Our very own Alex Harvey went mad for their debut, and now you can see what all the fuss is about. Wild Beasts have announced a short tour of the UK, filling in the gaps between their appearences at festivals over the summer.

July
04 - LEEDS The Cockpit
06 - PORT LYMPNE ZOO8 Festival
19 - SUFFOLK Latitude Festival (Uncut Stage)
25 – KENDAL The Brewery Arts Centre
26 - GLASGOW King Tut’s
29 - LONDON 100 Club

August
08 - LONDON Underage Festival @ Victoria Park
08 - BRIGHTON Concorde 2
09 - LONDON Field Day @ Victoria Park
16 - GLANUSK Green Man Festival
18 - EDINBURGH The Corn Exchange

Ok, ok, you can calm down now.

According to a piece in the latest Rolling Stone, Jim James, Conor Oberst & M. Ward have found some time in their bust schedules to work on a collaborative album. Count me officially very excited…

No other details at present, but other places (such as P4K and Stereogum) are picking up on this, so hope for some more concerete details soon.

Whilst we’ve got you here, Jim James, in the same article, has been suggesting that he’s going to release some work with an alter ego. An Asian country star named Sec Walkin (after the Evil Urges song about walking).

James told RS, “It’s such a great country name, like Trace Adkins. Look for us at the top of the charts.” Okey dokey…

This could be one of the best, or one of the worst things, ever.

Zack de la Rocha - once ex, now back with, Rage Against The Machine - has formed a new band with former Mars Volta man Jon Theodore.

Their efforts will be called One Day As A Lion and the duo will release a self-titled EP via Anti on July 21.

Tracklisting:
‘Wild International’
‘Ocean View’
‘Last Letter’
‘If You Fear Dying’
‘One Day As A Lion’

Find the band on MySpace here.

The wonderful Iceland Airwaves festival returns for it’s 10th year in October and whilst the main headline acts are still to be announced, we are pleased to reveal the first names added to the TLOBF-friendly bill are: CSS, The Young Knives, Crystal Castles and These New Puritans. Also confirmed are the hotly tipped British combination of White Lies and Florence and The Machine.

Also set to perform this year are Final Fantasy, Simian Mobile Disco, Junior Boys, Robots In Disguise, Stars Like Fleas, The Dirty Projectors, GusGus, Miracle Fortress, Handsome Furs, Familjen, and Australia’s Pnau.

The event will take place in downtown Reykjavik between 15-19th October.

The festival’s sponsor, Icelandair, are offering special UK package deals to get festival goers to and from Iceland, and includes entry to the event too. Icelandair flies out of London, Manchester and Glasgow. For more details, click here.

Saul Williams releases his brand new album The Invevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (try saying that after a couple of pints) on July 8th. To mark this rather exciting occassion, we have a track from the album for you to download. ‘World On Wheels’ was produced by non other that Trent Reznor of NIN.

If you can’t wait until next week to get hold of the album, you can download it via itunes right now. What’s more, the itunes version features 5 exclusive tracks as a bonus! Nice.

You can catch Saul Williams on the following dates, including an apperance at this weekends Wireless Festival in London.

Jul 3 - 02 Wireless Festival London, London and South East
Jul 4 - Arvika Festival Arvika
Jul 5 - Oslo Live Festival, Kontraskjaeret Oslo, Oslo
Jul 6 - Klubi Turku
Jul 7 - Klubi Tampere
Jul 8 - Tavastia Helsinki
Jul 10 - Poolbar Festival Feldkirch
Jul 11 - La Rote Fabrik, Club Raum Zurich, Zurich
Jul 12 - Cactus Festival Bruges
Jul 13 - Chauffer dans la Noirceur Montmarin sur Mer
Jul 16 - SOB’s New York, New York
Aug 3 - Lollapalooza, Grant Park Chicago, Illinois
Aug 23 - Petco Park San Diego, California
Aug 30 - Bumbershoot Festival Seattle, Washington
Aug 31 - Bumbershoot Festival Seattle, Washington

mp3:> Saul Williams: World on Wheels

The Last Shadow Puppets will be performing their debut live shows in August, followed by their first European and American shows in October/November.  The band, Alex Turner and Miles Kane, and live musicians James Ford (drums), John Ashton (keyboards) and Stephen Fretwell (bass) will be augmented by a full 16 piece orchestra at each show.

