photos by Jim Bennett

California’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are the ultimate biker gang of good old fashion psych n’ roll, tearing up the streets of the world one sinister album at a time. With the release of their fifth album and first full-length on their very own label, Abstract Dragon, Beat the Devil’s Tattoo proves the trio (drummer Leah Shapiro joined the lineup) is just as sin-filled as they’ve ever been in their 12 music-making years. Southern gothic to the core, the crew’s new vision and lineup is a mash-up of their past ballad-filled albums, oozing potent sexual energy and an untamable desire for something more.

BMRC packed the Gibson Showroom in Austin on the final day of our broadcast live from SXSW for a set of stripped down songs, mostly from the new album. It was a softer side of the band, but no less potent!

View more photos here!

When mega-artists team up for a collaborative project like the new two-piece band, Broken Bells, the outcome is sometimes so good, it’s scary. After two years, James Mercer, lead singer and guitarist of The Shins, and Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, hot-shot producer and co-founder of Gnarls Barkley (also produced the Gorillaz and 2004’s infamous The Grey Album) have finally revealed the labor of their hard and glorious work with Broken Bell’s 10 track self-titled debut record. Cinematic and unexpectedly dark and eerie, Danger Mouse trades in much of his signature sampling for live instrumentation, creating an entirely new sound for the two distinct musicians.

California psych-rock trio Black Rebel Motorcycle Club released their fifth album and first full-length on their very own label, Abstract Dragon. Beat the Devil’s Tattoo is just as sinister and sin-filled as their 12 years worth of deep southern gothic tunes (tune in on Friday, 3/19 at 2 p.m. to hear them live from SXSW). Glasgow-based Frightened Rabbit creates yet another emotive and dramatically gorgeous third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, which may very well land them the stardom they deserve (also playing live on KEXP’s SXSW broadcast on Thurday, 3/18 at 1 p.m.). The almighty British virtual act Gorillaz released their first album in five years since the critically acclaimed Demon Days. Damon Albarn (Blur) and Jamie Hewlett (co-creator of the post-apocalyptic comic book, Tank Girl) united once again, experimenting with glitched-out club beats and Asian-inspired melodies in Plastic Beach. Jason Collett locked himself away with some vintage instruments in a Toronto garage in 2009, emerging with his new release, Rat A Tat Tat, a passion-filled story of an album and worthy follow up to the 2008 beauty, Here’s To Being Here. Five albums deep, the LA-based, Australian fronted Liars experiments with the epic and bizarre in Sisterworld.

The Beggars Group, a family of labels encompassing everything from XL Recordings to Rough Trade, put out a bounty of albums this week. Worth mentioning are Ted Leo & the Pharmacists’s The Brutalist Brick, Tanlines’ Settings, Pavement’s Quarantine The Past: The Best Of Pavement , Lemonade’s Pure Moods, The Morning Benders’ Big Echo, Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor and Janka Nabay’s Bubu King. Secretly Canadian which includes labels Jagjaguwar and Dead Oceans is also celebrating with the releases of jj’s jj no 3, Besnard Lakes’ The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night and White Hinterland’s Kairos.

Check out Largehearted Boy’s list for more great albums and vinyl re-releases before hoppin’ on over to your local record shop.

You call yourself a Pixies fan? Bought tickets to their reunited Doolittle tour, yeah? For multiple shows even? Well, you’re not a real Pixies fan until you’ve plunked down two hundred and something bucks on the Minotaur box set, collecting 5 remastered CDs of their studio albums, also contained on 6 Blu-ray and 6 DVDs in 5.1 surround, plus a 54 page book set, all packaged by Vaughan Oliver, the designer of all of the Pixies album artwork. Come on, pilgrim — show your love.

Under the shadow of that monster, the rest of the week’s releases are fairly low key… but certainly not to be ignored. British brat rockers The Cribs let loose their fourth studio album, while Snow Patrol continues on their path with Up to Now, their sixth, and a new band fronted by a seasoned veteran, Bad Lieutenant, with New Order’s Bernard Sumner, releases in CD form their debut. Local (and former local) acts Big Spider’s Back, Loch Lomond, and deVries have new ones out today, as do Ola Podrida and Pants Yell!. Iceland rings in with two new releases, both quite different but equally excellent (what else would you expect?): the ambient experimental By the Throat by Ben Frost from the Bedroom Community, and Ólafur Arnalds’s Found Songs, which collects 7 songs of chamber strings and piano recorded in as many days, out on Erased Tapes — both well worth checking out!

