Destroyer, Black Mountain Play Scratch Records Parties
Also: Pink Mountaintops

Vancouver record store-turned-distro-and-label Scratch Records celebrates its 20th year of existing this year. Man, 1987... can you imagine a record store without any Pavement albums because Pavement albums did not exist yet?!!

Scratch's label arm has put out records by quite a few fine bands during that time, and to celebrate the two-decade milestone, several of them will perform at a series of shows going on in Vancouver this weekend and next.

Destroyer, Black Mountain, and Pink Mountaintops are among the parties' performers, who include not only artists with releases on the label but acts featuring current Scratch employees.

The first party is tomorrow, November 3, at Richard's on Richards, headlined by Black Mountain. The lineups for all three are right after the jump. [MORE...]

Oldham, Sweeney, W.K. on Baby Dee's Drag City Debut
Also: members of Current 93, Chavez, Antony and the Johnsons, Psychic TV

Stream: Baby Dee: Various Tracks

YACHT, Islands, Elverum Bring Noodles to NYC

Now that you've had a little time to digest Worried Noodles-- the star-studded musical extrapolation of the words of artist David Shrigley which finally made its way to disc late last month from Tomlab-- you may be wondering where the unique project could be heading next. One hopes you've saved a little room for another course or two, as a pair of live Worried Noodles performances will be taking place over the next few weeks.

On December 5, Islands ("special pared down line-up"), YACHT, Phil Elverum of the Microphones/Mt. Eerie and Nick Krgovich (P:ano, No Kids), Tussle, R. Stevie Moore and Roger Ferguson, Christopher Francis, Tomlab DJs, and some super-secret special guests will take the stage of New York City's Knitting Factory. They'll perform strands from Noodles and regular sets as well. Shrigley himself will be in attendance at the gig, and proceeds from the show will go to Amnesty International.

It's going down this Saturday in Berlin, too, with Dirty Projectors, YACHT, Scarlet's Well, and a DJ set from Psapp celebrating Worried Noodles at Festsaal Kreuzberg. The event also benefits Amnesty International.

All of this follows on the heels of an October 14 show in London that featured Hot Chip, Max Tundra, and more.

Stream: Grizzly Bear: Blackcurrant Jam [from the Worried Noodles LP]

Sonic Youth, Low Play Don't Look Back Down Under

Bright Eyes Guys Help Lightspeed Champ Cross Bridge

Video: Lightspeed Champion: Galaxy of the Lost [from the Galaxy of the Lost single]

Thao Nguyen Signs to Kill Rock Stars for Second LP

Photo by Cascade Wilhelm

MP3: Thao Nguyen: Feet Asleep [from the The Sound the Hare Heard compilation]

Photos: World Premiere of Sufjan Stevens' "BQE" [Brooklyn, NY; 11/01/07]

Photos by Kathryn Yu, words by Daphne Carr

Constructed between 1937-1964 as part of infamous city planner Robert Moses's master vision for New York City's social reality, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway rose as 11.6 miles of neighborhood-severing, money-eating, limited-access overhead highway grimness. The book about Moses's modernist cruelty and obsession with cars over human needs is called The Power Broker, a relentless, detailed portrait of one man's egomania in urban planning.

Which is part of the reason why, when Sufjan Stevens said he had written a symphony about the BQE, people got so excited. Maybe Stevens would, through the power of art, convey this bleak inter-borough piece of citywide dismay as something majestic, the way he had transformed Detroit or Decatur.

Known for his chamber-pop miniatures about humble white working-poor life, Stevens has become indie's populist orchestrator. But he's also enough of a fool to try his hand at large-scale composition, having boasted of writing 50 albums extolling the dignity of local culture. Fans who celebrate his outsider ("indie") ambitions to excel in academic forms clap for his being at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave festival regardless. Given classical's lust for young flesh and filled seats, the crossover of Stevens' rapt fan base into three nights of sold-out crowds already deems the event a success.

So how to judge such a thing?

