New Radiohead Album

Is everyone wearing their catheter? Radiohead is coming out with a new album folks. BE SURPRISED! Not only is Radiohead coming out with a new album, it will be available in TEN DAYS! It's called In Rainbows and you can apparently purchase it for however much money you want to spend. Once again, on 10/10/07 you will have something new to obsess over. It will be available for download only on that date and the tangible (expensive) material will arrive in December.

Check it out Here

Becky's Weekly Digs Courtesy of Last.fm

Animal Collective at the Rialto 9/20/07

Let's See:

The Rialto Theatre is located across a done-tore-up street from the Congress hotel where John Dillinger was caught. Tore-up'dness is not special around this part of Tucson, with the whole block looking fairly post-apolcalyptic- the only structures left standing in an apparent re-everything-ing of 4th street being a few "historic" (read: maybe 100 years old) brick buildings. Road work occurring under bright flourescent lights at 10:30 at night. It was a typically restless orange-lit Arizona weekday, made all the more Mad Max-esque by the roaming packs of Animal collective fans emerging from the dark alleyways adorned for a night of freakfolkin': peasant dresses, silver trenchcoats, tie dye, beards and bandanas.

Part 1B: The Opening Act
Early fans collect in front of the stage in down-sloping standing-room where theater seats once sat. A white fabric screen held up by geodesic scaffolding stands front and center stage, getting hopes up for a repeat of the pre-set shadow puppet show witnessed at Solar Culture their last time through Tucson. Not a puppet show, per se, we find out, as Wizard Prison takes the stage behind the screen with their cloaked and hooded silhouettes blocking psychadelic projections on the screen. They stand at their laptops like altars, I guess. They guy on the right moves his hand incantation-style over the keyboard and summons screechy big synth noises while the other wizard prisoner (the more charismatic, perhaps, but less subtle of the two... which one's your favorite?) screeches into a microphone in the darkness to the side of his screen. "WIZARD PRISON" announces the projector as a big distorted beat puts the first of many sinister psych jams into motion. 10 minute song, 10 minutes of noise, then it quiets down and out come the stratocasters. "Animal Collective!" shout some drunk assholes in the front (seriously... big drunk assholes) and the WP let out the loudest distorted power chord you can probably remember hearing and it hurts everyone's ears but they made their point. From here on it's basically like Sunn o))) except not, which is cool with me since I've never seen Sunn o))). Not bad. Oh and they said "thank you" with their projector in big bloody death metal letters with their projector. Friendly guys, Wizard Prison.

And then there was Animal Collective. Geologist, Avey Tare, and Panda Bear from left to right, with their personal array of twelve or so PA speakers and attached multicolored light panels arranged behind their three synth/sampler/percussion stations. They opened with "Unsolved Mysteries", if memory serves, with Tare taking a (for this show) rare turn on the guitar and giving the crowd an early (and even rarer) taste of familiar material.

From there it was a full-on drone trance two hour set that was as challenging as could be expected and as hard to translate into writing as you can probably tell from this account. Oh, and maybe I'm going crazy, but they totally lapsed into a remix of "A Paw in My Face" by The Field. Did anyone else notice that?! Tell me I'm not alone. I definitely heard a sample from this.

So they played all your unreleased youtube-only songs like "walk around" and a couple others. Wound down the evening with a wonderful rendition of Album closer "Derek" (30 minutes of confusion and then those shaker sounds started up and it was like seeing your friend's face in the middle of a crazy dream... Hi Derek!... y'know?) Finishing up in considerately nostalgic form, the played Leaf House, thanked Wizard Prison and wrapped it up... encoreless. Some of the front row kids were pissed, reminding us that, despite the pop monster Animal Collective has become, it has still reserved its right to rub people the wrong way.

Within Temptation show review

Attitude was the opener for this show, and apparently they're a local band so it was sort of exciting to have them up there with a national tour. These guys has a really entertaining live act. Not the friendliest of folks, unfortunately, but the show was definitely well worth watching. Music shows a lot of promise but it's not there yet, the band had more energy than the music.

The Dear and Departed was a decent band, but seemed unfitting for this show. Music was generally sort of a Pop Rock feel with an Indie atmosphere to it. The drop in energy from the first band was palpable even among the crowd, though the music was pretty nice. Very relaxed and chilled out. Unfortunately, this was a Metal show (more or less).

