Cowbell Magazine, June 2011

DEATH

CAB

weird al

LIAM FINN

OKKERVIL

+ RIVER

this is not an indie rock magazine

cowbellmagazine.com

The charmed life of

Madeline Follin and

Brian Oblivion

Cults

band’s about to blow Fleet Foxes This getting stranger Battles Only Plus

Bill Hicks, Beastie Boys, Marissa Nadler, Fucked Up, Amor de Días, Ty Segall, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Coathangers, Cars, Danger Mouse, JEFF the Brotherhood, David Kilgour, Thurston Moore, White Hills, Yacht, Making Friendz, Sub Pop’s Next Ambiance, Sorry Bamba

$4.95 | ISSUE no. 13

CHECK WW W.R ECO RDSTOR EDAY.CO M for video premieres, music news, and contests (like a Ray LaMontagne autographed lyric sheet in June!) 2

COWBELL

> music

> reviews

> more 42 Terror Firma: Nashville metal act/farmers

04 Amor de Días Lost in translation

14 Sworn Statement : Fucked Up get epic

31 Lead Review The Fantastic Fleet Foxes

05 Liam Finn Keepin En Zed the family

16 Final Fantasy : Marissa Nadler looked into the abyss

06 Making Friendz More songs about dancing and sex

18 B ack Down the Rabbit Hole: Battles live to fight another day

07 White Hills Disease-y does it

20 He Sees a Farness:

32 CD Reviews Arctic Monkeys, Beastie Boys, the Cars, Chateau Marmont, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, Death Cab for Cutie, Flogging Molly, French Horn Rebellion, JEFF the Brotherhood, Junior Boys, David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights, Let’s Wrestle, My Morning Jacket, Sorry Bamba, Ty Segall, Mia Doi Todd, TV on the Radio, Chad VanGaalen, Eddie Vedder, World’s End Girlfriend, YACHT and more

Okkervil River

get deep

08 Label Maker Peek inside Calgary’s Bug Incision

> dispatch 64 Rodney Anonymous Tyler vs. Tegan & Sara

10 A Little Ambiance: Sub Pop’s Next Ambiance takes on the world

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pg.

The Unbearable Lightness of Cults How Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion spun easy, breezy blog sensation “Go Outside” into the most buzzworthy debut of the summer. by K. Ross Hoffman

Cults, May 3, 2011, in New York City. Photographed for Cowbell by Shane McCauley.

cover photo by shane mccauley

39 Music DVDs The Beat Is the Law, Le Tigre on tour

Across Tundras

45 Bike Gang:

Netherfriends’

Northeast bike tour 54 Heart of Dorkness: Yankovic still Weird after all these years

> movies 46 Patriot Games: Making the Bill Hicks myth 48 Whoa Is Me: Vintage trainwreck Johnny Mnemonic

50 Celluloid Corral Andrew Bonazelli on the best, worst, weirdest and wildest in home video entertainment 53 Love Your Work:

American Graffiti

holds up

> from the editor

Take Me to Your Leader It was the Thursday

of SXSW at the Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, on the front-end of a Pitchfork showcase that would feature Glasser, tUnE-yArDs, Twin Shadow and James Blake. Band two out of six; a 9 p.m. set. This is what’s generally considered a warm-up slot, and on a music festival warm-up day, no less. Yet the church—front row to back, and the balconies, too, as if we were all awaiting the Rapture—was at capacity. The band about to perform was one that everyone (at least everyone in Austin for SXSW) had heard, but who nobody could really say they knew much about. They had teased the world with a handful of songs released on the Internet months ago, leaked precious little information about themselves, and taken their sweet time following up the groundswell of enthusiasm that erupted from their Bandcamp page. There was an air of expectancy and mystery as the troupe of longhairs took the stage and fumbled with their instruments. And then those four notes rang out on the glockenspiel and the assembled worshippers erupted in a burst of recognition and appreciation of “Go Outside,” the most captivating of those hazy, ’60s girl-group-inspired Internet pop songs. This was the band they’d come to see, and they were good. SXSW was another move in what’s been either a downright brilliant PR campaign or a series of happy accidents (likely, a little of both) that’s led San Diegovia-Brooklyn outfit Cults from Bandcamp superstars to the precipice of their (major label) debut. Cults perform on March 20, 2011 at For this month’s cover story, we sent K. Ross Hoff- Pure Volume House in Austin during man to New York to hang with Cults’ Madeline Fol- SXSW. Photo by Nina Mashurova. lin and Brian Oblivion as they prepared to play the launch party for Vice magazine’s noisey.com video website. What he found was, essentially, a bunch of kids (Brian, Madeline and all their friends) fully aware of the charmed life they’ve been swept up in, and loving every minute. You’d hate them if they weren’t so completely, lovably ingenuous about it all. As Hoffman discovered, it’s easy for an outsider to get swept up in it, too: “[T]he album never feels like it’s trying at all hard to be anything in particular, which is probably the single most fundamental, underlying key to the band’s appeal, both on record and in person.” Not that every issue of Cowbell isn’t bursting with unqualified awesomeness, but we’re particularly stoked about what’s going on inside this ish. To wit: Jeanne Fury (recently featured on npr.com and flavorwire.com as a music critic you need to read; more at cowbellmagazine.com’s Cowblog) talks with Canadian hardcore bandturned-indie punk operettists Fucked Up. Patrick Rapa goes dork-to-dork with Weird Al Yankovic. Hoffman gets inside the head of Okkervil River’s Will Sheff. Sean L. Maloney gets strange with the Tyondai Braxton-less Battles. Raymond Cummings debuts “Label Maker,” our series on under-the-radar record labels. Sam Adams gets deep with Marissa Nadler. Brian Baker chats up Liam Finn, son of New Zealand pop royalty Neil Finn. And “Two Minutes of Hate” columnist Rodney Anonymous weighs in on the Tyler, the Creator/ Tegan & Sara imbroglio. Get reading.

Within

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

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

Andrew Bonazelli art director

Jamie Leary jamie@cowbellmagazine.com designer/illustrator

Melissa McFeeters

production artist

Lucas Hardison

customer service

Kevin Juliff kevin@cowbellmagazine.com 215.625.9850 ext. 105 writers

Sam Adams Rodney Anonymous Brian Baker Raymond Cummings Jakob Dorof M.J. Fine Jeanne Fury Adam Gold Nick Green Joe Gross Justin Hampton K. Ross Hoffman Devon Leger Sean L. Maloney Michaelangelo Matos Michael Pelusi j. poet Patrick Rapa Sara Sherr Rod Smith Lee Stabert Matt Sullivan John Vettese photographers

Steve Cross Shane McCauley interns

Dan Brightcliffe Lindsey Colferai T.J. Gunther published by

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

ELTON IS CELEBRATING HIS FIRST

FATHER’S DAY. Maybe your celebration needs a little Elton, too. The music of Elton John, New Dad, on sale this month $9.99 or less

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Love Songs

Sleeping with the Past

Titles and prices vary by store. More music on sale $9.99 or less every day at indie record stores. COWBELL

3

Just Chilling “I Street of the Love of Days

Available now [ Merge ]

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Amor de Días’ lush debut proves that love isn’t always a battlefield / by K. Ross Hoffman

t had to be fun.” That’s how Alasdair MacLean, the

British tunesmith best known as the frontman of beloved indie-pop elegists the Clientele, identifies the major difference between his approach to that group—never an outfit known for frivolity—and Amor de Días, his newer collaborative project with Lupe Núñez-Fernández of the twee-pop duo Pipas. Working on these songs, MacLean says, “brought me back to why I ever wanted to be in a band: because it was fun. It had stopped being fun in the Clientele, for a variety of reasons”—some artistic, some financial. With Amor de Días, he explains, “we didn’t have to pay for studio time [thanks to their generous friend, producer Ken Brake], and we didn’t have a contract with anyone. We could say, ‘If the record ends up no good, we can walk away from it, so let’s just have fun in the studio.’” Street of the Love of Days, the duo’s Merge debut, isn’t exactly a jubilant, smile-a-minute party album, but it’s certainly looser and breezier than, say, Bonfires on the Heath, the restrained, melancholy, last proper Clientele full-length. (Last, and potentially final— MacLean asserts that the band is “in the retirement home, though not in the cemetery.”) While there’s still plenty of typically wistful, folk-tinged rumination to be found here, those impulses are intermingled and cross-pollinated with a considerable array of flavors, from Erik Satie’s nocturnal minimalism to “spooky old

Scottish-English folk songs” to musique concrète (“I wanted to sample some musique concrète tapes… but [Brake] told me to just open up the back of the piano and throw some things on it”) and, most notably, the supple rhythms of bossa nova and Tropicalismo— Núñez-Fernández rattled off a lengthy string of Brazilian favorites, including luminaries like Gal Costa, Jorge Ben and Caetano Veloso, among many lesserknown artists. And that variety does help impart a sense of subtle playfulness in spite of Street’s prevailing subdued, tender mood. The duo’s name, too, has a lighthearted origin. “It’s my really bad Spanish,” MacLean laughs. “I was

wandering in Madrid, and there’s a street called Calle del Amor de Diós. I just thought to myself, ‘These foreigners are so poetic; they name their streets in such beautiful ways…’ Lupe later corrected my

error [the word Diós means “God,” not “days”], but the name stuck anyway.” And rightly so. “The love of days,” besides being an appropriately dream-like phrase, is also an apt expression of the way the project has developed and progressed: gradually, piecemeal, motivated purely by pleasure and affection. More at amordedias.com

The Finn Crowd

Liam Finn goes digital and finds the soul in the machine with FOMO / by Brian Baker

I

t’s the afternoon before Prince William transforms

Kate Middleton into a princess, and Liam Finn is nowhere near the tumult. “I’ve managed to avoid the mayhem. When people ask, I often go, ‘What wedding?’” says Finn from his London home. “People think I’m joking… and I am.” Finn has plenty of preoccupations, including concerns for friends and family recovering from last fall’s and this spring’s Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquakes. And he’s preparing tour rehearsals with his new backing band, the Come Agains, to support his sophomore album, FOMO. “I didn’t want to rush, but there was an urFOMO gency to get it done,” says Finn. “With [2007’s June 21 I’ll Be] Lightning, a bit of heartbreak was part [ Yep Roc ] of the angst, but with FOMO the angst was expectation, self-pressure and, in some ways, self-doubt, worrying I couldn’t do it, or I’d done it and that was it.” After toiling alone on said 2007 solo debut, and breaking for 2010’s loose-knit BARB collaboration, Finn chose a different path for FOMO, hiring producer Burke Reid and taking his first stab at the digital realm. The shift rippled through Finn’s writing methodology and his studio performance. “I thought Pro Tools stripped your song of a little soul or atmosphere,” says Finn. “I realized it freed me up to lose any inhibition of performance, like what happens onstage. Being able to play without worrying this was the definitive take meant I could let go and play crazier things than I would have tried in the past. I got more of that live attitude and energy than I might have on tape.” At 27, Finn has spent most of his life making music. His education began when his father, Split Enz/ Crowded House spark plug Neil Finn, took the family on tours. At 14, Liam formed a rousing pop combo dubbed Betchadupa that produced a pair of hit albums over its nine-year run. Relocating to London in 2005 ended the band, sparking Finn’s solo desire.

“It was like a high school romance,” says Finn. “It’s a beautiful thing, but you grow up and want different things. As soon as I started doing solo stuff, everything seemed new and anything seemed possible.”

FOMO’s cryptic title is an acronym for “fear of missing out,” a popular theme during Finn’s year back in New Zealand making the album. “My friends were away touring and I’d get an email hearing about the fun times, and I’d get that pang of anxiety, like, ‘Oh, they’re having fun without me,’” says Finn with a laugh. “It’s a tragic state to be in. You don’t want to be wishing you’re somewhere else.” Play Liam Finn’s I’ll Be Lightning game at liamfinn.co.nz photo by chris cunningham

COWBELL

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Meeting People Is Easy

Tami Hart expands her social network on Making Friendz’ debut / by Jeanne Fury

M

aking Friendz is Tami

Hart the way Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor: one musical mastermind who turns self-loathing and existential despair into raucous body-rocking anthems. This Social Life June 21 comparison makes the former [ Last Bummer ] folk singer giggle. She has a greater taste for ’80s pop and DayGlo than industrial blitzkriegs and goth makeup. But misery needs company. About six years ago, Hart “begrudgingly” moved from San Francisco to New York City to follow her then-girlfriend. “I didn’t really have any friends, and I was really unhappy in that relationship,” she says, “so I did what I would’ve done since I was a kid, which was hole up in my room and write songs.” She started Making Friendz to be productive, climb out of her depression and meet new people. A steady diet of R&B, Justin Timberlake and Missy Elliott influenced the music’s super-danceable grooves, hardy synths and slow-burning sexual energy. Hart’s plan worked; she began living the “New York City party lifestyle.” Unfortunately, this facilitated the singer’s heavy drinking habit and led to drugs.

“I’m sober now, but I was a real wreck when I wrote these songs,” she says of the band’s debut, Social Life. “It’s interesting for me to look back on them now because I was really talking about alcohol and how I had a hard time with it without even realizing I have a problem.”

Despite its tragic elements, Social Life is bursting with life-affirming music. For lack of better words, it’s damn sexy. “Well, I love sex,” laughs Hart. “Who doesn’t? I just wanted to have fun again. When I first started this, I was so miserable, and music has always been so life-saving for me. The sexiness of it, I think, it’s just part of having fun.”

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Secret Identities “A

t shows, we come out looking kind of glam, with

this very intense and confrontational show,” White Hills guitarist/singer/synthesizer player Dave W. says. “Then later people come up and tell us, ‘I never thought you’d look like this and that you’d perform the way you perform.’” Truth is, one never knows quite what to expect from this mysterious NYC trio; they won’t reveal their ages, and the band’s female bassist/singer/synth player is known only as Ego Sensation. Are they psychedelic warriors? Heavy metal thunderers? Prog theorists? Nonconformist noisers? Krautrock crusaders? Try all of the above—and they aren’t above allowing DJs to re­ mix and recontextualize their gnarly, marathon jams. Dave W. and Ego Sensation came up in San Fran­ cisco, playing in various local bands. When it became clear that the center would not hold (“it wasn’t hap­ pening”), the friends decamped to a New York City where the likes of Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were en vogue. “Space rock, psychedelic music—there was no scene,” he remembers. He cut the first White Hills album in his apartment and sent it to Julian Cope, a longtime hero, who offered to release it. The band’s velocity hasn’t waned since, with Dave W., Ego and various collaborators blazing a macabre, flaming trail of releases, perpetuating what Dave W. terms an “on­ going performance piece.” New disc H-p1 finds the band further honing their far-out chops, elbowing and edging their way eas­

Versatile kitchen-sinkers White Hills confound and astound / by Raymond Cummings ily from ethereal gloaming (“A Need to Know”) to space-rock that’s as lumbering and anthemic as it is thoughtful (“H-p1”) to textual asides worthy of Glenn Branca (“Movement”). Bonus: H-p1 is actually about something.

“‘H-p1’ is just a name for what I see as global corporatization, buying governments and dictating to the world, financially and politically,” Dave W. explains. “I was thinking of how scientists like to discover and coin new viruses and diseases. So, that’s what I’ve termed this disease. At the time of the making of the record, I

H-p1

June 21 [ Thrill Jockey ]

really started getting into Abstract Expressionist art, and how emotional it was—you can feel what they were thinking. I wanted this album to be like that.”

COWBELL

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Cowbell rings up the month’s coolest indie imprint for your listening pleasure

Bug Incision

Calgary, AB | 2006 | founded by chris dadge | bugincision.com

A

s the players—Jay Crocker and Chris Dadge—crack their figurative knuckles,

sounds erupt at what appear to be cross-purposes. Scales and melodies are attempted on an out-of-tune banjo when attempts to de-string the banjo by hand aren’t underway. Percussive mischief abounds: scattershot drum-kit abuse, spoons rattled in water glasses, water glasses clacking, small metal objects poured onto hard surfaces. It’s a casually realized improvisatory reckoning, as the players’ efforts simultaneously contradict and complement one another, struggling to voice a musical language composed of happy industrial accidents. That track, “Creaking,” appears on Humming & Crackling—the second Bug Incision release, issued in July 2006. (This album and several others are available for free download at bugincision.com/ archives.) Etymologically speaking, the choice of album title was a prescient one; Dadge’s Calgary-based label would spend the ensuing half decade challenging the notion that compositional coherence equals bliss. Dadge favors limited-edition CDRs—never more than 150, never fewer than 30—sheathed in plastic sleeves with a simple, idiosyncratic design aesthetic. From the Bent Spoon Trio’s slack-jawed, malevolent improv to the brusque, anarcho-orchestral snarl of Raw Kites Humming & Crackling was to Dadge’s own perpetual vanishing-point drum studies, Bug released in 2006 Incision brings a great deal to the conceptual and anti-conby Bug Incision. ceptual dinner tables. —Raymond Cummings

Chris Dadge

Noteworthy Imprints from Bug Incision Slut Mouth Amateur Hour (bim-36) Ontario’s Slut Mouth come on like a deranged tornado, all trashy, distorted glower and turbulent vortex grooves, stumbling and slouching forth, radiating irradiated menace. Bayal with Arnaud Riviere First Contact (bim-15) At first, this collaborative venture between members of Ontario’s noise-vets Nihilist Spasm Band and prolific turntablist Arnaud Riviere suggests raw electrical cable ends teasing one another as intergalactic drums and kazoo-gagging cockatoos chatter. Eventually, Contact devolves into

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something more unruly: Zorn-ian, lightning-rod improv that’s like the soundtrack for a cartoon where monstrous cyborgs are chasing some cute bunny around, mercilessly zapping it with thousands of volts of electricity just for kicks. Christopher Riggs I Feel So Strong. I Feel I Could Punch a Hole in a Fucking Wall (bim-20) The Wall Riggs refers to is one of stark, monolithic silence. As an album, it doesn’t even seem to be happening at the outset, little more than the dying gasps of a compact disc player. To the trained ear, it’s this Michigan-based artist and his electric guitar performing sinister, microtonal exercises that suggest some sort of electronics colonic: an unstrung symphony of straining, nudging and squeaking. The final three untitled tracks—there

are five overall—proffer, respectively, groaning drones, smudges of distortion and screeching that sounds like a violin bow being dragged over guitar stings with sadistic slowness, until it explodes. This stands in stark contrast to the first two tracks, which are so minimalist and hushed that the listener is compelled to crank the volume up to a potentially lethal volume.

NOTABLE ALUMNI: Electronics/violin gadfly C. Spencer Yeh and Psychedelic Horseshit’s Ryan Jewell made up a third of noise-jazz supergroup Storm of Corpses, whose caustic, scaly Bite Your Tongue (bim-13) will peel the paint from your walls.

Introducing

RPM

a Record Store Day vinyl figure series created by

FRANK KOZIK Four figures.

Limited edition run of 5000 blind box pieces. Available at select indie record stores and online at www.recordstoreday.com

COWBELL

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A Little Ambiance Sub Pop’s fledgling world music label is anything but background noise / by Devon Leger

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quick glance at the music industry, and you’d think that the world mu-

sic genre was on its last legs. ¶ On one end of the spectrum, it’s beset by stodgy ethnomusicologists who turn even the world’s most fascinating music histories into unreadable, academic liner notes. ¶ On the other, high-profile labels like Putamayo—in an attempt to make musical traditions born of struggle palatable for play in suburban coffee shops and the Lexuses of soccer moms—water down the genre so much that every artist sounds like the Gipsy Kings. Even Peter Gabriel’s venerable Real World Records, L.A. in 1996 to meet with Ry Cooder and listen to the which used to be the preeminent world music label, rerough cuts of what would become the album Buena leasing albums from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Afro Celt Vista Social Club. Though Sub Pop made a play for the Sound System, seems to have gone mostly dormant in album, Nonesuch was eventually chosen, and Buena the States, concentrating primarily on Europe. So, perVista Social Club has since gone platinum, redefining haps it’s surprising that the king of indie music labels, the world music market in the process. Though that Sub Pop, has decided to get into the world music game was a golden opportunity missed, the appeal of branchwith its offshoot label, Next Ambiance. ing into world music continued to interest Poneman. Or maybe it’s not. World music is ostenWhen the stars finally aligned in 2009, sibly out of step with Sub Pop’s aesthetic, after Kertzer left his job working on Mibut the label’s always excelled at this kind crosoft’s Zune, Poneman and Kertzer of bold changeup (like in 2002 when they got together to start Next Ambiance. For flipped their own indie rock script to sign the first release, they licensed an album whisper-soft folkie Iron & Wine and kick from Malian musician Bassekou Kouyate off the indie-folk movement). The smart and his band Ngoni ba from German label money says they just might be on to someOut Here Records. thing with their new world music label, In hindsight, the signing of Kouyate was which pairs the considerable talents of brilliant. His music is instantly accessible, I Speak Fula was rolling along with the heavy stringed beats longtime KEXP world-music DJ Jon released in 2009 by of traditional Malian music, and punctuKertzer (who serves as the head of Next Next Ambiance Ambiance) with no less than Jonathan Poneman, co-founder of Sub Pop. Next Ambiance takes its name from Kertzer’s longstanding radio program, “The Best Ambiance,” on Seattle’s legendary community public station KEXP. (Kertzer, who’s been hosting his weekly show since 1984, two years before Sub Pop was founded, just announced he’s leaving the station to direct the University of Alberta’s folkwaysAlive! project.) He and Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman met at the station in the early days of the show. Over the years, Poneman came to respect Kertzer’s musical taste and passion. “I admired what he was doing on the radio so much, and his scholarly and yet enthusiastic approach to music,” says Poneman on the phone from Sub Pop’s downtown Seattle offices. “He has very much a rock-oriented background, but then he immersed himself in African music, both as an ethnomusicologist and as a fan, and it was through that that I came into his orbit.” Kertzer remembers talking with Poneman about starting a label as far back as the ’90s, but “the timing wasn’t right.” Kertzer and Poneman both flew down to

Bassekou Kouyate

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“

It’s harder in the States to promote world music. People here aren’t as accepting of foreign languages. In Europe, they’re more used to hearing foreign languages.”

—Jon Kertzer ated by beautiful, piercing vocals. But there was nothing safe about it at the time. Kouyate was not well known on the world music circuit. He’d worked early on with famed kora player Toumani Diabate, and been part of Kulanjan, Diabate’s collaboration with American blues legend Taj Mahal. Despite such high-profile gigs, he was still seen as a sideman, a status traditionally held by ngoni players in Mali. But Kouyate has a keen ear for collaboration, and one of his most buzzed-about early recordings was a 50-second track, “Wild Goose Chase,” on which he plays his instrument, the ngoni (a small spike lute with a skin head), with American banjo player Dirck Westervelt. The ngoni is seen by some as an ancestor of the American banjo, and the track was the first time the two instruments had met on tape. It was thrilling, at least for the small community of American banjo nerds, but

The Chosen One

hardly mainstream. So, signing a band made up entirely of ngonis (no guitarists, even) was ballsy, but ultimately helped the fledgling label. “People didn’t know what the ngoni was,” says Kertzer, on the phone from Seattle, “but it was part of the story that helped promote the album and got people interested in the music.” The album, I Speak Fula, was acclaimed by U.S. critics, rose to No. 5 on Billboard’s world music charts, and was nominated for a Traditional World Music Grammy. But all success aside, is this the right climate to be launching a new label, and a world music label at that? “It’s harder in the States to promote world music,” admits Kertzer. “People here aren’t as accepting of foreign languages. In Europe, they’re more used to hearing foreign languages. But there’s an audience here; it just needs to get developed.” Further complicating matters are the difficulties, especially in these times of heightened national security, that foreign bands have getting visas to tour the U.S. “We’re reliant, as everyone else is, on being able to have the artists do live touring,” says Poneman. “That is still the best avenue for promoting music.” As the head of Sub Pop, he’s under no illusions as to the difficulties that record labels face today. Is it a good time to be putting out records? “If you’re a fan of the records, it’s always a good time,” says Poneman. “If it’s something you’re looking forward to making a quick hit of money on… uh, no, it’s not a good time. But I didn’t enter into it for that reason. I have a long-term

Honduran singer Aurelio debuts on Sub Pop’s Next Ambiance

plan, which is maybe, in time, the label will break even. That would be great. But in the short term, all we want to be able to do is to put out crucial records that people need to hear.” That’s a brave statement for any record label in this economic climate, but a dedication to cutting-edge music is what built Sub Pop. In an interesting bit of synergy, Sub Pop recently signed Seattle hip-hop act Shabazz Palaces, the mysterious duo of MC Ish (Digable Planets) and Tendai Maraire, a young ZimbabweanAmerican artist who hails from a family of traditional African musicians. Shabazz Palaces’ music is a blend of deep urban beats and neo-African sounds. It’s not easily accessible and seems intended to confuse the listener. But no one else is playing music like this, and it looks like Sub Pop (who were reportedly interested in Seattle outre hip-hop act THEESatisfaction) has chosen avant-garde hip-hop as a new direction. So, what’s next for Sub Pop’s world music label? Kertzer sees a wider vision of a label “not just limited to African artists, but world artists that are rooted in their local music. It could be music from anywhere… the plan is to put out a couple records a year and to be really selective about the music.” The label’s first 2011 release, Laru Beya by Aurelio (see below), fits the bill perfectly. It features the littleknown music of the Garifuna people, descendants of Caribbean Amerindians and shipwrecked African slaves along the coast of Central America. Aurelio’s

history is compelling and his album beautifully produced—a clear case of a world music album deserving a wide release. Real World picked it up in Europe but declined U.S. distribution. That’s where Next Ambiance comes in. “We really want to give each record a lot of attention,” says Kertzer. “It’s me and Jonathan, the two of us. Directors of A&R for Next Ambiance.”

