Sons & Daughters Return With a Gift on New LP

Photo by Joe Dilworth

The men and women of Glaswegian foursome Sons & Daughters have some pretty cool friends. Not only are they buddies with fellow Scots Franz Ferdinand, but they enlisted former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler to produce their sophomore album, This Gift.

Domino will release This Gift, the follow-up to 2005's The Repulsion Box, on January 29 (North America) and January 28 (elsewhere). The album's first single, "Gilt Complex", landed today (October 29) in the UK and Europe; it's due tomorrow in North America. The single comes as a download and a UK-only seven-inch.

S&D have tour dates, kicking off October 31 with a London in-store and running through December. After This Gift's release, they will head to North America for another, yet-to-be-announced tour. [MORE...]

Bon Iver Signs to Jagjaguwar

Bon Iver, aka former DeYarmond Edison member Justin Vernon, has signed to Jagjaguwar for the official release of his sweet-spot-hitting debut For Emma, Forever Ago early next year.

For Emma is Bon Iver's (pronounced "bohn eevair") souvenir of a three-month stay in a cabin in the woods of northwestern Wisconsin. Vernon originally self-released the record, which explains the fact that Pitchfork already (very favorably) reviewed it and tagged it as a Recommended album.

Vernon will venture out this fall for a handful of shows starting November 10 in Madison, Wisconsin. [MORE...]

T.V. Eye: October 29-November 4, 2007

Live music on TV this week:


Monday, October 29:

ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Justice (rerun)

Tuesday, October 30:

NBC: The Tonight Show With Jay Leno: Sex Pistols

Wednesday, October 31:

CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: The Go! Team
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Sex PistolsNBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Regina Spektor

Thursday, November 1:

FUEL: The Daily Habit: Two Gallants
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Ryan Adams
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Thurston Moore, Common

Friday, November 2:

FUEL: The Daily Habit: Black Lips
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Jay-Z
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Talib Kweli

Saturday, November 3:

NBC: Saturday Night Live: Feist
PBS: Austin City Limits: Wilco

Spoon, Explosions, Aesop Rock Play Antipop Fest
Plus: Black Kids, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Busdriver, Craig Wedren

They call it Antipop, but no matter your ideological stance on all things catchy, the thing sure is poppin'!

Over four nights at nearly a dozen Orlando, Florida venues, this year's Antipop Music Festival packs in Spoon, Aesop Rock, Explosions in the Sky, Black Kids, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Craig Wedren (ex-Shudder to Think), Busdriver, the Postmarks, the Stills, All Smiles, David Bazan (ex-Pedro the Lion), Daedelus, Blockhead, Johnny Cash's Legendary Tennessee Three, and more.

The sustained affront to all things pop kicks off November 7, with more acts expected to join the fracas in the days leading up to the fest.

Photos: Kevin Drew [Portland, OR; 10/27/07]

Photos by Nilina Mason-Campbell

Kevin Drew's Spirit If... tour continues to make its way across the world, having landed on American shores this weekend, after a month of European exhibition. As predicted, Drew's beard (as well as a couple of his bandmates') has indeed continued to grow over the course of the tour, which hit Portland, Oregon's Aladdin Theater Saturday night. On this trek, the Broken Social Scenester has been joined at times by album collaborators Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set, Treble Charger's Bill Priddle, and Uncut/Hawaii member Sam Goldberg, as well as BSSers Brendan Canning and Justin Peroff, not to mention Metric's James Shaw.

The night before, at Seattle's Moore Theatre, Drew and co. were joined by special guests Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie for an encore of "When It Begins". Check out Joshua C. Bis' photos here.

More photos and remaining tour dates below.








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Devendra Banhart Exhibits Art at San Fran MOMA

Photo by Alissa Anderson

From now through February 24 at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, a collection of music-inspired works from late Swiss painter Paul Klee will be exhibited next to the drawings of Californian freakazoid Devendra Banhart. They're calling the show "Abstract Rhythms", and if we may be so bold, it's an inspired pairing: both Klee's and Banhart's works contain a wide-eyed (occasionally childlike) wonder at the beauty of the world.

If you own Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, you've seen some of the pieces Devendra's displaying at MOMA, but don't think a spin through the CD booklet is a proper replica for the real thing. D.Ban's got ten new drawings and a series of photos of Devendra, friends, family and well-wishers up as well.

The drawings, like the album, apparently "spring from a personal narrative developed around a fictional protagonist named Smokey- an archetype of a person Banhart frequently encounters while on tour," according to a press release. Yeah, I bet there's a lotta Smokeys in your audience, beardo.

"I sing what I can't draw and draw what I can't sing," Devendra says.

Here's a little wall-text-speak on a couple of the pieces on display: "In Kadmon Smokey (2007), Banhart thematically draws from the kabbalah, presenting Smokey as the primordial Kadmon Adam (the first being created by the cosmos), pictorially represented as an abstract, mountainous form around which colorful planets revolve. In Banded King Snake and Thunder Maiden (2007), Banhart blends myriad cultural myths, including a reference to Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Aztec god who is half-bird and half-snake. In the drawing the snake's vibrant colors signify the plumes of the quetzal bird. Similarly, lightening bolts radiate from the hybrid figure's hat-an allusion to Indra, the god of thunder in Hindu mythology."

This is like that time I tried to read Siddhartha and instead ended up playing a "Duck Tales" video game for like seven hours.

To keep things swinging at SFMOMA, Devendra will bring his traveling rock'n'roll hoedown-- primed to hit Europe early next month-- there January 17, when he will play a live show.

