Yoko Ono, Califone, Sea & Cake Join Pitchfork Fest
Plus: Twilight Sad, Nomo, Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra

Another week, another round of Pitchfork Music Festival madness! Today, we're ecstatic to announce that Yoko Ono, Califone, the Sea and Cake, the Twilight Sad, Nomo, and Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra have joined the already impressive lineup for this year's fest, going down July 13-15 at Chicago's Union Park.

Visionary music-maker Ono, perennial favorites Califone, and Scottish upstarts the Twilight Sad will now perform Saturday alongside Cat Power, Clipse, Iron and Wine, and more, while indie rock institution the Sea and Cake, Michigan Afrobeat party-starters Nomo, and experimental jazz/noise ensemble Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra beef up a Sunday roster that already includes the New Pornographers, De La Soul, and Stephen Malkmus, among others.

And let's not forget Friday's festival opening event, held in conjunction with All Tomorrow's Parties' Don't Look Back, at which Sonic Youth will perform the whole of Daydream Nation, GZA/Genius will slice straight through Liquid Swords, and Slint will showcase all of Spiderland.

The lineup to date (newly announced artists in bold):

Friday, July 13:

Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation
GZA/Genius performs Liquid Swords
Slint perform Spiderland

Saturday, July 14:

Yoko Ono
Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues (w/ members of Dirty Three, the Delta 72 & JSBX)
Clipse
Iron and Wine
Girl Talk
Grizzly Bear
Battles
Califone
The Twilight Sad
Fujiya & Miyagi
Oxford Collapse
Dan Deacon
Beach House
Professor Murder
Ken Vandermark's Powerhouse Sound

Sunday, July 15:

The New Pornographers
De La Soul
Stephen Malkmus
Of Montreal
Jamie Lidell
The Sea and Cake
Menomena
Klaxons
The Ponys
Deerhunter
Nomo
Craig Taborn's Junk Magic
Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra

As you well know by now, tickets are on sale now at Ticketweb. Three-day passes cost $50, Friday night costs $15, Saturday and Sunday individual passes cost $25, and a Saturday/Sunday pass costs $35.

Keep up on all the latest festival news and details by bookmarking the Pitchfork Music Festival webpage and by tuning into the Pitchfork Music Festival podcast.

Coachella Valley Festival Kicks Off Tomorrow
Perhaps you've heard of it?

Very soon, near the southern tip of California in the desert just outside of Indio, several thousand people will be making the rest of us very jealous. The seventh now-annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival begins tomorrow (April 27), ends Sunday, and finds time in between to pack in some the finest musical acts in the world, numbering in triple-digits.

Tomorrow, for instance, there'll be Björk, Sonic Youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Interpol, Of Montreal, Arctic Monkeys, DJ Shadow, El-P, Busdriver, Flosstradamus, Brother Ali, Peeping Tom, Gogol Bordello, Silversun Pickups, Tilly and the Wall, Felix da Housecat, plus at least 20 others. Not bad, huh?

Saturday's no slouch neither, what with the Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, the Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Ghostface Killah, Hot Chip, the New Pornographers, !!!, Pharoahe Monch, Girl Talk, Sparklehorse, Peter Bjorn and John, Roky Erickson & the Explosives, Pop Levi, Andrew Bird, Blonde Redhead, MSTRKRFT, Cornelius, and more.

Sunday, of course, there's the Zach-packing Rage Against the Machine, Happy Mondays (sans resident dancer Mark "Bez" Berry, who was unable to secure a visa in time), Air, the Roots, Klaxons, Lily Allen, Lupe Fiasco, Spank Rock, CSS, Junior Boys, Grizzly Bear, Explosions in the Sky, Tapes 'n Tapes, Konono N°1, for starters.

Heck, there's so many bands, they've even set fest-goers up with a nifty little web-feature called the Coachooser, which all but plots out your route for you. They've also made decision matters slightly easier by diluting the talent pool a bit, with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peaches, Fountains of Wayne, and Kings of Leon. Burn! We kid, because we love.