Bassekou Kouyate performing live

More on Next Ambiance at subpop.com/megamart/associated/next_ambiance

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he newest release on Next Ambiance is a sunshine-y slice of Aurelio recorded Laru Beya first in a beachside hut in HonduAfro-Caribbean music, highlighting the little-known and enras, tracking a chorus of local singers and a band of traditional dangered culture of Central America’s Garifuna communities. drummers and musicians from the Garifuna community. During Aurelio Martinez, known simply as “Aurelio,” is a young, charishis mentorship with N’Dour in Dakar, he added the master’s golden matic Garifuna leader seen as the great hope for bringing these voice to two tracks, as well as a host of Senegalese musicians. West old traditions into a new century. African stringed instruments, like the kora, mesh with Aurelio’s Descended from shipwrecked African slaves and Amerindian Caribbean guitar, and the voices of West African musicians lift up communities in the Caribbean, the Garifuna people live along the his singing. On a few tracks, Aurelio is even joined by Senegalese Central American Coast. Their communities retain elements of Afrappers Sen Kumpe. rican culture, and this shows through on Aurelio’s new album, Laru But this is not your typical Manu Chao-influenced Afro-pop fuBeya. African drumbeats tumble beneath Latin guitar lines, voices sion. Aurelio reaches deep into the roots of Garifuna music, pullrise in chorus and the Garifuna language—a melange of Arawak ing forth gems like the a cappella style abeimahani, traditionally and Carib—flutters over the music. The thatched huts, chippedwomen’s songs that are sung in a circle, holding hands, and without paint fishing boats and stunning coastlines of Garifuna areas in instruments, which informs the tragic sea ballad “Nuwaruguma.” Honduras and Belize may be picturesque, but the music on Laru Perhaps the most powerful track on the album, “Wamada” is a poiBeya reveals a much deeper side to the culture. gnant homage to Aurelio’s first mentor, Andy Palacio, a Belizean The narrative heart of the album is Aurelio’s return to Africa music star whose sudden passing in 2008 from a stroke shocked in 2008 and 2009. Funded by the Rolex Mentor and the international community. Based on a traditional Protégé Initiative, Aurelio traveled to Dakar, Senegal, song from the sacred Dügü ceremony, a funerary rituto meet and learn from the great Senegalese musician, al intended to bring ancestor spirits into the present, Youssou N’Dour. This was the first time Aurelio had been Aurelio sings of Palacio’s hammock swinging in the to Africa—“a lifelong dream”—and the first time that afterlife. Recorded in one take, the song is made more West Africans were exposed to Garifuna music. It was poignant by N’Dour’s guest vocals and Dügü druma revelation to all involved. ming, which has rarely been recorded. “Our music is very different, but we share the same The music of Laru Beya is deceptive. It’s prone to soul,” Aurelio says in an email interview. “It was emoswinging, Caribbean beats and cheerfully strummed tional for me, and I think he also felt a strong connection guitars. But beneath the fun of this music is the 21st with me. I learned a lot from him, especially about the century story of a diasporan homecoming, of the muLaru Beya is available now from role an artist plays in our societies, [and how] music is sic of a displaced people reconnecting to its source. Next Ambiance a vehicle to uplift our people.” —Devon Leger

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Sworn Statement

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ucked Up, the six-member Toronto hardcore crew

Fucked Up dip their toes in the mainstream with a rollicking new concept album / by Jeanne Fury

known for weird-ass stage names (Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas, etc.) and destructive, balls-out (literally) live shows, want to reach out and touch someone—but not by punching them in the face. After two critically acclaimed, abrasive punk full-lengths (including 2008’s Polaris Prize-winning The Chemistry of Common Life), the band returns with David Comes to Life, an honest-to-god indie-rock opera that hopes to make an emotional connection with society at large. These songs purposely wrestle with universal themes, namely love and loss. The move isn’t meant to alienate the band’s longtime fans. The members of Fucked Up simply want to be more receptive to people and vice versa. But don’t go making American Idiot comparisons. For Fucked Up, the somewhat highfalutin’ concept album is little more than a buffer against the distressing reality that they’re now, undeniably, professional musicians. Guitarist/ primary lyricist Mike Haliechuk (a.k.a. 10,000 Marbles) helps make sense of it all. What kind of nerve does it take to make a 70-minute-plus rock opera?

As long as we’ve been putting albums out, we’ve been wanting to do something like this. People think it’s adventurous, but for us, the further we go into thematic territory for an album, it makes it easier for us to hide behind whatever the album is. It’s like, we haven’t had to own up to being musicians; we just keep doing these ridiculous thematic complicated albums instead. It’s hard for us to take seriously the fact that we’re now professional musicians or artists, or whatever we are. The reason we keep doing stuff like this is so we don’t really have to admit to it. I don’t have to say, “I’m a musician.” It makes it seem silly, and that’s what makes it all right for us to do it. It’s less real.

Why is it so intimidating to admit to being a musician?

We still feel like we’re these punk kids, like it’s just this big lark. It’s 10 years later; we’ve been a band for so long. We didn’t form the band as musicians or [out of ] this great love of music or art or trying to express ourselves. We just ended up in a band. I feel like we just ended up here. We worked hard, but we never really worked hard as musicians; we worked hard at trying to make our band bigger. It’s almost never involved taking music seriously for us.

David Comes to Life will be available June 7 on Matador

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How did the writing sessions go?

We took a whole summer to write it; we went to practice every day. We just put a huge col-

lection of songs together. It wasn’t really difficult. It was a nice way to work. We took it very seriously. It was almost like going to an office, the way we went to the studio. I know that a lot of bands probably just do that normally, but it was different for us. We decided which [songs] make sense for the record, which ones didn’t, and then the story luckily came together over a couple of meetings. It wasn’t so daunting, really. It was kinda easy.

This is an indie rock album, not a hardcore album. Did you do that on purpose?

Kind of. The last record [The Chemistry of Common Life] was the most accessible thing we had done up to that point, but there were still these flourishes that we put in just to be difficult. [For David] we wanted it to sound like a set of songs. We wanted them all to be related musically, and we didn’t want any of it to be a joke or confrontational.

To facilitate the story?

No, it’s more about where we’re at. We are this punk band or whatever, but we’re adults, and we all listen to different kinds of music. It’s not that it reflects what we listen to as people, but you can only go so long in your life making confrontational music or the kind of art that’s trying to alienate people. We did that kind of well for a while, and it was fun, but at a certain point you want to be able to relate to people in a certain way. It’s where we’re at as people rather than where we’re at as musicians. The band is important or whatever, but it’s not like when we get together we’re super-amped about photo by daniel boud

music or practice the guitar and do all those musician things. We want to be in a band, but it’s not like we have these great musical or artistic aspirations. When we change our sound, it’s meant to reflect where we’re at everywhere else in life.

Plot-wise, David falls in love with a girl who dies, there’s a fight, David thinks he was better without love. I know I’m missing a lot. And I also know you’re not a dumb band just loading the songs with filler.

Yeah. The lyrics I did for the last record were all about like, plants and fuckin’, all these obtuse things that people could maybe get into the structure of the lyrics, but maybe not so much the sentiment. I thought that was a drawback to the band. We could have made a musical about murders or violence—and it’s got a bit of that— but mostly we tried to make it about things that people could relate to, like losing love and redemption. That was a concept to connect to people like that as well.

Before this album, you didn’t seem concerned with connecting with fans. Historically, some punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, were purposely repellent, but others, like Fugazi, wanted community, to blur the lines between fan and band. Why this need for connection?

A lot of the press we used to get, I read this phrase,

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The reason we keep doing stuff like this is so we don’t really have to admit to it. I don’t have to say, “I’m a musician.” It makes it seem silly, and that’s what makes it all right for us to do it. It’s less real.” —Mike Haliechuk

“They try to alienate their fans.” We’ve been really caught up with our reputation as this violent, gross band; people probably think we’re really difficult or mean, and maybe that’s true to a certain extent. We come from a hardcore punk background. Connecting with those people… it’s different. There are different rules; people respect you for different reasons. But that was a long time ago. I wanted to make the record that resonated with people in a different way. Before, people respected us because we disrespected them. There was this whole weird dynamic with our relationship to our fans. We just wanted people to relate to this record personally. Hopefully it’s got to do with things they actually experienced in their lives. Fucked Up will tour the U.S. in June and July. More at davidcomestolife.com and lookingforgold.blogspot.com.

Fucked Up for Life: (from left) Concentration Camp/ Gulag (Josh Zucker), 10,000 Marbles (Mike Haliechuk), Young Governor/Bad Kid/ Lil’ Bitey (Ben Cook), Father Damian/ Pink Eyes (Damian Abraham), Mustard Gas (Sandy Miranda) and Guinea Beat/Mr. Jo (Jonah Falco)

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Final Fantasy Marissa Nadler’s fifth record was a reality check in more ways than one / by Sam Adams

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cowbell

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or a while, Marissa Nadler wasn’t sure there’d be a next al-

bum. After releasing her fourth full-length, Little Hells, in 2009, she was unceremoniously dropped by her label, Kemado, a blow sharpened by the fact that the label named its Mexican Summer imprint for one of her songs. No label meant no advance to fund her next recording. Four acclaimed albums of hushed, atmospheric folk and nearly a decade into her career, she was stalled out. Then came Kickstarter. a stray pedal steel. Nadler, who’d only recently These days, it seems like every indepenbeen introduced to some of the great ladies of dent musician is reaching out for cash, hitting country music, brought records by Tammy up their fans to replace a broken-down van Wynette and Sammi Smith into the studio to or ease the burden of going on tour. But what give producer Brian McTear an indication as Nadler was looking for was more akin to an to how she wanted the record mixed. IPO, a chance to start again on her own terms. “I liked the way that people like that have “I thought at first it was like begging,” says their vocals really high in the mix, so you can have a rhythm section, but it doesn’t get in Nadler, who doled out everything from advance downloads to original paintings in exthe way of the emotional sentiment,” she change for contributions. “But then I realized says. “I used to be worried, because I’m such it’s so much work, it’s not at all like that. a delicate singer, that if I wanted drums, it “I didn’t feel like wasting any more time. always seemed to get in the way and overI’m sure I could have found a nice label that power me.” was run by good people and wanted to put my songs out, but I just didn’t feel like going through that process.” Her fifth album, titled simply Marissa Nadler and released on her own Box of Cedar imprint, starts off in familiar territory with the delicate finger-picking and breathy vocals of “In Your Lair, Bear.” But by the time “The Sun Always Reminds Me of You” rolls around, it’s clear Nadler is in uncharted territory. The song opens with a straightforward acoustic strum; Nadler’s voice joins the fray, then a sparsely played piano. And then the steel guiIt couldn’t have hurt that in the intertar kicks in, a slow swell that feels like the sun regnum between her own albums, Nadler emerging from behind a cloud bank. contributed vocals to the black metal band Even more striking within the context of Xasthur’s final album, Portal of Sorrow. If Nadler’s oeuvre is the way her voice sounds her voice could stand up to Scott Conner’s on “Sun”: full, open and untouched by artiwall of noise, it could surely handle the odd ficial echo. In the past, Nadler’s vocals have drum track. been swathed in gauze, but here they’re al“Old-time country music has this really most naked, as if she were singing into a miraccessible thing about it that makes it so popror, or whispering in your ear. ular,” Nadler continues. “It can be listened to by anybody; anybody can feel that. I think my It was, Nadler admits, a “big deal” to have three songs without reverbed vocals on the songwriting style slightly shifted from enalbum. “I used to think my voice was thin, cryption to something geared a little more toward connecting with everyand it just made it sound better,” she admits. “That was parbody. Something that drives me tially to do with how young I was crazy about a lot of indie rock towhen I started recording. I was day is that there seems to be this really shy—I’m still really shy— style of writing where you have but I think I just got comfortto prove to people how smart able enough with my own voice, you are all the time. I started finally, to use reverb purely as out running that way, covering an aesthetic tool, and know that Pablo Neruda and Edgar Allen I don’t need it on every song.” Poe on my first record, and of Marissa Nadler will be The country influence on Macourse I still like those poets a available June 14 from Box of Cedar rissa Nadler extends further than lot. But something changed in

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me where I didn’t want to abandon anybody for no good reason.” Where Nadler once took personal topics and buried them in elaborate allegories, now she’s speaking plain. Marissa Nadler songs like “Wind-Up Toy” and “Mr. John Lee Revisited” return to the subjects of past songs with drastically different approaches. In “Mr. John Lee,” from her 2005 album The Saga of Mayflower, the singer vies with a woman called Sweet Marie for the titular man’s affections, and the latter ends up dead, floating in a river. In “Revisited,” she reveals that Marie, or rather her real-life analogue, simply moved away and married someone else. “The original song is about people that I know, but I was kind of crazy back then, so I wrote this thing about people dying and me running away with somebody,” Nadler says. “In this song, I break the mythology around these characters and reveal what’s happening in their lives now, and how we’ve all moved on. ‘The sheriff, he never had to come and wade through the water’—you know, that shit never happened.

Something that drives me crazy about a lot of indie rock today is that there seems to be this style of writing where you have to prove to people how smart you are all the time.” —Marissa Nadler “I felt like the songs I was writing were as close to representational as I had ever gotten before. It felt like it was my most revealing collection of songs, in some way. I wasn’t hiding anymore. I wanted to self-title the record because I felt like I’d regained my independence and know who I am.” There’s a fitting irony in the fact that after stepping out on her own, Nadler has made her most commercial record yet. “Baby, I Will Leave You in the Morning,” with its dramatic crashes, squiggling synthesizer and, yes, drums, would be at home on NPR or any Triple-A station. (Nadler released the track for free in advance of the album, partly to give longtime fans a heads-up.) “I definitely had a fear of abandoning my fanbase, who helped make this record, by putting something so poppy on it,” she says. “But my friends were saying, ‘It’s really not that poppy. It’s just poppy for you.’” Marissa Nadler will tour the West Coast in June. More at marissanadler.com.

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Back Down the Rabbit Hole

“W

In the wake their founding member’s sudden departure, Battles fight for their right to make one of the strangest sophomore efforts ever / by Sean L. Maloney

e had somebody ask us if we recorded [Gloss Drop] in, like, the Bahamas or something,”

says John Stanier, drummer for post-rock supergroup Battles, whose second album is out this month on Warp. Gloss Drop, the first album recorded since founding member Tyondai Braxton’s departure, finds the band—Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and guitarists Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm & Stress) and Dave Konopka (Lynx)—at their weirdest and yet most accessible. It’s a prog-rock party record, full of strange sounds and driving rhythms. It’s a record that bubbles over with energy, excitement and upbeat vibes—the exact opposite of the way it was recorded. “No, we didn’t [record in the Bahamas]. We recorded in the industrial wastelands of Rhode Island.” “It was kind of like The Shining in a weird way, only minus the Victorian hotel and the blood.” Gloss Drop, almost complete when Braxton left the band—reportedly to focus on his solo work—had to be reworked from the ground up, rerecorded and rewritten to fill the vacuum, to save the record from becoming one of the countless never-released orphans on studio shelves across the globe. This is the sort of situation that can destroy a career: dark and pressure-filled days when a band’s entire existence is contingent on saving their work from history’s dustbin. That Battles emerged from that with an album at all—much less an album as effusive and shimmering as Gloss Drop—is a minor miracle. “I had the feeling that if we didn’t fucking make this happen, it [was] just going to haunt us for the rest of our days,” Stanier admits. “Seriously, I was really committed—more than anything I’ve ever been committed to—to finishing this [laughs] fucking stupid record.” Gloss Drop will be available June 7 It’s in this context that one realizes that Gloss Drop is an from Warp album of catharsis, an album of release and revitalization. Where lesser bands might have taken the opportunity to implode, to collapse upon themselves in the wake of an important member’s departure, Battles have exploded, aiming that energy outward and propelling their sounds into unknown territory. They also used the opportunity to incorporate guest vocalists such as new wave legend Gary Numan, Yamatsuka Eye of Boredoms and Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead—which may seem like a concession to more normative songwriting styles, given the band’s instrumental past, Embattled: (from left) Williams, but actually increases the strangeness withStanier and in. Yes, you read that right: They replaced Konopka the guy who made the blippity-bloops with vocalists, and things got weirder.

You read that right: They replaced the guy who made the blippity-bloops with vocalists, and things got weirder.

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“It’s not like we made this record and we just erased some parts and played a new guitar solo,” Stanier counters. “It wasn’t that simple. For all intents and purposes, we basically went back into the studio and rewrote and rerecorded the entire album in four months. Which was ridiculous, because it took us a year and a half to get a pile of garbage that nobody was really that happy with anyway. But that’s what happens when everyone is on the same page and you’re a band—an actual working band. Everyone is on the same page, focused. But that wasn’t the case earlier, which, you know, we don’t need to get into that, but that’s honestly what the problem was. “That’s why it’s so strange that the record came out the way it did; I can’t just point my finger and give you a statement on why the record sounds the way it does. It was a really, really difficult, dark, super-super-super-negative place that we were [at], and we took that situation and turned it into a much more positive one. The reason we did that was because we didn’t really have a choice. It’s like, subliminally, we wanted to be in a better place, so we forced ourselves into that with this record.” That drive, the need to elevate themselves beyond the misery of their environment, pushes Gloss Drop to the very edge of what we’ve come to expect from rock ’n’ roll. Simultaneously organized and chaotic, swinging and spastic, crazy-new and catchy-as-hell, this is the sound of a band that has walked through the shadow of death only to emerge with a new lease on life. More often than not, a band faced with this kind of challenge will succumb to it, limp off like a wounded coyote, curl up in a corner and wait for the storm to pass. Battles, true to their name, fought through it to emerge with a career-defining work of art. “I’m amazed that that happened—obviously, it’s become this reality, but I’m still amazed that we made it through that,” concludes Stainer. “I pat myself on the back every day.” Battles are touring Europe and the U.S. through July and playing festivals in August. They’ll curate All Tomorrow’s Parties/ Nightmare Before Christmas in Minehead, U.K., in December. More, including the incredibly weird video for “Ice Cream,” at bttls.com. Read Jakob Dorof’s review on p. 32

Just how super is this supergroup? The march to Gloss Drop Don Caballero, Don Caballero 2

Featuring Battles guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams, DC2 might just be the defining record from post-rock’s ’90s heyday—it’s really a toss-up between this and their debut, For Respect. Full of hardcore-punk intensity, raging riffs and calculated chaos, DC2 destroys the competition [Touch & Go, 1995]

Storm & Stress, Storm & Stress

If you’ve ever listened to Don Cab and thought, “Boy, this has wayyy too much structure for me,” Storm & Stress will be right up your alley. Not unlike Sonny Sharrock’s late-’60s free jazz explorations, S&S—featuring Williams on guitar—has more skronk-per-square-inch than is legal in most states. [Touch & Go, 1997]

Lynx, Lynx

More “rock” than “post,” Battles guitarist David Konopka’s old band Lynx made driving melodic instrumental music that wasn’t afraid to freak out when the situation called for it. A great entry spot for those intimidated by the genre and its propensity for being willfully abstruse. [Atomic, 1999]

Helmet, Meantime

One of the best heavy albums of the ’90s, Meantime laid down the blueprint for the future of intelligent, aggressive records, a blueprint that’s still being followed. A key component of the bludgeoning, brutal sounds is the incomparable drumming of pre-Battles John Stanier. [Interscope, 1992]

Tomahawk, Mit Gas

We know where Duane Denison lives! Which is completely irrelevant, but we thought we’d mention it. That said, the second album from the Jesus Lizard guitarist, madman Mike Patton, Cows bassist Kevin Rutmanis and Stanier is a brutal and majestic pummeling from some of the best in the business. [Ipecac, 2003] —Sean L. Maloney

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He Sees a Far-ness

On I Am Very Far, Okkervil River’s ever-enigmatic Will Sheff explores how memory works. / by K. Ross Hoffman

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here are no easy answers on the new Okkervil River

album. The Austin outfit—by now a venerable indie rock establishment that’s been releasing music for well over a decade—has always made records that invite careful contemplation and investigation to reveal their conceptual nuances and rich, literary complexity. But I Am Very Far, the band’s long-awaited sixth full-length, feels especially inscrutable.

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The music defies simple categorization, straining beyond its humble rock and folk underpinnings with extravagantly expansive arrangements, layered with abundant orchestral and choral elements, but also a handful of even more unexpected, inexplicable sounds. It’s the band’s first self-produced outing, which might partly explain why tales of its recording—marathon sessions with a seven-strong guitar army; noises coaxed from rolls of duct tape and file cabinets thrown across the room; a solo made by rewinding and fastforwarding a cassette deck—can’t help calling to mind the impishly excessive studio experimentation of lateperiod Beatles.

