore Vidal’s Lincoln/ Surrender at Appomattox Civilization: West and the Rest Collapsed Combat 4-Pack Vol. 1 Craft in America: Threads Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Eighth Season David Garrett: Legacy – Live in Baden Baden Declaration of War Designing Women: 20 Timeless Episodes Discover the Summer Olympics With Cecile and Pepo Discover the Winter Olympics With Cecile and Pepo Doc Martin: Series 5 Door to Door DragonBall Z Kai: Part Eight Earthquake Erin Brockovich Ernest’s Wacky Adventures 1 Ernest’s Wacky Adventures 2 Exit Strategy Fairly Legal: Season One Falling Skies: Season One Fast & The Furious Five Minarets in New York Fool and His Money Front Man: The Alex Boye Story Frontline: Murdoch’s Scandal G.I. Joe: Renegades Seas. 1 Vol. 1 Ghostlight Gothic Industrial Madness Grateful Dead: Dawn of the Dead Hawaii for Your Home Hell’s Kitchen Season 7 Hero Tales

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High Plains Drifter Hit So Hard Hoosiers House of Yes How to Live Forever I Plain Sight: Season Four I Will Fight No More Forevewr Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony Inch High Private Eye James Dean John Cage: The Works for Percussion, Vol. 2 John Carter John Mellencamp: It’s About You Journey 2: The Mysterious Island King Kong (2005) Knockdown Koch Brothers Exposed Kurenai: Complete Collection Lawrence Arms: An Evening of Extraordinary Circumstance Layover Season 1 Machine Gun Preacher Madonna: Lady Is a Vamp Missing in Action 2: Beginning Mists of Avalon MLB: Verlander’s 2007 No-Hitter Monsters From the Id Mummy (1999) National Lampoon’s Animal House Necessary Roughness: Season One New Tricks: Season Seven NFL: NY Giants: Road to XLVI Nirvana Normandy North West Frontier Nova: Deadliest Tornadoes Office Killer Outside the Law Pawn Stars Vol. 4 Phineas & Ferb: The Perry Files Pink Floyd: All-Star Line-Up Polar Explorer Pretty Boys Pretty Little Liars: Season 2 Prince Charming Private Romeo Proud Men Ptown Diaries Q Queen of Hearts Race Against Time Rage/Word of Honor Rags to Riches: Complete Series Raw Faith Rendezvous Rogue River Rolling Stones: Second Wave Romance in Manhattan Rome Express S.O.B. Safe House Scaramouche Skin Deep Smokey & The Bandit Spartacus Victor/Victoria Violin Masters: Two Gentlemen of Cremona Warrior 4-Pack Vol. 1 Washington: Behind Closed Doors West of Zanzibar Where East Is East White Collar: Season Three Winchester ‘73 Woodmans Workaholics: Season Two WWE: Stone Cold Steve Austin 2 Pack WWE: The Biggest Matches in ECW History Yankles

june 12 Entourage: The Complete Eighth Season

The once-promising Hollywood insider series farts to a halt, wrapping up the insufferable E/Sloan romance and resurrecting Vincent’s career for the trillionth time. [HBO]

JUNE 12

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies Accident Alien From Area 51: The Alien Autopsy Footage Revealed Alien Origin All Alone America’s Test Kitchen: Seas. 12 Angelina Ballerina: Musical Moves Arizona’s Monuments Assault Awesome Adventures Vol. 2: Races, Chases and Fun Backyard to Battlefield Bleach Uncut Box Set Vol. 13 B Meltzer’s Decoded: Season 2 Bridge to the Sun Chicago in Chicago Chicken Little… and More Zany Animal Stories Chocolate News: Complete Series

Cleanflix Close Combat Vol. 1 Coastal Dreaming Criterion Coll.: Shallow Grave Criterion Coll.: The Gold Rush Death Wish 3 Death Wish 4: The Crackdown Decisions Demoted Devilman Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks Doctor Who: The Seeds of Death Dog Bites Man: Complete Series Dog the Bounty Hunter: Taking It To the Streets Dogs in Space Don’t Go in the Woods Dudley & Dean Evenson: A Year of Guided Meditations Elephant Sighs Entourage: Season 8 Episodes: The First Season Fastest

