August Needle

Gloryhound strike at the heart of rock with their debut album Electric Dusk Featuring the singles ‘TKO Tokyo’ and ‘Electric Dusk’

On Tour this summer with The Cult: Aug. 22-12 Aug. 24-12 Aug. 25-12 Aug. 26-12 Aug. 28-12 Aug. 31-12 Sept. 01-12 Sept. 02-12

Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound Gloryhound

Vancouver, BC Edmonton, AB Medicine Hat, AB Calgary, AB Regina, SK Toronto, ON Montreal, PQ Quebec City, PQ

Commodore Ballroom Edmonton Events Centre The Esplanade Cowboy’s Calgary Event Plex at Evraz Place Phoenix Concert Theatre Metropolis Grand Theatre

AVAILABLE

08/21/12

ALSO AVAILABLE STEVE VAI

The Story Of Light

ONE DIRECTION

The Only Way Is Up - DVD

THE FACELESS Autotheism

KATATONIA

Dead End Kings

Marketed & Distributed in Canada by Entertainment One Canada

LOS LOBOS

Kiko - 20th Anniversary Edition

VARIOUS

Reggae Gold 2012

INASHTON

Everyone & You

VARIOUS

Big Easy Express - DVD

“How incredible is she?” – Adele “She’s a magnificent new artist from the UK. We did some writing together for my upcoming record. I just love her style and her flow – super raw. Hearing her voice against a guitar sends you into the mood.” – Alicia Keys “has developed a signature style of her own, one retro-raw with a futuristic shimmer…showcase a mélange of influences from Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman to Portishead and Virginia Woolf” – INTERVIEW

Em Eli SAndé

Ou r VE r S i On Of E V E n t S Featuring the Hits

NEXT TO ME, HEAVEN & DADDY AVAi l A BlE n OW

SHAWN HOOK Cosmonaut and the Girl is an ambitious offering of electrospiked pop – the tone of the album is set immediately with the striking opener ‘Planet Earth’. First single ‘Every Red Light’ is a rousing story of a man racing to get to his lover, while album tracks such as ‘Two Hearts’ and ‘So Close’ show the range of Shawn’s talents as both a writer and performer.

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photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg

Lost In Translation Dirty Projectors map out a symbolist manifesto Legend has it THAT David Longstreth found

Swing Lo Magellan (Domino) on a hill in upstate New York. The latest proselytizing vision from Longstreth’s Dirty Projectors may or may not attract a following to rival Joseph Smith’s Latter Day Saints. But consider the origin stories: sacred golden plates (a limited-edition, eight-inch square vinyl “tablet of values”), bestowed by an angel (backup singer Deradoorian), transcribed from reformed Egyptian (into Akkadian cuneiform karaoke lyrics) using two seer stones (Brown University Assyriology scholars Zack Wainer and Willis Monroe). Have you noticed he’s always surrounded by women?

Longstreth’s second great awakening (after the divine Bitte Orca) takes place in the frigid winter and thawing spring of early 2011, in an A-frame house in Delaware County, a pleasant purgatory between Manchester and Manhattan.

“I don’t know whose house it was,” he says.

“It kind of belonged to the woods. It was built by bootleggers about 100 years ago, up in one of those hollows. Too rocky to do any good farming up there, so the builders planted an apple orchard and a bunch of juniper, and they were in the business of making applejack gin.”

To this fragrant retreat, Longstreth made intermittent pilgrimages. “That winter was crazy—snow three feet every couple days up there in the mountains,” he says. “I would go on these songwriting benders. Go up there and make demos for six songs in five days, then roll back home. And life would be going on as normal. Go out to a coffee shop, have a cool day hanging around, then go up there and get into a weird place again.”

It was the songs that kept pulling him back. Earlier Dirty Projectors albums reveled in absurdist, long-playing Pentecostal challenges—2007 remind game Rise Above reassembling Black Flag’s Damaged as a gorgeously fractured orchestra, or postmodern 2005 opera The Getty Address dropping a teenager named Don Henley into post-apocalyptic America. Bitte Orca, for all its cubist deconstructions and kaleidoscopic overdubs, triumphed in 2009 with a parade of hyperkinetic pop songs: rainbow-bright “Temecula Sunrise,” tick-tock sexpot “Stillness Is The Move,” fey changeling “Useful Chamber,” sixstring marionette “No Intention.”

Since the first ears caught those eerie, moonlit coos on advance single “Gun Has

No Trigger” in March, the shadow of Swing Lo Magellan has loomed over 2012 like an alien spaceship’s eclipse. Upon touchdown, the surprise is that it’s not hostile like that warning shot implied. Quite the opposite—erase the froggy hums, prog shakeups and 808 earthquakes, and it’s a pared-down All Things Must Pass, a record of exceptional confidence and exquisite grace.

There’s more than a little of George Harrison’s open-heart self-surgery on the title track, a timeless, westward-ho strummer that sets benchmarks for economy and beauty. It’s matched by “Dance For You” and “Impregnable Question,” twin searchers that shatter the mirror Longstreth often holds up in his lyrics: “You are my love and I want you in my life,” he pleads on the latter.

Two bookends evoke vintage Projectors: “About To Die,” which tumbles above gurgling bongos, its sunburst hooks building to a vocal breakdown to make En Vogue envious, and “Unto Caesar,” a joyous, double-jointed rocker whose spontaneous calls and responses betray Longstreth’s first-take approach throughout. (“When should we bust into harmonies?” asks female foil Amber Coffman before busting into harmonies.)

“It seems like such an ordinary thing that you would do at this point: to digitally correct whatever performance, to create this objective rendering of a song or part of a song,” he says. “I wanted to create a collection of moments, to capture time and capture accidents.

A lot of the vocal parts that I sang on this album are the first time that I ever sang these songs out loud. They’re basically the demo vocals. Going back and rerecording them, they lacked a quality that comes out of doing something for the first time. That’s what the record is about, I guess.”

As opposed to Bitte Orca, which is studio sculpture at its finest—and most fastidious.

In many ways, Swing Lo Magellan springs more from Mount Wittenberg Orca, the spare, charity-benefiting joint EP written on the fly and recorded with Björk in 2010.

“I just got obsessed with songs,” says Longstreth. “I’d been on tour so much for Bitte Orca that I was looking out the window and just kind of fantasizing about all these songs that I wanted to write. It was really just about having the time and space and solitude to just get those going. What it has in common with Wittenberg is this feeling that the first thought

is the best thought; the first thought is the truest thought, to paraphrase Arthur Russell. But I was doing it again and again and again and again.”

Another artistic motivator was what Longstreth calls his “contrarian streak.” No one before had done what Dirty Projectors did on Rise Above and Bitte Orca, though plenty since have tried. The new market deficiency, Longstreth reasoned, was in original, clear-headed pop songwriting.

“I look around at the music being made, and it’s all vapors,” he says. “It’s all diaphanous veils and colors and impressions. I just wanted to create something that was like a stone, a smooth stone that you could hold in your hand. And that’s one song.”

The dozen stones in Magellan’s constellation are his favorites, culled from a bag of 70 unpolished deposits. Many (”Impregnable Question,” “Irresponsible Tune,” “Offspring Are Blank” and “Dance For You”) are among the last he recorded.

“They’re the ones I was trying to get to,” he says. “The first dozen or so were all in the style of Bitte Orca. It was just what was under my fingers after playing that stuff for two years.

It might’ve been a more logical thing to do in terms of a rock band’s career or something, to elaborate the same aesthetic. But I felt like I was searching for something. They had a kind of clarity and simplicity that to me just feels like the hardest thing for me, as a songwriter, to go for.”

For the video and vinyl for “Gun Has No Trigger,” the band went back to its obscure, complex ways. “We emailed every university that had a Near Eastern studies department,” says Longstreth, laughing. “I don’t envy our manager’s assistant, because I’ll just get a weird idea and he has to track it down. But he has fun doing it. We all have fun doing it.”

The result is a symbolic transcription that required metaphors to translate, changing the title to “Bow Has No Bowstring.”

“I love it,” says Longstreth. “A million becomes a thousand thousand, which is literally true and also a nice way of saying it. The word million wasn’t really a necessary concept in 3,000 B.C.” Why cuneiform, last utilized in the time of Jesus Christ?

“I love the look of it,” says Longstreth.

“God, such a beautiful script. The name of the band is Dirty Projectors: bad translation. The possibilities that arise out of that, mainly the creative implications of misunderstanding things—that’s an idea that I love.”

—Noah Bonaparte Pais

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photo by SAM HOLDEN

Your Attention, Please Afghan Whigs’ big comeback hasn’t corresponded with much new music … yet “I’m designing a hologram of myself to

send on tour, so I can sit at home and watch myself on YouTube.”

The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli is, of course, kidding. The legendary Cincinnati band—whose catalog makes up some of the most emotionally intense, conceptually dynamic and richly rewarding music of the late 20th century—will, in fact, be appearing live and in the flesh. But when MAGNET caught up with Dulli, on the eve of the first Whigs rehearsals for the string of dates that will take them across the country and the pond, he’s clearly reveling in the band’s return.

For a guy who’s best known for writing some of the darkest, most brooding songs of the ’90s, he’s in a remarkably good mood. And he should be: Word of the Whigs’ return has been greeted with the kind of jubilant response that many of their reunited peers haven’t been able to generate.

The Whigs weren’t the biggest band of the era. Their singles “Gentlemen” and “Debonair” were staples on MTV and alternative radio, and their major-label records certainly charted, but their development as artists would veer in the exact opposite direction of the era’s prevailing trends. When the world of rock decided to dress down and wallow in slovenly slackerdom, they were dapper young men in tailored suits and close-cropped hair.

When the world of alternative music went cartoonishly pop in the wake of Green Day’s Dookie, the Whigs went into darker, more literary territory. They were an anachronism in the Alternative Nation, a band that had all the sonic hallmarks of the age—the discordant guitars, the pummeling rhythm section—but there was always a groove, an undercurrent of soul, that their peers could never capture, a groove that would place their music outside of the time and place they were created.

And that’s why, after almost a decade and a half since they released their last album, Afghan Whigs still have a fervent fan base, a devoted and enthusiastic audience. Where as many of the bands with more and bigger hits that are reuniting currently have been met with a collective yawn from fans and critics alike—we’d list ’em, but why add in-

sult to injury—the response to the Whigs’ revival has been met with near universal praise.

NPR and Entertainment Weekly have said it, and the Whigs’ performance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and their first new song in years (a stunning reconfiguration of Marie “Queenie” Lyons’ obscuro-funk classic “See And Don’t See”) have confirmed that this is not a group whose edge has been dulled by the sands of time.

“Sometimes it’s strange, sometimes it’s emotional anthropology,” laughs Dulli. “You’re resurrecting and examining the psyche of a creature that once walked the earth, Honestly, in the end we were a rock ‘n’ roll band, we played rock ‘n’ roll, and we played it very well. These are rock ‘n’ roll songs, and it’s our job to fill them with oxygen and move them around the room. And that’ll be done, hopefully, in communion with the audience. That’s really the give and take of any performance: you and them. And I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.”

And the audience is ready for that communion; part of the reason Afghan Whigs are lumped into the “cult band” category is that their fans, even after a decade without new records or tours, are still fiendishly devoted.

In our informal polling of other Whigs heads, it was pretty clear that expense, distance and inconvenience wasn’t going to deter anyone from catching the reunion shows. Road trips have been planned, hotels booked, vacations rearranged to fit into tour dates and festival appearances, including I’ll Be Your Mirror, the New York City installment of the All Tomorrow’s Parties weekender series, the festival that instigated the whole reunion.

“We had been approached by the All Tomorrow’s Parties people in the past, and we politely declined in the past,” says Dulli.

“When they contacted us again this last time, I think basically it just caught when we had been in contact and kind of hanging out. It just seemed like the stars aligned this time, and it felt like the natural thing to do. I can assure you that we are, in fact, as excited about it as anyone.”

While shared excitement is a good thing, how exactly does one satisfy a horde of fans

who have been crafting their own fantasy set lists for years, cherry-picking from a catalog that runs from the noisy soul punk of 1990 sophomore album Up In It to the Nas-quoting, orchestral Armageddon gospel of 1998’s 1965? Fans who have been left to stew in their own juices can be notoriously fickle, and with a catalog as deep and varied as the Whigs’—we’re talking six albums of pure gold, plus enough b-sides and covers to keep your playlist full for a good long while—how do you even begin to put together a show that comes close to covering all the bases?

“I think that a lot of times I like what they like, and if I don’t, you have to let me like what I like,” says Dulli. “It’s not my intention to ignore what people want to hear—I am here to entertain. Everyone, including myself. But like any other show that I’ve done, you’re trying to put together some thing that electrifies you, satisfies you, with an eye on entertaining folks as well. We’ve got great players, we’ve added a couple of guys that are playing with us to flesh out the sound and render the more complex songs more easily. I think especially people who saw us before know that we, a lot of times, cover ourselves. We’ll listen to the material and react to it in the way the six people do. It’s no different than guys playing Led Zeppelin I vs. Physical Graffiti, you know?

You do it one time, and if you need to adjust, you adapt the next time.”

And that might be the most exciting thing for all involved: There will be a next time. Dulli is a bit guarded about the band’s plans going forward—there are new tracks in the can and new ideas being thrown about—but from the tone in his voice, the very obvious delight he’s taking in the untold possibilities, you can tell there’s something brewing. Like an author who’s discovered a new twist on the unfinished story that’s spent years in the back of an overfull filing cabinet, the newest chapter in the Afghan Whigs resumes a storied career that has never lost it’s punch despite languishing for years.

“It’s currently being written again,” he says. “We’re dusting it off, and the future is unwritten. We’ll just leave it at that.”

—Sean L. Maloney

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Music from every direction

Two incredible events. One weekend!

Saturday, September 1, 2012 2:00-10:00 PM

An all-day music marathon featuring Bang On A Can All-Stars, TORQ percussion quartet, a John Cage Musicircus and much, much more.

Yonge-Dundas Square - FREE

Sunday, September 2, 2012 Ambient2 - The Music of Brian Eno Music for Airports performed live by Bang On A Can All-Stars Discreet Music performed live by CONTACT Panasonic Theatre - 651 Yonge Street Box Ofice: 1.800.461.3333 $40 Orchestra/$30 Balcony

MORE INFORMATION: www.intersection.org

S P ECI A L LY P RICE D! Available at Sunrise Records 336 Yonge St. and 784 Yonge St. only. Quantities Limited. Sale in effect unil Sept. 9, 2012.

MUSIC DOCUMENTARY DVD

7:00 PM

“This kid will change the face of pop music…” Pharrell Williams

CONOR MAYNARD CONTRAST

INCLUDES THE HIT SINGLES

CAN’T SAY NO & VEGAS GIRL

‘Occasionally, a talent descends upon planet pop whose arrival is utterly meteoric; Conor Maynard’s collision into the UK consciousness has been just such an incredible impact, with ripples emanating around the globe.’

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They Are Risen Dead Can Dance burrows even deeper into the heart’s core Dead Can Dance, THE DUO of Lisa Gerrard

and Brendan Perry, has been confounding efforts to pigeonhole its music ever since the band first started playing together in Australia more than 30 years ago. Its music spans continents and centuries, incorporating cultural influences from Ireland to the Middle East, from the 12th century to the present day. Dead Can Dance has been called everything from goth to ambient to world music, but its wide-ranging, constantly evolving sound defies any attempt to neatly classify it.

“Most of the categories have been marketing decisions made by others, or confusion brought about by lazy journalism regarding our name,” says Gerrard. “We do not categorize ourselves because it would restrict our creative visions for future evolutions.”

Gerrard is speaking from the studio where the duo is feverishly working to put together the final versions of the songs on Anastasis, the first album they’ve collaborated on in 16 years.

“Has it really been that long?” asks Gerrard. “The journey of the work takes you to different places. I wanted to explore the world of cinema and soundtracks. Film work is also more technical and collaborative. You have to be able to compromise and write and rewrite the music until the director is satisfied, and you have to communicate your musical vision to the director and have it mesh with his. Brendan has never shown an interest in exploring that side of the work. He was more excited by his solo journey.”

After being a cult band for decades, Dead Can Dance broke through to the mainstream in 1996 when Spiritchaser became a number-one hit on Billboard’s world-music chart. After touring the globe to support it, the duo went on an extended hiatus. Gerrard composed music for films, including Gladiator and Whale Rider. Perry collaborated with Hector Zazou on his Lights In The Dark album and made two highly regarded solo LPs, Eye Of The Hunter and Ark. Not unexpectedly, Anastasis continues to move the band’s music in new directions.

“Spiritchaser was a celebration of transcendental music,” says Gerrard. “It explored a sensibility which was a response to African rhythm and the impressionistic colors of the

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East. This album is, among other things, a return to Brendan’s strong connection with ballads with deeply literary lyrics, as well as zembekiki (a Greek folk dance in 9/4) rhythms of both a subtle and percussive nature. The title of the album, Anastasis, is a Greek word that means ‘resurrection.’ The reason it has been used is to describe the rebirth of our creative union. As always, there were moments of discovery and learning. The work of music brings us to a place of great love and respect for the creative process, which has always lead the way to new insights.

“Brendan started sending things to me around August 2011, and we are just coming into the home stretch now, so the process started just under one year ago. We wrote together, but Brendan has always done the lion’s share of the groundwork. When we get together, our interaction takes very different shapes according to the piece in question.

The work is never predictable. It has always been a process of allowing the music to determine its ultimate direction.”

Ever since its eponymous debut in 1984, DCD has been exploring ways to use shifting sonic textures and complex rhythms to lift the music to a spiritual realm. When the duo started, the process was more hands-on than it is in today’s digital world, but the heart and soul Gerrard and Perry put into their work was always evident.

“Music in its innate form is spirit,” says Gerrard. “We have always had a deeply soulful love for it, so this in turn becomes the conduit of many pathways that reflect the human experience, which in our understanding is ultimately a spiritual journey.

When we began working together, it was at a time when MIDI was just being discovered.

Our mixing and recording techniques were made up as we went along using the audio hardware tools we had. The luxuries of automation and audio editing were not available. Everything had to be done by hand. New technology and the current editing tools we now use have proved to be of great advantage. They have provided us with facilities to get closer to the details that in an intricate way allow us to realize this work in a more controlled environment … Sometimes the arrangements work from percussion and bass

up. This has always been a strong signature of Brendan’s, where I respond more to string or ambient arrangements.”

Like the rest of its catalogue, the band produced Anastasis on its own. The duo worked in the studio at Perry’s castle in Quivvy, Ireland, using samples, live instruments and its singular voices.

“We have never felt the need or desire to use an outside producer,” says Gerrard.

“Brendan has always had a very capable ear in this area and a great deal of experience.

With my own ears and humble support, we have been able to arrive at a place that we felt to be true to the work and the process as a collaboration. We have always desired to stay very close to our own vision.”

After work on the new album is completed, Perry and Gerrard will be putting together a band for their first world tour since their 2005 reunion gigs. “Performing live invigorates you, but life on the road wears you down,” says Gerrard. “The frequencies hitting your ears and the volume can tire you, but you’re so elated onstage you don’t notice it. Then, the next morning you implode. You do five gigs in a row, have a day off, then seven in a row, day off; it’s a strange kind of torture. You love it, but it destroys you.”

That said, Gerrard explains the reasoning behind the band’s reunion: “The main reason we play music is to provoke a deeper sensibility within the consciousness of people; we hope to bring people to a state that’s beyond entertainment. Music can be very powerful and, like meditation, help you to realize the deeper issues of being human. We’re not looking at ourselves as entertainers, but fellow seekers. We ask the audience and ourselves, ‘What is spirituality? What is it to be an artist? What is it to be human?’ Those are questions that must be answered from the inside out, not from the outside in. That’s how you become more conscious. You want to keep in balance and find some harmony in the situation we find ourselves in these days. We offer the music as an olive branch. If we can overcome some of the things that separate us, perhaps we can create some positive energy and open the pathway of the heart to a deeper understanding of spirit.” —j. poet

photo by Dead Can Dance

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Positive Reinforcement Skelethon is Aesop Rock’s key to navigating the post-millennial abyss San Francisco-via-NYC hip-hop artist Aesop

Rock raps from the edge of an abyss. On 2000’s quasi-apocalyptic Float and his now-classic trio of albums for mighty indie hip-hop label Definitive Jux (2001’s Labor Days, 2003’s Bazooka Tooth and 2007’s None Shall Pass), Aesop told grim stories of dehumanizing labor, the pitfalls of rabid consumerism, self-annihilation through media addiction and the quickening decline of a human society driven by insatiable greed and hell-bent on its own destruction. His perspective was bleak, but with erudite wordplay, critical insight and labyrinthine layers of esoteric meaning, Aesop sounded more like an enlightened (and humble) visionary than a crabby, defeated naysayer.

