MySpaceSay what you will about Taunton, Massachusetts’ Wheat, but you can’t deny that they refuse to stay down. Once upon a time one of my favourite bands (circa Medeiros and Hope & Adams), they became a cautionary tale against the major label machine with 2003’s ill-fated Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second (which I chronicled back in 2004 and 2005) and essentially disbanded in the aftermath.

They unexpectedly returned in 2007 with Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square, again independent and down a member, but even then they were beset with label problems and delays. And the record itself was free of the excessive gloss of Per Second, it was decent at best - unfocused and only evidencing glimpses of the rough magic that defined their earliest releases. It pretty much came and went and I figured that that was the end of the band, again. They’d returned in order to finish on their own terms.

Or not. There were rumblings of a new record late last year and though there’s no release date as of yet, it has a title - White Ink, Black Ink - and a sample of it has surfaced on the band’s profile for SxSW, where I fully intend to see them play. Obviously not enough to form an opinion on, though it sounds like they’re sticking to the sonic cut-and-paste aesthetic of Kathy. I find I remain curious and still a little excited about the prospect of new music from Wheat - this news prompted me to revisit those magical first two records and they still give me tingles.

And those first two records - Medeiros and Wheat - are being reissued together along with a bonus disc of rarities and whatnots from the era entitled 30 Minute Theatrik (thanks to Mark for the tip). It’s set for a March 10 release but you can pre-order it now and get all three records digitally immediately. If you’ve never heard either one, well, you should. And here’s your chance.

More Wheat info and downloads available at thiswheat.com.

MP3: Wheat - “El Sincero”
MP3: Wheat - “Move = Move”

Drowned In Sound declared this week just ending “slowcore week” and followed that up with extensive features on personal favourites like Low, Galaxie 500, The New Year and Early Day Miners. They’ll have a new album out sometime this year entitled The Treatment.

CBC Radio 3 talks to Casey Mecija of Ohbijou, who will release their second album Beacons on April 14.

The Thermals are hitting the road in support of their new album Now We Can See, out April 7. Pitchfork has the full North American itinerary.

MP3: The Thermals - “Now We Can See”

Mogwai have announced a North American tour for this Spring.

MP3: Mogwai - “The Sun Smells Too Loud”

Neil Young’s Fork In The Road has a confirmed release date of March 31. Archives? Don’t ask.

Viva Voce will release Rose City on May 26.

MP3: Red Red Meat – “Gauze”

From the Bunny Gets Paid Deluxe Reissue, out 3/24 on Sub Pop.

Photo Source

The Phantom Band - “Throwing Bones” Get in the car, son! We're going on a trip. Roll down the windows, choose a radio station, crack open the Glosette Raisins. That blue sky is the blue of your mother's eyes. Those green trees are the green of your grandfather's eyes. The world's the stuff of all your ancestors, son. Never glare at a rain-cloud, never curse a mudpuddle, never glower. Love, that's what I say. The trunk is full of skeletons and we're taking them to the sea. [buy]

Emmy the Great - “MIA” Don't listen to this song because the chorus talks about M.I.A. - listen to it for the weird little cuckoo pipes. I mean the "LOO-la, loo-LA" at the corners of the lines, notes whose instrument I can't trace, sounds that seem at first like sweet Hello!s, like signposts of twee, and then gradually change into something else. Because this gentle song is ultimately a song about things being wrong, wrong as in not-right, and the weird little cuckoo pipes are the only musical marker of this. They turn in place and become very mildly discordant, just one step off, and to me it's the perfect sound for nostalgia soured, & dreams' sudden sunset. [buy]

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, by Annabel Mehran

St. Vincent‘s new album Actor is due out from 4AD on 5.5.

Grizzly Bear and Beach House
1982 Design, 2007

Shout Out Out Out Out “Guilt Trips Sink Ships” I wonder if there is a cultural reason why so much of the music that is fashionable today features vocals that have been obviously treated with studio effects, often severe enough to transform the natural sound of the performer. Perhaps many of us relate to the subtext of a person burying their identity, or altering it in a way to become more acceptable to others. Maybe it’s to do with how we have the option of living much of our lives in a mediate state, in which we are offered the opportunity to construct our identities as we please on the internet and in games. Either way, it’s difficult for me to hear things like severe autotune, vocoder, or extreme reverb applied to the human voice without thinking that the singer is trying to hide and/or become someone or something else.

Shout Out Out Out Out, a synth-funk band from Edmonton, use what sounds like a vocoder on a majority of their songs. In context, it seems rather matter of fact, as though the band have hired a big clunky sci-fi robot as their lead singer. In using this effect, the group draw on a long history of robo-voices in electronic dance music, but whereas this sound can often feel harsh and cold, their digital voice is mellow, soft, and relatively warm. As “Guilt Trips Sink Ships” unfolds and builds toward a series of ecstatic crests, the robotic voice manages to feel both precise and cheerful, emphasizing the composition’s feeling of relaxed bliss.