Flareup Freak Show: The Complete Series Gas Pump Girls GCB: The Complete First Season Gene Simmons Family Jewels Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance Give Me the Banjo Groucho Marx in the Mikado Happiest Baby on the Block Happiest Toddler on the Block Harold and Maude Herisson Heroes (De La Independencia Mexicana) History Classics: World War I: The Great War History of the Machine Gun Hopelessly in June Hullabaloo Hybrid World: The Plan to Modify and Control the Human Race In Darkness Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance Judo: Immobilization Vol. 1 Kajunkenbo Karim Nagi Presents: Arab Folk Dance: Dabje, Khaliji, Saidi & Sufi

Katie Loves the Kittens… and More Funny Stories Kill Speed Little Bit of Heaven Luisa Miller Malevolent Meatballs Minnesota: Parks for the People Missing: Season 1 Monsters Brawl My Tutor Friend 2 Necessary Death One Piece: Collection 6 Oregon Birds Oregon’s Memorable Century Paradise Queen’s Blade 2: Complete Series R.E.M.: Juke Joint Johnny – Straight Out of Georgia Rake Ranchero Rift Robbers’ Roost Run for the Sun Saintly Sinners Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Fifth Season Scandal: Season 1 Scholastic Storybook Treasures: My First Collection, Vol. 3 Featuring Chicken Little Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Simoun: Endless Melody Collection Something’s Gonna Live Son-Rise (A Miracle of Love) Star of Midnight Sultry Assassin: Aphrodisiac Kill Superman vs. the Elite Survivor: Guatemala Survivor: Panama – Exile Island Thin Ice This Could Be the Night Thrill Seekers Too Big to Fail Top Gear: Season 18 Tosh.0 Vol. 1: Hoodies Toughest Gun in Tombstone Tribe: Series One, Part Two Triple Feature: Heathers/Boys Next Door/Tuff Turf Tyler Perry’s Aunt Bam’s Place Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds Undercover Kitty Washington the Beautiful Wheeler Boys

june 19 Swervedriver: Live in Sydney

One of the ’90s’ most underrated shoegaze(ish) bands finally gives us a career-spanning live DVD, hopefully to preface a long overdue follow-up to 99th Dream. [Cobraside]

JUNE 19

65 Redroses Alien Origin Angelina Jolie: Bad Girl Gone Good – Unauthorized Documentary

Attenberg Aukmen Awakened Bag of Hammers Batman Beyond: Season 1 Batman: Animated Series Vol. 3 Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Season Three Complete Bedford Springs Believe: Seeing Is Believing – Live Below Ground; Demon Holocaust Best of Batman Best of Person to Person: American Icons Best of Person to Person: Hollywood Legends Best of Person to Person: Legendary Entertainers Big Fix Big Miracle Bill & Gloria Gaither: God Bless the USA Carrie Underwood: All American Girl – Unauthorized Documentary

Cat Run Catfight: Why Women Fight Charlie Daniels Band: Live at Rockpalast Code Code of Silence Criterion Collection: And Everything Is Going Fine Criterion Coll.: Gray’s Anatomy Danko Jones: Bring on the Mountain Dead Want Women Dean Koontz’s Intensity Disco Exorcist Dragonaut: The Resonance – The Complete Series Eminem: Recharge Exit Humanity

Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison Family Affair Family Demons Four Lovers FP Franklin & Bash: Season 1 Freddy Fender: Live at the Renaissance Center Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play – Suzaku Box Season One Give ‘Em Hell Harry Golgo 13: Collection 4 Gretl: Witch Hunter Headspace Hey Dude: Season 3 Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians Home Invasion How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?

Hungry Rabbit Jumps Ignite: Our Darkest Days Live Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks Jandek: Toronto Sunday Jerk Theory John Lee Hooker: Cook With the Hook – Live 1974 Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge: 40th Anniv. Edition Just Do It Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox Keyhole Kiara the Brave Kids Go to the Woods Kids Get Dead K-On! Season 2 Collection 1 Lady Gaga: Dancing in the Dark: Unauthorized Documentary Last Days of Pompeii Legend of Hell’s Gate Lina Wertmuller Collection Lost in America Lost in Buenos Aires Lost Woods Louie: Complete Second Season Love Story Lucky Girl Lydia Lunch/Road Rant Maisie Collection Vol. 1 Man Class Manassas: Lost Broadcasts M Pickford: Muse of the Movies Matter of Taste Michael Jackson: Legendary King…

