If An End Has a Start is Editors’ maxim, it is a confusing one for critics and fans alike. Booked like wildfire for the first of the U.K. sensation’s forthcoming trips to the U.S., they have been touring on the East coast all September, and are coming to San Francisco, San Diego’s Street Scene Festival, and Los Angeles’ own Wiltern Theater at the end of this month, showing no signs of a proverbial “end.” GC talked to Editors’ drummer Ed...
Jose Gonzalez, the incredibly talented singer-songwriter out of Sweden, will soon be releasing his much-anticipated sophomore effort, In Our Nature on September 25. There are already reviews trickling in and it seems that Gonzalez has come a long way from his O.C. performance a few years back. Filter has called the guitar style, “percussive” and the New York Post is already calling it one of the “top 40 albums to own this year.” Continuing, Gonzalez will be embarking on a...
If VH1’s Behind The Music ever decides to branch out from the internal squabbles, trivial psychodramas and minor torments that are de rigueur in most of the episodes they air and start tackling stories about true conflict in music and the bands that make it, the best story to start with would be that of the Meat Puppets. Now back on the road and supporting its first record to boast the musical contributions of both of the founding Kirkwood brothers...
News came today that the US release date for PJ Harvey’s much-anticipated follow-up to 2004’s Uh Huh Her, White Chalk, has been bumped back from a September 25 release to an October 2 release. However, this is only the case in the United States as the album is still due to hit the UK on September 24. If that seems like it’s too far off, check out the first single “When Under Ether” streaming at the top of this page....
I remember when we persuaded an insider man to sneak me and couple of girlfriends into a college cafeteria-cum-coffee-shop venue back when I still believed higher education was the ultimate path to enlightenment. The show featured some scruffy Scotsmen, who were actually not scruffy at all but rather dashingly dressed, and had cleverly named themselves after that Archduke of Austria-Este whose assassination in Sarajevo allegedly began WWI. I remember feeling uncomfortable at the surprising site of the jam-packed cafeteria floor,...
It's an odd feeling these days, to stand in the audience of a show at 27 and be part of the younger half of the audience. The high school and college kids—the ones still searching for their identities—are usually the first adopters of new music, and so make up the majority of the audience at indie shows. Don't deny it, it's true. The older fans, the ones with 9am jobs and mortgages and wives or husbands to get home to...
I can’t quite put my finger on it—I don’t know exactly what it is—but for some reason, growing up soaking up Southern Californian sun rays made me very, very musically stubborn; and if labels mean anything to you, I sneered against anything remotely referred to as “Country Western.” Call it coming of age, that inevitable right of passage, call it whatever you like, but I feel as if I’ve gone soft in my old age (I’m 23; hey that’s so...
The title of this article may seem like old news, LCD Sounsystem’s 45:33 has been out nearly for six months on iTunes; however, it will just now be released for the first time on CD and double-vinyl on November 13. What a great example of the current state of the music industry…. 45:33 was originally recorded by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) as a continuous, album-length disco symphony. Basically it’s one really long song commissioned by Nike for their Nike +...
What’s a multi-million-dollar industry to do? There’s no way for the record industry to hide it anymore as the loss of many record labels’ revenues have now been thrust squarely into the public eye. Variety recently reported that one of the “big four” record labels, Warner Music Group (Sony BMG, EMI and Universal Music are the other three –ed), reported losses of $27 million, or 19¢ per share, in the three months that ended on March 31, 2007, compared with...
"Retreat! Retreat!" somebody shouted, and followed by several other people. No, it wasn't an order, but it's a song title from 65 Days Of Static, the band from Sheffield, England who made their way to Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco. It's probably 65 Days Of Static's most well-known song, thanks to its air share on MTV2. 65 Days Of Static has been hailed as the new Mogwai with their soft-loud, crescendo sound. What sets them apart from other imitators...