Sufjan Goes High Art for Brooklyn Academy of Music
Creates music/film project inspired by NYC highway

The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is a stretch of road that any vehicle-owning New Yorker (or anybody who's ever taken the bus to/from La Guardia) probably knows well...from being stuck in traffic on it for hours and hours.

But, apparently, it's also a source of inspiration for one Mr. Sufjan Stevens, who has been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to write a "music and film work" titled "The BQE", which will make its world premiere at BAM's Next Wave festival November 1-3.

Here's what a press release had to say about "The BQE": Merging a virtual road trip (shot in beautiful 16mm film) with a live band and orchestral ensemble, The BQE discovers abstract patterns and stories in the snaking traffic, stunning city views, potholed pavement, billboards, and badly marked exits. The work, commissioned for the 25th Next Wave Festival, muses on an urban planning project—then controversial, now overcrowded and antiquated—that tore through neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens in a zealous period of urban development.

"The performances at BAM will also feature new songs by Stevens and orchestrated selections from his acclaimed albums."

So...does this mean the next state is New York?

As you know, Suf-jeezy has been keeping quite busy of late, mostly with writing, but also hanging out on rooftops.

Magnolia Electric Co Bundle CD/DVD/Medallion Box Set
Tour the long hard roads of the world

Along with a couple other lyrical fixations, Jason Molina loves him some moon. Just take a gander at the tracklist for the Magnolia Electric Co frontman's impressive five-disc box set Sojourner, hitting shops courtesy of Secretly Canadian on August 7.

Disc one: "No Moon on the Water" and "Nashville Moon"; disc two: "And the Moon Hits the Water"; disc three: "Memphis Moon"; and disc four: "Spanish Moon Fall and Rise". Molina finally bucks the lunar trend on disc five, a DVD that contains a tour film titled The Road Becomes What You Leave that might as well be subtitled The Moon Becomes What You Moon, Part Moon.

The four audio discs comprise recording sessions Jason's been threatening to release for a while now: the Nashville Moon session, recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, the Sun Session, recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis, the Black Ram session, recorded by David Lowery (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven) at Sound of Music, and the Shohola session, which Molina recorded by his lonesome.

Speaking of lonesome, the fifth disc's tour documentary, produced by Todd Chandler and Tim Sutton, apparently (says the press release) "shows the loneliness and isolation one can feel even when traveling in a pack."

All five discs come in an honest-to-goodness wooden crate, with postcards featuring Munch-esque artwork, and-- get this-- an actual moon-shaped medallion, your reward for making it through this many hours of moon-addled music.

Guests on Sojourner include Chicago whistler Andrew Bird, David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker), Rick Alverson (Spokane), Mike Brenner (Slo-Mo), Molly Blackbird, Miguel Urbiztondo, Alan Weatherhead, Peter Schreiner, Jonathan Cargill, and Magnolia regulars Jason Evans Groth, Mark Rice, and Michael Kapinus.

Thanks to reader Paul Belbusti for the tip!

Magnolia will take in many a Spanish moon whilst touring the Iberian Peninsula next month, plus some slightly-less-romantic German and Austrian moons thereafter. Then it's some North American harvest moons in late summer, including one sliver of Jason Molina solo moon man action. [MORE...]

Lisa Milberg Talks Concretes' Trouble, Rebirth
"This time around we wanted to do something...a little more stupid."

Photo by Marius Hansen

After a year fraught with bad breaks-- including the departures of lead vocalist Victoria Bergsman (Taken by Trees) and all of the band's instruments (taken by thieves)-- Swedish indie-pop heroes the Concretes were more than ready for a fresh start in 2007.

"It was just not a very good time," the Concretes' Lisa Milberg told Pitchfork recently. "Everyone went back home [after Victoria left the band and the tour was canceled] and we didn't know what to do-- whether we were going to continue and who was going to sing and what we were going to be called, or if we were just going to call it a day."

"I knew all along that we wanted to stick together," Lisa admitted, "because we love each other. But I think it was more a question of if we were going to try and make it something completely new. In a lot of ways, it probably would have been easier to come up with a new name and leave everything behind. But it just didn't feel right to abandon something we had been working on for so long.

"It's very typical of the Concretes to not take the easiest route, so I think we just decided to sort of stick to it."

Once the decision to endure was made, instinct soon took hold. "I started writing a lot," said Milberg, "not with any kind of plan. I just started writing down things. Then I built a small studio in my bedroom and started to record songs, and then we emailed them back and forth. I think, for me, it was just a survival technique. I think if I hadn't started writing I would have been hospitalized."

Previously the band's drummer and occasional vocalist/lyricist, Milberg has now stepped to the fore in the wake of Bergsman's departure, penning the words and singing the songs for the newly reinvented Concretes (and still drumming on record).