Let's start with the music. The music was not a symphony in either the Classical or Romantic version-- let's call it a suite, an ordered set of instrumental pieces meant to be played together. Like Stevens' arrangements for his smaller tunes, these seven pieces were built with modular movements of melody and rhythm connected by fanciful scalar runs, mostly in the woodwinds. They were like minimalism, but not as subtle (not even as "subtle" as Philip Glass, his nearest comparison). Stevens has not yet learned that classical musicians cannot follow the energy of the piece to their own ends, but instead need expressive markings-- louds and softs, keys to accent, and phrasing that shapes each line in the texture of the piece. Because of this, the ensemble was static, unnuanced, and, in full-on mode, painfully loud.

Stevens has a gift for interlocking compound rhythms that sound joyously simple, and the movement from these grooves into other sections was full of playful writing that showed promise. Unfortunately, his sprightly rhythms were often articulated by an over-mic'ed trap kit, and thus rendered "rock musical," helped by occasional wails of guitar that reminded me of the scene in The Crow where Brandon Lee solos his Fender on the roof.

Stevens introduced tenderness through the sonic and visual metaphor of the circle. (See his musings on the hula hoop here.) Feminine, repeating, mystical-- the musical circle in "The BQE" also implied melody's constant return and rhythm's constant motion, at the sacrifice of Stevens's other gift: moments of free-flowing tenderness.

The orchestra's t-shirt logo was a stylized hubcap, a circle of unrepentant modernist motion fetish and part of a growing Matthew Barney-esque homemade masculine mythology system. Stevens did look pretty buff in his extremely tight white pants and matching black hubcap shirt. He sat at the grand piano, turned to the childlike celesta for color, and nodded to the conductor occasionally. He looked stressed out.

But we weren't supposed to be looking at him. A three-channel video screen split the stage in two, showing 8mm movies of the BQE and surrounding neighborhoods. Like minimalist artists, Stevens played with repetition. Deceptively close shots of windows and highways panned out to reveal their places, long glances at skyline and bridges messed into one of two central visual systems in play: kaleidoscope point repetition or mirrored symmetry. People were scarce and cameras lingered on "ugly" intersections, vernacular street elements, and the occasionally half-hearted whimsy of a giant inflatable gorilla.

The visuals were interwoven with still and film shots of hula hooping women-- those feminine circles again, mixed with mid-50s nostalgia-- in body-hugging raver costumes. They came out several times, accompanied by two male hula hoopers, to dance, hoop and toss in time to the music, first in slow, ballet-like daylight scenes, and then later in glowing nightclub abandon. The several minute-long uses of strobe on their lithe forms went from poetic to circus-like pretty quickly. Très "new music" spectacle.

When it was all over, Stevens got a standing ovation. He came out hula hooping and made a joke about the audience's civic pride in looking at the grand project of the expressway. It revealed either discomfort in the reach of his metaphor, his choice of subject, or his attempt in general. Yes, yes, yes, he did fail to find something more human, redeeming, or majestic in that pile of overhead concrete that socially divides his home place. Insteady, he visually fetishized its nude ugliness and the noble poverty of its surroundings, and sonically rendered its nearly unquestioned modernist motion metaphor.

The only moments of discord were mere traffic woe, not the larger psychic wounds of the road's construction or the crush of oil-dependent vehicles on it. It was as if Stevens had not attended to many of the messes his sounds and visions were making, their ignorances and inconsistencies. It's a lot to ask of a newcomer, but not too much. He joked that it took him "the length of a pregnancy" to put "The BQE" together-- it took Moses longer and it wasn't all right either.

For the second half of the performance, the orchestra stayed, Stevens' band kicked in, and he played songs from his albums. Starting with "Seven Swans", the set juxtaposed Stevens and his instrument (banjo, piano) against the full force of all the instruments. It was crashing, banging, big-budget cinematic Romanticism, like gut-wrenchingly melodramatic John Williams or frivolously busy Danny Elfman. The intimate moments were best, when My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden harmonized with Stevens' falsetto while a sax scrunched or when, on "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," the ensemble sat out and he played piano with spare acoustic guitar accompaniment.