Those of us not fortunate enough to cast off the shackles of the workaday world and flee to Southern California can live like desert trash in the comfort of our own climate-controlled domiciles, as seven hours a day of Coachella will be webcast live via AT&T's Blue Room. Check the schedule here.

I'm being told by my editors I've got enough space for another Kings of Leon joke, so here goes: more like... Kings of Peon!

Walkmen, Wrens, Furnaces, Girl Talk Head Idea! Fest
Plus: Destroyer, Sunset Rubdown, Xiu Xiu, Frog Eyes, Damo Suzuki, Rock Plaza Central

Poster art by Jack Dylan

Nah, nobody spiked your poutine luncheon: that there feller immediately to the left of these here words is none other than Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper hanging-ten in a crowd surf. Nutty revelry of this sort should abound at Ottawa's Capital Idea! Festival, wrangled together by Canadian music promotion company/blog Mocking Music.

From June 21-30, Some of indie rock's finest will converge on the city to take in a Lynx game or two, bask in the humid continental climate, or maybe check out a show or two from their fellow festees at Ottawa venues like Barrymore's Music Hall, Babylon Nightclub, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the Bronson Centre Theatre.

Capital Idea! is only half-formed at this point. Fest organizers promise over thirty acts in total, and the current lineup's a doozy: the Walkmen, Destroyer, the Wrens, the Fiery Furnaces, Damo Suzuki, Girl Talk, Sunset Rubdown, Xiu Xiu, Frog Eyes, Rock Plaza Central, Crystal Castles, Montag, the Russian Futurists, and Born Ruffians. O, Canada!

Arcade Fire Cast Off on Tour Tonight

After a #2 debut, an abortive effort at a proper European tour, an emergency surgery, a thousand Pitchfork news posts, and a million blog entries, the curtains will finally be drawn on the Arcade Fire's fiercely-anticipated North American tour tonight in San Diego.

By now, you've heard that they're keeping some impressive company on tour; that their "Keep the Car Running" single can be yours May 8 from Merge; that Win's feeling a whole lot better since they sliced his throat open; that they're doing virtually every European festival once this thing wraps. You've pored over lyric sheets and Wikipedia'd every instrument they use. But until you've heard "Antichrist Television Blues" live, or bathed in Regine's sweat, or gently taunted that dude who looks like Jon Heder, can you really call yourself a scholar of the Neon Bible? Dunno, dude. But here's your chance. [MORE...]

Rhino Compiling Jesus and Mary Chain Rarities Box

Not much info yet to report, but according to a representative at the label, Rhino Records is in the process of mining the hallowed Jesus and Mary Chain archives and compiling an extensive rarities box set.

Jim Reid is aiding in the selection process and will approve the final tracklist for the set, which should include about 80 JAMC jams spread over four CDs when it's done. About "a half dozen" of those jams have never graced the ears of humanity before; even more will appear on compact disc for the very first time. Look for the as-yet-untitled collection this fall, and keep your browser situated at Pitchfork for more details as they emerge.

Rarities box set, reunion tour mania, random sibling sideproject...can a full-blown JAMC comeback record be far behind?

In related news, rumors abound that one Scarlett Johansson (the link: Lost in Translation) will join the Reid brothers, singing backup at tonight's gig in Pomona. The official word, direct from the band's publicist: "Anything can happen!!!!" So there you have it. [MORE...]

White Stripes Tour Far Reaches of North America
Introduce this new rock'n'roll fad to citizens of Iqaluit, Nunavut

Fresh off news of their new single in two installments-- and "Icky Thump"'s debut on iTunes today-- the White Stripes' relentless press onslaught continues with an announcement of the first leg of an insanely ambitious North American tour.

As promised previously, this gargantuan jaunt-- in support of Icky Thump, out June 19 here via Warner Bros. and June 18 there via XL-- will whisk the Stripes away to the only 16 States in the Union they've yet to rock during the course of their 10 year career-- and all the blooming Canadian provinces and territories too!

No joke: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut-- all covered. Nevermind that Nunavut, according to Wikipedia, has less than 30,000 inhabitants spread out over nearly two million square kilometers of land! Might just be the most intimate Stripes show to date.

