Pitchfork

Ted Leo + Pharmacists will be Living With the Living on March 20, as the gang has revealed that phrase as the title of their new album.

The band's 15-track Touch and Go debut was produced by Fugazi's Brendan Canty and was recorded at Massachusetts' Long View Farm Studios, as previously reported. Song titles include "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb", "Fourth World War", and "Army Bound" (which can be heard, in demo form, by clicking the link below). So yeah, it's safe to say that the record is politically charged, though reportedly not openly so.

Leo currently has three dates scheduled-- two December gigs in Seattle (one with Death Cab for Cutie, and one as part of KEXP's Yule Benefit), and, as previously reported, one March slot at San Francisco's Noise Pop festival. He + Pharmacists will hit the road again closer to Living With the Living's release.

The crew recently wrapped up a North American tour, some of it with Leo's brother Chris' group, Vague Angels. On November 24, the siblings and their respective bands stopped by Asheville's Grey Eagle, and, according to text and video accounts from Pitchfork reader Jason Martinez, things got a little rowdy.

"There was a guy in the front row that was 'on something' or really, really wasted," Martinez writes. "He was dancing really weird-like. At the encore he got up on stage and took hold of the microphone and started yelling at the crowd, calling them boring because they weren't dancing and going as crazy as he was. So some guys took him off the stage and then Ted Leo comes out and the video I have starts at this point."

Martinez's footage captures Leo performing an a cappella (like the original) cover of Billy Bragg's "Tender Comrade", half of "Dirty Old Town", and "Treble in Trouble". During the middle track, the aforementioned 'guy in the front row' starts a scuffle. Fortunately, Leo manages to break it up with some a little tambourine lovin'.

"Ted Leo is so Punk Rock!!!" Martinez commented.

Living With the Living tracklist:

01 Fourth World War
02 The Sons of Cain
03 Army Bound
04 Who Do You Love?
05 Colleen
06 A Bottle of Buckie
07 Bomb.Repeat.Bomb
08 La Costa Brava
09 Annunciation Day/Born on Christmas Day
10 The Unwanted Things
11 The Lost Brigade
12 The World Stops Turning
13 Some Beginner's Mind
14 The Toro and the Toreador
15 C.I.A.

Dates:

12-09 Seattle, WA - Key Arena *
12-10 Seattle, WA - Neumos Crystal Ball Reading Room (KEXP Yule Benefit 2006)
03-02 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall (Noise Pop)

* with Death Cab for Cutie