Pathos was lacking almost everywhere else. When, in the final cadences of the show, Stevens kicked back his piano stool while banging out two hands of block chords, I felt like I was watching indie's own Franz Liszt-- a Romantic virtuous showboater treating formerly human-scale vernacular melodies with egregious pompousness. When Stevens-- called "boy wonder" or "wunderkind" by the press in spite of his man age of 32-- came out to speak, he did his best return to sheepish "gee whiz" indie guy by thanking "my friends, my band," and then with that Mephisto smile, "... my orchestra." [MORE...]

Dominik Eulberg to Issue Bionik in December

Video: Dominik Eulberg: Live

Dirty on Purpose Decide They Like Bees on New EP

No, silly: Like Bees is the next EP from the shoe-glancers of Dirty on Purpose. Like Bees manages to pack in four originals, a cover of Aussie new-wavers Real Life's "Send Me an Angel", and guest appearances from the Jealous Girlfriends' Holly Miranda and New York folkie Jaymay.

You can net Like Bees when it emerges January 15 on North Street Records.

Having recently wrapped a spate of shows with those Fujiya & Miyagi gents, the Dirty dudes have but one gig to their names at the moment. It's not one to be slept on, however: Tomorrow, November 3, they play an all-night "Takeover" party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (post-Sufjan) along with Be Your Own Pet, Antibalas, Heartless Bastards, and the Exit.

Once rested up, the band plans to record some new tunes (four, apparently) to be released through RCRD LBL next year. [MORE...]

Video: Dirty on Purpose: Car No Driver [from the Hallelujah Sirens LP]
Stream: Dirty on Purpose: Like Bees / Audience in the Room / Send Me an Angel [from the forthcoming Like Bees EP]

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks Name New Album
Also diss Stockton California

So that Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album that's coming out in March on Matador now has a title. And it is...drumroll please...

Real Emotional Trash

That's got a nice ring to it.

Looks like they're going to tour the United States in the spring, and then Europe and Asia. Right now, they've only got two shows scheduled: December 19 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and on December 21 at the Doug Fir in Portland, Oregon. Both shows feature Blitzen Trapper opening.

All of this was posted yesterday on the band's website, along with a strange rant against the city of Stockton, California that involves Todd Haynes' new Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There. (As you know, Malkmus contributed to that movie's soundtrack.)

* (FYI, Matador Records hasn't confirmed any of this information yet, so don't be too surprised if the album title changes.)

UPDATE: It's confirmed!

Full rant below. And thanks to Colin Loustalot for noticing it! [MORE...]

Stream: Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers: Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan cover) [from the I'm Not There soundtrack]

Photos: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists / The Pogues [Los Angeles, CA; 10/31/07]

Photos by Akmal Naim

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists joined their spiritual brethren the Pogues on Wednesday night for a Halloween show at Los Angeles' Wiltern. Shane McGowan, reunited with his classic crew, assumed the guise of a mariachi band in celebration of the holiday, while Leo and the boys dressed up as, um, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Great costume, guys!

More photos and tour dates below.

TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS






THE POGUES



[MORE...]

Everything You Wanted to Know About Sufjan's "BQE"
Sort of

Right at this very moment, an opera house full of some very lucky New Yorkers is taking in the premiere of Sufjan Stevens' orchestral piece "The BQE" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The rest of us are patiently waiting to find out what the hell "The BQE" actually is.

Lucky for us, the Asthmatic Kitty website posted today a tractor-trailer-load of information about the piece.

Want a brief overview of Sufjan's fascination with the hippest highway in indie rock? Go here. How about Sufjan's thoughts on how the hula hoop is related to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway? There ya go. Or a list of things Sufjan and the NYPD found on the side of the road? (Choice quote: "4. Your cane. Why walk, when you can drive the BQE!") The official bird of the BQE? The House Sparrow, of course.

What about, you know, the actual music thing? Oh, that. Here's a list of everybody who's performing with Sufjan. Looks like My Brightest Diamond, Marla Hansen, and members of Crystal Skulls, Clare & the Reasons, Antony's Johnsons, and many, many more.

So what did we learn here? Well, Sufjan is a very good writer. And a funny guy! Also, we should all move to Brooklyn.

Video: Sufjan Stevens: The BQE (excerpt live on WNYC)

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)