Your earliest memory sometimes feels like a skeleton key to your entire life; like all the mysteries you’re gonna chase down in your life were right there. It’s your own personal creation story.” —Will Sheff And while Will Sheff’s lyrics—ever a crucial element of the band’s appeal—remain as erudite and exquisitely crafted as ever, they’ve never been this cryptic. What once scanned as lucid (albeit dizzyingly dense) prose, reproduced in CD booklets in neatly punctuated rectangular paragraphs, now appear (as in the handsome little volume that comes packaged with the new album’s deluxe edition) in loose, rhapsodic stanzas, yielding a generalized storybook-like character, and plenty of evocative imagery—much of it strikingly vio-

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lent and phantasmagoric, with recurrent references to death and blood; severed throats; crashing waves; memories and dreams—but precious little narrative coherence. So, it wasn’t too surprising that when I caught up with Sheff, on the phone from his home in Brooklyn, he had few easy answers to offer. Not that he was evasive, exactly, but he tended to steer our conversation into vaguer, more philosophical realms. And, perhaps predictably, he had mystery on his mind. “Being alive is mysterious,” he riffed, when I asked whether he saw himself as a particularly mysterious person. “There’s a lot of things we don’t understand: about the world, about consciousness, about what we are, even. You’ll have a dream that messes you up all day long and you’ll think: ‘Where did that come from?’ It shows how alien we all are. I respond to artwork that explores that and intensifies that sense of mystery. When I’m at my most present, that’s how life feels to me, in a beautiful, powerful way.” The album’s mysteries begin, perhaps, with its curious, fragment-like title phrase. Unlike earlier Okkervil titles—Down the River of Golden Dreams (2003) and Black Sheep Boy (2005), named for the songs which, revisited in cover form, became those albums’ conceptual focal points; or The Stage Names (2007) and The Stand Ins (2008), bits of showbiz lingo that pointed to those albums’ predominant fascination with performance, celebrity, artifice and other aspects of mass culture—I Am Very Far is elusive, suggesting an array of interpretations, but offering nothing concrete. Certainly, as perhaps the most basic, face-value reading of the title would imply, the album does seem very far away from the musically direct, Americana-rooted stylings of the band’s earliest work, best exemplified on their marvelous, overlooked 2002 album Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See. (In several respects, not least the new album’s mess of nautically oriented material—there’s even a song called “Piratess”!— Okkervil River seem to have suddenly switched places and swapped career trajectories with their similarly bookish brethren in the Decemberists, whose 2011 album found them killing kings, eschewing obfuscation, and doing away with fantastical sagas to embrace simplicity and American roots forms.) Lyrically, too, this album’s themes are just as “far” from the dense web of pop culture allusions strewn

across the conceptual diptych of their last two alyou’re gonna chase down in your life were right there. bums—notwithstanding references in hard-hitting It’s your own personal creation story. opener “The Valley” to “the rock ’n’ roll dead,” which “There’s something about [early memories] that would have fit right in—in a way that makes Far feel seems so true and seems so real… [I have] memories both more private and personal, and at the same time of being a kid that could not possibly have happened— hallucinations; people being in two places at once, more all-encompassing and fundamentally human. Sheff concurs: “There’s a way in which the more perthings like that—[that] I just accepted as real, and when sonal you get, the more universal you have the potenI think back, it obviously wasn’t real. But my memory of tial of being.” That potent if fairly paradoxical notion it is real. And then when you get older, everything gets was one of many subtle lessons Sheff gleaned from his bland and straightforward. There’s something about experience working with psych-rock icon (and fellow that mysterious world I wanted to invite to seep out.” Texan) Roky Erickson on last year’s acclaimed True To my mind, these ideas suggested a different Love Cast Out All Evil—Erickson’s highest-profile alpossible way of understanding the album’s title; the bum in decades—which Sheff explains as “[basically] an Okkervil River record with Roky as the frontman instead of me.” “I think that Roky’s kind of fearless in terms of the things he writes about and the way he writes about them. The way he expresses himself is incredibly free, with not a lot of thought put into meeting people where they are. You have to meet him where he is. [Seeing that helped me understand that] I didn’t need to be musically gregarious; I could be insular and interior in a way, and that that would kind of preserve a bit of that mystery that I’ll always respond to in art; this feeling that there’s a spiritual, mysterious depth and richness to a work of art that you can’t 100 percent access. It’s there, but you can’t quite get to it; you’re peeking through a keyhole. That’s what I wanted out of this record.” thought that “I”—one’s self, or some hidden aspect of one’s self—might be very far away from one’s experiBut if Far is clearly informed by an array of experience—whether Sheff’s own, that of Erickson (which is ence or lived reality. itself the stuff of rock ’n’ roll legend), or some deeper, Sheff was receptive to the idea. “Yeah, there’s somecollective understanding—it also displays an equal, thing to that; it’s better than what a lot of people have perhaps even more prominent strain of innocence. Besaid about it, which is why I almost didn’t want to call yond a prevailing sensibility redolent of fairy tales and the record that. [Many people assume] as a knee-jerk fabulism, the lyrics are full of direct, if still often hazy, thing that I’m talking about myself, or that it’s about progress—like, ‘Look how far I’ve come…’; that’s comreferences to childhood and young adulthood. pletely not what I meant, it doesn’t have anything to “With every record, it’s like you’re trying to be born again,” Sheff explains. “You’re trying to throw away do with it.” So what did he have in mind? “A lot of different your past formulas and rediscover yourself. And for that to work, you need to bring a certain kind of enthuthings—I think of it as a disconnected shard of dialogue siasm. There’s a time and place for a jaded that somebody in one of the songs might be standpoint—Exile on Main Street is a clasthinking or saying at some point… a ‘music sic example of a jaded record; The Stage from another room’ kind of thing. It’s not like a skeleton key to the meaning of the record Names and Stand Ins were kind of jaded. or anything. It’s kind of a twist or an add-on But for this record what I really wanted was not jaded—I wanted it to feel wild-eyed to the record.” and open. Okkervil River will be on tour through late “And that brought me to my own memJune. More at okkervilriver.com ories—to my very first memory. Your earliI Am Very Far is est memory sometimes feels like a skeleton available now from key to your entire life; like all the mysteries Jagjaguwar. Photo by alexandra valenti

Far and away: (from left) Justin Sherburn, Lauren Gurgiolo, Cully Symington, Will Sheff and Patrick Pestorius

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the

Unbearable Lightness of

How a couple of kids from San Diego spun easy, breezy blog sensation “Go Outside” into the most buzzworthy debut of the summer.

Cults

story by K . R o ss H o f f m a n photos by sh a ne m c cau l ey

It’s Thursday night in Brooklyn

and I’m sitting in a room full of kids in their early 20s. There’s a pair of worn vinyl sofas, beer in the fridge, a table spread with crackers, cheese and fruit. We’re chatting about Twitter, bus travel, big-box stores, natural gas fracking, bicoastalism (everybody I talk to seems to hail from San Diego). Everyone here is over the legal drinking age—if only barely—but there’s still something sheepish about the way Ryan—a tall, grinning fellow with chest-length hair and a peach-fuzzy dusting of facial scruff—cups his Miller. (His buddies inform me that his actual drink of choice is Budweiser: “Bud, burgers, pizza, Coca-Cola… he’s an all-American boy.”) Across the room, the petite, doll-like Madeline—who has equally long hair framing a cherubic face—is breathing deeply, trying to quell her stomach, which has been troubling her since she arrived earlier after downing a dubious-sounding slice of Caesar salad pizza.

Cults

Glancing around, this could be any party of post-collegiate adopis the brainchild—or perhaps better said the lovechild— tive New Yorkers, kicking it in a Williamsburg pad. In fact, we’re of this singularly endearing twosome, Follin and Oblivbackstage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where there’s a buzzion, who, a little more than a year ago, weren’t much different from worthy launch event underway for Vice magazine’s new video-based any number of transplanted New York college kids. Both San Diego music website, Noisey. Ryan—better known as Brian Oblivion (he natives, they met in San Francisco when Oblivion was playing guitar cribbed the moniker from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, a film with Richie Follin’s band the Willowz, and shortly thereafter relosix years older than he is)—and Madeline Follin, along with several cated together to New York to study film—he at NYU, she as a cinema of the hometown buddies gathered around them, comprise the band theory major at the New School. When the buoyant, preternaturally Cults, whose self-titled debut album will be released in a matter of catchy “Go Outside,” the very first song the pair wrote and recorded weeks by In the Name Of (a new imprint of Sony/Columbia overseen together, became a music-blog sensation virtually overnight—within by Lily Allen), and who will be headlining tonight’s show. a week after they first posted it and two other MP3s to their page at bandcamp.com, the song was picked up by Gorilla Vs. Bear and PitchIn addition to the after-effects of overly heavy, er, pizza dressing, Madeline’s internal distress stems from the fact that her band is fork, launching a remarkable wave of online enthusiasm—they were about to take the stage with a new, essentialjust a couple of overworked, over-stressed unly untested lineup. Her brother Richie, who’s dergrads, making music in the spare moments played with Cults since the beginning, just between demanding internships (Oblivion departed to focus on his own group, Guards, was working for film producer Scott Rudin; Follin, as it happens, for Vice) and full-time reducing their onstage personnel from six to five. Meanwhile, the latest in a Spinal Tapschool schedules. like string of drummers recently broke his Both of them had plenty of music in their arm, so another friend, Mark, is filling in. And backgrounds. Follin was exposed to the record this particular configuration has only logged a business particularly early on thanks to her few hours of rehearsal, earlier in the day. “I’m stepfather, Paul Kostabi, a California punknervous because everyone else is nervous, rocker who was in the band Youth Gone Mad, you know?” confides Follin, the band’s magas well as the original lineup of White Zomnetic lead vocalist. “I’m not doing anything bie. “When I was really little, I wanted to be a different. But it’s just scary; everybody else singer,” she recalls. “I was on my stepdad’s reis picking up two other instruments they’ve cord when I was eight years old.” (Follin also never played at our shows.” showed me a fawning fan note she’d written —Follin, age 6, Incidentally, Oblivion’s drinking tonight to herself at age six: “Dear Madeline, you’re written to herself is indeed minorly sub rosa, since the band’s so cute and funny, and you know what? I love manager (who also happens to be Madeline’s your clothes. You sing so well. Love, Madeline. mother), concerned about a flubbed note or P.S. Marry me?”) But despite childhood stints two during soundcheck, has suggested that he playing bass and drums, she became more stay sober until after the performance. He demurs, however: “I need ambivalent about music as she grew older, in a sort of inversion of to have at least one or two right before I go on, otherwise…” traditional filial defiance. “I wanted to rebel against what my parents Follin chimes in: “…or else you don’t have the energy!” (The two were doing. I went back and forth in stages where I was like, ‘I’m not have a habit of finishing one another’s thoughts.) “If you don’t have gonna do that. I’m gonna be a cheerleader.’” a drink, you feel like you’re not really awake.” Oblivion, meanwhile, moved to New York at 17 to pursue a music

Dear Madeline, you’re so cute and funny, and you know what? I love your clothes. You sing so well. Love, Madeline. P.S. Marry me?

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career, after testing out of high school early. “But it didn’t go very well,” he recounts. “The band broke up, there was a bunch of drama and after that happened I thought that music wasn’t really in the cards.” So, he refocused his energies on film, limiting his musical activities to the occasional Willowz gig, every few months or so. “The first songs that I’d written in two years were the songs that we wrote for this band. So, I was kinda out of it. But it made it more fun to come back to it, having somebody to work on it with that I liked and saw eye-to-eye with.”

From

the outset, there were no grand ambitions for the project. “It was just something fun to do when we were sick of writing essays and stuff,” says Oblivion. “I think that came out in the music a little bit.” It’s true that many of Cults’ songs evince a desire to escape from life’s complications; a yearning for the innocence of childhood, for a less complex (and probably imaginary) bygone era, or just the prospect of living more simply and sweetly. The wistfully breezy “Go Outside”—whose title works as both metaphorical and literal suggestion—is a prime, almost self-evident example, but there’s also the fervent wander­ lust of “Oh My God” (“I’m ready to walk right out that door… all I want is to know I have never wasted my time”), the dark, desperate promise in “Bad Things” to “run away and never come back,” and “Rave On”’s laundry list of mundanities they’d gladly forgo in exchange for the blithe rock ‘n’ roll rapture evoked in the song’s title. It’s easy to hear all of this as a reaction (in some cases, a highly sensationalized one) against the frustrations and tedium of schoolwork and “slave labor” internships, coupled with the nagging ennui Oblivion describes as either quarter-life crisis or postteen angst: attending parties that feel “more like networking opportunities”; looking to a nebulous future that seemed to promise only stifled ambition and further drudgery. “Subconsciously, a lot of our songs are about that period of time: not wanting to live a normal life, not wanting to go to work every day, being really afraid of that, because we were just about to graduate school and that’s what we were facing.” You could chalk it up to garden variety post-adolescent Peter Pan-ism. “A lot of it’s about the drive to stay young,” he admits, glossing Cults’ recurring lyrical impulses, and Follin continues: “…wanting to go out and have a good time, and screw your responsibilities.” But Oblivion sees broader sociological implications there as well: “It’s a big problem with our generation. I feel like our parents grew up and the goal for them was to better their situation: ‘I’m gonna go to college, and then I’m gonna go get a job at a pharmaceutical company, and then I’m gonna have a house and kids, and that’s the

life I want.’ Whereas we all expect that we’re gonna be rock stars and famous directors, and that we have some huge untapped creative ability that the world just has to see. Anything’s gonna be a disappointment when you’re thinking that way. The big thing for us is taking that attitude, which we obviously have as well, and actually doing something about it. “That’s partly what ‘Go Outside’ is about: the drive to actually make something out of your life and have something to show for it, rather than just sulking around and playing videogames and critiquing other peoples’ stuff. That’s really important for our generation to realize, that you’re never gonna get what you want unless you ask for it.” Still, Oblivion is quick to shy away from any notion that Cults are “speaking to the youth,” or anything grandiose like that—or even that they’re speaking from experience. “When Madeline and I sit down to write a song, we don’t write them about ourselves. We think, ‘Okay, what are the characters in this song, what’s gonna be going on?’ and

hair and makeup by liset garza. styling by Jenny Volodarsky. dresses designed by Caycee Black.

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we build a dramatic musical structure around that.” Hence, perhaps, an explanation for this pair of unabashed lovebirds penning numbers like the agonized, heartbroken “Abducted” (which Oblivion calls a Lynchian “girl in distress” song), or the unflinching, psychologically candid kiss-off “Never Heal Myself,” as well as the lovey-dovey boygirl back-and-forth of “Bumper.” “It’s not like we’re speaking from the heart,” he maintains. But, Follin counters, “Obviously, the heart seeps in.” And it’s easy to imagine many of their songs as mildly refracted reflections of a not-toodistant childhood, with all its attendant darkness and light. “We always wanted to write songs about and for outcast kids, misfit kids,” Oblivion states. “I think we were both like that growing up. We’ve grown to be more well-adjusted with the world, but we were both kinda freaky art kids. I didn’t wear shoes in high school, and that was pretty gross. I had so many weird ideas about the way you’re supposed to live. In eighth grade I just decided I was gonna have long hair, and I’ve never looked back…”

Oh yeah,

about that hair: All but one member of the band sports dark, freely flowing tresses, which gives their onstage appearance both a decidedly youthful and a slightly, well, cultish, aspect. “It was totally uncalculated,” Oblivion asserts. “They’re just our friends from San Diego, and we all fell into the same thing.” Like most everything else about their story, the duo’s process for assembling live musicians to flesh out the songs they’d created in their apartment was essentially unpremeditated. “We got the opportunity to play good shows and have a fun band, just off of nothing, so we called our best friends [in California] and said, ‘Dude, it’s going

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pretty well; why don’t you come out here?’” Bassist Nathan Aguilar was a deliveryman for “a very unsuccessful pizza business” when he got the call and, in Oblivion’s account, it took about zero seconds for him to accept. “He got on a plane like three days later and has been out here ever since. It’s kind of a Cinderella story.” Really, it’s been pretty storybook all around, with Brian and Madeline as a picture-perfect readymade Prince and Princess Charming. You could almost resent them if they weren’t so utterly, endearingly ingenuous about it all. And so, with enviable rock ’n’ roll fantasy-land logic, making music at home with your honey led to traveling around on tour with a bunch of friends and family. Follin insists it’s not quite as idyllic as it seems: “I don’t think that anybody would want to be in a band with us… we have a weird sense of humor that’s sometimes lost on people.” Oblivion illustrates by example: “We went on tour with the band Twin Sister, and they stayed at our hotel one night because we were out late drinking. The next morning we were in the van and Nathan, our bass player, started saying he was gonna puke.” Follin interjects: “This is a normal thing, he pukes every day.” “And so we pulled over the van at the center divider of a freeway, and he was puking there and we were all shouting at him and laughing at him. Then we just drove away and went to a Starbucks and hung out for 15 minutes, and just left him in the middle of the freeway.” “He didn’t care, though,” adds Follin. “…He thinks that kind of stuff is really funny,” Oblivion continues. “But the whole time [the Twin Sister guys] were appalled, like, ‘Are you serious, is he gonna be okay? Do you think we need to take him to the hospital?’ And I’m like, ‘No, dude, he’s just drunk. He’s an idiot, he shouldn’t be drinking that much.’” “Everybody’s really kind of mean to each other, but in a loving way.

It’s like we’re all brothers and sisters,” Follin elaborates. “And it’s can remember: on the radio; on bus trips; at those fake school sock weird because [Brian and I are] in a relationship also, so people feel hops… I feel like those are the first songs you really learn.” She cites like they’re in the relationship, too. Brian and I will be in an argument a few favorites, revealing a taste for the cheesily cheery—Lesley and people will say, ‘Well, why don’t you do this?’ and I’ll be like, ‘Why Gore’s “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows”; teenaged ’50s sister act don’t you stay out of our relationship?!’ There was an ongoing joke Patience and Prudence. this round of tour… I got in a fight with Brian, But the pair’s preeminent musical heroes and I said, ‘You know how much it hurts me are bad-girl O.G.’s the Shangri-Las. “I think when you lie to me?’” It was a really serious there’s something instantly connectable conversation. Then for the rest of the tour about them, especially for kids that don’t everybody kept saying that to me: ‘You know normally like pop music, because there’s a lot of rebellious spirit in it,” muses Oblivion. how much it hurts me…?’” In his case, that connection came about partly Although they rarely get time alone on the road (“only when we’re in, like, Birmingham, through a less conventional sort of rebellion, Alabama, and hotels are 20 bucks each—then against the opposite musical extreme: “I used we’ll get our own room,” says Follin, “but even to play in all these math-rock bands with then somebody will usually come in and ask kids in suburban San Diego, and it was like to stay with us”), Oblivion and Follin have a competition of who could like the weirddeveloped ways of protecting their relationest music—you know, Acid Mothers Temple, Merzbow…” After a while, burnout set in. “So, ship against the pressures of touring. “We’ve learned to kind of turn it on and off,” Oblivion I got a Beach Boys record, and I was like, ‘Oh explains. “When we need to do something semy god… this feels so good!’” It’s that inverted rious, when we need to have a talk with somesubversion again. “Exactly,” he chuckles. “Rebody or something’s going wrong with the bellion through conformity. Kind of a First equipment, we’re not in relationship mode. World problem.” We’re able to distance ourselves. Then, once “Oh my god, Mary Weiss actually just we have time alone, to be relaxed, it’s like, added me on Facebook a few days ago,” Follin ‘Ahh, what’s going on, babe?’ If not, everything gushes, referring to the Shangri-Las’ iconic would just get too personal. If every time you lead singer, with an expression of fan-girlish had some kind of professional problem, you enthusiasm that seems strangely anachroturned it into a personal argument, it would nistic in multiple ways. “It’s weird because just be hell, but we’ve been good at avoiding everybody’s been telling me I remind them of that. Which has been a very important life her.” Follin was dubious, but then she started watching live videos of Weiss performing. “I skill for us. But it makes things way better — oblivion having someone you love and care about on watched this one video in particular, and I tour instead of just a bunch of bros.” was like, ‘Is that me?’ She had the same hair“Yeah, a bunch of bros—that would suck!” cut and everything… it was weird.” giggles Follin—although it does sound like they have a bit of both The resemblance is audible, too. Many of Cults’ songs update the worlds. And it swings the other way, too: “I make them help me pick Shangri-Las’ flair for melodrama; “Bad Things”’ sparsely shuffling, what color nail polish I’m gonna wear. I make them be my girlfriends slightly menacing groove owes a certain debt to “Remember (Walksometimes.” ing in the Sand)” (as does “Abducted,” which echoes that song’s dramatic tempo changes), and they also nod to the group’s use of interstitial dialogue with spoken samples from films and, in at least youthful craving for sweetness and simplicity that’s so achone case, cult leader Jim Jones. But while the duo’s affection for the ingly conveyed in Cults’ lyrics (albeit counterbalanced by sounds of the early ’60s—sunshine pop and bad-kid blues alike—is distinct undercurrents of alienation, hopelessness and despair)—and certainly palpable in their music, Cults are hardly strict revivalists. that resonates remarkably well with their charmed and charming Much like Lykke Li’s excellent Wounded Rhymes, the 11 songs that experience of being a band thus far—is also brilliantly matched by make up Cults’ first full-length appropriate myriad retro signifiers, their music. Like a growing number of their contemporaries, they only to refashion them in their own, coolly modern image. Alongside borrow from the girl-group pop and soul sounds of the late 1950s and its handclaps and finger-snaps, doo-wop arpeggios and gloriously early 1960s. But unlike more fuzz-toned quasi-resurgents like Dum outsized melodies, the album is equally replete with dryly snarling Dum Girls and Vivian Girls, Cults tend to eschew the era’s rockier guitar leads; distant ghostly organs; airy synths and other swirling impulses to focus, above all, on the primacy of melody. Every single electronics; syncopated rhythms subtly informed by hip-hop and funky post-punk, and a level of vocal reverb that would make Phil song they’ve unveiled so far boasts an absolutely stunning melodic line: long and fluid; not too simple, not too complicated; rendered Spector blush. indelible by Madeline Follin’s high, tensile voice—girlishly thin but still piercingly potent—and often doubled or tripled, on glockenspiel, guitar or organ, for good measure. a short and sweet debut at just shy of 34 minutes, The music of the girl-group era is shot through with nostalgia contains four of the five tunes that trickled out onto the web during the band’s first year or so of bubble-like, bubblingon just about every level: it’s music by, for and about youth, from a time when rock music itself was in its infancy, and it’s also muunder fame, along with another seven equally delightful offerings, the sic that multiple generations of listeners first encountered in their cream of five months’ worth of piecemeal studio sessions. The band’s own childhood. Follin, for instance, has listened to it “ever since I description of that period—nonstop touring alternating with nonstop

We got the opportunity to play good shows and have a fun band, just off of nothing, so we called our best friends [in California] and said, “Dude, it’s going pretty well; why don’t you come out here?”

The

Cults,

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Oblivion’s

theories about attention-spoiled 21st-century fame-seekers notwithstanding, Cults are hardly self-satisfied about their sudden success. After a full year in the eye of the hypestorm, they’re still refreshingly wide-eyed about the rock ‘n’ roll fairy tale they’ve stumbled into; Oblivion, particularly, seems almost oblivious to the idea that the attention might be well-deserved: He’s slow to make any allusion to the evident talent and craft that goes into the band’s music, and quick to chide himself about, for instance, his foolish, headstrong attempt to mix the album himself (“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking”), and his general lack of professionalism (“I’d get so little-kid pissy,” he says of a typical experience working on a video. “Any time anybody made a critique, I’d just be like, ‘Alright, I’m not answering e-mails for a week.’”) As he told me when we first sat down, they never set out to be rock stars. “We think of our band, from its birth, as more of an art project than a band, really. It’s just the two of us, making our own album art, consulting on our own videos, making music together. Neither of us are lifetime road-dog musicians or anything. It was never our dream. It’s just something we’re having a lot of fun with.” His partner has a slight quibble: “I mean, it definitely was my dream,” she says. “You saw my note; I was telling myself that I sang so well... I guess I never wanted to admit it.” So, how does it feel to be living her dream? Madeline beams. “I’m really happy, for the most part. Touring’s tough, but it’s fun. It’s really fun.”

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recording—sounds utterly hectic and exhausting, but they’re enthusiastic about the experience and how it affected the album’s gradual evolution, giving them the opportunity to play songs live and make changes as they went. “It was really healthy to take our time with it as opposed to trying to capitalize on a moment,” says Oblivion. Their initial impulse, given the unexpected, rapturous reception of “Go Outside,” was to try to recreate it. “‘We gotta write a bunch more like that!’” Oblivion recalls thinking. “But any attempt that we made to make a song that sounded like that just fell flat; we hated all of them.” So, they allowed themselves to branch out, exploring a variety of directions without succumbing to eclecticism for its own sake. “And that’s how we ended up making the album; we wrote 10 dark songs, eight happy songs, five weird, noisy songs. And then, instead of thinking, ‘Well, this is our first statement as a band, we want it to be cohesive,’ we just grabbed the best songs and put ’em together. Which is kind of a vintage way of thinking about an album.” To be fair, Cults definitely still sounds like a fluid, cohesive work, and, despite the band’s intentions, there are a couple of tunes that capture an insouciant uplift readily reminiscent of “Go Outside,” though nothing that could be called a blatant facsimile. (“Oh My God” comes close—in sound, feel and message—but it’s so deliriously exultant in its own right that it’s nearly impossible to mind.) But the album never feels like it’s trying at all hard to be anything in particular, which is probably the single most fundamental, underlying key to the band’s appeal, both on record and in person.