Michael Jackson: The Way He Makes Them Feel Morning Departure Mother’s Day Evil Motorhead: Bonecrusher Mutantes My Reincarnation Nature: The White Lions Neil Young: DVD Collectors’ Box Never Let Go Never Say Never: Deidre Hall Story Nine Muses Ninja Champion/Weapons of Death Nova: Hunting the Elements P.O.E.: Poetry of Eerie Paradise Lost: Evolve Paraiso Pendragon: Out of Order Comes …

Permissive Power Rangers Samurai Vol. 1: The Team Unites Power Rangers Samurai Vol. 2: A New Enemy Profane Project X Punk Revolution NYC: Velvet Underground New York Qhapaq Nan, La Voix Des Andes Raconteurs: Live at Montreux 2008

Radio Rebel Real Merle Travis Guitar Real of Napalm Records III Reel Love Rihanna: Up Close & Personal Rockwell Sarah Silverman: Complete Series Shakira: Her Life, Her Story – Unauthorized Documentary Sherlock Holmes & The Woman in Green Snow on Tha Bluff Space Children Super Why: Around the World Swervedriver: Live in Sydney Tent City USA Tete En Friche That Kind of Girl This Is Civilization Todd Rundgren: Healing Treasure Chest of Horrors Tree Widow Trial & Retribution: Set 5 Tyler Perry’s House of Payne 9 Van Halen: David Lee Roth Years Wanderlust Way Ahead Web Therapy: Season 1 Whitney Houston: The Greatest Love of All Why Lie? I Need a Drink WWE: Over the Limit 2012 JUNE 26

21 Jump Street (2012) Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 5 All Dark Places Amok Train Artist Ator Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom NYC Basic Techniques of Caopeira Bending the Rules Best Laid Plans Best of Foyle’s War Best of He-Man & The Masters of the Universe Big Trouble & The Crew & Oscar Bikini Spring Break Billy Bathgate & Blaze & Nixon Bowling for the Mob: A True Story of Depravity Breakaway Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Lost Broadcasts Carried Away Casablanca: The Complete Series Castlerock C’Mon Man Criterion Coll.: Samurai Trilogy Criterion Coll.: The 39 Steps Daddy’s Home Damages: Season 4 Deceived & The Rich Man’s Wife & Summer of Sam Decoy Bride Diagnosis Murder Movie Collection Doctor & Stella & Roommates Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Rescue in the Mermaid Kingdom Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham and Other Stories Duchess of Hamilton Famous Bombers of WWII Father Hood & Life With Mikey & Swing Vote Frontline: The Real CSI Ganges: Divine River Giselle Greatest Tractor Show on Earth Hangman Hiding

History Classics: The Mafia Holy Man & Kazaam & Spaced Invaders Hope Springs & Green Card & Mumford Ici & Ailleurs Identical IN the Footsteps of Beethoven In the Footsteps of Verdi Iron Man: Armored Adventures: Season 2 Vol 1 Jezebel Double Feature: Permissive/That Kind of Girl Kasabian: Live at the O2 Kirk Douglas Law & Order: Criminal Intent – The Seventh Year Little Lord Fauntleroy Love in a Cold Climate Manchester United Season Review 2011/2012 Maria Holic: Alive – Complete Collection Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake Mindfulness for Urban Depression With Ira Israel Miracle Match & Prefontane & White Squall Mirror Mirror More Than Puppy Love Nazis at the Center of the Earth Night of the Grizzly Night Tide Nina: Crazy Suicide Girl Numero Deux Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Oranges and Sunshine Ouran High School Host Club Paranormal Plantation Parasitic Paseo Perfect Family Pink Floyd: Story of Wish You Were Here Reason 6: Advance Saint Petersburg: Window on Europe Second-Story Man Sector 7 Shark Divers: 4-Part Documentary Series Sleeper Sound of Noise Spirit Is Willing Stone Temple Pilots: Alive in the Windy City Strawberry Panic: The Complete Series Taking Care of Business & Mr. Destiny & Hello Again Tales That Witness Madness TCM Greatest Classic Legends Film Collection: Joan Crawford TCM Greatest Gangster Films Collection: Humphrey Bogart Tied in Blood Time of the Wolf Tommy Lee Jones Collection: 4 Film Favorites Towano Quon: Complete Collection Toxic Lullaby Travel the Road: The Source Tween Romance Collection: 4 Film Favorites Twisted Terror Collection: 4 Film Favorites Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 6 World’s Most Beautiful Place Wrath of the Titans WWE: Falls Count Anywhere Matches Zebraman Zombiefied

