Despite what Shane Mehling said about ghosts, (”hey fuckers, stop talking about ghosts…”) Band of Horses still name their first single “Is There A Ghost”. And you can stream it on MySpace.
NME: Keith Richards has been kind of Weirdy McWeirderstein latley. I mean, if you think admitting to snorting your Dad’s ashes and eating cigarettes onstage is weird.
While Nick Cave has been recording with a group under the name Grinderman, longtime Bad Seed and fellow Birthday Party cohort, Mick Harvey, has just released his fourth album (not including soundtracks). For this recording, Harvey has employed the Bad Seeds’ Thomas Wydler and James Johnston to assist him with another amalgam of cover songs and a few original tunes. His first two solo records contained reinterpretations of Serge Gainsbourg songs that were translated to English while his last album, One Man’s Treasure, followed the same formula of the new disc, Two of Diamonds.
I went to the Download Festival at the Gorge this weekend, which might be one of the weirdest festival line-ups around. The Thermals, Arther & Yu and Heavenly States performed on the second stage. Nada Surf opened the main stage with a really boring set.
We had to sit through an hour of Presidents of the United States of America. I can’t believe those guys can still get away with singing about peaches, cats and frogs. And dune buggies. And Boll Weevils. I would rather listen to Raffi sing about Baby Beluga because at least his music openly targets children and retards.
This was followed by 90 minutes of Incubus. If there had been water anywhere in the desert, I would have taken a bath face down.
Fortunately Modest Mouse’s headlining set was fantastic. Two drum sets, accordion, violin, glockenspiel, stand up bass, some dude passed out drunk in the fetal position and Isaac Brock freestylin’ lyrics to old songs.
Soft rock has its place. It’s good in old folks homes, in the moving/inspirational/epiphanic moments of romantic comedies… but soft rock doesn’t fit in as the bastard child of one surprisingly good band, Luxe, a somewhat unknown early collaboration between Torquil Campbell, Chris Dumont and James Shaw (of Metric), and Campbell’s newest involvement, Stars. Memphis formed during Dumont’s vacation in Campbell’s hometown of Vancouver, B.C. They got together, spilled their creative juices (eek) and Memphis was born.
For those uninitiated to the upside down world of Genesis P. Orridge and his truly bizarre existence, he has been an instrumental influence on experimental groups ever since he started the highly controversial Throbbing Gristle in England in the late 1970s. Just when that seminal group imploded in 1980, Genesis went on to begin another seminal act called Psychic TV. In their original form, they released two proper albums, the strange, creepy and excellent Force theHand of Chance (1982) and Dreams Less Sweet (1983), before two of it’s members moved on to form yet another influential experimental band, Coil. Orridge has spent the remainder of his career assembling other versions of Psychic TV in addition to multiple other projects. Hell is Invisible… is the first studio album, however, that Psychic TV has recorded in over ten years, and the most recent version of the group is being dubbed Psychic TV/PTV3.
Isaac Brock and Pinback love Caleb Boddicker. Kind of like a man loves a woman, but more serious. Here are a couple new tracks from his upcomming album Big Lionhearted and the Gallant Man set to be released October 2, 2007 on Banter Records and produced by Brian Deck.
