Iron & Wine, headed by Sam Beam, will drop by the Apple Store in Soho for a free set tonight, at 7 pm. It should be a lot more intimate than the band's sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday, but will likely be packed. The store has been handing out wristbands for guaranteed entry since yesterday - not sure if those are still available - but my suggestion is, arrive an hour early if you want a good shot of getting in.
The band's new album, Kiss Each Other Clean, came out this week, building on the full-band sound of 2007's Shepherd's Dog. It's been pretty well-received.
Check out a recent four-song live recording via NPR.
Add another eagerly awaited release to the 2011 list: Britain's Katy B will drop her first full-length, On A Mission, on March 28. It'll be 12 tracks, including previous singles "Katy On A Mission" and "Lights On," and judging from past work, she'll be incorporating elements of house, hip hop and (yes) dubstep.
Although she's been scorching the U.K. charts, Katy hasn't made an impact Stateside just yet, but judging from her fellow Brits Kate Nash and Lily Allen, she's poised to do just that. Now, we just need some local tour dates!
Preorder the album in three different ways at Rinse.fm. Video for the title track below.
Wild news tonight: All Tomorrow's Parties annual fall festival is moving from Kutshers in upstate New York to Asbury Park, N.J., and this year's show, dubbed "I'll Be Your Mirror," will feature Portishead and Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel. That's Portishead's first show in the East Coast since 1998, which was, coincidentally the same year that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was released. Portishead is also curating some ATP shows over the summer, and expected to be in the States around this time.
The change in venue was due to the deteriorating condition of Kutshers, and also the opportunity to sell more tickets in Asbury Park, the Timesreports. Speaking of tickets, a three-day pass is $249, a ticket for Friday is $60, and tickets for Saturday and Sunday are $99. Only a three-day pass will let you catch Magnum on Friday, but you can also seem him on Oct. 3 for $35, which seems fair. Cults, the Album Leaf, Chavez and Shellac are also booked for the event, and another couple dozen will be announced soon.
Tickets go on sale on Friday at 9 am.
Portishead could potentially be playing some one-off shows in the city as well, but we'll have to see. Either way, pretty sweet.
Last Wednesday, I managed to catch Toro Y Moi at Mercury Lounge, which was even cozier than usually. The venue was packed stage-to-door by the time Toro's early set came around, bobbing to the woozy beats. Singer Chaz Budnick exemplified the laidback nature of his South Carolina roots, cooing into the mic and murmuring words of thanks in between songs. And although nominally a one-man band, Toro Y Moi live is definitely enhanced by Budnick's bandmates (including, it should be said, my friend Andy on drums), pushing the sound into that of a full-formed quartet, rather than the shy bedroom producer. It was a nice, if temporary, antidote for the miserable, frosty weather.
Last week, the Timesreported that Warner Music Group was, as expected, pursuing a bid for EMI, reaching out to the troubled label's debt holder Citigroup. But what was surprising was that Warner had also hired Goldman Sachs to seek potential buyers for itself, a strange "double or nothing" strategy. It appears that Warner's investors, who bought the company from the huge Time Warner conglomerate in 2004, are becoming impatient. They either want the label to expand, likely targeting EMI's lucrative publishing arm, or they want to dump the investment.
On Friday, the Timesreported that the other two majors, Sony and Universal, are in a dance of their own. Universal hired Larry Jackson, who will join the Interscope Geffen imprints, after Jackson left Sony last October. At the same time, Universal cut 60 lower-level employees, citing the economy.
In other Sony news, Bloomberg reports that the label will begin rolling out the U.S. version of its Music Unlimited service, seen as an iTunes alternative that will allow the majors to gain a greater share of the profits. The move is compared to the successful video distributor Vevo, which runs off advertising, but Music Unlimited will have a subscription model, rather than advertising. “Free doesn’t make any money,” Sony executive Thomas Hesse tells Bloomberg.
He's wrong. The Vevo model works because it relies on attracting eyeballs, rather than wallets, giving viewers the minor inconvenience of sitting through ads for a relatively painless viewing experience. (Vevo is also pretty integrated with YouTube, a huge traffic booster.) But a product like Music Unlimited has to compete with rampant piracy, and charging a subscription is a big hindrance. If the majors instead explored an ad-driven, streaming service, similar to the television networks and Hulu, they would have a much better chance of reaping a profit. But they're pretty stuck in their ways, and no amount of personnel or branding changes is likely to change that.
In 2007, Chromatics released Night Drive, an evocative, nocturnal trip that was one of the most striking releases of the year. They visited New York a few times since then, but I never managed to catch them until recently, when they played the weekly Girls & Boys party at Webster Hall. Generally, it's a scene and venue I try to avoid - although Webster used to be a solid venue for relatively large indie bands, Terminal 5 has since supplanted it (unfortunately), and I hadn't been there for ages, generally opting for the more intimate venues.
But the night's lineup, which included Chromatics' Italians Do It Better labelmates Desire and Glass Candy, was pretty irresistible. They all follow the same general template of cooing female vocals, and each band has electronic maestro Johnny Jewel on the machines, making for a pretty consistent bass throb throughout the night. Italians' Mike Simonetti added in a diverse, thumping DJ set in between the bands, which was much appreciated.
Desire started off slow, but quickly hit a midtempo sway, and judging by the cheers, it was a sweet spot. Chromatics built on the vibe with a string of signature tracks: "In The City," "Night Drive," "I Want Your Love," and their heartbreaking cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," along with some new ones, suggesting that a new album is imminent. Ruth Radelet's voice was spectacular, and she even picked up the guitar. Can't ask for much more than that.
