The mysterious and bizarre cult of drone known as Sunn O))) has just made plans to grace Minnesota with a rare performance next month during their brief tour of the Midwest. On July 5, 2009, Sunn O)) (featuring Stephen O’ Malley and Greg Anderson) will be at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown for a incredible sonic experience like no other during a small tour supporting their new full-lenght album Monoliths and Dimensions. Keep reading for all their tour dates… Continue reading
I heard the rumor a few weeks ago, but now an official announcement has been made, so I feel comfortable posting this. The doom metal show of the summer has arrived folks (and it just so happens to be the first show at First Avenue that I’d dare to call “metal” all year)! Here’s the info:
Bands: Buried Inside, Battlefields, Frontier, Lungs
Date: July 16, 2009
Venue: 7th St. Entry
Addit: 8 p.m. | $7 | 18+
Follow the jump for all of Buried Inside’s summer tour dates… Continue reading
As I sit in my new favorite cafe here in La Crosse, The Root Note, I day dream about May the 20th. It’s the day Animal Collective, along with opening act Grouper hit the main room at First Ave. It’s a concert that sold out like country music shows do at the Xcel Center. So yes, anticipation is brewing.
May 18 @ Royal Oak Music Hall, Royal Oak Michigan: SOLD OUT
May 19 @ Riverside Theater, Milwaukee Wisconsin: Tickets (!)
May 20 @ First Avenue, Minneapolis Minnesota: SOLD OUT
So the fact that Animal Collective and NPR teamed up last night to stream the band’s set form the 9:30 Club in Washington DC was all the more reason for me to get excited. It was essentially a look inside the band’s tour, a two hour romp through the Baltimore trio’s best work. And you’re more than welcome to stream the entire thing for yourself at their archives, or even just check out the set list.
You would think that selling out nearly every venue on their tour was enough, but Animal Collective have now officially released and
officially sold out of The Animal Crack Box vinyl set that everyone and their mother have been salivating over. The triple-vinyl box set collects various live tracks and unreleased material from the bands tribal years from 2000-2003 period. If you happened to have $92 laying around and happened to be on the internet and happened to stumble upon the first blog that wrote about it (Pitchfork) you might have been lucky enough to load the page fast enough to get a copy. Oh well I guess, The rest of us poor souls will just have to wait for the MP3s to come leaking out of some dude’s basement.
Until that time though, you can check out the new track that Panda Bear, Avey, and Geologist have been playing live. It’s working title is “Bleed” and can be had in a handy MP3 form already thanks to Collected Animals. “Bleed” seems extremely unpolished still, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the track still evolve even over the length of this tour. The track sounds a little too mythical, a little too slow, but the Avey and Panda melodies are a nice treat none-the-less. It’s not as good as the other new live track, “What Would I Want Sky”, but it shows once again the talent that these three men have at crafting music seemingly on the fly. Grab it below:
The beloved folk-pop group Fleet Foxes have already toured once in support of their chart topping 2008 release of the same name, and now they’re sketching out some more dates for this summer as well.
The tour is fairly scattered, including many festival dates both here and across the pond, but the boys were nice enough to squeeze in a First Avenue show on August 9. Tickets are on sale now for $22 (get them here). If you’re a fan of their records at all they are certainly worth seeing live, when I had the chance to see them at Pitchfork last year the acoustics of an outdoor setting didn’t bog them down at all, and they still sounded amazing. So I know I’m certianly excited for a more intimate setting, but if you’re a big festival goer there are plenty of chances to see them at these fine gatherings:
5-25 Sasquatch
6-23 Hove Festival
6-26 Glastonbury
7-31 All Points West
8-07 Lollapalooza
Fleet Foxes released a new single today as well. The “Mykonos” 7″ features the awesome “False Knight On The Road” on the B
side. MP3s of False Knight have been floating around on the web for a while now, but here it gets a well deserved official release. “False Knight On The Road” is well worth the purchase, the echoing vocals recorded mostly by frontman Rob Pecknold are much more in line with his or fellow Fox’s J. Tillman solo projects, but the song could have just as easily appeared on their self-titled group debut. If you’re broke though, or out a record player, check the MP3 below for what you’re missing. Enjoy!
Really, we all know that I don’t need to do anything more for this post than list the dates for these two separate summertime shows that our friends at First Avenue booked this week. I can guarantee these will sell out in no time, because anyone who wants to see these bands live definitely knows how rare these Minnesota visits are for the longtime indie rock gods in Sonic Youth (on July 21) and the constantly rising star of Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (on May 30). Tickets for both shows will be available this Saturday, May 2nd. Pay attention to first-ave.com for the link or just drop by their box office!
