Because of the famous company Tokyo Police Club have been keeping lately, I feel kinda like a writer for Us Weekly. OMFG Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)! That guy from Blink-182 (Angels & Airwaves, Blink 182)! Felicity Huffman (Desperate HousewivesSports Night)! Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives, The Golden Girls)! These are just a few of the beautiful people who TPC have met during a busy 2008. Some 2008 highlights? Releasing their Saddle Creek debut album, Elephant Shell (TMT Review), embarking on headlining tours, playing half-full U.S. arenas while opening for alt-nerd-rockers Weezer, and guestspotting as a band not named Tokyo Police Club on Desperate Housewives.
Even with all those accomplishments in 2008, you'd think the band would take the rest of the year off. Nope. Instead, the band is set to start another little tour following an appearance on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson on December 10. This tour will take them to Canada with fellow syrup-drinking leaf-lovers Metric, The Dears, and Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains.
The band's pace for 2009 seems to mirror that of 2008, as they have just announced a U.S. tour beginning February 24 in Providence, RI that runs for about three weeks and covers about two-thirds of the States. Harlem Shakes, Ra Ra Riot, and Born Ruffians, respectively, will open those shows. After the tour is over, the band will begin work on the follow-up to Elephant Shell.
Odetta, the classically trained folk, blues and gospel singer who used her powerfully rich and dusky voice to champion African American music and civil rights issues for more than half a century starting in the folk revival of the 1950s, has died. She was 77.
She was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City for a checkup in mid-November but went into kidney failure. She died there Tuesday of heart disease, her manager, Doug Yeager, told the Associated Press.
With a repertoire that included 19th century slave songs and spirituals as well as the topical ballads of such 20th century folk icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Odetta became one of the most beloved figures in folk music.
She was said to have influenced the emergence of artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Tracy Chapman.
Avant-garde noise act Franz Ferdinand are back with their cutting-edge music -- that is, if you can call it "music." Innovative, radical, revolutionary, experimental, spearheading, trailblazing, trendsetting -- these are just some of the words that immediately spring to mind when I think of the group's forward-thinking sounds. When all is said and done, Franz Ferdinand is a singularity in the music universe.
Don't have a way to play their non-categorizable "music" at home? You's in luck: Franz Ferdinand are touring North America starting today and, by the end of the year, will find themselves on the festival circuit before ending with a couple UK shows in January 2009. Expect to see lead Ferdinand-er Alex Kapranos consume narcotics, self-mutilate, verbally abuse the audience, expose himself, and leap off the stage. Their shows are so exciting.
Atlantic Records made history recently when it became the first major label record to announce that its digital sales were 1% higher than revenue accrued from physical CD sales! For all you mathphobics out there, this means that digital sales earned a whopping 51% of total revenue.
For those of you who have been living in some dark cave, their parents’ basement, or decided to chill out and spend a couple years frozen solid (like me), “MP3s,” as they call them, have steadily been on the rise as the prime format for music storage. Whether it be through legal or illegal means, anyone with half a brain knows that a growing segment of the population, including tech-savvy hipsters and SUV-driving hockey moms alike, have been buying up “MP3 players,” collecting “ringtones,” and “downloading” their music from online sources like “Rhapsody” or, say, “iTunes.”
Warner Music Group announced that their digital revenues rose by 39%, topping out at 639 million doll hairs in the previous fiscal year. Julie Greenwald, president of Atlantic Records, had this to say: “I think we’ve figured [music] out.”
So, what next? Will physical CD sales continue to decline? Does this signal the end of the album? Will the next Ironman movie be as good as the first? Will CDs become a thing of the past, joining vinyl records as a niche market? Will record stores die out only to be replaced by online download stations and boutique clothing shops? Who knows!
Only time will tell where mankind goes from here. Onward and Upwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!!
For someone who's named himself after majestic deer and a lush foresty Canadian province -- not to mention a sample and title songs that deal with nature -- it's no surprise that Dan Snaith would want to save the earth. And since he's also a part-time teacher, Snaith seems like the kind of guy who likes to give rather than receive.
Appropriately, Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, announced last week that he will donate a majority of his $20,000 Polaris Prize money he won for 2007's Andorra (TMT Review), keeping only a small portion to fund his forthcoming album. The money will be given to environmental non-profit Ecojustice and the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
"I have always thought of Canada as an environmentally progressive place... however, recently the Canadian government has acted as a global obstacle to climate action. In a study this year Canada ranked 29th out of 30 industrialized nations for tackling climate change," Snaith said, remarking on his choice of giving to Ecojustice. Meanwhile, The Stephen Lewis Foundation is a project-based charity helping communities affected by the AIDS epidemic throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Heck of a guy, that Snaith. Hopefully the money given to Ecojustice will be invested in getting real legislative efforts to come to fruition, not in another Live Earth (Sorry, Al).
Deerhunter have had a hell of a year: blog drama, album leakin', shit-talkin', secret record schemin', playa hatin', dealin' with the obligatory clause that states every Goddamn article about Deerhunter has to mention something about Bradford Cox's physical appearance, et al. Nonetheless, the band has emerged victorious with the mighty Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. (TMT Review), poised to be at the top of a lot of year-end lists this year (including my own).
Just wrapping up a recent fall tour for the yanks, Deerhunter will spend Q1 of next year studying abroad. They will also release a single for "Never Stops," certainly the poppiest of Microcastle, in March. Otherwise, not a whole lot going on, so just keep looking at the amazing photo above before you go.