The tour will round up at London’s Hammersmith Apollo on Sunday the 26th of October.  Full dates as follows:

August 19th – Portsmouth, Guildhall
August 20th – Oxford, New Theatre
August 22nd – Leeds Festival
August 24th – Reading Festival
August 26th – Paris, Olympia

October 15th – Stockholm - Circus
October 16th – Copenhagen – Vega Main Hall
October 17th – Berlin – Tempodrome
October 19th – Brussels – Cirque Royale
October 20th – Amsterdam – Paradiso
October 22nd – Glasgow – Academy
October 23rd – Sheffield – City Hall
October 26th – London – Hammersmith Apollo

October 30th - Grand Ballroom, New York
November 3rd - Mayan Theatre, Los Angeles

Tickets for all UK headlining shows will be available from usual outlets on Saturday the 5th of July from 9.30am.

Jaguar Love (ex-Blood Brothers, Pretty Girls Make Graves) hit the UK at the end of this week and make their London debut at Wireless Festival on Friday (ie. the Morrissey day). Which also happens to be the festival that TLOBF are covering from behind the scenes… keep your eyes peeled this weekend.

Anyway, they’re here to showcase material from their debut album Take Me To The Sea (out 18th August). You can have a taste as well, as the band have offered up a track from it for free:
mp3:> Jaguar Love: ‘Bats over the Pacific Ocean’

Tour dates below:

July
04 Wireless Festival, London
05 The Barfly, Brighton
07 Academy 3, Bristol
08 100 Club, London
09 Cockpit, Leeds
10 Roadhouse, Manchester
12 T In The Park, Scotland
13-July Oxygen Festival, Ireland

So they might not be “trad” Jazz, but they’re Jazz all the same. The Thing have announced busy plans for the next 12 months.

They’re going to release a box set called Now And Forever next week via Smalltown Superjazz, which consists of 3 CD’s and 1 DVD. The first two discs are copies of The Thing’s out-of-print albums (The Thing and She Knows…), the other CD is an unreleased recording of an improvised piece called ‘Gluttony’, whilst the DVD is called Live at Øya, featuring the band’s 2005 performance with Thurston Moore at the aforementioned festival.

Onto October, and The Thing will release a new studio album titled Bag It! via Smalltown Supersound. Recorded by Steve Albini, the album features the Thing’s versions of songs by Duke Ellington, Albert Ayler, the Ex, and others, including a couple of originals by the band and by its saxophonist, Mats Gustafsson.

Then last, but not least, The Thing are preparing two live albums for release early next year. One is a show they did with Jim O’Rourke recorded by Otomo Yoshihide, and the other, rather nicely, is a show they did with Otomo Yoshihide recorded by Jim O’Rourke.

Nice.

For more info on The Thing, see here.

Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand have announced the release of Provisions, their first album in nearly 4 years. It’ll be out on the 8th September 2008.

This incarnation of Giant Sand is comprised of Gelb, Danish musicians Thøger T. Lund (bass), Peter Dombernowsky (drums) and Anders Pedersen (slide guitar). It features talented friends/collaborators such as Neko Case, M. Ward, Isobell Campbell, Henriette Sennenvaldt, Lucie Idlout and Lonna Kelley.

More info when we get it folks…

We’re concise people at TLOBF, so what better than to condense a whole host of tour dates for you in one convenient article…

First up is Micah P Hinson, whose new album Micah P Hinson & The Red Orchestra is out on 14th July (and is, as you’d expect, marvellous) and he’s touring the UK in September:

02 Cardiff Club Ifor Bach
03 Leeds Holy Trinity Church
04 Liverpool Academy 2
06 Cheltenham Frig & Fiddle
07 Isle Of Wight, Bestival (BBC Stage)
09 Cambridge Junction 2
10 Nottingham Bodega
12 Dorset Larmer Tree Gardens, End Of The Road Festival

We’ve then had news of Feeder with an extensive tour of the UK in October / November:

20 October STOKE-ON-TRENT, Victoria Hall
21 October MANCHESTER, Apollo
23 October NEWCASTLE, Academy
24 October GLASGOW, Barrowlands
26 October LINCOLN, Engine Shed
27 October NOTTINGHAM, Rock City
29 October LIVERPOOL, University
30 October SHEFFIELD, Academy
01 November LOUGHBOROUGH, University
02 November NEWPORT, Centre
04 November BIRMINGAHAM, Academy
05 November LLANDUDNO, Arena
07 November LEEDS, Academy
08 November BRISTOL, Colston Hall
10 November CAMBRIDGE, Corn Exchange
11 November BRIGHTON, Dome
14 November EXETER, University
15 November SOUTHAMPTON, Guildhall
17 November LONDON, Brixton Academy

Tickets go on sale from 9am Friday 27th June and are £22.50 in advance for all shows except London which is £25 in advance.   Doors for all shows will be 7.30pm.

