Gerbils/Neutral Milk Guitarist Westbrook Passes On

The Athens, Georgia music community, as close-knit as scenes come, experienced a tragic loss this past Monday as Will Westbrook, guitarist for Orange Twin-affiliated Elephant 6 offshoot the Gerbils, passed away.

Will was also an Olivia Tremor Control collaborator, a player in Neutral Milk Hotel's live incarnation, and a celebrated photographer-- it's his portrait of NMH that appears on the Elephant 6 website. Will's untimely death-- said to extend from unspecified recent health problems-- prompted an outpouring of grief from the Athens community.

"Will was a a great guy, and a madman as a guitar player," wrote Ben Crum of fellow Orange Twin act Great Lakes on his band's MySpace blog. "He will be sorely missed."

Along with Scott Spillane and John D'Azzo, Westbrook formed the core of the Gerbils, who came together back in Louisiana in 1992, later relocating to Athens. They released a pair of albums and several singles over the years (also breaking up for a period), the most recent being 2001 LP The Battle of Electricity on Orange Twin.

Some thoughts posted by J. Kirk Pleasant of former Athens band Calvin, Don't Jump! on the Elephant 6 message board touched on elements of Will's character unbeknownst to most. "He was very unassuming on stage," wrote Pleasant. "His beauty always lay in the very very subtle."

"It took him forever to do anything... record a guitar solo, line up a photo, make a cup of coffee. If anyone ever goes by the transmetropolitan in Athens, notice the tile before the entrance. Will did those tiles and took years (as I recall) to finish the job. Every tile was perfect and he made sure that when he did anything, it was perfect.

"He was an extraordinary photographer. I always admired him the most for that. His hands were perpetually cracked and dry. I keep seeing his hands in my mind today as this news sinks in. This is tearing me apart. I'll miss him."

Read more from Pleasant here.

Our hearts go out to friends and family of Will and all those he loved.

Photos: ATP Nightmare Before Christmas [Somerset, England; 12/08-10/06]

Last weekend, what seemed like the entire noise-rock universe gathered in Somerset, England for All Tomorrow's Parties' Nightmare Before Christmas festival, curated by scene godfather Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. We are so jealous of everybody who went.

And Thurston didn't take his curatorial role lightly, oh no. Dude was everywhere. Not only did he play two sets with Sonic Youth and one with side project Bark Haze, but he also jumped onstage with Be Your Own Pet and sang backup for Negative Approach.

Andrew Kesin, General Manager of Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, was kind enough to share a small slice of the thousands of photos he took at the event. Pix of performances from Sonic Youth, the Stooges, Gang of Four, Flipper (with Krist Novoselic!), Be Your Own Pet, the Melvins, Negative Approach, Six Organs of Admittance, Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wolf Eyes, Comets on Fire, Dead Machines, Hair Police, Awesome Color, Bark Haze, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, Monotract, and MV + EE are below.

For a lot more, including performance photos from Nurse With Wound, Dinosaur Jr., No Neck Blues Band, Prurient, Sun City Girls, and many, many others, as well as off-stage goofing, check out Kesin's extensive photo gallery on the Ecstatic Peace site.

Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth

Iggy Pop

Gang of Four

Flipper

Be Your Own Pet

Be Your Own Pet with Thurston Moore

[MORE...]

Streets, Lily Allen, Killers, Lupe Play Big Day Out
Diplo, Muse, Spank Rock, Drones, Hot Chip, Tool also set for Australian fest

At Pitchfork HQ, scarves and shivers pretty much make up January and February's forecast, but for occupants of the Southern Hemisphere, it's bikinis and sweat.

Early next year, Australia and New Zealand will celebrate their summer with the 15th annual Big Day Out festival. The event will travel to Auckland on January 19, Gold Coast on January 21, Sydney on January 25, Melbourne on January 28, Adelaide on February 2, and Perth on February 4.

Big Day Out boasts a boatload of both touring and select-show-only acts, including the Killers, Tool, Violent Femmes, the Streets, Peaches, Muse, Lupe Fiasco, Lily Allen, Diplo, Spank Rock, Hot Chip, Macromantics, Kasabian, Justice, the Presets, the Drones, the Vines, the Sleepy Jackson, and more. For a more complete lineup, head here; local acts can be found on each city's roster page.

