Fat Worm of Error’s 2006 release Pregnant Babies Pregnant with Pregnant Babies made #90 on our Favorite 100 Albums of 2000-2009. Here’s why:
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Tourdates:
05.19.10 - Pittsburgh, PA - The Shop Art and Performance Studio
05.20.10 - Detroit, MI - The Cave
05.21.10 - Evanston, IL - Block Cinema
05.22.10 - Cincinnati, OH - Art Damage Lodge
05.23.10 - Toledo, OH - Woodchuck’s
05.24.10 - Cleveland, OH - The Cool Ranch
06.26.10 - Boston, MA - Nom D’Artiste
Wild Beasts are, stay with me for a second, totally wild! You say you’ll stick a quarter in your ear; Wild Beasts will stick their whole wallets. You say you’ll do a motorcycle flip; Wild Beasts will do a zeppelin flip. You say you’ll take four shots of vodka; Wild Beasts will punch a nun. You say you’ll tour the UK this summer; Wild Beasts will sandwich a string of North American dates in between two UK tours. Then they will give you a wedgie.
Wild Beasts tourdates:
05.21.10 - Liverpool, UK - Kazimer
05.22.10 - Glasgow, UK - ABC Stag & Dagger Festival
05.27.10 - Barcelona, ES - Primavera Festival
05.29.10 - Bristol, UK - Dot to Dot Festival
05.30.10 - Nottingham, UK - Dot to Dot Festival
05.31.10 - Manchester, UK - Dot to Dot Festival
06.20.10 - Istanbul, TR - Efes Pilsen One Love Festival
06.26.10 - Pilton, Somerset, UK - Glastonbury Festival - John Peel Stage
07.01.10 - Roskilde, DK - Roskilde Festival
07.16.10 - Henham Park, Suffolk, UK - Latitude Festival
07.17.10 - Victoria Park, London, UK - Lovebox Festival
07.31.10 - Lowther Park, UK - Kendal Calling
08.06.10 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
08.07.10 - Chicago, IL - Lollapalooza
08.09.10 - Toronto, ON - The Mod Club
08.11.10 - New York, NY - Highline Ballroom
08.13.10 - Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theater
08.21.10 - Brecon Beacons, UK - Green Man Festival
08.28.10 - Bramham Park, UK - Leeds Festival - Radio 1/NME Stage
08.29.10 - Richfield Avenue, UK - Reading Festival - Radio 1/NME Stage
09.12.10 - Isle of Wight, UK - Bestival
09.16.10 - London, UK - Campfire Trails at The Troxy
Q: Is there anyone in music today who says more awesomely self-righteous bullshit when he really ought to just shut the fuck up than Kanye West?
A: Of course there is. Maybe you’ve heard of him. His name is Paul McCartney (TMT file photo). See, he likes to call people out for things out loud and in public, especially when he hasn’t seen his name on Tiny Mix Tapes (his favorite music news source, I’m told) for awhile. And really, can you blame the guy? We are bigger than Jesus [ed: we are not bigger than Jesus].
So, what pointless dig has Sir Paul lazily let loose this time? In a recent interview with BBC Newsbeat, he apparently saw fit to fart out the anti-news that The Beatles’ record label EMI are to blame for their albums and songs not being available digitally.
“To tell you the truth I don’t actually understand how it’s got so crazy,” he said listlessly. “I know iTunes would like to do it, so one day it’s going to happen.” His anus then continued to leak: “It’s been business hassles, not with us, or iTunes. It’s the people in the middle, the record label. There have been all sorts of reasons why they don’t want to do it.” Yeah, now that I think about it, I did hear something about how EMI was desperate to earn less money; I think it was that it was earning too much, and it didn’t want to end up in a higher tax bracket this year or something?