He also never gripped the mic to brag about knowing the solutions to the world’s endless ills. Aesop’s mission was more about documenting troubling things as he saw them, not prescribing cures like some finger-pointing pundit on Democracy Now! or Fox News. He jotted down patterns in his notebooks and constructed sonic maps to assist curious

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listeners who, like him, found themselves navigating dystopic tunnels with no flashlight.

He never positioned himself as anything more than a perplexed dude attempting to find out why people do what they do and why the world is the way it is.

“My music’s sometimes social commentary, but I never deliver that commentary from atop a soapbox,” says Aesop. “I’m just a person who tries to make it through life one day at a time. I don’t have the answers. I’m just always walking around, finding my environment to be way too much to handle. I fish through it to try to figure it out, while remaining realistic and open to the fact that things aren’t always good. And, then I write a song when I have an urgent idea that must come out. Music has always been my release.”

Following a five-year hiatus, Aesop recently returned with his first solo album since None Shall Pass; released by the Rhymesayers label, Skelethon is the rapper’s effort to come to terms with the death of a close friend, as well as the deterioration of several friend-

ships and close relationships.

“Death has become commonplace in my life,” he says. “The past few years was an endless period of skeletons. But, hopefully, Skelethon will help put all of this behind me.

It’s like a giant purging—like finishing a chapter and preparing to jump into the next one.”

In this sense, Aesop’s a lot like Lucy, the heroine from his song “No Regrets,” from Labor Days. While the world crumbles around her and everyone’s occupied with meaningless negativity, Lucy ceaselessly pursues her passion for painting. Like Lucy, creativity is how Aesop makes sense of the world and maintains his sanity.

“Throwing myself completely into my work is the only answer for me,” he says. “I like to hide out and make music. It’s the only silver lining. It’s like therapy—you go in and talk for an hour, and though nothing has really changed, you feel better because you get all those thoughts out. If I wake up in the morning and know I made a song from scratch the day before, then I’m happy.” —Elliott Sharp

photo by Chrissy Piper

MADCHILD DOPE SICK

FIRST EVER SOLO ALBUM FROM THE LEAD EMCEE FROM SWOLLEN MEMBERS OUT AUGUST 28TH FEATURES

'JUDGMENT DAY' & 'MONSTER'

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Still Smokin’ Honorary Mad Woman Susanna Hoffs mines the ’60s for inspiration It’s certainly a left-field surprise. Some-

day, the jangly, Mitchell-Froom-produced solo set from Bangles bandleader Susanna Hoffs, sparkles with the classy ’60s sound and delivery of Petula Clark or Dusty Springfield.

How did the singer—whose well-seasoned voice is now richer, deeper, more jazz-diva assured—tap into such a Bacharach/Davidretro vibe? Easy; she’s had the ’60s on her mind for quite some time now, ever since she stumbled upon her first episode of Mad Men while channel-surfing in her hotel room one night, on tour with the Bangles. It proved to be an eye-opening revelation.

“I just landed on episode three of season one, because they were playing the first three episodes back to back on repeat,” says Hoffs, a still drop-dead gorgeous 53. “And at first, I was like, ‘What is this?’ But I ended up never leaving my room—I was completely transported into some blurry, Kodak-colored vision of my childhood. It was crazy. I had such a deep experience with it, I’ve been an addict ever since.”

This aesthete isn’t kidding. She grew so obsessed with the fictional doings at the (then) Sterling Cooper agency, she actually wrote creator Matthew Weiner a gushing, threepage fan letter. “I just said how much I loved the show, and then I went into detail about little moments in different episodes,” she recalls, giggling. “I talked about the look of it, the feel of it, the darkness and intensity of it, and the flashback to some part of my childhood that had been buried.”

That was just for openers. “Then I talked about the Don Draper character being this incredible protagonist,” Hoffs continues of her flowery missive. “An anti-hero that was so dark and so driven by his impulses, which are ones that we all have, but he acted on them, all the time. He’d be watching some French film in an art house when he should be working. I think Mad Men is a work of art, up there with the Beatles and Truffaut for me. And I think that Matt is one of the most talented, most committed, most passionate and visionary filmmakers out there.”

Far from being creeped out by such slavering fandom, Weiner got in touch with Hoffs and began inviting her onto the set and to special Mad Men screenings. The Bangle even befriended some of the cast; at last year’s South By Southwest, her good buddy Jon “Don Draper” Hamm just happened to be in town, so he dropped by the Bangles’ concert, then he, Hoffs and his girlfriend—film-

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maker Jennifer Westfeldt—all headed off to catch the Duran Duran show. Hoffs even has a weekly ritual during each Mad Men season now: She has to see the episode live, at home on Sunday night, if at all possible. “And I’ll usually watch it two times in a row, too, because you pick up on different things,” she says. “It’s like a song. I mean, let’s face it—songs are meant to be listened to more than one time.”

Ideally, Hoffs would like to do her own rendition of “Zou Bisou Bisou,” the campy French pop hit from 1961 that Mad Men’s Jessica Pare, as Megan Draper, sang to her embarrassed husband early this past season.

“Jessica is like the ultimate ’60s goddess— she just has the look down so perfectly,” she sighs. Instead, Hoffs had just spent a week getting sonically lost in that heady era, recording four vintage covers at Froom’s studio for Someday bonus tracks. “We did a song a day, totally old-school, live, singing in a room with a band,” she says. “We did ‘This Will Be Our Year’ by the Zombies, ‘All I’ve Got To Do’ by the Beatles and ‘Sally Go Round The Roses,’ this song I’ve been wanting to do since I discovered it years ago, a song from 1963 by the Janettes. And we also did ‘Teacher Teacher,’ the Rockpile number, because I’m a huge fan of Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds.”

So, yes, she’s had Mad Men on her mind.

But how did Hoffs—who’d been busy with a Bangles reunion album (last year’s Sweetheart Of The Sun) and tour—time-travel back to a peace-and-love mindset in her songwriting? Through some truly strange serendipity. She and her husband—movie director Jay Roach, of Austin Powers renown (which accounts for her presence in Powers’ onscreen backup band, Ming Tea, with Matthew Sweet)—have an open-door policy in their L.A. guesthouse. That’s where her Nashville-based niece, Miranda Hoffs, stayed last year when she undertook a move to California, and where she was visited by her Tennessee chums, like 27-year-old musician Andrew Brassell.

The bungalow was also available when Brassell decided to launch his L.A. career, and the clan took to him immediately. “I said he could stay there for a while, and I just started writing songs with him,” says Hoffs, who had a few old compositions in the can, like “November Sun” and a chiming co-write with the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, “Raining,” but no real plans of releasing a solo set. “So, he kind of distracted me, his always being around with a guitar. He had nothing else to do, really, except play music, and writing songs was his

work. Meanwhile, I was rushing around like this crazy mother/Bangle person who was always multitasking way too much. And he snapped me out of that reality into this ‘Wait. Stop everything. Just sit down, grab a guitar and start writing songs’ sort of thing.”

The collaboration felt unusual at first. Hoffs was almost twice the kid’s age, and coming at lyrics and melodies from a mature, decidedly feminine approach. “And every once in a while,” she says, “I’d be like, ‘I just can’t say those words—a person of my age and gender just can’t do it. Although it sounds really cool when you say it, when I say it, it’s just really wrong.’” They soon developed a rapport that felt quite natural, and their first co-write—the sunny, Lulu-chirpy “Picture Me”—quickly led to more Brill Building-shrewd finger-poppers, like “One Day,” “Always Enough” and “Picture Me.” Retooled versions of “Raining” and “November Sun” made it onto Someday, as well.

At first, the Hoffs/Brassell team-up was simply a fun exercise. But one evening, he invited her and her niece to accompany him to hip nightclub Largo, to catch a set by his Nashville pal Caitlin Rose. That’s where Hoffs bumped into Froom, who’d played keyboards on the Bangles’ 1986 breakthrough Different Light, including the signature line on their hit “Manic Monday.” She told him about her latest solo work, and he said he wanted to hear it.

“And I thought he was just being polite,” she says. “But two days later, he called up to say, ‘Yeah—I really, really meant it!’ So, the whole thing was very organic—for lack of a better word. It wasn’t forced, and everything just fell into place.”

But just like her friend Hamm, whom she praises for his non-Don Draper comedic timing, Hoffs doesn’t want to be typecast with Someday as some go-go girl from the psychedelic past. She’s familiar with other decades than the ’60s, which she’ll soon be proving with Under The Covers, Vol. 3, the latest in her series of playful musical reworkings with Sweet.

“Volume 1 was all ’60s songs, Volume 2 was all ’70s, and now we’re doing nothing but ’80s songs,” she says. “And living in the ’80s with the Bangles, we were sort of horrified, like, ‘Why are the ’80s so bad?’ It just felt like a goofy time period for music. But now I’ve got satellite radio in my car, and I have stations like 1st Wave and the all-’80s one on there, and it’s great because I’ve actually been rediscovering the ’80s. Now I have a whole new appreciation for all of it!” —Tom Lanham

photo by jonathon kingsbury

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NEW FROM NETTWERK

Joshua Hyslop Where The Mountain Meets The Valley

Liam Titcomb CICADA

Featuring “What Have I Done?”

Featuring “Love Don’t Let Me Down”

“Hyslop’s sound is a hushed and crystalline Americana folk wrapped in pillowy clouds” – Vancouver Sun

“One of my favourite Canadian songwriter-performers.”

– Bob Merser (CBC Music)

“Hyslop is an instantly likeable singer-songwriter with a gift for intimacy and almost ghostly mood-making” – Georgia Straight

Family Of The Year Loma Vista

Angus Stone Broken Brights

Featuring “St. Croix” & “Diversity”

Featuring “Bird On The Buffalo” and “Wooden Chair”

“A fantastic debut, reminiscent of Fleet Foxes.” – NME

“one of the strongest folk tunes of the year” – Baeble Music

“If there’s an off-center California pop sound for the here and now, this is probably what it sounds like.” – LA Weekly “We ♥♥♥ Family Of The Year ” – Nylon

“…bears a resonance incomparable to anything Angus has ever done.” – Paste

THE BE GOOD TANYAS - A COLLECTION (2000-2012) Stand-out tracks and fan favourites from the band’s three critically-acclaimed full-length albums including “The Littlest Birds.”

16-song Collection features two brand new tracks“Little Black Bear” and “Gospel Song” and new mixes of “Scattered Leaves” and “Song for R.”

www.facebook.com/thebegoodtanyas | www.begoodtanyas.com | www.nettwerk.com

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Second Wind

The Old Ceremony greets a new audience with Fairytales And Other Forms Of Suicide

When Django Haskins picks up the phone,

it’s less than 48 hours after his return to North Carolina from Europe. He’d been across the pond to play two shows, in London and Barcelona, as a member of Big Star Third, an all-star revue performing Big Star’s Sister Lovers. For Haskins, it was an opportunity to stand among heroes: Jody Stephens (Big Star), Chris Stamey (dB’s), Mike Mills (R.E.M.)—and on this trip, Robyn Hitchcock and Ray Davies, too.

“It just blows my mind to have that kind of opportunity,” he says, shaking off the jet lag.

He won’t have much time to reflect, though.

The Old Ceremony, the orchestral-pop quintet Haskins has led since 2004, releases its fifth album, Fairy Tales And Other Forms Of Suicide, this month. The band’s first LP for Yep Roc is also its first to receive a vinyl pressing, as well as its first to be released in Europe. In other words, it’s the perfect time for a provocative album title.

“The decision came because it just seems to really express the overarching theme of a

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lot of the songs of the record,” says Haskins, “which is trying to really see things as they are, rather then the way that you’d like them to be, or the way that sometimes these idealized versions of things get in the way of that. The band has obviously been around for a while, but to a lot of people, this will really be the first thing they hear about us, and I like kind of coming in swinging a little bit.”

If the title swings, the music lands the blow.

Eclectic as ever, the Old Ceremony spends Fairytales’ 10 songs resurrecting the Waits/Cohen “pop-noir” of its earliest recordings (“Star

By Star”), toe-dipping in funk (“Middle Child”) and otherwise concocting a sophisticated synthesis of intimate folk, dramatic pop and rootsy power pop. Aside from its guitar/bass/ drums (played by Haskins, Jeff Crawford and Daniel Hall, respectively) setup, Mark Simonsen’s vibraphones and Gabriele Pelli’s violin add a stately glow and atmospheric shading to the Old Ceremony’s music.

“Certain bands kind of have a sound, and

that’s their sound,” says Haskins. “For us it’s definitely been an evolution. There’s an aesthetic and maybe kind of an atmosphere to our songs that is pretty consistent … it’s a little more abstract than a specific sort of sound, but that’s what ties together what is otherwise a pretty eclectic writing style.”

It also makes them a perfect fit for Yep Roc’s roster, where the Old Ceremony stands alongside rock ‘n’ roll grown-ups like the aforementioned Hitchcock, Sloan, Chuck Prophet, Nick Lowe, John Doe and Paul Weller. When I mention this to Haskins, he laughs. “Right,” he says. “Grown-ass men.”

There’s something to that, though. Like many of the reinvented and rejuvenated performers the band now calls labelmates, the Old Ceremony makes music unencumbered by the ever-shifting demands of new and now.

And it does so without forgetting rock’s primal energy. There’s a catharsis, Haskins says, in playing a guitar solo “that sounds like it was damaged in a fire.” —Bryan C. Reed

photo by Soleil Konkel

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Three’s Company Vancouver punk band Nü Sensae expands its sound and personnel for a standout sophomore album

A year ago, THE THREE members of Nü Sen-

sae were content just to keep playing their music without any real consideration for longevity or sustainability. Their full-length debut, TV, Death & The Devil, was recorded and released in 2010 with little thought given to how it might be received.

Says drummer Daniel Pitout, “I was like, ‘No one’s going to listen to this but our friends. My mom will have a copy and maybe 30 people in Vancouver and a couple in the States.’ Not that we have a platinum record or some shit, but it definitely had a way bigger response than I ever thought it could.”

In hindsight, it’s hardly surprising. TV, Death & The Devil was recorded and released before guitarist Brody McKnight joined the core duo of Pitout and singer/bassist Andrea Lukic. As a twosome, the band delivered an efficient brand of loud rock, served with hardcore’s streamlined assault and grungy melody. Lukic is a formidable frontwoman whose vocals range from a slacker-rock deadpan to scathing yowls, and she can scream a melody in the manner of Kurt

photo by Gordon Nicholas

Cobain. McKnight joined the band at the end of 2010, after Lukic and Pitout recorded their Tea Swamp Park EP and a split with fellow Canadian punks White Lung. Earlier this year, the trio completed a 10-date tour with EMA, building its profile beyond the punk underground. Between the records and the tenacious tour schedule, the band started to build a dedicated following.

Pitout estimates some 40 or 50 people now sport Nü Sensae tattoos.

That sort of reaction spurred the idea that maybe this band could be more than a hobby, but also instilled a certain pressure for the follow-up. “It sounds really stupid, but I felt pressured about what people were going to think, which is something that I’ve never been concerned about with our music,” says Pitout.

“Not in the sense that I’m worried about it like, ‘Oh, I hope people like it,’ but in the sense like, ‘Oh, this guy in Portland just showed me this huge tattoo of our band on his arm. I hope he doesn’t think this sucks now.’”

Sundowning (Suicide Squeeze), the product of two weeks of recording and mixing in

Vancouver, doesn’t betray any such timidity.

Nü Sensae was a ferocious ensemble; now it’s even more so. In the duo, Lukic had adopted a riff-based style on bass. Even with McKnight in the mix, she doesn’t abandon it.

When all three charge through a riff, it has the feeling of being chased by a mob through an alley. Now, though, that’s not the only option. McKnight helps steer the band into more spacious passages, widening the dynamics, making the result more volatile. As intended, the bigger, bolder sound reinvigorates the trio and makes the reason for McKnight’s recruitment self-evident.

“We just constantly want to keep changing and doing stuff, and I think it’s important because I get bored with the same thing over and over,” says Pitout. “I wouldn’t call us anything other than a punk band, but I think the general definition of what a punk band is can be really loose.” —Bryan C. Reed

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CANADA'S BELOVED ICON STOMPIN' TOM CONNORS RELEASES HIS 51ST STUDIO ALBUM

The Roads of Life is Tom’s most personal album, a musical reflection that includes songs about life, home, travel and of course his beloved Canada!

17 newly recorded tracks that includes originals, instrumentals and covers from the likes of Wilf Carter (Rattlin’ Cannonball), Hank Snow (My Nova Scotia Home) & other beloved country legend balladeers.

Of the newly penned soon-to-be classic songs, “The Flander’s Field Song”, is a very caring tribute to the fallen heroes of war, while the upbeat “Pie in The Sky” is a very catch phrase tale about love, while Tom’s new arrangement of the classic tale “The Men With Broken Hearts” is a telling story that fits in nicely to complete this album, well titled.. The Road’s of Life!

AVAILABLE AUGUST 21

pre-order your limited edition AUTOGRAPHED copy early at any Sunrise Records location. quantities limited

on the record

Joe Jackson has been a lot of things to a lot of listeners in his 30-year-plus time in the sun: smartly snotty power-pop punk, big jump band leader, sophisticated Bacharach-ian chronicler of Manhattan before the fall, symphonic composer, film soundtracker, Beat-crazy jazzbo and hero to those whose human rights mostly include smoking cigarettes. Plus, he likes his live albums, with eight of them to his credit since his 1979 recording start. With The Duke (Razor & Tie), you can add experimental bearer of standard songs to the list, as Jackson and his wide-ranging Technicolor cast (?uestlove, Iggy Pop, Regina Carter, Zuco 103, Sharon Jones, among others) deconstruct a hearty handful of composer/arranger/bandleader/icon Duke Ellington’s black-and-tan fantasies in a manner most unfamiliar and wildly satisfying. Now living in Berlin where he can smoke in peace, Jackson talked about Ellington and cigarettes. —A.D. Amorosi You’ve recorded albums of other people’s songs. You’re restless. It’s not unusual for you to do something like The Duke. Yet it’s been a minute (2008’s Rain) since we’ve heard your songs. What made you want to run with this brand of interpretation rather than craft your own new songs?

I think it was 1981 the last time I did that (Jumpin’ Jive). I have no idea what made me want to do the Ellington album now, actually.

The songs, the actual melodies, really just kept coming up in my head, which led to me wondering what sort of arrangements I’d give these songs, given the chance.

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a conversation with

Joe Jackson

So you decided you were gonna give yourself the chance.

Exactly. And after a while I had enough solid ideas that maybe it could be something.

Ellington has always really been one of my heroes—from his manner of dress to the accompanists he chose to the music he maintained. Plus, writing is only one part of what I can do. Arranging, producing, bandleading, singing and just playing—I really wanted to highlight those sides of myself. Those parts of the Ellington record really made it more fun than, say, if I also had to worry about having them be my songs.

Do you think that nu-jazz artists are ignoring the classics of the genre, eschewing the standards such as Ellington’s for their own compositions?

I think that process has been going on for awhile. Maybe it’s escalated. My feeling about the jazz scene now is that it’s more fragmented than ever.

You worked with Christian McBride (bass) and Regina Carter (violin) amongst other notable jazz cats on The Duke. What was their take on Ellington? Was he still part of their daily diet?

photo by FRANK VERONSKY

It’s funny, but you wouldn’t necessarily think that there’d be a jazz artist alive who doesn’t like Ellington or hasn’t been influenced by him, but I suppose it is possible when you think about it. It never occurred to me. He’s the basis for so much study. My take on it just happened to be something they could sink their teeth into.

Do you dialogue much with your collaborators and session guys, or is it more like you hire guys that you sense have an instinct for these things?

No. There is quite a bit of talking going on. A lot of dialogue. Especially someone like, say, Regina, who you mentioned. She’s as much a thinker as she is a player. I’m glad she’s on tour with us.

What changed about your feeling, your opinion of Ellington, between, say, being a young music student to the present?

I think it’s that I learned to love all of Ellington by this point, rather than just eras. When I first got interested in Ellington, I was a music student of like 18 or 19. Being a fan of his was more so due to his later works, the so-called more sophisticated material and arrangements. Over time, though, I came to appreciate his earlier works even more so than the latter-day pieces.

Just the rawness of it all, the crackling rhythms perhaps.

Yes. I think that’s a big part of it. You can really hear them crackle. I genuinely learned to appreciate the nuances of the old stuff more as time goes by.

I feel the same way about Louis Armstrong.

The older I got, the more that his earlier works resonated with me. So then, which of Ellington’s “The Mooche” do you prefer?

The original from, like, 1929 or the more lustrous 1952 version?

[Laughs] I love them both. But that’s one of the things that I find most fascinating. That there are such rich differences between the two—and several other versions in between—to discuss and dissect. That every single version was so different; that you get the 1952 version that is so expansive, the way he plays it, the arrangements he’s made. It’s so inspired, I think, and nothing that’s just padded out either. Instead, each version is thought out and reimagined.

Would I be working too hard if I remembered that your soundtrack to Tucker (1988, Francis Ford Coppola) had an Ellington-ian feel to it?