Klaxons Release Sweet Video, Tour

The video for "Golden Skans"-- Klaxons' January 22 single from the forthcoming Myths of the Near Future LP-- is the band's best video yet, due in no small part to the fact that they now seem to have a budget.

Like a human version of the awesome video for Vitalic's "Poney Part 1", a good portion of the clip is spent with the band floating in the air wrapped in colored ribbons. But it also includes sweet shots of the band roaring up from a body of water and using thin rods to slice through big cylinders with liquid inside.

Right, so it doesn't make any sense, but director Saam Farahmand-- responsible for Klaxons' excellent "Magick" video as well as the cleverly edited Bush and Blair video set to Electric Six's "Gay Bar" and who has one of the most awesome websites we've seen-- makes it all look fantastic.

Polydor will release Myths of the Near Future in the UK on January 29, and Klaxons have plenty of UK tour dates to keep them busy before then and afterward.

[MORE...]

Scissor Sisters Announce 2007 World Tour

Get ready to cut a rug, because Scissor Sisters are about to tour pretty much everywhere. In late January, the band will fire things up with quick treks through both Japan and Australia. Then, they're off on whirlwind treks across North America and Europe, taking them through late April.

As if that wasn't enough, the Sisters also slated to play a New Year's Eve gig in Berlin, as well as three English dates in the summer.

And they'll reach an even bigger audience on February 8, when Scissor Sisters will appear on the zany NBC soap opera "Passions". According to their website, the band will "burst on to the show in a puff of smoke, conjured by young witch(!) Endora to play in her mother's living room."

And speaking of that big screen sitting in front of your face (the one that isn't a computer monitor), last month, Scissor Sisters asked their fans to film themselves "getting ready, pumped and prepared" for their shows at London's Wembley Arena for possible use on a future Scissor Sisters DVD.

Finally, the band released a new single, "Land of a Thousand Words", not too long ago on CD, picture disc, and iTunes exclusive download. [MORE...]

MP3/Video: Paul Brill: "Paris Is On (Jason Forrest Remix)"

Pitchfork party pal and monster mash-up man Jason Forrest treats Paul Brill's "Paris Is On", stringing it up with a little Casio melody, filling out the rests with some beatboxing, and punctuating the refrain with some pretty sick drums. It all fits Brill's brooding verses/cathartic choruses template quite well, and best of all, there's a Joel Trussell video to accompany it.

You may remember Mr. Trussell as the creative force behind the kick-ass clip for Forrest's "War Photographer" or the lovely vid for M. Ward's "Chinese Translation". Not going to lie here: I can't really make heads or tails of this one (Is that thing a stuffed sausage? A paramecium? A Muppet reject?) but it's quirky and fun all the same-- plus the B-boy bugs are an awesome touch. Watch the YouTube right here or click below for a higher quality version.



"Paris Is On" comes from Brill's latest, Harpooner, out now on Scarlet Shame Records.

Exclusive MP3: Chromeo: "Tenderoni"

Recipe for "Tenderoni", from Chromeo's currently untitled forthcoming album on Vice:

6 cups repetitive keyboard space bass
2 cups "Staying Alive" disco guitar
3 tbsp Zapp & Roger vocoder
1 tsp cowbell
2 small bags of keyboard handclaps
1 fake fadeout

Bring space bass to a boil. Stir in disco guitar, handclaps, and vocoder until an even mixture is achieved. Sprinkle cowbell into broth. Let cool. Pour into bowl, and carefully place fadeout on top. Serves two creeps.

Goldfrapp to Release iTunes EP

Joining labelmate José González in the "Mute artists with iTunes live session EPs in December" club is Goldfrapp, whose EP will hit the Apple music joint on December 19.

The four-track collection, recorded in San Francisco this May, features material from the pair's Supernature, Black Cherry, and Felt Mountain albums.

Like González, Goldfrapp are also up for a slew of awards. They are nominated for two Grammys, Best Electronic/Dance Album (Supernature) and Best Dance Recording ("Ooh La La"), a PLUG award for Electronic/Dance Album of the Year (for remix disc We Are Glitter), and "Subterranean"'s video of the year (for the clip for "Ooh La La"). Vote here and here for the latter two honors, respectively.