Those emailed song sketches, meanwhile, would form the foundation of Hey Trouble, the Concretes' third LP and a comeback record of sorts. Out now in Scandinavia, the album hits UK shops June 4; the band plans to send Trouble Stateside in the fall via their own Licking Fingers imprint.

As for Bergsman... "I haven't seen her since the day we split up," Milberg said. "I'm really sad about that, but I think we should have probably gone our separate ways quite a lot sooner than we did. The last year or even before that, I think we just knew we wanted different things, and it made it very tough on everyone. And I really wish all the best to her." [MORE...]

Big Business Kick Off Tour

Jared Warren and Coady Willis-- veterans of a bunch of crushingly loud and abrasive bands who have united to form Big Business-- will bring the hammer of the gods to the masses on their summer tour, which kicks off tonight (May 31) in Barcelona.

For tonight's show, the Big Biz guys are joining the Melvins onstage for a performance of Houdini as part of the Don't Look Back portion of the Primavera Sound Festival. (And as most readers know, the Pitchfork Music Festival has its own Don't Look Back performances by Sonic Youth, GZA, and Slint on July 13.)

After tonight, Big Business will bruise the Italians for four dates before returning to the U.S. for the full-blown tour. Screw Valhalla...Fargo, I am coming! [MORE...]

The Field to Tour America This Summer
When you're on foreign soil, a microhouse is not a microhome

Axel Willner-- best known to you and me as Swedish beatball the Field-- has garnered enough praise for the glitchy grooves etched in this spring's Best New Music recipient From Here We Go Sublime to earn himself a little American holiday.

Unfortunately for him, it's a working holiday, but fortunately for us, that translates to a week's worth of live dates from the prodigious producer in the muggy wilds of mid-July. Of course, you've already got plans to show our friend Axel a little warm Midwestern hospitality come July 15, when he takes the stage at the Pitchfork Music Festival, along with the cream of 2007 musical crop. [MORE...]

Lekman, Lidell, Fennesz/Patton Play Paris Fest
Also: Múm, Nurse With Wound, Black Devil Disco Club, Polysics, Feadz, Uffie (ugh)

Jens Lekman, Jamie Lidell, Fennesz, and Mike Patton are among the artists who will perform at various venues across Paris from June 7-10 as part of this year's Villette Sonique festival. Fennesz and Patton's set is part of their previously reported collaborative tour together, and Lidell's set will be "versus" veteran electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani (although we hope Lidell goes easy on Parmegiani, who's nearly 80).

Other artists performing at the festival include Nurse With Wound (featuring Current 93's David Tibet and Andrew Liles), Múm, Black Devil Disco Club, Polysics, First Nation, Shit and Shine, Dirty Sound System, Pascal Comelade and Bel Canto Orquestra, Daniele Baldelli, Krikor, Pentile, Zëro, and Ed Banger's Feadz performing with labelmate and sign-of-the-apocalypse Uffie.

For more information about Villette Sonique, visit the festival's website.

Primavera Sound Festival Kicks Off Tonight
The White Stripes, Hot Chip, Of Montreal, Battles, Beirut, Fujiya & Miyagi Added

On the plus side, the Primavera Sound Festival-- kicking off tonight at Barcelona's Parc del Forum-- has one heck of a eye-popping lineup. On the downside, it's in Spain. Well, okay, so that's only a downside if you're without the ways or means to get yourself to the Catalan capital. And if you can swing it, well, you've got yourself a jam-packed three-day weekend to look forward to. Hope you're all rested up!

Since last we spoke of the Primavera lineup, they're bulked up like your little brother after a trip to GNC. The White Stripes, Hot Chip, Of Montreal, the Fall, Beirut, Battles, Bonde do Role, Fujiya & Miyagi, Portastatic, Apostle of Hustle, Black Lips, Malajube, and Parenthetical Girls, among others, have all RSVP'd to the Primavera party. (Unfortunately, Spank Rock and Klaxons canceled.) It's like they reached into your brain while you were dreaming, and this was what they pulled out!

And, of course, you're already well aware of the presence of Sonic Youth (doing all of Daydream Nation), Slint (doing all of Spiderland), the Smashing Pumpkins, Modest Mouse, Wilco, Built to Spill, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Bad Brains, Girl Talk, Spiritualized, Grizzly Bear, the Good the Bad & the Queen, and like a million others.

If you're from Barcelona, well, get yourself down to Parc del Forum, pronto. If you're from I'm From Barcelona, go play some kazoos or something.