Not at all. I had to replicate so much of its initial time period, which was 1947 and 1948.

The big-band thing in America that was just starting to wane was still being invented and reinvented in Ellington’s mind.

I interviewed you years ago and you mentioned that you simply were not much of a fan of the blues. It could have just been the

moment, but I was curious as to how that thought plays your affection for—or your alteration of—something as melancholy as “Mood Indigo”?

Man, I wish I knew or that you remembered what the context was. I can tell you that I’m neither a blues purist nor an aficionado, so there is that. Plus, I will say that I like the blues as a mood, and more when it is applied to the jazz idiom than say the folk idiom, an element of jazz rather than the primary sound. There’s more going on, quite frankly. Today, though, I think I may be more open-minded toward the straight-ahead blues.

found. Zip. What was the aesthetic decision there? That’s pretty radical.

I often thought that the idea of creative freedom was an illusion—that instead limitations might be best. So, you add structure. Barriers.

The ironic thing about putting limits on yourself is that it forces your imagination into new places to deal with restrictions. Like when I did Night And Day, I used no guitars. I figured, let’s see if anyone notices. I tried the same thing here. You expect a trombone, trumpet or saxophone in his sound. What about not having them? That really opened my imagination as to how to fill in that void.

Like you say, you’re no purist, so I’m not too surprised, but you’ve got contributors on “Caravan” and “Perdido” such as Sussan Deyhim and Lilian Vieira singing in their own languages. Yet, on top of that, you had them change the lyrics while translating them into their native tongues. Why? A couple of reasons. Ellington was a genius.

But he was also human and had a weak spot.

That weak spot was his lyrics. As most of his songs were instrumental, I often thought the lyrics seemed tacked on, as if anybody could’ve done them. I imagined at one point that Ellington grabbed the first guy who walked into a session—the pizza guy there for a delivery—and asked him to write lyrics.

Some of them are just horrible.

You’ve got two contributors here that I’m curious about: ?uestlove, who adds some real in-the-pocket stuff, and Iggy, who I adore and have heard do classics, but certainly not smoothly.

In the case of Ahmir (?uestlove), my manager suggested him. I decided then to check out more of the Roots and was impressed.

One thing led to another, and the next thing I know I’m on Jimmy Fallon’s show playing with the Roots. Not long after that, I was talking about another guy I had wanted to play with, Christian McBride, who oddly enough went to high school with Ahmir, were old pals and had played together ever since. Suddenly it became, “Wow, this is something I have to do.” They both really made time for this on top of really ridiculously busy schedules on both their parts. And Iggy. [Laughs] Everybody knows the chorus and nobody knows the verse to “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” I wanted people to know that verse. So, I was experimenting with singing it in a few ways. I kept going deeper. I liked the effect, but my voice didn’t cut it so well in that range. With that, I suddenly heard Iggy’s voice singing those lines in my head, that tune. No sooner than I did, I ran to my collection, pulled out a copy of him singing “The Passenger,” and it turns out to be that same range and sound that I wanted for “Swing.”

So, the wheels turned—why not just call him.

I thought he might do it. We met before. He’s smart and open-minded, so we asked and headed down to Miami. We had a lot of fun with him.

Once you point that out, I suppose some of the words are kinda over-simplistic.

I was trying to think of some new way to deal with these lyrics so that they at least weren’t embarrassing. So, I thought of experimenting in another language that had some connection to the music, hence “Caravan” and “Peridido.” Plus, I really was just looking for another interesting angle into these songs, something that hadn’t been done or even tried before. I‘m a big fan of Zucolo 103’s samba stuff. I wanted a new approach. Who else has thought of Ellington with an Iranian arrangement? Why not do it this way?

Why not.

How much they improved upon their original lyrics, I guess, remains to be seen. But they couldn’t have been worse than the originals.

No way.

Was that really an essential goal—no matter what circumstance, not to ape or approximate the original in any way?

The first goal was to make a great album.

You’re right, mind you, in what you say. I just don’t want it to sound that contrived.

[Laughs] I wanted to communicate the excitement that I had about listening to Ellington with fresh ears in as many new ways as possible. So, yes, the best way to do this was to not compete with Ellington directly, not ape any aspects of his sounds, as you say. I think he might have dug the whole album, actually.

I understand not wanting to tread on his turf, but there’s nary a brass or a reed to be

Totally unrelated to The Duke: I don’t smoke anymore, but applaud the freedom to do so.

Do people dig you or hate you what with having written one pamphlet (“The Smoking Issue”), one essay (“Smoke, Lies And The Nanny State”) and one song (“In 200-3”) about the matter?

Oh yeah, I still get hate mail and death threats, really nasty stuff like they hope I die of cancer.

It’s quite unbelievable. Those writings have become manifestos for some. And for those who like to think of themselves as armchair liberals, but who truly aren’t, it’s become a way for them to discriminate with ease. It’s appalling and amazing how so many supposedly open-minded people will get on a soapbox and passionately crusade against something they can’t get their heads around.

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/music

Hello Again

Tanyas for summer festival dates — got together to determine the songs for this best of album Parton says it was fairly easy. “We all had a strong sense of which songs we wanted to put on the collection.”

A Collection (2000 – 2012) features 16 songs in total: 12 taken from the Tanyas’ three albums, such as “The Littlest Birds” from Blue Horse, which also apThe Be Good Tanyas’ retrospective is just the peared in the TV show Weeds; Townes Van Zandt’s beginning of the cult favourites’ second chapter “Waiting Around To Die,” from Chinatown, which

by KAREN BLISS got placed in TV’s Breaking Bad; the traditional “Oh Susanna,” found on Blue Horse; Neil Young’s “For The Turnstiles” from Hello Love; plus two new mixes of “Scattered Leaves” and “Song For R,” also Samantha Par- from Hello Love; and two new recordings, “Gospel ton lets out a big Song,” a long-time live BGT favourite and “Little laugh when asked for the first thing that comes to her mind Black Bear,” penned by Parton.

“We couldn’t call it Greatest Hits because we when she reflects on the band’s new retrospective album, A haven’t had any hits,” Parton laughs. “But we were Collection (2000 – 2012), on Nettwerk Records, and the 13 all very much in agreement about which songs peoyears she spent in the alternative folk/contemporary blue- ple seemed to love the most and respond to the most grass trio she formed with Frazey Ford and Trish Klein in and which to leave off. We wrote out a list of each song on each album and we picked out those ones, Vancouver, BC. trying to keep it to four or five from each record.”

The only song conspicuously absent though is “In “It’s kind of just been a wild ride, I Spite Of All The Damage,” which brought The Be Good Tanyas guess,” she says. “The whole thing was considerable attention when it was included on the TV show The L Word and 2004 soundtrack. just so unexpected so it’s been this really great adventure.”

“It was a debate between that one from that album, Chinatown, The Be Good Tanyas — which reand ‘Junkie Song,’” Parton explains. “We chose ‘Junkie Song’ beleased three critically-acclaimed stucause we loved the Olu Dara horn part on that track. I think that dio albums, 2001’s Blue Horse, 2003’s was one that felt special to us because Olu played on it.”

Chinatown and 2006’s Hello Love, beOf the songs on A Collection, Parton wrote or co-wrote quite a fore taking a four-year break in 2008 few: “Littlest Birds” with original BGT member Jolie Holland; A Collection to pursue other interests — started “Only In The Past” with Ford; and “Dog Song,” “Song For R” and (2000-2012) just for fun after the three singers and the aforementioned “Little Black Bear” by herself. “Draft Daughis available now from Nettwerk multi-instrumentalists met at a treeter’s Blues (a.k.a. Ootischenia)” was written as a band.

Records planting camp where they would play.

She remembers the genesis of each and has one story in partic“I don’t think any of us even knew ular to relay about “Littlest Birds,” arguably the song that started it that a music business existed,” Parton says. “We were all quite all. “I was about to get on a Greyhound bus heading south to New removed from that culture. I know I was and I know Trish was; I Orleans to visit because I had lived there for a year or two in the don’t know about Frazey. I remember telling a friend — who didn’t 90s,” she recounts. “I was walking through my neighbourhood, believe me but it’s true — that I never saw a music magazine in heading for the station, asking myself, ‘Why am I doing this? Why my life. I didn’t know there was any such thing. can’t I stop traveling? I just want to settle down, be normal.’ And “Just before the band started, I had gone down to Texas to the I stopped to look at this bush full of birds.

“It was springtime and the birds were all singing and the bush Kerrville Folk Festival, and that’s when I discovered that there were people just like me, my age, writing songs, that were actu- was just vibrating with them and I heard this voice, saying, ‘The ally playing paying gigs. They weren’t Neil Young, but they were littlest birds sing the prettiest songs’ — it was really strange; like a ghost or something; it was like somebody leaned in and said making a living performing for people, so it was a total revelation — people who bought vans and lived in their vans and book their that into my ear. own shows — I thought, ‘We could do that.’ So we did that, and it “So I started walking and singing that line over and over again and piecing together all the different meanings of the phrase — kind of exploded [laughs].” then I got on the bus and wrote the rest of the song — wrote a When Parton, Ford and Klein — who have reunited The Be Good

The Be Good Tanyas’

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“

To have gone away for a bunch of time, and all of us to have done a bunch of things in this stage in our lives which we wanted to do, I think now we’re all a lot more relaxed and a lot more able to appreciate this thing that we’re doing that’s so magical and special. It’s really nice to be back.” —Samantha Parton

whole bunch of verses and then I came back to Vancouver and I played it for Jolie [Holland] and she loved it. She started covering it, and she changed some of the words and then we started performing it together and it eventually settled into the version that’s on the album.”

“Littlest Birds” is the song that led to The Be Good Tanyas’ record deal with Nettwerk. They were still an independent band and CBC Radio’s David Grierson on Vancouver Island started playing the track.

“This was the story we would hear,” says Parton, “is that Terry McBride, the guy that runs Nettwerk Records, his wife was driving in her car down the road and heard that song on CBC, pulled over and wrote down the band name and got in touch with us, and then we signed a record deal with them. We heard that story over

and over again — Emmylou Harris told us that too.”

Parton, who spent her time apart from the band working towards her undergraduate degree in English and Folklore from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and moved to New York to work as a folklorist at the Brooklyn Arts Council, says these summer dates with The Be Good Tanyas have been fun.

“To have gone away for a bunch of time, and all of us to have done a bunch of things in this stage in our lives which we wanted to do, I think now we’re all a lot more relaxed and a lot more able to appreciate this thing that we’re doing that’s so magical and special. It’s really nice to be back.”

As for a new album, she says, “I wouldn’t say we’ve been planning our new album, no. We’ve been calling it the ‘getting it together’ tour — and I think we’re pretty close now.” needle

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/music

Writing in Cursive Have a stress-free Gaslight Anthem scrawled out their second masterpiece?

by KAREN BLISS

The other one

was ridiculous. It was just foolery around it. It was just all this hype and all this stupidness. It was weird. So for this one we just completely changed that.”

Brian Fallon, lead singer and guitarist with New Jersey rock band The Gaslight Anthem, is fed up with hype and hyperbole. He’s talking about their much-ballyhooed third album, 2010’s American Slang, and the new one, Handwritten, on Mercury Records.

“I think that this record was a door closer on the rest of the records, Fallon says. “And I don’t have to form an opinion on the rest of the records verses this record because it’s totally different.

The process was different.”

He’s friendly, but firm, not afraid to contradict an interviewer or clarify earlier remarks pulled from another source. He’s just started doing press for Handwritten, so he’s going to get frustrated a lot.

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In an early interview he did with Rolling Stone about the new album, he said, “I don’t care what Bruce [Springsteen] or Eddie Vedder or any of my friends think of it,” which prompts this scribe to begin her praise of Handwritten by saying, “I know you don’t care, but…”

“Don’t take it the wrong way,” he responds, not realizing it was meant as a light tease. “People don’t ever write if I was joking.

When you say you don’t care, you don’t really mean you don’t care.

It’s just you’re not going to let that dictate what you think about your own record.”

Based on Fallon’s rather stressful experience of making American Slang and the pressure of knowing The Gaslight Anthem had found esteemed fans such as Springsteen (his 2009 appearances at a couple of their shows for 2008’s The ’59 Sound doubled their sales), along with critical acclaim and an increased fan-

base, the frontman decided to get in a very different headspace either. I don’t know if you’re going to get in a van with a band and for Handwritten. go to Nashville and find the truth. I don’t think you’re going to find “You just have to get away until you’re ready to do it,” he explains. the truth in a record; I don’t think you’re going to find the meaning “You just need to just let it happen and let it permeate in your own of life on a record. These things are overblown and I’m sure you get the sense that I’m a little tired of that. It’s ridiculousness,” he mind and not try and force anything. You have writing times and says, understandably. you have gathering times and you need to know when that’s right.”

“We got in a van to go play some songs and go make the record In this case, going away for the writing stage just meant sequestering himself in his home in Jersey. “And taking time off and going because that’s what we like doing. We didn’t get in a van and ask on the Revival Tour and doing other things and getting your head the stars or the Ouija board, ‘Where do we go? What is the truth of straight,” Fallon adds, referring to his side band The rock ‘n’ roll? I’m going to find it Nashville.’ It’s kind of Horrible Crowes which released Elsie in 2011 and strange. It’s all about the hype with everyone.” toured Europe acoustically with The Gaslight AnFallon, it turns out, won’t discuss the meaning bethem repertoire and its own. hind any of the lyrics on Handwritten. When trying At home, he shut off his computer (“I didn’t cancel to worm some kind of explanation from him about “Keepsake,” — is it a murder? — he says, “No, but if my internet in my house,” he laughs, as one magazine reporter wrote. “See how things get overblown? you want it to be about a murder, that’s a beautiful You guys over-blow things all the time”) and started thing, then it is about a murder. That’s the cool thing reading classic literature. about songs; they can be whatever the listener decides “Mostly poetry books at the time. I was reading that they are.”

Handwritten Does he ever reveal what his songs are about? “No a T.S. Eliot, just a couple of different books that I is available now from Mercury way! Are you kidding!? No, I never talk about that thought were good reading, just to expand and not Records stuff. That takes away the kind of community, the just reiterate the same thing over and over again,” explains Fallon. process of it. You kind of ruin any open interpretation that an audience would have. I hate it when a band tells you Did it impact the way he wrote lyrics for Handwritten?

“Sure,” he says, “but that’s all subconscious. If you’re just readwhat the song is about because then that’s it for that. The story ing something to steal from it, then that’s a different story, but is over,” Fallon explains. that’s not my style so I just let it do what it’s doing in the back of He’s willing to talk about the music, but his one answer to why, my head and then whatever comes out comes out. But it’s hard to for instance, the minstrelsy folk vibe of “National Anthem” could pick how it came out.” not have been given the heavier rock treatment of “Too Much But the music comes first before lyrics for The Gaslight AnBlood,” could be applied to any of the songs.

“It’s the song that dictates it, and it’s the mood and what you’ve been surrounding yourself with at the time that you’re doing it,” Fallon says. “Certain songs speak to you in a soft voice and certain songs speak to you in a loud voice. Especially with the music coming first, you start with a mood and every chord and every time you touch the guitar, there’s a mood there, whether you —Brian Fallon finish the song or you don’t.”

Fallon is, surprisingly, very open about his influences, describing Handwritten in them. “We just jam,” Fallon says of bandmates Alex Rosamilia the press bio as “Tom Petty songs [being] played by Pearl Jam.” (guitar, vocals), Alex Levine (bass, vocals) and Benny Horowitz “That’s because everybody wants definitions for music and (drums, percussion, vocals). “That’s how we start the music. everybody needs that,” he says. “They can’t listen to something Somebody will come up with a riff, and then we’ll do a loose ar- and let it be what it is. They have to define it for everyone else. But rangement of a song and then later the lyrics come.” everybody comes from somewhere and everybody comes from That’s when they all drove down to Nashville, TN to work with an influence.

Brendan O’Brien (Springsteen, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, Billy Talent) “The media is very slow and they miss what happens in bands. for five weeks at Blackbird Studio. The record label bio, that acI think bands happen quickly — the music is happening now; the companies the album, loftily puts it this way: concert is happening now — and the influences that people hang “On January 18, 2012, The Gaslight Anthem piled into their on to sometimes they’re not accurate. You have to tell what you’re old tour van and headed across the New Jersey state line for a doing at the time because they don’t understand. They’re not re14-hour road trip to Nashville on their own quest for the truth… ally listening from that aspect.

Their mission: to reconnect with rock ‘n’ roll in its most feral, “People go on and on about certain artists that they think we pure, stripped-raw form.” emulate and it’s gone beyond that. That chapter’s done and they Fallon laughs — and who wouldn’t? have to catch up. So you have to tell them sometimes where you’re “That seems to be overblown. I don’t know what that means coming from.”

“

People don’t ever write if I was joking.

When you say you don’t care, you don’t really mean you don’t care. It’s just you’re not going to let that dictate what you think about your own record.”

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Hopeland 36

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ia

Just when it seemed the band disappeared down the Hobbit holes of the moss-covered Icelandic tundra, Sigur Rós is back with a new album and tour. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the end of Sigur Rós as we know it. sto ry by jo nath an valania | ph oto s by h o rdur sve insso n

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Iceland isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here. This is both a blessing and, to a lesser degree, a curse. Much less. It is the land that time forgot, which is why it is a place of uncommon purity. Primeval is the word that comes to mind: smoldering volcanoes, black sand beaches, towering geysers, geothermal hot springs, epic waterfalls, vast lava fields that recede infinitely out to the horizon, bumping up against glaciers thousands of years old. Elves. Not for nothing did Ridley Scott select the hinterlands of Iceland to film the stunning, panoramic “beginning of time” segments in Prometheus, his recently released sorta-prequel to Alien. The Viking “sagas,” the epic poems situated in prehistoric Iceland, are said to have been a primary inspiration of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

The occasion of my visit to this magical Nordic isle is the release of Valtari (XL), the first proper studio album by Sigur Rós since 2008’s nudist-friendly Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, which marks the cessation of a so-called “indefinite hiatus” that many feared signaled the end of the band after 18 years. Sigur Rós (Icelandic for “victory rose”) first showed up on most people’s radars a dozen years ago with the release of Ágætis byrjun, a grand bargain of ethereal post-rock, minimalist psychedelia and sweeping orchestral maneuvers, guided, like a beacon in the fog, by the mesmerizing otherworldly voicings of singer Jón Þór Birgisson (a.k.a. Jónsi). It sounded like somebody snuck a tape recorder into heaven. Like cherubim swinging the hammer of the gods. It was said the frontman was, in fact, singing in a newly invented language of his own device. The name of this language in Icelandic was Volenska. In English it was called Hopelandic.

But, as of late, there have been signs of trouble in paradise. Alleged insider reports surfaced intermittently on the internet indicating that the new album had been made and scrapped at least three times. Then, shortly after Valtari was released in May, word came from the Sigur Rós camp that Kjartan Sveinsson, the group’s multi-instrumentalist (piano, keyboards, organ, flute, tin whistle, oboe, banjo, guitar)—the one member of the band who can read music, the member of the band who wrote the signature string and horn charts—would not be joining them on the planned year-long tour in support of Valtari. His reason for not touring— that it would “not necessarily (be) the most productive” use of his time—struck many as a curious thing for a man who makes his living as a musician. Could it be that hope no longer

38

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springs eternal in Hopelandia?

MAGNET sent me to Iceland to find out. I was doing what I usually do between cover stories— lying around in a Saigon hotel room smoking and listening to the Doors in my underwear—when the order came down from on high. My instructions were cryptic: Get on a plane from Philadelphia at the crack of dawn. Fly to Minneapolis and wait there for eight hours, then board a plane shortly before midnight and fly through the night, arriving on the shores of Iceland with the rising sun. There I was to be picked up by a very nice man with an unpronounceable name who would chauffeur me into the heart of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital city, and await further instructions.

As the plane approaches, dropping out of the Western sky at sunrise, looking out the window you would be forgiven for thinking you were landing on the moon. As far as the eye can see are the vast lunar wastes of blackened lava fields that recede into the horizon. The landscape is dotted with smoking holes in the ground.

Nearly 99 percent of Iceland’s energy needs are provided by geothermal and hydropower.

Keflavik International Airport is actually part of a decommissioned NATO base that has since been converted into a university and a hospital.

My hotel is situated by the harbor, butting up against a massive whaling ship in dry-dock. I check in and crash. Hard. I’m awakened at two in the afternoon by the urgent ringing of one John Best, Sigur Rós’ manager. Best is a tweedy Londoner with a bushy mustache and eyeglasses that were last in style during the Ford administration. Even after spending a solid 48 hours with the man, I still can’t tell if his look is ironic or hip beyond my comprehension. A gifted raconteur with an ear for what comes next, Best is a veteran of London’s Britpop era, working as a

publicist for Elastica, then managing the Verve, all the while dating the lead singer of Lush. He started working with Sigur Rós as its publicist, but soon transitioned into manager, a position he has held since the release of Ágætis byrjun.