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in the green room at the Williamsburg Music Hall, in the cocoon of their bandmates and adoring friends, merrily boozing and bantering, periodically stepping out to go watch the other bands on the bill, Madeline is equal parts fluttering hostess, level­ headed den mother and nerve-stricken ingénue. She’s been keeping watch by the door of the bathroom, making sure everyone who goes in knows not to push in the lock (because it’s broken and they might get stuck inside.) But it also seems like she’s partly keeping close by in case her stomach starts to get the better of her. (Not a typical occurrence, she assures me; but this show in particular seems to have ratcheted up her anxiety: “I guess I’m more nervous than usual.”) By the time Cults take the stage, those nerves have dissipated, and Madeline is all smiles once more. The awkward repartee with which she and Brian attempt to engage the crowd between songs (“It’s getting too Noisey!”) doesn’t come across as flustered or uncomfortable so much as amiably offhand, like they were just cracking bad puns for a room full of old friends. And, of course, they needn’t have worried about the performance itself. The rejiggered version of the band breezed through their eightsong set like the seasoned pros they secretly sort of are. And actually, without the noisier, shoegazey element of Richie Follin’s supplemental guitar work, the songs sounded cleaner and tighter, closer to the crisp arrangements on the record. It felt like a small, precious moment; a minor revelation, even if it’s just one in a continuing, dizzying string for Cults themselves—still youthful, open to freshness and wonder, just at the beginning of an amazing adventure. It was a blessing just to be there, basking in that joy, sharing it with them. P.S. Marry me? Cults will tour the U.S. and Canada in June and July. More at cultscultscults.com and cults.bandcamp.com. Cults will be available June 7 from In the Name of/Columbia.

new music reviewed and graded for your aural pleasure

Fantastic Mr. Folkie S

Fleet Foxes

Helplessness Blues Sub Pop

photo by Sean Pecknold

eattle’s Fleet Foxes have been key players in

indie’s ongoing coming-out party of the past half-decade— the one that culminated in all those who-the-fuck-is-theArcade-Fire moments in the wake of last year’s Grammys. Having sold nearly half a million copies of their eponymous debut fulllength, they reside in the same neighborhood of the pop culture consciousness as the most recent Record of the Year award winners—a middle-class suburb between the affluent gated communities of the mainstream and the blue-collar underground. Not only has anticipation of sophomore effort Helplessness Blues been stoked by how well the debut was received nearly three years ago, but if there’s another band waiting in the wings to get

Robin Pecknold’s grip on Fleet Foxes’ reins is stronger than ever, and we’re not complaining who-the-fucked at a future Grammy ceremony, it’s almost certainly Fleet Foxes (now that LCD Soundsystem’s done, at least). “White Winter Hymnal” is still Fleet Foxes’ most reliable entry point. Loose, front-porch folk collides with choral washes, taking traditional music 31

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reviews

borne of unsophistication and dressing it up for concert halls. On Helplessness Blues, the band’s still best at their most church-y, and the near constant harmonies are nearly as constant. But a number of the songs are direct in a way that’s jarring—or at least as jarring as a band as tempered as Fleet Foxes gets. With the new album, one voice in the chorus is obviously the primary one. Even as Robin Pecknold sings matter-of-factly, “I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me,” it’s apparent he’s the

gear turning the others. That’s not meant to belittle the contributions of the other Foxes—one would be hard-pressed to find a band in which this scenario isn’t the case to some degree—but Helplessness Blues’ titular helplessness seems to radiate from Pecknold’s drive to reconcile an increasingly insular point of view with a desire to work toward the greater good. While Pecknold’s voice sits more front and center, the new album isn’t lacking in the pastoral flourishes that have become the band’s calling card. “The Plains/Bitter Dancer” floats

along in Simon and Garfunkel fashion, while “The Cascades” takes mountain music across wideopen valleys. Moving into less familiar territory, the second half of “The Shrine/An Argument” drifts into free-form quasi-jazz skronk—and it works. But even if large portions of Helplessness Blues feel more like a solo record (“Blue Spotted Tail” even features Pecknold unaccompanied), it’s still a pretty great one. At least there’s some version of a middle class out there that isn’t feeling the squeeze. —Matt Sullivan

This Must Be… Pop? With one frontman down, Battles fight for their right to party

W

hat do you do when the pretty-much-frontman of

your band up and leaves to do the solo thing? If you’re Battles, the NYC now-trio whose guitarist/vocalist TyonBattles dai Braxton recently went rogue, you start with a blank slate—and dump Gloss Drop as much bright ’n’ sugary shit on it as you can find. Forget a replacement: Throw an ice cream social, just for yourselves (and a few of your friends warp who can sing pretty good, sure). Have fun. Get saccharine. That’s how it works on the aptly titled Gloss Drop, and it works damn fine. Without Braxton’s multi-instrumental skills and gas-huffing gnome chanteys (are you going to miss that second one?), Battles are indeed a different beast than they were on 2007’s debut LP, Mirrored, but all the compensatory sweet equity actually pays off. “Wall Street” is powered by nose candy jitters just like the real one is, “Dominican Fade” gets its cheery Caribbean steel groove on (with handclaps), and the soft-serve guitar swirls of “Ice Cream” are churned out with summer drives and carousel rides in mind. Matias

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Aguayo sings on that one, à la Animal Collective when they aren’t too drugged out, and surprisingly puts ol’ Gary Numan— whose “My Machines” wail, disappointingly enough, makes for the one clunker here—to shame. Everything else tastes nice on first bite, though—just don’t call it lightweight. ExHelmet man John Stanier’s drumming is every bit the muscle and math you’d expect, and the dense pastiches Dave Konopka and Ian Williams slather on top are no joke. Gloss Drop is Battles gone pop, but it’s made with some pretty heavy cream. —Jakob Dorof

photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg

Antony and the Johnsons

Swanlights

Secretly Canadian

When merely hypnagogic just isn’t enough Having one of the world’s most beautiful voices has only helped Antony Hegarty build a comfortable niche for himself amid the interstices of indie rock, experimental music and dark cabaret. But with collaborations, the 40-year-old New Yorker’s blessing often turns to a curse. Not for Hegarty, exactly. It’s just that Björk, Bryan Ferry and pretty much everybody else he’s ever shared a mic with ends up coming off like Donald Duck in comparison. His collabos with non-vocalists tend to fare far better, per Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Swanlights” remix. Drone innovator Daniel Lopatin doesn’t so much deconstruct the song as turn it into a heavily bejeweled version of its somnambulant skeleton. Spectacular as it is, though, Lopatin’s treatment serves mainly to send us back, again and again, to the soulfully psychedelic original. Two additional tracks—both previously unreleased—close the loop, resulting in an EP richer than most albums. —Rod Smith Arctic Monkeys

Suck It and See Domino

Perhaps “perfect” is a bit strong, but... Less Strokes than Borg, Arctic Monkeys assimilate everything they sense—to the extent of anchoring punk-into-grunge rock club natural “Brick by Brick” with a riff lifted from Ernie K-Doe’s 1961 novelty R&B hit, “Mother-in-Law.“ It’s neither their fourth album’s only foray into transcendent silliness—“Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I Moved Your Chair” even boasts a perfectly formed “yeah, yeah, yeah” chorus—nor the only patch of new terrain they successfully lay claim to. (For every snob who dismisses singer, guitarist and creative core Alex Turner’s dalliances with U.K. Americana, at least three Travis fans are bound to mess their Dockers.) Hater bait aside, most of Suck It revisits the sexed-up wonderland they’ve been exploring at least since 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare, with fewer theatrics than ’09’s Humbug, more virtuoso performances, more romance (check “She’s Thunderstorms”), and the trickiest takedowns to date in their perpetual wrestling match with the sublime. —Rod Smith Beastie Boys

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two Capitol

Licensed to kick ill’s ass. It occurred to more than a few people that Adam Yauch’s 2009 cancer diagnosis and treatment might have given the Beastie Boys pause to reflect on their place in the great cosmic plan, somber contemplation that would be displayed on the

sleeves of their long-delayed Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. Screw dat. HSCP2 might as well have been titled You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Piss Down Cancer’s Back, as it bumps with crackling intensity and trademark humor hearkening back to the psychotically excellent Paul’s Boutique. The Beasties hit for the cycle on Hot Sauce: pure funk extract (“Make Some Noise,” “Funky Donkey”), deep dub with a ska/pop sheen (“Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”), blistering indie rock (“Lee Majors Come Again”), atmospheric rap (“Too Many Rappers,” “Nonstop Disco Powerback,” “Here’s a Little Something for Ya”), new wave electropop (“Ok”) and some crazy-ass shit (“Crazy Ass Shit”). Hot Sauce is no cancer survivor afterschool special; it’s a full-bore mixtape circus, and maybe the best thing the Beasties have dropped in a decade. —Brian Baker

The Cars

Move Like This Concord Music Group

Orr maybe it isn’t? Pshaw! This sounds like a thousand other synth-driven dance-y rock bands that live in a cabinet in some warehouse in Williamsburg. All these kids ever do is rip off the Cars and try to pass it off as their... oh, wait, this is the Cars. Well, this rules. Or, at least as much as a Cars album can rule without original bassist Ben Orr. When Orr passed away, we swore that we would never listen to an Orr-less Cars reunion—it seemed like heresy, frankly—but Move Like This is respectful of the legend’s legacy, and even includes a “Drive”-like moment with the new cut “Soon,” so we’ll let ’em slide. (And yes, we know that Ocasek wrote “Drive,” but it’s Orr’s vocal that makes the song.) We were skeptical—we’ve been burned by reunion albums before—but Move Like This is a great contribution to the classic band’s catalog. —Sean L. Maloney Chateau Marmont

2008-2009-2010 Chambre404

Dap Funk Although this Parisian quartet has found fame recently engineering nouvelle electro remixes for like-minded acts La Roux and Röyksopp, this collection of EPs hews closer to Chateau Marmont’s true bread-and-butter: Daft Punk-inspired synth pop. Endless grooves and vocoder-assisted vocals on “Nibiru” draw further parallels to the group’s French countrymen, while a series of remixes of last year’s Nibiru EP (including an ace mix of “Monodrama” by LCD Soundsystem auxiliary member Gavin Russom) strip some tracks down to their bare-bones essentials. 2008-2009-2010 bypasses linear sequencing in favor of an approach that drops the group’s slightly older material (including the standalone/ standout “Beagle” single) in the middle of the newer catalogue, but what’s missing is a hint of the impish humor at the heart of the best Daft Punk singles. Still, it’s all frothy and effervescent enough to

suggest that Chateau Marmont are really only one “One More Time” away from finding their ultimate groove. —Nick Green

The Coathangers

Larceny & Old Lace Suicide Squeeze

Crime pays For two albums, the women of this Atlanta quartet, who now take the band as their last name, Ramones-style, have danced this mess around in no wave chaos and monster mashes. While the latest, named after an episode of The Golden Girls, shows them flirting with more formal structures, there’s no danger of them really settling down for good. If anyone can have fun with heartbreak, it’s the Coathangers, from the opening stomp of “Hurricane,” to the tart girl group-ish “Go Away” and the outer space freakout of “Johnny.” The vocals, shared by Crook Kid, Minnie, Rusty and Bebe, are like a rowdy bar conversation, listening to a girlfriend tell a really good story: They coo, cajole, crack up and crack each other up. They stomp along to the Rolling Stones on “Well Alright,” and try their Southern roots on for size on “Tabbacco Rd.” —Sara Sherr Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi

Rome

Capitol

The good, the okay and the generally agreeable Danger Mouse must surely dread the specter of a defunded NPR. After all, any attack on bourgie musical eclecticism would seriously damage his ability to conduct self-consciously neo-retro musical projects, such as this collaboration with Italian TV/film composer Daniele Luppi (Sex in the City, Hell Ride). For now, he’s safe to explore his fondness for ’70s-era film soundtrack orchestrations, particularly of the spaghetti western variety, unhindered. For now. All kidding aside, there will always be a market for these musical conventions, whether it be lachrymose Lee Hazlewood-esque balladry (“The Rose With the Broken Neck,” emoted by Jack White), Starbucks-ready downtempo pop (“Season’s Trees”) or charmingly dated instrumentals. Expect plenty of wistful moaning, tremolo-infused guitar leads and pleasantly unobtrusive melodies designed, like any movie score, to serve a background role in the listener’s real-life dramas. —Justin Hampton Des Ark

Don’t Rock the Boat, Sink the Fucker Lovitt

Still seasick More than a record title, it’s a philosophical mantra. Don’t simply make your argument, hammer it in; don’t write songs that are just challenging, write songs that might be alienating. This un­

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compromising ethos hinders the first Des Ark album since 2005’s Loose Lips Sink Ships, but its boldness is admirable. Melancholic opener “My Saddle Is Waitin’ (C’mon Jump on It)” rides pleasantly but aimlessly to guitar harmonics and feedback ambience until almost the five-minute mark. “I’d love to keep on loving you, my dear,” Aimee Argote breathlessly sings, “but you’re already dead.” Suddenly there’s an eruption: piano, drums, angelic vocal harmonies and ridiculous splendor—a fine payoff. We hear this again in “FTW Y’all!!!” a disco/guitar anthem for codependency that emerges from a minute and a half of swell. Other moments aren’t as successful—with disjointed guitar and dense lyrics about abuse, “Girls Get Ruff” collapses under its own weight. But even this is a winning point; Don’t Rock the Boat can be captivating in its instability. —John Vettese

straightforward poetry, while the band plays with an inspiring flair. “Revolution,” “Don’t Shut ’Em Down,” “Saints and Sinners” and the title track are searing indictments of the greed and shortsightedness that have driven the country to the edge of economic ruin. Tracks like “Present State

of Grace” and “A Prayer for Me in Silence” showcase the band’s acoustic side and provide a glimmer of light in the darkness by saluting Detroit’s indomitable spirit of resistance. They may not be rockers, but they’re just as powerful in their own quiet way. —j. poet

EMA

Past Life Martyred Saints Souterrain

She’s unbelievable “EMA is the new basement bedroom garage,” says Erika Anderson on her website (cameoutta­ nowhere.com) regarding her new solo project, EMA. But she clarifies that the term is more a reference to her current digs rather than “some sort of super-genre.” The new guise of the former member of the Gowns features guitars that buzz and drone, a voice that could be described as fragile and a sound quality ranging from lo- to mid-fi (sometimes within the same track).But there is a depth and weight to this album that demands attention. “California” mines a cavernous gospel-blues vibe for a song that ends with a cast of characters, including the narrator, toting guns. “Milkman” features a thrilling use of distortion on pretty much every instrument. And the closing track, “Red Star,” builds to a devastating, intense reading of the line, “If you won’t love me, someone will,” solidifying Past Life Martyred Saints’ status as a compelling piece of work. —Michael Pelusi Flogging Molly

Speed of Darkness Borstal Beat

A heartfelt call for revolution Flogging Molly have never been secretive about their populist identity, but on Speed of Darkness they take their revolutionary ire to a whole new level. The band recently relocated to Detroit and that city’s bleak economic outlook informs the album. FM have never sounded this angry—or focused—before. Dave King’s lyrics tell the story of America’s rapidly growing underclass with a powerful

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Racer Riot Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. leave their hearts on the dancefloor

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he song “Nothing but Our Love” swells with sweet, understated romance—not quite what you’d Dale Earnhardt expect from a band with a name as silly as Dale EarnJr. Jr. hardt Jr. Jr. The Detroit duo’s full-length debut, It’s a Corporate It’s a Corporate World World, is tremendous, perfectly marrying the digital whimsy of electronica with lovely, restrained emotionalism. “Simple Girl,” Quite the first song bandmates Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott ever Scientific worked on together, is a perfect synthesis of all the band’s more appealing qualities—melodic spunk, bright arrangements and tender intelligence. The dreamy “Skeletons” hums along with a syncopated little beat, accented with a teensy, charming guitar warble. “An Ugly Person on a Movie Screen” has some particularly clever lyrical moments—including a promise of “20 different ways to make him sigh”—backed by a nifty head-nodding beat and well-placed, nostalgic na-na-na-na’s. For all the album’s skill with subtlety, there is also a heavy debt to dance music, including an emphatic rhythmic sensibility, an affection for electronic elements and a talent for crescendo. The most notable example is the faux-disco fun of “Vocal Chords,” but there’s also the excellent, anthemic “We Almost Lost Detroit,” a song that mythologizes the city’s crumbling industrial past. It’s a Corporate World is an album so casually arresting that it’s easy to underestimate the achievement. On “Nothing but Our Love,” Zott offers quiet assurance: “Don’t try, don’t try so hard. My love is easy.” And then later adds, “Your love is easy, and I get more than I deserve.” My feelings exactly. —Lee Stabert

French Horn Rebellion

The Infinite Music of French Horn Rebellion Once Upon a Time

Mistruths in advertising The Infinite Music of French Horn Rebellion is not infinite (though it is admittedly overlong), it’s not particularly rebellious, and it features disappointingly few French horns. Apparently, the Williamsburg-via-Wisconsin Perlick-Molinari brothers actually wish to rebel against the French horn (on which score this is, again, only a partial success), and more specifically against Robert P-M’s classical music career, but it’s not entirely clear what they’d like instead. The foundation here is workaday, but well-executed electro-dance—a little bit sparkly neo-disco, a little bit glitchy blogfodder tech-pop—infused with a cheery, Fountains of Wayne/OK Go-style power-pop sensibility, with the occasional spacey

chamber-psych diversion (where the horns come in, usually) tacked on, presumably, misguidedly, to bolster a sense of artful, album-like weight. You could cite the usual run of “nostalgic” ’80s forebears, but really it feels like these guys are just imitating their contemporaries (Passion Pit, MGMT), and though their ambitiousness is appealing and the classical chops serve them well, true greatness in this vein (e.g., Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colors) requires heart as well as craft. —K. Ross Hoffman

Handsome Furs

Sound Kapital Sub Pop

The family that plays ’80s Euro synthpop together… On Handsome Furs’ debut, 2007’s Plague Park, Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry opted for chilled minimalism, a clear counterpoint to Boeckner’s

noisy day jobs with Wolf Parade and Atlas Strategic. On 2009’s Face Control, the husband/wife duo roughed up the sound with more guitar, retaining an icy synth pulse and dour lyrical perspective. For Sound Kapital, the Furs tapped influences absorbed on their European/Asian tours (often in sketchy political areas with support bands that risked arrest for culture crimes), and revisited ’80s Eastern European electropop/industrial ringleaders, while Boeckner relied on keyboards to write, forcing him from his six-string comfort zone. Consequently, Sound Kapital shimmers and shudders with the hell-bent throb of Ian McCullouch fronting Tubeway Army at an OMD tribute, from the relentlessly poppy “When I Get Back” to the visceral synth-punched “Damage” to the perfect ’80s club homage of “Memories of the Future.” Like the era’s best synthesists, Handsome Furs set a bleak outlook to driving electronic rhythms, creating sounds that are magisterial, thoughtprovoking and danceable as hell. —Brian Baker

Transition Defense Things change and stay the same, beautifully, for Ben Gibbard and Death Cab for Cutie

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t this point, Death Cab for Cutie are real pros—they

make music that sounds rich and smart, indulging just Death Cab enough in the type of angst that adults can get behind. Their for Cutie latest, Codes and Keys, is no exception. “Some Boys” is a perfect exCodes and Keys ample—it’s a head-nodder, balanced by frontman Ben Gibbard’s trademark feelings, as he continually intones, “Some boys don’t know how Atlantic

to love.” Penultimate track “St. Peter’s Cathedral” builds from spare, fuzzed-out piano to a swirl of sound, channeling the majesty and drama of its subject matter. It’s a strong example of the dissonant and distorted elements the band increasingly incorporates, a welcome counterpoint to Gibbard’s never-not-sweet vocals. Meanwhile album closer “Stay Young Go Dancing” augments an all-acoustic opening verse with lush harmonies and orchestral flourishes. Those understated strings are also put to good use on the title track, another in a string of recent Death Cab songs that seem obsessed with transition—doors, keys, moving on. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise from the recently married Gibbard. In the end, some of these songs sound like Death Cab songs (crisp, emotive and bathed in pitch-perfect production) and a few sound like really good Death Cab songs—those magical tracks that work just as well on a sunny windows-down day and on the morning after a catastrophic breakup. It’s always been one of Gibbard and Co.’s greatest skills, encompassing the duality of euphoria and heartache into taut, pop song-length packages. —Lee Stabert

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Implodes

Black Earth Kranky

Tick-tick-ticked off With an album called Black Earth and a name like Implodes, you’d expect this Chicago crew to sound a lot more menacing. Truth is, most of this full-length debut is downright pretty. Chord progressions and melodies churn just below the squall as the drone-y psych troupe dabbles with harsh textures, and something akin to hooks often bubble to the surface. Implodes can still sound menacing, though. That’s a pretty big knife that lady’s wielding on the cover, after all. The vocals on second track “Marker” never rise much above a moan (nor anywhere else on the album), but the heft and density of the wall of sound built to fortify them makes for an imposing structure. The melodies are delicate and the basslines can groove, but on tracks like “Meadowlands,” Implodes show an affinity for the dirge as well. And true to their name, it all sounds like it could cave in at any moment. —Matt Sullivan JEFF the Brotherhood

We Are the Champions Infinity Cat

Let nerd persecution end Jake and Jamin Orrall clearly remember Weezer before Rivers Cuomo grew an ironic ’stache and started jerking off on Hugh Hefner’s front lawn. That is to say, the Brotherhood remembers the Blue Album’s goods that came by way of an alienated, KISS-obsessed nerd. We Are the Champions, the follow-up to 2009’s lauded Heavy Days, finds the Nashville duo unraveling “Come Undone (The Sweater Song)” into a pile of thick fuzz and unruly grooviness. Opening line, “I’ve been thinking about your mom/ You can tell me if it’s really wrong/ It’s been going on for way too long” indicates JEFF’s social awkwardness. Whether throwing down aggro skate-punk (“Mellow Out,” “Stay Out Late”), Black Sabbath psych-metal (“Ripper”) or Ramones paranoia (“Shredder”), the Orralls stab and tweak their tunes with a variety of textures—from laser-beam arpeggio to trippy sitar—that’ll hook your lobes on the first go-around. —Jeanne Fury Junior Boys

It’s All True Domino

Pinky swears If only because the first two Junior Boys LPs set an impossibly high bar—especially the peerless, debonair So This Is Goodbye—the still-excellent Begone Dull Care couldn’t help feeling like a slight comedown; the songcraft stumbling even as the productions grew increas-

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Mr. Clean is the Man David Kilgour and Co. perfect shimmering, laid-back Kiwi indie pop

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n David Kilgour’s seventh solo album,

it’s not the songs that draw you in so much as the sound. The over-cranked 12-string that opens the instrumental title track sucks you in like a shimmering whirlwind, pulling you into the center of a storm you’re powerless to escape, should you be fool enough to try. Left by Soft Kilgour’s seventh solo album is only the second co-creditMerge ed to his backing ensemble, the Heavy Eights, but he’s been playing with them in various configurations for years. That familiarity is reflected in Left by Soft’s easy, almost effortless feel. Recorded in a rural cabin by bassist Thomas Bell, it could have been knocked out over beers or between hands of poker were it not for the understated craft involved. At times, songs like “Autumn Sun” and the six-minute “Diamond Mine” seem to drift, not unpleasantly, without purpose; there’s such a thing as being too easygoing. But it’s a pleasure just to float along with Kilgour and band, treasuring their company as they do what they do best. Further listening reveals deeper layers, thought through or simply intuited, like the way the self-referential “Pop Song” seems to begin mid-chorus and then circles back around, lazily chasing its own tail, or the purposeful frisson between the warm bath of an opening track and the stinging crunch of the following “Way Down Here.” After decades as a New Zealand fixture—including membership in the sporadically active, always legendary the Clean—Kilgour doesn’t need to flaunt his mastery, but it oozes out all the same. —Sam Adams David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights

photo by Steve Brummell

ingly nuanced and streamlined. Album number four is at once a corrective and a reorientation: Excepting the tender, lovelorn “Playdate”—daringly (or perhaps teasingly) slotted second—it’s their catchiest, most outgoing outing yet. (I’m almost tempted to say “sunniest,” though these are relative terms; Jeremy Greenspan’s hushed, wistful croon remains indelibly nocturnal.) Though it finds the duo successfully branching out without disrupting their core sonic identity (and it’s neat to hear Care’s numbed, tech-y lockgrooves—revisited here on the terse “Kick the Can”—blossom into something more chromatic and engaging), True also veers ticklishly toward an outright evocation of plastic ’80s pop-soul (q.v., Grovesnor, if not quite Chromeo), troublingly for a band that’s always felt effortlessly modern. Infectiously epic closer “Banana Ripple” even busts out the synthetic disco-samba horn stabs, practically the antithesis of the JBs’ trademark restraint. Then again, it’s easily the best thing here. —K. Ross Hoffman

Let’s Wrestle

Nursing Home Merge

Sleeper pick All hail Let’s Wrestle, a band that doesn’t feel the need to change their dresseddown rock stuff from one album to the next for fear of being pigeonholed. Evolving is overrated; this London trio dug themselves a glorious hole on 2009’s In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s, and have decided to stay there, thank heavens. Nursing Home reprises the flustered energy and jumpy rhythms, and introduces a nice blanket of crud thrown on the production, courtesy of Steve Albini. For all the band’s slacker tendencies, their tunes possess great punk rock immediacy (the bass continually sticks out due to awesomeness). Fingers fervently scratch off half-assed Jam riffs like lotto tickets, while the vocals lag as if floating in a half-case of Guinness. From Greek men fighting in a pharmacy to a dutiful son easing his mother’s grief by walking her overweight dogs, the lyrics—cheeky, Descendents-like antipoetry—cleverly mix the inane and the mundane. Let’s Wrestle have WWE-worthy moves. —Jeanne Fury Love with Arthur Lee

Black Beauty High Moon

Why can’t this be Love? According to Erich Segal and Bernie Taupin, respectively, love means never having to say you’re sorry, and sorry seems to be the hardest word. As such, if you’re looking for the incendiary Love of Forever Changes, you might be sorry for searching them out on Black Beauty, a rarities collection credited to Love with Arthur Lee. The credit is important; Black Beauty’s first nine tracks are only tangentially related to Love by virtue of Lee’s involvement. The 1963-64 songs are Lee’s earliest known recordings—also included is Lee’s composition for R&B singer Rosa Lee

photo by Steven Oberlechner

Brooks, 1964’s “My Diary,” purportedly featuring Jimi Hendrix. Black Beauty heats up with the next 11 tracks, a full album’s worth of 1973 recordings shelved when Lee’s label went toes-up. Here Lee strips back to a rock/soul vibe that reflects his friendship with and adoration of Hendrix, particularly on the “Bold as Love”-tinged “Midnight Sun” and the loose-limbed “You’re Just a Product of the Time.” The recordings are rough, but definitely listenable, and essential for diehard Lee/Love fanatics; the early stuff is merely interesting for the Lee connection. —Brian Baker

Chris Mills

Heavy Years: 2000 2010 Ernest Jenning Co.

