Andrew Bird Adds a Few Shows, Blogs Some More

Photos by Keith Klenowski

Collaborations, studio sessions and, of course, a little time at the blog spot-- all in a day's work for Andrew Bird. The singer/songwriter/violinist/whistler recently lined up a handful of new dates to go along with the somewhat sporadic itinerary he's made for himself over the next few months, including a run out west with Josh Ritter.

Of course, the infrequency of Bird's tour plans probably has something to do with that record he's working up in Nashville with producer Mark Nevers. Bird again blogged about the process for The New York Times' Measure for Measure blog, and if he's to be believed, the record may sound like an amalgam of Studio One echo, the Zombies, Steve Reich, and "Ghanian street music."

And if that ain't enough genre-bending for your tastes, catch Andrew, Jel and others as they join Dosh at Minneapolis' Walker Arts Center May 3. [MORE...]

Nobody at All Playing Vegoose 2008
Because there won't be a Vegoose 2008

Every autumn since 2005, the Vegoose Festival has helped make Las Vegas, Nevada a safer place for music-minded folk who'd rather toss their dollars at awesome bands than slot machines, strippers, and bloodthirsty white tigers. Every year until this one, that is.

According to a Billboard.com report, Vegoose will not return in 2008. "We're not going to do Vegoose this year," a festival organizer is quoted as saying. "We're not saying it's killed, it's just not going to happen in 2008."

The organizer suggests that dwindling profits in recent years most likely tanked this year's proposed event, as 2007's festivities only brought in about half the attendees and half the revenue as the inaugural 2005 event-- this despite the presence of Daft Punk in 2007.

"The first year we were actually really successful, the second and third years we weren't as much so," the Vegoose rep told Billboard.com "Any time you do a show it has its own unique challenges. We're going to continue to be aggressive and try things, and some will be huge successes and other things may not be."

While Vegoose may have vamoosed this year, Bonnaroo 2008-- put on by the same promoters, Superfly Presents and AC Entertainment-- is still very much on.

Robyn Postpones Two Shows to Play "The View"

Barbara! Whoopi! Joy! Sherri! That Republican Lady from "Survivor"! Robyn!?

Yes ma'am. On Thursday, May 15, you and your morning coffee will be greeted by none other than the pop sensation as she joins the ladies of "The View" as the musical guest.

It's a quick follow-up to Robyn's sublime/surreal stint on "Letterman" last week, which presumably means this American invasion is going pretty well.

Alas, Robyn's time with "The View" has forced her to push planned dates in Portland on May 13 at Berbati's Pan and Seattle May 14 at Neumos back to August to accommodate the taping. That's a bummer, Pac NW, but think about it this way: there's another North American Robyn tour in the works, and it is definitely coming your way.

Somehow, Robyn also managed to find the time to craft a series of six short promotional videos with the help of the Blip Boutique. You saw the one where she does "Bum Like You" for a mess of Texans over in Forkcast yesterday and the album-art-themed clip for "Handle Me" today, but my personal fave is a parrot getting down to "Konichiwa Bitches":

How can we convince this person to sit our American pop stars down for a seminar in how to do this shit properly? [MORE...]

Adem Takes on Aphex Twin, YLT, Bjork, Breeders on LP

Who is that man behind the colorful dots and recently featured in Forkcast? Why it's Adem Ilhan, Kieran Hebden's Fridge bandmate and releaser of solo albums under his own first name. Thanks to the folks at Domino, the third of Adem's solo albums will arrive quite soon. The label will issue Takes in Europe on May 12 and in North America on June 3.

Takes is a covers album collecting Adem's, ahem, takes on some of his favorite tunes released between 1991 and 2001. This includes tracks by Björk, Yo La Tengo, Aphex Twin, Smashing Pumpkins, Low, Tortoise, PJ Harvey, and the Breeders, to name just eight of 12.

Providing an even niftier listening experience, the instrumentation on Takes is typically unusual. There are sounds on the record from an Appalachian dulcimer, an EBow, harmoniums, glockenspiels, a banjolele, an autoharp, and found items such as cups and bike locks. There are also pianos, violins, and acoustic guitars.

Takes' tracklist, complete with original artists in brackets, lies after the jump.

