- Album Review: The Walkmen - “You & Me”
- Album Review: The Dandy Warhols - …Earth to the Dandy Warhols
- Featured Artist Interview: Xu Xu Fang
- New Tunes: Xu Xu Fang - “Fascination Street” (Cure cover)
- New Tunes: Death to Anders - “Detective Surgery” (acoustic)
- Concert Review: Kárin Tatoyan w/ Sarah Negahdari & the Sad Solids and Learning Music (8.08.08)
- Featured Artist Interview: Le Switch
- Concert Review: The Airborne Toxic Event w/ Radars to the Sky and the Morning Benders @ the El Rey (8.07.08)
- Interview: The Submarines on ABC New Now
- New Tunes: The Henry Clay People - “You Can Be Timeless”
- Interview: The Weather Underground on Groupee
- Lollapalooza Pocast, Part Four: Radiohead (8.01.08)
- New Music Preview: The Little Ones - Morning Tide
- New Tunes: Young Animals - “Death Rattle” / “Casualties of War”
- Lollapalooza Pocast, Part Three: Wilco (8.02.08)
- New Tunes: Xu Xu Fang - “Fascination Street” (Cure cover)
"This Losing"
Live at the El Rey (8.07.08)
by The Airborne Toxic Event
Visit their site
Buy The Airborne Toxic Event's debut album
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August 19th, 2008 @ 9PM ($5/18+)
Le Switch
The World Record
Les Blanks
and Nico Stai
August 19th, 2008 @ 9PM ($6)
Xu Xu Fang
The Savages
and Death to Anders
28th Annual Sunset Junction Street Festival
August 23rd & 24th, 2008, 10:00 AM to 11:00 PM ($20)
September 30th, 2008
Hotbodies
Young Animals
The Monolators
The Icarus Line
and The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra
• All Music Guide
• Aquarium Drunkard
• Classical Geek Theatre
• Indie 103.1 Presents Check one…two
• KROQ Locals Only
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• Spaceland
• Troubadour
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Album Review: The Walkmen - “You & Me”
By Travis Woods
Release Date: 8.19.08
Label: Gigantic
Because this is the fifth album in their nearly ten-year-old sprint of a lifespan, the Walkman have finally begun to slow down and drift into that winded, lung-burned and shadowy career mid-point in which one begins to look back, both stylistically and thematically, and releases a quietly self-indulgent LP of glinting pastoral beauty, where the sun-flared glare of bright-white, picket fence Sunday melancholy and maturity dulls the wild-eyed and carousing howls of raw-nerve, hip-throb youth.
Because this is the Walkmen, though, the fifth album in their nearly ten-year-old sprint of a lifespan neatly obliterates those time-crusted critical straightjackets—a quieter and more mature work to be sure, You & Me nevertheless channels the Walkmen’s frenetic and grandiose take on dirty, grime-chunked rock ‘n roll into a darkly sublime stretch of songs that meditate on the passage of time, life, friends and self. And, because this is the Walkmen, “darkly sublime” can be taken with a grain of salt: even the album’s more subtle moments—as on the lightly clattering ache and rollercoaster swoon of “In the New Year”—feature the ceaseless locomotive energy and gravel-gargled vocal cords that made “The Rat” so indelible four years ago, though this LP does so in a more restrained fashion.
Album Review: The Dandy Warhols - …Earth to the Dandy Warhols
By Travis Woods
Release Date: 8.19.08
Label: Beat the World Records
The Dandy Warhols have put me through a lot in our time together. But this, finally… this is just too much:
I totally, wholeheartedly and unequivocally agree with everything Pitchfork has said about this ‘new’ record (between these parenthesis explains what the new between those apostrophes might not, namely, that this is a turgid, blendered rehash of everything the Dandy’s have done before, but staggered and slowed into the same kind of stuttered and drool-slick Valium haze as celebrated on the LP’s “Valerie Yum”—look, I’m even writing this as if it were for Pitchfork). And that is something I cannot forgive. Putting up with Courtney Taylor’s endless series of pretentious, sub-Bowie poses, listening to the band’s records of bong-clouded ’60s camp reruns, and the entirety of 2005’s Odditorium or Warlords of Mars—that’s one thing. But come on—Pitchfork?
