“There is something about participating in the music economy that makes me uneasy. You see it a lot in Nashville, Supply down on its knees begging, whoring for Demand, but I didn’t ever expect it to infect what was once called ‘underground music,’ the vague world I’ve been working in for fifteen years.”

Our friends at Nashville Cream had a chat with Silver Jew David Berman about the Joos’ upcoming final show and about his decision to get the hell out of the music world. More gem quotes follow…
(more…)

Richard Mosse

Doug Randle - “Coloured Plastics” What seems at first like a jingle is in fact a wistful complaint, or rather it's a jingle for post-industrial angst; a psych-pop ditty that sounds as good now as it must have in 1971, warm & catchy & spry. Listening to Randle's rediscovered and reissued masterpiece, Songs For The New Industrial State, it's an outright travesty that he's been left out of the canon. And not just the Canadian pop canon; this is the stuff of John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, the Velvet Underground's Loaded. He quotes Simon & Garfunkel here (sorta), but it's to connect the dots between their NutraSweet folk-music and this world's plastic-wrapper gloss. Nostalgia's a complicated thing in a cellophane present: even the most beleaguered hearts get some battery-powered sun. [buy - highly recommended!] Liz Durrett - “Wild As Them” There's a ton to love on Liz Durrett's Outside Our Gates, so why not take the song that doesn't just have her wild rose voice - but also a tiny guitar solo and whole fields of horns. There are so many horns that it's totally overkill, beautiful overkill, glorious overkill, Durrett almost getting crowded out of her own song but still standing fast, the beautiful glorious whole field of hurricane just flattening everything for a mile around, turning the grass to trampled copper. [buy - highly recommended]
Said the Gramophone is looking for a major sponsor for an upcoming contest. If your company (or a company you er know) might be interested in a partnership, please get in touch and I can offer more details. It's just about the only time that Said the Gramophone ever takes anything close to advertising, and a great chance to team up with, um, the likes of us!

This is a new feature at MBV: full albums streams from select artists. This inaugural edition goes toward unleashing yet more of my uncontrollable enthusiasm for Vancouver’s Apollo Ghosts, and their fantastic self-released album, Hastings Sunrise. I don’t think I’ll be happy until I hear that they’ve sold out the album’s entire limited pressing of 300.

DovesJoyous news to start the day yesterday when it was announced that Doves had not only assigned a release date to their fourth album and first in over four years - Kingdom Of Rust will be available on April 7 in North America - but they were also offering the lead track from the record, “Jetstream”, available as a free download on their website for a fortnight in exchange for signing up to their mailing list. Curiously, said offer seems to have disappeared for the moment but I expect that’s due to technical difficulties and it’ll be back soon.

And though the breathless press release verbiage that accompanied the news heralded the new record as their “most sonically adventurous, intimate, cerebral, propulsive to date”, I suspect it’ll be much like the previous three Doves records. Take two parts soaring anthemicism, two parts atmospheric melancholy, season with equal portions of dance and dreampop influences and serve. Guaranteed to be mostly brilliant. Doves arrived almost fully-formed with their 2001 debut Lost Souls and have basically been refining their sound ever since, oblivious to musical trends. Never quite fashionable, but still successful - it won’t surprise me one whit to see Kingdom hit #1 on the UK charts as its predecessor Some Cities did - and basically forging a… what’s it called? Oh yes, a career.

MySpace: Doves

Spin is streaming Elbow’s contribution to the War Child: Heroes compilation coming out on February 24 - a cover of U2’s “Running To Stand Still”.

The Toronto Sun, The Globe & Mail, Stuff NZ and Out converse with Franz Ferdinand.

NPR welcomes Laura Marling for a World Cafe session.

The Shield Gazette interviews Emmy The Great about the darkness of her debut album First Love, out February 9.

Patrick Wolf discusses his battle to release Battle independently with The Quietus.

Since it was Hot Press who first informed me last Summer that Irish dreampop outfit Butterfly Explosion had split up, it seems appropriate that it be Hot Press be the ones to inform me that they’re not so finished after all. Granted, with a number of lineup changes including the departure of keyboardist/vocalist Sorcha Brennan, it’s not the same band who impressed in April 2007 but still, it’s good that they’ll have another chance to fulfill the potential I saw in them.

MP3: The Butterfly Explosion - “Sophia”
MP3: The Butterfly Explosion - “Chemistry”

Rolling Stone gets to know M83. They’ll be playing a one-off show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in March wherein Anthony Gonzalez will supply each and every member of the orchestra with their own distortion pedals.

Magnet finds out what the members of The Smiths are up to these days.

The Guardian seeks the formula to the perfect pop song, consulting at length with Jarvis Cocker, amongst others, on the topic.

Please take a moment to go congratulate MBV’s favorite Boy with a Heart that is Large, David, on this, the 7-Year Anniversary of Largeheartedboy

Tucson Weekly profiles Golden Boots.

If Golden Boots' music was difficult to classify before--they call themselves "alt-alt-country"--such a pursuit is made far more difficult with the release of The Winter of Our Discotheque. The band has always traded in a sort of warped take on Americana, simultaneously organic and psychedelic. But this time around it would appear that the mixing of the record became at least as important as the basic recording process. Added to the basic recipe of skewed, twangy folk-rock is a plethora of interesting new sounds and genre dabbling. A synth here, some dubby, delay-treated drums there. A touch of reggae here, a noise freakout yonder. And those are just a few of the elements that are identifiable.

Paste interviews A.C. Newman about his new solo album, Get Guilty.

Paste: How is everything going in your world, Carl?

Newman: I’ve been home for a while, relaxing in a way. You know, my record just came out, so I’ve been doing stuff connected with that. I’ve also been writing and working on demos for the next New Pornographers record. Anytime I’m able to work at home, I don’t really consider it work. Being able to sleep in your own bed is key. When I’m on tour, that feels like work.

Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats talks to the Santa Barbara Independent about his two bands.

“When I got the job with The Shins, I had a lot of people say to me, ‘Congratulations, man,’” Johnson recalled. “I was sort of like, ‘Why? What did I do? I just got hired in somebody’s band.’… There was kind of this idea that people were like, ‘Well now you don’t have to do that Fruit Bats thing anymore. Good for you! You’re off the hook!’ It was this American idea of, as long as you’re on TV … It’s not really just about creating stuff. It’s sort of about visibility, or whatever. I absolutely love being in [The Shins], but I like writing my own music too—it’s really fun.”

Music Radar offers a flow chart to explain heavy metal band names.

In the Guardian's music blog, My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way explains how the comic Watchmen changed his life.

Daytrotter's Thursday session features in-studio mp3s from Husband & Wife.

Audiolife is a new online service where musicians can sell CDs, digital downloads, and merchandise in the same place with no upfront fees.

Ear Farm gathers Super Bowl predictions from indie rockers.

For some time now, We’ve watched as the music mags began giving up the ghost. We’ve even seen magazines squeeze out an extra 6 months of life by taking reader donations. But here’s a new one, a zombified magazine (of sorts): Folio reports that the founder of Harp (which folded last year) is planning to launch a print version/companion of his apres-Harp website Blurt.

Yes, it sounds very Bizarro world: instead of being a print mag with a companion website, they’re going to be a website with a companion print mag. It seems hard to wrap your brain around the logic, but then again, maybe it’s just the publishing variation on the “think digital first, physical second” philosophy. At any rate, it’s certainly a unique move– and I'm very interested to see how this one plays out.