And now that Halloween has come and gone, well… ’tis the season. Box sets, mostly less ambitious than Minotaur, and holiday albums begin to proliferate on the shelves. This week, AC/DC weighs in with a 2 CD/DVD box, and of course you’ll find the requisite Billy Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald collections. Tori Amos has recorded an album of Christmas classics along with a few originals, called Midwinter Graces, and if you’ve ever wondered what “Waterloo Sunset” sounds like in choral version, Ray Davies has put The Kinks to the 65-piece Crouch End Festival Chorus for The Kinks Choral Collection. Maybe a little less in the holiday spirit but certainly to make great gifts nonetheless: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Robyn Hitchcock have new live DVDs for fans. So prepare to gather ’round the Festivus Pole, but not before you create your list from Largehearted Boy and enjoy these kind gifts courtesy of the bands and their labels:

photo by Ray Lego

• Author, poet, musician Jim Carroll died on Friday at age 60. As chronicled in his autobiography The Basketball Diaries, Carroll’s outlaw lifestyle of poetry and drugs (and of course basketball) brought him into circles that included Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe and other counter-culture icons of the 70’s. In fact, it was Smith who encouraged Carroll to form the Jim Carroll Band, but it was Carroll who remained true to his poetic voice and created a hybrid sound that was and remains unique. Their debut release, Catholic Boy, soon became a cult classic, especially the gritty memorial “People Who Died.” Carroll died in his New York home of an apparent heart attack. [more here]

• With the hubbub of Kurt Cobain becoming a Guitar Hero avatar singing hair metal, it’s refreshing that Daft Punk don’t have to worry about a drug coma Courtney Love selling their likeness away. As it turns out, the French duo are happy to be included as characters in the upcoming DJ Hero — going so far as to include eight new mixes exclusively for the game.

• Flashback to 2002 and remember when The Strokes were the hottest thing in rock and roll since The Hives? It’s been all quiet on the NYC front for the boys in leather, glossing over Albert Hammond’s solo albums. Now the booming vocals of Julian Casablanacas are set to give the throwback rockers a bit more publicity as he readies his solo LP, Phrazes for the Young, for an October 20th release in the states. The ‘z’ in Phrazes is prove his street cred.

• Four of the largest radio markets are about to find themselves with Last.fm broadcast stations. New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles will be the first homes to high-definition Last.fm broadcasts thanks to the CBS Interactive Group, who will transmit the stations beginning October 5th. The Last.fm station playlists will be dictated by the weekly charts generated by Last.fm users, so if you live in any of the four cities and want more Prurient or more Dean Martin, you better get cracking.

• Rhapsody, the on-demand subscription music service may be headed to the iPhone. The Real Network company recently submitted an iPhone app and is now awaiting approval, according to The Daily Swarm. If Apple allows the app, users would have full access to their accounts, including any created playlists and preferences, not to mention the over 8 million tracks available through the service.

• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have partnered with Vagrant Records with the impending release of a 2xDVD + 1xCD live set from the demure rockers. Due November 10th, the as-yet-titled set will feature over 2 hours of performance footage from sold-out dates in Berlin, Dublin, and Glasgow, along with 90 minutes worth behind-the-scenes film and extra performances. This should whet the insatiable appetites of fans eagerly awaiting the group’s fifth studio album, which is due sometime in 2010.

• James Allan, the Glasvegas frontman who had been reportedly missing for a week, was back with the band in Boston on Friday. James’ cousin and bandmate, Rab Allan, talked to Spinner about their reunion and confirms that James now has a cell phone (which he’d been lacking for six months).

• Do you need a vacation? How about a jaunt to Joshua Tree during October 3rd and 4th for the KCRW-supported Manimal Festival? The two-day event will play host to the talents of Fool’s Gold, Chairlift, and Juliette Commagere, along with a indie blogger’s wet dream of acts on the cusp of modicum success.

• Another slow week on the talk show circuit, but there are a few highlights, including Franz Ferdinand and Metric on Last Call, Phoenix and Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Conan — and Megadeath on Jimmy Fallon? Sure, why not?
  Monday, September 14

  Jimmy Fallon: Rufus Wainwright
  Last Call: Franz Ferdinand

  Tuesday, September 15

  Conan O’Brien: Phoenix
  Last Call: Metric

  Wednesday, September 16

  David Letterman: John Fogerty (R 9/3/09)
  Conan O’Brien: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  Last Call: Pete Yorn
  Colbert Report: The Flaming Lips

  Thursday, September 17

  Jimmy Fallon: Megadeth

  Friday, September 18

  go see a movie!