Dates listed below - ‘nuf said.

BLURT cover stars Wilco hit the road this summer in support of their most recent release, The Whole Love. The just-announced U.S. tour includes concerts in Salt Lake City, UT, Sioux City, IA, Newport, RI, Cooperstown, NY, Essex Junction, VT, Hartford, CT and Rochester, NY plus a special North Adams, MA concert benefiting MASS MoCA, the home and host of the band's Solid Sound Festival.

These concerts are in addition to the list of previously-announced summer U.S. tour dates that include two performances at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, a special Chicago-area concert at Fifth Third Bank Ballpark and more.  A complete list of current tour dates follows and additional tour dates will be announced soon.

WILCO U.S. TOUR DATES

"The Wrecking Ball Company" taken from forthcoming album The Sister.

By Blurt Staff

Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler has premiered a new video for her "gorgeously melancholic" single "The Wrecking Ball Company" with IFC. You can view it below.

Marissa Nadler - The Wrecking Ball Company (Official Video) from Ryan Walsh on Vimeo.

Nadler explains, "the song references the walls that can grow up between two people and how painful that distance can be." In the video, "the couple is sharing the same desolate, unadorned house, but they are apart, and looking for a hopeful sign to bring them back together." "The Wrecking Ball Company" is taken from her previously announced forthcoming release, The Sister, that was recorded and produced by Brian McTear at Miner Street Studios in Philadelphia. The Sister is a companion record of eight new tracks subtly linked to last year's self-titled critically acclaimed LP, out May 29 via her own Box Of Cedar Records.

Tour dates:

6/01 -  Somerville, MA - The Armory

6/02 - New Haven, CT - Cafe Nine 

6/13 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's

6/14  - Washington, DC - DC 9

6/15 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall

6/16 - New York, NY - Joe's Pub

WWND? (What would Nick Cave do?)

By Blurt Staff

Those merry men of Grinderman are set to drop Grinderman 2 RMX next week - it's a collection of remixes, reinterpretations & collaborations based on the songs contained in the band's 2010 album Grinderman 2

It's now streaming in full at Stereogum: http://stereogum.com/999221/stream-grindermans-grinderman-2-rmx/album-stream
 

Grinderman 2 RMX's tracks include "Super Heathen Child" - a collaborative version of Grinderman's "Heathen Child" (MOJO Honours Song Of The Year 2011) which teams the band up with legendary guitarist Robert Fripp (King Crimson, David Bowie, Eno); an exclusive previously unreleased remix of "Bellringer Blues" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarist Nick Zinner; a remix of "Mickey Mouse & the Goodbye Man" by producer/-musician Joshua Homme (Queens of the Stone Age); "When My Baby Comes" by Cat's Eyes (a duo consisting of Horrors' front-man Faris Badwan and soprano Rachel Zeffira); "Evil" reinterpreted by Silver Alert (Grinderman's Jim Sclavunos) and The National's front man Matt Berninger; and Grinderman's original demo version of "Evil", "First Evil".

 
Grinderman 2 RMX tracklisting:

Grinderman / Fripp                              "Super Heathen Child"     
A Place to Bury Strangers                    "Worm Tamer"
Nick Zinner                                          "Bellringer Blues" (exclusive)
UNKLE                                                 "Hyper Worm Tamer"
Joshua Homme                                    "Mickey Bloody Mouse"
Cat's Eyes with Luke Tristram              "When My Baby Comes"
Barry Adamson                                    "Palaces Of Montezuma"
Silver Alert (featuring Matt Berninger)  "Evil"
SixToes                                                "When My Baby Comes" (exclusive)
Andy Weatherall                                   "Heathen Child"
Factory Floor                                       "Evil"
Grinderman                                          "First Evil"

Details on tour dates, below.

By Blurt Staff

No, it's not a cover of Max Frost & the Troopers (and it's definitely not a Yardbirds cover either), but "The Shape of Things To Come" is without a doubt a highlight of the recent self-titled debut from Zammuto, aka Nick Zammuto's post-Books project. The other day the band released a video for the song, a multi-camera rehearsal clip that'll have you rewinding over and over to pick up you own playing tips. Check it out (via Stereogum):

Zammuto - "The Shape Of Things To Come" Video from stereogum on Vimeo.

