Human Highway Announce Tourdates, Discover That Nick Thorburn Suffers From Dystychiphobia

By Mario Speedwagon on 01-09-2009

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and New Years. I got a microwave for Christmas and watched my drunken uncles and aunts play Rock Band while my little cousins sat looking miserable on the sidelines. Then on New Year's Eve, I went to MSG and saw My Morning Jacket and drank $9 beer -- holler. Anyway, while ya’ll were hanging with your families, absolutely nothing happened. This shit is gonna be boring.

- So, Best Buy is offering buyouts to 4,000 or so employees at their corporate office. The economy is a mess, so Best Buy needs to “reduce significant expense from its corporate payroll.” I wish someone would offer me some pimp buy out. I ate Cream of Chicken soup and some Airheads for dinner last night. Everyone from the janitor to the big VP dudes are being offered the buyout, which is based on age and time of service. They didn’t say how many people they wanted to get rid of, just that pretty much everyone was offered to volunteer to be fired. Nice.

- Brian Eno is gonna score Peter Jackson’s new movie, an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones.” Part of the movie takes place in heaven (okay…) and stars Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Saoirse Ronan, Michael Imperioli, and more. Shit comes out December 11, 2009.

- Merle Haggard is suing the environmental group The Green Train for allegedly using his name and likeness to raise money. Haggard says the group, a nonprofit that educates the public about environmental issues, forged his signature and exaggerated his involvement. The Green Train has a six-week train tour departing from Portland, OR and traveling through 28 states while stopping for several concerts along the way, eventually ending in DC. I mean, he did donate money to them, and it doesn’t sound like a bad organization, so Merle needs to chill out. It’s not like he’s the face of the Puppy Kicker’s Club.

- Dutch anti-piracy company BREIN shut down 75 Bit Torrent trackers. Sites like Luckytorrents, Allmymovies, Digi-tor.org, and Seederstor.org were taken down. Yes, this is how boring the holidays were...

Seriously -- ATTENTION MUSICIANS -- someone needs to get arrested or make an angry blog post or start feuding with someone else, because, like, I seriously just wrote about some ‘nilla news items. Mario OUT.

By Annapocalypse on 01-09-2009

Did you know that Vetiver’s new full-length album, Tight Knit, is both their first Sub Pop release and also Sub Pop’s first release of 2009? Because of this fact, I decided to do a little research and compile a brief list of other Sub Pop first releases for years gone past:
1989: Blood Circus – Primal Rock Therapy
1990: Tad – Loser/Cooking With Gas
1993: Dwarves – Underworld/Lies 7”
1994: Pigeonhed – S/T
1997: Damien Jurado – Water Ave. S
1998: Godheadsilo – Share The Fantasy
2001: Arlo – Up High In The Night
2003: Holopow – S/T
2005: Low – The Great Destroyer
2006: The Elected – Sun, Sun, Sun
2007: The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
2008: The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead

If there’s one conclusion that can be drawn from these results, it’s that Sub Pop kinda sucked during the ’90s. Don’t take my word for it though -- just ask the members of Blood Circus, whose album Primal Rock Therapy was apparently one of the poorest selling Sub Pop albums ever.
Getting back on topic, Tight Knit is due February 17 and features such special guests as Eric Johnson (Fruit Bats, The Shins), Jonathan Wilson, “Farmer” Dave Sher, and Adam Peters.

Tracklist: