This month, the band will play shows up and down North America's West Coast and in Europe, and we've got their dates below.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart:

11-04 Vancouver, British Columbia - The Media Club +
11-05 Seattle, WA - The Vera Project +
11-06 Portland, OR - Holocene +!
11-07 Eugene, OR - McDonald Theatre +*
11-09 San Francisco, CA - The Independent +
11-10 Santa Barbara, CA - SoHo +
11-11 La Jolla, CA - The Loft UCSD +
11-12 Los Angeles, CA - Echoplex +%
11-14 Pomona, CA - The Glasshouse *
11-16 Lisbon, Portugal - Lux Club
11-18 Santiago, Spain - Sala Capitol
11-19 Toledo, Spain - Circulo de Arte
11-20 Murcia, Spain - Garaje de la Tia Maria
11-21 San Sebastian, Spain - Gazteszena
11-22 Paris, France - Glazart
11-23 Milan, Italy - Tunnel
11-24 Rome, Italy - Circolo Degli Artisti
11-25 Bologna, Italy - Covo Club
11-27 Munich, Germany - Backstage Halle
11-28 Cologne, Germany - Luxor
11-29 Berlin, Germany - Lido
11-30 Hamburg, Germany - Gruenspan
12-02 London, England - 229 ^

! with Glasser
+ with Weekend
% with Sonny and the Sunsets
* with Stars
^ with 14 Iced Bears, the Zebras

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 12:40 p.m.

Tags: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Audio, New Releases,

Interpol:

11-03 Washington, DC - Constitution Hall ^
11-04 Philadelphia, PA - Tower Theatre ^
11-05 New York, NY - United Palace Theatre ^
11-12 Lisbon, Portugal - Campo Pequeno
11-13 Madrid, Spain - Palacio Vistalegre
11-14 Barcelona, Spain - San Jordi Club
11-16 Marseille, France - Dock Du Sud
11-17 Milan, Italy - Palasharp
11-18 Vienna, Austria - Gasometer
11-20 Berlin, Germany - Tempodrom
11-21 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Heineken Music Hall
11-22 Dortmund, Germany - Westfalenhalle 2
11-24 Nottingham, England - Rock City
11-25 Newcastle, England - O2 Academy
11-26 Birmingham, England - O2 Academy
11-27 Edinburgh, Scotland - Corn Exchange
11-29-12-01 Dublin, Ireland - Olympia
12-03 Manchester, England - Apollo
12-04 Liverpool, England - Liverpool University
12-06-07 London, England - O2 Academy Brixton
12-30 Lorne, Australia - Falls Festival
12-31 Marion Bay, Tasmania - Falls Festival
01-01 Busselton, Australia - Southbound Festival
01-04 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre
01-05 Brisbane, Australia - Sunset Sounds
01-07 Melbourne, Australia - Palace Theatre
01-27 Vancouver, British Columbia - Orpheum
01-28 Seattle, WA - Showbox Sodo
01-29 Portland, OR - Roseland Theatre
01-31 San Francisco, CA - Warfield Theatre
02-02 La Jolla, CA - RIMAC Arena
02-04 Santa Barbara, CA - UCSB Events Center
02-07 Salt Lake City, UT - The Venue
02-08 Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater
02-12 Chicago, IL - Riviera Theatre
02-15 Toronto, Ontario - Sound Academy
02-16 Montreal, Quebec - Metropolis
02-17 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall
02-19 Boston, MA - House of Blues
03-03 Hamburg, Germany - Docks
03-06 Oslo, Norway - Sentrum Scene
03-07 Stockholm, Sweden - Cirkus
03-08 Copenhagen, Denmark - KB Hall
03-10 Leipzig, Germany - Haus Auensee
03-11 Luxembourg, Luxembourg - Rokhall
03-12 Munich, Germany - Kesselhaus
03-14 Zurich, Switzerland - Komplex
03-15 Paris, France - Zenith
03-16 Antwerp, Belgium - Lotto Arena
07-05 Chicago, IL - Soldier Field *
07-08 Montreal, Quebec - Montreal Hippodrome *
07-09 Montreal, Quebec - Montreal Hippodrome *
07-11 Toronto, Ontario - Rogers Centre *
07-14 Philadelphia, PA - Lincoln Financial Field *
07-17 St. Louis, MO - Busch Stadium *
07-20 East Rutherford, NJ - New Meadowlands Stadium *
07-23 Minneapolis, MN - TCF Bank Stadium *
07-26 Pittsburgh, PA - Heinz Field *

^ with White Rabbits
* with U2

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 12:15 p.m.

