Thursday News Threads

Zach, KEXP — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:55:12 +0000

I missed it, but I guess some people on the internets thought Kanye West was dead. He’s not. You’d think his million blog posts a day would’ve stopped the rumors dead in their tracks, but meh.

Yeasayer signed to Secretly Canadian for the North American release of their highly anticipated 2nd album. It’s called Odd Blood, and it will be released on February 9, 2010. They join the ranks of artists like Jens Lekman, Damien Jurado, Magnolia Electric Company, and Antony and the Johnsons on Secretly Canadian.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s October 29th/30th concerts at Madison Square Garden have gotten more incredible: Ozzy Osbourne will perform with Metallica, Buddy Guy will join Eric Clapton, B.B. King is pairing with Stevie Wonder and Annie Lennox and Lenny Kravitz are teaming with Aretha Franklin.

Below you’ll find a new People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) advertisement featuring the members of Animal Collective. They’re teaming up to show support for ending seal slaughter in Canada. Huh.

Uh, really? Some guys from his label say Lil Wayne is going to be releasing not one but TWO new albums before the end of the year! According to Cash Money CEO Birdman, The Rebirth, “the dubious Lil Wayne rock album that’s been pushed back a few times, will come out this year. And so will Tha Carter 4, the next entry in Wayne’s… Carter series. Birdman even has a projected released date for Tha Carter 4: December 15.”

MGMT’s new album now has a name. Their label confirmed it will be titled “Congratulations” and will be released “sometime next year.” They’re playing some of the new stuff live these days, including the title track:

Yep, it’s Death Cab news of the week! As you probably know, Ben Gibbard is making his big screen debut in the movie “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.” Stereogum just posted clips from his performance. Now Zooey isn’t the closest he’s come to acting.

Trent Reznor is, I guess, married now? Congratulations to him and his lucky(?) new bride. Check out the extremely awkward photographic evidence here.

Courtney Love has reunited her band Hole for the first time since 2002, after they formed in ‘ninety four after Love was widowed. I guess we’ll see.

Zach, KEXP — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:18:03 +0000

Agh! Pop music collides! Rivers Cuomo of Weezer reportedly is working with Katy Perry on writing/recording for her new album.

Not enough Eels to sate you? I guess they liked the feeling of releasing a new album in June after four years hiatus. Now they’re going to be releasing their eighth studio album, End Times, on January 19, 2010, just 6 months later. Who’s complaining, though?

Earlier this week, Bon Iver played their last show for the foreseeable future. Justin Vernon, the songwriter, wrote in a blog that it would be difficult wrapping up the whirlwind For Emma experience and that this would be the band’s final gig “before taking a well-deserved break from public performance.” Listen to the performance below, made available by 88Nine Radio Milwaukee.

Bon Iver podcast (MP3)

Regina Spektor has quite a schedule lined up, including her Broadway debut. As for the latter, she has joined playwright/director Tina Landau (Floyd Collins & Superior Donuts) and lyricist Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) to create a new Broadway bound musical called Beauty. She’ll be stopping by Seattle on her tour November 3rd.

Sufjan Stevens, in a new interview with Exclaim! journalist Vish Khanna, says some pretty interesting things about the direction of the music industry and his place within that. Among many other quotable quotes, he wonders out loud, “What’s the point of making music anymore? I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that’s how I’ve always created– I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I’m wondering, what’s the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone’s just downloading music?” Read more!

The Pixies are just beginning their North American stretch of their tour. What’s more, TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone will open some of the dates with his solo project, Rain Machine. Both bands are playing Seattle on the 12th of November and The Pixies will play again on the 13th.

Courtney Love. In the news again. This time, it is revealed that she owes the US government $324,335.21 in taxes, stretching back to 2007. Also, her bizarre ramblings in 140 characters or less will be harder to find as she closed her well-known and confusion-inducing Twitter page recently.

Because I can’t go a week without mentioning Death Cab in some form or another, I’ll have to inform all you faithful blog readers that Chris Walla and Jawbox’s J. Robbins got together at NPR’s studios and wrote/recorded a totally rad song. You can watch a mini-documentary about the process or just watch/listen to the song over at NPR’s website.

The KEXP Blog » Courtney Love