News literally just in….

All Tomorrow’s Parties have just announced that the next curators for the Nightmare Before Christmas this December 2008 will be Mike Patton and Melvins.

The event will take place December 5th, 6th and 7th at Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead.

The line up so far looks like this:

Curated by Melvins:
Melvins
Isis
Neil Hamburger
Dälek
Big Business

Curated by Mike Patton:
Fantômas perform The Director’s Cut
The Locust
Zu

Tickets can be purchased from www.seetickets.com, www.stargreen.com, or www.gigantic.com.

ATP are offering an early bird deal, so at the moment all tickets are priced at £140pp room only, and £150pp self catering, this deal lasts until the 1st July. When the deal expires prices will rise by £10 per ticket, making room only chalets £150 per person and self catered chalets £160 per person.

Due to the specifications of the accommodation, there are two prices for the tickets, £150 for Room Only accommodation (£140 for early bird), and £160 for Self Catering accommodation (150 for early bird).
Room Only accommodation is available in 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 berths and offers either double, single or bunk beds with private bathroom and TV, but no kitchen facilities or lounge, more like a hotel room. (£150 + booking fee per ticket, £140 early bird)

Self Catering accommodation is available in 4, 6 or 7 berths and offers private bathroom, full kitchen facilities and separate lounge area with TV. (£160 + booking fee per ticket, £150 early bird)

All tickets include a 3-day festival pass and 3 nights accommodation. Ticket includes performances starting from mid-afternoon, with around 40 acts set to play live across the weekend. There are four pubs and DJ sets through till late, plus three nights in a self-catering chalet or room only accommodation all with private bathroom suites and TV’s.

Butlins Holiday Camp Minehead, Somerset , TA24 5SH is located near Glastonbury.

Mike Patton recently released A Perfect Place, the soundtrack to a short film directed by Derrick Scocchera. The Melvins’ latest offering, Nude With Boots, is out end of June. Both are available via the Southern Records Webshop.

Originally a side-project outlet for ‘quieter songs’ than those suited to Okkervil River, main men Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff have produced a weighty and gloriously rich follow-up to the critically acclaimed Palo Santo. And ‘quiet’ isn’t the most immediate description that comes to mind either. There is a sense of a common thread, though an actual concept is harder to pin down, it being full of dark inspiration drawn from the natural world: an earlier time before man exerted his crushing dominance perhaps. References to oxen trains, whaling, stars, hunting, countless birds and animals and forces of nature all tumble out. In this respect there’s some symbiosis with the similarly Texas-based Midlake and their Trials Of Van Occupanther, but Rook is more epically baroque and hard-hitting, almost indie-operatic in ambition, and both less overtly melodic and instantly appealing. Pianos are more in evidence than guitars, and the pastoral prog is fleshed out with string quartet, plenty of woodwind, a harp, and trumpets. Continue Reading

I thought I loved The Notwist. Their last album, Neon Golden, the Germans’ 2002, well, I suppose ‘breakthrough’ (lots of Pitchfork love, etc) was packed full of amazing songs like ‘This Room’, ‘Consequence’ and ‘One Step Inside Doesn’t Mean You’ll Understand’- glitchy indietronica that was as catchy and challenging as it was undoubtedly mature. And all held together by Markus Archer’s amazing, Teflon-smooth clipped continental voice. Its predecessor Shrink was tops too (particular hearts reserved for opener ‘Day 7′), likewise their admittedly patchy but when-it-hits-it-really-hits collaboration as 13&God with Themselves (better known now as Doseone, Jel and Dax from Subtle). So yeah. I thought I loved The Notwist. And then I heard this. Continue Reading

Having inked a deal with the influential Canadian indie label Arts & Crafts (home to Broken Social Scene, The Dears, The American Analog Set - nuff said) The Stills have announced details of their third album, Oceans Will Rise which will be released in the States on August 19th. No UK release has been announced as yet, although Drowned In Sound records put out their last ‘effort’ (with strong emphasis on the word effort) so maybe they’ll do the same this time round, who knows.