Tags: Interpol, Tours,

And, while we're talking "It Takes a Muscle", do yourself a favor and watch this Spectral Display video from 1982, too.

M.I.A.: "It Takes a Muscle" [ft. the Specials]

Posted by Ryan Dombal on November 3, 2010 at 11:40 a.m.

Tags: M.I.A., the Specials, Video,

Kevin explained the idea behind the creepily sexual vid to Spin as such: "It's the story of a man living in a feminine empire. As a male, he is considered lower class. He is expected to abstain from any social interaction with members of the ruling class, and provide sperm for breeding rituals. Each household is provided by the State with one male, the housemale is not permitted to leave the grounds. The housemale must live in the estate he is assigned to until death or sexual impotence." OK!

In addition, the band's currently holding a remix contest for "Famine Affair", where fans can submit their own takes on the tune for a chance to win $500 and of Montreal's entire digital discography. Peep the full details for the contest here.

Posted by Larry Fitzmaurice on November 3, 2010 at 11:25 a.m.

Tags: Video, of Montreal,

As L.A. Weekly reports, Cosentino's experience with Cuomo sounds a lot like the experience her tourmates Male Bonding had with the man. The opportunity dropped out of the blue, and the two wrote and recorded the song together in one day. Cosentino, a huge Weezer fan, doesn't know where the song will appear, if anywhere.

Cosentino tells L.A. Weekly, "Honestly, I went in, recorded a song with him in one day and it was one of the most... for something that I got so stressed out and anxious about, it ended up being so natural, and it happened, and the song is really great... We wrote it together, and he recently sent me a version he's been working on, and I'm really happy with it and to be able to hear it. It's a duet, it's him and I singing together, and to hear his voice and my voice on the same song makes my inner 13-year-old so excited [laughs]."

In other Best Coast news, Cosentino recently posted a heartfelt note on her blog, addressing the problem of bullying: "Words hurt. No matter where they come from. Please next time you say something hurtful about someone, consider how you would feel if the same things were said about you. I understand that negative criticism is a part of my job, but honestly sometimes I can not comprehend how cruel and immature people can be."

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 11:10 a.m.

Tags: Best Coast, Rivers Cuomo, Weezer, Collaboration,

Bush went on, "He called me a racist. And I didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now. It's one thing to say, 'I don't appreciate the way he's handled his business.' It's another thing to say, 'This man's a racist.' I resent it, it's not true."

The interview was to promote Bush's new book, Decision Points. Lauer read aloud a piece of the book, in which Bush calls the moment "an all-time low" and pointed out another in which Bush tells his wife that it was the worst moment of his presidency. Bush writes, "I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low."

Bush told Lauer, "Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt 'em when I heard 'em, felt 'em when I wrote 'em, and I felt 'em when I'm listening to 'em."

EW also quotes the following exchange:

Lauer: "I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you've written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this--"

Bush [interrupting]: "Don't care."

Lauer: "Well, here's the reason. You're not saying that the worst moment in your presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You're saying it was when someone insulted you because of that."

Bush: "No, and I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple."

The interview will air in the prime time special "Matt Lauer Reports" on NBC November 8.

Meanwhile, five years later, Kanye doesn't appear to be taking the moment as seriously as Bush still does. Kanye spent election night on the New York rap radio station Hot 97 with DJ Funkmaster Flex. As The New York Times reports, Kanye said during one part of the interview that his interruption of Taylor Swift's VMA acceptance speech had eclipsed his attack on Bush: "[The Taylor Swift moment is] an amazing, compelling situation. The situation is bigger to me than the Bush moment. It's bigger than a lot of things." (Taylor Swift's career certainly doesn't appear to be suffering.) Kanye also freestyled with Clipse member Pusha T; hear the freestyle and several interview segments at Nah Right.

Meanwhile, Clinton made his statements about Lil Wayne on a Pittsburgh radio station morning-zoo show yesterday morning, as AllHipHop reports. The DJs asked Clinton how he felt about Lil Wayne's impending release from prison, scheduled for tomorrow. Clinton's awesome response:

"I know this is kind of a funny question for you to ask me. But my daughter introduced me to rap and hip-hop music after I said some things that she thought were not very smart. She said, 'Dad, you need to listen. A lot of these guys are smart.' This guy's smart, and he's got ability. And he's got a new chance now. And what I hope is that this is not just something to brand him as a cool guy but that it'll never happen again to him. I think a lot of these people, they don't get successful in that-- just like any other area of life-- by being dumb. They're really smart. But a lot of them have tough lives, and they almost think it's cool to get in trouble every now and then, or they don't know how to stay out. What I hope will happen is that he has a good life now."

