Excellent Online

The National will be releasing their new album called, "High Violet" on May 11th.  From now until then you can hear the album in full over at the New York Times.  This is their follow up to the wonderful "Boxer" album and it's very highly anticipated.  I'm listening right now and it's sounding pretty good.

2010 will mark my 10th Coachella.  And this review will mark my 4th review (see 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006).  It's been interesting watching the festival "grow up" over the past 12 years, every year little things get better, but they always seem to screw one thing up.  Needless to say, this is the best Coachella I've ever been to, and yes, I say that every year.

Last year I didn't really do any research on the bands.  So I went in wanting to check out a few bands and the days felt empty.  I had a lot of free time to walk around in the burning heat and eventually left thinking that I would never come back.  This year I did my home work and wrote up a quick review of all the bands at coachella.  So I had a plan on who I wanted to see, I was in front of a stage for most of the festival which in turn allowed me to see about 40 bands in 3 days.  Read on for my review.

I'm heading out this weekend for the yearly Coachella festival and if the cell singnal is decent I'll be posting to our twitter feed.  Not because I'm a huge fan of twitter and I believe it's the future, but because I'm a big nerd and want to see if it'll work.  So if you're bored this weekend, check out our feed for regular and (hopefully) interesting updates.

Wow.  First it took a day or two to get over Ajay giving Little Boots an F in his Coachella pre-review below (*the opinions of site administrators are NOT necessarily the opinions of Excellent Online, Inc. or it's other Little-Boots-loving administrator.  And while we're at it, a C- for Yeasayer? Come ON, man! Hehe!)

But just as THAT shock faded comes news that beloved Britpop stalwarts SUPERGRASS are calling it a day following their current European tour.  Like the swallows to Capistrano, every year brought the expectations of a blindingly good Supergrass record, and their presence on every year's Upcoming Releases list will sorely be missed.

No future plans from any members announced yet, though I'd expect none of them are too eager to cash in a retirement check from the music biz just yet...   

Coachella is a mere 4 days away and I decided to do my homework this year and listen to at least one track by every band that's playing.  Below you will find my one-line review of every single artist plus my rating on an A-F scale.  A means I'm going to see them, F means that I hate them with a passion.  Naturally, most fall in the D and C category.  I've been to many Coachella's and this is the first time I've done this and I found some great gems that I probably would've otherwise overlooked.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.