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/music/new_releases JUNE 5

1776 After the Ball Broken Families Cendres Et Sang Prisoners Echoes of Love Conclusions Netherwards The Nature of the Beast/ Power Play Architects (UK) Daybreaker Ashra Ashra/Ashra 2 Astras Maze of Time At the Drive In The Lowdown Atrium Carceri Reliquiae Dave Ball Don’t Forget Your Alligator The Bamboos Medicine Man The Beach Boys That’s Why God Made the Radio The Beatles Yellow Submarine Songtrack Bedlam Bedlam in Command Belleruche Rollerchain Eric Benet The One Big K.R.I.T. Live From Jherek Bischoff Composed Black Music Disaster Black Music Disaster Black Shape of Nexus Negative Black Black Sheep Wall No Matter Where It Ends Alfie Boe Alife Justin Vivian Bond Silver Wells David Bowie The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: 40th Anniversary Edition Brian Bromberg Compared to That Bobby Brown Masterpiece M. Brueggergosman I’ve Got a Crush on You BT Laptop Symphony Call Me No One Last Parade Candlemass Psalms for the Dead Canned Heat The Hits, the Blues Carach Angren Where the Corpses Sink Forever Luis Cardenas Animal Instinct Cardiac Arrest Vortex of Violence Brandi Carlile Bear Creek Johnny Cash I Walk the Line Catamenia The Rewritten Chapters Chubby Checker Very Best of Chubby Checker Circus Maximus Nine Shawn Colvin All Fall Down Creator Phantom Antichrist Cryptic Vision In a World Cryptic Vision Of Infinite Possibilities Curren$y The Stoned Immaculate Curumin Arrocha Cyanide A Descent Into Hell Dahlia’s Tear Dreamsphere Charlie Daniels Band Live at Rockpalast The Darlings The New Escape Decrepid Live at the Purple Turtle Lana Del Ray X-posed Deride The Void Din Brad Dor Dinozauras Ecce Cruor!

Troy Donockley Messages Dave Douglas Magic Triangle/Leap of Faith Downfire Damnation Robert Duchaine Offensive Epitaph Danger Man Alejandro Escovedo Big Station Eths III Phil Everly Star Spangled Springer Faithful Breath Rock Lions Fates Warning Inside Out: Expanded Edition Fear Factory Industrialist The Features Wilderness Float Face Down Exitium Verum Friends Manifest The Gates of Slumber Suffer N Guilt Generation of Vipers Howl and Filth The Germs (GI) 1776 B. Adair/J. Paul Adaliah Aenaon The Agonist Omar Akram Altars Anhedonist April Wine

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Brutal Romance The Best Barrelhouse Waves From Albert Ayler Love Jams Volume 2 Generals Jazz Party Boxset Unison Hello Marry Lou Clever Disguise Come to Me/Well Kept Secret/Take Heart Night Long Distance Novalis Flossenengel Offending Age of Perversion Kid Ory Kid Ory Meets Red Allen Oz Knozz True Believer Pee Wee Bluesgang Boudoir De Luxe Phobia Remnants of Filth Wilson Picket Chocolate Mountain Pomegranates Heaven Predator Homo Infimus Prince Buster Sister Big Stuff Pseudogod Deathwomb Catechesis Pujol United States of Being Queen Queen Box 3 Raison D’Etre When the Earth Redeemer First Degree Renegade Creation Bullet Rise to Remain City of Vultures River City Extension Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger Chris Robinson Brotherhood Big Moon Ritual Xavier Rudd Spiriti Bird Bobby Rydell Very Best of Bobby Rydell S.P.O.C.K. The Best of the SubSpace Years Sala Delle Colonne XX A.D. Emeli Sande Our Version of Events Sarcofago Decade of Decay Sarcofago Hate Sarcofago Inri Sarcofago Rotting Sarcofago The Laws of Scourge Sarcofago The Worst/Crust Dan Sartain Too Tough to Live SBB SBB Rony Seikaly Nervous Nitelife The Shangri-Las, B. Lavette & More Boys Can Be Mean The Sheds Self/Doubt A Silent Film Sand & Snow Paul Simon Graceland: 25th Anniversary Edition Skillet & Leroy 2 or 3 Times Big Ken Smith Hometown Home Patti Smith Banga The Cory Smoot Experiment When Worlds Collide Solblot Of the Wand and the Moon Soundscape Grave New World Soundtrack Madagascar 3 Soundtrack Rock of Ages Soundtrack Yankles Spectrum Road Spectrum Road Squackett Chris Squire & Steve Hackett Stackridge Best Of Vivian Stanshall Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead Dave Stringer & Spring Groove Yatra Sugarloaf Sugarloaf/Spaceship Earth Tank War Nation The Temper Trap The Temper Trap Anna Ternheim Night Visitor Texas Tornados Live From Austin Tx Richard Thompson Live From Austin TX The Toothaches O! Be Joyful The Tower & The Fool How Long Toy Dolls The Album After the Last One Various Artists 2012 Warped Tour Compilation Various Artists A Long Hot Summer Various Artists Blood, Sweat & Punk VOl. 1 Various Artists Foggy Mtn Special Various Artists Ibiza 2012 Various Artists In-Akustik Soundcheck Various Artists Kin: Songs by Mary Karr Morglbl Van Morrison Ella Mae Morse Mount Everest Trio Mr. Capone-E The Mynabirds N-Coded Music Maria Neckam Ricky Nelson Neonfly Juice Newton