Down on the upside Chris Mills calls his publishing company Powerless Pop, which might be the most appropriate moniker for the genre whose practitioners sing about getting the girl, but never do. Spanning a decade and four albums, Heavy Years covers Mills’ transition from a fellow traveller of Chicago’s altcountry scene to an orch-pop Brooklynite, and with it a more subtle drift from wry surrender to going on the attack. “Suicide Note,” from 2002’s The Silver Line, embraces the end with sardonic remove, pitting Mills’ sad-sack drawl against Kelly Hogan’s soaring harmonies. From 2008’s Living in the Aftermath, “Atom Smashers” busts out of the gate at a full clip and never looks back, even when its freeassociative lyrics lag behind. When Mills admits defeat on “Such a Beautiful Thing,” it’s because his feelings surpass his ability to express them. Fans will note the presence of two new songs; for everyone else, it’s time to catch up. —Sam Adams Thurston Moore

Demolished Thoughts Matador

Unlikely monster of folk Did Sonic Youth’s unplugged performance on Gossip Girl a few years back give Thurston Moore an idea? His latest solo album contains no electric guitars, no feedback and no noise. Instead, Moore hired a celebrity producer (Beck Hansen’s still a celebrity, right?) and recorded nine tracks of mellow acoustic folk rock, perfect for both rainy-day contemplation and sunny-day walks in the park. On songs like “Benediction” and “Illuminine,” Moore’s guitar and voice intertwine beautifully with Samara Lubelski’s violin and Mary Lattimore’s harp. Anyone familiar with the melodyfriendly side of Sonic Youth won’t be too surprised by this album. (“Circulation” could’ve fit on 2006’s Rather Ripped.) The only problem is that the songs start to sound the same after a while. Moore’s last solo disc, Trees Outside the Academy (2007), balanced folksy leanings with bursts of energy (thanks to players like J. Mascis and Steve Shelley), something Demolished Thoughts could use once in a while. —Michael Pelusi

My Morning Jacket

Circuital ATO

Somewhere in the future, listening Hands down the best thing Jim James has done since he started the Crème-Bru-Log, the My Morning Jacket leader’s tribute to the crispy, custard-y Adonis of desserts. We kid! This is definitely the best album of My Morning Jacket’s decade-plus career—a tight, soulful rock record, focused yet free-roaming, drawing on all the things that made the band exciting in the past, but boiled down into their most energetic and accessible effort yet. Recorded in a church gymnasium in their hometown of Louisville last summer, Circuital finds MMJ reaching a new level of cohesion, making this the first fully realized full-band album of their career, a country rock journey through cosmic soul. “Holding On to Black Metal” is in the running for the first backyard-barbecue anthem of the summer, “Outta My System” is sure to be a favorite among their po-mo hippie cult and “Slow Slow Tune” may be the most accurately named song of all time. —Sean L. Maloney Netherfriends

Angry East Coast EP self-released

The meanies in Delaware Since 2007, Chicagoan Shawn Rosenblatt has channeled his restlessness into Netherfriends. The psych-pop outfit—centered on Rosenblatt with a revolving support cast—covers a wide range of geography both sonically and physically. Last year, the then-recent college graduate set out on a vagabond-style 50-state tour, during which the already-prolific songwriter set out to write and record a new song in each state he visited. Four of those are collected on the Angry East Coast EP. The topic Rosenblatt seems most eager to address here is the 50-state project itself. The titles are presumably the places in which the songs were written. On “Washington, DC” he sings, “I can relate to everyone I meet in each state I play,” while Rosenblatt had lady troubles on the brain in Rehoboth Beach, DE—“She is trying to make me a better person/ I will travel the country, sleep on many couches.” While he’s gone he knows “she will finish with school and meet a lot of bros.” While the lyrics might be a little superficial, it’s the sonic layers wrapping them up that add depth. Hard-to-peg washes of sound fill the gaps, while Rosenblatt steers clear of verse/chorus/verse templates. Hopefully the other 46 recording sessions went just as well. —Matt Sullivan Sebadoh

Bakesale Domino

Indie. Rock. If you were to assemble a golden-age-of-indie-rock start-up kit (you know, for the kids), you’d probably want to include

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scratched-up copies of, say, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand, Superchunk’s Foolish, a “This Is Not a Fugazi Tshirt” T-shirt, an old Touch & Go catalogue and maybe a past-due water bill. And at the top of the heap—a copy of Sebadoh’s Bakesale. In the annals of indie rock, this record is a gateway masterpiece. As ear-catchingly accessible to the un-primed listener as it is a disjointed mess of missed downbeats, abstruse lyrics, cockeyed hooks and unfinished ideas, its asymmetrical idiosyncrasies are as inherent to the band’s DNA as they are to its genre’s. With Lou Barlow and Jason Loewenstein peaking at their prowess as writers, Bakesale also boasts—pound for pound— the strongest set of songs (“Rebound,” “Magnet’s Coil,” “Careful,” “Drama Mine”) in the Sebadoh canon. Long overdue, this unabridged reissue features a 25-track supplement of unearthed odds and ends to balance out the obligatory remastering treatment, giving you a warts-and-all window into a record that already stood tall on the strength of its blemishes. —Adam Gold

Ty Goes to the Studio Bay Area garage rocker Ty Segall cleans up nice

Sondre Lerche

Sondre Lerche Mona

Cryptic pop tunes for latenight radio Lerche’s work is marked by his smooth, lilting tenor, strong melodies, laid-back arrangements, oblique lyrics and a fine balance of acoustic and electric impulses. Think David Bowie fronting Steely Dan, and you’ve got a good idea of his sound on this album. On “Living Dangerously,” he says he wants to forsake the contentment of married life for something more chaotic and precarious, but his vocal sounds more mellow than dangerous. The funky rock of “When the River” calls out for the turmoil of a mad affair, but Lerche’s relaxed delivery doesn’t convince you that he’s ready to take the plunge into darkness. The man is a romantic, and these tunes all deal with love and its discontents, tales of jilted and misunderstood lovers trying to make sense out of their inability to connect with each other. But even on the darkest tunes, his placid vocals make him sound more comfortable than edgy. —j. poet Sorry Bamba

Volume One: 1970-1979 Thrill Jockey

Winner and still champion The fascinating decentralization of African music dissemination proceeds with Thrill Jockey’s second Malian release of the year, one that’s worlds from the rustic desert folk-blues of Sidi Touré. Hitherto little-known in the West, the orphaned Sorry Bamba defied his noble birth caste to become one of the recently independent

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n the old days, Ty Segall was a Bay Area solo act, just

a guy playing ballsy garage rock on drums and guitar at the same time. Impressive, but an act of necessity more Goodbye Bread than novelty; he eventually recruited a full band and churned out music at a spectacular pace. Segall has done quite a few things Drag City for Goner Records, including 2010’s breakout Melted. Surprising then that this, his Drag City debut, is pretty much a slow-cooked and straight-ahead solo project, the result of Segall and producer Eric Bauer holing up in a basement studio for six months and making just a little less noise. For somebody who earned his rep as a sweaty, swaggering imperfectionist, this is what you call a gamble. But it pays off; Goodbye Bread is good. “My Head Explodes” is a psyched-out scorcher. “I Can’t Feel It” and “You Make the Sun Fry” are catchy-as-fuck rock songs, with just enough delay and reverb to keep things deep and dirt-cheap-sounding. “Goodbye Bread,” “The Floor” and “Comfortable Home” are showcases for that pretty, nine-volt voice and those lightning fingers. But it’s not all business: The quick, sing-songy “California Commercial” takes issue with the faux-reality shows that have come to define his home turf. I guess you’d be pissed, too, if you grew up as a skate punk in Laguna Beach, only to have MTV forever brand the place as a gritless playpen for rich brats. That said, Segall’s old band the Epsilons got their digs in brilliantly five years ago. Check YouTube. Funny shit. —Patrick Rapa Ty Segall

Mali’s most prominent bandleaders, competing successfully in multiple National Biennial celebrations during the period showcased here. As befits a state-endorsed post-colonial cultural effort, these selections (compiled by Extra Golden’s Alex Minoff and Ian Eagleson with input from an enthusiastic 73-year-old Bamba) find a

deft balance between heritage and modernization, with a mixture of populist originals and folk songs (representing three distinct ethnic groups); traditional percussion combined with spry electric guitars, horns and the occasional psych-dappled synthesizer (plus Bamba’s piercing flute and vigorous vocals); and swirling, lavishly hypnotic grooves

photo by Angel Ceballos

that, while not as dense or forceful as Fela’s afrobeat, display some palpable Western soul and funk influences—and, on “Astan Kelly,” the unmistakable rhythms of Cuban salsa. —K. Ross Hoffman

Mia Doi Todd

Cosmic Ocean Ships City Zen

Sailing far away On her early records, Mia Doi Todd was nothing but calm, a clear-voiced college folkie alone with her guitar. As she added to her repertoire—Nels Cline’s electric guitars and Mitchell Froom’s frippery on one album, remixes on another, a mini-orchestra on a third—she never lost her cool. So, it’s no surprise that Cosmic Ocean Ships, Todd’s ninth release, offers serenity even as she reaches for more exotic instruments and more worldly sounds. That approach works on “Under the Sun” and “Summer Lover,” a pair of languid tunes that bask in the brand of bliss you’ll find only in a warm climate or a warm heart, but it also creates fertile conditions for the album’s weak spots. At worst, she sounds too much like a lady of the canyon; echoes of Joni Mitchell’s fussiest phrasing mark Todd as the product of mid-’70s L.A. just when she most wants to be a citizen of the world. —M.J. Fine TV on the Radio

Nine Types of Light Interscope

Bon mot bonanza There’s never been anything easy or casual about this band. Like all of its predecessors, the fifth release by Tunde Adebimpe and Dave Sitek’s brainchild-turned-WilliamsburgRadiohead un-knots like a puzzle. That’s partly because Adebimpe, Sitek, Kyp Malone, Jaleel Bunton and Gerard Smith (who sadly died of cancer on April 20) are so casual about claiming so much sonic territory. But once you acclimate, there’s something diverting around every corner of Nine Types of Light, much of it purely sonic: the bleed of real horns into fake ones at the end of “Second Song,” for instance. But it’s the words that jump out of this album; Adebimpe and co-singer Malone’s dry deliveries sneak in great lines all over, nowhere better than the sly, frank “Will Do”: “It might be impractical to seek out a new romance/ We won’t know the actual if we never take the chance/ I’d like to collapse with you and ease you against this song/ I think we’re compatible, I see that you think I’m wrong.” —Michaelangelo Matos

homemade instruments, but did so as a third option behind illustration and animation (he’s done videos for J Mascis and Guster, among others). For a guy whose music is a hobby, he’s made plenty; VanGaalen’s latest, Diaper Island, makes nine releases over the past seven years—counting EPs and his 2009 Black Mold album—and his new disc may stand as his most linear effort to date. Recorded in VanGaalen’s new home studio (which he’s appropriately christened Yoko Eno), Diaper Island has the contemporary energy and soft edge of Jim James and James Mercer, while applying the claustrophobic expanse of Brian Eno’s earliest twisted pop explorations to the proceedings. Plus, it’s hard to resist any album with a space-rock-from-the-bottom-of-a-well anthem called “Blonde Hash,” and an indie-rock-music-box twiddler titled “Shave My Pussy.” —Brian Baker

Follow Me Down: Vanguard’s Lost Psychedelic Era (1966-1970) Vanguard

Everywhere you go… In a market saturated with reissues, it seems like every week a new compilation comes along purporting to uncover the lost gems of an unjustly forgotten movement. But the songs on Follow Me Down sound, with few exceptions, as if they were forgotten for a reason, not so much lost as left behind. Keep your eyes off the liner notes and you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish one third-rate band from the next; imagine an entire album by the generic beat combo miming in the background of any ’60s teensploitation movie.

musicdvds The Beat Is the Law: Fanfare for the Common People Sheffield Vision

Now with more juicy bits This documentary arrives just in time for Pulp’s summer reunion tour (sorry: festival shows in Europe and Australia only, so far). However, don’t expect a straightforward recounting of the band’s story. Director Eve Wood covers the years 1983-1995 (Pulp’s career ran from 1978 to 2002), and lends running time to lesserknown Sheffield acts such as ’80s avant-funk outfit Chakk and ’90s Britpop would-bes the Longpigs. Referring to the city early on as “The Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire,” the film begins by adroitly weaving in the pressing issues facing the city. Sheffield was an industrial town and union stronghold facing government hostility courtesy of Margaret Thatcher, culminating in the city’s 1984 miner strike. So, musicians and artists, facing little hope of success in any field, joined the dole and displayed oft-cunning industriousness. In a particularly genius move, Chakk convinced their major label to bankroll their own recording facility in Sheffield, which became the prestigious FON Studios. As the film moves into the rave and Britpop eras, there’s additional illuminating information, but the sociopolitical angle is unfortunately

Chad VanGaalen

Diaper Island Sub Pop

Hey, where’s Alex and Eddie? Oh, wait... Indie doesn’t even begin to describe Chad VanGaalen. The Calgary native started with basement tapes of instrumental music composed with

Various Artists

Cocker at Glastonbury, 1995

diminished. Still, Pulp fans will find a treasure trove of rare footage and witty reminiscences from Jarvis Cocker and other key band members. And Cocker’s metamorphosis from badly coiffed ’80s miserabilist to the strutting, devastatingly witty icon of 1995, with an entire Glastonbury crowd eating out of his hand, remains awe-inspiring. —Michael Pelusi View the trailer at thebeatisthelaw.com.

Le Tigre

Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour Oscilloscope

Still a hot topic Le Tigre is such a visual band, with their Motownesque dance moves, Technicolor outfits and engaging multimedia, that a DVD might be the best way to capture the electro-punk trio, currently on hiatus while Kathleen Hanna goes solo and JD Samson leads Men. Who Took the Bomp? is a solid beginner’s primer while still giving fans good performance footage and entertaining behind-the-scenes banter, insight and hijinks. Directed by Kerthy Fix (Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields), the DVD follows the band on their 2004 “This Island” tour, where they humorously struggle with their queer, feminist ideals: photos with Slipknot at Australia’s Big Day Out Festival, navigating condescending radio DJs and a homophobic fan (who mistakes butch lesbian Samson for a gay man), agonizing over a Jane magazine ad campaign, and watching the Donnas with Hatebreed and discussing ways to “rage.” Best part: the workout sequence in onstage costumes. More, please. —Sara Sherr

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THE

reviews

“Did You Have to Rub It In?” by Brian Epstein protégés the Hi-Five is the best of a rum lot, a snotty kiss-off set to a descending Farfisa riff, and it’s worth pondering just what Far Cry vocalist Jere Whiting might have ingested before laying down the strangled vocal of “Hellhound.” But unless you’ve gobbled every nugget and bagged every pebble, there’s no reason to start here. —Sam Adams

Eddie Vedder

Ukulele Songs

Monkeywrench

Tiptoeing through There’s an unshakable— perhaps not unsuitable—taint of novelty about any one-off ukulele record, and the discrepancy between Eddie Vedder’s notorious earnestness and the instrument’s frivolous associations make this one seem especially punchline-worthy. But it doesn’t sound that way, even if that tension is subtly evident throughout. Vedder has his sweetness, the uke has its quiet integrity, and the two find a way to make it work, the singer tempering his tremulous baritone to meet the instrument’s cheery brightness halfway. He’s not half playful enough for this to truly feel like a lark, but he’s smart enough to keep the stakes small, devoting over a third of the disc to perennial standards—“Dream a Little Dream,” “More Than You Know,” the Everly Brothers’ classic “Sleepless Nights” and perhaps the ultimate uke tune, “Tonight You Belong to Me”—inviting his buddies Glenn and Chan to duet on the latter two. And while Vedder’s originals falter when they venture into rockier terrain, and (of course) can’t compete with the genuine golden oldies, he does just fine when he sticks to the ukulele’s proper métier: sweet, simple love songs. —K. Ross Hoffman World’s End Girlfriend

Seven Idiots

Erased Tapes

The suite life of Bach and Skolnik Fronted by the almost schizophrenically talented Katsuhiko Maeda, World’s End Girlfriend defy easy categorization. On WEG’s 10th studio album, Seven Idiots, Maeda creates a soundtrack that suggests Trans-Siberian Orchestra on steroids and champagne, a prog/classical/pop mash-up that is muscular and giddy and frenetic and undeniably fun. Maeda pinballs between genres and sounds with attention deficit speed, but the shifts never seem capricious; “Ulysses Gazer” gives the impression of a radio dial being spun across a spectrum where Muse, Danny Elfman, Queen, Thomas Dolby, Radiohead, Testament, Raymond Scott and Mozart are all playing the same song on different stations in radically different styles, but with the same visceral intensity.

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Paradise Lost Lofty ambitions aside, this YACHT does not rock

I

t all looks so good on paper. Take an ambitious,

musically adventurous composer with a taste for esoterica, add a bright, accomplished writer with a Cory DocShangri-La torow-esque fascination for the intersection of sci-fi themes and modern progress, channel it through the unique creative dfa sensibilities of Portland, OR; Marfa, TX; and Los Angeles, and doubtless, something good will come of it. One would think that, until one sat on the group’s DFA debut, See Mystery Lights, and slowly realized how gimmicky and uninvolved that album was in retrospect. Still, enough people saw something in it that YACHT decided to go one better with a good old-fashioned concept LP, Shangri-La. Unfortunately, they’ve fared no better. Now, anyone who witnessed the blossoming of Tahrir Square understands utopia as a powerful and arresting social force. But Jona Bechtolt really can’t convey that in his musical creations, which are consistently drab and bland. The first track, “Utopia,” sounds like a half-hearted Vampire Weekend that lost faith in Graceland, and the added emphasis on live instrumentation improves nothing. Meanwhile, Claire L. Evans seems hamstrung by the pat observations these lukewarm retro’80s synth pop concoctions warrant. Using vaguely drawn sci-fi conceits, she determines the future as a creation we as presumably cooperative humans, freed of religious constraints, can make to order—an encouraging if naïve observation. But the finished product is hardly as visionary as it would like to be, even though it ends on a warm and catchy resolution, “Shangri-La.” Still, an art-rock band can dream. —Justin Hampton YACHT

Ignore the emo-sounding band name; with Seven Idiots, Maeda makes cartoon music for intellectuals, metal for eggheads, classical for headbangers, prog for 21st century schizoid adven-

turists, jazz for geneticists, party vibes for blade runners. World’s End Girlfriend are everything on your iPod and more. —Brian Baker

photo by sarah meadows

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.org 41

greenmind

Terror Firma

Nashville metal outfit Across Tundras coax heavy sounds, organic veggies from the fertile Tennessee soil / by Sean L. Maloney

T

en minutes north of Nashville, deep in the rolling hills that you’ve

heard so many songs about, wedged in between decrepit double-wides and the mammoth estate of mega-star Garth Brooks, you’ll find sleepy little Ramble Hill Farm. Well, it’s not entirely sleepy—besides supplying Music City with organic, adventurous edibles, Ramble Hill Farm is the headquarters for frontier-metal outfit Across Tundras, whose fifth studio album, Sage, is out now on Neurot Records. Sure, it might seem a little weird to get your rose hip jelly from a band that sounds like Marty Robbins and Ennio Morricone jamming with Mountain, but amid of Nashville’s burgeoning D.I.Y. food and music cultures, it’s par for the course. A staple of the West Nashville Farmers Market, Ramble Hill specializes in organic and heirloom produce—the sort of vegetables worth getting up way too early on a Saturday morning to procure. With a focus on responsible land use and seriously tasty food, Ramble Hill has carved out a niche within a very competitive and increasingly crowded food community by connecting the city’s agricultural history with its cosmopolitan present. Cowbell talked with singer/guitarist/farmer Tanner Olsen just days before spring planting began to talk about chemical-free weed control, eating outside of your comfort zone and Garth Brooks’ lawn. So, what’s the connection between farming and playing in a metal band? It seems like an odd combination.

The DIY aesthetic in music is totally what’s happening in food around here right now. I would assume it’s happening everywhere, but Nashville is really awesome for that. And I think it’s really awesome to be able to bridge the gap—musicians aren’t all onedimensional, you know? But it’s cool to be able to connect the two worlds like that, spread the word about eating good and taking good care of the land, and being in tune with all of that stuff. I feel like it strengthens me as a person and makes me be a better musician, just being aware of all that. 42

You’ve said you don’t use any chemicals. How do you deal with weeds and critters?

What I try to do for weed control is put a ton of greens around it and harvest the baby greens in between all this other stuff. So, rather than weeding, we’re harvesting. And then you don’t have to cut into [regular production]... All the people want the little tiny stuff, but when you do that, it wipes out [your crop] so fast that you kinda want to go easy on it. This is more romaine, strawberries down there [points down]. All those little sprouts are radishes. Not having one specific crop in an area, no animal can zero in on that crop. We have pretty good luck with bugs and pests, animals and stuff.

greenmind

Tanner Olsen on the farm.

We started planting stuff in January and would just cover it up and hope for nice days. And if we got three nice days in a row, we’d get stuff to germinate. It’ll sit dormant for a little while, but… all this stuff, we started some of it indoors and some of it [in the garden bed]. Again, all this is baby lettuce coming up around the other stuff in hopes of keeping the weeds down and having nice little greens to harvest. What’s cool is that probably in two months from now all this is going to be like, BAM! We’re hardly going to be able to walk through here, but this is where it starts. What do you use for compost?

We don’t have any specific recipe. My take on all this stuff up here is that I don’t add anything to the soil unless that plant looks like it needs it, and then if it needs it, start with a little bit. With this garlic, we just did a little mushroom compost that we get

“

The DIY aesthetic in music is totally what’s happening in food around here right now.” —Tanner Olsen

from a local greenhouse—they do a really nice organic mushroom compost. And then there are random spots all around the farm here where we threw down all of our trimmings of greens from last year, and I’ll just go kick aside some stuff. The land out here—compared to where I come from in South Dakota—the land here is real easy to farm, and the soil is real nice compared to everywhere else I’ve lived. I haven’t really had to do much. I feel like the less you have to do with it, the more natural it will taste. We don’t fertilize stuff. We don’t put poop on this—there’s no manure up here. We’ll just let it grow naturally and take a little bit lon43

greenmind ger, rather than throw a bunch of cow shit on it. It makes the veggies taste bad, you know? I think [these fossils are] part of the reason why [the soil is good]— this is all ancient sea bed down here. All this soil, that’s like super old—400 million years old—minerals and coral that have been crushed up and ground into the soil, and that’s the richest kind of soil there is. And that’s why we’ve had such good luck without having to do a whole lot beyond maintain it. One thing that we’re going to start doing up here is—when we take these rocks out and make a big old pile, get a big old hammer and just start crushing them down—is re-adding the minerals and the crushed rock back in. I’ve read online that there’s a few people that have been doing that in organic farming and have had really good results. All of the minerals that you put back in there really improves the taste of the veggies. We’re really excited to be doing stuff like that. You guys bring some really different stuff to the market. How do you choose your crops?

trees. And more blackberries and blueberries, ’cause that’s nice when you can just pick it and you know that it’s going to come back. I mean, barring a complete disaster, we’re going to have tons and tons of blackberries this year. I’ve heard about some people eating hop shoots as a delicacy—eating the shoots of the baby hops when they come out. That fits with what I was talking about, about rearranging your idea of how you should or shouldn’t eat something. I think it’s pretty cool. Over there, there’s a patch of bamboo [points toward hill]. That’s Garth Brooks’ land. This is all Garth Brooks’ land right around here—apparently he has a big house back there, but he only comes out once a year to mow. We saw him last year—he’s out here mowing in a sweatshirt, we’re not kidding, with his big $50,000 tractor. He needs to mow it more than once a year, because he creates bug problems for us. If I have to complain on Garth Brooks to the city of Goodlettsvile, I’m gonna do it. [Laughs] He let the stuff go crazy, and we try to keep our stuff pretty maintained. He needs to do more. [Laughs] Anyway, there’s a little patch of bamboo up there, and you can get the shoots, and they’re really good.

These are all cosmic-purple carrots; we’re getting all these germinated. We try to do cool different kinds of things, like not standard food fare, because I think everybody gets used to their food looking one way, or only eating one part of the plant when all of it’s edible. We really try to use of all of it. See these little guys down here? Try that—it tastes like broccoli, but it’s the floret of a turnip green. That’s what broccoli is, but the broccoli we get in stores is just one select type of brassica that grows the head that we know as the traditional broccoli head; but this is basically broccoli right here. See how sweet it is? These over here are blackberries. They’re the monster ones… and these are good moneymakers. It’s good to have stuff you know is going to come every year. We want to put more stuff on the Sage is available farm that will take care of itself, like now on Neurot the shiitakes and even getting into fruit Records. 44

More at acrosstundras.blogspot.com.