The Dandy Warhols- "The World The People Together (Come On)" [4:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadNew Tunes: Wilco - “One Wing” / “Sunny Feeling”
Anyone who’s listened to Wilco live lately (which you can do here), has noticed the inclusion of more and more unreleased material in their sets. Two such songs were caught at the band’s August 4th show in Indianapolis, and they sound like top-drawer Wilco–there’s the gorgeously fragile stop-start melancholy of “One Wing”’s first half which gives way to a fiery and chugging midsection, one that finally climaxes into wave upon wave of screaming guitar spirals, while “Sunny Feeling” counters with a rubberband jaunt that dovetails into quiet, piano-swathed choruses.
Both songs sound as if they came from the album that Web in Front wished had followed A Ghost is Born (2004), rather than the blank-eyed, dad-with-an-earring revision of A.M. (1995) that was Sky Blue Sky (2007). While Sky sounded like the first time Wilco had taken a step backwards in their career, these new songs point to both a consolidation of their past and a steady step forward.
Wilco - "One Wing" Live In Indianapolis (8.4.08) [5:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Wilco - "Sunny Feeling" Live In Indianapolis (8.4.08) [4:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadInterview: The Submarines on ABC New Now
The Submarines made it onto ABC News Now recently, where they hold up quite well, considering the sheer awkwardness generated by the oddly blank yet rather excited interviewer.
Everest announces North American fall tour with Neil Young, Death Cab for Cutie, and Wilco
As announced by Everest today:
We are so honored that Neil invited us along for the ride. On Leg One of the tour, Death Cab For Cutie will be on the bill. On Leg Two, we’ll be joined by Wilco!!! A dream come true, to say the least. Hope you get to enjoy the moment with us as we finish out what has been one the best years of our lives…..
Cheers to your health and happiness,
Everest
The band will also be on the road for a brief west coast tour with the Parson Red Heads next week. All dates are listed here.
Listen to Everest’s “Rebels in the Roses”
Featured Artist Interview: Xu Xu Fang
By Travis Woods
A darkly celestial blend of rolling thunder melodies and the freeform lunar milk-splash of ambient experimentation, Xu Xu Fang is the creation of Los Angeles musician and Xu Xu drummer Bobby Tamkin, and is one of the most indescribable listening experiences in la la land rock. Upon first hearing the band’s EP, The Mourning Son, last May I managed to write,
“…the title track not only lends the EP its name, but is also the centerpiece around which the disc haloes —not only does it build on the foundation of “These Days,” but with its chugging swirl of ascending guitar riffs and luminescent Nyquil pools of hypnotic vocal harmonies, it acts as a sonic umbilicus between the swinging, increasingly propulsive rock of “Good Times” and the EP’s bizarre shadow terminus of quietly unsettling ambient noise, ‘Terra Scurra..”
which is as close as I can come to describing the dichotomous sway of the Fang’s [insert genre prefix here, I suggest post-, art-, ambient-, psych-, dream-] rock. You just have to listen.
Web in Front spoke recently with Tamkin about the band’s stellar contribution to an upcoming Cure tribute double LP, their show at this Tuesday’s Let’s Independent!, and, most eagerly, their forthcoming full-length.
New Tunes: The Henry Clay People - “You Can Be Timeless”
If this song doesn’t stretch a wistful smile across the front of your bobbing head… well, we don’t know what to say to you–you’re just not human, and the blood in your veins is as still-framed and coagulated as the lifeblood in this track is roaring and alive. Yeah, we’d probably say something pretty hyperbolic like that.
As a preview to the Henry Clay People’s upcoming full-length, For Cheap or For Free (released via Autumn Tone Records this fall), “You Can Be Timeless” captures the mood and various sounds of the entire freewheeling disc–the song begins as a hum of lightly strummed introspection, building into a cascade of rhythmic mid-tempo guitar interplay before exploding into a haze of mudsplattering guitar riffs and the euphoric stomp of shambolic rock ‘n roll that is quintessentially Henry Clay.
