The Old Pueblo gets immortalized in a country rock opera.

By Blurt Staff

Howe Gelb's long running Arizona outfit Giant Sand returns to action June 11 with the aptly-named Tucson - after the town he's called home for forty years. It's a self-described "country rock opera."

Taking place in the town of Tucson, the story revolves around a "semi grizzled man" who sets off to escape the trappings of hometown life and embarks on a life-changing road trip; eschewing all his worldly goods and leaving behind what he has loved, encountering jail at the Mexican border, finding new old love at a train station saloon, all while 'the end of the world' provides the landscape game changer. The album is a dusty work of art, conjuring images of the all knowing desert and a confused river inside the cacti-strewn sound scape.

Check out an advance track from the album:

Giant Giant Sand - Forever And A Day by FIRE RECORDS

The inspiration for assembling these collaborators (or cast if you will) for an album was the idea of a country rock opera, a vision that has followed Howe for decades. Some of the members hail from Denmark who have been a part of Giant Sand for the last 10 years (T. Lund, Peter Dombernowski, Anders Pederesen and Nikolaj Heyman), as well as pedal steel player Maggie Bjorklund. There are also new musicians from Tucson making their Giant Sand debuts along with long time collaborator Lonna Kelley lending her smoldering warble from Phoenix. The Tucson lineup includes Brian Lopez, Gabriel Sullivan and Jon Villa who bring their Mex-Amer-i-can plunk to the album with a permeating cumbia style of playing, drawing on South American traditional music. Joining them all is a string section from Aarhus, Denmark, including violinists Asger Christensen amd Iris Jakobsen.

The electronica/dance mega-bash took place-March 23-25 in Miami,Fla., and featured everyone from vets and icons (Kraftwerk, New Order, Fatboy Slim, DJ Shadow) to newcomers and upstarts (Neon Indian, Pretty Lights, M83, SBTRKT).


All photos by Tony Landa



(above) Kraftwerk on Live Stage  - 3/23/12


Afrojack on Main Stage - 3/23/12

Miike Snow on Live Stage - 3/23/12




Neon Indian on Live Stage - 3/23/12




New Order on Live Stage - 3/23/12




Pretty Lights on Live Stage - 3/23/12




Avicii on Main Stage - 3/24/12




DJ Shadow on Live Stage - 3/24/12




FatBoy Slim on Main Stage - 3/24/12




Little Dragon on Live Stage - 3/24/12




M83 on Live Stage - 3/24/12




Afrobeta on UMF Radio Stage - 3/25/12




Bassnectar on Live Stage - 3/25/12




Chase & Status on Live Stage - 3/25/12




David Guetta on Main Stage - 3/25/12




Flying Lotus on Live Stage - 3/25/12




SBTRKT on Live Stage - 3/25/12




Steve Aoki on Main Stage - 3/25/12




Timabaland on Main Stage - 3/25/12




Armin Van Buuren on Main Stage - 3/25/12

A Wasteland Companion, released next week on Merge, belies its foreboding title and yields Ward's most effusive effort yet. Listen to a track from the album, below.

By Lee Zimmerman

Things must be going well for M. Ward of late. Perhaps underground stardom has finally caught up with him. Or maybe his partner in his sometime side duo She & Him, Zooey Deschanel, has opted to share some of her upbeat effervescence.

M. Ward - Primitive Girl (Single Version) by MergeRecords

Whatever the reason, his new effort, A Wasteland Companion, belies its foreboding title, largely eschewing the hushed introspection that's cast a pall over previous efforts in favor of, well, a sound that's at least marginally more hopeful. To be clear, nobody's ever going to mistake Mr. Ward for the life of the party - not in a musical sense anyway - but with tracks like the telling "Clean Slate (for Alex & El Goodo)," the happy-go-lucky "I Get Ideas" and the casual strum of the title track and "Wild Goose," Ward appears to have let down his guard and opened up to optimism.

He has some able assistance in this venture; Howe Gelb, Bright Eyes" Mike Mogis, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley and Ms. Deschanel are all on hand to add their talents to the varied sonic set-ups. Of course, some turbulence is bound to remain - the uneasy sprawl of "Watch the Show" and the unusually edgy "Me and My Shadow" guarantee that - but by Ward standards it seems that A Wasteland Companion is his most effusive effort yet.

On March 29 at the Summit Music Hall, the Aussies and New Yorkers served up a musical buffet par excellence.

By Tim Hinely

Australian duo An Horse (vocalist/guitarist Kate Cooper and drummer Damon Cox) were eminently enticing as the opening act. You've seen the set up before: he drums, she plays guitar, and they both sing (though it appears she did handled more of the vocal chores) -  but these add more to the duo market. The two are likeable due to their sheer enthusiasm and sheer scrappiness (the songs aren't bad either). And come on, who can resist Cooper's Aussie accent?