Adem has a handful of shows scheduled this month in support of Takes, all in his native England. [MORE...]

Lil Wayne: Sex Columnist, Thespian, Not Guilty Pleader

"He used to be all about the hustle and the green," some silly person over at VH1.com writes of Lil Wayne, "but these days our boy is dispensing information about the wild thing, too." Ah, yes, they must mean "Lollipop", the fascinatingly terrible chart-topper from Mr. Carter's forthcoming (probably) opus Tha Carter III. "'Lollipop,' the saucy single that's currently rocking the top of the charts suggests that a good romantic relationship is always enhanced by a good physical relationship."

Really? I thought the song was about delicious candy!

But no! It is, in fact, about doing it! And, since talking about doing it comes so naturally to the self-proclaimed "pussy monster," it seems our friend Wayne is currently seeking submissions of queries regarding "love and sex" for a new advice column called "Ask Weezy" he'll be doing for VH1's website. For the next week and a half, you can put your burning questions to Wayne, who'll then proceed to get stoned and tape his responses for airing later in May. We expect a lot of giggling, and perhaps a freestyle verse matching "cup fulla slurpies" with "outbreak of herpes."

But hurry! Wayne already has 1264 questions, and it's only four days into the questioning.

In other news from the wide (weird) world of Wayne, he's set to feature fairly prominently in a new film, Patriots, according to Billboard.com. The New Orleans basketball drama also stars Forest Whitaker and Bow Wow. And earlier today, Wayne pleaded not guilty to charges related to his January arrest in Yuma, Arizona for possession of drugs and weapons. He's due back in court on June 19. (Via MTV.com)

To our knowledge, Tha Carter III is still dropping in June, complete with that fly-from-birth cover art. And Wayne's still got all those shows on the way, with the next in Owensboro, Kentucky Thursday night. [MORE...]

James Blackshaw Preps Cloud Follow-Up, Tours

For the follow-up to last year's well-loved (and Recommended and year end list-making) The Cloud of Unknowing, British acoustic axeman James Blackshaw put the guitar down for a moment to tickle a few ivories-- a Blackshaw first on record.

That said, Litany of Echoes (as the new album is called) isn't a total instrument-swapper like Mingus Plays Piano or something, since Blackshaw is still largely sticking to the finger-picking that he does best. He just happened to throw a little piano on the new disc, as he's been doing quite a bit during his live appearances. Litany finds Blackshaw once again joined by Fran Bury, who contributes violin and viola. The record is due June 17 from Tompkins Square.

Blackshaw has a handful of European tour dates lined up through the spring and summer. The next takes place tonight (May 7) in Spain. [MORE...]

Cluster Plot First U.S. Tour in Ages

Legendary krautrock duo Cluster will return to the U.S. for a round of shows this month. The excursion marks the first time Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius have played most of these cities together in quite some time.

Cluster's U.S. dates find them paired with a whole bunch of different guests at various stops, including Ariel Pink, Wooden Shjips, White Rainbow, Tussle, Howlin Rain, and Arp. The band's Baltimore show goes one step further: It's a freaking festival in their honor! The previously reported Full House Fest boasts a bill that includes Cluster themselves ("at sunset"), Lungfish's Daniel Higgs, Black Dice's Eric Copeland, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Tickley Feather, among others.

Cluster also have European dates before and after their U.S. tour, while Harmonia-- aka Cluster plus Neu!'s Michael Rother-- play a couple of their own shows, including the imminent ATP vs. Pitchfork event. And hey, Roedelius has a few solo gigs too. Find all that below. [MORE...]

A Place to Bury Strangers Too Loud for Record Press

All the nice people at Meal Deal Records wanted to do was release a limited-edition UK-only A Place to Bury Strangers 10" EP sporting "To Fix the Gash in Your Head", "Ocean", and remixes of both tracks from Lillica Libertine and Clapp, respectively. It was supposed to come out on Monday, May 5.

Then, as usual, A Place to Bury Strangers had to go and be all loud and shit. According to an NME.com story confirmed by a publicist, the "red noise levels" on the master tape for "Gash" were so high that the process of transferring them to disc resulted in the destruction of the equipment manufacturing the record. To add insult to injury, the press was one of the few 10" presses left in the UK. You guys ever think about turning it down just a notch?

