News

News

Blur Release First Track in Seven Years

Record Store Day is on April 17th and there are a ton of great releases that you'll only find in your local record shop.  One that you unfortunately WON'T find in the US is the new Blur 7".  It is currently untitled and is only limited to 1000 copies.  As of right now there are no plans by EMI to release the track on any other format.

Doves Release A 'Best Of' and New Track, 'Andalucia'

This week the Doves are released a greatest hits album in a 2CD set.  There's also a DVD which includes videos.  It's a pretty standard format, disc 1 has the hits and disc 2 has the rarities.  And to annoy all those collectors out there, it includes one new song, 'Andalucia'.  They made a video for the track which is included below and you can also checkout the tracklisting if you click on the "read more" link.

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HOLY CRAP, Godspeed You! Black Emperor Reunite!!

Godspeed You! Black Emperor have reunited and will be currating the All Tomorow's Parties in the UK in December.  They "officially" broke up in February of 2008 but by then they had already been on a hiatus for many years.  According to their official site, http://www.1119732.net/, their current plan is the festival, "a handful of british and eurpoean shows, and then 9 american towns."

And it continues:

"until further introspection, WE WILL NOT BE FIELDING ANY OTHER OFFERS.  nor will we be doing any interviews.  inquiries directed to band, record label, or bookers will not be guaranteed a reply.  alls we really want to do is the thing we do, heads down and leaned into the squall."

I may have to take a vacation and see all nine of their shows.

Tivo Alert: Swell Season, She & Him, PiL, & Suzanne Vega

Grr...  this is kinda late but here's what's on this week:

Monday, April 5:

  • David Letterman: Jack Hanna, the Swell Season (R 2/5/10)
  • Jimmy Kimmel: Kellan Lutz, Brooke Burke, She & Him
  • Carson Daly: Joel David Moore, Luci Romberg, Arctic Monkeys (R 3/5/10)

Wednesday, April 7

  • Jimmy Kimmel: Luke Wilson, Aaron Johnson, PiL
  • Jimmy Fallon: Rachel Maddow, Dave Annable, Suzanne Vega

Chemical Brothers Announce New Album

The Chemical Brothers will have a new album out on June 7th called, "Further".  I know, I know, not a lot of people care about the whole "electronica" thing since it was called "electronica" back in the late ninties but their last record, "We Are the Night", was pretty amazing.  It was an excellent return to dance music from the horrible "Push the Button" record.


I just paused for a second while writing this and read some reviews about "We Are The Night".  Apparently my opinion that it's a vastly superior album to "Push the Button" is in stark contrast to the rest of the media.  Awesome.

Tivo Alert: She & Him, Doves, Julian Casablancas and Keane

On Monday's I'll try to get a list of the interesting bands that are playing the late night shows for the upcoming week.  Here's the first batch:

Monday, March 29:  Jimmy Fallon: Jeff Goldblum, Jennifer Morrison, Julian Casablancas
Tuesday, March 30:  Carson Daly: Snoop Dogg, Keane
Wednesday, March 31:  Carson Daly: Jesse Ventura, Doves
Friday, April 2:  David Letterman: Nathan Lane, She & Him
 

Odds and Ends: Listen to MGMT & National, Elliott Smiths Fans Are Upset, Beck Covers INXS, and more...

Here's some of the stuff I've seen over the week that's kinda interesting but not interesting enough for me to clog up your RSS feed, twitter account or Facebook page over.

  • MGMT's new album was leaked so they decided to stream the whole thing from their site.  Enjoy.
  • The National's new album, High Violet, will be released on May 11th.  You can grab a track from the record, "Bloodbuzz Ohio" on highviolet.com.
  • Larry Crane is a longtime friend of Elliot Smith and he's in the process of remastering Smith's debut album, Roman CandleFans are upset over an album that no one has heard, but I can see why.  It's something that should be preserved, faults and all.
  • Beck, St. Vincent & the Liars have covered INXS's popular "Kick" album in a day.  They are releasing one song a week from their project, first up is "Guns in the Sky".
  • The BBC reviews Jonsi's new album, Go.  I like the intro:  "His voice remains one of modern music's most readily identifiable instruments".
  • Iggy Pop will no longer stage dive after the audience failed to catch him at New York's Carnegie Hall.
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Teenage Fanclub Returns with First Album in Five Years

I can't believe that this is my first Teenage Fanclub story I've ever written on Excellent Online!  I've loved them ever since their 1990 album, Bandwagonesque.  And their 13 album is one of my all-time favorites.  In the late nineties they left the shredding guitars and went with a more grown up sound and I didn't follow them.  But in retrospect I've come to appreciate their latter records (thanks pandora!), and am quite excited about their followup to 2005's Man-Made.  Their new record will be called Shadows and is out on Merge Records in June.  They also plan on touring the US in September.

WOXY Goes Off the Air

The hugly popular Internet indie radio station, WOXY.com, has gone off the air yesterday at 10 am EST.  They have run out of funding and it isn't the first time the station has been in trouble.  In 2004 the station had to shut down only to be revived by "anonymous investors".  It's a sad day but I can understand the problems.  There are just so many choices to listen to music online that it's very difficult to get an audience.  I rarely tuned into woxy.com since I had pandora, my ipod, or the ton of other shoutcast stations.  Right now I'm syncing up MP3's from my house using a dropbox folder.

Below is a short documentary on the station (via PopCandy):

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New Grandaddy/Earlimart Band, Admiral Radley at SXSW

We've previously talked about the new band Admiral Radley which has Jason Lytle (ex-Grandaddy) and member of Earlimart.  Over at npr.org you can check out a couple of tracks.  Since their first album isn't due out until the summer, it's really the only way to hear the band.