Tagged: progressreport

Name: The Walkmen Progress Report: Band gets to work with Phil Ek on forthcoming studio album. Aside from taking a victory lap around North America to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone , members of The Walkmen have been holed up in a studio with Phil Ek working on their seventh studio album. According to frontman Hamilton Leithauser, the follow up to 2010's Lisbon will be a "very different sounding" record … even if [...]

Name: Mark Lanegan Progress Report: The songwriter talks about Blues Funeral , his first solo album in nearly 8 years. It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his music that Mark Lanegan is a man of relatively few words. Whether it be with his work as the frontman of Screaming Trees, his work with the Twilight Singers and Queens of the Stone Age, his duet albums with Isobel Campbell , or his arresting solo work , Lanegan brings a certain intensity and creative gravitas [...]

Name: Dan Deacon Progress Report: Baltimore's favorite experimentalist opens up about his new record … and also tells us a bunch of lies. Dan Deacon sure is wacky. And busy! In the time it took to read this sentence Dan Deacon will have recorded music for half a dozen projects, made some art , worked on a Wham City sitcom, and possibly have groomed his beard. Aside from a million other things, the Baltimore-based art popster is busy putting the finishing touches on a new full-length album - his first [...]

Name: Why? Progress Report: Yoni Wolf talks about the state of WHY? and the band's sometime-to-be-released new record. WHY? is one of those bands that will invariably cause you to sound like an asshole when you try and describe them. Hip-hop-inflected indie rock? Folk-hop? I'm gonna stop trying now. I will say, however, that the band's last two albums - 2008's Alopecia and 2009's Eskimo Snow - are some of the most wonderfully unclassifiable and fantastically witty pop albums of those years. Fans of the band have been waiting nearly [...]

Name: Here We Go Magic Progress Report: Luke Temple opens up about the band's serendipitous new Nigel Godrich-produced album Sometimes life really is a lot like a romantic comedy. I'm thinking specifically of that Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors (I apologize) or any number of Lifetime cable movies that explore that age-old idea of how your life might be changed forever by simply crossing paths with a stranger, missing a train, or being at the right place at the right/wrong time. Such is apparently the story behind Here We Go Magic's [...]

There's this deli across the street from our work. It's an okay place to get a cheesesteak but it's an excellent place to get a burger. And for a brief period last year, it was A1 territory for f... Continue reading "Were Musicians Given Progress Reports, Lil Wayne Gets All Fs, Apparently" >

Name: Porcelain Raft Progress Report: Mauro Remiddi - the man behind the raft - discusses putting the finishing touches on Porcelain Raft's highly anticipated debut album. Mauro Remiddi is a very friendly Italian man currently living in New York. If you are to believe his press clippings, Remiddi has done everything from travel Europe playing traditional gypsy Klezmer music with a traveling youth circus to reinterpreting traditional music from North Korea to serving as a pianist for an Off Broadway tap dance revue. All of these things, while fascinating in their own [...]

Name: Sharon Van Etten Progress Report: NYC songsmith Sharon Van Etten talks about her soon-to-be-released third album, Tramp . Not only was Sharon Van Etten's last record - 2010's Epic - one of that year's loveliest surprises and critical faves, it also found the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter suddenly being covered by the likes of The National and Bon Iver. It also marked the beginning of a long tour for Van Etten and an even longer stint of homelessness, both of which would inform the emotionally thorny tunes on her new record. I [...]

Name: Oberhofer Progress Report: Indie wunderkind preps debut album for Glassnote Records with production help from Steve Lillywhite. Brad Oberhofer first started making major waves back in 2010 with self-released singles like " Away Frm U " and " Gotta Go ," both of which displayed his knack for combining lyrics that were equal parts clever and earnest with melodic lo-fi guitar sounds (and the occasional toy piano) that could have been recorded in your grandmother's bedroom. Oberhofer and his band recently wrapped recording on their full-length debut album at a tiny studio in [...]

Name: Lindstrøm Progress Report: Norway's finest super producer talks about his disco-infused 2012 release, Six Cups of Rebel . Hans-Peter Lindstrøm has been releasing some of the world's finest electronic music for nearly a decade now, both on his own and along with fellow production whiz Prins Thomas. In 2011 Lindstrøm released Real Life Is No Cool , a collaboration with Norwegian-Mauritian singer Christabelle that would ultimately prove to be one of the most popular releases of his career (and his most overtly "pop" record to date). Next year Lindstrøm will release [...]