And then it was Glass Candy, which I only knew through the Balearic "Rolling Down The Hills" and a cover of Kraftwerk's "Computer Love," both from the great After Dark compilation. Thus, I wasn't really prepared for the balloon explosion that accompanied singer Ida No's very active performance. I couldn't help but think that it was more about spectacle, rather than sound, but it was pretty entertaining. See for yourself below:
This looks fun! Ghostly shapeshifter Matthew Dear will be DJing a free dance party tonight, in another bash from the folks at Beyond Booking. The venue's at 345 Grand Street, just off the Metropolitan Ave stop on the G, also known as the Lorimer stop on the L. The promoters also promise that the dance floor will light up.
Coachella just announced its 2011 lineup, and there are the obligatory big names, but it's the smaller ones that really excite me. As it's such a massive festival, you can pretty much take a bucket and dip it into the current pond of indie bands and come up with a pretty good idea of who's playing, as the fake posters indicate.
Still, some cool stuff here. A Death From Above 1979 reunion is completely unexpected and awesome, and I'm crossing my fingers that they'll make there way to New York. Also, it's wild to see Mumford & Sons up there with Bright Eyes and Animal Collective - I should check them out at some point. The rest of the top half of the bill is solid, but nothing too jaw-dropping for me.
So on to the gems! The band that would most compel me to fly to Coachella would be Glasser. Through Philip Sherburne, I fell in love with the gorgeous voice of Cameron Mesirow, and if I had to redo my 2010 list, she could very well top it. I'm seriously kicking myself right now that I missed Glasser's gig last summer at Glasslands (what an appropriate venue!), and despaired that the band was only during European dates for the rest of winter.
This is my favorite song of the moment:
Other bands I'd like to see (and to this point haven't) include Phantogram, !!! and Klaxons. On the DJ front, I'd like to see the absurdly young Kyle Hall, Cocoon Recordings boss Sven Väth, dynamic duo Duck Sauce and moody, atmospheric Trentemøller.
But this is all pretty hypothetical - it's highly unlikely I'll actually make it this year, and pretty much all bands have or will make it to the city. I would, however, love to attend SXSW and find out if you really can do it without a badge, if anyone's road tripping to Austin from New York.
Oh, and one thing that intrigues me is the Creators Project partnership noted at the bottom of the page. It really demonstrates that Vice and Intel are committed to that brand, which is a good thing, and I'm curious what they'll add to Coachella. Update: Creators have outlined their plans on their site.
Let me know what artists excite you, and if there's anyone on that list that I overlooked.
In about an hour, at 9 p.m. EST, Broken Social Scene will play at Terminal 5. Instead of wading into the massive crowd there, you can stream the show at Bowery Presents' YouTube page.
Although their last effort, Forgiveness Rock Record, didn't grab me as hard as their previous albums, BSS live is quite a spectacle, and they're bound to be play some of thoseclassics.
Oh, and opener Here We Go Magic is pretty good, too.
Some really sad news last week: Trish Keenan, the beguiling voice behind the British band Broadcast, passed away due to complications from pneumonia. She was only 42.
While Broadcast was never my favorite band, they encapsulated one of my favorite styles: pretty indie pop, flecked with electronic textures. Keenan's voice was sublime, a melodic anchor even as the band branched out into increasingly avant garde styles.
I'll always regret never seeing them live, but their four-album legacy will always be memorable, with Keenan as its human core.
"Succumb to the line
The finishing time
The long distance runner
Has stopped on the corner
But I won't give up
Although I've stopped too"
Eight years, wow. I actually had no idea that techno mainstay the Bunker had been around that long, defying the tail end of Giuliani and becoming one of the last sanctuaries for fringe electronic music. According to its history, the party started out in subTonic, which was inevitably shut down, before springing for its current home at Public Assembly, formerly known as Galapagos. Serious props to the folks behind Bunker for continuing to book amazing DJs and for keeping it true to underground roots.
For the very special night, they enlisted Italy's Donato Dozzy to hold court in the back room and British duo Optimo to take over the front. There's a very particular vibe to these events: dense, dark rooms and, for the most part, completely unrecognizable music (someone did play "Rej" once, which was great). For me, it's more about general atmosphere, and on this night, it was really special. There's often a relentless minimalism, but instead, we were treated with melodic, relaxed beats, and even when things peaked, there was a lovely sort of restraint. It was definitely one of the best Bunkers that I've been to.
Check out RA for an illuminating feature on the dark wave of Italian producers following Dozzy, and more crowd shots at the official site. Rest of my photos after the jump.
A couple weeks ago, Anamanaguchi played to a feisty, sold-out crowd at the Knitting Factory. They've been called 8-bit and chiptune, a style marked by the bleeps and bloops of a Super Nintendo, and often dismissed as a novelty. But unlike the Dan Deacons and Crystal Castles of the world, 'guchi are grounded more in rockist melodies than (just) electro-induced seizures, using video game synth as the topping, rather than the meat, of their sound.
The brunt of their music is composed of the more standard guitar and drum (there's generally no singing, although they pulled off a walloping cover of M83's "Don't Save Us From The Flames"), forming a backbone for the electronic effects. While much of the show was at a frenetic, jump-in-place pace, things got pretty interesting when they slowed down. The highlight was a new song, "UNME," which built on a twinkling hook that morphed into a churning, almost housey blast. They're not quite shoegaze, but the sweeping ambition was a proud successor, and they seem like the perfect candidate for soundtracking the video game version of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Openers Lionshare were an absurd rap bunch, complete with nonsensical lyrics and meow samples. It was mildly entertaining, but not really my thing. Alas, the So So Glos went on early (apparently they had to be somewhere), and I missed them. Next time!
Head over to nyctaper for a full recording of the , and check out "UNME" below.