So does this mean Alaska and Hawaii too? Not yet, but hang tight: Jack and Meg aim to reveal more dates soon.

For now, they'll teach a lesson in Canadian geography beginning June 24 in Burnaby, British Columbia. After nearly a month up north, the Stripes, pending border control approval, finally re-enter the U.S. July 22 for some merry-making out East.

In related news, according to Billboard.com, Jack White's Raconteurs have been recording the follow-up to last year's Broken Boy Soldiers in Nashville, with eyes on a 2008 release. [MORE...]

Banhart, Oldham, Superchunk Cover Guilty Pleasures
Plus: Luna, Mike Watt, Concretes, Petra Haden, Jim O'Rourke, Geoff Farina, Mooney Suzuki

No matter how much people talk about having no guilty pleasures, it's hard to deny that some artists and songs have a little stink on them, rightly or wrongly.

But that's not all bad. There can be a lot of catharsis in screaming from the rooftops about your love for, say, the Deftones (so good!) after so much repression. And when you're a musician yourself, sometimes screaming from the rooftops about your guilty pleasures turns into covering them.

It's under this premise that Engine Room Recordings rounded up some of the biggest names in independent music to have them record versions of their favorite guilty pleasures for a compilation it will release August 7 called Guilt by Association.

Will Oldham, Devendra Banhart, Superchunk, Minutemen/Stooges bassist Mike Watt, Jim O'Rourke, Luna, Petra Haden, Geoff Farina, and the Concretes all contributed to the compilation, which includes covers of songs by Journey, Oasis, the Spice Girls, Destiny's Child, Paula Abdul, Fall Out Boy, Cher, Shania Twain, System of a Down, Blue Oyster Cult, Eddie Money, and the cast of High School Musical. Seriously, this tracklist is amazing.

The folks at Engine Room are also holding a video contest in conjunction with the compilation. The label is currently accepting video proposals for one of three tracks from Guilt by Association: Will Oldham's cover of Mariah Carey's "Can't Take That Away", Devendra Banhart's cover of Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger", or Petra Haden's cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing".

To enter the contest, budding directors should submit a brief email to videocontest@engineroomrecordings.com that contains a video concept for one of the songs as well as a link to their previous work. The first round deadline is May 15, at which time the label and a few of the contributing artists will pick five proposals to make. The winning video will be chosen from the resulting five videos (all completed by July 1) and will become the compilation's official music video, with all of the press and prestige that includes. For more information about the compilation and video contest, visit the Guilt by Association MySpace page.

As for how all this mutual, guilty love came about, Engine Room General Manager Wes Verhoeve told Pitchfork that "the concept originated about five years ago, and we resurrected it in early 2006. Together with Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar, who have served as music supervisors for Zodiac, The Aviator, [forthcoming Dylan biopic] I'm Not There, and several Wes Anderson movies, we pulled together this exciting cast of musicians. Sometimes we'd suggest the songs, but sometimes the artists were already enthusiastically armed with their pop song of choice." Associate producer Morgan Lebus was also instrumental in getting in touch with several artists, including Banhart, Oldham, and the Concretes.

As for these artists' pop songs of choice, Mike Watt has never had any problems showing love for the Blue Oyster Cult, but who could have guessed Jim O'Rourke felt so strongly about the Spice Girls? [MORE...]

Johnny Marr on Crowded House Reunion Album

According to Billboard.com, Time on Earth-- the first album in nearly a decade-and-a-half from Kiwi jingle-janglers Crowded House-- will feature Johnny Marr on a pair of tracks, one of which he helped pen. You know, Johnny Marr from the Smiths, and now, Modest Mouse? Yeah, that Johnny Marr.

The album also features a track House-master Neil Finn wrote alongside the Grammy-grubbing Dixie Chicks, and it's produced in part by Dave Matthews' BFF Steve Lillywhite. Time on Earth arrives July 10 in North America via Matthews' own ATO Records, and July 2 in the UK via Parlophone.

In other Marr news, he'll be on the road imparting his worldly wisdom on Modest Mouse for the next several months. [MORE...]