For its part, EMI insists that it’s trying to sort out the situation. “Discussions are ongoing,” the label said in a statement, adding that they “would love to see The Beatles’ music available for sale digitally.” But again, alas, they are just too rich right now. :(
Oh well. Despite the current lack of digital availability, McCartney admitted he isn’t too worried that a younger audience are missing out on his band’s music. “We get so played and noticed and tributed as The Beatles that I’m not complaining.” Besides, if he was complaining, his words would be in ALL CAPS WITH HAPHAZARD PUNCTUATION AND THEY’D BE ALL RANDOM SKIPPING FROM THOUGHT TO THOUGHT AND LOTS OF !!!!!! THEY SHOULD HAVE GIVEN THE BEATLES THE BEST VIDEO FOR HELLO GOODBYE!! REVOLUTION 9 FUCKIN’ SUCKED THAT’S WHAT IT IS!!!!!! I’M NOT CRAZY Y’ALL I’M JUST REAL.
Ozymandias crumbled, and only the wrecked vestiges of his statue remained, a sun-bleached reminder of man’s impotence in the face of eternity. Young Marble Giants only lasted from 1978 to 1981, but guitarist/songwriter Stuart Moxham refuses to disappear into an ancient past. Over the last three years, Stuart has played several Young Marble Giant reunion shows (including a performance of Colossal Youth at last year’s ATP) with original members Phil Moxham and Alison Statton. However, there’s much more to Stuart’s repertoire than three years’ worth of seminal post-punk from 30 years ago. To remind us, he recently announced a forthcoming album, Personal Best: the first offering from his own hABIT label.
Personal Best is a “sampler of things to come,” but despite its forward sound, according to Moxham’s MySpace blog, it “covers every corner of my post-Young Marble Giants output over the last thirty years.” After all, we mustn’t forget about The G!st and his solo work in the 90s. (Moxham even contributed a track to The Believer’s 2009 music issue CD, so let’s not pretend he’s been twiddling his thumbs all these years.)
Moxham is still chugging away, too. He is currently recording an album of new material in his studio, slated to be hABIT’s second release. The album will feature his father Terence, daughter Melody, and friend Charlie Rose on violin. I wonder if Phil feels left out?
After five albums and thirteen years as a band, Isis have decided to call it quits. The group’s final album, Wavering Radiant (TMT Review), was released last year on Ipecac. The label’s founders, Mike Patton and Greg Werckman, said of Isis’ breakup: “It has been a complete honor to be a part of the ISIS team. ISIS is a major part of our label’s foundation. Those 5 talented guys are our friends and we look forward to see and hear what they each do in the future.”
Here’s the official announcement from Isis:
ISIS has reached an end. It’s hard to try to say it in any delicate way, and it is a truth that is best spoken plainly. This end isn’t something that occurred over night and it hasn’t been brought about by a single cataclysmic fracture in the band. Simply put, ISIS has done everything we wanted to do, said everything we wanted to say. In the interest of preserving the love we have of this band, for each other, for the music made and for all the people who have continually supported us, it is time to bring it to a close. We’ve seen too many bands push past the point of a dignified death and we all promised one another early on in the life of the band that we would do our best to ensure ISIS would never fall victim to that syndrome. We’ve had a much longer run than we ever expected we would and accomplished a great deal more than we ever imagined possible. We never set any specific goals when the band was founded other than to make the music we wanted to hear and to play (and to stay true to that ideal), so everything else that has come along the long and winding path has been an absolute gift. As with any momentous life-changing decision (which this certainly is for the 5 of us), we feel a very dynamic range of emotions about this and cannot express all of it within the space of a few sentences, and perhaps it’s best to do what we’ve always done and let our music speak for us. It is and has been the truest expression of who we are as a collective and in some ways who we are as individuals for the 13 years in which we’ve been together. The last and perhaps most important thing we might say in relation to all this is how grateful we are for the people that have supported us over the years. It is a lengthy list that would include those who put out our records, those that played on them and put them to tape, the many bands with whom we shared the stage, all of our family, friends and companions who supported us in our individual lives and thus made it possible for us to continue on in the band, and most importantly those who truly listened to our music whether in recorded form or by coming to out to our shows (or both). It is quite true that we would never have done what we have without those people, that is many of you who are reading this. Our words can never fully express what we feel, but we hope that our music and the efforts made to bring it into being can serve as a more proper expression of gratitude for this life and for everyone in it. Thank you.