May 30, 2009
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN
Doors @ 6 / All Ages
July 21, 2009
Sonic Youth
First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN
Doors @ 7 / 18+
Non-Minnesota residents, keep reading! All of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sonic Youth shows that are booked so far are listed after the link… Continue reading
Okay so I have been and will continue to be basically incommunicato for the next week. 18 credits the week before finals and 30 a week at work will do that to you. The music world, sadly, goes on without me. But here is a round-up of various ongoing over the past few days.
1. Calvin Harris remixes Passion Pits new single “The Reeling”
2. White Denim released a new track entitled “Mirrored and Reverse”
White Denim – “Mirrored and Reverse”
3. Phoenix gets remixed twice. Once by Classixx another adding a Dub. They play this tour date (be there): 06/23 Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity
Phoenix – “1901 (Ivan Beck Dub)”
4. I have to give two presentations now. Hope you enjoy! See you in a week!
University of Minnesota’s Spring Jam is going on all weekend, and besides being the first major celebration of drinking around campus for the spring, the event usually is the first major free music event in the city, as well. Unofficially, the festivities kick off tomorrow when NYC’s acoustic experimentalists in Mountains descend into the Whole at U of M’s Coffman Union for a free gig with Minneapolis-based ambient/experimental musician Andrew Broder of Fog and Madison ambient post-rockers in Frail By Design (featuring bass skills from good friend and fellow U student Dan Jin). All three acts will be supporting new releases; Frail By Design just released their Time Traveler EP, Mountains third full length Choral came out in February, and Broder is having one of the most prolific years imaginable, so far self-releasing 9 albums of his solo experimentations for free download via a personal online directory (including one called Spirals that was uploaded yesterday!). If unconventional rock is your sort of thing, or even if you just want to start your Spring Jam a bit early, come down to the Whole to lose yourself in some ethereal, unorthodox jams from a superb collection of up-and-coming acts. For the price of FREE, this is a concert you can’t afford to miss.
University of Minnesota
The Whole Music Club
Thursday, April 23, 2009
8pm – FREE
Even if you have your calendar booked with hardcore shows through May, don’t put your pen away just yet. Extreme Noise Records aren’t the only one bringing stellar hardcore to Minneapolis this spring. On the first of June, the Triple Rock Social Club will showcase Deathwish Inc. recording artists Victims and Trap Them with openers Black Breath for a night of dirty, sweaty hardcore punk from some of the underground’s best bands.
Disembodied reunion, Coalesce, Amebix, Tragedy, The Kids, etc., etc. – and now a Trap Them/Victims co-headlining announcement… if you’re a hardcore punk fan in Minnesota, you can expect to be referring to the Triple Rock as your second home over the course of these next few months.
Keep reading for all of the Trap Them/Victims/ Black Breath spring tour dates… Continue reading
The indie music scene might as well just be Spencer Krug. The incredibly gifted man has got his hands in nearly every cookie jar. Just last month saw the release of the new Swan Lake album Enemy Mine as one of stronger releases of the early spring, but Krug was not done there, working diligently on the new (and my favorite Krug band) Sunset Rubdown.
Dragonslayer out June 23rd on Jagjaguwar
To newcomers the band name sounds like a bad porn movie, but with amazing vocals and an eclectic lineup the band’s 2007 album Random Spirit Lover smothered my attention and had me enraptured for months. My await for the new album is nearly over however as the release date for Dragonslayer has been set for June 23rd on Jagjaguwar records.
Today marks the first real glimpse at the album too, with the release of the track “Idiot Heart” for free download. It’s certainly in line with much of their last album, building from start to finish and marked by the signature Krug voice. About half-way through the track a xylophone or something of that sort hits the track and really takes the song to a more interesting level. I like it, it’s good… not great, but a solid foundation for the album.
Most of all, “Idiot Heart” gets me excited for some touring, and although no Minneapolis date has been set, Sunset Rubdown will hit various coastal venues this summer (fingers crossed for an appearance at a festival or two maybe as well). Check out all the dates below:
06-11 Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
06-12 Brooklyn, NY – Studio B
06-15 Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506
06-16 Atlanta, GA – The Drunken Unicorn
06-20 Austin, TX – Mohawk
06-22 Tucson, AZ – Plush
06-23 Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
06-24 San Francisco, CA – The Rickshaw Stop
06-26 Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
06-27 Seattle, WA – Chop Suey
Great blog. Great bands. Great club. The weather’s looking nice this week and it’s a excellent time to party, so stop by the Turf Club tomorrow to support an awesome show sponsored by our friends at More Cowbell! Thanks to them for 5 years of dedicated blogging. Romantica, The Absent Arch, and The Evening Rig will be performing.
MIND INVERSION 