The Breeders Kick off North American Tour

Photo by Chris Glass

Following the release of their new album Mountain Battles and their appearance at Coachella this past weekend, the Breeders are ready to get this reunion thing going at full-tilt.

Starting tonight (April 28) in San Diego, the Deal-led quartet will spend almost two months on stages across North America. After that, they have in store a summer of European and Japanese festival dates with a little Australian tour sandwiched in the middle. [MORE...]

MP3: The Breeders: Bang On [from the Mountain Battles LP]

Photos: Triptych Festival [Glasgow, Scotland; 04/26/08]

Coldplay to Play Free Shows in London, NYC
John Ashcroft angered, shamed by album cover

Coldplay are all about making trade fair, and they're passing the savings on to you! In the midst of all the hubbub surrounding the band's fourth album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (due June 16 in the UK on Parlophone and June 17 in the States on Capitol and featuring the above histrionic cover art) Chris and company have lined up a pair of intercontinental free-of-charge concerts. They are also laying the album's first single on you for the low low price of zero dollars (or zero pounds or euros or whatever).

On the date of Viva la Vida's UK release, Coldplay will make their way to London's Brixton Academy, where they'll take the stage for a crowd of freeloaders. They'll hop an ocean and do the same June 23 at Madison Square Garden in New York. There's a catch, however: the band will hold some kind of contest through their website, the details of which have yet to emerge but can be expected shortly.

And while they're giving stuff away, they'll unload "Violet Hill", the first exhortation from Viva la Vida, on their website as a free download starting tomorrow (April 29). That's a full week before your digital retailer of choice will start asking you to pay for the damn thing.

Oh, and if you happen to pick up a copy of the May 10 issue of NME, you'll get yourself a "Violet Hill" 7" backed with an exclusive track called "A Spell A Rebel Yell". [MORE...]

Video: Kanye West [ft. Chris Martin]: Homecoming [from the Graduation LP]

Centro-Matic, South San Gabriel Team for Split LP, Gigs

MP3: Centro-Matic: I, the Kite [from the forthcoming Dual Hawks LP]
MP3: South San Gabriel: Trust to Lose [from the forthcoming Dual Hawks LP]

Photos: Coachella [Sunday]

Photos: Coachella [Saturday]

Photos: Coachella [Friday]

Report: Dickson Street Music Festival [Fayetteville, AR; 4/25/08-4/26/08]

While the cool kids spent the weekend at Coachella, a little piece of the hipster stratosphere broke off and fell on Fayetteville, Arkansas. Pitchfork's Joe Tangari headed to the Dickson Street Music Festival to catch Sonic Youth playing with a lineup of good ol' boys and frat faves, and he lived to tell the tale.

Stay tuned for our Coachella coverage...

To a starving man, there's nothing better than a good meal. The indie rock fans of Northwest Arkansas do a lot of starving. A few bands a year come through George's or JR's, and the University of Arkansas books somebody decent at its Greek amphitheater about once a year... and that's it. So when Sonic Youth showed up as the day two headliner of the first annual Dickson Street Music Festival, indie rockers from about ten counties in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma came out in force.

At a glance, the bill for the festival looks incongruous: Shooter Jennings, .38 Special, and the Charlie Daniels Band on the first night and Little Feat, Michael Franti & Spearhead, and Sonic Youth on the second. Strange as it is, though, splitting the acts like that made it a lot less so.

On day one, cowboy hats and camouflage attire filled the audience in abundance and the crowd got exactly what it came for. .38 Special had 30 years' worth of rock star moves, complete with mic stand twirling (yes, the whole stand-- I thought someone was going to be killed or at least injured), jet noises as they walked on stage, drum stand lights that mimicked police lights, and a prolific smoke machine.

For a guy who looks vaguely like Santa Claus in denim and happens to be 71 years old, Charlie Daniels has a ton of on-stage energy. I listened to Daniels a lot when I was around 12 years old, and on Friday I was struck by how prog some of his old music is. The band played their hit "El Toreador" and it sounded like it could have come off a bizarro Old West Yes album. Charlie's fiddle is still as mean as ever.