Two More New Robert Pollard Albums on the Way
We might as well just keep that headline up all the time

How many records does Robert Pollard put out every year? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Just last week we told you about the Takeovers album featuring Stephen Malkmus et al, and a quick glance to your left on the main page all day Wednesday got you a glimpse of Jason Crock's review of Bobby's Silverfish Trivia EP. Shucks, it was just a month ago we wrote up something on a collection of the Fading Captain's best deep cuts. And isn't there a Circus Devils album in there at some point?

The man writes songs faster than most people drink beverages, and he owes us at least a beer or three for still paying attention. But he made Bee Thousand, dude... Bee Thousand.

So, here we go again. On October 9, Merge will simultaneously release two albums from our boy Bob. One, Standard Gargoyle Decisions, is being described as "down and dirty rock," while the other, Coast to Coast Carpet of Love, as "super-catchy pop."

In celebration of his newfound triumph over writer's block, in June he'll also kick off a year-long singles club through his website, backing a track from the new records with a non-album cut every month. [MORE...]

Clipse Announce Summer European Tour

Malice and Pusha T are warming up to this whole performing-at-outdoor-festivals thing. The potentially label-less duo known as Clipse have announced that they will play a whole string of European festival dates this summer leading up to their appearance at our own Pitchfork Music Festival. They also have quite a few club dates scattered in between the fests.

The tour kicks off June 14 in Leicester, England, and it ends with Pitchfork Fest at Chicago's Union Park on July 14. Also performing that day are Yoko Ono, Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues, Mastodon, Iron and Wine, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, Voxtrot, Battles, Califone, the Twilight Sad, Fujiya & Miyagi, Oxford Collapse, Dan Deacon, Beach House, the William Parker Quartet, Professor Murder, and Ken Vandermark's Powerhouse Sound. [MORE...]

Sub Pop Loser Scholarship Winner Revealed!

When, some months ago, we alerted our readership of the existence of Sub Pop's Loser Scholarship, the Washingtonian teen in all of us collectively wished we'd spent less time playing Super Smash Brothers and more time doing cool shit.

But only one teenaged cool-shit-doer could emerge victorious, and that one, is seems, is Kennewick, WA's favorite son Kyle Raquipiso, who'll pack the nearly six grand Sub Pop ponied up for the scholarship and make a name for himself at Portland's Pacific Northwest College of the Arts.

Among presumably stiff competition, Raquipiso's formidable entry gained the edge; he managed to stuff tunes from three of his bands, a 7" of his own Leper Print project, and a mess of his own ink drawings in the envelope, along with an essay detailing his efforts at putting on shows around Kennewick and making real art in the midst of a burnt-out peer group. Congrats, Kyle! Six grand ought to pay for beersketchbooks at least through the spring.

Junior Senior (Finally) Issue Sophomore Set in U.S.
So much time has passed, now they're both Seniors

Much has changed in the astonishingly long while since we posted our initial review of Junior Senior's Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, the foot-moving Danish dance duo's sophomore album: tunes from the disc have been featured in PSP games and on "Ugly Betty", Le Tigre-- who guest on the disc-- have effectively split up, and a lot of the group's onetime Stateside fans have all but forgotten about their love for "Move Your Feet", their once-ubiquitous single.

But, North America, prepare to fall in love with Junior Senior all over again August 14, when Rykodisc issues Hey Hey My My Yo Yo on this continent for the first time ever, a mere two years after its initial issue (on Crunchy Frog).

The disc, as you'll recall, features guest spots from a couple B-52s, Spooner Oldham, and the aforementioned Le Tigre, and will come packaged with a DVD featuring "exclusive footage." Will the Junior Senior fire catch on again? Your move, North America.

Junior Senior have a single show on the bubble, at Belfort, France's Eurockéennes festival on June 29. They hope to hit the States this fall.

Decemberists, Neko, Grizzly Bear Take SummerStage
Plus Television, Common, Human Giant, Underworld

Stroll past the Diana Ross Playground, the John Lennon shrine, and the large piles of horse poop and you might just catch a glimpse of some fine indie rock, hip-hop, or comedy this summer in New York City's Central Park.

The world's most famous hotel for transients will host their 22nd year of SummerStage at Rumsey Playfield starting June 8 and running through September. The concert series includes a Decemberists/Grizzly Bear/Land of Talk triple-bill, Neko Case and Eric Bachmann, Television with the Apples in Stereo, Human Giant and Dimitri Martin, a Sloan/Apostle of Hustle Canadian celebration, Rufus Wainwright, Cinematic Orchestra, Femi Kuti & Positive Force, and Underworld, among many others. Unfortunately, Common is playing with Joss Stone.

But arguably the deffest bill belongs to the Wild Style 25th anniversary show on July 29, packing such legends as Fab 5 Freddy, Grandmaster Caz, the Cold Crush Brothers, the Chief Rocker Busy Bee, and DJ GrandWizzard Theodore. Most shows are free, with a few paid shows serving as benefits for the series. [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.)