Visit the Shout Out Out Out Out website.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle profiles Blitzen Trapper.

Indeed, I hear Bigfoot in the music of Blitzen Trapper, which plays Tuesday at the Bug Jar. I hear darkness, and menace, and the solitude of vast stretches of nature. It is a rock band, but a rough-hewn, low-fi one that finds darker trails than most, with an indie-band's GPS for following the songs to where they lead. Blitzen Trapper put out an album in 2007, Wild Mountain Nation, that earned some critical attention, drawing an audience of "music-nerd type people, people actively seeking out unusual music," Early says. Last fall the band released Furr, drawing further applause. National Public Radio featured the band, and its audience expanded to, as Early puts it, "normal people."

Clickmusic interviews Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison.

Does brutal honesty in songwriting ever get you into trouble in real life?

Not too much. My mother wasn't too enamoured with the suicide song from the last record though. Writing honestly (and maybe brutally) is really the only way I know how to do it, though this time around my personal life is far too content for me to be focusing on it. People would find it boring, so I'm shifting that focus away somewhat.

In the Charleston Post-Courier, Patterson Hood mentions a possible Drive-By Truckers cartoon.

As far as the future is concerned, Hood and the band are as busy and ambitious as ever. "There could be as many as seven Truckers-related projects on the horizon for the next 15 months," says Hood. "Lot's of shows, Booker T.'s album and some shows with him. Maybe a cartoon and a documentary, which is kinda a cartoon also. I love cartoons."

Ars Technica examines the state of negotiations for internet radio royalties.

Left out in the cold are the pure webcasters, like Pandora. According to The New York Times' tech blog, negotiations had been close to a resolution over the weekend but fell apart because of disagreements over a potential two-tiered pricing structure. Depending on size and income, webcasters might pay either per-song fees or a flat percentage of revenue or expenses. The Times suggests that the smaller Internet broadcasters viewed the fee structure as punishing success—if they managed to grow their business, they'd quickly break through a ceiling and wind up paying much higher royalties for their content.

The Hartford Courant examines the effect of the bad economy on live music ticket sales.

In the Huffington Post, Amanda Palmer discusses the UK censorship of the video for her song, "Oasis."

I sat down one day in or around 2002 and wrote a tongue-in-cheek, ironic, up-tempo pop song about a girl who got drunk, date raped, and had an abortion. She sings about these things lightly and happily and says that she doesn't care that these things have happened to her because Oasis, her favorite band, have just sent her an autographed photo in the mail. If you cannot sense the irony in this song, you're about two intelligence points above a kumquat.

Amazon MP3 is selling the classic 8-track MC5 album, Kick Out the Jams, for $1.99.

The Guardian profiles Dischord Records as the music label celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Seattle Weekly interviews Eugene Mirman about his new book, The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life.

Speaking of huge corporations, how did working with a publisher like Harper Collins differ from working with an "indie" label like Sub Pop?

With standup, you hone an act over time and your feedback is your audience. By the time you record an album, you know that most of what you're doing will work. With a book, you're mostly sitting alone and then submitting drafts to an editor or showing what you've written to a small number of friends. They're different, but both great. However, I think working with Sub Pop and Harper isn't really that different necessarily, though I've known the people at Sub Pop much longer, and stay at their houses when I'm in Seattle. That's probably the main difference...I wrote some of my book in the little cabin in back of Megan Jasper's house, but I didn't work on my record in back of Rupert Murdoch's. Still, I've only just begun editing my next Sub Pop album, so Rupert could still invite me to his villa.

NPR's All Songs Considered previews its SXSW coverage.

Amazon MP3 is selling the Grateful Dead's 7-track Wake of the Flood album for $1.99.

Independent Weekly interviews John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats about Jandek.

What did you think about Jandek coming into public to play after 26 years of avoiding it all, especially since your obsession with him had just grown so intense?

I feel weird talking about it because there was a lot of discussion when Jandek played live. People said, "Well, I don't know if he should have done this." And then others, I think rightly, said, "Look, he can do whatever he wants to do. It's his music. It's his f**king business." But at the same time, let's imagine it's 150 years in the future, so we're not talking about a guy who's alive and what he does or doesn't want to do. We're talking about a historical figure now.

The Brooklyn Eagle profiles Grizzly Bear and the band's frontman, Ed Droste.

As something of an elder statesman of the Brooklyn scene (at the very wizened age of 30, no less), where does Droste see things headed? Although “excited about where things are,” Droste—who is an active blogger, provoking a minor imbroglio late last year when he unwittingly posted a leaked track from Animal Collective’s much—anticipated Merriweather Post Pavilion-is equivocal in his praise of the blogosphere, citing its mystifying” elements and going so far as to compare it to high school.