“The Dark Knight Rises” debuts more new character posters
Has the Sacha Baron Cohen shtick jumped the shark?
Tim Grierson on Will Smith, the Last Movie Star
Exclusive download: Corporal, featuring Michael Shannon, presents “Glory”
Snoop Dogg is trying to find a network to pick up his sweet idea for a Hip Hop version of “American idol,” a show that will discover, celebrate and berate previously unknown rap and hip hop artists, THR reports. But it’s not been an easy sell to TV executives who obviously can’t tell when someone’s…
Portugal. The Man frontman John Gourley doesn’t remember much about last night: All he knows for certain is that his art-rock band from Wasila, Alaska, had fun watching the NBA Finals in a bar in Portland, Maine. He thought everything was fine until everyone woke up this morning, bruised and battered covered in blood. Apparently,…
Bloomington musical collective, EDM, lead by singer/guitarist Daniel Burton stripped down their name (formerly Early Day Miners), their production process, and returned to their old label for the release of “Night People” — due out on Western Vinyl July 19th. Once mentored by Daniel Lanois in LA, Burton has recorded Okkervil River, Windsor For the…
Sorry Bamba isn’t the most historically famous Malian musician, but four decades ago, he was essential in sculpting that young country’s cultural heritage as a recognizable, venerable export. A forthcoming compilation pieced together by Sorry himself and Alex Minoff and Ian Eagleson of Extra Golden (and due June 21 on Thrill Jockey, who are having…
Coldplay‘s timing, at least, is impeccable: This morning, the band released “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall,” the first single from its as-yet untitled new album with Brian Eno again behind the boards. It has the feel of an instant summer hit, with a gigantic sound saturated by organ and lifted by a heavy acoustic guitar…
Friends and family gathered to honor and celebrate the life of poet-musician Gil Scott-Heron yesterday, at Harlem’s historic Riverside Church. His daughter Gia “proclaimed the revolution will be televised” in a stirring service during which she “performed an original poem, called ‘Time’ and sang Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose,’ the NY Daily News reports. Another speaker…
Doubles, the first LP by Irish guitarist Cian Nugent, is a major proclamation of new young talent. As ambitious as it is evolved, Doubles is a 45-minute album comprised of only two tracks–the patient, practiced guitar-and-electronics meditation “Peaks & Troughs” and the longer “Sixes & Sevens,” a brilliant movement that builds quickly from start-and-stop picking…
London dance pop group, Is Tropical, indulge in their youthful boy fantasies with abandon in this video for “The Greeks.” Shot in a nice little French suburb by MEGAFORCE, it follows a scruffy bunch of kids who have taken over the streets, cook “drogues” in basement labs, and are constantly executing each other in the…
Last night, Okkervil River headlined a sold-out concert at the Cat’s Cradle, the long-time and legendary North Carolina stopover between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The Cat’s Cradle holds just more than 500 people, meaning that any two of the three bands on Wednesday night’s bill–Okkervil River, Titus Andronicus and Future Islands, combining for one of…
Tom Hanks’ actor son Colin Hanks (not to be confused with the rapper son, Chet Hanks) has been trying to get a documentary about Tower Records off the ground for about three years. The little record store that started in Hanks’ hometown of Sacramento California in 1960, grew into a music retail empire earning over…
LA’s Spindrift has scored another opening sequence from an obscure 60′s film by rogue director J.X. Williams, who has been living clandestinely in Europe for the last 30 some years. This new video is for his 1967 box office bomb, “Space Vixens,” the premise of which is so out of hand, just describing it here…
The Modern Weepers sold out NYC”s Mercury Lounge last Friday night when word leaked out that they were in fact, comedians Mike Myers and Fred Armisen. It helped that half the cast of SNL showed up too. According to splitsider (via Brooklynvegan) the duo were described by a spectator as “a very funny sketch parody…
Vancouver’s Crystal Swells have little regard for pleasantries or polished production, in fact a few of the songs on their self released EP, “Goethe Head Soup,” might damage your speakers. But if you like noise punk with salvos of distortion, and a bit of surf, you will dig. This foursome’s guitars sound like they’re using…
Citing the plethora of people who couldn’t attend Coachella this year because of how quickly the annual Spring festival sold out, organizers revealed this morning that Coachella 2012 will be replicated over two weekends. That’s right: The same bands that play April 13-15 will hang around for another weekend, playing for a different crowd (and,…
In this confounding short, Lindsay Lohan appears deeply contemplative in shallow water, channels Bo Derek, and then touches herself, all to the goth shoegaze of San Fransisco’s Tamaryn and collaborator Rex John Shelverton. The expected fragrance or special brazier never arrives, instead, we find that this is not a commercial at all, but a film…
“Unobstructed Views” is the longest track on Codes and Keys, the seventh disc by Seattle band Death Cab for Cutie and their third for Atlantic Records. It’s the centerpiece, too, sitting exactly in the middle of the 11-track album as an anchor and an epic. As such, it unfurls gradually, throbs of keyboard bass bulging…
Musician, author, and poet of legend, Gil Scott-Heron died late on Friday at age 62. Heralded as the Godfather of rap by some and a drug-addled radical by others, he was beyond any praise or criticism, a true pioneering artist. His break through 1970 work, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a scathing indictment of…
Last year, a friend who I hadn’t seen in some time sent me a barrage of texts throughout an afternoon asking me to have a drink with him that night. He had some pals playing some covers that evening at a local muscle-shirt/short-skirts bar, and he didn’t wanted to be the stranded bro pretending to…
Note: Each Friday, we’ll close with a song we consider a suiting goodbye for the workweek. With each Music for Fridays post, check for a free mp3. Aside from a convenient excuse for firing grills, filling pools in backyards and flinging crushed beer cans into the backyard, Memorial Day is a holiday meant for reflecting…
“Just try to make me go to rehab, I wont go, go, go,” the song goes, but Amy Winehouse went anyway at the behest of her Dad. Or as rep for Winehouse put it, she “has embarked on a treatment program at the Priory Clinic. She wants to be ready for performances in Europe this…
In this exploration of a lovelorn inner mindscape, a man in a tattered space suit runs from a crazy on horseback shooting arrows at him, towards some kind of portal, and emerges on a beach with the ruins of his past just off shore, “Planet of the Apes” style. Then things get weird. Hooray For…
San Francisco’s Tidelands, duo Gabriel Montana Leis and Mie Araki, sought out Magik*Magik Orchestra conductor Minna Choi and Deerhoof engineer Ian Pellicci to create an their debut album, “If.” The album opener, “Holy Grail,” is awash in twinkling looped guitars, Moog bass and Flugelhorn. “I found myself writing melodies that I knew were meant for…
Director Mike Mills’ film “Beginners” is about a young man named Oliver (Ewan McGregor) who learns his elderly father has both terminal cancer and a young male lover, and how Oliver tries to love a woman with the life lessons this dying father gives him. Mills wrote the screenplay based loosely on recollections of his…
Balmorhea is an instrumental ensemble from Austin, Texas, with a propensity for fluctuating memberships: At the start, the band was just Rob Lowe (not that Rob Lowe, or even that one) and Michael Muller, multi-instrumentalists making paradoxically tiny epics. Sure, their sound was small, but their music’s scope was grand, suggesting cinematic landscapes and climaxes.…
Yesterday, Thurston Moore released Demolished Thoughts, his fourth and inarguably best solo album in the three decades since he co-founded Sonic Youth. Unlike his previous song-oriented solo works, Demolished Thoughts finds its sound–lush, lonely, Beck Hansen-assisted rock, retextured with acoustics–and sticks with it from start to finish. After one of the most enviable and inspiring…