In more immediate and practical terms the tour we are about to embark upon is indeed our last. We are hoping that these final live rituals can help us bring a close to the life of this band in a celebratory and reverent way, and also provide us with a chance to say goodbye to many of those that have supported us over the years. While there is a measure of sadness that comes with the passing of this band, we hope that the final days can be joyous ones during which any and all that wish to come and join us will do so. It seems fitting that the last show of the tour and of our active existence will take place in Montreal, the site of the very first ISIS show in 1997 (though that was an unintentional move when booking the show initially). After the tour we also plan to follow through with other projects set in motion some time ago - pursuing the completion of a final EP, compiling live audio and visual material for future releases, and generally doing whatever we can to make our music available for as long as there are people who wish to hear it.
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Final tourdates:
05.26.10 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah @
05.29.10 - Eugene, OR - Wow Hall @
05.30.10 - Olympia, WA - Capitol Theatre @
05.31.10 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theatre @
06.01.10 - Seattle, WA - Neumo’s @
06.02.10 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge @
06.04.10 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall @
06.05.10 - Los Angeles, CA - The Troubadour @
06.12.10 - Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo Festival #
06.14.10 - Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club #
06.16.10 - Washington DC - 9:30 Club #
06.17.10 - Philadelphia, PA - Theater Of Living Arts (TLA) #
06.18.10 - New York, NY - Webster Hall #
06.19.10 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall Of Williamsburg #
06.20.10 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club #
06.21.10 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club #
06.22.10 - Portland, MN - Port City Music Hall %
06.23.10 - Montreal, QC - Club Soda %
Down here in the deep south, the summer seems to be fully upon us. In fact, today the temperature reached an almost unseasonal 92-degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity could be cut with a razor. Its during days like this when the sun seems to have a stagnant hold on the world, when a high-powered ceiling fan is the only consolation that the droning movements of Windsor for The Derby have the most relevance. So it is only fitting that the Philadelphia/Austin space/post-rockers have a new full-length release to accompany the summer sweltering that is bound to be just a sedative as their music.
Against Love, the band’s eighth proper album, will be hitting stores and front doors June 22 in the US and June 21 in the UK via Secretly Canadian. If you want an idea of the further development in their pop-psych sound on this new sonic construction of theirs, go ahead and snag a download of the track “Queen of the Sun” off the new album right here. As of now, the band plans to leave a trail of distorted particles through a good chunk of Europe come late this year, hopefully the same for the US after. For now, I just leave you Americans with the tracklist and the beckoning heat of a summer that lurks ever closer.
Against Love:
01. Against Love
02. Autumn Song
03. After Love
04. Queen of the Sun
05. Singer 1968
06. Moon Shadows
07. Our Love’s a Calamity
08. Alex Lucero
09. Dull Knives
10. Hips
11. Cursed Ages
12. Tropical Depression
13. Strange Dream
European Dates:
07.27.10 - Nantes, FR - Sputnik Bar
07.28.10 - Paris, FR - Noveau Casino
08.02.10 - London, UK - Windmill Brixton
08.03.10 - Brighton, UK - Freebutt
08.06.10 - Metz, FR - Emile Vache
08.11.10 - Hamburg, GR - Astra Stube
08.12.10 - Berlin, GR - Schokoladen
08.13.10 - Copenhagen, DK - Lades
08.14.10 - Malmo, SE - Debaser
08.17.10 - Hannover, GR - Cafe Glocksee
08.18.10 - Wiesbaden, GR - Schlachthof