Then the DJ says some dumb shit about the McRib sandwich. Hear Clinton's Wayne answer below, via Vulture.

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 10:35 a.m.

Tags: Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Politics, Video, OMG, Pusha T,

Next spring, Ladytron will celebrate their 10th anniversary as a band by releasing a best-of album on Nettwerk. They're also at work right now on another studio album, and band members Mira Aroyo and Reuben Wu are planning a quick DJ tour across North America over the next two weeks. Dates below.

Ladytron (DJ sets):

11-03 Toronto, Ontario - Cobra
11-05 Miami, FL - Vagabond
11-06 St. Louis, MO - Sol
11-07 New York, NY - Standard Hotel
11-09 Salt Lake City, UT - Bar Deluxe
11-10 Mexico City, Mexico - Centro Gallego
11-11 Queretaro, Mexico - Sein Club
11-12 Kansas City, MO - Luna
11-13 Montreal, Quebec - Rialto Theatre

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 9 a.m.

Tags: Ladytron, Audio, New Releases, Tours,

Pitchfork: On Spiral Shadow, you guys are working with a much more melodically centered sound than you've done in the past.

Phillip Cope: It's weird because we didn't go in, necessarily, thinking, "Hey, let's get more melodic." It just kind of happened. I don't know why that is, but it did.

Pitchfork: Were you listening to different music or anything like that?

PC: Well, we've always listened to lots of different kinds of music. Taking some different influences in this time-- it definitely happened. I think maybe it's just trying some new things out.

Pitchfork: What influences made their way in?

PC: Definitely the 90s alternative-type stuff. In the last year, I have gone back and listened to a lot of that stuff. I liked a lot of it when I was younger, and it seemed like a lot of people around me were listening to a lot of that stuff as well. So that definitely had a little bit of influence, but I think that's really on a few songs, not necessarily the whole album. The most noticeable one would probably be Pixies, and we've had a lot of people notice it on the song "Don't Look Back". When we were writing that song, it wasn't necessarily the intention to do that, but as it was coming out, we were noticing that it was sounding like that. So we just went with it.

Pitchfork: "Don't Look Back" is my favorite song on the album. It just sounds huge. It's got the biggest chorus of anything you guys have ever done. Does that song stand out to you?

PC: Yeah, it was the scariest one to do. As I was writing it, we were all working on it, and there was definitely the question: "Are we going too far with this? Is this getting too far away from what we do?" We just decided that we just needed to see the whole idea out and just go for it and not worry about it. I'm really happy with the way it came out, now that I can get away from it.

Pitchfork: Are you worried about alienating older listeners?

PC: No, because I don't think it's that different. It's not like we did a whole album of that. There's lot of different ideas going on throughout the album. Also within that album, there's ideas that have been brought back from every other album we've ever done. We really, really appreciate our fans and everybody that supported us, and the last thing we'd ever want to do is alienate them. So we definitely keep that in mind. But at the same time, we have to go with what's coming out of us and feeling natural to us. It wouldn't make sense for us to keep trying to do something if that's not exactly what we're feeling. So I'm not too worried about it; I think it'll be all right.

Pitchfork: You produced the record as well, just as you did with Static Tensions.

PC: Yeah, I did. But that being said, I didn't do a lot of the engineering on it. We had three different engineers, the same people on both records. I brought them back from Static Tensions because I really liked how it all worked out. I more or less was the director of it, because we were running two studios with a couple of engineers working at the same time almost all the time. It was a lot to keep track of, making sure everything was getting done in the way that we wanted it to. But I didn't want to bog myself down with too much to do.

Pitchfork: The two records sound very different. On Static Tensions, the drums were higher in the mix and everything punched harder. But Spiral Shadow is thicker and murkier.

PC: Before we went in, I listened to Static Tensions a lot, and people really responded to the headphone mix and the drums on that album. [The two drummers are split between the two speaker channels, creating a disorienting and immersive effect.-- Ed.] As I was listening to it, I thought it all sounded too much the same all the way through. Going into this one, I wanted to not just have the drums pan that way but to have everything do that. We decided we really wanted to make a good headphone record, something that has lots of parts weaving in and out and gives you a totally different experience when you hear it that way. That was the biggest difference in production. We wanted to give each song its own vibe, but the trick was making sure all of those vibes fit together smoothly.

Pitchfork: I thought Static Tensions was a great driving-fast-when-you're-kind-of-pissed-off kind of record. But you can play this one in the background while you read a book. You guys haven't done a record like that before, and metal in general seems to rarely produce records like that.