Within Temptation was a lot of fun. They played for about an hour and a half which meant I didn't know a fair amount of the material played. This was their last show for their first headlining US tour, and you could tell they were thrilled to be here. The entire band was smiling the whole set and fooling around and acting like this wasn't work, this was just something they do for fun, a refreshing view because the crowd feeds off this energy fabulously. In addition, Sharon is absolutely adorable. Not in the sex-icon way most fans probably see her, but in person she just has this really charming and friendly vibe. The whole band did in fact, always nice ot have bigger bands that are that friendly. Worth seeing again.

Between the Buried and Me says, “What the Hell Are you Lookin at?”

The North Carolina based Metal/Progressive Between the Buried and Me released Colors, the band’s fifth full length last Tuesday. Before even opening the disc, the band made its intentions clear as Colors was intended to be a symphony of metal, progressive rock and the intensity of a bar fight all blended together. While immediately coming off as pretentious, the band stands its ground and delivers exactly as promised. Flawless transitions between songs and different moods, the journey starts off with a piano serenade followed by BTBAM’s signature kick in “Foam Born (A) The Backtrack.” Throughout the middle of the disc, the listener is greeted by not only the sounds of heavy metal and lush prog rock, but also an audible bar fight and the occasional accordion. Finally, the metal leaders take a moment to build a climax in “Viridian” and kick hard again to close the disc with “White Walls.” At the close of Colors, it becomes immediately clear exactly what the hell the listener is looking at. BTBAM demonstrates their position as a band capable of spanning genre, tone and many colors to create a technical masterpiece that any metal fan can enjoy.

High on Fire Show Review!

Coliseum started out, which was disappointing in that the band after them was the band that seemed to be the least successful. They put on an alright show but the crowd was pretty dead and not hugely into it, but that's as much as I expected for more of a Hardcore Punk band at a Heavy Metal show. I think the band would have a much more fun show at a Hardcore show. They did have a few people nodding head by the end though.

Panthers was up next, and unfortunately they weren't hugely exciting live. They seemed to lack that extra ingredient to really spice up their show. The vocalist also didn't fit the music very well I thought although my opinion might change if I heard them on CD.

Mono was AMAZING live. Amazing. The music started off pretty and sweet, and I'm pretty sure half of the bar didn't realize this band was even playing music for the first few minutes they were playing. It was a nice and slow build, but assuredly, by the end of their first climax, the entire room was captivated and clapping fervently in any break that seemed appropriate. The line for merch after their show probably consisted of half the audience there. they were that good. Go see this band live. Period.

High on Fire was very entertaining live. They had a huge emphasis on sound that many bands don't bother with when they play live anymore but it really made for a better show. The guitarist/vocalist is a super friendly guy and very energetic and charismatic. Fun to be around, and he was around almost the entire time he wasn't playing, socilizing and even buying people drinks at the bar. Their live show wasn't as good as Mono's, but it was still quite good and fun overall.

My Pinback interview is up on azcentral! You can read it here!

WTF Regina?!

Okay, the new J.C. Penney's commercials use "Music Box" by Regina Spektor as the background jingley music. I thought I was okay with musicians selling their souls for retail purposes, since, you know, Feist has those iPod mini commercials with "1 2 3 4," plus a few others that I can't readily recall. And there's probably some decent money in it. But, seriously? J.C. Penney and Regina Spektor? That's like Ryan Adams pairing up with Kohl's, or Blondie backing up some freaking Doritos ad, or Cat Power modeling for Chanel, or Wilco with Volkswagen... oh wait. But honestly, I actually really like this song and now it's forever tainted.

EDIT: Not ten minutes after writing this, there was an ad with Vera Wang for Kohl's. Just a friendly notification.

Holy crap!

Ghostface Killah playing at ASU?

Yes.

October 17th. Witchdoctor supports; tour is sponsored by Adult Swim. No word yet on where on campus, but just follow the stylishly-dressed screaming kids with backpacks. Or the sound of loud bass. Or the sound of awesome music.

Most Serene Republic Streamage

You can stream the new album from The Most Serene Republic, entitled "Population" right here right now!

Hey guess what!

Who's going to see Kings of Leon at Marquee tomorrow night?!

Upcoming Shows!