CHARLIE DANIELS BAND:

On day two, about the only camouflage I saw was the ironic netting on Michael Franti's amplifiers. The crowd morphed pretty smoothly from Little Feat's mostly older audience to an enthusiastic jumping and hula-hooping mob of college and high school students for Franti's idealistic blend of reggae, funk, alt-rock and rap. Juxtaposed against the Charlie Daniels t-shirts with the words "these colors don't run" printed across an American flag, Franti's huge banner depicting some kind of faux-Hindu deity in a gas mask holding a bloody cheeseburger, an airplane, and a pistol under the words "caveat emptor" made for an interesting clash of ideologies.

SHOOTER JENNINGS / MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD:

SONIC YOUTH:

Much of Franti's audience hung around for Sonic Youth, and dozens of people I hadn't yet noticed in the crowd moved toward the front. As we were in a massive parking lot, these people had plenty of places to go before the band they came to see went on. The audience worked up a Sonic Youth chant twice during the interminable sound check (the sound guy did a great job, though, and the mix was fantastic), and the band played a hell of a set, aided by the addition of Pavement's Mark Ibold to the lineup.

The all-ages admittance policy didn't stop them from ripping through a careening version of "Bull in the Heather" or going on extended feedback sorties that whipped the crowd into a frenzy. They've earned a few rock star moves of their own-- Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore each spent some time busting crazy guitar moves on the amplifiers that jutted out toward the crowd, with Lee giving a few fans up front a chance to do a bit of strumming.

During one of the SY chants before the show, I heard two guys behind me-- one was in an instrumental metal band from Lawrence, Kansas, called Lethe and the other had on a Washing Machine t-shirt--commenting that the odd festival lineup (did I mention that Blind Melon played the after-party?) was pretty cool, and after watching the whole thing, I have to agree. The festival ran right next to the town's yearly Springfest, and it's not easy to serve such a general audience with music, but it seems just about everyone went home happy.

Yo La Tengo Scoring Ryan Reynolds Movie
Yeah, that guy

The Sounds of Science this one ain't. Adventureland is a forthcoming comedy film from Greg Mottola (Superbad, a couple episodes of "Arrested Development") scheduled for release late in the summer. According to IMDB, the flick is set in 1987 and at an amusement park, and features key players from the "Saturday Night Live" and Apatow camps near the top of the bill.

IMDB says that Adventureland is "centered around a recent college grad who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world." And the star of this movie is none other than Ryan Reynolds. Yes, Ryan Reynolds, the genial blonde dummy from such films as Just Friends, Blade:Trinity, and Van Wilder.

The score for Adventureland will be provided by veteran Jersey trio Yo La Tengo. And there are very few things that wouldn't be improved with a little more YLT, right? Besides, it's not like "Yo La Tengo are scoring the new Ryan Reynolds movie" is the most surprising bit of news we've heard lately. This is.

Of course, this ain't the first time Yo La Tengo have hobnobbed with Hollywood elite. You'll recall their supporting role during She & Him's appearance on the "Conan O'Brien" program last week. (We hear they have a cameo in Zooey Deschanel's new film, Elf 2: The Elfening.) And they scored the Will Oldham-featuring movies Junebug and Old Joy.

Nor is Adventureland the only 2008 soundtrack to feature Yo La Tengo. Their cover of George McCrea's "You Can Have It All"-- from 2000's superb and then nothing turned itself inside out-- appears on the second volume of Juno music.

Yo La Tengo have a few live appearances scheduled for themselves in the coming months, with a trio of European stops in June and an appearance at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois' Pygmalion Music Festival off in September. [MORE...]

Video: Yo La Tengo: Kaplan's Korner, or How Yo La Tengo Got Their Name

These New Puritans Gear Up for First U.S. Tour

Video: These New Puritans: Swords of Truth [from the Beat Pyramid LP]

Simply Saucer Reveal Half Live LP Details, Tour Dates

Stream: Simply Saucer: Half Human, Half Live [full album]

Roky Erickson, Ronnie Spector, ? Do Ponderosa Stomp
With Mary Weiss, James Blood Ulmer, the Collins Kids, Green Fuz, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson

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