I’m hoping for a return to form of their debut album Logic Will Break Your Heart, which funnily enough, I was only playing the other day. ‘Lola Stars and Stripes’ and ‘Gender Bombs’ still sounding as awesome as they did in 2004. I tend to pretend that their second album, which I shall not name, was never made. Because frankly, it was one of the biggest musical letdowns I’ve had since…I dunno, The Charlatans turned reggae..

Tracklisting and cover art…

Don’t Talk Down
Snow in California
Snakecharming The Masses
Being Here
Everything I Build
Panic
Eastern Europe
Hands on Fire
Dinosaurs
I’m With You
Rooibos/Palm Wine Drinkard
Statue of Sirens

Currently on a mammouth tour of Europe, Baltimore’s Beach House filmed the following new song for a Norwegian TV station. Written whilst on a train journey through the mountains it sees Victoria and Alex in rare stripped back mode. Simply an acoustic guitar and Victoria’s haunting vocal. Niiiiice.

Victoria and Alex explain the song:

so on our journey through norway we were asked by norwegian tv if a reporter could join us on the train trip from bergen to oslo. they also asked that beach house write a song on the train journey through the mountains and that they record it for radio on the train and at oslo staion for tv. the results are thus…..

The guys head over to the UK next month with fellow Bella Union label mates Fleet Foxes for a co-headline tour. I, for one, can’t flippin’ wait. Watch the video below, tour dates after the jump.

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Having just finished a tour with Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong and currently touring with TLOBF faves Duke Spirit, The Voluntary Butler Scheme are currently offering a free download of the song ‘Laundry’ via their myspaz.

A new EP entitled Trading Things In will be released on July 14th, The video for the title track was completed last weekend by director James Copeman, who recently worked with Mystery Jets. Expect that to appear on the site sometime soon…

Momento is building up nicely for The Voluntary Butler Scheme, or Rob Jones as he’s known to his mum. Gaining positive support from 6Music and Radio 2 from the likes of Marc Riley, John Kennedy, Rob Da Bank, Jon Hillcock, Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens. No suprise either. This guy is real good, if pigeonholing is your thing you can stick him amongst the likes of Noah & The Whale, Laura Marling, Emmy The Great and Johnny Flynn. Quirky sun-kissed folk. Me likey. Quite a lot in fact.

The new solo record by Conor Oberst will be released in the UK via Wichita Records. Stateside, Oberst has decided to release the record through Merge - home to Spoon, Arcade Fire, Lambchop as well as his longterm pal M. Ward.

It’s something of a homecoming for Oberst, who released a pair of Bright Eyes records on Wichita at the turn of the decade.

Conor Oberst will be released on August 4th. Tracklisting is as follows:
Cape Cañaveral
Sausalito
Get-Well-Cards
Lenders in the Temple
Danny Callahan
I Don’t Want to Die (in the Hospital)
Eagle on a Pole
Moab
NYC - Gone, Gone
Valle Místico (Ruben’s Song)
Souled Out!!!
Milk Thistle

The album was recorded in Mexico and produced by Andy LeMaster (REM, Drive-By Truckers, David Dondero). Oberst and his new backing band (The Mystic Valley Band) will be showcasing the new material at Reading and Leeds this year, as well as at Electric Picnic in Dublin, Connect in Scotland and the End of the Road festival.

In other Wichita records related news.. Visiter, the latest album by The Dodos (which has been getting some hardcore abuse on the TLOBF stereo lately) will be released by the label at some point in July. Good news we say. The album has been out for a while in the States courtesy of French Kiss records and it’s about time the UK caught up.

Dodos will be supporting the release with a short tour in June. Dates are:

June
01 Birmingham - Bar Academy
02 London - Hoxton Bar & Kitchen
03 London - Amersham Arms
11 Manchester - Night & Day
12 Glasgow - Beat Club
13 Dublin - Crawdaddy

You can download a track from The Dodos’ album via our free 10-Track May Playlist. Which also features Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket and Flight Of The Conchords. Needless to say it’s rather bloody good. Grab it here.

The Futureheads are a band who have experienced the highs and lows of the music “industry”, and their travails have been much discussed recently. After being dropped by 679 Recordings having releasing two albums to some success and acclaim, they are now born-again proponents of the small label / DIY / self-release path. This, their third album, is accordingly released on their own Nul Records imprint.

A quick scan of the song titles may lead you to expect a dour and bitter album based around their recent experiences, with track names like ‘Walking Backwards’, ‘This Is Not The World’, ‘Hard to Bear’, ‘Work is Never Done’ and ‘Everything’s Changing Today’. And indeed lines such as “Sometimes it feels like we are walking backwards off a mountain / Sometimes it feels like we don’t know which way to go ” (on ‘Walking Backwards’) and “I will explode” (‘Broke Up The Time’) do seem to be referring to their music business problems. It would be misleading, however, to imply that this is a downbeat or depressing release. The band seem to have been invigorated, rather than demoralized, by what has happened, and lyrically they come across as defiant: “That was then / This is now / But we will find our feet / And move around” (‘Walking Backwards’, again), “It’s hard to bear, but not impossible, as such ” (‘Hard to Bear’), and even rather arrogant, when they dismissively proclaim “Do you know / When we go over your head / I don’t mean to offend / But you’ll never understand “. Continue Reading

Sometimes the obvious can smack you in the face. Looking back on Tom Petty’s original band, it’s not hard to see why they weren’t signed, and it’s all in the name: “Mudcrutch”. What a fucking awful name for a band. It conjures up images that I just don’t want to think about… In fact, I’m shuddering whilst I write this. However, once you’ve got past that, slipped the shiny silver disc into your player of choice and pressed play, all those images are quickly removed. Mudcrutch’s pitch perfect blend of country-rock is the perfect antidote to those messy flashes in your mind.

Formed in 1970 from the ashes of previous bands, it eventually bled into The Heartbreakers who’ve been Petty’s support band for the best part of thirty years. They reformed in August last year, the album containing tracks that were written both back in the day and since the reformation.

Continue Reading

What are they putting in the water in Canada? The seemingly endless stream of female singer-songwriters door-stepping TLOBF Towers continues with Kathleen Edwards and her third album of alt-country/rock. Her brother’s collection of Bob and Neil was her sole resource as she grew up a diplomat’s daughter abroad, the first album she owned was by Tom Petty, and Ryan Adams has been a strong influence since his Whiskeytown days. You can sense a coming together of those sounds together with the honest and direct, even ballsy, lyrical approach of Ani DiFranco. She’s got alot going for her personally, plus she has managed to put together a classy line up of musicians previously associated with the likes of The Heartbreakers, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Wilco, and Plant/Krauss (including husband and guitarist Colin Cripps). She co-produces with Jim Scott of Tom Petty and Whiskeytown fame. With that crew on board, quality arrangements and masterful playing are a given. More name-checking and shoulder-rubbing: Edwards has toured with Willie Nelson, Aimee Mann, My Morning Jacket, The Stones, AC/DC, Dylan, and Bryan Adams. Maybe that last one is some sort of hazing ritual for Canadian musicians, I’m not sure. Continue Reading

Oxford Collapse have just announced the release of their fourth album. Bits is slated to hit shelves on August 5th via Sub Pop. The fourth album from the Brooklyn-based trio, Bits follows 2006’s Remember The Night Parties and will be the second release from the band on the influential Seattle imprint.

The band road-tested much of the new record whilst on their recent stint on the road with borough-buddies We Are Scientists, and recorded the album in chunks over the course of last year with Eric Emm at the Brothers Studios, and Chad Matheny in “spaces all over town”.

The track listing for Bits is:
‘Electric Arc’
‘The Birthday Wars’
‘Vernon-Jackson’
‘Young Love Delivers’
‘Back of the Yards’
‘A Wedding’
‘Featherbeds’
‘For the Winter Coats’
‘Men and Their Idea’

mp3:> Oxford Collapse - Please Visit Your National Parks
mp3:> Oxford Collapse - Lady Lawyers

For this edition of After Hours, we managed to track down NYC based Milena Mepris, one half of Transatlantic duo Pin Me Down. Ultimately a side project for Bloc Party guitarist Russell Lissack, Pin Me Down have been making waves with their current single ‘Cryptic’. Shedding the angular restrains of Bloc Party, Lissack has forged his distinctive guitar parts with infectious 80’s beats and Kim Wilde-esque melodies. Check out their myspace why don’t ya.. ‘Cryptic’ is released on June 2nd via Kitsune.