Nick himself was recently the subject of a BLURT profile in which he talked about his old band, the new one, touring with Explosions in the Sky, and sundry other matters. "This summer I want to jump back in the studio right away, if I can," he explained. "Financially I've spent everything I have producing this last record and trying to get this new band off the ground, so I'm sort of counting on people actually buying the record at this point to keep me in the studio, otherwise I'm going to have to do something else for a while. I feel like the band is in a really good place to jump in on a new album right away. And with this band, it's really meant to be a live thing. And the amazing thing about these players is they can bring the album to life in a way that really makes it better. So I'm hoping people will take that risk and come see us play."

Go see him play, folks:

4/11 - Eugene, OR @ McDonald Theater

4/12 - Reno, NV @ Knitting Factory

4/15 - Davis, CA @ Mondavi Center

4/16 - San Francisco, CA @ Palace of Fine Arts Theater

4/17 - San Francisco, CA @ Palace of Fine Arts Theater

4/19 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar*

4/20 - Visalia, CA @ The Cellar Door*

4/22 - Flagstaff, AZ @ Orpheum Theater

4/24 - San Antonio, TX @ Backstage Live

4/30 - Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands*

5/01 - Annandale-on-Hudson, NY @ Bard College*

We would never post a gratuitous Nirvana item simply to drive web traffic. Oh, no. Never.


By Perez Mills


Some days we write the news. Some days the news writes itself... from Billboard.com (all details reported verbatim):

***


Frances Cobain is calling for a Twitter ban on mother Courtney Love after a Wednesday rant that alleged Dave Grohl had made a pass at the 19-year-old.

"While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn," Cobain said in a statement. "I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way.  I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy. Twitter should ban my mother."

Love made the allegations on her private Twitter account, claiming that she'd been told the Foo Fighters frontman had "hit on Frances," and called Grohl "sexually obsessed" with Kurt Cobain -- her late husband and Grohl's late Nirvana bandmate.

Grohl denied the accusations in a statement of his own.

"Unfortunately Courtney is on another hateful Twitter rant. These new accusations are upsetting, offensive and absolutely untrue," he said.

However, Love refused to back down, telling the New York Daily News that she was "certainly not going to retract anything," and criticizing Grohl's statement with an attack on the appearance of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- as sung by Kermit the Frog -- in "The Muppets" film last year.

"Unfortunately, Dave is on another Kurt rant, by turning him into a Muppet and hitting on his daughter," Love said.

Love lost legal custody over her daughter in 2009, when Cobain was 17.

***

We here at BLURT applaud each combatant and his/her skill at getting into today's headline music news. It sure beats out those legendary EARLY KURT COBAIN DEMOS UNEARTHED, eh? Why do so-called music fans continue to eat this shit up?

And some news incoming shortly about Coachella, too!

By Fred Mills

‘Tis the season to be festive, and two of the most festive annual events recently unveiled their 2012 lineups. Not coincidentally, they both take place in Chicago.

At Union Park on July 13-15, the Pitchfork Music Festival will feature a who's-who of indie rock: Beach House, Wild Flag, Real Estate, Atlas Sound, Big K.R.I.T., Nicolas Jaar, Cults, Chavez, Ty Segall, Oneohtrix Point Never, Youth Lagoon, Thee Oh Sees, King Krule, Lotus Plaza, Dirty Beaches, Lower Dens, Milk Music, the Psychic Paramount, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Outer Minds, A Lull, Vampire Weekend, Feist, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hot Chip, Sleigh Bells, Dirty Projectors, Flying Lotus, AraabMUZIK, A$AP Rocky, the Field, Danny Brown, Liturgy, Clams Casino, the Olivia Tremor Control, Iceage, Kendrick Lamar, Grimes, Purity Ring, The Men, Cloud Nothings, Tim Hecker, Schoolboy Q, the Atlas Moth, and Willis Earl Beal.

Full details at Pitchfork, natch.

Then on August 3-5 in the Windy City's Grant Park, the storied Lollapalooza bash will host the likes of Black Sabbath (for their on-again, off-again reunion tour), Black Keys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack White, the Weeknd, Justice, Die Antwoord, Afghan Whigs, Frank Ocean, At the Drive-In, the Walkmen, M83, Sigur Rós, the Shins, Santigold, Passion Pit, Twin Shadow, Franz Ferdinand, Toro Y Moi, Bloc Party, the Tallest Man on Earth, Neon Indian, Dum Dum Girls, Washed Out, SBTRKT, Wale, the Big Pink, Florence and the Machine, Chairlift, Sharon Van Etten, tUnE-yArDs, the War on Drugs, Bowerbirds, Little Dragon, Bear in Heaven, Alabama Shakes, Star Slinger, JEFF the Brotherhood, Metric, Amadou & Mariam and more.

You can read more about it at the Chicago Sun-Times and at the official Lolla site.