It had been a few years since I'd last caught NYC trio Nada Surf , so long in fact that they're now a quintet with the addition of former GBV guitarist Doug Gillard and keyboardist/percussionist Martin Wenk from Calexico. They started strong with two songs from their latest record, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy in "Clear Eye Clouded Mind" and "Waiting for Something," two more gems from this band that lately seem to do no wrong. Leader Matthew Caws really is at the top of his game but it's not just Caws, that sturdy rhythm section of bassist Daniel Lorca (the French dude with the dreads) and metronomic drummer Ira Elliot just keep getting better and the addition of Gillard and Wenk only seems to have strengthened the band. And how about this: they seem to really enjoy playing with each other!

Caws was friendly, chatty and appreciative of the amped-up crowd all night (he stated that this was their first Denver gig in 4 years and also said, "Denver, I love your town but man is it hard to jog in!") and the band was just on fire.  The set was then peppered with tunes both new ("Teenage Dreams," "Looking Through") and old ("Blonde on Blonde," "Happy Kid," "Weightless," etc.).  For the encore they came out and hit three (inside-the-park) home runs with "Inside of Love," "Always Love" and "Blanket Year' and called it a night. I'll say it again, a band at the top of its game. Catch ‘em now or forever be the fool.

Stephin Merritt's baroque ensemble plays with the passion of a true romantic at the Fox Theater on March 24 and wows ‘em...

By Jud Cost

Over the past 20 years, the Magnetic Fields have evolved from being a very good indie-rock band into something musically unique. And one of the catalysts for this caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation has been a rather cruel medical diagnosis dealt to Stephin Merritt, the band's songwriter/lead vocalist. Merritt has a hearing condition known as hyperacusis which makes him extremely sensitive to loud sounds. This ironic twist finds Merritt now wearing earplugs onstage so his devoted legion of fans doesn't have to.

When the tiny set of amps and synths employed by opening act Bachelorette for her pleasant set of futuristic airport-lounge electro-pop was removed from the stage of Oakland's Fox Theater, not much was left. All that remained was the modest brace of keyboards used by Merritt, the grand piano of Claudia Gonson, the acoustic guitar of John Woo, a dulcimer strummed by Shirley Simms, Daniel Handler's accordion and the cello of Sam Davol. But, what this almost baroque instrumentation becomes when manipulated by Merritt's romantic heart is something to behold.

Merritt may well have a reputation as "the most depressed songwriter in rock," but you'd never know it from the bubbly repertoire on Love At The Bottom Of The Sea, Magnetic Fields' new longplayer on Merge. "Andrew In Drag," sung by Merritt, dressed like the foreman of a British road-maintenance crew in an ochre shirt, bulky overcoat and cloth cap, is pretty funny stuff. ("I don't know why I even went, it's really not my bag/Just thought it might be funny to see Andrew in drag/The moment he walked on that stage, my tail began to wag/Just like a little wiener dog for Andrew in drag").

"The Horrible Party" sounds like material for a B-52's song gone wrong. "Everybody's been to a horrible party," says Gonson. "Maybe you're at one right now," adds Merritt, impishly. The song continues the grand tradition of borrowing snatches of pop ballads from the '50s with its use of a short quote from "I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific. Handler steps forward in classic dueling-guitars rock style, aiming his accordion squarely at Davol's cello. "Daniel may still be at a horrible party," smirks Gonson.

Gonson introduces one song as "a revenge fantasy." "You can never have too many revenge fantasies," adds Merritt. "I'd Do Anything For Hugh," on the other hand, the loveliest tune on the new album, sung live by Simms, is all drawing-room love triangle. ("I love Hugh and Hugh loves you/You love me and he does not/I don't love you, you don't love Hugh/What a sad gavotte!"). The song's opening phrase is a seven-note lift from Jo Stafford's exotic 1952 chart-topper "You Belong To Me."

One of Merritt's best numbers, "There'll Be Time Enough For Rocking When We're Old," is resurrected from MF's 1999 gem 69 Love Songs. ("There'll be time enough for sleeping when we're dead/But tonight I'd rather just go dancing"). Merritt has the song keyed low enough to show off the bass end of his rich baritone. On a roll, Merritt stays in the basement with another winner from the same album: "I haven't seen you in ages/But it's not as bleak as it seems/We dance on whirling stages/In my Busby Berkeley dreams."

Some day, Merritt's life's work will certainly be collected for an off-Broadway retrospective. Until then, we still have the original item appearing every now and then in the flesh. 

J.K. Rowling, Amy Winehouse, Noel Gallagher, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, David Bowie and Ian Curtis among the new/not-so-usual suspects...

By Fred Mills

As Rolling Stone, NPR and other media outlets are reporting this morning, the iconic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP sleeve is being celebrated today - or rather, the sleeve artist, Sir Peter Blake, is. In honor of his own 80^th birthday, Blake created a new sleeve featuring new images. It's pictured above.