For more Devendra art, check out the book Good Times: Bad Trips.

Full dates after the jump. [MORE...]

Photos: The Decemberists [Chicago, IL; 10/28/07]

Photos by Sanchez and Kitahara

If you know the long and short of the Decemberists' catalogue, then you're probably excited about the band's current "Long and Short of It" tour, on which the Portland rockers play two nights in each city, devoting one night to their lengthy jams, and one night to their shorter pop tunes.

It was a night of extended sea chanteys on Sunday at Chicago's Vic Theater, as Colin Meloy and crew worked through some of the longer tracks from last year's progtastic The Crane Wife and some of their more verbose tunes from albums past.

More photos and tour dates (delineated by length of songs to be played) below.








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Kanye Writes a Book of "Kanye-isms"
Editors scramble for dust jacket quotes from Chris Martin, John Mayer, guy from Maroon 5

It looks like Kanye is taking his role as purveyor of the printed word seriously. We're not sure how he was able to do it between near-constant updates of his new blog, but the Chicago MC will issue Thank You and You're Welcome!, his first book, early next year.

Written in collaboration with co-author J. Sakiya Sandifer, Thank You is, according to Kanye's blog, "an entertaining volume of 'Kanye-isms'-- the creative, humorous, and insightful philosophies and anecdotes used in creating my path to success. It captures the same wit, playful irony, and piercing insight found abundant in my lyrics. In Thank You and You're Welcome!, I deliver my personal message uncensored, without any five-second delay or media distortion."

Kanye will post sample pages from the future bathroom companion shortly, but the book is available for pre-order right now. It will ship no later than January 2, and West and Sandifer will autograph the first 500 copies sold.

Next up, an advice column! (We wish.)

Kanye's next show is tonight, October 29, in Boston. [MORE...]

Flaming Lips Play OK Show With Country Superstars
The Flaming Lips + Amy Grant = melted brain

The Flaming Lips are involved in a lot of weird shit. In addition to their famously over-the-top shows, there is the UFO-themed live DVD, the Halloween parade, the alley named after them, and Christmas on Mars. But none of those things holds a candle to the band's upcoming appearance at the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular.

Aside from being the Lips' home state's celebration of 100 years of statehood, the performance is notable because of the rest of the artists on the bill: Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood, Patti Page, All-American Rejects, and Amy Grant. Just...we're just...speechless.

The concert will take place at Oklahoma City's Ford Center on November 16. Here's hoping for a Toby Keith appearance alongside Wayne Coyne in the inflatable plastic sphere.

Thanks to reader Rock Strongo for having an awesome name and giving us the tip.

Don't forget that the Lips-featuring soundtrack to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium comes out November 13, with the film following on the same date of the Centennial Spectacular.

Finally, there are still a few of those Zaireeka 10th anniversary parties left, with the next taking place tomorrow, October 30, in Dallas. [MORE...]

Photos: Jens Lekman [Philadelphia, PA; 10/26/07]

Photos by Michael Alan Goldberg

As Night Falls over Kortedala, the sun rises over here on the other hemisphere, where Jens Lekman has just kicked off his Night Falls U.S. tour. It began with a kids-only show in Bloomington, Indiana, home of his Stateside label, Secretly Canadian, and continued at Philadelphia's First Unitarian Church this weekend.

Lekman and his ladyfriends trot across the rest of the country through mid-November, and then head to the UK at year's end. And don't forget the Swedish songsmith makes an appearance on the newly-downloadable EP of Arthur Russell covers, available on Rough Trade.

More photos and tour dates below.








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Robyn's Robyn Finally Coming Stateside in 2008
Bonus: U.S. tour in the works!

Roll out the red carpet, break out the bubbly, and prepare to extend a warm American welcome to European pop royalty. Robyn, the fantastic long-player from a rejuvenated Robyn Carlsson, is finally coming to the U.S. in 2008-- some three calendar years after it initially landed over in Sweden, and one since the UK got theirs.

An Interscope rep tells us that Robyn will grace U.S. shops in non-import form at last thanks to subsidiary Cherrytree Records (who also sent the Pipettes our way; keep 'em comin', guys!). As mentioned, it's due at an unspecified point in 2008, not-- as reported in a recent EW.com article-- on December 4. Tracklist details have not yet been finalized, but it's looking like Kleerup collaboration "With Every Heartbeat" (not found on the original Robyn) will make the cut!

What's more, word is Robyn is planning to make an official U.S. visit-- what us commoners might call a tour-- sometime in 2008. Hot damn! For the moment, however, she's making the rounds in the UK. [MORE...]

Country Music Legend Porter Wagoner, 1927-2007

Country music legend and Grand Ole Opry star Porter Wagoner died Sunday, October 28, from lung cancer at the age of 80, according to a Reuters report. The report cites Wagoner's publicist, Darlene Bieber, who said Wagoner entered a hospice facility in Nashville several days before his death.

A Grammy winner and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Wagoner was known for his penchant for flashy rhinestone suits. In addition to his solo career as a musician, entertainer, and television host, he nurtured the career of a young Dolly Parton as both a mentor and duet partner. He was allegedly the inspiration for Parton's classic song "I Will Always Love You".

The Howell County, Missouri native was a fixture of the Grand Ole Opry for 50 years, though he didn't shy away from controversy just to tow the party line. For example, in 1979, he invited James Brown to perform on the Opry stage, despite the objections of other Opry members.

Just this past June, Wagoner released his last album, Wagonmaster on Anti- Records. He opened for the White Stripes at Madison Square Garden in July.

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.)