First Acts Revealed for Pitchfork's Intonation Festival

>>Confirmed artists:
The Decemberists
The Fiery Furnaces
Broken Social Scene
The Go! Team
Four Tet
Magnolia Electric Co.
The Wrens
A.C. Newman
The M's

The gates will open at noon each day, and there will be no advance tickets (which means no dealing with the evils of Ticketmaster or scalpers). Admission will be $10 at the door and certain proceeds will go to benefit the Chicago Park District's after-school music programs. The park is located at 1419 W. Blackhawk St. Stay tuned to Pitchfork and the websites below for more information and updates to the lineup.

* Intonation Music Festival: <a

Sufjan Stevens Album Details Announced

01 Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL
02 The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, "I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!"
03 Come on! Feel the Illinoise!
-Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition
-Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream
04 John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
05 Jacksonville
06 A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But for Very Good Reasons
07 Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step Mother!
08 One Last "Woo-hoo!" for the Pullman
09 Chicago
10 Casimir Pulaski Day
11 To the Workers of the Rockford River Valley Region, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and it involves shoe string, a lavender garland, and twelve strong women
12 The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts
13 Prairie Fire That Wanders About
14 A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze
15 The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!
16 They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhhh!
17 Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell
18 In This Temple, as in the Hearts of Man, for Whom He Saved the Earth
19 The Seer's Tower
20 The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders
-Part I: The Great Frontier
-Part II: Come to Me Only With Playthings Now
21 Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few
22 Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I shake the dirt from my sandals as I run

The album will be available in both CD and vinyl formats. The vinyl will be a 2xLP set with a triple gatefold sleeve and an additional track, "The Avalanche". The CD will have a running time of 74 minutes and the LP will be 80 minutes. Epic indeed.

Sufjan Stevens: http://www.sufjan.com/

Low Documentary Coming to DVD

The DVD, to be released on June 28, includes deleted Super 8 footage from a December 2002 radio broadcast in Germany, as well as further interviews and songs.

Songs featured in the film:
"(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace"
"John Prine"
"Canada"
"Laser Beam"
"Take the Long Way Around the Sea"
"Last Snowstorm of the Year"
"Immune"
"Time is the Diamond"
"Little Argument With Myself"
"I am the Lamb"
"Speaking in Tongues"

A trailer for the film can be viewed by clicking here.

Low: http://www.chairkickers.com/
Plexifilm: http://www.plexifilm.com/

Ponys Prepare Album, Tour

01 Glass Conversation
02 Another Wound
03 Today
04 I'm With You
05 We Shot The World
06 Shadowbox
07 Discoteca
08 Get Black
09 She's Broken
10 Ferocious

And how will the Ponys spread the good news about the new album to a jaded, overstimulated public? According to the band's web site, with a record release show at home in Chicago followed by a series of westerly live appearances that go a little something like this:

04-29 Chicago, IL - Double Door
05-03 Columbia, MO - Mojo's
05-04 Norman, OK - Opolis
05-05 Ft. Worth, TX - Wreck Room
05-06 Austin, TX - Emos
05-07 El Paso, TX - The T Lounge
05-08 Scottsdale, AZ - TBA
05-10 Los Angeles, CA - Echo
05-11 San Francisco, CA - Café Du Nord
05-12 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill *
05-13 Portland, OR - Berbatis *
05-14 Seattle, WA - Neumo's *
05-16 Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court Gallery *
05-17 Denver, CO - Bender's *
05-18 Lawrence, KS - Replay Lounge *
05-19 St. Louis, MO - Hi-Pointe *

* with Gris Gris

The Ponys: http://www.theponys.com
In the Red Records: http://www.intheredrecords.com

Stratford 4 Disband, Form New Bands

The annoyingly gossip-free statement posted on the site's main page laid out the band's final thoughts as such: "We want to thank all of you for coming to the shows, buying the records, and just emailing to say hi. We were together for close to six years, and it was worth every minute." OK, fair enough, but somebody double check who Yoko's been shacking up with lately.

Formed in 1998 and often compared to My Bloody Valentine and the Velvet Underground, the Stratford 4 will leave behind three studio LPs, including the upcoming swan song Keep Your Crazy Head on Straight, which has been promised for release on a yet-to-be-named Tuesday in the late summer/early fall 2005. And before you do the logical thing and just bust out Loveless and White Light/White Heat, 3/4 of the band will be testing fan loyalty by splintering off into two new groups.

As the official statement continues: "The music isn't over just yet. Jake and Andrea have a new band called Love Like Fire, and Sheetal has a new band called August Bodies. And we're happy to announce that we're playing our debut shows together." Hey, maybe people really can stay friends afterwards! Interested parties can check out both groups when they perform at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco on April 18, along with Serene Lakes.