Drummer helmed the kit for one of proto-punk's most influential recordings. Watch live video, below.

By Fred Mills

"Sad news to report on the passing of the former Dictators drummer. Rest in peace, brother. More to come..."

That posting was made yesterday to the official Dictators website regarding Richie Teeter, who passed away at the age of 61. No cause of death has been announced.

Teeter joined the legendary NYC proto-punk combo in 1976 in time to cut the group's second, classic album, 1977's Manifest Destiny - the one featuring such timeless Dics' tunes as "Science Gone Too Far" and "Young, Fast, Scientific" plus a terrific cover of the Stooges "Search & Destroy." Later would come 1978's Bloodbrothers.

And as everyone knows, the Dics effectively bridged the Stooges/MC5 early ‘70s era and the subsequent Ground Zero years for NYC punk (Ramones, Blondie, Television, etc.). Teeter's part of the history books for those exploits and more, and he later was a member of Twisted Sister. While he subsequently dropped off the radar, he will still be missed. (Thanks to BLURT contributor and fellow Dictators acolyte Barry St. Vitus for alerting us to Teeter's passing.)

Let's remember the Dictators via this scorching live clip of "S&D" from the late ‘70s.

Here we go...


In OFF!'s new video, transgressive director Richard Kern joins the punk rock supergroup (which includes ex-Black Flag singer Keith Morris) to bring back everything we loved about old school west coast skate culture.

Get the cure, here.



El-P's new album Cancer For Cure drops May 22. If that date isn't ominous enough for you (look it up), check out the video trailer he just released for the rec. As directed by Timothy Saccenti, the folks at his label, Fat Possum, advised thusly:


"After we'd finished shooting an interview with him & Killer Mike, Def Jux founder El-P dropped some info about "Cancer for Cure," his new album. We wanted to know more, so he sent over this official trailer."

Call Doctor Powell - he'll prescribe for what ails ya! "Crazy Pills" taken from Great Ideas In Action album...

By Blurt Staff

Already smitten by Chicago power pop maestros Archie Powell & the Exports and their aptly-titled Great Ideas In Action LP (we featured an MP3 of key track "Metronome" awhile back), BLURT is pretty damn chuffed to show ya their new video. It's for the song "Crazy Pills," and it will clearly suggest exactly what ensues if people ingest said pills...

The album is officially out on May 1 and was produced, engineered and mixed by Justin Perkins (formerly of Yesterday's Kids, The Obsoletes and Screeching Weasel) at Howl Street Studios and The Mystery Room in Milwaukee during the fall of 2011. As we are advised, "Powell makes songcraft look simple; he is incapable of writing an un-danceable tune, whether he turns a jaundiced eye on the culture of self-medication or whipping up a 3 minute heist story. Blink and it's killer catchy rock, blink twice and it's social commentary that is sad, biting, funny but ultimately incredibly honest. Powell's writing could easily come from someone twice his age but it never feels studied - his humanity just shines through and demolishes any doubts about where he stands."

The band already notched SXSW raves as well as enthusiastic touring audiences. Look for ‘em on the road this summer.

Tour dates:

Apr 26    Panchos          Chicago, IL      
Apr 27    Subterranean  Chicago, IL    
Apr 28    South Park Tavern      Dayton, OH     
Apr 29    Birdy's Bar      Indianapolis, IN          
Apr 30    Bear's Place    Bloomington, IN         
May 1    Carabar           Columbus, OH           
May 2    The Camel       Richmond, VA 
May 3    Maxwell's        Hoboken, NJ   
May 6    Piano's Lounge NYC   New York, NY 
May 7    Firehouse 13   Providence, RI            
May 8    Middle East     Cambridge, MA           
May 9    Flask Lounge  Portland, ME   
May 10   Lucky Dog Music Hall Worcester, MA 
May 11,  Mohawk Place Buffalo, NY      
May 13    Strega Cafe     St. Catharines, ON      
May 14    The Brass        London, ON   
May 15    Casbah            Hamilton, ON  
May 16    Cafe Deckuf     Ottawa, ON      
May 17    Divan Orange  Montreal, QC   
May 19    Plan B Moncton, NB   
May 20    Baba's Lounge            Charlottetown, PE       
May 21,   Falls Brook Centre      Knowlesville, NB         
May 22    The Spill Cafe Peterborough, ON      
May 24    The Mansion   Kingston, ON  
May 25    The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern       Toronto, ON    
May 27    Mulligans Pub Grand Rapids, MI 
 
For music and more, visit http://www.archiepowellandtheexports.com/press.html