He fetches me at my hotel, and we walk the streets of Reykjavik in search of Vegamót, the sidewalk cafe where I will meet the first of my interview subjects, Sigur Rós bassist Georg Hólm (a.k.a. Goggi). It’s an incurably sunny day in the low 70s, all blue skies and zero humidity. On a clear day in Iceland, you can see forever. Literally. Out my hotel window I can see the snowcapped Snæfellsjökull volcano some 120 miles away as the crow flies.

Reykjavik is a charming, hilly spread of lowrise, two-story, chalk-white buildings and narrow cobblestone streets where nearly a third of Iceland’s 319,000 citizens reside. By American standards, Reykjavik feels more like a historic village than a nation’s capital. In the wake of Björk’s international stardom, Reykjavik has attracted the attention of bohemian jet-setters like Blur’s Damon Albarn, who—Best points out as we pass it—owns a minority interest in one of the city’s hippest bars. Everything is immaculately clean. Everyone is blond and tan and stylish and seemingly 25. Nobody appears to have a job. It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and the sidewalk cafes are filled to capacity with Icelanders hoisting frosty pints of beer. And yet there are no discernible signs of poverty anywhere.

“That was the most shocking thing about going to America for the first time,” says Hólm.

“That some people could be so rich and everyone else could be so poor. It’s not like that here.”

Hólm is the only member of Sigur Rós— and, for that matter, one of the few in Iceland itself—who doesn’t have a patronym, a tradi-

❝

I think Kjartan is slowly leaving the band. It’s Iceland— things happen really slow. We never speak, we never talk to each other. It’s a funny group of guys, four very different guys. We’ve known each other many years, we have become very good friends, but we don’t have many heart-to-heart conversations.❞ —jónsi

tion stretching back to Iceland’s pre-history as a colony of first Norway, then Denmark, but long-since abandoned in both countries, wherein a child’s last name is created by taking the first name of the father and attaching the suffix “dottir” (daughter) or “sson” (son) depending on gender.

“We don’t really use surnames in Iceland,” he says. “So, people don’t call people, even formally, using their last name. Everyone calls everyone by their first name. So, everyone would call me Georg; they wouldn’t call me Mr. Hólm.

It just doesn’t exist in Iceland.”

Hólm is a ruggedly handsome 36-year-old blond who always uses his indoor voice, even now as we sit outside in a noisy outdoor cafe

where the din is punctuated with the intermittent and slightly unnerving sound of helium balloons bursting in midair. The sidewalk is packed with attractive young Nordics tippling crisp pilsners and soaking up the summer sun. Iceland is situated just south of the Arctic Circle, so the sun never really sets this time of the year. It’s a trade-off for the fact that, come winter, it will stay completely dark 24/7.

“You get used to it—I really enjoy it, actually,” says Hólm. “I’m going to bed and it’s midnight and the sun is still shining, and I wake up and the sun is still shining.”

Despite its close proximity to the polar regions, Iceland’s climate is mild and temperate, thanks to the warming vectors of the Gulf Stream’s North

Atlantic Current. The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere appears to have redoubled that effect. “We joke around that you can’t beat global warming because the weather in Iceland is so nice these days,” says Hólm.

I ask him about the so-called “indefinite hiatus” and reports that the band almost called it quits during the making of Valtari. “‘Indefinite hiatus’? That sounds serious,” says Hólm.

I agree it does sound serious. How serious was it?

“That didn’t come from us; there was nothing like that,” he says. “After the tours for the last album, we had decided to take a year off. We weren’t going to work until the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. The idea was just to not be in a band for a year, but it just went on a little bit longer.

There was definitely much more time off.”

And what did he do with that time?

“I don’t know, just family stuff, I guess, normal things. Take the kids to school and … ” The rest of his thought is shattered by the gunshot sound of another balloon popping.

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❝

I wouldn’t change anything. I don’t believe in that. Anything that happens makes it worth your while. All things are good in that sense. We all make mistakes, but I’ve done nothing I can regret.❞ —kjartan sveinsson

H

Georg Hólm first met Jón Þór Birgisson at the

dawn of the ’90s, when both were enrolled in a technical school neither were long for. Jónsi was miserable studying mechanical drawing, and Hólm would soon quit to attend film school.

In 1994, they formed a three-piece with drummer Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson. They called them themselves Victory Rose, the English translation of Jónsi’s newly born sister’s name. Later, they would switch to a variant of the Icelandic version, Sigurros. They spent about three years working on their little-heard, rarely discussed debut, Von. What took so long, I wonder aloud?

“Weeks and weeks on and off of hanging around the studio, which turned into months and months, a lot of time given over to things like trying to record the rain out the window, ordering a pizza and hanging around, basically,” says Hólm.

Drowned in reverb, the resulting album was heavily indebted to early influences like Smashing Pumpkins and Spiritualized. Von barely registered outside of Iceland, and even at home it attracted very little attention. Upon its release, Sigur Rós’ debut sold a whopping 300 copies.

“To be honest, I think they are rather embarrassed by it and would rather it never existed,” says Best.

Then three things happened that would change everything. The first was Jónsi started singing in a falsetto, having accidentally discovered that not only could he control his voice better, but exhibit much more power and reach. In time, he would fashion his voice into one of the most distinctive and original-sounding instruments in 21st-century rock music. The second was Hólm was given a violin bow as a birthday present. He tried using it on his electric bass and it sounded … terrible. “I had no idea you needed to use rosin,” says Hólm, who quickly cast the bow aside.

Shortly thereafter, Jónsi picked it up and,

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after jacking up his effects pedals, ran it across the strings of his guitar and … eureka! The Sigur Rós sound was born: spectral in texture, glacial in pacing, oceanic in scope, inspirational in intent, transcendental in effect. Armed with this new arsenal of otherworldly sounds, Sigur Rós commenced writing and recording Ágætis byrjun, the album that would not only make the band members homeland heroes but a global cause célèbre. Nobody had ever heard anything quite like it before or, for that matter, since. These songs would become, in the hearts and minds of devoted fans and smitten critics, the national anthems of Hopelandia.

“We had this accidental moment of kind of being cool, and you would get all these glitterati types showing up backstage wanting to meet the band,” says Best.

By “glitterati,” he means people like Tom Cruise and David Bowie and Courtney Love.

Brad Pitt was an early fan, telling interviewers Sigur Rós was his favorite band. Metallica’s Lars Ulrich sent them a thank you note after seeing them in San Francisco. Sigur Rós served as the soothing soundtrack to the birth of Apple Martin, the daughter of Coldplay’s Chris Martin and actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Gillian Anderson (a.k.a. Agent Scully from The X-Files) actually followed the band on tour for a time. Even Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee was a fan, writing in his autobiography that he liked to listen to Sigur Rós in the fetal position.

“And they all kind of went away about five or six years ago, I guess,” says Best, wistfully.

Hólm shrugs as if to say Sigur Rós is, in the grand scheme of things, none the poorer for its absence. These guys were Sigur Rós before the celebrities took notice, and they will continue to be Sigur Rós long after others have moved on to the next flavor of the moment. Amen to that.

I

Jónsi happens by our table on his way home from the hardware store. He is tall and lean and dressed in a red jersey and black peg-legged track-suit pants that resemble jodhpurs. He still has his trademark coiffure that one wag aptly described as “a cockatoo frond of sticky-up hair.” Blind in his right eye since birth, Jónsi always seems to be staring off into the middle distance, entranced by the spectacle of something invisible to the rest of us “Weirdly, he has no problems with depth perception—his brain just works it out,” says Best.

“If I close my right eye, I can’t work out where anything is; I’d be knocking things over on the table. You can play table tennis with Jónsi, and he will beat you. You try and play tennis with one eye closed—I guarantee you, you can’t. I have no idea how he does it.”

We bid Hólm adieu and tag along with Jónsi for a walk-and-talk. We are quickly lured into a neighboring bar by the blaring sounds of the Rocky theme. Both Jónsi and Best are immensely amused by this fact, given that I live in Philadelphia. Inside we find the surreal scene of a guy well into his 70s striking muscleman poses while a phalanx of photographers snap away. It turns out he’s the owner of a Reykjavik-based brewery, which is celebrating its two-year anniversary. There’s a thriving beer culture in Iceland, despite the fact that beer was officially banned from 1915 to 1989. Nobody here seems to think that’s remotely weird, nor do they seem to think it odd that, up until 1985, TV stations were legally prohibited from broadcasting on Thursdays, presumably in the hope that people would read a book or go outdoors or have a conversation.

As we walk, Best brings Jónsi up to speed on some of the latest developments in the business side of things: Dubstep DJ Flux Pavilion (25 million plays on YouTube!) wants to do a remix, Save The Children wants them to play a benefit concert literally up a tree (don’t ask), and Sigur Rós has been invited to perform at the upcoming 67th birthday party for Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi (who just completed 10 years of house arrest) in Dublin, where she will receive Amnesty International’s highest honor, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, from Bono. Regrettably, it is an invite that will have to be declined. Sigur Rós is in no shape to deliver a live performance right now.

For the last few weeks, the group has been locked away in its rehearsal space trying to reconfigure itself as a live band in the wake of multi-instrumentalist Sveinsson’s decision not to tour. It will take three people to replace him: Ólafur Björn Ólafsson of Stórsveit Nix Noltes and Benni Hemm Hemm will replace him on keyboard and oboe, respectively, and Hólm’s younger brother Kjartan Dagur Hólm (from the At this point,

band For A Minor Reflection) will play guitar in his place. Time is running out—a world tour begins in a matter of weeks.

Eventually we wind up back at Jónsi’s residence, a gorgeous, low-slung, tastefully appointed, two-story carriage house made of black lava rock. Built back to 1882, Jónsi’s home is one of the oldest residential structures in Reykjavik.

Jónsi lives here with his longtime partner Alex Somers, an American musician and producer who mixed and arranged Valtari. His sisters Lilja and Inga Birgisdóttir, who design and create Sigur Rós album covers, band photos and merchandise, live across the street.

We head outside to inspect a series of cracks that have emerged in the side of the house and must be patched to stop rainwater from getting in and undermining the foundation. Jónsi is only half-kidding when he tells me that he’ll grant me an interview if I help him patch the wall tomorrow. Deal, I say, warning him I’m terrible at this kind of Mr. Fix-It stuff. We stroll over to a nearby restaurant for a meal and afterward, if the stars align, an interview with the somewhat press-shy Sigur Rós frontman. The singer can be a little fickle, and at this point in his career, Jónsi doesn’t have to do what Jónsi doesn’t want to do.

As we settle into a table, Best mentions that back in 2008 the band was approached by the Obama campaign, which wanted to use the aspirational “Hoppipolla,” from 2005’s Takk…, as its official campaign song. Although the band readily agreed to let the campaign use it for free, the move was blocked by the suits at Universal Music, who expressed concern about appearing partisan. This prompts Jónsi to ask about the status of the presidential campaigns in America.

He finds it genuinely perplexing it could even be a close race.

“Why would America not re-elect Obama?” he says. “He is so cool.”

I try to explain how divided the country is and the ugly role that race plays in all of this.

The mood lightens, however, when I school Jónsi about the exact nature of Rick Santorum’s Google problem. “That is so cool,” he says, laughing. As dinner wraps up, Jónsi decides he doesn’t feel like being interviewed today and excuses himself from the table.

Best shrugs apologetically. No matter, Best is actually a far more colorful and articulate narrator of Sigur Rós lore than anyone in the band. Talk turns to the impending tour. Best tells me that they enlisted the services of innovative stage designer Willie Williams, who, in addition to his work with the Rolling Stones, R.E.M. and George Michael, has designed every U2 stage set dating back to War, including the massive H.R. Giger-esque crab-shaped stage for the recent 360 Tour. This inevitably leads to talk

of Sveinsson’s decision not to tour.

“Obviously it changes things—the dynamic of the band is three now,” says Best. “In many ways, it’s an opportunity. Crisis is an opportunity. It has been a crisis, and it is an opportunity because Georg’s brother Kjartan is a phenomenal musician. Plus, he’s young and he’s Georg’s brother. So, that’s good; he will have his brother on the road with him. Now there will be six people on the stage, instead of four, so we have more hands to do more stuff, to create more of a wall of sound. Plus, we’ll have strings and brass with us. Sigur Rós live is like a juggernaut. They can really fucking blow your hair back.”

D

The next morning, I meet up with Sigur Rós

drummer Orri Páll Dýrason at his favorite coffee shop. It’s a charming little ramshackle bohemian affair, with thrift-store furniture, an old record player and a stack of vintage vinyl serving jukebox duties.

Dýrason pulls up on his new motorcycle, a Yamaha XJ6 Diversion F, dressed head to toe in black. It’s a badass look for somebody so softspoken. We sit on a bench out front, bathing in the brilliant sunshine as we sip coffees and nibble whole-grain toast and jam. Dýrason is 35, married with children, tall and lean, and topped off with a thatch of hair the color of straw and currently styled like John Lennon circa The White Album. Dýrason joined the band after Ágætis byrjun was recorded when charter drummer Gunnarsson quit to go back to school.

Dýrason is a man of few words. Very few. Starting a conversation with him is like trying to start a fire in the rain. There is a spark and then … nothing. I ask him about what music he likes to listen to these days.

“I never listened much to music,” he says, hushed and haltingly. “When I was 13 is when I really listened to music. Now I just listen to whatever’s on the radio in the car.”

I ask him about Sveinsson’s decision not to tour.

“There’s not much to talk about … It just is,” he says.

With talk about music and the band going nowhere fast, I ask him about the elves, the socalled huldufólk, or hidden people, an ancient folk tradition that has a somewhat surprising currency in 21st-century Iceland.

MAGNET: What can you tell me about this about the elf thing? You have to ask them permission to build roads or move houses?

Dýrason: That’s exactly right. There are stories about that, when trying to

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move some pillars of rock to make a road and equipment just breaks down and stuff, and then they have to get the elf specialist who can talk to elves.

MAGNET: There are elf specialists?

Dýrason: Yeah. People who can see elves and talk to them.

MAGNET: Are they in the phone book?

You can call them up and say, “I need an elf specialist”?

Dýrason: I don’t know. Just someone who knows someone. I guess it’s like that.

MAGNET: How do you become an elf specialist?

Dýrason: You have to be like clairvoyant.

F

“Just like you had in Greece, people who didn’t have any assets, but got really ‘rich’ by just getting loans, and that’s exactly what happened here in Iceland,” says Sigur Rós multiinstrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson, a raw-boned 34-year-old with piercing eyes and a thick beard who looks like he stepped out of the pages of a 19th-century Russian novel. “It was so easy to get money. Money was so cheap from 2000 to 2008, and so everybody had a lot of cash and everyone was buying computers and plasma TVs and big jeeps and all this shit that they don’t need. And those are the people who are really fucked today.

People spending money that they didn’t have. I mean, it’s really hard to kind of put a finger on what exactly is going on, or what are the consequences.”

❝

That was the most shocking thing about going to America for the first time. That some people could be so rich and everyone else could be so poor.

It’s not like that here.❞ —georg hólm

With that, he gets back on his motorcycle and, presumably by way of a farewell, says, “Have a nice lunch.”

“Yeah, we’re still trying to figure him out,” says Best when he comes by to collect me afterward.

We head down the road en route to the Apple Store, where we are to rendezvous with Sveinsson. But along the way we encounter a scene straight out of a Fellini movie: A small parade of preschoolers in yellow vests and paper crowns singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” A policeman on a motorcycle provides escort. Apparently, there is a rival parade of preschoolers from across town headed this way. They will meet somewhere in the middle of Reykjavik and have some sort of a sing-off.

Also taking in this surreal scene, coincidentally enough, is filmmaker August Jakobsson, who made the mind-blowing video for Sigur Rós’ “Svefn-g-englar,” which features the members of Reykjavik’s Perlan Theater Group dressed like angels while swooning and swanning about on a mossy plain in slow motion and oversaturated colors. All the members of the Perlan Theater Group have Down syndrome or a similar mental disability. Somehow the video manages to sidestep even a whiff of exploitation, because what comes across to the viewer, in the end, is not their damage, but rather their humanity.

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We are sitting at yet another outdoor cafe, in the village of Mosfellsbær, about 10 minutes drive from downtown Reykjavik. Behind him, carved into the side of a large grassy knoll, is a silent testament to the excesses that led to Iceland’s financial meltdown in 2008: a series of roads that were never finished leading to houses that were never built. Across the way is Sundlaugin, the former indoor swimming pool that Sigur Rós purchased and converted into a studio, where just about everything from 2002’s ( ) on was recorded.

As of late, the band has decided that owning your own recording studio is more of a liability than an asset. When you have unlimited time to record an album, you wind up using it. As a result, completing each Sigur Rós LP took longer and longer, culminating in the never-ending gestation of Valtari, which features some tracks that were recorded as far back as 2005. Recently, Sveinsson bought out the other three band members’ stakes in Sundlaugin, taking steps to make it a commercially viable recording studio.

“It wasn’t getting the attention it needed, and we were sitting on this property,” says Sveinsson. “All this equipment inside wasn’t really being used or taken care of. It was always kind of a second home to us, so there were always dirty socks in the basement and stuff because some of the boys lived there for periods of time. All of us

did, actually. I kind of wanted to clean it up and make it more professional. I hated going there and seeing all our gear so disorganized.”

I ask him the question that everyone in Sigur Rós’ orbit is desperate to have answered once and for all: Are you leaving Sigur Rós?

“I don’t know,” he says, with a shrug. “Maybe.

It hasn’t been decided yet.”

Sveinsson has always kept busy with musical side projects, among them scoring films like Ramin Bahrani’s 2009 short Plastic Bag and Neil Jordan’s 2009 Ondine. He has worked extensively with Icelandic string quartet Amiina, which includes his wife Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir on violin and has served as Sigur Rós’ string section on numerous tours. Sveinsson made NPR’s 2011 list of “100 Composers Under 40,” and he hints at numerous irons in the fire, none of which he is ready to talk about.

If he had to do it over again, is there anything he would have done differently?

“I wouldn’t change anything,” he says. “I don’t believe in that. Anything that happens makes it worth your while. All things are good in that sense. We all make mistakes, but I’ve done nothing I can regret.”

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When Sigur Rós started in 1994, back when they were still calling themselves Victory Rose, Smashing Pumpkins were Jón Þór Birgisson’s favorite band. You can hear it in Sigur Rós’ Von debut, and for that matter, you can hear in the core of its sound to this day: the grandeur, the melancholy and the infinite sadness. Back then, Jónsi considered himself just a guitar player. Period. He hated the sound of his own voice, and he only sang out of necessity. There was nobody else to do it, and they didn’t want to be an instrumental band. Because they didn’t have a proper PA, he had to plug his microphone into his guitar amp, which made it hard to hear himself over the sound of his guitar.

Eventually, he discovered that if he sang in falsetto, his voice occupied a different place on the sound spectrum than his guitar, and he could hear himself. He also realized he could control the pitch of his voice better, and if he slapped some reverb on there, well, we just might have something. It was about this time he started using Hólm’s discarded violin bow on his guitar, which made him totally rethink the way he played guitar.

“Less rock ‘n’ roll riffs, more droney, float-y, big sounds,” says the 37-year-old Jónsi as we quaff crisp Icelandic pilsners at yet another sidewalk cafe. “Lots of reverbs and echoes and stuff like that. In the studio, we recorded anything that we could record just to try and put it

through effects machines, and we found one I remember, like, a reverb effect we found was called ‘Nuclear,’ that was longest we could find.

So, we used that on everything.”

Eventually they figured out that a little reverb goes a long way. Sigur Rós rarely played out in public, but it did rehearse and record all the time. One day the bowed guitar, the falsetto and Sveinsson’s string and horn arrangements—not to mention hours and hours of elbow grease and sweat equity—came together

in a perfect storm of densely ambient, breathtakingly panoramic rock music. They played a finished track for a friend who nodded and called it “a good start.” That struck the band as a fitting album title, especially when translated into Icelandic: Ágætis byrjun.

“We kind of knew we had something good going, you know,” says Jónsi. “Maybe it sounds cocky, but we knew it was good.”

It would take some time to unfold, but over the course of three years of touring, Ágætis by-

rjun would sell a million copies and make the band members international pop stars. Some culture shock was inevitable.

“I really like touring in America now, but the first time I was a little skeptical,” says Jónsi.

“You know, it’s so easy to make fun of America.

Especially going through customs: ‘Sir, stand behind the yellow line!’ Such an asshole. But you know, we love it now.”

One thing that Jónsi wants to clear up is that the whole Hopelandic thing is the fabrication of an overambitious music journalist. “It’s just not true at all—there is no made-up language at all,” he says. “When you write a song and you are a singer, you make vocal sounds that fit the line. There was one song on the first album with some made-up stuff, and some journalist ran with it and called it Hopelandic, and that stuck.” Mostly, people are mistaking Icelandic, the language Jónsi sings in 99 percent of the time, for Hopelandic.