And last, but by no means least, Ben Kweller has announced some dates for December. The shows will give you a chance to hear material from Kweller’s new album, Changing Horses. Tickets are on sale now.

04 Manchester Ruby Lounge
05 Glasgow King Tut’s
06 Dublin Whelans
08 Birmingham Glee Club
09 London Union Chapel

It has to be said, I don’t really need much of an excuse to post about Loney, Dear. I’m especially excited at the moment as a) next weekend I get to see them play for the first time in nearly 12 months (which has felt like a lifetime) and b) i’ve heard on the grapevine that album number five is finished. Get in.

So yeah - Loney, Dear are back in the UK next weekend (6th July), headlining the Bella Union stage at Wireless, Hyde Park. We’ll be there backstage so will hopefully get the skinny on the new record - tentatively titled Dear John. But in the meantime, enjoy this video I stumbled across. It’s of a solo Emil playing two new songs at a party in Utrecht, Holland. I say new even though he’s certainly been playing one of them at shows for the past 12 months or so. I’m guessing they’ll be on the new album - but I have no clue what either of them are called. Feel free to comment below and let me know.

Enjoy! (Both songs of course, are utterly beautiful)

This has dropped into my inbox over night… we’ll probably get taken off line for posting it, even though it’s from the label themselves, but here you go…

Have a listen below to the first piece of proper new Verve material. It’s a steam of their new single, to be released on August 4th, call ‘Love is Noise’: listen here.

It’s a bit of a weird beast… plenty of processed “noise”, some trademark guitar riffs and Ashcroft’s voice sounding stronger than it ever has done… keeping off the booze and drugs is doing him well. I guess the only disappointment is the lyrics - pretty generic ramblings about how painful love is.

Oh well, let us know what you think…

London’s Offset Festival have added The Maccabees and Tom McRae to this years event. The Maccabees will be performing on main stage, supporting a yet-to-be-announced, hugely influential headliner. Ooooo… who will it be?!?! They’ve already got the following:

WIRE
Maccabees
Young Knives
Tom McRae
Chrome Hoof
Ipso Facto

plus there’s over 100 other bands (including more headliners) to be announced very soon.

Tickets now on sale, priced from just £45 for the whole weeken and available at www.offsetfestival.co.uk.

Venue: Hainault Forest Country Park, Redbridge
Date: Saturday 30th – Sunday 31st August 2008
Gates open: 11.30am on both days

Perennial TLOBF favourites Elbow have announced a full UK tour for October.

The action kicks off in Cambridge on Monday 6th October and the band will wind their way round the highways and byways of Britain before closing the tour in fine style with a homecoming show at Manchester Apollo on October 23rd.

Tickets will go onsale on Thursday 26th June - buy online at www.gigsandtours.com or call the 24 hour ticket hotline on 0871 2200 260.

Here’s the full list of dates:

October
06 - Cambridge, Corn Exchange
07 - Portsmouth, Guildhall
08 - Truro, Hall For Cornwall
10 - Cardiff University, Great Hall
11 - London, Roundhouse
12 - London, Roundhouse
15 - Wolverhampton, Civic Hall
16 - Leicester, De Montfort Hall
18 - Leeds, Academy
20 - Gateshead, Sage
22 - Liverpool, University
23 - Manchester, Apollo

Maxïmo Park have announced three new shows in Ireland over the summer, including a headline festival appearance at Marley Park. The new dates are as follows:

August
21st Rosin Dubh, Galway
22nd The Savoy, Cork
23rd Marley Park Festival, Dublin

The Lovebox Weekender date at Marley Park in Dublin also features acts such as N.E.R.D, Gorillaz and LCD Soundsystem.

The band, who have recently finished an extensive European tour culminating in a headline appearance at Hurricane & Southside Festival in Germany, will also be headlining the main stage at Haldern Festival in Germany on 9th August. Other bands appearing include Flaming Lips, Foals, The National and Editors.  The full line-up is available on the website at http://www.haldern-pop.de/en/

If you head on over to Merge Records’ site right you’ll be greeted by a very neat free download of Destroyer’s ‘Madame Butterflies.’ The new track from Canada’s hyper-sinuous lyricist. Originally released on Merge’s 7-inch contribution to Record Store Day (which occurred on April 19). As for the actual track its what we’ve all come to expect from the scruffy baroque rocker. Palm muted guitar slow builds into the usual electric theatrics. Check. Bejar inserts some lyrical self-references about the “fucking monsters puncturing the dawn” that appeared on his most recent album Trouble in Dreams. Check! Wordless troubadour vocals about a girl named Sandy? Check and check.