Photo by Lynne Krohn Indie-blues brother band Penrose is emerging from its autumnal hiding this month, playing two gigs to wrap up the year. Next Friday, they're at Milkboy Philly for El Fuego's record release show , and on Dec. 30 they play what will reportedly be one of the final shows at Tritone with their like-minded peers in Levee Drivers and John The Conqueror. Through the spring and into the summer of this year, the brothers Murphy were an active bunch, staging the fantastic No Excuses summertime [...]

Name: The Smashing Pumpkins Progress Report: Billy Corgan opens up about the recent Smashing Pumpkins reissues, the forthcoming Pumpkins album, and his own rather complicated musical legacy. Say what you will about Billy Corgan (and there is certainly plenty to say), the dude knows how to write great songs. It might be easy to question some of his choices in recent years - whether it be his side-projects , his solo record , his recent dalliance with pro wrestling , or the reconstituted Smashing Pumpkins band line-up - but [...]

Name: Tegan and Sara Progress Report: Sara Quin talks about Get Along , what's next for the band, and the Tyler, The Creator controversy that won't seem to ever go away. Last month Tegan and Sara released Get Along - a career-spanning live album that also includes three short documentary films on the band. Not only is the album a potent reminder of just how much of a polished live act Tegan and Sara have become, it's a nice feather in the cap for a band that has been recording and [...]

Name: Bear in Heaven Progress Report: Brooklyn's finest synth-rock dreamshapers put the finishing touches on their forthcoming spring release. Bear in Heaven's last album - Beast Rest Forth Mouth - was one of 2009's most pleasant surprises. For many, that album - and the ubiquitous single, "Lovesick Teenagers" - was their first introduction to the band, even though Bear in Heaven has been recording music in one incarnation or another since way back in 2003. The somewhat unexpected success of the last record not only sent them into what would become nearly [...]

Progress Report: The mercurial singer/songwriter chats about his new Mark Ronson-produced album, Out Of The Game . Since releasing his debut album back in 1998, Rufus Wainwright has proven himself to be one of the world's most formidable jacks-of-all-trades. Whether it be writing pithy pop songs, composing grandiose operas, or channeling Judy Garland, Wainwright has aptly lived up to the lofty expectations of the musical family into which he was born (His father being Loudon Wainwright III and his mother being the late, great Kate McGarrigle). Next spring Wainwright will release Out Of The Game , [...]

Name: Grimes Progress Report: Claire Boucher - aka Grimes -talks about the magic and madness behind her forthcoming new album, Visions . The term "otherworldly" gets tossed around an awful lot these days, but there really are few other words to aptly describe Claire Boucher and her work. Releasing music under the moniker of Grimes for the past two years, Boucher has developed her own distinct musical language - a mostly electronic vocabulary built around Boucher's whimsical falsetto and propensity for kooky turns of phrase and live shows that incorporate elements of performance [...]

Name: WU LYF Progress Report: Ellery Roberts of WU LYF - Manchester's cultiest non-cult band - opens up about the band's current tour and getting to work on album number two. WU LYF's debut album - Go Tell Fire To the Mountain - has proven itself to be one of this year's best and most wonderfully confounding records: an echoey, guttural blast of reverby guitars and growly howly vocals recorded in an abandoned church somewhere in Manchester, England. For a band that seemingly rode into town on a wave of [...]

Name: Field Music Progress Report: David Brewis discusses the making of Field Music's forthcoming 2012 release, Plumb . As far as I'm concerned, Field Music (a.k.a. Sunderland, England, siblings Peter and David Brewis) is arguably one of the most criminally underrated bands in the world. Like a hybrid of every great 120 Minutes -era jangly post-punk band from the late '80s, Field Music make music that is melodic, harmonic, and nerdishly smart. The band's previous albums, particularly 2007's Tones of Town , offer some of the most catchy and wonderfully brainy [...]

Name: R.E.M. Progress Report: Mike Mills talks greatest hits, covering Big Star, and life after R.E.M. It's kind of hard to comment on the progress of a band that just released a career-capping retrospective and officially broke up. Still, it's hard to turn down the opportunity to speak with any of the members of R.E.M., one of the most profoundly influential American rock bands of our generation. Where do you even begin? Hot on the heels of announcing their retirement a few weeks ago, this week the band released Part Lies, Part [...]

Name: School of Seven Bells Progress Report: Benjamin Curtis opens up about the band's forthcoming spring release, Ghostory . The first time I ever interviewed Benjamin Curtis was back in 2004. At the time he was playing music alongside his brother Brandon in a band called Secret Machines. After Secret Machines released their second album in 2006, Benjamin left the band to focus on his new project - a shoegazy dream -machine called School of Seven Bells that also featured Alejandro and Claudia Deheza of On!Air!Library!. I interviewed Ben again sometime in [...]