Stratford 4: http://www.stratford4.com

Melvins to Issue Early Demos Disc

What's more, the Melvins existed long before their big-name proteges, recording their first songs around 1983. Segue: those primeval tracks are about to see their first official release as Mangled Demos, due out June 14 via Ipecac Records. The demos involved seriously predate the band's first EP (that would be 1986) and reportedly sit halfway between early 80s hardcore and the Melvins' familiar slow, swampy sound. We tried just running a recent Melvins record at double speed to get an idea of what that would sound like, but it gave one of the interns some kind of seizure, so we grudgingly turned it off.

The new CD features several songs whose titles got lost somewhere in the last 22 years; rather than making up new ones, the Melvins appear to have assigned them little graphical doodles, which makes the following tracklist a bit of a bitch to reprint. Meanwhile, some songs are included twice, and others run together, producing a total of 18 tracks that, in some abstract sense, look like this:

01 Elks Lodge Christmas Broadcast
02 If You Get Bored - live radio
03 Forgotten Principles
04 Snake Appeal
05 [flower]
06 If You Get Bored
07 Set Me Straight
08 [communist star]
09 I'm Dry
10 Forgotten Principles
11 I Don't Know
12 Matt-Alec
13 The REAL You
14 Run Around
15 Keep Away From Me
16 [clover]
17 Bibulous Confabulation (during rehearsal)
18 [iron cross]
19 [pencil]
20 Matt-Alec
21 "Walter"
22 [broken scissors]
23 [airplane]

The association between the Melvins and Ipecac Records owner Mike Patton goes back farther than this record; Ipecac has put out six other Melvins records since 1999, starting with The Maggot, The Bootlicker, and The Crybaby, a trilogy all recorded together, and two band members have recently played in outside projects with Patton-- new bassist Kevin Rutmanis in Tomahawk, and Buzz Osbourne in Fantomas, who are touring through the end of April.

Melvins: http://www.melvins.com/
Ipecac: http://www.ipecac.com/

Feist Album to Get U.S. Release

Leslie Feist is one of the many Canadian musicians on the fringe of the BSS collective, having sung a bit on You Forgot It In People, but she also has her own thing going on, a solo project under the header Feist. Pitchfork gave the second Feist album, Let It Die, a big juicy 8.1 way back in July 2004, and if you don't trust us, we've got the entire Canadian recording industry to back us up; they just gave Ms. Feist two Juno Awards for the album. Also, as we never get tired of telling people, much of Let It Die was produced by Jason Beck, also known as Peaches' partner in foul-mouth-dom, Chilly Gonzales.

Anyway, here's the point (finally): Let It Die is finally getting a U.S. release on April 26, thanks to the purely altruistic intentions of Interscope Records. Following the release of the album, Feist will be heading Stateside herself, for a North American tour with British Sea Power that will last the better part of May, prior to and following which she'll be all over Europe. Wait, she's touring alone? Does that mean Broken Social Scene have broken up? Shit, we have to tell everyone about this. Uh, dates:

04-08 Gottenberg, Sweden - City Sound @ Pusterviks Teatern
04-09 Malmo, Sweden - Inkonst
04-10 Stockholm, Sweden - Sodra Teatern
04-11 Oslo, Norway - John Dee
04-12 Paris, France - Olympia
04-13 Aarhus, Denmark - Voxhall
04-14 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega
04-16 Schorndorf, Germany - Manufaktur
04-17 Frankfurt, Germany - Batschkapp
04-18 Dresden, Germany - Scheune
04-19 Berlin, Germany - Columbiaclub
04-21 Vienna, Austria - Szene Wien
04-22 Treviso, Italy - New Age
04-23 Rimini, Italy - Velvet
04-24 Rome, Italy - Circolo Degli Artisti
04-26 Milan, Italy - Rainbow
04-28 San Sebastien, Spain - Gastescena
04-29 Madrid, Spain - Moby Dick
04-30 Barcelona, Spain - Razzmatazz 3
05-03 San Diego, CA - Casbah #
05-06 Denton, TX - Hailey's #
05-07 Austin, TX - Emo's #
05-08 Houston, TX - Fat Cat's #
05-10 Atlanta, GA - The Earl #
05-11 Chapel Hill, NC - Cat's Cradle #
05-12 Washington, DC - Black Cat #
05-13 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church #
05-14 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom #
05-15 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom #
05-16 Boston, MA - Middle East #
05-17 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace #
05-18 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop #
05-19 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium #
06-10 Neuhausen, Germany - Southside Festival
06-11 Scheessel, Germany - Hurricane Festival
06-30 Montreal, Quebec - Montreal Jazz Festival
07-01 Toronto, Ontario - Harbourfront
07-03 Belfort, France - Festival Les Eurocknes
07-07 Montreux, Switzerland - Festival de Montreux
07-17 La Rochelle, France - Les Francofolies
07-21 Boulogne-sur-Mer, France - Festival de la Cd'Opale
07-22 Nice, France - Nice Jazz Festival

# with British Sea Power

Feist: http://www.listentofeist.com/
Broken Social Scene: http://www.arts-crafts.ca/bss/index2.html

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