Given that Iceland’s current prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, is the first openly lesbian world leader, I ask Jónsi if coming out in Iceland was a traumatic experience for him. “It was no big deal whatsoever,” he says. “I came out when I was 21. I grew up in the countryside and didn’t know anybody that was gay, not one person. I was always different; I knew I was different in my head.

I came out slowly. First I came out to my friends, like really slowly. Then I told my parents—they had no clue. I was always very boyish, no female tendencies or being flamboyant or whatever. It was super easy. Not traumatic at all.”

Finally, I ask Jónsi the question I have traveled 2,687 miles and 14 sidewalk cafes to ask: Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

“I think Kjartan is slowly leaving the band,” he says. “It’s Iceland—things happen really slow.

We never speak, we never talk to each other.

It’s a funny group of guys, four very different guys. We’ve known each other many years, we have become very good friends, but we don’t have many heart-to-heart conversations. We tour all the time, you learn to give each other a lot of space, and then when we come home we don’t hang out that much because you want to give each other lots of space, enjoy your time off, stuff like that. I think Kjartan wants to expand more. He’s been playing with the band 16 years.

I don’t know if he’s fulfilled. He wants to try something new, try something different.”

Did you two have a conversation about it?

“Kind of, but we were both really, really drunk and don’t remember much about it. Classic Sigur Rós style. But if or when he does leave, we would probably go back to being a trio like we were when we started out. I’m not done. We’re going on tour, I’m excited about it. Festivals.

Beer. Can’t beat it.” M

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reviews Archers Of Loaf p. 46

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Nick Cave p. 48

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sugar p. 49

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Dan Deacon p. 50

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Debo Band p. 52

Taking Sides Yeasayer enacts its third halfmasterpiece theater

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nternet breakouts are the child stars of indie rock. Where do you

go from The Cosby Show or Oracular Spectacular, Paper Moon or Manners?

On divergent second records, MGMT veered away from the pop colossi that punched its ticket to the majors, and Passion Pit steered head-on into them.

Born the year in between, in 2006, Yeasayer is the synth-pop siblings’ wayward middle brother, outstripping them in both the rate of its releases and the risks taken therein. Odd Blood, the Brooklyn band’s sophomore offering, transposed the Eastern promise and chant-along ritual of Baraka-rock debut All Hour Cymbals into a smoldering new-wave epitaph. Now comes this third LP, which further smudges that traveling teen spirit with the embers of downbeat electronica and—more surprising, but less successful—breakbeat glitch hop.

There’s a duality to Fragrant World that, sized up alongside its two predecessors, reveals an inherent character trait and a more troublesome trend. Bad songs turn into good songs, and good songs turn into better ones. Attention-deficit and starved of structure, “Folk Hero Shtick” is a microcosm of the confused side two, a chop shop of

photo by Anna Palma

Yeasayer

Fragrant World S ec ret ly Ca na dia n

phantasmagoric sonics whose prospects are done in by undercooked hooks and impatient editing, as if tapes of experimental demos were stolen and hastily restitched

by Prefuse 73. But it’s righted at the end when the last of its melodic digressions, a cultish invitation blasted with wind-tunnel bass shears, miraculously sticks.

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reviews Although it takes thrilling turns, the throbbing first half suffers from no such misdirection. “Blue Paper” glides on a frictionless R&B groove, the smooth circumference of a cresting wave of slow jams that opens the album. Then, as it often does in a Yeasayer song, something jarring happens: A serrated tone sinks its teeth into the beat, the tempo adjusts to a wicked stutter-step funk, and a sea of processed vocals opens to swallow it whole. First single “Henrietta” similarly rides a bubbling dub rhythm before mutating into a miniature power ballad of temporal exaltation for its seven-word thesis: “Oh, Henrietta/We can live on forever.”

For all the creative restlessness, Yeasayer has fallen into another pattern, one that inverts the ascension of many of its songs.

Every set piece (”Sunrise,” “2080,” “Ambling Alp,” “Madder Red,” “Fingers Never Bleed” and “Longevity”) belongs to its album’s first side.

The lopsided composition makes Fragrant World seem better, then worse, than it is. The second side’s clearest message comes on the fatalistic closer, its chorus a caustic instruction manual for the overexposed, delivered via seismic aftershocks and cyborg bleats: “Tilt your head back, don’t choke/Under the glass of the microscope.” Words to live—or die—by.

—Noah Bonaparte Pais

Acid Mothers Temple

Son Of A Bitches Brew Important

AMT eats past, poops future

Given its history of using titles and cover images as lynchpins for complex jokes, one of the most surprising things about Acid Mothers Temple’s 40-somethingth studio album (not including side projects) is that it’s a straight-faced homage to electric-era Miles Davis. Less surprisingly, guitarist Kawabata Makoto and crew (an expanded version of AMT’s core) permeate their fusion potion with psychedelic spectacle to an extent imaginable only recently.

As the band wends its way through an expertly self-constructed maze, we slowly come to realize that the biggest difference between Son Of A Bitches Brew and its sources of inspiration is that every note AMT plays might have been mapped out in advance. But who gives a shit? At a time when gentrification and inertia threaten to permanently snuff the flame that kept jazz vibrant well into the ’80s, signs of life with this much in-your-face vigor—improvised or otherwise—deserve nothing less than open arms. —Rod Smith

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Creative Loafing

Merge reissues Archers Of Loaf’s most accomplished record

F

ollowing the knockout one-two punch of

Icky Mettle and Vee Vee with 1996’s All The Nations Airports, Archers Of Loaf had one of golden-era indie rock’s finest winning streaks. For the idiosyncratic North Archers Of Loaf Carolina quartet, Airports was its London Calling, its Born To All The Nations Airports Run, its OK Computer: the band’s all-important third album (not to mention major-label debut) where it smoothed out Merge and sophisticated some of the asymmetric, jagged edges of its discordant, jerry-built-sounding rock.

While Archers may have refined their unpredictable, harum-scarum ferocity on Airports—in the process turning in an album on which each song segues into the next— the angular, dueling, cranked-to-11 guitars still split the speakers. Mark Price’s drums remain a cacophony of crashing cymbals and fall-down-stairs fills. Matt Gentling’s bass still rumbles through the record like a locust swarm. And Eric Bachmann still strains raspingly for the rafters like an indie-rock Tom Waits. Still, softer cuts like “Rental Sting,” piano requiem “Chumming The Ocean,” the hypnotic, heady “Form And File” and the widescreen, wistful “Scenic Pastures” (arguably the band’s best song) add pictorial balance to classic blood-and-guts AOL rockers like “Bones Of Her Hands,” “Worst Defense” and the title track, while “Vocal Shrapnel” is as good a power-pop gem as the band ever wrote.

Archers Of Loaf was a group that prided itself on expressing love through anger, joy through conflict, beauty through disfigurement; making pop songs out of menacing melodies—and the band never did it better than it did here. Along with that album’s follow-up, White Trash Heroes, this reissue is one of two to round out the band’s remastered, vaults-be-emptied catalog via Merge. Its accompanying 19-track bonus disc is a trove of unreleased, Airports-era four-track demos. —Adam Gold

photo by dennis kleiman

Antibalas

Antibalas

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

Mature Themes

Daptone

I go shout plenty

Five years! That is entirely too long to wait for a new record from this Brooklyn Afro-funk outfit. The band has lost one Afrobeat in the interim—an interim, mind you, that has seen African-influenced music here in the States explode. Although there is a rather long list of bands that have taken the Antibalas formula and ran with it, the kings are back to reclaim their crown with six songs of sublime rhythms, funky bass lines and passionate vocals.

The Antibalas crew—which also happens to overlap with the Dap-Kings, Budos Band and Menahan Street Band gangs, as well as the group for Tony-winning Broadway musical Fela!—is in peak form, playing circles around any other second-wave Afrobeat outfit in town.

Er, make that any town, anywhere in the world.

The best part is Antibalas is hitting the road and coming to yours, and this is a band whose greatness doesn’t even begin to exclaim itself until it hits the stage. —Sean L. Maloney

Antony & The Johnsons

Cut The World

A Collection (2000-2012) Nettwerk

4AD

Rating highly

Nice title for the latest of Ariel Pink’s eerie excursions into oblong retro pop/rock. Long regarded for its spiraling, down-and-dirty, tape-hissing soundscapes, dedication to the tiny Paw Tracks label and an obsession with AM radio’s contagion, howling Pink and his band of Haunted avant-renowneds find themselves with a new tone to toy with: grandeur.

Although APHG diddled with big sound on its last album, 2010’s Before Today, it’s as if Pink and Co. got the fever for full flavor (“Driftwood” sounds huge) and went wide-scale more so than before. Having Mature Themes be the band’s second album for 4AD completes the sense of upward mobility and fidelity.

Although most of Pink’s devotion to the sonic squalor of Daniel Johnston is jettisoned, that weird spirit happily infects Mature Themes without turning it into a disease. With the members of Haunted Graffiti acting as a full-out band, they’ve become a gentler Crazy Horse to Pink’s new creepy brand of Neil Young-ian cranky pop wilding. There are no “Cinnamon Girl”s here, but “Farewell American Primitive” and “Only In My Dreams” breathe the same catchy air. Sweet. —A.D. Amorosi

Secretly Canadian

Slice of live life Over the course of his decade-plus with the Johnsons, Antony Hegarty’s music has taken on an increasingly conscious bent with each release, culminating with 2010’s Swanlights, an album of hymns to the natural world—and dirges for its ongoing degradation—that made for one of his most compelling releases to date.

Although Cut The World, the first full-length live release of the Johnsons’ career, only contains two new tracks, it continues along this trajectory, most notably on “Future Feminism,” a remarkably candid seven-minute monologue

by Hegarty that does well to explicate his radical views on the subject without ever getting too preachy.

Still, the real draws here are the stunning fresh takes on some of the finest works to be found in the Antony & The Johnsons catalog— the meticulous selection of which plays rather like a greatest-hits compilation. Even Hegarty’s most dejected, lovelorn dirges such as “I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy” and his spiked ode to sadomasochism, “Cripple And The Starfish,” are found here imbued with a sense of joyous rhapsody, courtesy of reworked arrangements with the help of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra and Nico Muhly, among numerous others. —Möhammad Choudhery

The Be Good Tanyas

Beak>

>>

Invada

Sounds for the subversive insomniac

Opening Beak>’s second full-length is an atmosphere of discord. It sounds like an alarm, or a machine’s approximation of human suffering. The track, titled “The Gaol,” sets a thick, groove-laden low end against the keyboard’s cries. The drums breeze through, offering just enough space to avoid suffocation. This formula will be played with, dismantled and rebuilt for the entirety of >>, to captivating effect.

There’s an immediate familiarity to its plain krautrock homage, but Beak> knows how to expand and contract for texture, finding elasticity in repeated notes and motifs. Brief moments of metal and folky psychedelia arrive, and ghostly vocals populate the almost-foreground. The sequencing is one of the most interesting aspects. With its disjointed turns, it plays like a score to a David Lynch film: sinister, with moments of beautiful and icy-cool respite. An arc is traded in for back-to-back groovy, then ambient sounds. Highly recommended. —Jill LaBrack

Rehashed, but refreshing

In anticipation of this year’s reunion tour, the Be Good Tanyas, that lovely indie-roots trio from the early aughts, are releasing a collection of favorite tracks from their three studio albums. It’s a great idea for newbies who want a quick fix of their shimmery, summery harmonies and sweetly innocent banjo melodies, but for old fans of the Tanyas, there’s little here to recommend.

Two new tracks (“Little Black Bear” and “Gospel Song”) and new mixes (which sound about the same) of two other songs are the only virgin material you’ll get with this disc.

That said, the tracklist flows well, and it’s a great listen. It’s just too bad the Tanyas didn’t take this chance to release something fresh, since their notoriously uncomfortable stage shows are certainly not the highlights of their career. —Devon Leger

Bloc Party

Four

Frenchkiss

Dour times

After four years of side projects and solo efforts, Bloc Party and wiry frontman Kele Okereke are again whole and creating the sort of jagged rhythm pop that made Joy Division joyless and the Cure sick, the very sort that the Bloc rocked on the back-to-back bleak A Weekend In The City and Silent Alarm.

Gone (mostly) is the flux of electronic wash and twittering noise of 2008’s Intimacy, Bloc’s entrée to Okereke’s tale of broken romance and icy distrust. Back is the density that made Bloc’s angular edge so full, rich and round in the first place—a sound now provided by producer Alex Newport, the man behind the muscle of At The Drive-In and the Mars Volta.

“The Healing” and “Truth” might be a wee bit weighty, not just from the thickness of the thudding mix, but from bloated lyrical élan.

Better is the buoyancy of “Octopus” and the downright glad-to-be-bad greasiness of “We’re Not Good People.” Welcome back, Bloc-heads.

—A.D. Amorosi

Evan Caminiti

Dreamless Sleep Thrill Jockey

Hanging with the jet (one) set

As one half of Barn Owl, Evan Caminiti has been known to sculpt a soundscape or two.

Although the guitarist’s main gig frequently finds him dabbling in ominous drones or dusty desert twang, his latest solo set takes that framework and molds it into a less familiar di-

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reviews rection. Caminiti has said he recorded “a kind of rough draft” of the album before revisiting it a year later, manipulating those tracks into something that probably doesn’t much resemble the source material.

So, like much of Tim Hecker’s records, the post-production work on Dreamless Sleep plays a bigger role than the performances.

Opener “Leaving The Island” is built entirely on guitar parts that never sound like a guitar, and in places, the washes of distortion and distant echoes layered into panoramic collages could actually be mistaken for a Hecker album. Tracks like “Fading Dawn” hew closer to Barn Owl’s sound, with the instrumentation a little less cloaked, but meditative forays like “Absteigend” are the biggest successes here.

—Matt Sullivan

Jim Coleman

Trees

Wax & Wane

Look deep into his eyes, sir

Jim Coleman was the “sampling and ambient noise” surgeon in Cop Shoot Cop, one of ’90sera art rock’s most abrasive outfits. On his first solo release under his proper name, Coleman is in a different acoustic wheelhouse, building evocative sonic events with mostly soft edges.

The album’s 10 pieces are constructed from strings, percussion (courtesy of Cop Shoot Cop founding member Phil Puleo), wood flute, horns and a number of found and sampled sounds. Best when spun straight through, Trees has the cohesive overall feel of a film soundtrack or chamber composition; actually, the record’s languid dynamics and slow movements acutely recall Popol Vuh’s soundtrack work for Werner Herzog.

Although several of its titles refer to the visible natural world (“Rain,” “Dawn,” “Summer Heat”), the best moments here play like the private music inside a moody head: a slow, steady pulse shot through with occasional growling undercurrents. If it sometimes feels like Coleman is using a limited sonic palette, you also get the sense he’s aiming for a hypnotic effect, which he achieves more often than not.

For the past several years, Coleman has been collaborating and doing remix work, but Trees spotlights his skills as a solo composer and collage artist, and they’re formidable chops indeed. —Eric Waggoner

Eric Copeland

Limbo

Underwater Peoples

Coming up sevens

A semi-inveterate novelty salesman in the throes of a creative tear, Eric Copeland has cultivated a devoted audience by

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Bad Romantic Murder was the case Nick Cave gave us in three challenging, newly reissued classics

U

pon the occasion of middle age, Nick Cave—

the wiliest of sagely literate lyricists, the most murderous of all murder balladeers, the logical successor to Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker when it came to wrenching existentialism—hit an ice patch. And so it came to pass, nearly 20 years after his exuberant start as a savaging solo artist (1984’s From Her To Eternity), Cave struck upon albummaking as necessity and recorded what was thought of then as the listless Nocturama.

In retrospect, through the lens of these remastered packages with additional material, 2003’s Nocturama has more Nick Cave & goodly ghoulish stuff going on than once imagined. The nasty The Bad Seeds nattering “Babe, I’m On Fire” is vintage avant-vexing Cave at his primal best, the man we’d come to expect/respect again Nocturama when he slimmed down the Bad Seeds for the Tin Machinelike Grinderman and its knuckle-dragging, sexed-up primal Abbatoir Blues/ psych-blues bluster. (That same raw roar, with some Hammond The Lyre Of Orpheus organ pumped into its veins, is what makes 2008’s Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! so epically prickly.) Maybe Cave was going through Dig!!! the mordant motions of slick-indie dross (“Bring It On”) and Lazarus, Dig!!! generic goth-romanticism (“Still In Love”) on Nocturama, but “Dead Man In My Bed,” heard through new ears, is a masterEMI Collectors Editions piece of noir tall-tale telling and rude music.

Besides, Cave/Seeds fans would have to wait less than 12 months for the double punch of 2004’s separate-but-equally brilliant Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus. Perhaps Cave was playing rope-a-dope with Nocturama: Abbatoir/Orpheus sounds too fully formed (without losing its improvisational éclat) and hot-blooded to have been tossed off the cuff with the pathos-soaked lyrical lean and gospel-punk gruel of its first half and the richly elegiac theatricality of its second disc. —A.D. Amorosi

photo by STEVE GULLICK

File Under: Totally Awesome Sugar is still helping the medicine go down …

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ntagonism suits Bob Mould. Hüsker Dü,

born in a feedback-drenched punk frenzy, didn’t get really interesting until Mould started going mano-a-mano with Grant Hart while simultaneously thumbing his stylistic nose at the Maximumrocknroll crowd. Mould’s exquisite solo debut, Workbook, essentially transformed a lyric from Hüsker Dü’s Warehouse swan song into prophecy: “Expectations only mean you think you know what’s coming next, Sugar and you don’t.” In his 2011 autobiography, Mould recounts Copper Blue/Beaster watching the alt-rock wave begin to crest as he toured 1990’s Black Sheets Of Rain, and he decided to play Caesar to a flannelFile Under: Easy Listening flagged Gaul. The subsequent battle hymns recorded under the moniker Sugar and collected on 1992’s flawless Copper Blue merge and its amped-up 1993 companion EP Beaster married the harrowing honesty and sophistication of Mould’s solo work to trademark Hüsker Dü sturm und drang. A triumph? Try some of the most compelling, essential rock music of the era, period.

Alas, lightning failed to strike twice on the rushed 1994 follow-up File Under: Easy Listening. Like much of Mould’s post-Sugar solo work, however, it possesses more than its fair share of sublime moments and an edge that neither quasi-contentment nor risible techno excursions can ever quite dull.

These deluxe reissues—all three releases remastered, two careening live sets and select cuts from the 1995 Besides collection—arrive as Mould hits the road to perform Copper Blue in its entirety. Is a restless Caesar preparing one last epic campaign? Here’s hoping. —Shawn Macomber

concocting sonic amusements all at once nauseating, delectable and habit-forming. Limbo extends his winning streak further, another victory in the Black Dice member’s continuing effort to ever-so-casually rewire and reverseengineer pre-established notions of what a pop song should be able to accomplish without forsaking songcraft.

So, while “Louie Louie Louie” cross-pollinates self-cannibalizing disco licks and a hook seemingly plucked on a musical hair comb, “Lemons” eases from planetarium IMAX distention into stutter-framed K-hole hellaciousness replete with oozing sirens. Like “Pinball Wizard” from Black Dice’s recent Mr. Impossible and 2008 solo Slurpee “Alien In A Garbage Dump,” “Double Reverse Psychology” finds Copeland flaunting his poly-portmanteau surrealist skill set. Donald Duck oompa-loompa-isms fall prey to loops encompassing a Servotron synth whirr and scatting in an untraceably impenetrable country dialect before downing a bottle of Quaaludes, stumbling into and then back out of a laser light show, and emerging with the bare bones of early-’90s pop R&B singles lost to history. —Raymond Cummings

The Darkness

Hot Cakes Wind-Up

They’re really growing on you

The Darkness suddenly seems a lot less outrageous than when it last put an album out, some seven years ago. Maybe it’s just the times: We’ve come a long way toward working out our collective irony issues—and have certainly grown desensitized to any and all ’80s-revivalism ticklishness—since the band members and their zebra-print spandex catsuits first touched down in the early ’00s. The once-inescapable line of inquiry—“Wait, are they serious?”—now just seems irrelevant, and boring besides. Hence, Justin Hawkins’ falsetto remains in full, preposterous, glorious effect throughout, but Hot Cakes (title notwithstanding) isn’t really trying to be funny so much as just plain fun. And it is.