Top: Bassist “Big Jim” Shively and Olsen cover a raised bed; above, band practice.

greenmind

Bike Gang S

The perma-touring Netherfriends put two wheels to the road / by Matt Sullivan hawn Rosenblatt started the psych-pop outfit Nether-

friends in Chicago in 2007, and started touring regularly with a solid lineup in 2008. That lineup eventually became a revolving cast of supporting players, as Rosenblatt opted to live on the road permanently, never staying in one spot for longer than a couple of months. He calls it “hyper living.” It’s indicative of Rosenblatt’s approach to Netherfriends. Whether writing songs or touring, each facet of the band is defined by a larger project. Last year he set out on a vagabond-style 50-state tour where he not only played all 50 states in less than one year, but wrote and recorded a new song in each. “It is weird to tour with no real purpose,” Rosenblatt explained over the phone. “That’s why I did the 50 states thing—that way I could do something creative where I could trick my mind into thinking it’s more than just, ‘I’m in a band on tour all the time.’” The first of those 50 songs have been released as the swirling and trippy Angry East Coast EP (reviewed on pg. 37). A big part of what strikes Rosenblatt as making that part of the country angrier than the rest is the drivers. “I hate people that drive in the East Coast—they’re all really obnoxious,” he says. “I think I’m just sick laundry constantly. Though that gas-guzzling van is essentially his of driving.” home, Rosenblatt decided to forgo all those relative comforts, not The solution: Travel from Philadelphia to New Jersey to New because of any sort of idealism, but for sheer practicality. York to Connecticut to Massachusetts and back on bicycles. “I And he’s not too keen on bicyclists, either. hate New England, really,” he explains. “I mean, I don’t hate it. I “There’s this whole level of pretension when it comes to bike strongly dislike playing in New England, even though I keep doing culture,” he says, recalling a former roommate in Chicago that it. Same thing with New York. I grew up on the East Coast, and he claimed ruined the bike scene for him. “He was that kid that the people there have a really fast-moving, move-out-of-my-way would take his U-lock out and hit cars with it, and race through mentality.” red lights and almost get hit.” None of the songs on Angry East Coast address drivers specifiBut he’s just getting started: “It’s funny, ’cause I ride a fixedcally, but Rosenblatt cites not joining their ranks as a potential gear bike, but I hate fixed-gear riders. I hate the whole culture, the financial boon, even though the plan would take them 10 whole smugness about riding a bicycle. I just want to days to play five shows. “I’m driving a huge gas-guzzler ride from point A to point B. In the city, that’s the easiright now, so it’s gonna be really nice. I have a friend, est way to do it. I have a huge van. I don’t want to have he kinda tours full time, too, and does the same thing. to drive everywhere and have to find parking. A bicycle He doesn’t have a home and he’s touring, and he drives is the easiest way to get around for me—it’s the fastest. around this small Geo,” Rosenblatt says. “He was just I hate walking everywhere in the city.” patronizing me: ‘What are you doing driving this gas“That’s the only reason I like bikes—I don’t really guzzler by yourself ?’” care for anything else.” The plan was to travel light, bringing only a sampler More at netherfriends.blogspot.com and netherfriends. and loop pedal and maybe a couple extra shirts. The rest Angry East Coast is available now bandcamp.com they planned to borrow from other bands, while Rosen- from Cellar Hits blatt figured he’d pedal shirtless to avoid having to do 45

movies

Patriot Games

Does the new documentary on comic giant Bill Hicks tell too tall a tale? / by Sam Adams

Let’s say we know that rock is the devil’s music—at least he fuckin’ jams! If it’s a choice between eternal hell and good tunes, and eternal heaven and New Kids on the fuckin’ Block, I’m gonna be surfin’ on the lake of fire, rockin’ out. Bill Hicks never wanted to go to heaven, at least not the kind populated

by the right-thinking, well-behaved people he spent 15 years demolishing from the stage. (In another routine, the habitual smoker mused that heaven might be a place where you can light up unmolested. “Hell is nonsmoking,” he’d say in the voice of a tobacco-puffing St. Peter.) But since his death in 1994, at age 32, Hicks has been gradually turned into a secular saint. The latest bid for beatification comes courtesy of Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas’ American: The Bill Hicks Story, a 100-minute documentary whose DVD/Blu-ray release includes nearly six hours of extra footage. American is only the latest in a steady stream of posthumous Hicks releases, which have by now dwarfed the four albums released during his lifetime. Think of him as the Tupac of standup. If not in the league of Richard Pryor or George Carlin, Hicks was a fitfully brilliant comedian, especially in his later years, once his runaway popularity in the U.K. allowed him to pursue his attacks on American politics without fear of being unable to finish a thought. The shock and exhilaration of hearing Hicks (on Live at the Oxford Playhouse) refer to George H.W. Bush as a “mass murderer” is dulled only slightly when he follows it up with a riff about “pay[ing] an extra nickel on a litre of petrol”—a nod to his largely British audience.

46

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. Wary of staging their portrait as a series of talking heads, Harlock and Thomas juice up American with a flurry of visual tricks, using animation to enliven the accounts of Hicks’ early days. Either because there’s scant footage of his formative routines or because they don’t support the film’s account of Hicks’ greatness, it takes American a long time to work around to the routines on which his legend rests. His friends and family discuss the fact that Hicks started working the

Stills courtesy Variance Films

movies

comedy clubs around Houston while still in high school, but we don’t see him stumbling towards genius. In sticking with those who knew Hicks first-hand, American achieves an otherwise inaccessible glimpse of what Hicks was like offstage. Born into a strict Southern Baptist family, Hicks steered clear of demon rum, but he started in on psychedelic mushrooms at a young age. By the time he worked his way around to alcohol, he was an adult, full of previously unseen rage that would pour out in torrents onstage and off. He sometimes lost control of both his anger and his drinking, reduced to lying on the stage shouting at unseen ghosts, but at least in this telling, that’s just part of the legend.

People come up to me: “Bill, quit talking about Kennedy, man. It was a long time ago.” And I’m like, “All right, then don’t bring up Jesus to me.” As long as we’re talking shelf life. Given the wealth of material its makers have to draw from, American has plenty of white-hot moments, although Hicks’ material works better at length than in excerpt. As isolated bits, his attacks on popular culture and authority figures can seem like the views of a particularly articulate adolescent: Popular music sucks! Bosses are dicks! Distorted video footage of one disastrous gig (circulated as the Funny Firm American: The bootleg) finds Hicks railing Bill Hicks Story, will be available against the “peon masses” on DVD and Bluwho drag down society’s ray June 7 from Warner Bros. prophets—an observation as self-serving as it is accurate. Harlock and Thomas overlook or simply ignore Hicks’ flaws, like the anti-gay imagery he used to attack the likes of George Michael and Rick Astley, in favor of posthumous canonization. If Hicks were still around, it seems like exactly the kind of sanctimonious, prepackaged idol worship he’d take the utmost glee in razing to the ground.

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

Blank City Although it may not send you scurrying to seek out lost masterworks by Amos Poe and Nick Zedd, Celine Danhier’s documentary is an engrossing document of the Manhattan film underground in the pre-Sundance era. In an environment where technique was greeted with the utmost skepticism—John Lurie recalls camouflaging his saxophone proficiency so as not to jeopardize gigs—artists turned to film and filmmakers formed bands, a fertile cross-breeding that spawned the careers of Jim Jarmusch and Steve Buscemi, among many others. Contemporary excerpts offer ample visual testament to the bombed-out state of 1970s New York, an era that not coincidentally represented the island’s last artistic golden age. It may not have been a safe place to live, but the art’s never been so alive.

Submarine Threaded through with what its supremely selfaware teenage narrator called “the Super8 film of memory,” the directorial debut from The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade is a coming-of-age story that both exploits and transcends the genre’s limits. As his parents’ marriage founders, teenage Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) forges his first relationship with a sar-

donic classmate (Yasmin Paige), who burns his leg hair with matches and decries kissing as “gay.” Much like adolescence itself, the film pitches from absurdity to anguish and back again, but Ayoade never loses his grip on the wheel. Comparisons to Wes Anderson aren’t inapt, but the mix of metacommentary and raw emotion is closer to François Truffaut’s 400 Blows, one of many predecessors to which Ayoade tips his hat.

The Trip Tristram Shandy co-stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reteam for a passive-aggressive cooking tour of England’s north in Michael Winterbottom’s slight but endlessly enjoyable travelogue. Playing bent caricatures of themselves, the pair skip from one elegant restaurant to the next, ostensibly fulfilling a magazine assignment, but really providing an excuse for a series of barbed two-handers where the two not-quite friends grapple for the upper hand. Coogan mercilessly demolishes his colleague’s Michael Caine impression in a delirious back-and-forth, while the happily married Brydon lands sly digs at Coogan’s perpetual bachelorhood. Though die-hards will want to see out the six-part miniseries from which the theatrical feature is condensed, there’s ample nourishment here for all but the most ravenous Cooganites.

More at americanthemovie.com

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Whoa Is Me

“I

Truth is stranger than science fiction in vintage Keanu trainwreck Johnny Mnemonic / by Sean L. Maloney

want to get online... I need a computer!”

We’ve all been there, right? Sneaking out of Beijing amid some serious corporate-Yakuza bloodletting and sneaking into Newark with clandestine information bursting out of our brain-implants with a laser-thumbed thug chasing after us, right? No? Damn, the future ain’t what it used to be—Johnny Mnemonic lied to us!!! All Johnny’s promises of a dystopian techno-apocalypse, cyber-dolphins and world-saving fax modems, and what do we get from the actual Internet in the actual future? Funny cat videos and Rebecca Black. Way to disappoint, Internet.

Johnny Mnemonic the cinematic experience, on the other hand, does not disappoint. Well, it probably does if you’re looking for, you know, a good movie, but why would you want to do that? JM stands as the best of the worst: a film so hamfisted and earnest, so dated and disjointed, that it’s tough to describe as anything but the Best Shitty Movie of the ’90s, beating out Tank Girl, Freejack… even Mom and Dad Save the World. We’re talking Johnny Mnemonic will about Keanu Reeves’ most wooden performance be available on to date—it’s got all the nuance of a Donald Trump Blu-ray June 14 from Image presidential run—plus a veritable who’s who of the Entertainment worst actors on earth: Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Dolph Lundgren, Udo Kier, Henry Rollins. It almost makes you wonder why they didn’t call Don “The Dragon” Wilson. Reeves trying to “act” with anthropomorphized-neck-muscle Rollins, rattling off Clinton-era technobabble, is one of the most hands-down hilarious things ever committed to film—Johnny’s brain holds 80 gigs, for cryin’ out loud! We’ve got keychains with more memory capacity! He saves the world using nothing but the Power Glove and a really uncomfortable looking cyber-hat! He makes a long-distance call—on the INTERNET! Throw in a conspicuously pop-industrial soundtrack— Fear Factory, God Lives Underwater, and not one but TWO tracks from Stabbing Westward—and you’ve got yourself the most perfectly awful slab of ’90s nostalgia the future has ever seen. Keanu Reeves as Johnny Mnemonic.

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30 YEARS ON...

New editions of the records that inspired new generations of hard rock fans and showcase Ozzy’s collaboration with late guitar hero Randy Rhoads

also on

vinyl al

vinsyo on l

Blizzard of Ozz

Expanded Edition includes three bonus tracks, including “RR”, an unreleased Outtake guitar solo from the session tapes

Diary of a Madman

Legacy Edition includes a previously unreleased OZZY LIVE disc, with Randy Rhoads at his side

COLLECTOR’S EDITION BOX SET

Includes Blizzard of Ozz Expanded Edition and Diary of a Madman Legacy Edition CDs, a DVD, Coffee Table Book, two Posters, Vinyl Copies of both Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, and a Replica of Ozzy’s Ironic Cross

METAL MUSIC, NEWS

AND THE STORES THAT ROCK

AS HARD AS YOU DO WWW.MYMETALCLUB.COM

metalclub_quarter_0611.indd 1

5/20/2011 3:05:55 PM

IN STORES

JUNE 7

IN STORES

AVAILABLE FOR

© 2011 Magnolia Home Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. www.magpictures.com

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celluloid corral

This month’s best, worst, weirdest and wildest in home video entertainment by andrew bonazelli

True Grit We were looking forward to this being horrible, just to someday blow your minds with the headline “True Shit,” but no luck. Allegedly hewing closer to the 1968 Charles Portis source novel that we haven’t read than the 1969 John Wayne movie we haven’t watched, the Coen Brothers’ version is pretty crackerjack. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld redefines austere as the young girl who hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to hunt down her father’s killer (Josh Brolin, underused, but still gnarly as usual). For all the late-career love Bridges has enjoyed—and awards season noms for Steinfeld—we prefer Matt Damon’s effective chameleon turn as a pompous Texas Ranger. Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges in True Blood.

Just Go With It Sounds like a James Brooks movie, right? Well, if we’re talking about a late-period Brooks dud like How Do You Know. And this is way shittier. Even for a Sandler flick, the plot is asinine—his plastic surgeon whines about his nonexistent marriage to (somehow) score chicks far out of his league. The one time he doesn’t (with Brooklyn Decker—right), she discovers the old ring and is appalled, so he enlists his loyal assistant, Jen Aniston, to masquerade as his vacuous trophy wife. Because… shit, we have no idea why. Wonder which one’s right for him. Wonder which bullet’s right for me.

The Company Men Lots of good actors here for a movie that nobody saw. Probably because the conceit was pretty much already covered via Up in the Air, and well-to-do drones at corporate jobs having the rug pulled out from under them only engenders so much sympathy. It happens to Ben Affleck here, and he’s resigned to doing carpentry work with his brother-in-law, Kevin Costner. (“Hey,” your thought balloon says, “I thought you said good actors!”) Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones (there you go) do their Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones things as more of the eponymous sufferers. KC mildly improves the horrible Boston accent that almost derailed the otherwise great Thirteen Days, so there’s that.

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Beastly An unholy combination of Beauty and the Beast, Gossip Girl and, I don’t know, Powder, Beastly wasn’t in theaters nearly long enough to generate the Razzie buzz it so richly deserves. Vain, rich high school douche Alex Pettyfer insults school witch Mary-Kate Olson (this is where you roll up this magazine and start pummeling yourself about the head and neck; I’ll be here when you get back), who uglies him up with tats and lesions; he’ll stay that way forever unless he gets someone to fall in love with him in a year. Enter Vanessa Hudgens, but to what end? He’s still rich—how hard can it be?

Sanctum Hot on the heels of Avatar, Universal tried to fool us by slapping “executive-produced by James Cameron” all over the trailer. For once, America didn’t bite—I’m sure we would have greatly preferred JC’s usual abysmally oversimplified characterization—and this “3-D adventure” went the way of pretty much every other rush-job 3-D adventure. It’s about a bunch of underwater cave-divers in over their head (literally and figuratively!), but lacks the clarity of Avatar, the emotional stakes of 127 Hours and the tension of The Descent. Well, that and there has to be a porno out there somewhere with the same title.

KICK

OFF

THE SUMMER OF

IN STORES

JUNE 14

KUNG FU

© 2010 Media Asia Films (BVI) Ltd. Beijing Enlight Pictures Ltd. All Rights Reserved MPAA RATED R

© 2008 Mandarin Films Distribution Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. MPAA RATED R

© 2008 Emperor Motion Picture (International) Ltd. Chang Hong Channel Film & Video Co., Ltd. & Shanghai Film Group Corporation All Rights Reserved. MPAA RATED NOT RATED

ALL SWORD MASTERS ON SALE!

© 2009 Menage Atroz S. de R.L. de C.V., Mod Producciones, S.L. and Ikiru Films S.L. All Rights Reserved.

OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES PRESENTS

WHO TOOK THE BOMP?

ON DVD AND BLURAY

LE TIGRE ON TOUR • A film by Kerthy Fix “Smart and sexy, political and provocative, Le Tigre is the best and brightest of feminist rock.” —POPMATTERS.COM

NEW ALBUM

WASTING LIGHT

JUNE 14

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A V A IL

A true chronicling of the triumphs and tragedies of the band’s 16 year history, BACK AND FORTH chronicles FOO FIGHTERS’ entire existence: from Dave Grohl’s cassette demos to the band forming to play those songs to their ascent to becoming one of the biggest rock bands on the planet--and every Grammy win and sold out show along the way.

ABLE

JUNE 7 © Oscilloscope Pictures 2011

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Love Your Work*

Paul Le Mat as John Milner and Mackenzie Phillips as Carol Morrison in American Graffiti / by Joe Gross

* Directors often get

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

Mackenzie Phillips and Paul Le Mat.

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M

an alive, American Graffiti holds up. The documentary visual feel,

the lack of formal blocking, the improvisational acting style, the montage title cards at the end of the picture updating the characters—everything about it is pure pleasure, entire lives lived in one night. Consider the soundtrack, a seamless wall of pop decades before music supervision was a key component of mainstream filmmaking. Hell, it and Jaws practically invented the summer blockbuster. Dazed and Confused is practically a remake set in ’76 rather than ’62.

Director George Lucas, making only his second feature, never got performances like that in any of his other movies, which is really odd. Consider how much improved the original Star Wars—or how much more human and credible The Phantom Menace and the other prequels—would have been if some of the looseness and energy that bubbles up in American Graffiti had been allowed to run free. Never mind—it’s just too depressing. It helped, of course, that Graffiti is cast shockingly well, from the leads to the most minor players, from Ron (still Ronny back then) Howard as college-bound Steve, and Cindy Williams as his fabulously believable girlfriend, to Harrison Ford as cowboy hat-wearing, Bob Falfa, whose “very wicked ‘55 Chevy” becomes a major plot point. But Ford isn’t playing Han Solo here. That job fell to

boxer-turned-actor Paul Le Mat as John Milner. Milner is the slightly older guy who is not going to college, the one who is obviously going to stay in Modesto for the rest of his life. He’s pals with the college-bound kids like Steve and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) and nerds like Toad (Charles Martin Smith), but he’s not of them. He can’t stand surf music and thinks “rock and roll has been going downhill since Buddy Holly died.” He likes havin’ fun and cruising the strip. In mid-cruise, John hits on a group of girls in another car. He’s rejected, but “Judy’s sister” expressed interest in riding with him. Fine by him. Except when Judy’s sister gets in the car, she turns out to be about 13. This is Carol, played by Mackenzie Phillips with an ebullience that would seem deft were it not so natural. Milner is mortified. “Aw, shit! How old are you?” “I’m old enough,” Carol says, which she most certainly is not. Obviously, he does not want to be seen with her. When a car full of pals drives by, he (asexually) grabs her head and pulls it down to his thigh to hide her. “Is this what they call copping a feel?” Carol asks. “What? No! Get up. Jesus,” John replies, horrified. “What’s your name?” Carol says. “My name?” Milner moans. “Mud, if anybody sees you.” Thus is introduced the most charming of the Greek choruses running through the picture. Le Mat and Phillips, neither a veteran actor, play off each other beautifully. Carol is chatty and goofy and as annoying as most tweens. They get pulled over, she goodnaturedly threatens to tell a cop he tried to rape her unless he says, “I’m a dirty bird, Carol’s not grungy, she’s bitchin’” It almost gets old. Almost. Milner spends a big hunk of the evening looking for the car she emerged from. Things come

movies

Paul Le Mat.

to a head at the drive-thru, where he makes a comment to a friend about babysitting his cousin. Carol is furious and storms out of the car into the night. Milner looks mortified, then guilty, then starts looking for her, in a brief, lovely sequence cut to the Monotones’ “(Who Wrote the) Book of Love.” It’s only about a minute long, and it’s an emotional turn you’ve seen a million times—someone deciding that someone else isn’t so bad after all—but Le Mat sells it with his eye roll and the casual intensity with which he looks for her, finally flipping open the door so she can get in. Chastened, Carol hops in and says, “Hey, cousin” with an oddly serious look on her face. She knows she’s avoided a potentially disastrous scene and is getting a second chance. Later, they stroll through car graveyard, while Milner waxes rhapsodic about the horrible deaths of previous drag racers. He looks totally relaxed with his odd little wardfor-the-evening. After she gets beaned by a water balloon from a passing car, which she responds to by cracking up (a brilliant mistake Lucas wisely kept), she orders him to

stop at the light. They jump out and cover their enemy’s car in shaving cream. Everyone else is trying to get laid, but they platonically enjoy each other’s company. She even gets a few laugh lines. “Your car’s uglier than I am!” she belts at Bob Falfa, then swallows hard: “That didn’t come out right.” Milner loses that race to Falfa when he runs a red: “He’s stupid,” he says. Milner is serious about cars and he’s serious about driving. In the small hours of the morning, Milner figures out that pretending to hit on Carol is the way to get rid of her. “If you told me where you lived, I could take you home,” Milner says. “I’ve got to have you, it’s too late…” “It’s not too late; it’s never too late!” Carol says. “231 Ramona, 2-3-1, it’s easy to find.” At Carol’s house, she looks impossibly young. “I had fun,” she says, quietly. “Do you like me? Can’t I have something to remember you by?” Milner rolls his eyes. He knows he’s making a mistake, but he’s too nice not to make it. He gives her the gearshift knob and a quick peck on the cheek. “It’s like a ring or something!” Carol shrieks.

This has been the best night of her life. But Milner still has some Han Soloing to do. He gets his car ready to drag, rescues Toad from a wicked beating and heads out to Paradise Road for a final showdown with Falfa. He wins, but is convinced he did so only because Falfa blows a tire and rolls his car, which promptly explodes. Toad will have none of it, and Milner grudgingly agrees to let his legend ride: “We’ll get ’em all.” An American badass to the end, played elegantly. Except, then, the devastating title card: “John Milner was killed American by a drunk driver in DeGraffiti: Special Edition will be cember 1964.” I wonder available on where Carol was when Blu-ray from Universal on she heard the news. May 31.

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comedy

Heart of Dorkness From “My Bologna” to Gaga, Weird Al’s still walking the pop tightrope after 30 years by Patrick Rapa “Symbiotic.” That’s the word Weird Al Yank-

ovic uses to describe the unique relationship between his parody songs and the pop tunes they’re lampooning. The success of one is tied to the other. “The weird thing is that the parodies are, in a sense, co-written by the other artists,” he says in a lightning-fast phone interview while preparing for a cross-country tour. “There’s a contract somewhere that says that ‘Eat It’ was written by Michael Jackson and Al Yankovic. Whenever I do a parody, I de facto become a partner with that given artist. So, I was a Lady Gaga fan before, but now I’m rooting extra hard for her.” Truth be told, Yankovic wasn’t even going to do a Lady Gaga parody. Too easy, and too obvious, right? Yes, but on the other hand, she’s the undeniable pop zeitgeist, so how could he not? “That’s kind of the tightrope I have to walk,” he explains. “As an entertainer, part of my job is to give the people what they want, but as a comedian, part of the humor is the unexpected.” When he heard Gaga’s loony and lovely “Born This Way,” the lyrics and a high-concept video idea popped into his head, and he couldn’t resist. You might’ve heard the mini-controversy that followed, wherein he wrote and recorded the gently ribbing “Perform This Way,” only to be told Gaga would not give her blessing. Legally, he doesn’t need permission to put out a parody, but he’s a nice guy, so he asks anyway. Long story short, yeah, it was actually Gaga’s manager who’d said no. When the Lady finally found out, she declared herself a Weird Al fan and green-lit the song. “Perform This Way” is the first single off the upcoming

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Alpocalypse (his first album in five years, and 13th overall), and the video will get made. “YouTube is the new MTV,” he says. “There was a brief period of time where I was almost wondering if it made sense to make music videos anymore, because they’re very expensive. And MTV wasn’t playing videos and YouTube didn’t really exist yet, and there wasn’t really an outlet.” Now the web is full of portals for videos, on an on-demand basis. “You don’t have to get the approval of some corporate executive in an office tower. You can just upload it and if it’s good, people will see it.” Of course, that also means the playing field is leveled out a bit, and he knows there are thousands of song satirists out there taking a swing at the genre he’s been the king of since 1979’s “My Bologna.” He calls the increased competition “healthy.” “I actually get the credit and the blame for

a lot of parodies I didn’t write just because people assume, ‘Oh, it’s a funny song or it’s a parody song—it must be Weird Al.’ Just purely because of my longevity, I get a lot of things attributed to me.” That longevity is a strange thing indeed. “It was very hard to get signed to a record deal in the early ’80s because everybody we went to said, ‘Oh, this is funny, you’re really clever, this is brilliant stuff, but we’re not interested because we’re looking for artists that are going to have some, you know, staying power,’” he laughs. He never figured he’d outlast NirvaAlpocalypse will na, Michael Jackbe available June 21 on Volcano. son and dozens of

comedy Heard

other artists he’s taken on. “My whole career is pretty ironic, actually, because comedy music is considered novelty music—which is sort of a derogatory term. It implies that it’s not going to be around very long; it’s a very ephemeral art form.” His uncanny skill for reinvention has a lot to do with his improbable shelf life. He’s done metal, hip-hop, alternative, country, funk— and, of course, those signature polka medleys that render Top 40 hits as peppy, dorky accordion numbers (the one on the new album, “Polka Face,” has been on Weird Al’s live set list for a year now). And he hasn’t made many enemies. Quite the opposite. Michael Jackson let him borrow the “Moonwalker” video set. Dave Grohl has said his old band knew they’d “made it” when “Smells Like Nirvana” came out. Chamillionaire was so into “White and Nerdy” he posted it on his MySpace. After a brief tiff over “Amish Paradise,” Coolio and Al are cool. Ray Manzarek of the Doors makes an appearance on an Alpocalypse song called “Craigslist” that sounds a whole lot like his old band. The White Stripes, Miley Cyrus, T.I. and Queen get parodied, too. The title Alpocalypse comes from the whole Mayan/2012/ doomsday hubbub, but it brings to mind the sort of general upheaval of modern life, too: war, discord, disasters. How does he feel about putting out such joyous, sometimes silly, music in these serious times? “That’s hard to answer because, you know, that’s why they’re always making Nostradamus predictions—because we always live in serious times. There’s always been the threat of nuclear annihilation. There’s always the threat of something horrible happening. That’s certainly true now, but was it true five, 10 years ago? I think it probably was,” he reasons. “Times are tough, but I don’t know if I would say now is worse than it was at any other point in my lifetime.” Weird Al will be on tour this summer. More at weirdal.com.

