So you’ve done a festival. Of course you have. You’ve ticked that box. You’ve squinted at your favourite, over hyped band through a sea of random flags, bobbing heads and a shower of piss and branded beer. You’ve queued for loos. Waded through mud (well, you hoped it was mud) and made it on to [...]
With a brand new Throwing Muses album waiting in the wings, the 25th anniversary of their self-titled debut has arrived, with 4AD issuing the first ever compilation of the band’s work, simply entitled Anthology, on September 5. Compiled by the band, the first American act to sign to 4AD, the twenty-one track selection eschews most of the singles in favour of personal favourites, and enjoys a non-chronological sequence which makes for interesting juxtapositions and encourages a reassessment of the music. The initial release comes in a hardback book with a bonus CD of B-sides and rarities.
Forget Glastonbury, I mean, really, just forget it. With the recent addition of Prince to the Hop Farm Festival line-up, expanding the event from two to three days, and a guaranteed U2 and Coldplay free zone, Hop Farm has become a firm contender as one of the quintessential UK festivals of 2011. The event, which now takes place from July 1-3 at Hop Farm in Kent, will also mark Prince’s first UK show in four years, following on from his mammoth run at the O2 arena in 2007. The other headline slots already taken up by the aforementioned royal family dissing Morrissey and American legends, The Eagles.
With the UK having weathered quite a few festivals already this Summer, there’s still the main all-encompassing indie and alternative maelstrom that is the Reading and Leeds Festival. The Reading festival has been a long standing event on the English festival goer’s calendar for many a decade and a right of passage for music fans which takes place on Friday 26th to Sunday 28th August at Little John’s Farm in Reading and Bramham Park in Leeds.
The mainstream too often consumes the alternative and throws up a diluted dream but Truck Festival has avoided such a safe, repackaged fate. Since 1998 rural Oxfordshire has hosted a festival where the music and the music fan really does matter. The festival is now a three day affair and includes a new Clash stage curated by Transgressive Records, Bella Union and Heavenly Recordings. Truck 14 is on at Hill Farm, Steventon from July 22 to July 24 2011. A brief run-through the line-up includes appearances by Gruff Rhys, Bellowhead, Graham Coxon, Jonny, The Young Knives, St Etienne, Philip Selway, Edwyn Collins and many more.
Esteemed Louisvillian rockers My Morning Jacket have returned with their sixth album Circuital, to be released on May 31. To celebrate the occasion, the band have joined the likes of Arcade Fire and Duran Duran to appear on the “Unstaged” internet live broadcast which pairs a well-known band up with a well-known director. This time around My Morning Jacket go toe to toe with Todd Haynes, better known for the multi-actor Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” and the loved but banned “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”, a short film acted out by modified Barbie dolls.
Arcade Fire are to release a deluxe CD/DVD version of its Album of the Year Grammy Award-winning third album The Suburbs on August 2. The expanded CD version of The Suburbs sees the original album augmented by a longer version of the track “Wasted Hours (A Life That We Can Live)” as well as the previously unreleased “Culture War” and “Speaking In Tongues,” the latter of which features David Byrne on vocals. Highlights of the DVD include the half-hour short film Scenes From The Suburbs, directed by Spike Jonze, a companion documentary, and the music video for the track “The Suburbs.”
Record Store Day is quickly becoming known as Christmas Day for rabid music fans and vinyl junkies. An enticement for those of you to get up and actually walk into a record store rather than ordering off Amazon or….shudder Itunes, is that these record stores are going to have primo geeko stuff that have been produced ONLY for Record Store Day. So you can either get down there on Saturday April 16 and be a part of the celebration (read: frenzied madness), or cry about it later on Ebay when you’ve just paid through the nose for that Fleet Foxes 12″.
Much-loved upon release earlier this year was the ninth album by 80′s referencing eccentric / romantic Dan Bejar aka Destroyer entitled Kaputt. If his work as Destroyer draws a blank, you may well know him as a member of fellow Canadian indie-rock outfit, The New Pornographers. There’s good news for people in the UK waiting for Kaputt to get a local release as that day is finally going to happen through Dead Oceans on June 13. Which also happens to coincide with Destroyer’s first ever European headlining tour, including an appearance in London at Heaven on June 28. Oh, happy days.
Atlanta four-piece Deerhunter make their long-awaited return to the UK this week, beginning this Saturday (March 26) in Belfast at The Stiff Kitten (oh, the Irish and their romantic pub names). Their first full European tour since 2009, the trip is also the first chance for British fans to hear tracks from the group’s acclaimed fourth album, Halcyon Digest, since its September release last year. To coincide with the tour, the track “Memory Boy” is to be released on 7″ single, backed by new track “Nosebleed” and can be purchased at the shows or in stores from April 11.
One of Webcuts favourite albums of 2011 was Coastal GroovesBlood Orange aka Dev Hynes. It was our “dancing in the dark, alone” album, or club grooves for loners. Directed by Haley Wollens, the video for “Champagne Coast” features an assortment of jerkily animated girls dancing in each of their specifically designed bedrooms, while Dev Hynes stands idly by. As Dev explained recently in The New York Times: “The song, as with every other piece of music I seem to make, is mostly about longing, creating scenarios in regards to an unrequited lover, plans that will never see fruition. So you’re left alone in your digitally created interior to dance by yourself”. We can also announce that Blood Orange has been confirmed to play at this year’s Field Day Festival in London’s Victoria Park on June 2nd. Further UK dates are to be announced.