Scott Lucas and the Married Men june 5

Blood Half Moon Not sure why the Local H leader needs a side project given that he writes everything but drums for the duo, but these let’smake-up songs are worth the full band treatment. [The End] Manuel Goettsching Die Muld Gong Electric Shiatsu Googoosha Googoosha Gorefest False/Erase Grand Magus Iron Will Grand Magus The Hunt Grand Magus Wolf’s Return Hail Spirit Noir Pneuma Haunted Heads Blue Sky Happiness Heart Strange Euphoria Heikousen Parallels The Hives Lex Hives Kelly Hogan I Like to Keep Myself in Pain B. Hopper & R. Fenner Virtuality Iamdynamite Supermegafantastic Ivory Tower IV The Jacka The Sentence Alan Jackson Thirty Miles West Big George Jackson Nothing Japandroids Celebration Rock Jay & The Americans Sands of Time/Wax Museum/Capture the Moment Waylon Jennings Live From Austin TX Jorn Bring Heavy Rock to the Land Judge Smith Orfeas Ramin Karimloo Human Heart Karthago Love Is a Cake Karthago Second Setp Robert Earl Keen Live From Austin TX Bap Kennedy The Sailor’s Revenge Stacey Kent Dreamer in Concert Kid Gorgeous Blue Romance Jana Kramer Jana Kramer Lenny Kravitz Mama Said (Deluxe Edition) L.A. Guns Hollywood Forever L. Slim & The Law The Way We Move The Lava Children The Lava Children Lettuce Fly Liars WIXIW Lil Ed & The Blues Imperials Jump Start Lil G Different Stilo Lost in Society Let It Sail Scott Lucas & The Married Men Blood Half Moon Amanda Mair Amanda Mair Manipulator Voidbound Marduk Serpent Sernon Marley’s Ghost Jubilee Maroon 5 Songs About… 10th Anniversary Edition John Mayall Smokin’ Don McLean Addicted to Black Melvins LIte Freak Puke Ministry The Very Best of Fixes and Remixes Moon Safari A Doorway to Summer Moon Safari Blomljud Moon Safari Lover’s End Jackie Moore Make Me Feel Like a Woman

George Duke DVA Earth, Wind & Fire Edens Edge Electric Light Orchestra Epic Soundtracks Jimmy Fallon Far East Movement Fly Future of the Left

Nada Surf june 12 Karmic EP

Stan Getz

Before their “Popular” breakout via 1996’s High/ Low, the indie trio offered a promising template on this EP, now reissued with 7-inch rarity “Pressure Free” as a bonus.

[Hi-Speed Soul]

Giant Sand Dexter Gordon

Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Nick Vayenas Victorious Cast Feat.