Genre affectations aside—and by now these guys have been nailing their target aesthetic for so long that they’ve probably got as much claim to it as anyone—Hawkins and Co. have always been champs at penning solid, tuneful rock pop, and the group manages a small tackle-box worth of hooks here, ditching its second album’s baroque (faux-?)pretensions to reboot its debut’s uncluttered directness. Plus, if it’s novelty you’re after, there’s the blistering, shred-heavy overhaul of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit,” which succeeds, mostly, because it’s hardly a stretch—it was practically a Kansas song to begin with. —K. Ross Hoffman

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reviews Matthew Dear

Beams

Ghostly International

Murky outlook

The beginning of EDM’s colonization by white college kids could arguably be located directly at the doorstep of Ghostly International and its original leading light, Matthew Dear. Both on his own and with Audion, Dear integrated traditional rock-group arrangements alongside DJ dates and remixes, and he continues the project with his fifth artist LP. Not unlike Underworld, Dear’s spacey, impressionistic lyrical content reflects the murky, spectral funk of its surroundings. Witness opening Beams salvo “Her Fantasy,” where Dear intones a distorted vision of barbarian chivalry over a midtempo disco thump. It’s not much different than what Talking Heads did in the days of Studio 54, or even what Dear has attempted on prior LPs. And now that people like Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio are getting into the dance-fusion game, the field is getting competitive. Sadly, Beams doesn’t show Dear changing up his game in any meaningful way.

—Justin Hampton

Family Band

Grace And Lies No Quarter

Folk surface, metal soul

Jonny Ollsin was once a metal guitarist’s metal guitarist. In L.A. outfit Children, he thrashed like Suicidal Tendencies and tore savagely across speed-freak solos.

Relocating east and mellowing out in the Catskills led to the formation of Family Band with his wife, visual artist Kim Krans, and on the surface, the duo gives off a peaceful vibe reminiscent of ’60s English folk touchstones Trees. But no—this stuff is heavy, haunting and wholly captivating.

“Night Song” opens Grace And Lies with a crackling drum loop and hypnotic fretboard tapping. It’s clean and melodic; in the context of a Northeast hardcore band circa 1996, it might have signaled a build-up to something loud. But no maelstrom comes—just Krans’ spectral singing. Her voice is reminiscent of Lisa Gerrard, lending songs like “Moonbeams” and the title track a blissful, serene mood. (Think Dot Allison’s Afterglow.) Elsewhere, on the chugging “Ride” and ominous closer “Rest,” it turns gripping as Krans breathlessly contemplates the big sleep (“Oh sweet, oh friend/Rise the end, forgive the rest”) for seven intense minutes. —John Vettese

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Protest Freak-Out Dan Deacon is a spazz with a cause

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merica is a nation of cognitive dissonance—

a mishmash of ideas and people ever at odds, somehow managing to make great strides. And so it is with America, Baltimore beardo kewpie/knob-twiddler Dan Deacon’s exponentially sprawling yet infinitely dense Dan Deacon seventh full-length. Deacon, the Wham City Collective coAmerica founder who made his name with a combination of sucroseDomino high electro-pop and tweaked-out full-crowd performance art, has with America struck a sublime balance between his solo-electronic beginnings and the acoustic sounds he coaxed from the members of the Dan Deacon Ensemble on 2009’s Bromst.

America is both progression and departure for Deacon: an album rife with danceable party music, but also a deeply political gesture. Deacon named Bromst because of the word’s cognitive neutrality. He chose America precisely because of its semantic baggage.

Deacon’s concept of his country—which he gained perspective on following a 2007 European tour and appreciation for after playing an Occupy Wall Street rally—is a mixture of deep cynicism and boundless hope.

Opener “Guilford Avenue Bridge” is an instrumental homage to his Wham City homies, a hyper-dense dance dystopia and an intro to the cognitive crush that will follow. “True Thrush,” all uplifting and sing-songy, repeats, “Beast on my brain/Every thought is the same,” an apparent nod to the metaphorically small, powerless songbirds who rose up in movements like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Four-part, 21-minute opus “USA,” with its insistence that “nothing lives long, only the earth and the mountains,” is an epic appraisal of the permanent, the fleeting and the fragile state of nations. And on lead single “Lots,” Deacon sing/shouts, “Now we stand upon a chance/To break the chains and break lance,” before repeating, like a mantra and a rally cry, “One choice to make, get ready to go.”

It’s as if Deacon, who for years has been compelling crowds to do crazy and crazybeautiful things in the name of art, finally understands the power in that. —Brian Howard

photo by Shawn Brackbill

Fang Island

Major

Sargent House

Progressively turning that frown upside-down

Not that we’re complaining, but when a band exists for seven years and wholeheartedly lives up to the description of “the sound of everyone high-fiving everyone,” it’s a little disconcerting how dark parts of Major are. Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, however: Fang Island on its most depressive and morose day is still farting more sunshine than a wide-eyed idealist on the first day of Clown College.

But the piano riff and vocal drone of album opener “Kindergarten” sounds positively—and comparatively—mournful. It still has all the hooks the band members are masters of—their writing philosophy is to create songs with back-toback-to-back hooks—as does everything here, but their slight veer toward layered and involved prog rock takes a little getting used to. When you get beyond that and see how the dots are connected between the sunshine-y clutter of “Sisterly” and the driving math pop of “Chompers,” Major comes across as the next logical chapter for one of music’s most unique and positive forces. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

Neil Halstead

Palindrome Hunches Brushfire

Neil, an alien

Neil Halstead will forever be associated with Slowdive and Mojave 3, the two bands he fronted with Rachel Goswell, but Palindrome Hunches solidifies his excellence and independence as a solo artist. Early-’90s dreampop and shoegaze are things of the past for Halstead, though they’re things of the present for some nostalgic young bands. Instead, he uses the British folk tradition of Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and John Martyn as sonic templates without overtly imitating any of them.

The palette is narrow: close-miked acoustic guitar (with fingers scraping strings), gentle piano, a counterpoint violin and/or double bass, and Halstead’s thoughtful, world-weary voice.

His third solo album’s sobriety is more akin to 2002’s excellent Sleeping On Roads than 2008’s very good Oh! Mighty Engine. Although the title track’s palindrome-laden choruses show Halstead’s wit, nothing is a superficial as Engine’s “Baby, I Grew You A Beard.” Halstead is underrated. Fans of Mark Kozelek, Bon Iver and early Iron & Wine have a new favorite to discover. — Steve Klinge

Jesse Harris

Sub Rosa

Dangerbird

Sing us a lullaby

If Jesse Harris were any more

laid back, he’d be in a coma. He’s a fine songwriter, but a little tempo variety in the arrangements would go a long way toward lifting this album out of its easy-listening, backgroundmusic groove.

Harris is a fine singer, too, pleasant and gently melodic, with a sleepy, slightly disconnected quality that brings to mind Jackson Browne and Paul Simon. His lyrics are full of melancholy images of lost connections and love gone awry married to classic melodies that sound as familiar as your favorite ’70s folk/pop songs. Every track here is a quiet gem, but halfway through the album you can find yourself falling to sleep, lulled by the music’s soothing caress.

The twangy bossa nova of “It’s Been Goin’ Round” and the gypsy-flavored stomp of “I Won’t Wait” jump out at you with their playful energy. A few more moments like that would make this a great record instead of a good one.

—j. poet

often feeling like a chillwave bandwagoner because of it.

At 33 minutes, Wild Quiet’s duration is roughly the sum both its predecessors.

It’s Junk Culture’s full-length debut, literally—and figuratively, too. Wild Quiet finally achieves a clear purpose. Padding Mantena’s layered, wispy vocal with glowing synths and fuzzy bass—and the steady bedrock of jagged, sample-heavy rhythm—Wild Quiet bridges Matthew Dear’s dance-floor cool with Washed Out’s reflective insularity. Mantena, approaching his late 20s, wrote the album thinking about the inevitable advance of age.

Wild Quiet shows he’s still got plenty of good years ahead. —Bryan C. Reed

Los Lobos

Kiko 20th Anniversary Edition Shout! Factory

JEFF The Brotherhood

Hypnotic Knights Warner Bros.

Still adroit

Entering its second decade, JEFF The Brotherhood has its sound pretty well set. There’s a paper trail of god knows how many micro-edition CD-Rs and singles chronicling the sibling duo’s development. But by 2009’s Heavy Days, Jake and Jamin Orrall had arrived at a super-catchy mix of stadium-rock bombast and punk simplicity, open to Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick, the Ramones and the Stooges. The result is a spiritual heir to Weezer’s early and beloved Blue Album hits.

After joining Warners’ Brotherhood, JEFF opted to stay the course on Hypnotic Knights. Coproducing with Dan Auerbach, the Orralls edge toward Nirvana on “Leave Me Out,” add some subtle keyboard backing to standout “Sixpack” and try a motorik pulse on “Wood Ox.” But these embellishments don’t overhaul anything. At this point, JEFF is consistent enough that judging its records comes down to hair-splitting and personal preference. For what it’s worth, I’m still partial to last year’s funny, punchier We Are The Champions. —Bryan C. Reed

Still dreaming in blue By the time the band recorded 1990’s The Neighborhood, after close to 20 years together, Los Lobos was bored of being Los Lobos. The sessions were a drag, the tour that followed was even worse, and the group was badly in need of a change. So it got weird, experimenting with songs, styles and textures, coming out the other end with Kiko, a head-scratcher of an album with lyrics like “I peeked inside of the open door/Looked around, don’t know what for.”

How weird? Weird enough to trade roots rock for noisy, ecstatic art, even if it meant losing its audience—which is what happened, even after critics declared it a masterpiece.

Twenty years later, the anniversary album’s demos show just how much producer Mitchell Froom helped Los Lobos reinvent itself, and the live CD/DVD’s 2006 performance goes a long way toward becoming the definitive version, with all the gentle, elegiac qualities of the writing combined with a sound built on smarts, soul and sweat. —Kenny Berkowitz

Matisyahu

Spark Seeker Spunk

Junk Culture

Wild Quiet

Illegal Art

Coming of age

Listening again to West Coast, Junk Culture’s instrumental 2009 debut, it’s immediately apparent how far producer/ singer/songwriter Deepak Mantena has come.

The sample-based dance-pop collages he assembled as short, choppy collage-pop clips were one thing, but last year’s Summer Friends EP changed the game. For one, Mantena started singing, casting his project with contours borrowed from Panda Bear and Toro Y Moi, and

Under reconstruction

Thank G-d for K’Naan, the Somalian/Canadian rapper of undervalued melodic merit whose world-beat/Europop/rap hybrid and surprise success with 2009 Olympic smash “Wavin’ Flag” makes such impossibilities possible as a listenable Matisyahu album.

Forget about the abandonment of “Hasidic reggae” and its awful “principled” lyrics that won over Michael Franti fans or whatever, or (literally, who cares) shaving off his “trademark facial hair.” People care so little about Matisyahu in 2012 that the visionless one could quietly reinvent himself with this garbage plate, replete with contemporary production tactics and Real

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reviews Rapper Cred from fellow castoff Shyne.

Exactly three of these corporate mish(s) mashes deserve to exist: stomping Auto-Tune special “Buffalo Soldier,” the Arcade Fire-meets-Black Eyed Peas (really!)

“Breathe Easy” and the unabashedly cheesy and hopefully inescapable “Live Like A Warrior.” Occasional exotic loop or surprising flair aside, the rest is listenable, charmless and pointless. —Dan Weiss

John Maus

A Collection Of Rarities And Previously Unreleased Material Ribbon

Synth-pop oddball beginnings

Looking over the eccentric artists John Maus has worked with (Ariel Pink, Animal Collective), it makes sense that his solo output would be just as strange—and this fucker is quirky as hell. By day, Maus is a political-science professor working toward his Ph.D.; by night, armed with another degree in music composition, he makes lo-fi pop nuggets that are equally inspired by 1600s Baroque, the classical avantgarde of the 20th century and ’80s synthesizer film scores, taking as much from Handel and Schoenberg as Giorgio Moroder and the Cure.

It’s also really fun. You don’t have to know about 12-tone serialism to appreciate the wonderfully goofy innards of this appropriately titled compilation. Whether it’s the dancey goth of “Castles In The Grave,” the jittery drive of “No Title (Molly)” or his faux-British yelping on the hilarious “This Is The Beat,” the smartest thing about Maus is that he knows pop music and “serious” music are proportionately worth their weight. —Bryan Bierman

Morning Parade

Morning Parade Astralwerks

March madness

British indie pop has occupied a sort of aesthetic limbo ever since Oasis disappeared from the scene. Nowadays, Coldplay provides the template for moody journeyman four-piece Morning Parade to follow, and its debut LP does little to distinguish the band members’ observations from that of other bored, dissatisfied dreamers that have come before them.

Apparently, some of these guys worked the same dead-end jobs together, and most of their songs’ subject matter touch on themes of small-town ennui (“Us & Ourselves”), alcoholism (“Half Litre Bottle”), romantic love (“Carousel”) and weekend uplift (“Under The Stars”). The band, however, knows how to convey only one emotional space, which is

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Worlds Collide Debo Band’s debut modernizes Ethiopian dance pop for the West Debo Band

Debo Band Next Ambience/ Sub Pop

D

ebo Band is not the first Western ensemble

to take up Ethiopian pop music. Both the Either/ Orchestra and the Ex have backed veterans of Ethiopian pop music’s golden age, which arose in the mid’70s during the waning days of monarch Haile Selassie’s reign.

But while they have performed the material on occasion, it’s

all that Debo Band does Ethiopian groove music hits modern American ears with an appealing mixture of exoticism and familiarity. Its punchy horns, blazing, effects-laden guitars and hip-snaking grooves are close kin to vintage American soul, but its supple vocal melodies are dictated by the cadences of the Amharic, a language that flows quite differently from English.

Bandleader and baritone saxophonist Danny Mekonnen started out learning tunes from the record collection of his immigrant parents, but the group has also gone to the source by touring Ethiopia.

Cherry-picked material and six years of gigging have turned these guys into a hell of a live act, but this is their first album. It reveals a band that has gone beyond revivalism to forge a singular, contemporary sound that draws from psychedelic rock, outward-bound jazz and even a bit of funky gypsy fiddling. Aside from a couple of incongruous outbursts of heavy guitar, the hybrid works. The band is beyond tight, and not only does singer Bruck Tesfaye possess the requisite mellifluous diction, he has an impassioned delivery that reaches effortlessly across language barriers to collar anyone ready for a good time and haul them willingly onto the dance floor. —Bill Meyer

photo by Shawn Brackbill

dreary—if pretty—disconsolate torpor, entirely suitable as background for a half-caf mocha latte, but it wears over the course of an entire LP. At least Springsteen knew he had to switch it up in order to keep his working-class tales of woe palatable. —Justin Hampton

Old Crow Medicine Show

Carry Me Back ATO

The bitterest pill The Old Crow Medicine Show guys may have very well ended their hiatus out of indignation. With bands like Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers taking bluegrass, country and folk into the mainstream, the Nashville sextet has witnessed the scene it helped forge grow around (and without) it.

Reuniting with founder Critter Fuqua (and parting with singer/guitarist Willie Watson), OCMS teamed up with British producer Ted Hutt (Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly) for its fourth LP. Although the harmonies and pickin’ skills are still top-notch, Carry Me Back falls short in songwriting. The entendre-laden “Country Gal” and the childish “Sewanee Mountain Catfight” would sound immature coming from a band half OCMS’s age. Even highlights like “Half Mile Down” and “Steppin’ Out” seem like generic retreads of favorites from the band’s early albums.

Although its music is inherently (and intentionally) regressive, Old Crow Medicine Show remains stuck in the same stale rut that forced it into hiatus in the first place. —Eric Schuman

Onuinu

Mirror Gazer Bladen County

Toro Y Tu Mamá También

You go into an album called Mirror Gazer, by an artist called Onuinu (yes, and ew), with certain preconceptions. But Dorian Duvall isn’t nearly as presumptuous as his nom de plume implies. The silverback of Portland, Ore.’s artist-run Apes Tapes label, Duvall fashions his official debut around sinewy synths and P-Funk beam-ups. “Ice Palace,” a hypnotic bobblehead first tipped in late 2011, still hits like a heart attack, rewiring listeners’ tickers on the one.

As persuasive as that track is, it may be the fourth-fairest on this set-to-stun sci-fi extravaganza—jostling with the apologetic disco of “Always Awkward,” the downstairs “Axel F” bass melody of “A Step In The Right Direction” and the Toro Y Moi-simpático “Happy Home.” “I hope you’ll be around/When I’m in town,” winks Duvall over an irresistible dance beat. He may just leave with you yet. —Noah Bonaparte Pais

Owl City

Sic Alps

Universal Republic

Drag City

Lights out

Bored up the house

Sic Alps

The Midsummer Station

Give Adam Young credit for knowing how to craft a catchy tune. Almost everything on The Midsummer Station sounds like it could follow the success of “Fireflies,” the number-one single from 2009’s Ocean Eyes.

Actually, almost all the songs on this third album sound like “Fireflies” itself; they feature big, sing-along choruses, affirmative, sensitive sentiments and ubiquitous references to stars or light. It’s an LP full of computerized, AutoTuned dance-pop anthems, perfect to drive the kids at the junior prom into a frenzy.

“Good Time” even has what sounds like a gym full of kids singing along; it-girl Carly Rae Jepsen, of “Call Me Maybe” fame, joins in for added hit potential. Young has a flair for the obvious: “Dementia, you’re driving me crazy,” he sings on “Dementia,” with help from blink182’s Mark Hoppus. The Midsummer Station includes a couple of ballads—Young’s Postal Service moments—but the repetitive lyrics and too-familiar dance-pop hooks chafe. Owl City, you’re driving me crazy. —Steve Klinge

Redd Kross

Five albums in and San Francisco’s Sic Alps has drawn the attention of tastemakers and Stephen Malkmus, who wondered aloud if this collective was destined to be reckoned with, should Earth exist after December 21. Nah. Our ears hear psych-indie, ’60s-garage stoner jams without weed metal’s monolithic guitars or any of the cheery details the energetic fresh-faced and rugged-veined troubadours of the ’60s scene possessed. The no-care ’90s have sunk their tentacles into this band, shackling weighty, depressive balls and chains around its hearts, souls and mood rings.

Even when fuzz-box pedals are dialed up alongside the requisite “oo-oo-oooh”s on “God Bless Her, I Miss Her,” it’s more lo-fi Pavement than libidinous punk rock. At times, Sic Alps reminds of the Who you’ll never hear on classic-rock radio, but far lazier. Granted, there are some pop-infused gems simmering under the moping morass (“Moviehead,” “Glyphs”), but this slacker approach doesn’t do favors, and should be met with equal ambivalence. —Kevin Stewart-Panko

Six Organs Of Admittance

Researching The Blues

Ascent

Merge

Neurotic to the bone

Certainly, Redd Kross has long-term credibility. When the band first started out, Jamie Lee Curtis was still a hot party girl worth obsessing over and, as veterans of L.A.’s early-’80s punk/pop explosion(s), the then-teenage brothers McDonald (Steven and Jeff) literally grew up in public—steadily refining their artiste/poser/trash/thrash/goldengarage aesthetic. Now cycling through another reunion phase with their seventh album in 34 years, the Kross basically lives and dies on the strength of its smartly stylized songwriting.

Laden with grungy rock squalls, Nuggetsstyle guitar riffs and shiny British Invasion harmonies, Researching The Blues is masterfully produced and keenly performed. Pop-nostalgia isn’t exactly required, but whether you find majesty in these three-minute studio symphonies still depends on your cultural frame of reference. The LP is brief (just 32 minutes), but the 10 new melodies are mostly merry and often memorable, providing a fitting testament to the quixotic band’s enduring spirit, dedication and talent. —Mitch Myers

Drag City

crap out of me

Joe Rogan scares the

You want to know the most terrifying thing ever? If you misspell this band’s name as Six Rogans Of Admittance, you’ll spent the rest of the day with a sextet of Joe Rogans screaming gibberish at your brain. It’s a truly terrifying experience, so watch what you’re typing, kiddos. Also terrifying? Finding a starting place in SOOA’s expansive 15-albums-in14-years catalog.

But be not afraid, psychedelic warriors, for Ben Chasny’s ongoing experiment in the strangest reaches of sound has released one of its most accessible records to date. Featuring a full band and some of the most domeexploding guitar-playing since Quicksilver Messenger Service handed in its fixies and started sending snail mail, Ascent is an album that manages to find the perfect harmony between the normal and the weird, the dirty and the clean, the psychedelic and the straight. Put this one in your psych-rock emergency kit; it’ll save your ass one day. —Sean L. Maloney

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/dvds

It’s Got Guts

The second season of The Walking Dead doubles down on characterization—and ratings

by Bill Howard, Fountainpop.com

When AMC’s

The Walking Dead hit our television screens in 2010, it was an instant success. Zombies had long been a favourite of horror film fans, but The Walking Dead was different. Based on the hugely successful and popular comic books, written by Robert Kirkman, it gave horror fans what they had hoped for; tons of undead walking the streets, gory scenes unprecedented for television, blood by the gallons in every episode.

But what no one expected was an incredible show with writing of such a high caliber that it was rarely seen accompanying horror, and relatable, likable characters who would be instantly embraced by television viewers of all kinds, as well as by the horror fans.

group to stay at the farm, but only while Carl recovers, then he insists Rick and Co. find their own way. As the group begins to realize the safety the farm provides, disagreements over leadership cause tensions to rise. Glenn finds love on the farm, Lori finds security for Carl, and everyone sees the farm as a safe haven where they might actually find a chance to survive.