Interpol Reveal Third Album Details
This is the only version of their assertion that you should ever subscribe to

Monday, it was a release date. Today, it's a tracklist and a title. Tomorrow, will it leak? Who can say, really? They may be playing us like a diminished seventh chord, but, like the salivating dogs that we are, we'll take whatever they dish out.

Interpol's third album-- about which we knew virtually nothing, like, two days ago-- will arrive July 10 via Capitol. As announced on the Interpol message board today, it's called Our Love to Admire, and it has a tracklist (which you may view after the red clicky thing). You heard it here first: it will probably also be kinda droney, coke-y, maybe with a pants-kicker or two, interspersed with some pretty bits.

In other Interpol news, Interpol cooks, and cleans up live. Catch them around the world in the coming months.

You may now proceed to get all fired up about "All Fired Up", and screen print t-shirts that read, "There's No I in Threesome". [MORE...]

Pipettes Prep EP, Tour; Debut Gets U.S. Release Date

Praise is not wasted on the Pipettes. After much Fork fawning over We Are the Pipettes last year, the pattern conscious trio have announced a U.S. release date for their debut LP at last. It arrives August 28, via new Stateside home Interscope/CherryTree-- and they're practically hand-delivering it with a North American tour.

The tour will happen two months prior to the album's American release, but if slightly less than perfect timing means we get the Pipettes earlier than expected, then it's time we threw out our polka-dotted day-planners for good!

Plus, the tour is timed extremely well with the June 5 release of the Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me EP on Interscope/CherryTree. In addition to the title track and "I Love You" from We Are the Pipettes, the EP also features non-album tracks "Really That Bad" and "Guess Who Ran Off With the Milkman?" Adorable.

After serenading Europe, Riot Becki, Gwenno, and Rosay kick off their North American jaunt June 1 in Toronto. [MORE...]

Robert Pollard's Best on Final Fading Captain Release
Pressed, printed, stomped, tripped, trapped, tricked, packaged, shipped

Drunkard genius Robert Pollard's a real giver; over the course of his lengthy tenure as one of indie rock's greatest songwriters, he's issued more albums than he's downed Miller Lites, and that cat can suck down a brew-dog. So many albums that even the most official ironman occasionally has to peer into an empty wallet and mutter "maybe next time, Bobby."

Those looking to play catch-up on Pollard's long-running Fading Captain series-- an outpouring of discs by Pollard side projects and friends of the Cap'n himself-- get a little boost May 15, as Crickets: The Best of the Fading Captain Series is released by Luna Music. Sporting 56 tracks splayed over two CDs and 160 minutes, Crickets marks the first appearance of six new Pollard nuggets, including a pair from the recent Silverfish Trivia EP, with the rest representing the best of Fading Captain's 43 chapters.

Though the most dedicated GBV-aholics have already pawned their fillings to pay for much of Fading Captain, the press release chides that Crickets "will be enjoyed by the hardcore fans who own everything and the fringe GBV fan who had trouble tackling the 43 release catalog." The Captain camp is keeping the tracklist under wraps until the compilation drops, leaving us to speculate just how insane it is.

For one of the all-time great namers of things, Pollard sure doesn't like to stick to a moniker for too long: Crickets will mean bon voyage for the Fading Captain Series. On to the next!

Photos: Spoon [Asbury Park, NJ; 04/24/07]

Text and photos by Maria Tessa Sciarrino

At their gig last night at New Jersey's Stone Pony, Spoon treated show-goers to even portions from the past three albums, premiered a few selections from the forthcoming Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (personal favorites of the night and probably the best-sounding of the evening), and used the encore to toss in a track off the recently reissued Soft Effects EP-- a setlist designed to please newcomers and diehards alike.

Unfortunately, the Stone Pony's overzealous fog machine seemed to drain the energy out of the evening. The endless, billowing tufts made it next to impossible to see the band half the time (and this is a small club!); it was probably the the reason why so many bum notes were played. But it didn't seem to matter much to the audience, who enthusiastically cheered the band on to the very end.

Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga babbles into shops July 10 via Merge; the band's tour, meanwhile, continues tomorrow night in New Haven.




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