Who’s your favourite new band at the moment? Tell us a bit about them.
Milena Mepris: I quite like Santogold - she is based near us in Brooklyn and, for a while, we were sharing a drummer with her. Santi’s music is great - a mesh of a ton of genres - everything from electronic and hip hop beats to pure pop to ska guitars. She’s got a great ear for melody, a malleable voice, and a lot of personality. I think she will do really well. Continue Reading

In my first job as a general assistant at my local cash & carry, we would have a terrible local radio station blaring out the same songs every day, so you couldn’t get away from the new RnB sensation, pop diva or…Toploader. ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ by the aforementioned band followed me around every single shift for about three months, at least that’s what it felt like because despite me knowing it was complete shite I couldn’t get the bloody thing out my head. It was one of the most annoying songs I’d ever heard but at least with Toploader I didn’t have to listen to the whole album. I do however with The Parlotones.

Like Toploader, The Patrlotones’ music is designed for daytime radio and the widest audience possible. There is nothing edgy or much to get overly excited about and whether you like it or not, you will get at least one song that’ll stick with for the rest of the day. Opener ‘Louder Than Bombs’ provides your Kaiser Chiefs esque energetic shouty number, but it’s mostly M.O.R indie-balladary like ‘Beautiful’, ‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ and ‘Colourful’. I have to admit after a few listens I was humming away and tapping my feet to some of the catchier hooks and melodies but then songs like the dreadful ‘Interlude (The Impossible)’ soon snap you out of it. Continue Reading

Unfortunately I haven’t made my millions yet so I have to work. Even worse I have to travel to get there. On the plus side I drive north through the South Wales Valleys, it takes about 45 minutes usually enough to get through a full CD.

And so is the case with Russian Circles second effort. Six tracks weighing in at just over 43 minutes gives some indication of the lengthy soundscapes that Russian Circles weave through their meshing of guitar, drums and bass.

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Gay Against You

This Saturday I travelled down to distant London to attend the second annual Brainlove all-dayer at the Brixton Windmill, a sort of almost-birthday party for John Brainlove, head of the very good Brainlove Records (Keyboard Choir, Friends Of The Bride, Napoleon IIIrd, Pagan Wanderer Lu) and a former member of experimental types Junkplanet (and Tracy Is Hot & The Clap!) as well as a writer for (amongst other publications) THIS VERY SAME WEBSITE- The Line Of Best Fit (conflict of interest duly awaits). At six a.m. I wake up. By just past 7:30 I am sitting, accidentally a bit too early, in Manchester Piccadilly train station, waiting for my friend Steve Jam On Bread (set to play the acoustic stage) so that we can catch the 8:17 train to Sheffield (and then onwards to London from there, West Coast mainline having been maddeningly closed). Steve’s bus gets delayed, so 8:17 becomes 8:33. Steve has left his debit card back at his flat- 8:33 becomes “catch the 8:44 train to Chesterfield, change to Derby, from Derby go to London, get the underground to meet my girlfriend in Waterloo, I’ll see you there.” A short call from his equally confused girlfriend later and a text arrives on my phone giving me the option of waiting for the 9:20 train to Sheffield which he can get on at Stockport and meet me there. Largely ignorant of London and its ways, I decide to exercise this option.

So that’s the first part of my Brainlove all-dayer experience, sat in Manchester Piccadilly train station reading The Economist and listening to Distophia on my mp3 player, blinkingly shaking off the organisational hassle around me. This, I suppose, is what you get for choosing to attend an all-dayer in London when you live in Manchester. That said the bands are good. Cats In Paris, Keyboard Choir, Gay Against You, Jam On Bread, Pagan Wanderer Lu, Team Brick, Napoleon IIIrd… all acts I would pay to go and see individually if they were in the same geographic vicinity as me, and so I guess if they’re all clustered together then despite the distance… well. By this point I’m writing from the perspective of a man who has spent a truly ridiculous amount on train fares over the past two days so in a fiduciary sense it was not worth it at all but in theory, this line-up is gold, particularly the main stage but also round the back near the barbecue where they have the acoustic one (also where dear old Steve Jam On Bread is scheduled to be playing). Continue Reading