Patriotic I am not. Of course, there are somethings about England I love. Its open-door conduct to culture, all-out elective government and unmitigated gratitude to the sport of football. Having noted those, there are probably even more somethings I hate - Heck, its people, to name but one. The National (you know, of New York, America-fame) are to return very soon with a new record. Thank heavens, indeed. In the meantime they've been demoing some fresh material to and fro. One song in particular, which they debuted at NYC's Radio City Music Hall last May, goes by the [...]
Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News After a full day of announcing artists one at a time on social networking sites like Twitter and MySpace , Bonnaroo has finally unveiled its full 2010 line-up. It's a good thing they only unveiled it only in spurts at first -- the full line-up is so stacked and top-heavy it's hard to take it all in at once. Seriously. This year's gathering -- which will take place from June 10 to 13 at the festival's 700-acre homestead [...]
Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News After a full day of announcing artists one at a time on social networking sites like Twitter and MySpace , Bonnaroo has finally unveiled its full 2010 line-up. It's a good thing they only unveiled it only in spurts at first -- the full line-up is so stacked and top-heavy it's hard to take it all in at once. Seriously. This year's gathering -- which will take place from June 10 to 13 at the festival's 700-acre homestead [...]
Frank Yang If I'm being totally honest, I wasn't that excited for last night's Magnetic Fields show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. After all, their last few records didn't especially bowl me over and I was feeling somewhat pessimistic about what to expect from a performer who's very much on record as being disdainful of the entire phenomenon of live performance. I had seen them before at their last visit to Toronto in July 2004 and while my memories of that show are fond, I couldn't say it was an especially [...]
Well, this should be fun. The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival has proved to be quite the epic annual event. For its 2010 edition, the festival organizers have decided to make the lineup announcement equally epic, so for the next 24 hours or so we'll be glued to our computer screens waiting to see who will be hitting Manchester, Tennessee from June 10-13. As previously mentioned, the lineup announcement will work something like this. Unlike previous announcements, the 2010 bill will not be unveiled all at once, but rather throughout the day, with the goal being [...]
So I've been sitting on Laurent Bourque 's impressive debut CD for a few months now, trying to come up with the right way to describe it without making it sound like it's a bit on the dull side. You could slide it into the singer/songwriter genre, but that makes it sound boring. You could say it's a rock album, but that conjures up images of bar bands and classic rock, and that's not doing it justice either. And it's certainly hooky enough to be called a pop album, but the sounds are a tad too organic for it [...]
I have been inundated with millions of e-mails, letters and phone calls from irate fans angry at me for ignoring the Grammys (well, the other side of my split personality figured it deserved a mention). Yes, I forgot to mention the Grammys in my last post, mostly because I don't care. I really don't want to sound snobby about it (and I'm only parroting what everybody else already says) and this is painfully bleeding obvious, but the Grammys aren't exactly about the music (duh!). I'm fine with that, but at least be honest with people. You're honouring sales figures and [...]
This installment in our Covers Project series is a two-fer. St. Vincent joined up with The National to cover Crooked Fingers ' "Sleep All Summer" for Merge Records ' 20th Anniversary compilation. Despite remaining relatively faithful, the cover still sounds world's apart from Eric Bachmann's original duet with Lara Meyerratken. Annie Clark (Miss St. Vincent) returned the favor recently when she performed a re-imagined version of The National's "Mistaken for Strangers" for Brooklyn Vegan [...]
About Big Ears Fest : BIG EARS debuted in February 2009 in Knoxville, Tennessee with a line up that included Philip Glass & Wendy Sutter, Antony & the Johnsons, Jon Hassell, the Necks, Fennesz, Pauline Oliveros, Negativland, Michael Gira, Sparklehorse, Ned Rothenberg, Dan Deacon, Neil Hamburger, and others. The mission of BIG EARS is to offer an exciting and dynamic platform of musical and artistic discovery by artists possessed of singular and unique visions that stand apart from the mainstream. Response to the first BIG EARS was phenomenal [...]
I'ma go ahead and declare the as-yet-unnamed record The National is finishing up right now my most anticipated release of the year (if, indeed, it releases in 2010). It's weird, I think The National's music is a bit of an outlier in my music love spectrum, at least lately. But I adore their compositions so much--and their seriousness, honestly--that the idea of a fresh album to adore...well, it's almost too much. Ever the over-achievers, Pitchfork got enigmatic frontman Matt Berninger to sit down and talk about it . He says the record's about 75 percent [...]
Lauren Ambrose and The Leisure Class at The Bell House (01/27/10) Photo : Jonny Leather ( Buy Tickets ) Event Date Event Name Venue On Sale Buy 03/26/10 Lauren Ambrose & The Leisure Class The Bell House 09:00 AM EST Buy [...]
The National at Terminal 5 (10/11/07) Buy Tickets Tickets for The National 's July 27, 2010 Celebrate Brooklyn! show at Prospect Park go on sale today ( Feb 4 ) at noon EST ( Buy Tickets ). More National tour dates over here . (Still waiting for that club show to be announced.)
By now you are well aware of my love for American indie band, The National. So when I come across a magical cover of one of there songs, I am bound to post it. Such is why I am posting St. Vincent's breathtaking rendition of their Boxer standout "Mistaken For Strangers". She gives the moody song a beautiful spin, and tugs on a heartstring or two. She played it for a Hati benefit on January 23rd. I saw it over at Rawkblog !
The Specials at Terminal 5 (04/21/10) Buy Tickets Date Event Name Venue Buy Tickets Mar 27 2010 Al Jarreau with Special Guest Christian Scott [...]
Doron Gild There's a lot of New York in Eyelid Movies , the debut album from the duo of Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel known as Phantogram , and while the pair do indeed have Empire State license plates on their cars, they don't hail from a Brooklyn bedsit or East Village walk-up, but the town of Greenwich way upstate - as close to Montreal as it is to Manhattan. But you couldn't tell that from just listening to the record - Its synthetic dream-pop owes a lot to bands [...]
The National at All Points West (07/31/09) Photo : Paul Crispin Quitoriano "Because Radio City only whetted our appetite for this Cincinnati Brooklyn band." Tickets for The National 's just announced July 27, 2010 show at Celebrate Brooklyn go on sale Feb 4 at 2PM ( Buy Tickets ).
Filed under: News , Album , New Music Remind us never to go around to the National 's house for the holidays. The Brooklyn, N.Y., indie heroes are currently putting the finishing touches to the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed 2007 effort 'Boxer' and all is not harmonious in the studio as they hash out the final details of mix and arrangement selection. "A week after the record's done, we [will] all laugh about the mean and horrible things we've said to each other," frontman Matt Berninger has told Pitchfork [...]
Click here to view the embedded video. I'm not a huge fan of The National, some of their songs are top notch, including "Mistaken for Strangers", but most of their work is just flat, monotonous and boring. Here, Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent takes one of the band's most fiery songs and flips it into something soothing and delicate. Whereas The National's version comes across as 3 a.m. existentialism after a night of drunken bar hopping and lonely one-night stands, St. Vincent turns the fire and anger into heartbreaking sadness - the [...]
More proof, if any were needed , that St Vincent is pretty awesome. MP3: The National - Mistaken for Strangers
A solo, ethereal take on one of The National's best songs by past tourmate St. Vincent, live at the Brooklyn Vegan Haiti Benefit in New York on January 23. Just gorgeous.
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