And about that album? If it doesn’t make it onto your personal Best of 2008 list… see above.
Interview: The Weather Underground on Groupee
Web in Front favorites (and one of our first and best Featured Artist interviews–check it out), the Weather Underground recently sat down for a video interview with Groupee, one that is interspersed with simmering in-studio performances as the group muses on their sound and the creative process.
They make mention of their debt to soul, which we certainly hear, but we’ll always view them as L.A.’s beautifully ragged response to Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones.
Lollapalooza Pocast, Part Four: Radiohead (8.01.08)
As a special four-part podcast this week (Tuesday-Friday), Web in Front has been offering our favorite Lollapalooza 2008 performances that happen to floating around the internet. By all accounts (we, unfortunately, couldn’t be there in person–sigh, always a bridesmaid, never a bride), this was an extremely good year to be at the festival, with stellar performances by Bloc Party, The National, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, Stephen Malkmus, the Kills, and Radiohead, to name a few (Explosions in the Sky went up on Tuesday, The National on Wednesday, and Wilco on Thursday).
Radiohead detonated their set on the stage–a twenty-four song performance with a seven-song encore, every album besides Pablo Honey represented with frenetic and emotive takes on their respective tracks, Thom Yorke doing his seizured thing during “The National Anthem”… Essentially, it’s an almost complete fulfillment of a Radiohead fan’s concert wishlist (exception: no “Pyramid Song”?) The band’s beautiful and thrilling version of “Lucky” alone makes this set worth listening to.
New Music Preview: The Little Ones - Morning Tide
It’s an old story: young band signs with big label, makes a record of stunning, infectious pop music, then big label drops young band, who then falls into a shadowy obscurity that is only occasionally broken up by the slats of dusty sunlight that peer into the used record store box where their lonely EPs lie, or by the hyper-dedicated listener scrounging through information in a dense html drift of filed and forgotten bands.
If there’s any justice in the music world, or at least enough good ears, the Little Ones will not end up that way. Dropped from their label, Astralwerks, earlier this year after releasing the Sing Song EP’s wildy rollercoasted pop hooks and starburst melodies in 2006, the Little Ones have returned with their debut full-length, Morning Tide, on Chop Shop Records. Already available in the U.K., the disc is due in the U.S. on October 7th.
While Sing Song was a condensed burst of blinding exuberance, Morning Tide allows that sound to sprawl and unfurl—while the skittering bounce of the title track’s “do do do do dooo’s” and the blissed, clattering sway of “Boracay” echo the now-classic EP, other tracks (most especially the slowmotioned “Waltz” and the gorgeous closer, “Farm Song”) expand and broaden the Little Ones’ sound into slower tempos and more experimental structures. And that odd, repetitive thudding sound you hear? It’s the folks at Astralwerks repeatedly slapping their foreheads in time to the lovely summer pop of “All Your Modern Boxes.”
It’s been a long wait, but, thankfully, the Little Ones crafted something that was worth it.
The Little Ones - "Morning Tide" [4:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download The Little Ones - "Boracay" [3:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadNew Tunes: Young Animals - “Death Rattle” / “Casualties of War”
Spencer Rollins of the Young Animals, when not sticking it to the Man, has recently made available an album’s worth of demos on the band’s Myspace page. Called Temporary Animals, it’s a collection of melodic and haunting folk-tinged Americana–and it’s scarily good. You can listen to two of the tracks below before getting the whole set.
And yeah, Temporary Animals can be downloaded for free, right here.
And yeah, we didn’t think scarily looked like a real word either, but it is.
Young Animals - "Death Rattle" (ft. Marina Malota) [3:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Young Animals - "Casualties Of War": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download-
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- Album Review: The Walkmen - “You & Me”
- Album Review: The Dandy Warhols - …Earth to the Dandy Warhols
- New Tunes: Wilco - “One Wing” / “Sunny Feeling”
- Interview: The Submarines on ABC New Now
- Everest announces North American fall tour with Neil Young, Death Cab for Cutie, and Wilco
- Featured Artist Interview: Xu Xu Fang
- New Tunes: The Henry Clay People - “You Can Be Timeless”
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