Well, not quite everyone. Shane grows increasingly agitated with Lori’s reluctance to acknowledge their relationship, and finds Rick’s leadership lacking. Shane thinks they should overtake the farm for The first season won the Emmy® Award for Outstanding Prostheir own safety and tempers escalate with the impending request thetic Makeup for a Series, Miniseries, Movie or Special and was

by Herschel for the group to leave. With tensions running high nominated for Emmys® in Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series regarding the future safety of the group, secrets about the farm and Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. are revealed and personal relationships get tested.

Season One also garnered a Golden Globe® nomiThe walkers may not be the only thing to fear. nation for Best Television Series - Drama, and was The Walking Dead Season Two did what many named to the American Film Institute’s (AFI) Top 10 fans of the first season thought not possible. It got Programs of the Year (2010), among other accolades. better. The thing that makes The Walking Dead The Walking Dead Season Two premiered on stand out from other zombie films, and in fact from AMC to 7.3 million viewers, which was unheard other dramatic television series, is the absolute care of for a basic cable TV series and represented a and artistry that goes into every episode. Andrew 40% increase on the previous season. It even beLincoln as Rick Grimes is a captivating and strong came the ratings record holder for the 18-49 adult lead in an already strong cast. Jon Bernthal is fandemographic; The Walking Dead was officially a tastic as the loyal ex-partner who is in love with phenomenon.

Rick’s wife.

The Walking Dead: The second season begins where Season One Some great drama comes out of that whole situaSeason Two will be available August left off, with Rick and his group of survivors leavtion, even more so than in Season One. The tension 28 from Anchor Bay ing Atlanta after the events at the CDC and heading in every scene with any combination of Rick, Shane Entertainment to Fort Benning. Along the way, they come across and Lori is palpable and unnerving. Shane is such abandoned vehicles scattered all along their route on the I-85. a timebomb in Season Two, he almost poses more danger to the While scavenging the vehicles for supplies, a large horde of walk- group than any impending walkers might. Bernthal’s portrayal ers migrate through and the group are forced to hide under vehi- of Shane is riveting. cles. Sophia gets chased into the woods by two remaining walkers Steven Yeun as Glenn is also a much bigger part of the second and Carl is accidentally shot while they are searching for her. Rick season. Glenn is the caring everyman of the group and the charand the group take Carl to a large, isolated farm owned by a veteriacter most viewers can relate to. Glenn is the go-to guy for all narian named Hershel Greene and his family. Herschel allows the the dirty work, but he does it willingly because he is determined 54

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to do whatever he can to ensure the safety of the group, even at his own expense. Kudos to Yeun for his spectacular yet subtle performance. He is the true heart of the group.

The backbone of the group is their leader, Rick, portrayed with strength and vigilance by Andrew Lincoln. A British actor, Lincoln still captures the essence of a Southern police officer with an unwavering sense of duty. He is the rock that the entire group stands on to survive in their apocalyptic reality. Other outstanding actors among the cast are Jeffery DeMunn and Laurie Holden.

This is also a standout season for Norman Reedus (The Boondock Saints), portraying the gruff Daryl Dixon who has become one of the most celebrated characters on the show. It is in these actors, as well as the passionate and talented directors and writers of The Walking Dead, that the show finds its heart. The passion for story that they all share keeps viewers coming back.

Aside from the excellent writing and acting, the production values on display here are top notch, looking better than half of the films at your local movie theatre. Beautiful cinematic camerawork and set design, with giant orchestral scoring and some pretty damn interesting character arcs make The Walking Dead the show that shouldn’t have worked. But damned if it didn’t. It’s smart, fast, funny, gory, scary, intriguing, romantic, epic and intimate, with most of these descriptors falling into each and every episode.

Anchor Bay Entertainment proudly releases the AMC original series The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season on August 28th. A truly unique and very limited edition zombie head case created and designed by McFarlane Toys will also be available on Blu-ray™. The 4-Disc sets contain all 13 episodes of the second season and are loaded with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, featurettes and audio commentaries.

Among the excellent special features are some real treats for fans of the show. First off are the engaging webisodes. The webisodes relate a continuing story that takes place concurrently with the events in the show; an alternate storyline if you will. But there are many references and hints to the show throughout, and the end result of the storyline in the webisodes is just awesome. A definite must-watch for fans.

Also included are some great deleted scenes which again, provide a little deeper story and insight into the world of The Walking Dead. Some real treats here as well. The featurettes provide an excellent and in-depth look at the making of the show, from the groundbreaking makeup effects by show producer Greg Nicotero (who also steps into the director’s chair in Season Two), to the digital effects that are so good, we didn’t even know they were in there.

Every detail from makeup to sound design, from costumes to sets, is covered and exhaustive. An amazing look at an amazing show. needle

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A Trick Upon The Dead

essay by

Stan Michna

So-so poet and so-so cynic Alphonse de La- civilians. When Miller hops the wall, he martine once described history as “a trick discovers a gaggle of teen-aged Chinese we, the living, play upon the dead,” perhaps Catholic schoolgirls, apprehensive and none so cruelly as the obdurate refusal by fearful, joined soon after by a group of Japan, even today, to acknowledge formally elegant young prostitutes who demand the scale of the horror visited on Nanking and are granted—by the lascivious Miller (Nanjing) by the Imperial Japanese Army against the wishes of the appalled schoolin the weeks following that city’s capitula- girls—entry into the compound.

And here the movie really begins, as retion in December, 1937.

Known in historical vernacular as the sentful schoolgirls and self-absorbed prosRape of Nanking or Nanjing Massacre, titutes bicker and clash until a rapprochethe ongoing argument over the death toll ment is reached following—in a sequence of non-combatants—a chasm-like range of at once suspenseful, electrifying and gut40,000 at one extreme, 300,000 at the oth- wrenching—a frenzied attempt by Japaer—attests to the bitter divide. The nature nese soldiers to rape the schoolgirls. The of those deaths by the rampaging troops, entire film pivots on the crucial moment a however, is what truly inflames: fleeing schoolgirl diverts a ralive burials; beheadings; immopacious soldier away from the lation; indiscriminate shootings; trapdoor where the prostitutes execution of prisoners-of-war; are hiding. The prostitutes are and the rape, mutilation and not only spared, but humanmurder of thousands of women ized. And once humanized, and children. Death manufactheir fate is sealed. tured on a monstrous industrial Flowers Of War has shoulmodel. dered some peculiar criticism Against this nightmarish in the West, but any familiarity backdrop, just as the Japanese with the work of the director of The Flowers Of War will be available are crushing the remnants of both Raise The Red Lantern on DVD and Bluarmed resistance, director and the opening ceremonies of ray/DVD combo August 14 from Zhang Yimou sets The Flowthe 2008 Beijing Olympics proEntertainment One ers Of War (reportedly China’s vides its own answers. Using highest grossing film). Based loosely on baseball idiom, Yimou can play long ball Geling Yan’s novella, Flowers, broadly or little ball, spectacle or revealing detail.

Flowers isn’t flawless. Bale’s character speaking, is the story of not-particularlyheroic American mortician (!) John Miller, is often superfluous. You spot the eventual played by Christian Bale (in Nanking to identity switch from the balcony back row gussy up a dead priest), who reluctantly almost the moment the prostitutes brazen harbours but ultimately saves—through their way into the compound. And Yimou’s the agency of the suicidal sacrifice of a attempt at extrapolating the great recurgroup of prostitutes—a dozen schoolgirls ring theme of Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre (see from certain rape and death at the hands of sidebar) falls short. the Japanese. But watch closely and you’ll Yet whatever its weaknesses, Yimou’s realize the story isn’t his at all, his impor- formidable filmmaking strengths overtance gradually displaced by the burgeon- ride them, including his gift for discovering ing relationship between the prostitutes exquisitely beautiful women who can act.

And if Flowers Of War doesn’t always and schoolgirls.

The bulk of the film takes place in a meet the approval of filmgoers abroad, no fortress-like cathedral within a walled, matter. Zhang Yimou is playing for the compound in the Nanking Safety Zone (es- home crowd. tablished by real-life John Rabe, an exact counterpart to Oscar Schindler), sanctuary Questions or comments? to Westerners and thousands of terrified Email stan@sunriserecords.com 56

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NEGLECTED

CRITERION

Red Beard 1965 / Director

Akira Kurosawa Why It’s Neglected: A three-hour black-and-white meditation on the meaning of life, set in a 19th-century medical clinic and hospice for the indigent, with nary a samurai sword nor Yakuza gat in sight.

The Theme: It’s the culmination—he would not express it again—of the grand unifying theme that binds his greatest works like a golden thread.

Namely, that only through humiliation, suffering, even degradation does one find true redemption. It’s a theme he shares with Dostoyevsky, particularly so in Red Beard, many of whose elements are derived from Dostyevsky’s Humiliated And Insulted.

The Story: An arrogant, ambitious young doctor finds himself stuck in a poverty-row public health clinic/ hospice run by a legendary and unorthodox hardass doctor known as Red Beard (the great Toshiro Mifune, the last time—after nearly 30 films— he would work with Kurosawa). The young doctor’s arrogance gradually erodes as Red Beard pushes him more deeply into the lives—and blisteringly heartbreaking stories—of the sick and dying.

In the end, he chooses to stay on.

What You Get: As extras: a pamphlet detailing the film’s extraordinary set design; and commentary featuring a densely packed and articulated exegesis of Red Beard.

As film: a beautifully rendered— cinematography, score and performances—bittersweet long goodbye to the greatest collaboration in screen history; and to an era of filmmaking where the most dynamic action sequences were staged in the heart.

/movies/new_releases AUGUST 7

13 Families: Life After Columbine 1313: Night of the Widow Adventures of Bailey: The Lost Puppy Aerosmith: A Performance in Review After the Wizard Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan: The Complete Series Arsenal Stadium Mystery Bel Ami Berenstain Bears: Bear Country Berenstain Bears: Celebrations Berenstain Bears: Homework Help Blue Like Jazz Bomber Boys Boogens Bound Captain’s Table Conspirators Crow Curious George: Dance Party Dance Moms: Season 1 Dennis the Menace: 20 Timeless Episodes Devil Seed Dirty Jobs: Collection 8 Disgaea: The Complete Series Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax Eyewitness Fireman Sam: Heroic Rescue Adventures For the First Time Foreign Parts Frankie and Johnny Franklin: School Days With Franklin Garrow’s Law: Series 1 and 2 Genesis: Behind the Music and In Their Own Words Ghost Hunters: Season Seven Part 1 Girlfriend Golf’s Grand Design Grimm: Season One Gunsmoke: The Sixth Season Vol. 1 Hawkwind, the Enid and More: Stonehenge – A Midsummer Night Rock Show 1984 Heartland: The Complete First Season Heartland: The Complete Second Season Heroes & Demons Highly Dangerous Il Trovatore Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt Jesus Fish Jock the Hero Dog Johnny Guitar KaBoom! Back to School Kathy Griffin: Pants Off & Tired Hooker Killing Scarecrow: Complete Series Knock Knock 2 La Fanciulla Del West Ladda Land Land of Fury Let It Shine Liquidator Little Wizard: Guardian of the Magic Crystals Long Memory Looney Tunes Show: There Goes the Neighborhood

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Marley Mary Marie Mia and the Migoo Miramax House Party Collection Mr. Hush My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic – Royal Pony Wedding Nobody Lives Forever One Direction: The Only Way Is Up One Piece: Season 4 – First Voyage Parenthood: Season 3 Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon – The Independent Critical Film Review Rally Redemption Redemption Road Rental Magica Part 1 Rio Grande Rookies: Season Two Saideke Balai Seven Hills of Rome Sinking of the Laconia Squidbillies, Vol. 5 Steve Niles’ Ramains Story of Wales Strike Back: Season One Threads: Three Strangers Up Heartbreak Hill Valentina Lisitsa: Live at the Royal Albert Hall Verdi: Il Trovatore William & Catherine: A Royal Romance Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom WWE: Superstar Collection – Daniel Bryan WWE: Superstar Collection – Sheamus Yellow Rock You Know What Sailors Are Youth of Christ

AUGUST 14

2012 Apocalypse American Gangster American Pickers Vol. 4 America’s Greatest Feud: Hatfields & McCoys Angry Beavers: Season 3, Part Two Another Perfect Stranger Art Is… The Permanent Revolution Assassin’s Bullet August Barack Obama: From His Childhood to the Presidency Bigfoot Bowie in Berlin Brains That Wouldn’t Die Breathless Burma: A Human Tragedy

By Way of the Stars Callers Christmas Choir Christmas Hope Christmas in Boston Ghugginton: Traintastic Adventures Churchill: The Finest Hours Coffin Cold-Blooded Killers Community College Community: The Complete Third Season Dalziel & Pascoe: Season 6 Dead Trees

AUGUST 14

Essential Games of the Chicago Cubs Well, let’s see: There was that time Ernie Banks hit his 500th home run. And that time Steve Bartman got scapegoated for them choking away the NLCS. And… uh… and… [A&E]

Deadly Mysteries Collection Dexter: The Complete Sixth Season Diary of a Cheating Woman Disaster Collection Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Doctor Who: The Krotons Essential Games of the Chicago Cubs Essential Games of the Philadelphia Phillies Essential Games of the Texas Rangers Exile Fairies: Fairy Fun Forsyte Saga Collection Fresh Beat Band: The Wizard of Song From the Bush to the Valley Gamera: War of the Monsters Girl Walks Into a Bar Glee: The Complete Third Season Godzilla vs. Megalon Golden Christmas Good Life Ground Zero Gruffalo’s Child Happy Endings: Season 2 Hick History Classics: Great Monuments of America History Classics: The Color of War History Classics: WWII in Great Britain Holiday in Handcuffs/Snow/ Snow 2: Brain Freeze Hunger Games In Tahrir Square Inga Collection Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment Jaws Jay and Silent Bob Get Old: Tea Bagging in the UK John Wayne: In Action John Wayne: In the Saddle Juan of the Dead Judge John Deed: Season Six

Kil List Korczak Lake Effects Lamp LEav It on the Floor Life and Death of a Porno Gang Little Women Love Addict Maisie Collection Vol. 2 Marriage Retreat Marvel Iron Man: Animated Series 1 Marvel Iron Man: Animated Series 2 Marvel Knights: Astonishing X-Men – Torn Marvel X-Men: Animated Series 1 Marvel X-Men: Animated Series 2 Master Qi & The Monkey King Midnight Horror Collection 11 Most Wonderful Time of the Year/Moonlight & Mistletoe/ The Christmas Choir Neverlost Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror One Piece: Collection 7 Original Christmas Classics Sing Along Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory Pawn Stars, Vol. 5 Penniless Princess Perfect Stranger Plate Portal Power Rangers Super Samurai: Super Showdown 2 Power Rangers: Super Powered Black Box Promesse Qi Gong: Discover the Ancient Art Raid; Redemption Ravi Shankar: Raga Bihag Renaissance Live in Concert Tour 2011 Rewind Rosetta Scandalous Schwarzenegger: 3-Film Collection Sesame Street: Elmo’s Alphabet Challenge Silver Screen Queens Smurfs and the Magic Flute Snowglobe Snowtown Sophie Space Rock Invasion Staind: Live From Mohegan Sun Stallone Collection Stranger Series Sword Identity Tai Chi: Discover the Ancient Art Tonight You’re Mine Transatlantic Sessions 2 Transatlantic Sessions 4 Trinity Blood: The Complete Series Vacation Massacre Vampires Vega$: The Complete Series Vega$: The Third Season Vol. 2 What to Do When Someone Dies WWE: Money in the Bank 2012 Zombie Horror Fright Fest

AUGUST 21

1000 Times More Brutal Adele: The Only Way Is up Adventures of Tintin: Season

AUGUST 28 Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Second Season

The Atlantic City chess game continues, with Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore facing off against Nucky, multiple failed hits, and all sorts of critically acclaimed gangster goodness… [HBO]

Three Andrew Marr’s Megacities Aristocats Arnold Schwarzenneger: The Comeback Attack of the Killer Backpacks Beautiful Soul Bernie Billits Bindlestiffs Black Magic Rities Black Metal Veins Black Metal: Voices From Hell Bloody Evil International Collection Bones Bonsai Breathless Bruno Mars: Just the Way I Am Cajun Pawn Stars: Season One California Indian Captain Carey, U.S.A. Carrie Underwood: Country Girl Children of the Hunt Chimpanzee Closer: The Complete Seventh Season Color Out of Space Colossal Collection Crisis at the Castle Dalai Lama: Towards a Peaceful World Dalai Lama: Universal Responsibility in a Nuclear Age Dances & Waves; Schoenbrunn 2012 Night Concert David Bowie: The Calm Before the Storn Day of Violence Deadly Renovations Doc McStuffins: Friendship Is the Best Medicine Doomsday Preppers: Season 1 DOS Hogares Dreams Do Come True Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters

Elevator Escape Extreme Canadian Horror Flesh for Olivia Freelancers Frontier Boys God’s Ears Grown Up Movie Star Happy You’re Alive Hatfields & McCoys: An American Feud Hell Hide Away Home Run Showdown House: Season Eight – The Final Season Image of Bruce Lee/The Snake, the Tiger, the Crane Journey to Grace: The Hansie Cronje Story Joysticks Kill and Kill Again King of the B Movies KISS: Shout It Out Loud Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventures Let Go Lionel Richie: Just for You Little Big Boy: The Death Stalker Murders Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 1, Vol. 1 Mike & Molly: The Complete Second Season Moss Murderer My Son John NCIS: Los Angeles – Seasons 1-3 SCIS: Los Angeles: Season 3 NCIS: Seasons 1-9 NCIS: The Ninth Season NFL: History of the New York Giants Official Kubotan One in the Chamber Pawn Shop Payback Perry Mason: Season 7, Vol. 1 Planet Dinosaur Play in the Gray Pocahontas/Pocahontas II Post Mortem Private Hell 36 Psychos in the Woods Pursued Rescuers Revision: Apocalypse II Rockpalast: Graham Parker Rockpalast: Mitch Ryder Rome: The Complete First Season Scar Crow Separation Shangri-La: Part 1 Shangri-La: Part 2 Shark Week Shuffle Sid the Science Kid: Sid’s Spooky Halloween Silenced Slash: The Cat in the Hat Something Strange Space Adventure Cobra Spookley the Square Pumpkin Stunt Riders: Hot Wheels Sunny Super Hero Squad Show: The Infinity Gauntlet – Season 2, Vol. 3 Thinner TIgra, Chaco Time Again Tiny Toon Adventures: How I

Spent My Vacation Trucker’s Woman Up & Down Virginia Walking Dead Origins Weekend When Death Calls Winnie the Pooh: The Tigger Movie WWE: 50 Greatest Finishing Moves in WWE History Zombie A-Hole

AUGUST 28

# Regeneration Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 6 Amazing World of Gumball: The DVD America & The Civil War American Experience: The Presidents Ancient Alien Question: From Apartment 143 Apocalypse of the Dead Aquarium for Your Home Bad Bush Barnes Collection Battleground Below Zero Between Heaven and Ground Zero Beyond Time: William Turnbull Big Time Movie/Rags Bio-Slime Blood Money Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Second Season Bob the Builder: The Ultimate Can-Do Crew Collection Cage Fight Campfire for Your Home Carol Burnett: Prime Time Specials Collection Changing the Game Chuck Jones Collection: Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles Citizen Gangster Closed Book Comedy With JC In the Streets Danny Phantom: Season 2, Part 2 Darling Companion Death Watch Dinosaur Train: Big, Big Big E2: Intervention Architecture Ergo Proxy: Box Set Etta James: Live at Montreux 1978-1993 Family Affair Family of Four First Ladies Five-Year Engagement Florence and the Spirit of the Renaissance Free Havana Green Lantern: The Animated Series – Season One, Part One Guilty Pleasures Hawaii for Your Home Headhunters Heineken Kidnapping Highest Pass Homeland: The Complete First Season I Am Gabriel I Heart Shakey Ije: The Journey In Plain Sight: Season Five In the Footsteps of Berlioz In the Footsteps of Puccini

Injustice International Jazz Hall of Fame: 1997 Awards Jersey Shore: Season Five Uncensored Jersey Shore: Shark Attack Jungle Bunch Kaleido Star: Season 1 Life Happens Lady Lady Ninja Lhasa and the Spirit of Tibet Living Dead Girl Lonesome Love Translated Lovely Molly Lucky One Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer Max Schmeling Midnight Movies: Car Crash Double Feature Midnight Movies: Crime Double Feature Midnight Movies: Sci-Fi Double Feature Monsieur Lazhar Moth Diaries Nate & Margaret Newest Pledge Once Upon a Time: The Complete First Season One Hour to Die Paradise Lost: Evolve Patient Zero Penumbra Pirates! Band of Misfits Previous Engagement Quadrophenia Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1 Redemption of a Dog Romey Et Juliette Scarface Screaming in High Heels Shark Week Shrek’s Thrilling Tales Smithsonian Channel: 9/11 – A Day That Changed the World Sons of Anarchy: Season 4 Sponegbob Squarepants: Ghouls Fools Starship Troopers: Invasion Stratovarius: Under Flaming Winter Skies – Live in Tampere Streets of San Francisco: Season 4, Vol. 1 Streets of San Francisco: Season 4, Vol. 2 Streets of San Francisco: Season 4, Vols. 1 & 2 Tape 407 Texhnolyze: Complete Series Things We Do for Love Think Like a Man Transformers: The Japanese Collection – Victory Two and a Half Men: The Complete Ninth Season Two Orphan Vampires UFC 146 Viral Factor Voices From the Front Voices From the New South Africa: Nothing But the Truth/ Homecoming Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season You’ve Got a Friend

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AUGUST 7

Minus the Machine Very Best Of Anthology IV Cornbread and Cadillacs American Football Antibalas Cut the World Junior Violence All the Nations Airports White Trash heroes Summoning the Bygones Celtic Rhapsody Family Affair Soul Syndrome Very Best Of Dig Sow Love Grow The Greatest: Country Songs Johnny Cash The Greatest: Duets Johnny Cash The Greatest: Gospel Songs Johnny Cash The Greatest: The Number Ones Billy Cobham Warning Ned Collette & Wire… 2 Alex Conti Retrospective Rebecca Corry My Story Cruxshadows As the Dark Against My Halo Eddie Lockjaw Davis Quintet Dust Bolt Violent Demolition The Easy Leaves American Times Craig Elkins I Love You Bill Evans Trio Very Vest of Everyone Dies in Utah Polarities Fastway Fastway Fergus & Geronimo Funky Was the State of Affairs Finbar Furey Colours Grave Digger Home at Last EP Guano Padano 2 Vince Guaraldi Very Best Of Haunted Heads Blue Sky Happiness High Strung These Are Good Times Perez Hilton Pop Up! #1 Colin Hoover Mental Instruments Incubus X2 (Morning View/Make Yourself) Jano Ertale Red Jasper Action Replay Jovanotti Italia 1988-2012 Judas Priest X2 (Defenders of the Faith/ Hell Bent for Leather) Jukebox Romantics Hollywood Mickey Jupp You Say Rock Kaiser Chiefs The Lowdown DJ Kentaro Contrast Knock Out Kaine House of Sin Lianne La Havas Is Your Love Big Enough?