Victoria Justice Rick Wakeman Wally Joe Walsh Daniel Wanrooy The Warriors Whirr Johnny Winter Winter’s Verge Wormed Wormed Write This Down Xfactor1 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Zaz

New Order Tribute No More Tears Story of Blue Beat 1961 Vol. 2 Top Teen Dance Hits Nick Vayenas Victorious 2.0 In the Nick of Time Valley Gardens Analog Man Slice of Life Bolton Club 65 Distressor Live Bootleg Series Vol. 8 Beyond Vengeance Planisphaerium Quasineutrality Lost Weekend Famous.Last.Words Americana Zaz

JUNE 12

2econd Class Citizen The Small Minority 3 Brave Souls 3 Brave Souls 31 Knots The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere Aloha Some Echoes Architecture in Helsinki Like It or Not EP Chet Baker The Very Best Of Paul Banks Julian Plenti Lives EP Big SMO Grass Roots Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland Black Is Beautiful BoDeans American Made Jonathan Boulet We Keep the Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start The Heart The Bouncing Souls Comet The Dave Brubeck Quartet The Columbia Studio Albums Collection The Byrds The Complete Columbia Albums Collection M. Chapin Carpenter Ashes and Roses Stanley Clarke The Complete 1970s Epic Albums Collection Billy Cobham Picture This John Coltrane The Very Best Of The Constellations Do It for Free Sam Cooke The RCA Albums Collection Brian Culbertson Dreams Miles Davis Quintet The Very Best Of The dBs Falling Off the Sky John Denver The RCA Albums Collection Paul Desmond The Complete RCA Albums Collection DJ Numark Wonderwheel Spins 2012 Drivin N’ Cryin Songs From the Laundromat

Hathaways The Heptones The Hive Dwellers Billie Holiday Hot Chip Ryan Humbert The Hundred in the Hands The Invisible Jail Thom Janusz Joan of Arc Judas Priest Jukebox the Ghost Rolf Julius Kandodo Kansas

The Complete 1970s Epic Albums Collection Pretty Ugly The Columbia Masters Edens Edge The Classic Albums Collection Wild Smile: An Anthology Blow Your Pants Off Dirty Bass Year of the Snake The Plot Against Common Sense The Classic Columbia Albums Collection Tucson The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Parasol Sessions Volume One Good Vibes Hewn From the Wilderness Lady Day In Our Heads Sometimes the Game Plays You Red Night Rispah Traps Ron Forella Moves Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain The Complete Albums Collection Safe Travels Raining Kandodo The Classic Albums Collection 1974-1983 Blues Live Quarantine The Blues Ruler of the Night

Freddie King Laurel Halo J.B. Lenoir Magic Trick Mahavishnu Orch.

With J. McLaughlin The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Boban & M. Markovic Golden Horns: The Best Of Wynton Marsalis Swingin’ Into the 21st Mates of State All Day Mates of State Team Boo Matt Pond PA The Green Fury Dent May Do Things Pat Metheny Unity Band Metric Synthetica Mice Parade Live: England vs. France Wymond Miles Under the Pale Moon Miss May I At Heart Wes Montgomery The Very Best Of Motion City Soundtrack Go Nada Surf Karmic EP Nouela Chants Pop Etc. Pop Etc. Grace Potter & The Nocturnals The Lion the Beast Public Image Ltd. This Is PiL (CD/DVD) Rainer Maria Atlantic EP Rainer Maria Long Knives Drawn Return to Forever The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Mighty Mo Rodgers Cadillac Jack Sonny Rollins The Very Best Of Rush Clockwork Angels Ryat Totem Saturday Looks Good to Me Cold Colors Mike Scheidt Stay Awake Woody Shaw The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Ed Sheeran + Wayne Shorter The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Nina Simone The Complete RCA Albums Collection Soundtrack Bernie Soundtrack Hemingway & Gellhorn Soundtrack Let It Shine

Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Spaceghostpurrp Stepdad Sunday’s Best The Tallest Man on Earth Tech N9ne Presents Matt Toka Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Josh Turner Usher Variety Lights Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Visioneers Waka Flocka Flame

Lola Versus Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Touchback Mysterious Phonk Wildlife Pop The Californian There’s No Leaving Now Rollin’ Stone Matt Toka

Trouble Punching Bag Looking 4 Myself Central Flow Ace Records Story Greatest Songs 1940s Now Country 5 That’s My Jam Top 40 Country Vol. 1 Hipology Triple F Life: Friends, Fans & Family Grover Washinton Jr. The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Weather Report The Columbia Albums 19761982 The Welcome Wagon Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Device Phil Western Laborandum Walt Wilkins Plenty Wintersleep Hello Hum Bobby Womack The Bravest Man in the Universe Xbxrx Wars The Young Dub Egg