The art is part of a Blake retrospective set to be unveiled in July at Wayne Hemingway's Vintage festival in Northamptonshire, England. Blake was quoted as saying, "I've chosen people I admire, great people and some who are dear friends. I had a very long list of people who I wanted to go in but couldn't fit everyone in - I think that shows how strong British culture and its legacy of the last six decades is."

By the way, if you go to the website of Britain's Guardian they have a scroll-over-the-image guide to who's who on the new sleeve...

Vinyl editions also en route, plus a special Record Store Day release.

By Fred Mills

Indie- (and scum- ) rockers unite: legendary NYC combo Pussy Galore, the group that unleashed Jon Spencer upon an unsuspecting public, has reissued in digital format their Right Now and Dial M for Motherfucker albums (1987 and 1989, respectively) plus the 1988 EP Sugarshit Sharp. (Tip o' the hat to Pitchfork for the news.) Right Now is also out on vinyl with the others slated for vinyl incarnations as well. Meanwhile, on Record Store Day (April 21) a 7" vinyl reissue of the band's Feel Good About Your Body EP also arrives.

Founding member Jon Spencer oversaw the reissues and the remastering.

Now word, however, whether or not Pussy Galore's notorious 1986 track-by-track re-recording of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. will be unearthed anew. Raise your hand if you own the original cassette, or if you bought one of the CD bootlegs that surfaced in the late ‘90s... then revisit your fond memories, below.

In which we offer a gallery of some of our favorite moments from Austin the other week - among them, shots taken at the BLURT day party held at the Ginger Man pub.

Photos By Susan Moll

(above) Best Coast

Andrew Bird

Beach Fossils

Bear In Heaven

Chairlift

The Wedding Present

Best Coast

BLURT Day Party:

JC Brooks

Peter Buck

Tommy Stinson

Chris Stamey of the dB's

Peter Holsapple of the dB's

Mitch Easter (guest bassist, dB's)

dB's Setlist

Chuck Prophet

Big Star Tribute: Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow, John Doe

The date, of course, is April 21. Coming to a reputable indie shop near YOU.

By Fred Mills

2012 marks the fifth anniversary of Record Store Day - and if you don't know what RSD is, you are definitely reading the wrong website. Each year the organizers manage to make our jaws drop with the exclusive offerings they've managed to wrangle out of artists of all stripes on both major and indie records, and this year is no exception.

Head over to the RSD website and click on the links for the PDF list as well as the pull down menu showing details and artwork. They've got all the exclusive releases as well as "limited run/regional focus" titles plus the "Record Store Day First" titles, so check ‘em out, and spend some time on the site because the collective list is MASSIVE.

There's everything from Abba, Animal Collective and Arcade Fire to The Flaming Lips, Widespread Panic and Townes Van Zandt, with the likes of Small Faces, Mike Watt, Miles Davis, Leonard Cohen, Iggy & the Stooges, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Devo and Captain Beefheart sprinkled somewhere in the middle. (We are especially hot for the Pete Townshend Quadrophenia Demos Part 2 ten-inch vinyl, as we picked up Part 1 last November during the RSD "Black Friday" offshoot.)

Equally cool: they've released a special RSD app for iPhone/iPad and Android that offers the latest news, store directory/store finder, special events happening at various indie stores (not restricted to just April 21, either), and a list of various contest available via mobile devices. There are also insta-links to the RSD Twitter feed and Facebook page. The app uses GPS to locate you in relation to the nearest RSD-registered store, so there's no way you can not wind up in the record bins of your choice on April 21.

***

Oh, and incidentally: if you happen to be anywhere near Raleigh, NC, that day, drop by Schoolkid's Records at 2114 Hillsborough Street - several of the BLURT staffers will be hanging out, scoring cool vinyl, checking out the live music, etc. Come up an introduce yerself!

"11-17" comes from the singer-songwriter's latest album Between the Concrete & Clouds. Ace videography by Aaron Powell, no less.

By Blurt Staff

We were stoked to catch Kevin Devine in Austin for SXSW the other week when he appeared at the BLURT day party at Ginger Man - great sound, great response too. Now we're doubly stoked to be able to present his brand new video, "11-17," one of the more haunting and luminous tunes to come down the pipeline in ages. Check it out:

Notes Devine, of the video, "This is the second time we've worked with Aaron Powell, who uses public archive stock footage to make these singularly beautiful and evocative videos.  They're more like visual tone poems; he uses a song's themes and feel as a springboard for his own interpretations, his own read.  I loved the work he did on ‘Another Bag Of Bones' from Brother's Blood, which was, within his style, more literal - for ‘11-17' he took a more abstract path to no less realized results. 

"This is a song about the nagging feeling that you chose the wrong things, or that you can't trust yourself enough to even know what the right things are.  It's a song about the beartrap of memory and the clouding agent that is nostalgia.  It's in some ways a fog song, a lost song, and Aaron, I think, expressed that gray area in a very moving way."

Devine is currently on tour as direct support to Say Anything.  Full tour dates can be found at www.kevindevine.net.