PC: This album had an overall theme that was definitely different than Static Tensions. Static Tensions had a more... I don't know if aggressive vibe is the right term for it, but it was a bit angrier. This one was a bit more introspective. The theme of this was distance and different kinds of it. Now that we're approaching 10 years as a band, there's a lot of stuff we've been through, and it was just a more introspective record. It's still dark, and there are still some pretty brutal things we've been through and we're getting off our chest, but also there are some more positive vibes to it. The overall production needed to be different.

Pitchfork: When you say "distance," how do you think that manifests itself?

PC: Every song is lyrically based on some definition of that word-- whether its the distance you've traveled or distancing yourself from something else. It just goes on and on. The song that you mentioned earlier, "Don't Look Back", lyrically, that was looking back on your life, and some of that can bring some unsettling feelings. Sometimes, it's better not to look back; it's better just to keep moving and say "fuck it."

Pitchfork: The way that Static Tensions was mixed, you really felt the two drummers keeping you off balance. This one, they blend with each other more. It doesn't sound exactly like one drummer, but they mesh together into this sort of tribal thing.

PC: When people listen to it, we don't want the focus to necessarily always be on the drums. The focus needs to be in different areas at different times. Even though we have two drummers, it doesn't mean that we should be throwing that in people's faces all the time, just to prove that we have two drummers or to prove that you have to do something with it because you have it. When we want it and it needs to be there for the song, it's there. If something else should take the focal point, whether it be guitars or vocals, it does. We have keyboard now too, with Corey [Barhorst] doing keyboards and bass. It just needs to be varied. It doesn't need to be the same through the whole album.

Pitchfork: That idea of serving the song, rather than the players, seems to be a thread with you. You don't play a lot of solos or anything like that.

PC: Nope. This was actually the first album that I put some solos on in a while, and I only did a couple. I just wanted to play some solos, and I felt that it fit. Listening back to some of the songs, I felt that there's spots that I could add something that would work for the song, so I did.

Pitchfork: Right now, there's a wave of bands from Georgia and the surrounding area that seem to share some connective threads-- Mastodon, Baroness, Black Tusk, you guys. What do you attribute that to?

PC: Well, it's a little different for me. Between Damad, the band I was in before, and Kylesa, I've been doing this for close to 17 years. There was a period of time when I was doing more psychedelic-influenced heavy music where there weren't other people around. Mastodon wasn't even around yet. I worked with most of those bands when they were coming up. Baroness and Black Tusk-- I produced their earlier records, basically just because they asked. As it's gone on, everybody's put their own thing to it, and it's gotten to the point now where everyone's so busy that I hardly ever see anybody. It's cool; I'm glad everybody's doing well. The big thing I can attribute to it is just the work ethic. I mean, everybody around here just has a really huge work ethic. Whether it's Savannah, Atlanta, or Athens, I think all the bands really work hard. And that's the example that's been set-- that you just have to, no matter what. And if you do, people will notice.

Pitchfork: Well, you're putting out another album only about a year and a half after the last one.

PC: Yeah, that really was just us being inspired. We were on the road for a year, and we could've kept working off of Static Tensions and using that to keep moving forward, but we didn't want to. We were inspired to write, and we'd been thinking about writing a lot. We had a lot of ideas that had developed by being on the road for so long. So we just jumped on it while we were inspired.

Pitchfork: You guys are  touring with High on Fire and Torche, and you've been on a lot of big tours with a lot of other big bands. Is there a sense of competition? Or do you get nervous about it?

PC: We don't get nervous. And the competition is more realizing that you are playing with really good bands. If you aren't playing at your best, it will be noticed because the other bands will. In that sense, I think it works out for the audience because they're going to see bands giving it their best. When you're playing with bands of that caliber, there's not room for slacking.

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 3, 2010 at 8 a.m.

Tags: Kylesa, Audio, Interviews,

The Journal-Constitution reports that Arresting officers had to use pepper spray on the rapper, whose real name is Radric Davis. Davis last got out of prison in May, after serving about six months for violating his parole. According to the Journal-Constitution, Gucci has been to Fulton County Jail at least five times since 2005, for a variety of charges. Over the past two years, he's done two lengthy prison bids and still managed to crank out a steady stream of mixtapes and two studio albums.

In other Atlanta rap legal news, The New York Times reports that fellow local star T.I. reported to an Arkansas federal prison yesterday to begin serving his own 11-month parole violation sentence.

Posted by Tom Breihan on November 2, 2010 at 6:20 p.m.

Tags: Gucci Mane, T.I., Legal,