JUNE 19

Ahab The All-American Band JD Allen Jarrard Anthony Apollo Four Forty

The Giant

Stars and Stripes The Matador and the Bull Ready to Live The Future’s What It Used to Be Fiona Apple The Idler’s Wheel Peter Appleyard Sophisticated Ladies At Vance Facing Your Enemy Bacon Brothers Philadelphia Road: The Best Of Bruce Barth Three Things of Beauty Johnnie Bassett I Can Make That Happen Bermuda The Wandering Beyonce 4 (deluxe) Justin Bieber Believe A. Blaylock & Redline Hard Country Blood on the Dance Floor Evolution Burning Love Rotten Thing to Say Burning Point The Ignitor Can The Lost Tapes Joey Cape / Tony Sly Acoustic Vol. 2 Kenny Chesney Welcome to the Fishbowl Chicago Chicago 17 Children 18:3 On the Run Chantal Claret The One, The Only Ravi Coltrane Spirit Fiction Crispell – Dresser – Hemingway Play Braxton Dawn of Demise Rejoice in Vengeance Def-Con-One Warface Delta Rae Carry the Fire Digital Soundboy Soundsystem Fabric 63 The Dirty Heads Cabin by the Sea Dr. Acula Nation The Chuck Dukowski Sextet Haunted Dying Fetus Reign Supreme Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart Dedication Duane Eddy Duane Eddy Electric Hellfire Club Kiss the Goat Damon Elliott Shadow of Reality Christian Escoude Joue Brassens: Au Bois De Mon Coeur

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/music/new_releases Exotic Animal Petting Zoo Exumer Eye Empire F5 Forrest Fang Firewater Firewater Firewater Firewater The Flower Kings The Flying Burrito Brothers

Tree of Tongues Possessed by Fire Impact The Reckoning Animism Get Off the Cross Psychopharmacology Songs We Should Have Written The Man on the Burning Tightrope Banks of Eden

The Flying Burrito Brothers/Last of the Red Hot Burritos For All Those Sleeping Outspoken Lita Ford Living Like a Runaway Sara Gazarek Blossom & Bee Gregory Generet (re)generet-ion The Ghost Inside Get What Y ou Give Groove Armada Late Night Tales Hacienda Shakedown Glen Hansard Rhythm and Repose Paul Hardcastle The Chill Lounge Sophie B. Hawkins The Crossing Hawkwind Onward Hi Power Ent Presents Bluetiful Day 3-CD Box Set Keith Hudson Rasta Communication Ignite the Borealis Coup de Grace Ihsahn Eremite The C. Jackson Band A Cup of Joe: A Tribute to Big Joe Turner Al Jarreau Metropol Orkest-Live Juvenile Rejuvenation Katana Storms of War Bradley Kincaid A Man and His Guitar Selected Sides Klaypex Ready to Go Nicolette Larson Say When/Rose of My Heart Lil C H-Town Chronic 6 Lions Lions To Carve Our Names Lit The View From the Bottom Looking Forward Down With the Ship Lostprophets Weapons Make Do and Mend Everything You Ever Loved Malice New Breed of Godz (CD/ DVD) Manilla Road Open the Gates Manilla Road The Courts of Chaos Mantas Death by Metal Marion Crane The New Religion MC Yogi Pilgrimage Kate Miller-Heidke Nightflight Kylie Minogue The Best of Kylie Minogue Jim Mize No Tell Motel Jim Mize Release It to the Sky Mnemic Mnemesis Moby Destroyed Remixed Morning Parade Morning Parade Joe Moses From Nothing The Murder of My Sweet Bye Bye Lullaby My Dynamite My Dynamite Nachtblut Dogma Nickodemus Moon People Old Forgotten Lands Primal Original Cast Recording Queen of the Mist The Overseer We Search, We Dig Buck Owens Live at the White House Jessica Pavone Hope Dawson Is Missing Peaking Lights Lucifer Steve Poltz Noineen Noiny Noin Riz MC Microscope Steve Roach Day Out of Time (CD/DVD) Rockabilly X Rockabilly X Rumpelstiltskin Grinder Ghostmaker Todd Rundgren Healing

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JUNE 26

Casey Abrams Admiral Fallow The Alchemist Arild Andersen Beachwood Sparks Kath Bloom Blues Traveler Chris Cagle Johnny Cash

Everclear june 26

Invisible Stars Now in their fourth (!) iteration, the band who brought you “Santa Monica” and “Father of Mine” hopes to conjure a little late ’90s magic on their first album in six years. [eone]