Dirty-mouthed Long Island stand-up Amy Schumer kicks all kinds of ass on her debut, Cutting (Comedy Central). The Last Comic Standing alum does some snappy Rickles/Lampanelli-style race-baiting and nutty bits on blacking out, popping Plan Bs and banging homeless dudes. Lots of quotable stuff here. “I just walked in on him masturbating. He’s like, ‘Are you mad?’ I’m like, ‘No, but you seem to be. Holy shit. Does it owe you money?’… He never chokes me like that.”

Heard

Seek Norm Macdonald’s Me Doing Stand-Up, due out June 14 on Comedy Central Records. His new Sports Show (Tuesdays before The Daily Show) puts him back behind an anchor desk, and it’s a sight for sore eyes.

Saw Donald Glover/Childish Gambino at the TLA in Philly. Best known as the wide-eyed “Troy” on Community, Glover did about a half-hour of humble-ish stand-up and 1.5 hours of for-serious live-band hiphop. Dude knows about 300 ways to sell himself as an intellectual and baller at the same time. Best line: “I eat more pussy than ALF.”

Filthy-mouthed comedy vet Doug Stanhope goes by on some righteous, dubious Patrick rants on his new Oslo: BurnRapa ing the Bridge to Nowhere, the first comedy release by Roadrunner Records. Yeah, Jon Dore at Helium Philly. Stanhope’s a tobacco-voiced nihilist The bedheaded star of The Jon Dore asshole, but this 73-minute agronomProgram (the Canadian mockumenicon—“recorded in an abandoned factary-style TV show rebroadcast by IFC) tory in the Grünerløkka suburb of Oslo, likes to say gross things in adorable Norway” for some reason—shows off ways. After the set he made a beeline his agile vocabulary and just spellfor the bar to watch the Habs-Bruins binding awfulness. playoffs game. Total stereotype.

Saw II

Get Jen Kirkman’s new Hail to the Freaks, out now on the A Special Thing label. Wasn’t able to get a copy by press time, but I’m a big fan of her “Drunk History” segments for Funny or Die, and appearances on Paul F. Tompkins’ The Pod F. Tompkast and Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show on WFMU.

See Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend—mentioned in last month’s cover story—just got extended through June 25 at the Barrow Street Theatre in NYC.

Saw III World Champion Judah Friedlander, also at Helium. Yes, that’s what he goes by. The 30 Rock star does stand-up from the perspective of the strongest, smartest, fastest person on Earth (even though he looks kinda schlubby and stoned). He killed it on crowd work.

Got Bits? Send ’em to Patrick Rapa, ireadashortstorytoday@gmail.com

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/movies/new_releases

JUNE 7

18 Bronzemen 2033: Future Apocalypse 2:13 4 Movie Marathon: Classic Adventures (Scott of the Antarctic/Island of the Lost/The Royal Hunt of the Sun/Shalimar) 4 Movie Marathon: Hollywood Stars (Mazes and Monsters/ The Next Man/Tears in the Rain/ Ruby’s Dream) 4 Movie Marathon: Psycho Killers (The Beast in the Cellar/Mansion of the Doomed/Hunting Humans/ Phobic) 4 Movie Marathon: Thrillers (83 Hours Til Dawn/CIA: Code Name Alexa/Cold Sweat/Terror Storm) 4 Movie Marathon: Women With Grit (Convict Women/Charms/ Madame Claude/Fatal Charm) 4 Single Fathers AC/DC: Let There Be Rock All Lies on Me American: The Bill Hicks Story America’s Sickest Home Videos America’s Sickest Home Videos 2 Angelina Ballerina: Pop Star Girls Animal Crackers Answer: 412 Days of Rock ‘n’ Roll Arctic Blast Backyardigans: Escape From Fairytale Village Banned in America Bellydance Superstars: Killer Drillz With Zoe Jakes Big C: Season One Blue Crush 2 BMF: Street Certified Bob Hoskins Collection (The Long Good Friday/Mona Lisa/The Raggedy Rawney/The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne) Bounty Hunters Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball Ray Bradbury Theatre Complete Collection Bratz: BFF – Best Friends Forever Breaking Bad: The Complete Third Season Burn Notice: Season Four Butterfly & Sword Carancho Care Bears: Flower Power Children of God Children of the Corn: Revelation Chronicle of the Third Reich Cocoanuts Company Men Despair Discreet Diving Bell and the Butterfly Dizzy Gillespie Dream Band: Jazz America Dragonball Z Kai: Season One Part Five Duck Soup Dudley Do-Right Elephant Dreams Elephant White Exorcismus FDNY Dream Bike: In Honor of Gerard Baptiste Flight Frank Sinatra: Around the World From Beginning to End

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Tangerine Dream: From the Tangent Gerry Mulligan: Jazz in America Get Yourself a College Girl Ghastly Grabs Vol. VII Ghastly Grabs Vol. VIII Great Divide Green Lantern: Emerald Knights Harlem Blues Harmony: Oneness Here We Come Hawthorne: Season Two Hellraiser: Hellworld Hellraiser: Deader Hold On Horse Feathers Housemaid How It’s Made: Auto I Only Want You to Love Me If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle In Her Skin Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers Jet Li 3-Pack Journey of the Bonesetter’s Daughter Just Go With It Legends of Flight Les Invites De Mon Pere Lethal Landscapes: Canvases of the Combat Artist Leverage: The 3rd Season Little Cars Vol. 6: Fast Lane Fury Love’s Kitchen Macho Menos Madagascar Madeline and Her Friends Maid Sama! Collection 1 Malibu Shark Attack Manolete: Blood and Passion Max Roach: Live at Blues Alley McMillan & Wife: Season Three McMillan & Wife: Season Two Michael Palin Collection (Time Bandits/The Missionary/A Private Function) Midnight Chronicles Miss Marple: Coffret 5 Monkey Business Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit – Complete Collection Mother’s Day Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter Mjueres Y Muerte National Geographic Classics: Cats and Dogs Nature: Outback Pelicans Nature: Survivors of the Firestorm New Morals for Old New Tricks: Season Four New York Street Games Nice Guy Johnny Night Flight Osso Bucco Pahappahooey Island Collection Paranormal Entity/From the Dead of the Night Passing Phantom Empire Physics of Motion Physics of Warfare Physics Super Pack Pimp Prehistoric Prizefighter & The Lady Prophecy 4: Uprising Prophecy 5: Forsaken Pros and Ex-Cons Queen of the Lot Rage in Harlem Rawhide: Season Four Vol. 1 Remote Control War Road to Avonlea: The Complete Fourth Volume Roary the Racing Car Rubber

JUNE 14

june 14 Hall Pass

It’s been roughly a zillion years since the Farrelly Brothers were appointment comedy. That impressive streak continues here, as Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis get a much-needed week off from their sexy, thoughtful wives.. [Warner Bros. Pictures] Salt of This Sea Sanctum Science of Death Primal Scream: Screamadelica – Classic Sean Connery 007 Collection Vol. 2 Secret at Arrow Lake Secret Life of the American Teenager Vol. 6 Sesame Street: Elmo’s World – People in Your Neighborhood Shadows and Lies Slices of Life Smoke Signals Snoop Sisters: The Complete Series So Goes My Love Spring Break Jump Off Vol. 2 Squall Stargate Universe: The Complete Final Season Stunt Man Supreme Champion Teaching Mrs. Tingle Tenchi Muyo! Ryo Ohki: The Complete Series Third Finger Left Hand Tortured True Grit (2010)Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle Season 1 UFC 128: Shogun vs. Jones Ultimate Fight Ultimate Roy Rogers Collection Universal Squadrons: War Is Not a Game Vision Quest Part C: The Ascension Vision Quest: Gia’s Story Vision Quest: The Kundalini Fire Voodoo Cowboys Welcome to Sarajevo When We Leave White Collar: The Complete First and Second Seasons Whitesnake: Live at Donington Le Tigre: Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour Wild Hunt World’s Grossest Video Infantree: Would Work WWE: The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro Wyvern Mysteries Year to Remember: 1930s Zig Zag

36 Adrift Algerian War 1954-1962 Amputee With an Axe Animal Diversity Battle History of the USMC: Korea Battle of Los Angeles Best of the ‘80s: Knight Rider Best of the ‘80s: Magnum P.I. Best of the ‘80s: Miami Vice Best of the ‘80s: The A-Team Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show Big Momma Collection Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son Black in Latin America Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet Bob Dylan: Gotta Do My Time Bob the Builder: The Big Dino Dig – The Movie Brew Masters Bruce Springsteen: Between the Lull and the Storm Caliber 9 Camille 2000 Celebrity Bowling Celtic Woman: Songs From the Heart Chained Chaperone Charles Bronson Collection Chatroom Children of the Night Classic Slasher Collection (Don’t Look in the Basement/Scream Bloody Murder) Cold Day in Hell Con Artist Concert Crusade in the Pacific Cult Classics Collection Date With the Angels Deadly Dolls Demon King Daimao: Complete Collection Detention Devil Dogs of Nam Devil’s Harvest Collection Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators Disney: Have a Laugh Vol. 3 Disney: Have a Laugh Vol. 4 Doctor Who: Frontios Doctor Who: Time and the Rani Doodlebops: The Beat Goes On Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle Duda Dummy Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Night of the Living Dead/I Eat Your Skin Elvira’s Movie Macabre: The Satanic Rites of Dracula/The Werewolf of Washington Europe: Live at Shepherd’s Bush London Fabulous Betty White Fall Down Dead Final Battles First Person Singular: I.M. Pei Foo Fighters: Back and Forth Freedom Call: Live in Hellvetia Fruits Basket: Box Set Gallants Gerald McBoing Boing Collection Giant Robot Action Pack: Robot Wars/Crash and Burn Glades: The Complete First Season Gordon’s War/Off Limits Groupie Hall Pass Happiness Is… Peanuts: Snoopy’s Adventures Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

june 21 Louie: Complete First Season

Not to deify the guy, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in this magazine’s readership who didn’t think Louie was the most consistently brilliant debut of 2010. Sophomore slump: unlikely. [FX Network] Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Haven: Complete First Season Haven: The Complete First Season Hero: 108 – Season 1 Vol. 1 Hollywood Bombshells Hollywood Safari/ Secret of the Andes How to Fold a Flag Image Insignificance Jackass 3.5 Jonah’s Mission Kassava Restaurant’s Jerks Kill the Irishman Kingdom of War: Part I Kingdom of War: Part I/Part II Kingdom of War: Part II Kirk Douglas Collection (To Catch a Spy/The Big Trees) Korkoro Last Exile: Complete Series Latina Novella Latino Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen Life With Elizabeth Little Rascals Vol. 1 Little Rascals Vol. 2 Little Rascals Vol. 3 Little Rascals Vol. 4 Little Rascals Vol. 5 Little Rascals Vol. 6 Little Rascals Vol. 7 Living Is Winning Lord, All Men Can’t Be Dogs Makioka Sisters Man v. Food Season 3 Man With a Camera Manhunt Marines in the Pacific Marriage of Figaro Marvel Knights: Spider-Woman – Agent of S.W.O.R.D.

Monogamy Mooz-Lum Mother of Invention National Geographic: Alaska State Troopers Season 2 Norm MacDonald: Me Doing StandUp N-Secure One From the Heart Pastor Jones: Sisters in Spirit – Double Feature Piper Penguin and His Fantastic Flying Machines Poussieres de Vie Probe Red Riding Hood Reefer Madness Collection Revolucion Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Student Council Saga Royal Wedding: His Royal Highness Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton Securing the Solomons Sergeant Cribb: The Complete Series Shanghai Red Shot in the Dark Smile Jenny You’re Dead SpongeBob SquarePants: Heroes of Bikini Bottom Supernatural: The Complete Second Season Sweet Karma Sweet Karma Sword Tony Palmer’s Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter Transformers: Beast Wars – The Complete First Season Triple Hit Tyler Perry’s House of Payne Vol. 8 Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Adaptation Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Builders Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Communities Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Defense Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Feeding Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Intelligence Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Migration Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Senses Ultimate Wildlife: Nature’s Cycles Uschi Digard Collection Vanishing of the Bees When They Were Young When Zachary Beaver Came to Town/Undercover Angel Wipeout Yellow Rose: Complete Series Yes: Union – Live Yo Gabba Gabba: Circus Zanzibar Musical Club JUNE 21

42nd Street: River to River 80 Waves A.I.M.S. Gala: Live at the Royal Albert Hall Adjustment Bureau Advance to the Rear Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Pale Horse Albino Alligator Alphonso Bow American Flag Anti-Nazi Classics Armitage III Movie Collection Baghdad Texas Bedways Bending All the Rules Best of Cheaters Vol. 3: Uncensored Best of Cheaters Vol. 4: Uncensored Big Time Rush: Season One Vol. 2 Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster Black Rat Bleach Uncut Box Set Vol. 9 Blue Gender: The Complete Series and Movie Bob Ross Joy of Painting Series:

Lakes Bob Ross Joy of Painting Series: Mountains Bombadier Born Innocent Bunnyman Capo, Part 1 Captured in Chinatown Cedar Rapids Ceremony Charlie Sheen: Born to Be Wild Cheatin’ Hearts Chicago: Live in Concert Chi-Lites: Live in Norfolk 2005 Closer: The Complete Sixth Season Cuba: Island of Music Dalai Lama on Life & Enlightenment Destination Inner Space Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules Ding Dong Dead Dizzy Gillespie: Redondo Beach Don’t Go Breaking My Heart Don’t Go Near the Water Doubleplus Good (Why Lie? I Need a Drink/To the Moon) Eagle Elektra Luxx English Sheik and the Yemeni Gentleman Exposure Face of the Screaming Werewolf Family Fania All-Stars: Live in Africa Flight Command Four Tops: Live at Stardust 2006 Frontline: Football High Ghosts of Angela Webb Happythankyoumoreplease Harvest Hip Hop’s Power Couple: Jay Z & Beyonce Home Invaders Honeymoon Machine Horizontal Lieutenant Huit Fois Debout Imperial Airways: The Definitive Newsreel History 1 James Maddock Anthology Johnny Cash: Great Lost Performance Just Write Kanokon: Ova Collection Kekkaishi: Set One Kid Killer Stories: Crimes of Torture and Horror Kiss Me Deadly Larry Carlton and Tak Matsumoto: Live 2010 Larry Carlton and the Sapphire Blues Band: Paris Concert Lawn Life of Leonardo Da Vinci Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders Lockdown 2011 Louie: The Complete First Season Loup Medium: The Complete Series Medium: The Final Season Mega Python vs. Gatoraid Mike Stern: New Morning – The Paris Concert Miles Davis: Live at Montreux: Highlights 1973-1991 Miss May, I Monument Mister T: The Complete First Season Monte Carlo Muammar El-Qaddafi: The King of Kings Neil Young’s Music Box: Here We Are in the Years Nickelodeon Favorites: Summer Vacation Nickelodeon: Big Box of Play Dates Vol. 2 One World Tour Europe Orgasm Inc. Outlaws: The Legend of B.O. Taggart Paranormal Planet: Psychics and

the Supernatural Pepe Romero Plays Concierto Festivo by Ernesto Cordero Playing House Poison Porij Neoplasm Priest of Love Prime of Your Life Prophecy of Israel Psycho Holocaust Queenie R&B’s Lost Souls: Aaliyah & Lisa Left Eye Lopes Radiohead: Arms & Legs – The Story So Far Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas Rio Conchos/Take a Hard Ride Rocko’s Modern Life: Season One Roger Corman’s Cult Classics: The Women in Cages Collection Romantic Englishwoman Royal Air Force Air Pageants Hendon 1920-1939 See Here Private Hargrove Sins Split Estate Squidbillies Vol. 4 Strokes: From Then ‘Til Now Stylistics: Live in Norfolk 2005 Submarine: Hidden Hunters Sunrise Earth Greatest Hits: East/ West Swedish Midsummer Sex Comedy T. Lavitz: The Key Tell-Tale Heart/Ovalportrait Thin Lizzy: Live in Concert 1983 This Nude World Together/Apart Toward the Unknown Ultimate Death Match III Under the Hammer Unknown Van Von Hunter Visioneers Weapons Races Weird & Wonderful Films What About Me? What’s on Your Plate? White Zombie William and Kate Willie and the Poor Boys Wired WWE: Over the Limit 2011 Yesspeak: 35th Anniversary You Got Served: Beat the World You’re Under Arrest: Full Throttle Season 3 JUNE 28

2:13 2012: Ice Age 3 Backyards About Adam/Down to You About Jenny Holzer Adventures in Space Albert Lee & Hogan’s Heroes: Live at the Tivoli Algeria: The Nameless War All Aboard: Great American Railroads America the Beautiful American Experience: The Duel American Pickers: The Complete Season Two Ancient Astronauts: Our Extraterrestrial Legacy At Risk Baby Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale Batman Forever/Batman and Robin Batman/Batman Returns Beastly Beautiful Girls Beneath Hill 60 Beneath Loch Ness Beneath the Mississippi Beowulf Billy the Exterminator: Season 3 Blast

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/movies/new_releases Bloodworth Bloody Birthday Breaking Vegas: Dice Dominator Breaking Vegas: Slot Buster Bringing Ashley Home British Rail Journeys: Blaneau Ffestiniog Christoph von Dohnanyi: In Rehearsal Christopher and His Kind Classic U.S. Combat Aircraft of WWII: P-47 Thunderbolt Cock Sparrer: Back in SF 2009 Color of Your Socks: A Year With Pipilotti Rist Craft in America: Season Three Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer Dan Candy’s Law Danny and the Dinosaur… and More Friendly “Monster” Stories Daring Docs: Waiting for Fidel/Late Night Talks With Mother/Voyage in Time Dawning Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash Deadly Dolls Triple Feature Declassified: Chairman Mao Delphi: Center of the World Dirty Pretty Things Discreet Diving Bell and the Butterfly Dog the Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business Dogpound Shuffle Down in Old Mexico: My Dear Tom Mix/Don’t Fool With Love Eleventh Aggression Erasing David Extraordinary Minds: Jacques d’Amboise Fortress/Total Recall 2070 Four Rooms Fri Os Fra Det Onde Front Full Frontal Galaxy Express: Adieu Galaxy Express 999 George Gently: Series 3 Glory Daze Godfathers of Havana Good Night Gorilla & More Sleepytime Stories Great Conductors: John Eliot Gardiner – In Rehearsal Great Irish Escape Grifters Guilty Hearts Gungrave: The Complete Series Hellraiser: Deader Hellraiser: Hellworld Heritage of British Monarchy High School of the Dead: Complete Collection How the Universe Works I’m Dirty! And more Sories of Adventure and Science Ideal Husband Idiots and Angels Immigration Tango Imperial Airways: The Definitive Newsreel History 1 Impostor/Final Encounter Infested Investigating History: Mountain Massacre John Muir: In the New World Kimmie’s Kitchen Episode 1 King’s Highway: El Camino Real Korea: The Unfinished War Language of Life: Swirl Like a Leaf Law & Order: Criminal Intent – The Sixth Year Lebanon, PA Legends of the Silver Screen Lifetime Bridal Little Buddha

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Lookout/The Yards Lord of the Dance Magical Witch Punie-Chan Make Masters of American Music: Satchmo Max Manus: Man of War Mega Movers: Army Mega Moves Mega Movers: Giant Structures Mega Movers: Tower Crane Melvin Midnight Chronicles Miramax Triple Feature Classics Miramax Triple Feature Crime Miramax Triple Feature Suspense Mobile Suit Gundam UC Unicorn, Part 1 Modern Marvels: Alaskan Fishing Modern Marvels: Cowboy Tech Modern Marvels: Hot & Spicy Modern Marvels: Keep Out Modern Marvels: Soft Drinks Modern Marvels: Super Ships Modern Marvels: Top Ten Monster Quest: Maneaters – Lions Moscow and the Golden Ring Music Video Exposed: David Mallet Music Video Exposed: Russell Mulcahy Music Video Exposed: The Collection Music Video Exposed: Wayne Isham Nature: Bears of the Last Frontier Nature’s Treasures Nature’s Wrath Nesting Next Big Bang Nightmares Norwegian Ninja Ordinary Decent Criminal/ Bravo Two Zero Pawn Stars: Season Three People on Sunday Perfect Man Play Hendrix Quest for Veritcal Teke-Off Rage in Harlem Rammbock: Berlin Undead ReBoot ReBoot: Seasons 3 & 4 Restoration Reviving Ophelia Rideback: The Complete Series Risk Takers/History Makers Roar of the Lion Roger Reynolds: Sanctuary Royal Air Force Air Pageants Hendon 1920 to 1939 Royal Jewels Save Our History: Victorian Reborn Saving the Ocean: Shark Reef and the Sacred Island Scooby-Doo: 3-Pack Fun Season of the Witch Secret Mysteries of America: The Untold History Secret Superpower Aircraft: Bombers Seducing Time by Lynn Hershman Leeson Sesame Street Essentials Collection: Learning Sgt. Frog: Season Three Part 1 Sk8 Life Skydiving Smoke Signals Spithead and Other Royal Navy Fleet Reviews Spy Planes Step Milf Story of Queen Elizabeth II Supreme Champion Taken From Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story Team Umizoomi 1 2 3 Tenant Tetsuo: The Bullet Man Timmy Time: Picture Day Tom and Jerry: 3-Pack Fun Tool Bench: Power Tools

july 5 Hobo With a Shotgun

Rutger Hauer’s turn in Blade Runner was rightly immortalized in these very pages a few months ago. The veteran ham goes grindhouse in this instant cult classic, an obvious title-of-the-year candidate. [Magnolia Home Ent]

Twin Dragons/Dragon Lord Typeface Underwater Universe: Season 1 US Open: Graf vs. Seles – 1995 Women’s Final Warehouse 13: Season Two Warrior’s Way Wild Cherry WShite Lightnin’ WWE: Best Cage Matches Zazie Dans Le Metro JULY 5

13 Assassins According to Jim: The Complete Fourth Season Alice in Wonderland/Thumbelina American Flyer American Heritage Collection American History in Black & White Anniversary at Shallow Creek Apollo 13 Bloodlust Zombies Bond of Silence Bourne Identity Bourne Supremacy Bourne Ultimatum Boy Meets World: The Complete Sixth Season Camaleones Cape: The Complete Series Carnival of Souls Cats 101 Classic Western Round-Up 1 Classic Western Round-Up 2 Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection Compassion in Emptiness Dogs 101 Dragonball Z: Dragon Box Vol. 6 ET: The Extra Terrestrial Eureka: Season 2 Eureka: Season 4.0 Eureka: Season One Fall: Kicker Conspiracy – Live at the Hacienda 1983-1985 Ferocious Planet Fireman Sam: Brave New Rescues Four Centuries of American Education

Frankenstein Syndrome Gettysburg/Gods and Generals Ghostly Grabs 9 Girl Who Leapt Through Space Vol. 2 Hobo With a Shotgun I Was Happy Here Illegal IllegalI Was Happy Here Incredible Hulk (2008) James Bryan Triple Feature (Escape to Passion/Dirtiest Game in the World/I Love You, I Love You Not) James Stewart: Screen Legend Collection Jaws John Wayne Collection Kikkerdril King Kong (2005) Kite Liberator K-On! Vol. 2 Lies in Plain Sight Live to Forgive Making of the President Man With the Midas Touch Mannix: The Fifth Season Master Harold… and the Boys McMillan & Wife: Season Five McMillan & Wife: Season Four Memoirs of a Lady Ninja 2 Millennium Meltdown Miranda Mummy Mummy Returns Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Mysteries at the Museum: Season 1 National Geographic: Witchcraft – Myths and Legends Nymphs in the Mist Oblivion Out of the Blue Paramedics Vol. 2 Passion of Darkly Noon PJ’s Season 2 Pretty Little Liars: The Complete First Season Riding Tornado Robin Hood (2010) Sacrifice Safari Serenity Sesame Street: The Best of Sesame Spoofs Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 Tales of the Abyss Part 1 Tiara Tahiti Tom and Jerry: Fur Flying Adventures Vol. 2 Trailers From Hell Vol. 2 Transformers: Headmasters – The Japanese Collection UFC 129: St. Pierre vs. Shields Victorious Season One Vol. 1 Wake Wood Wisconsin Project X Witchmaker: Legend of Witch Hollow Witchville Word: Vol. 1: Shows 1-4 JULY 12

2 Air War: Vietnam 1964-1972 Alice America’s Test Kitchen: Season Eleven American Loggers American Rebel Animal Atlas: Animal 123’s Animal Atlas: Animal ABC’s B.B. King Live Barney: 1 2 3 Learn Battle Beyond the Stars Beer Patrol Best of Caillou: Caillou Goes Back to School BFF Black, White and Blues Bloodrayne: The Third Reich

KICK OFF THE SEASON WITH THE

MUSIC OF SUMMER DIPLO Riddimentary

RICHIE SPICE Book of Job

BUSHMAN Bushman Sings the Bush Doctor— A Tribute to Peter Tosh

BOB MARLEY Legend

REGGAE LEGENDS AND NEWER VOICES ON SALE THIS MONTH

BOB MARLEY Live Forever

JIMMY CLIFF The Harder They Come.