Despite its truncated length and its cookie cutter scheme, if you’re fan of Destroyer you should check it out. Did I mention its free?! Baltimore’s dreamy pop duo Wye Oak also have ‘Prodigy’ available to download. Its a meandering electric guitar number punctuated by muted bass. Jenn Wasner’s voice is particularly arresting but firmly set within the restrained folk-rock mantras she sang on Merge’s rerelease of Wye Oak’s 2007 debut, If Children.

The ever wonderful Damien Jurado has announced that his new record Caught In The Trees will be released on October 27th via Secretly Canadian. The album, a collaborative project between Jurado and band his band members Eric Fischer and Jenna Conrad and judging by the track ‘Gillian Was A Horse’ the album will certainly be worth the four month wait. Download the song at the bottom of the post.

In other Jurado news, he will be heading over to the UK in August to showcase material from the new album. He will headline two regional shows, plus an appearence at the Green Man festival. Dates are:

August 17th - Crickhowell, Green Man Festival
August 18th - Manchester, Trinity Chapel
August 19th - London, Bush Hall

Support on the London date comes from current TLOBF favourites Bowerbirds.

mp3:> Damien Jurado: ‘Gillian Was A Horse’

David Holmes is set to release his fourth solo album through Canderblinks/Mercury/UMC. Entitled The Holy Pictures, it’s an album whose incubation has lasted almost the entire length of Holmes’ career.

“The story of this album really began on the 4th of August 1996, when my mother, Sarah Holmes, passed away. I had always wanted to make a record about my life in Belfast and all the things attached to that – family, friends, loss, love and starting a family of my own. All the stuff that shapes the person you become.”

Sounds interesting… Will certainly be intriguing to hear this new stuff considering he’s spent the best part of the last 5 years, at the very least, working on soundtracks…

Holmes can be seen doing his other love, DJing, during the festival season this summer. He will be at The Big Chill [1st -3rd August] The Green Man [15-17th August] and Electric Picnic [29th-31st August].

Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds might just be washing down after their recent get together, the excellent Dig, Lazarus Dig!!! (read our review here, and a live review here) but Cave has confirmed he’s already turning his attention elsewhere.

Speaking to XFM he declared that there’ll be a new Grinderman album en route…

“There’s a lot of work around the Grinderman project that we wanna do in a more serious way this time. The thing about Grinderman was that we just threw out the record and we made it very quickly. We wondered about its affect on us and it was hugely important on The Bad Seeds.

“When we go in to make the next Grinderman record we don’t want it to sound like the last Bad Seeds record, or the Grinderman record before. We’re forced to find something new, but that’s always been the way.

“The thing that Grinderman will remain committed to is that it doesn’t matter; if the whole thing goes belly-up and if people really hate it then we don’t care because we have the Bad Seeds anyway, so that gives us an enormous amount of freedom to go and spend three months in Bulgaria or something.”

“We’re going out in a playing mode so we can get in the mood for making the new record, that’s why we’re doing the live stuff.”

Good stuff…

Augie March have made a four track download available for the minor inconvenience of signing up to their newsletter (just go to the official sign following the link below). Very nice it is too, especially lesser known ‘Mother Greer’ and older track ‘Sunstroke House’ from the Strange Bird album. Get it while it’s hot.

On a particularly puzzling, frazzling day involving a fried band and crew, the buzz of new promise in a big land, long-haul sleepless dementia and a 9.3 on the Collective Minibar Hangover Scale, the band tumbled out of a brown 15-seater and into a famed Los Angeles studio and sublimely leant into a semi-acoustic concert, straight to tape. It came up great, unsurprisingly, and it is now available as free download. Tracks are the ubiquitous ‘One Crowded Hour’ (featuring a sleep-deprived Boxer blasting a dynamic harp solo), ‘Cold Acre’, ‘Mother Greer’ and ‘Sunstroke House’ (featuring Dave on uke). Wont be available forever, but it’s yours and its free, hope you enjoy it.

They’re currently in NZ working on their fourth album outing and trying not to trash the Finn Brothers studio. God speed.

Links
Augie March [official site] [myspace] [TLOBF Review of 'Moo You Bloody Choir']