All is not lost, however. The 10"s are now due in stores this coming Monday, May 12.

Hopefully things will go more smoothly on the road for APTBS. They're over in the UK right now getting ready for ATP vs. Pitchfork festival this weekend, and then are off to the races with Nine Inch Nails in August. [MORE...]

Why?, Cryptacize Cover Dylan, Steely Dan on Split 7"

Unusual musical animals and old pals Why? and Cryptacize have joined forces with Asthmatic Kitty to release a 7" as part of the label's "Unusual Animals" series on July 22. Cryptacize cover Steely Dan's "Peg" and Why? cover Bob Dylan's "As I Went Out One Morning" on the slab, making it an extra special treat. In keeping with tradition, the record comes with an unusual animal on the cover: a West Indian manatee.

Cryptacize will support their debut album, Dig That Treasure, on tour this spring and summer. Why? will do the same for their own new album, Alopecia. [MORE...]

My Brightest Diamond Adds Shark Goodies, Tour

My Brightest Diamond's switch from Horse to Shark means Shara Worden has a lot of spring cleaning to do in preparation for her sophomore album's June 17 release on Asthmatic Kitty.

For starters, she released A Thousand Shark's Teeth's first single to the digital realm yesterday (May 6). The four-track "Inside a Boy" single comes with remixes from Tim Fite and Son Lux, the latter of which is already up in Forkcast.

MBD's other big recorded offering is a bonus EP that comes with Teeth pre-orders. The EP's six tracks consist of alternate versions of album tunes and one non-album outtake.

To top it all off, My Brightest Diamond hit the road this May and June for some U.S. headlining dates and European festivals. [MORE...]

The Vaselines Reunite!
Play Sub Pop 20th anniversary and Tigerfest; SP20 also adds Eric's Trip, Les Thugs

Though they have only 19 official recordings to their credit and broke up just after their lone full-length was released, the Vaselines have etched a special place in the hearts of many. Chief among these is a certain Kurt Cobain, whose popular grunge rock outfit Nirvana famously covered no less than three of those 19 Vaselines jams, including one (in slightly modified form) before a sizable television audience on "MTV Unplugged".

But enough boring backstory: the Vaselines are reuniting! The Scottish act, helmed by Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, will reconvene for at least two festival performances in 2008. Hooray!

The first goes down May 16 at Dunfermline, Scotland's Carnegie Hall as part of Tigerfest. A bona fide Scottish lovefest, this gig will find the Vaselines sharing the bill with Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake and the Pearlfishers' David Scott, all while backed by members of Belle & Sebastian!

And hey, the second appearance ain't too shabby either. The Vaselines will help celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's onetime label home Sub Pop at Redmond, Washington's Marymoor Park on July 12. Sub Pop also, of course, helped keep the Vaselines on the map by releasing The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History back in 1992. You scratch my back, I'll rock yours.

Already rife with reunions from the Fluid, Green River, Seaweed, Red Red Meat, and now the Vaselines, Sub Pop's SP20 bash has turned up the nostalgia a couple more notches with the addition of defunct French punks Les Thugs and reunion-happy Canadian alt-rockers Eric's Trip. As previously reported, the fest takes over the aforementioned park near Seattle from July 12-13.

New Beck LP: 10 Tracks, 30 Minutes, Due This Summer

No title, release date, tracklist, or cover art just yet, but that Danger Mouse-produced, Cat Power-assisted Beck LP will indeed be coming at us a whole lot sooner than we thought a week ago. Clocking in at just over a half an hour, the ten track LP is due "this summer" from Interscope in the U.S.

Given how much we don't know about the project at this juncture, let's take an inventory of the rest of what we do know. Sez a press release: "The result [of Beck and Danger Mouse's collaboration] is a tightly assembled group of songs that range in lyrical tone from introspection and social commentary to off-the-cuff wordplay and lighthearted humor."

So it's a Beck album, then.

And the music? "Musically, the album's ten tracks vacillate between economy and experimentation, hybrid and pop classicism, while consistently manifesting Beck and Danger Mouse's shared interest in psych-rock, folk, electronic minimalism, and orchestration."

So it's a Beck album, then.

Beck's forthcoming summer tour? Still all laid out and ready to roll since our last report. [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.)