Say Anything Diego Schissi Schram Marlee Scott Senses Fail Sibelian Sidh Gary Sloan & Clone Smashing Pumpkins Chris Smither Smoke DZA Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Spiders & Snakes Spineshank States Mike Stern Stroszek Teodor Tuff Erena Terakubo B.J. Thomas

Anarchy, My Dear Tongos Rockin’ Fish Tales 3 Beautiful Maybe Follow Your Bliss Gothic Opera 1999-2011 Lila Harmonitalk Oceania Hundred Dollar Valentine Rugby Thompson Brave Game of Thrones Season 2 People Like Us Piranha 3DD London Daze Anger Denial Acceptance Room to Run All Over the Place Sound Graveyard Bound Soliloquy New York Attitude The Complete Sceptor Singles

The Devin Townsend Project By a Thread: Live in London Trae Streets of the South U.D.O. Celebrator: Rare Tracks Matt Ulery By a Little Light Vampires Everywhere Hellbound and Heartless Various Artists 1961 British Hit Parade Pt 2 Various Artists 1961 British Hit Parade Pt 3 Various Artists Dubstep Various Artists Hollywood Blues Various Artists Index04 Various Artists Party Rock Various Artists Project X Various Artists Reggae Mix USA Various Artists Trancemode Express 1.01 Various Artists We Love the Nightlife The Ventures Hawaii Five-O The Ventures On Stage The Ventures Super Psychedelics The Ventures Wild Things Levon Vincent Fabric 63 Walk the Moon Walk the Moon Seth Walker Time Can Change Weh En Natt Kom Doed Benjy Wertheimer & John De Kadt One River Dr. Michael White Adventures in New Orleans Jazz, Part 2 White Arrows Dry Land Is Not a Myth White Pulp Vulgarity Is Not a Felony Whitechapel Whitechapel Stan Whitmire Piano Inspirations Don Williams And So It Goes Bebe Winans America Amerca The Wretched End Inroads Z-ro & Agonylife Slab Soldierz Radio Z-ro & Lil C I Ain’t Takin’ No Loss 2 Zulu Winter Language

Casey Abrams Tree Bursts in Snow Russian Roulette Celebration The Tarnished Gold Here I Am Suzie Cracks the Whip Back in the Saddle Setlist: The Very Best of Johnny Cash Live In Cool Blood

Chain & the Gang Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons Old Believers The Cinematic Orch. In Motion #1 John Cooper Clarke Evidently John Cooper Clarke Julian Cope Psychedelic Revolution Dali’s Car InGladAloneness Miles Davis Setlist: The Very Best of Miles Davis Live M. Brant Demaria Solace John Denver Setlist: The Very Best of John Denver Live Teri Desario Caught Diiv Oshin Jerry Douglas Traveler The Dustaphonics Party Girl Electric Prunes The Complete Reprise Singles Everclear Invisible Stars Everest Ownerless The Flaming Lips The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends FM Indiscreet FM Tough It Out Mark Fosson Digging in the Dust Kenny G./R. Sharma Namaste Jeffrey Gaines Live in Europe Gojira L’Enfant Sauvage Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 27 Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 28 Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 29 Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 30 Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 31 Dave Hardin Miles of Nowhere Harlequin One False Move Henry Clay People Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives Jesca Hoop The House That Jack Built Infantree Hero’s Dose J. Dilla The Shining Joe Jackson The Duke Jano Ertale Jay Dee Welcome to Detroit Instrumentals R. Kelly Write Me Back Left Lane Cruiser and James Leg Painkillers Lil’ Scrappy Grustle Linkiin Park Living Things Little Feat Rooster Rag Lorn Ask the Dust Maroon 5 Overexposed Memphis May Fire Challenger Milk Maid Mostly No The Miracles Renaissance/Do it Mixtapes Even on the Worst Nights Molly Hatchet Setlist: The Very Best of Molly Hatchet Live New Broadway Cast Recording Evita The New Christy Minstrels A Retrospective 1962-1970 Alan O’Day Appetizers The Offspring Days Go By Old Man Gloom No The C. O’Leary Band Waiting for the Phone to Ring Open Mike Eagle 4nml Hsptl Rita Pavone The International Teen-Age Sensation Philthy Rich Kill Zone A Place to Bury Strangers Worship Elvis Presley Setlist: The Very Best of Elvis Presley

AVAILABLE JUNE 12 www.ilovemetric.com