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JUNE 7

2011 Broadway Cast How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying 31 Knots Trump Harm Above & Beyond Group Therapy Art Abscons Der Verborgene Adelitas Way Home School Valedictorian African Head Charge Off the Beaten Track The Air I Breathe Great Faith in Fools All Time Low Dirty Work Amorphis The Beginning of Times Anathema We’re Here Because We’re Here (Special Edition) Jill Andrews The Mirror The Appleseed Cast Middle States EP Arch Enemy Khaos Legions Arctic Monkeys Suck It and See Avantasia The Flying Opera – Around Axis of Perdition Tenements Badlands Badlands Badlands Voodoo Highway Barn Burner Bangers II: Scum of the Earth Battles Gloss Drop Bedouin Soundclash Light the Horizon Behemoth Abyssus Abyssum Invocat Benny Benassi Electroman Justin Bieber My Worlds Acoustic Black Lips Arabia Mountain Black Moth Super … Dandelion Gum Deluxe Reissue Black September The Forbidden Gates Beyond Blindside With Shivering Hearts We Wait Mike Bloom King of Circles Sydney Blu Live From Mansion Bole 2 Harlem Bole 23 Harlem David Bowie vs. KCRW Golden Years Brent Hinds Presents Fiend Without a Face Dennis Brown Reggae Royalty J Bunnett & H Duran Cuban Rhapsody Carolina Choc Drops Heritage Tommy Castro Presents the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue Cerebral Bore Maniacal Miscreation Chrome Division 3rd Round Knockout Circus of Power Vices City and Colour Little Hell Nels Cline The Veil CMG The Jane of All Trades The Coathangers Larceny & Old Lace Chick Corea The Definitive Corea-Clarke-White Forever Crashdiet Generation Wild Creation Rebel Starship Africa Curt Cress Band Curt Cress Band Cults Cults Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. It’s a Corporate World Danjal The Palace Dawes Nothing Is Wrong Depeche Mode Remixes 2: 81-11 Chris Difford Cashmere if You Can DJ Screw 3’n the Mornin’ DJ Screw All Screwed Up Dr Midnight & Mercy … I Declare: Treason Ronnie Dunn Ronnie Dunn East River String Band Sweet East River East River String Band Be Kind to a Man When He’s Down East River String Band Drunken Barrel House Blues East River String Band Some Cold Rainy Day Efendi’s Garden Efendi’s Garden Hanin Elias Fatal Box Hanin Elias Get It Back Jonathan Elias A Prayer Cycle: Path Joe Ely Satisfied at Last

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Infection 1813 Tollus Crooked Voices Golden Horn La Lechuza Armod Way Home Echo Boom Channel Pressure Saturday Night Underwater David Comes to Life What’s Going On: 40th Anniversary Edition Gigan Quasi: hallucinogenic Sonic Givers In Light The Grascals Dance Til Your Stockings Are Hot & Ravelin’ Grayson Capps The Lost Cause Minstrels Michael Grimm I’ve Got Dreams Sonne Hagal Helfahrt Sammy Hagar Street Machine Hail Mary Mallon Are You Gonna Eat That? Hairy Phlegmball The Sound of Mucous II Hammerfall Infected Haunted Heads Songs Playing Heat Seekers Heat Seekers Helix Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge Hiromi Voice Hooray for Earth True Loves Bruce Hornsby & Range Bride of Noisemakers Hospital Ships Lonely Twin Ikebe Shakedown Ikebe Shakedown Infantree Would Work (Deluxe Edition) Infestus Ex/Ist Iron Maiden From Here to Eternity Daniel Isaiah High Twilight Jack or Jive Kagura Joe Jackson Live Music Bodek Janke Global. Dance. Kulture Jessica 6 See the Light Johann Johannson The Miner’s Hymns George Jones Great Country Hits of the ‘60s Kevin K Joey and Me Karma to Burn V Khan Erode Konitz/Mehldau/Haden Live at Birdland Ladybug Transistor Clutching Stems Sondre Lerche Sondre Lerche Les Doigts de L’Homme 1910 Cheikh Lo Jamm The Loose Salute Getting Over Being Under Manifest Live in Concert Bob Marley The Lowdown B Marsalis & J Cald… Songs of Mirth and Melancholy Dean Martin Classic Dino: Best of Dean Martin Cool Then, Cool Now Dean Martin Dino: The Essential … Russudan Meiparani Lieder Mignon Kiss of Death Montrose Montrose Morbid Angel Illud Divinum Insanus Peter Murphy Ninth Music Video? Fireproof Your TV Music Video? Now That My TV Has Wings I’ll Never Be Lonely Youssou N’dour Dakar-Kingston Kenneth Nash Mama Blue Shoe Necro Facility Wintermute New Age Steppers The New Age Steppers New Gary Burton Qu… Common Ground New York Dolls Dancing Backwards in Heels (Deluxe) Nick 13 Nick 13 Nine Below Zero Cold Cool Heart Nunslaughter Demoslaughter Dustin O’Halloran Vorleben Octopus An Ocean of Rocks Octopus Rubber Angel Brian Olive Two of Everything Omega Lithium Kinetic Origin Entity Original Cast Recording The Book of Mormon Lindi Ortega Little Red Boots Endstille Toulouse Engelhardt Engineer Ensemble Fisfuez Esmerine Falconer Maria Farantouri The Farewell Drifters Q Ford & Lopatin Nik Freitas Fucked Up Marvin Gaye

Depeche Mode june 7

Remixes 2: 81-11 If you’re a remix junkie, the Mode has never not delivered. Snap this up in single- or triple-disc form and enjoy avant reimaginings of sexy times from Speak and Spell to 2009’s Sounds of the Universe. [Reprise]

Patrolled by Radar Be Happy Frankie Paul Most Wanted Pharaoh Ten Years Michele Pillar Featuring Larry Carlton Poison Control Center Stranger Ballet The Postelles The Postelles Pure X You’re in It Now Quiet Riot Quiet Riot Rainer Baumann Band Fooling Raven Woods Enfeebling the Throne Ziggi Recado Ziggi Recado Paul Reed Smith Band Paul Reed Smith Band Reign of Vengeance Disemboweling Swine Residents Lonely Teenager Rhythmagic Orchestra The Rhythmagic Orchestra The Rosebuds Loud Planes Fly Low Santah White Noise Bed Santana Guitar Legend Henning Schmiedt Klavierrau Diane Schuur The Gathering Duncan Shiek Covers ‘80s Julian Siegel Urban Theme Park Paul Simon Paul Simon Paul Simon … in Concert: Live Rhymin’ Paul Simon Still Crazy After All These … Paul Simon There Goes Rhymin’ Simon Simply Red Farewell: Live in Concert Frank Sinatra Ring-A Ding Ding! Sister Hated Sisters 3 Coruscate … Meadow Gate Paul Reed Smith Look at the Moon Soul of John Black Good Thang The Soulless Isolated Soundtrack Afterparty Massacre Soundtrack Emerging Past Soundtrack Music From and Inspired by the Big C Soundtrack Sympathy for Delicious Sprains Imitate Art Syn Zw Sase Tri Intre Doua Lumi Craig Taborn Avenging Angel Tea Leaf Green Radio Tragedy Tech N9ne All 6’s and 7’s Tedeschi Trucks Band Revelator Thousand Foot Krutch Live at the Masquerade Tombs Path of Totality Touché Amore Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me Randy Travis Anniversary Celebration Trentemoller Late Hight Tales Frank Turner England Keep My Bones Tyr The Lay of Thrym Under Fire Under Fire Various Artists 2011 Warped Tour Compilation Various Artists Chicago Blues: A Living History Various Artists Dancing Peregrina Various Artists Jazzkraut: Teutonal Jazz Rock Various Artists Keith Richards Jukebox Various Artists Mad Styles & Crazy Visions 2

Masters of Hardstyle Vol. 5 New Arrivals Vol. 4 Underground Rockabilly Where the Fun Never Sets Worship Devotional: August Worship Devotional: July Worship Devotional: September Vin Blanc Chroma Key Derniere Volonte Commemorate Watermelon Slim & … Okiesippi Blues G Watson & R Vincent Your Money and My Good Looks Laurie Wheeler Twilight Whitesnake Live at Donington 1990 Paul Winley Presents Greatest Doo Wop Hits The Wooden Birds Two Matchsticks Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists

JUNE 14

13th Floor Elevators Box Set Paula Abdul 10 Great Songs C Adderley & B Evans Know What I Mean? Alcest Le Secret Alestorm Back Through Time Carmine Appice Rockers & V8 Arkona Stenka Na Stenku Bad Meets Evil Hell: The Sequel Chet Baker In New York George Benson Body Talk Maria Bethania Love Celebration Devotion Black Country Comm… 2 Black Veil Brides Set the World on Fire Blackie & The Rode Kings and Queens Blink 182 The Lowdown Bloodbound Unholy Cross Book of Knots Garden of Fainting Stars Marc Broussard Marc Broussard Bulldozer Unexpected Fate Spec. Ed. Glen Campbell Gentle on My Mind/By the Time I Get to Phoenix Jim Capaldi Short Cut Draw Blood/The Contender Cardiac Afternoon of Extravagant Delight Chic Dance Dance Dance Ornette Coleman Something Else Lisa Damiani’s Star … Kid Stars That Rock Your World The Dear Hunter The Color Spectrum Debauchery Germany’s Next Death Metal Deleon Casata Bosco Delrey Everybody Wah Duran Duran 10 Great Songs Richard Durand In Search of Sunrise 9: India Jonathan Edwards My Love Will Keep Jackie Evancho Dream With Me Bill Evans Trio Explorations Ella Fitzgerald & J Pass Easy Living Michael Franks Time Together Freedom Call Live in Hellvetia Funk Ark From the Roof Tops Rory Gallagher Against the Grain Rory Gallagher Calling Card Rory Gallagher Tattoo GNO Cannibal Tango A Goldberg & Guiller… Bienestan Gorilla Zoe King Kong Andy Grammer Andy Grammer Grand Funk Railroad 10 Great Songs Grateful Dead vs. Phish Grateful Dead vs. Phish Lee Greenwood 10 Great Songs Stefan Grossman Those Pleasant Days/Hot Dogs H.A.W.K. Under HAWK’s Wings H2 Flights Hawkwind Collector Series Vol. 2: Choose Your Masque The JeffHealey Band Live at Grossman’s Ram John Holder Black London Blues/ Bootleg Blues The Hollies/ Here I Go Again/Hear! Here! Freddie Hubbard Straight Life Hurrah! The Sound of Philadelphia In Legend Ballads ‘N’ Bullets J. Period & Q-Tip The (Abstract) Best

10 Great Songs It’s All True The Last Night on the Battlefield Katana Heads Will Roll King Crimson Projekct A Scarcity of Miracles Lake of Tears Illwill Hubert Laws In the Beginning Ledisi Pieces of Me Life on Repeat Struggle + Sleep Lil C Throweder Than Throwed 2K11 Norm MacDonald Me Doing Standup Barry Manilow 15 Minutes Ziggy Marley Wild and Free Paul McCartney McCartney Paul McCartney McCartney II Mercury Rev Deserter’s Songs Pat Metheny What’s It All About Sugar Minott Love & Understanding Molly Hatchet Greatest Hits II Thelonious Monk Alone in San Francisco Mr. Criminal Criminal Mentality 2 Mr. Y.U.G. 18 Shots Necrodeath The Age of Fear North Atlantic Oscill… Grappling Hooks Oasis From Childhood to Oasis Of Mice and Men The Flood Original Cast Baby It’s You Owl City All Things Bright and Beautiful Pale Horse Named … And Hell Will Follow Me Madeleine Peyroux Standing on the Roof Baden Powell Afro-Sambas Artimus Pyle Artimus Venomus Queensryche 10 Great Songs Random Axe Random Axe Rev 16:8 Ashlands Smokey Robinson The Solo Albums Stan Rogers A Matter of Heart Stan Rogers Between the Breaks… Live Stan Rogers Form Coffee House to Concert Hall Stan Rogers From Fresh Water Stan Rogers Home in Halifax Stan Rogers Northwest Passage Stan Rogers Poetic Justice Stan Rogers The Very Best Of Stan Rogers Turnaround Roswell Rudd The Incredible Honk Saga Heads or Tales: Live Scar of the Sun A Series of Unfortunate Concurrencies Matt Schofield Anything But Time Dan Seals Very Best Of Sebadoh Bakesale (Deluxe Edition) Secret Sphere Archetype John Shannon & … Songs of the Desert River Shock Sum One High Definition Dinah Shore The Nashville Nightingale Slaughter 10 Great Songs Slim Thug Presents… Serve and Collect 3 Smoke Fairies Through Low Light and Trees Smokehouse Junkiez Inner Mission: Smoke With Us Soundtrack Another Year Soundtrack Cars 2 Soundtrack First Grader Soundtrack Game of Thrones Soundtrack Green Lantern: Origin Soundtrack The Borgias The Swellers Good for Me Paul Taylor Prime Time Transformers Dark of the Moon Transglobal Undergr… The Stone Turntable Stanley Turrentine Don’t Mess With Mr. T Uncle Ill Doo Doo Thijs Van Leer Introspection 4 Various Artists 10 Great ‘80s Hits Various Artists 10 Great One Hit Wonders Various Artists All Blues’d Up: Songs of Janis Joplin Various Artists All Blues’d Up: Songs of Led Zeppelin Various Artists Electro Wave Various Artists Essence Music Vol. 4 Various Artists Now Country 4 Various Artists Profile Records Blue Freddie Jackson Junior Boys Kaledon

Owl City june 14

All Things Bright and Beautiful Good thing for this kid that Death Cab for Cutie is putting out a new album so close to his—the indie snob blogs will probably be too distracted to crucify him again. Wait, what are we saying? [Universal Republic]

Soca Gold 2011 The Driving Instructor: 20 Comedy Classics Various Artists Wizards of Country Guitar 1935-1955 Various Artists Wolfgang Gartner Presents: Electric Daisy Vetiver The Errant Charm Don Williams Traces/New Moves The Wipeouters P’Twaaang!!! The Wonder Years Suburbia I’ve Given You all and Now I’m Nothing Keke Wyatt Unbelievable Young Intl Harvesters A Treasure Various Artists Various Artists

JUNE 21

New Heaven Most Known Unknown: Live Love Letters Capture (1995-2010) 2 Times Revolution Eleven Eleven The Latest Fashion Leveler Volume One 1970-1979 Deep as the River Gabriel Bello Music for Misfits Black Dahlia Murder Ritual The Black Rabbits Hypno Switch Blanck Mass Blanck Mass Blue Water White Death Blue Water White Death Bobby Bobby Bodies of Water Twist Again The Bo-Keys Got to Get Back Michael Bolton Gems: The Duets Collection Bon Iver Bon Iver Bonfire Branded Benji Book Beats, Treats and All Cindy Bradley Unscripted David Adam Byrnes Premium Country C Canada & The Dep… This Is Indian Land Laura Cantrell Kitty Wells Dresses Vanessa Carlton Rabbits on the Run Centro-Matic Candidate Waltz Chain Gang of 1974 Wayward Fire Patsy Cline Fingerprints Compass Productions A Motown Collection The Computers This Is the Computers Bobby Conn Rise Up! Bill Cosby Icon Cream Icon The Crimson Armada Conviction Bing Crosby Icon Crosby & Nash Bittersweet Crossfade We All Bleed Danko Jones Below the Belt Dayton Family Charges of Indictment Death Human Dekapitator We Will Destroy You Wil 1,2,3 The Acacia Strain Beegie Adair Afro Celt Sound Sys Alborosie Dave Alvin Attack! Attack! UK August Burns Red Sorry Bamba Harry Belafonte Gabriel Bello Big B The

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/music/new_releases Obey Special Affections Stukas Over Disneyland The Glitter End Afterhours Club Mix In the Dynamite Jet Saloon So I Ate Myself, Bite by Bite Bad Luck Crimson Fear in a Handful of Dust Lost in Transition Who’s Gonna Save the World Jose Feliciano Light My Fire Liam Finn Fomo Fit for an Autopsy The Process of Human Extermination Ruthie Foster Live at Anthone’s General Surgery Necrology Gentlemans Pistols At Her Majesty’s Pleasure The Get Up Kids Simple Science EP Giant Sand Black Out (25th Anniversary Edition) Giant Sand Glum (25th Anniversary Edition) Giant Sand Goods and Services (25th Anniversary Edition) Gillan, Iommi & Friends Who Cares H Golightly & D Melc… Desperate Little Town Gomez Whatever’s On Your Mind Googoosh Googoosh Grieves Together/Apart Guano Apes Bel Air Buddy Guy Icon Hadden Sayers Hard Dollar Alee Halms Weatherhead Paul Hardcastle Hardcastle VI Heights Dead Ends Diamond Rings The Dickies Diva DJ Vicious Vic TheDogs D’Amour Dreamend Ed Gein Edge of Sanity Elitist Ellwood Father’s Children

Heirlooms of August Forever the Moon Billie Holiday Icon Hot Chelle Rae Tonight Tonight I Set My Friends on Fire Astral Rejection Iceage New Brigade In Flames Sounds of a Playground Fading Insane Clown Posse Icon Invisible System Street Clan Jackmaster Fabriclive 57 Jagged Edge The Remedy Japanese Popstars Controlling Your Allegiance Jeff the Brotherhood We Are the Champions John Paul Keith … The Man That Time Forgot Jungle Rot Kill on Command EG Kight Lip Service Simon Kirke Filling the Void Knuckle Up Motivation From Misery K-the I??? Synthesthesia Seun Kuti From Africa With Fury: Rise Jim Lauderdale Reason and Rhyme Little Richard The King of Rock & Roll LMFAO Sorry for Party Tony MacAlpine Tony MacAlpine James Maddock Wake Up and Dream Manilla Road Mark of the Beast Dean Martin Solitaire Maze feat. Fr Beverly Greatest Hits: 35 Years of Soul Paul McCartney Chaos and Creation Paul McCartney Driving Rain Paul McCartney Run Devil Run Nicki Minaj Pink Friday (Deluxe) Miss May I Monument Silvano Monasterios Unconditional Monkeyjunk To Behold JustinMoore Outlaws Like Me Greg Nagy Fell Toward None Matt Nathanson Modern Love Olivia Newton-John Portraits Gary Nicholson Texas Songbook Night Ranger Somewhere in California The Nighty Nite Dimples

Brave Tin Soldiers Nuclear Animals Free at First Light 180/365 You Only Live Twice Fruit of the Spirit Live Design Weave Me Planet Pit The Darkest of Grays/ Solicit to Fall Potluck Rhymes and Resin Public Enemy Bring the Noise, the Hits, Vids and Docs Reel Big Fish Best of Us, for … Rest of Us Righteous Brothers Icon Roxy Music Manchester Manifesto (CD + DVD) Rubblebucket Omega La La S.O. S. I Owe You Nothing Sanchez-Harris-Scott Ninety Miles Jill Scott The Light of the Sun Bob Seger & Silver … Nine Tonight Bob Seger & Silver … Live Bullet Seven Sisters of Sl… Seven Sisters of Sleep Shangri-Las The Leader of the Pack Fionnuala Sherry Songs From Before Matthew Shipp Knives From Heaven Simple Plan Get Your Heart On Great Civilizations Skysaw Soundtrack The Minority Soundtrack X-Men: First Class Sourvein Black Fang Rod Stewart The Day Will Come Rod Stewart Unplugged… and Seated Symphony X Iconoclast These Hearts Forever Ended Yesterday Thin Lizzy Icon Through the Sparks Almanac Year of Beasts Peter Tosh Equal Rights (Legacy Edition) Peter Tosh Legalize It (Legacy Edition) The Devin Townsend Project Sarah Nixey Nuclear Animals Sean O’Connell OK Go Pain Paleo The Parlotones Peter, Paul & Mary Pitbul Planks

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Dave Matthews Band

Black Stone Cherry

Various Artists

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Neil Young

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THE HANGOVER PART 2

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dispatch

Two Minutes of Hate

by Rodney

Anonymous

Total Eclipse of the Balls “And the last thing I heard was a muttered word As he stood smiling above me with a rock in his fist” —from “Where the Wild Roses Grow” by critical favorite Nick Cave, featuring Kylie Minogue

B

y the time you read this, it’ll be too late to stop it. It might be a month two late, or (depending upon Cowbell’s publishing schedule and the outcome of my latest trial) it might be a year too late. Either way, it’ll be too late. Because on May 10, 2011, America (and at least a small portion of Canada, as you’ll see below) collectively lost its shit. For it was on that day that a 20-year-old musician who goes by the name of Tyler, the Creator released a CD titled Goblin, which, in turn, managed to transform a sizable segment of the population into quite reasonable facsimiles of Rev. Lovejoy’s wife from The Simpsons, flailing about and shouting, “What about the children? Won’t someone think of the children?” Many critics lambasted Tyler, the Creator for his “excessively violent lyrics,” “juvenile misogyny” and “blatant homophobia” before getting back to burning a mix CD that included Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sherriff,” Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone” and Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer?”

“She started to hate every Nigger and Jew Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit Every homosexual and the idle rich” —from “Los Angeles” by critical favorite X That critics would miss the point is pretty much a given. But you’d expect musicians to have a deeper appreciation of irony and artistic license. Unless, of course, those musicians are Canadian folk duo Tegan and Sara. Just a few days after the release of Goblin, the half of Tegan and Sara who didn’t get top billing took a few minutes away from loitering in front of an audience to post an open letter on the duo’s website demanding that Tyler be held accountable for his “sickening and hateful message” and stating, in part, “Why should I care about this music or its ‘brilliance’ when the message is so repulsive and irresponsible?” Tyler responded with the following bon mot: “If Tegan and Sara Need Some Hard Dick, Hit Me Up!” OK, as far as comebacks go, it’s not exactly Algonquin Roundtable material; then again, no quote from Dorothy Parker ever made my wife laugh as hard as she did at Tyler’s rejoinder. 64

cowbell

“All of the things That you promised me that you’d be Now your hands are tired” —From “Come On” by critical Canadians Tegan and Sara Unlike what I’m assuming to be all of Tyler, the Creator’s detractors, I’ve actually met him. Our band shared a bill with Tyler’s band Odd Future (WGKTA) in Texas a few months back; after the show I spent about an hour hanging out with Tyler (admittedly hardly enough time to really get to know someone, but I’m an excellent judge of character), and I found him to be polite, funny and genuinely pleasant (in short, the exact opposite of myself at 20). And I could’ve guessed that he would be all those things. Why? Because experience and a knowledge of history have taught me that, from the old Irish murder ballads to :Wumpscut, people who explore violent, hateful themes in their music, are rarely, if ever, violent or hateful themselves. It’s just our way of trying to make sense of a violent, hateful world. After all, critical favorite John Lennon, who wrote about nothing but peace and love, slapped his first wife around. Rodney Anonymous is the singer for Philadelphia punk rock

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

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Here’s where to find a local retailer that carries the MonitorThis! Sampler and even more treats!

Silver Platters Seattl e

BK Music

Gallery of Sound

r i c h m ond, va

Pennsylvania

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For a complete locations list, special offers and more, visit www.monitorthis.com 4

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