Goldfrapp are currently at their home studio in Bath, England recording new tunes; these are slated for a spring release.

Finally, keep an eye out for Goldfrapp on Showtime's "The L Word" in 2007, as they taped a performance for the series earlier this year. Ooh La La indeed! [MORE...]

Exclusive MP3: Scritti Politti: "The Last Time I Looked"

This mellow White Bread Black Beer outtake features Green Gartside in the same plaintive mood he struck on songs like that album's "The Boom Boom Bap", but not without references to things like "the tree of cocaine" and "a river of beer."

The layered vocals, pretty harmonies, and carefully placed slide guitar give the song an almost "new grass" feel, and the occasional xylophone adds a holiday touch. If only the French female voice in the middle were counting down from a dozen instead of seven, we'd have a new "12 Days of Christmas".

Exclusive: Mew's Frengers Coming to America

Hey kid, have you heard? Not cool is the new cool. And I don't mean "Man, hair metal is so ridiculous and tacky, therefore it's cool," cool. I mean "Wow, this is so uncool not even ironically liking it will vindicate me," cool. It's a little bit like the nostalgia cool that's all the rage these days-- love for 80s cartoons and movies and such-- except it's going on right now. And Danish dream-proggers Mew are leading the charge of the new cool-not-cool.

Way back in 2003-- before America realized not cool equates to cool-- Mew released their major label debut, Frengers, in the UK and Europe. The album bore a not very cool cover depicting a matador, which has precisely nothing to do with the aesthetic of the songs therein-- songs culled from Mew's first two self-released records, A Triumph for Man (1997) and Half the World Is Watching Me (2000). Great news, people: Frengers (apparently a portmanteau of "friends" and "strangers") finally comes out in the U.S. on January 23, 2007, via Columbia.

Among its treasures: multi-part opener "Am I Wry? No", the soaring "156", eerie "SheSpider", and epic, 10+ minute closer "Comforting Sounds", all of which have been staples of Mew's recent live sets in North America in support of this year's And the Glass Handed Kites. And have you heard the chorus on "Snow Brigade"? It totally kicks.

Frengers also features a guest vocal from Swedish avant-pop princess Stina Nordenstam on "Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years" and a pretty amazing duet with an adolescent American girl named Becky Jarrett that singer Jonas Bjerre met through the Internet (not cool = cool, recall) on "Symmetry". No joke, read about it here.

Pretty much every song on this thing is epic, huge, and overblown, not unlike a child's imagination-- and not unlike cornerstones of our youth like The NeverEnding Story, The Princess Bride, and The Goonies. Dudes, in case you weren't sure, I'm stoked. [MORE...]

Dead Moon Call It Quits

After two decades and too many releases to count (on both hands anyway), Clackamas, Oregon garage rock institution Dead Moon have entered the new moon phase, and fans shouldn't expect another cycle to begin anytime soon.

"After 20 yrs, Dead Moon is retiring," reads a message posted on the Sub Pop site earlier today. "It has been a journey we will always treasure and feel that a worldwide family has emerged in its place. Dead Moon became much bigger than the band itself, it became a DIY underground hopeful for a lot of people. The candle is still burning!

--Fred Cole"

Their official website, located here, is currently down (on purpose, perhaps?), so that's about all we can tell you for now. The disbandment follows Dead Moon's best-of two-disc set, Echoes of the Past, which was released via Sub Pop in September.

Clinic, Hella, Okkervil's Sheff Added to Noise Pop
Black Angels, Macromantics, French Kicks also new to lineup

Although San Francisco's Noise Pop festival has a ways to go before completing its 2007 lineup, quite a few new artists have made their way on to the event's roster.

The six-day party, now in its 15th year, will run from February 27-March 4. In addition to previously reported performers such as Sebadoh (in their reunited original lineup), Ted Leo/Pharmacists, John Vanderslice, and Jolie Holland, the following are slated to play the festival: Okkervil River's Will Sheff, Clinic, Hella, French Kicks, Josh Ritter, the Black Angels, Macromantics, Richard Swift, Autolux, Midlake, Earlimart, Vic Chesnutt, Ghostland Observatory, Midlake, Pop Levi, and Seawolf.

More information on the (currently incomplete) artist list here. Badges for the festival go on sale today. [MORE...]

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)