Lionheart Hot Tonight Little Milton Friend of Mine Los Straitjackets Jet Set B Marsalis Quartet Four MFs Playin’ Tunes Mastamind The Mastapiece Tak Matsumoto Strings of My Soul John Mayer X2 (Continuum/Heavier Things) John McEvoy The Johnny McEvoy Story Marcus Miller Renaissance 10 Years Cannonball Adderley Akphaezya All Purpose Blues American Football Antibalas Antony & Johnsons Ape School Archers of Loaf Archers of Loaf Bilocate Seamus Brett James Brown James Brown Dave Brubeck Buffalo Killers Johnny Cash

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Rob Zombie AUGUST 7

Mondo Sex Head The title and contents of this new remix album are unsurprising, and the cover is bsurd.

At least Rob will have a chance to redeem himself with that Broad Street Bullies movie. [Geffen]

Thelonious Monk Janka Nabay & Bubu Ne Obliviscaris Bill Nelson Niki and the Dove Novalis Nu Sensae One Direction Opossum Ordeal Ormonde The Orwells Brad Paisley Paris Graham Parker Charley Patton Kellie Pickler Elvis Presley Elvis Presley Elvis Presley Elvis Presley Elvis Presley Raymen Redd Kross Rev Horton Heat Rev Peyton’s Big …

Ruperts People Mitch Ryder Say Hello … Angels Scarlet Anger Skillet & Leroy Bessie Smith Troy Sneed Soulcream Spider Bags Stagnant Pools Rod Stewart Striker Striker Cecil Taylor This Mortal Coil This Mortal Coil This Mortal Coil Liam Titicomb Tos

Very Best Of En Yay Sah Portal of I Live in Concert Instinct Augenblicke Sundowning X-Posed Electric Hawaii Descent From Hell Machine Remember When X2 (Mud on the Tires/5th Gear) Paris Live at Rockpalast Rough Guide to Charley Patton X2 (Kellie Pickler/Small Town Girl) His Hand in Mine (The Alternate Album) King Creole (The Alternate Album) Lost in the ‘60s: Fame and Fortune Lost in the ‘60s: Kiss Me Quick Loving You (The Alternate Album) Supersonic Rocket Ride Researching the Blues 25 to Life Between the Ditches 45 RPM Live at Rockpalast Stay Dark Reign Big Dead Dick Rough Guide to Bessie Smith All Is Well Told ‘Ya Shake My Head Temporary Room X2 (As Time Goes By… The Great American Songbook) Armed to the Teeth Eyes in the Night Fly! Fly! Fly! Blood (Remastered) Filigree & Shadow (Remastered) It’ll End in Tears (Remastered) Cicada Idiom

Van Der Graaf Gen Live Johnny Van Zant Band Last of the Wild Ones Johnny Van Zant Band Round Two Vangelis Chariots of Fire Various Artists Girls on 45 Various Artists I Am What I Am Various Artists Jesus Christ Superstar Various Artists Kinetik Festival Volume 5 Various Artists Now 43 Various Artists Now Party Anthems Various Artists Sacred Oath: Spells and Incantations Various Artists Take Your Whiskey Home Various Artists Two Minutes to Midnight Various Artists We Walk the Line Elle Varner Perfectly Imperfect Void Union Higher Guns Brian Wilson Jukebox Gretchen Wilson X2 (Here for the Party/All Jacked Up) Rob Zombie Mondo Sex Head

AUGUST 14

2 Chainz Aborted Acherontas/ Nightbringer American Me Andain Alhousseini Anivolla Ann-Marita Another Lost Year Anvil Anvil Anvil Anvil Asrock

Based on a T.R.U. Story Goremageddon, the Saw and the Carnage Done

The Ruins of Edom III You Once Told Me Anewal/The Walking Man Intuition Better Days Anthology of Anvil Back to Basics Past and Present Still Going Strong Take Me Away/Beginning to End Atlanta Rhythm Sec. Are You Ready Jerry Bergonzi Shifting Gears Black Light Burns The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall Blackberry Smoke The Whippoorwill The Chant A Healing Place Prague Philharmonic Lawrence of Arabia The Classic Crime Phoenix Cottonmouth Kings Mile High Arthur Big Boy Crudup The Blues Darkness by Oath Near Death Experience Dead Can Dance Anastasis Deadly Remains Severing Remains Deiphago Satan Alpha Omega Delicate Cutters Ring Denial of God Death and the Beyond D’Eon LP Dignan Porch Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen The Dirty Guv’nahs Somewhere Beneath These Southern Skies P Donohue & B Thom. Vicksburg Blues Doro Under My Skin: A Fine Selection of Doro Classics Downspirit Bulletproof Dragony Legends Dublin Death Patrol DDP 4 Life Dublin Death Patrol Death Sentence The Dust Busters Old Man Below Steve Earle The Revolution Starts Now Ephel Duath On Death and Cosmos The Faceless Autotheism Fastkill Bestial Thrashing Bulldozer Flatfoot 56 Toil

Andrew W.K.

I Get Wet (10th Anniversary Special Deluxe Edition) “Party Hard” is but one of many bangers on W.K.’s only good record. Extra seconddisc crap includes live recordings, early demo versions, alternate mixes, various unreleased stuff. [Century Media]

AUGUST 28

Flying Burrito Bros Close Up the Honky Tonks The Foreshadowing Oionos The Foreshadowing Second World A Forest of Stars A Shadowplay for Yesterdays The Forsaken Beyond Redemption Fozzy Sin and Bones Marty Freidman Bad DNA Marty Freidman Future Addict Marty Freidman Loudspeaker From Atlantis Pedestals Adam Glasser Mzansi Graveyard the Altar of Sculpted Skulls Merle Haggard Icon Hipower Ent Presents Cholo Love Hot Club of Detroit Junction In This Moment Blood Incubus Incubus HQ Live Insane Clown Posse Mighty Death Pop Vybz Kartel Kinston Story: Deluxe Edition Chaka Khan Greatest Hits Live Kill It Kid Feet Fall Heavy Sunny Kim A Painter’s Eye Korpiklaani Manila L.A. Guns Waking the Dead Letter to the Exiles Make Amends Jerry Lee Lewis Original Album Classics 1965-1969 The Lijadu Sisters Horizon Unlimited Lil Cuete Gunplay Locrian The Clearing and the Final Epoch Loudness Eve to Dawn Loverboy Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival Corb Lund Cabin Fever Lynch Mob Revolution Deluxe Collection Michael Lynche Michael Lynche Marillion Marillion.com Marillion Somewhere Else Charlie Mars Blackberry Light Pat Martino Alone Together Master The New Elite Mazz Regalo de Navidad Bill Monroe Icon Necrovation Necrovation Nguzunguzu Warm Pulse No. Atlantic Oscillation Fog Electric Nuclear Death Terror Chaos Reigns Nude Beach II Oiltanker The Shadow of Greed/ Crusades Mike Oldfield Platinum Mike Oldfield QE2 Mike Oldfield Two Sides Oneman Fabriclive 64 Papercranes Three Physical Terapy Safety Net

The Fatal Erection Years Chasing the Light Give You the Ghost Turn on the Lights The Prog Collective SAM Records Extended Play Seth Les Blessures De L Ame Beanie Sigel This Time Slightly Stoopid Top of the World Smile Smile Marry a Stranger Sophicide Perdition of the Sublime Soulicit Parking Lot Rockstar Soundtrack Paranorman Southside’s Most … The Return Billy Squier Enough Is Enough/Hear & Now/Creatures of Habit Ralph Stanley Old Songs & Ballads Vol. 1 Ralph Stanley Old Songs & Ballads Vol. 2 Strike Anywhere In Defiance of Empty Times Strong Arm… & Statik Stereotype Marty Stuart Icon Such Gold Misadventures Ben Taylor Listening Johnny & Ted Taylor Super Taylors Texas Hippie Coalition Peacemaker Steve Vai The Story of Light Various Artists Certified #1 Country Various Artists Joey’s Song Volume 2 Various Artists Just Tell Various Artists Rock & Roll Beginnings Various Artists Songs of the Century Various Artists This Is Trance 3.0 Julian Vaughn Breakthrough Jerry Jeff Walker Live From Dixie’s Bar & Bus Stop Waylander Kindred Spirits White Vioet Hiding, Mingling Robin & L Williams These Old Dark Hills Meri Wilson Telephone Man Xibalba Hasta La Muerte Yellowcard Southern Air Zombiefication Reaper’s Consecration Zonaria The Arrival of the Red Sun Poison Idea Polarization Polica Daniel Powter The Prog Collective Jacques Renault

AUGUST 21

Bailterspace Strobosphere A Brown & Group Ther. Anthony Brown & Group Therapy Michael Burks Show of Strength Call of the Wild Leave Your Leather On Evan Caminiti Dreamless Sleep Chino XL Ricanstruction Ry Cooder Election Special The Darkness Hot Cakes Dena Derose Travelin’ Light Dispatch Circles Around the Sun Estasy Wild Songs Bill Fay Life Is People The Heavy The Glorious Dead JT Hodges JT Hodges James Ingram It’s Your Night JJ Doom Key to the Kuffs Kiss Destroyer: Resurrected Dylan Leblanc Cast the Same Old Shadow Los Lobos Kiko Live Dustin Lynch Dustin Lynch Lynyrd Skynyrd Last of a Dyin’ Breed Lynyrd Skynyrd The Last Rebel Imelda May More Mayhem Nihil Verdonkermaan The Old Ceremony Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide

Age of Ignorance The Midsummer Station Priceless Concrete Echoes Escape From Crystal Skull Mountain A Pink’s Haunted G… Mature Themes Plan B Ill Manors Prodigy More Music for the Jilted Generation Rebotini Music Components Adrian Sherwood Survival & Resistance Emilie Simon The Big Machine Sir Douglas Quintet Border Wave Trey Songz Chapter V Soundtrack Samsara Soundtrack The Apparition Taj Mahal Hidden Treasures Harry Taussig Fate Is Only Twice Brooke Toia How to Love Van She Idea of Happiness Various Artists Best of Bellydance Various Artists God Game Me You Wax Tailor Hope & Sorrow Wax Tailor In the Mood for Life Wax Tailor Tales of the Forgotten Melodies Matthew E White Big Inner Yeasayer Fragrant World Young Fresh Fellows Tiempo De Lujo Our Last Night Owl City The Penelope(s) G Pepper & Problems

AUGUST 28

Abandoned Pools Sublime Currency Aceyalone All Balls Don’t Bounce Beegie Adair Quiet Romance: Solo Piano B Adair & J Steinberg An Affair to Remember Admiral Sir Cloudesley Don’t Hear It… Fear It All About Maggie Now Hear Me Out All Hail the Yeti All Hail the Yeti Aloha Home Acres Aloha That’s Your Fire Andrew W.K. I Get Wet (10th Anniversary Special Deluxe Edition) Arizona Dranes He Is My Story The Art Here Comes the War Asobi Seksu Hush Asobi Seksu Rewolf S Bangas & E Vand… Diggaz With Attitude Beardfish The Void Bjork Biolphilia Remix Series 6 Deanna Bogart Pianoland Erin Boheme What a Life Brecker Brothers Complete Arista Albums Collection Betty Buckley Ah, Men! The Boys of Broadway G. Campbell/J. Webb In Session David Cassidy Cassidy Live David Cassidy Getting’ It in the Street Nick Cave Lawless Original Motion Picture Soundtrack The Chariot One Wing Coffin Texts The Tomb of Infinite Ritual Tom Colletti Yoga Is Union Community Service Bastards of Saints Amy Cook Summer Skin Ian Cooke Fortitude The Cravats The Cravats in Toytown Robert Cray Nothin’ But Love Albert Cummings No Regrets Darkthrone Holy Darkthrone Dan Deacon America Destroyer 666 Phoenix Rising Divine Fits A Thing Called Divine Fits

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Undisputed Blind Sighted Faith Greater Than One The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale Easy Star All-Stars Easy Star’s Thrillah Eclipse Bleed and Scream The Enid Stonehenge 1984 Father Befouled Revulsion of Seraphic Grace The Flatlanders The Odessa Tapes Flobots The Circle in the Square Julie Fowlis Mar a Tha Mo Cridhe Kenio Fuke Spirit of Nature Jim Gaffigan Mr. Universe Art Garfunkel The Singer Gillan & Iommi Who Cares Grandfather Child Grandfather Child Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 28 Grave Endless Procession of Souls Guttural Secrete Reek of Pubescent Despoilment Gypsyhawk Revelry and Resilience Haiku D’Etat Haiku D’Etat Richard Hawley Standing at the Sky’s Edge Headlights Remixes Headlights Wildlife Caroline Herring Camilla Hess Living in Yesterday M Hill’s Blues Mob Goddesses & Gold Redux Hipower Ent Presents Notorious Life Boxset Rick Holmstrom Cruel Sunrise Hugh Hopper The Mind in the Trees Hot Peas ‘N Butter Catchin’ Some Peazzz James Husband A Parallax I I Am War Outlive You All Inashton Everyone & You Ingram Hill Ingram Hill Inme Overgrown Eden A Irvine & D Spillane East West Etta James The Complete Private Music: Blues, Rock ‘N’ Soul Dr. Jeffrey Thompson Music for the Mindful Brain Joan of Arc Flowers Jay Jesse Johnson Run With the Wolf Rickie Lee Jones The Devil You Know Just Like Vinyl Black Mass Kaipa Vittjar Kamikabe Aberration of Man Katatonia Dead End Kings Keak Da Sneak cheddarCheeseIsay Khold Morke Gravers Kammer Khonsu Anomlia Ellay Khule Califormula Kitten Cut It Out Klaypex Loose Dirt K-Navi New York Gritty The Last Vegas Bad Decisions Alvin Lee Still on the Road to Freedom S Levine/Jack Jezzro Romancing the ‘60s Gary Lewis & Playboys The Complete Liberty Singles Lipstixx ‘n’ Bulltez Bang Your Head Loney Dear Dear John Lionel Loueke Heritage Love Is All Two Thousand and Ten Injuries Machetazo Trono De Juesos Madchild Dope Sick DMX Dunwells Dwele Eagle Twin

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Katatonia AUGUST 28 Dead End Kings

The once-crushing Swedish doom squad is taking it a little easier with every new album, but still has enough riffage in the tank to make DEK a worthwhile melancholy endeavor. [Peaceville]

Magic Slim & Teard… Bad Boy Johnny Mathis Love Is Everything/ Broadway Johnny Mathis Tender is the Night/ Wonderful World of Make Believe Maximo Park The National Health Maya Over Eyes Rebel Alliance Minus the Bear Infinity Overhead The Mob Let the Tribe Increase Monuments Gnosis Anthony Moore Flying Doesn’t Help & World Service Christy Moore The Iron Behind the Velvet Morgion God of Death and Disease Alanis Morissette Havoc and Bright Lights Morning Glory Poets Were My Heroes Kendra Morris Banshee Mothlite Dark Age Moving Hearts The Storm Mr. Criminal Presents Gang Bang Symphonies Part 2 Mr. Patron Made in the Hood Murder Construct Results Natural Habitz Fantastic 4 Neptune Towers Transmissions The New Year Rough Guide to Hungary NME Unholy Death Obey the Brave Young Blood Liam O’Flynn The Given Note The O’Jays Live in Concert The Orb The Orbserver in the Star House Oregon Family Tree Over Your Threshold Facticity Paradise Lost Draconian Times: Legacy Edition Paradise Lost Icon Paradise Lost One Second Paradise Lost Reflection Paradise Lost Shades of God Cale Parks Sparklace Passenger All the Bright Little Lights Pele A Scuttled Bender in a Watery Closet Poor Moon Poor Moon Prospect Hill Impact Putumayo Kids Pres European Playground Martha Reeves Live in Concert The Rippingtons The Rippingtons Roxy Music Complete Studio Recordings 72-82 Ben Roy I Got Demons Royal Teeth Act Naturally The Roys New Day Dawning Rush Wun Jack of All Trades

Saga 20/20 Jon Samuel First Transmission M Saunders & J Garcia Keystone Companions Scum of the Earth The Devil Made Me Do It Maia Sharp Change the Ending Sky of Rage Sor Slaughterhouse Welcome to Our House Snake Rattle Rattle … Sineater Soundtrack For a Good Time Call Luciana Souza Duos III Luciana Souza The Book of Chet Davy Spillane Atlantic Bridge St. Germain Tourist Stealing Axion Moments J Steinberg Orchestra The Sound of Swing Stratovarius Intermission Stratovarius Under Flaming Winter Joe Strummer & Mes… Global A Go-Go (remastered) Joe Strummer & Mes… Rock Art & The X-Ray Style (remastered) Joe Strummer & Mes… Streetcore (remastered) Swell Maps Wastrels and Whippersnappers Tamia Beautiful Surprise Teen In Limbo Television Personalities I Was a Mod Before You Was a Mod Trae Streets Advocate Tragedy in Progress Mechanical Weather Triumph Live at Sweden Rock Festival Uncle Lucius And You Are Me Mahsa Vadat & Mighty Sam McClain A Deeper Tone of Longing Townes Van Zandt No Deeper Blue Various Artists A Tribute to Alan Jackson Various Artists A Tribute to Janet Jackson Various Artists A&M 50: The Anniversary Collection Various Artists Great Reggae Roots Classics Various Artists Holy Hip-Hop Vol. 14 Various Artists Kingdom Hits Various Artists One Big Trip Various Artists Rough Guide to Ethiopia Various Artists Ultra Dubstep Various Artists Vaudeville Blues Sarah Vaughan Complete Columbia Albums Collection The Vibrators Alaska 127 Vore Gravehammer Darrell Webb Band Breaking Down the Barriers Weep Alate Karyn White Carpe Diem Stan Whitmire Seasons of Life: Solo Piano Wild Nothing Nocturne Erik Wollo Airborne The Wood Brothers Live, Volume 2: Nail & Tooth World Fire Brigade Spreading My Wings XXL Dude Dwight Yoakam Under the Covers Frank Zappa Apostrophe Frank Zappa Bongo Fury Frank Zappa One Size Fits All Frank Zappa Over-Nite Sensation Frank Zappa Roxy & Elsewhere Frank Zappa Sheik Yerbouti Frank Zappa Sleep Dirt Frank Zappa Studio Tan Frank Zappa The Grand Wazoo Frank Zappa The Rebirth Frank Zappa Waka/Jawaka Frank Zappa Zappa in New York Frank Zappa Zoot Allures

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Distributed By Anchor Bay Entertainment, LLC. All Program Content Š 2011, 2012 AMC Film Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved.