This news item's for my kid, folks...

By Blurt Staff

In the wake of the massive success of Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's one of the most anticipated video games ever, period. And it looks like the soundtrack is going to be up to the task, too.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, WaterTower Music and DC Entertainment today announced Batman: Arkham City - The Album, which will be released in conjunction with the forthcoming gam. Featuring 12 new original tracks by Panic! At The Disco, Coheed and Cambria, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and more (full track list below), Batman: Arkham City - The Album will be released on October 4th, two weeks prior to the game's North American release on October 18th. Collector's Edition of the game will include a download code for the album along with additional bonus content.

The artists featured on Batman: Arkham City - The Album approached their contributions to the album with their own unique interpretations of the stories surrounding Batman. The result is an eclectic mix of dynamic, atmospheric songs for an album that will appeal to fans of both the artists and the game. Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez said, "I write in a very conceptual format with the stories that surround Coheed and Cambria, but Batman has a much larger, defined history and rules that go along with it. My goal was to find universal themes from Batman's existing history to help give the lyrics legs and dimension so that the song could live within that world."

TRACK LISTING:

1. Panic! At The Disco - Mercenary

2. Coheed and Cambria - Deranged

3. The Duke Spirit - Creature

4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Shadow On The Run

5. Blaqk Audio  - Afterdark

6. The Raveonettes - Oh, Stranger

7. (Crosses) - The Years

8. The Damned Things - Trophy Widow

9. Daughtry - Drown In You

10. The Boxer Rebellion - Losing You

11. Serj Tankian - Total Paranoia

*Bonus Collector's Edition track

12. A Place to Bury Strangers - In The Shadow

Olivia Tremor Control bring their traveling medicine show back to the Great American Music Hall on September 5.

By Jud Cost

After a 10-year lay-off, the Olivia Tremor Control are back in business, and it looks like they're having a lot more fun their second time around. Their helter-skelter set, before an excited, half-full house at the Great American Music Hall on Labor Day evening, had the buzz and vibe of a mini-Terrastock, the traveling neo-psychedelic music festival that bowed at Providence, R.I. in 1997 and lit up San Francisco the following year. The Olivias played mind-bending sets at both affairs.

To warm the house for this much-anticipated return engagement, the PA cranked out the Beach Boys' lovely, Leonard Bernstein-validated "Surf's Up," followed by "Remember (Walking In The Sand)," the spooky 1964 hit single by the Shangri-Las.

Bill Doss is easy to spot onstage, the guy to the far right who still looks like Lovin' Spoonful frontman John Sebastian with red hair. Not so easily recognized, book-ending Doss to the far left is a short-haired Will Cullen Hart, stumbling, at times, over his stage announcements. Hart was diagnosed with M.S. a few years ago and hadn't played live with the band he and Doss founded in 1988 since a recent All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England reunited the Olivias onstage for the first time since 2000.

Somewhere between Hart and Doss are OTC regulars Eric Harris on bass, Peter Erchick on keyboards and John Fernandes on drums, bolstered by a pair of recent recruits who add spice to the guitar stew. The boisterous octet has toned down its former dead-serious, experimental trip for a more loosely knit chaotic rumpus that switches from Salvation Army band to '30s swing orchestra to blaring carnival calliope to acoustic jugband in the blink of a bloodshot eye. Dry ice fog, accented by red stage lights, cascades over the Olivias as if they were eight escaped convicts from Dartmoor Prison playing a live film soundtrack accompaniment to The Hound Of The Baskervilles.

One song combined the sweet country harmonies of the Louvin Brothers with the gurgling-underwater reverbed guitar of early-'70s L.A. combo Bread. Something you could always depend on from the Olivias - as well as their sister combos from the Elephant 6 collective, Apples In Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel - was a bunch of people with great record collections, ready to use them at a moment's notice. Magazine features on the original three E-6 combos were always a pleasure to write. All you had to do was dial up the members of the bands not on the hot-seat, and the stories would come rolling in like the evening fog. 

A pair of landmark double-albums - 1996's Music From The Unrealized Film Script Dusk At Cubist Castle and a 1999 follow-up Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One (both on the Flydaddy label) - got the band's foot in the door to tour worldwide with such high-profile acts as R.E.M., Beck, Stereolab and Super Furry Animals. But when the calendar struck 2000, the batteries went dead from a band that once had seemed so promising.

From what I heard Monday night, this may be yet another case of mid-life rapture,  with artists doing some of their best work after they turn 40. 

Check out some video action below too, plus tour dates.

By Fred Mills

Nashville's ever-prolific (and pal of Jack White)  PUJOL resurfaces next month (Oct. 18) with an EP for Saddle Creek. The evocatively-titled Nasty, Brutish, and Short - kind of a description for the general tenure of BLURT interns, eh - is billed as focusing on "fragmentation, compartmentalization, and the idea of cultural maxims dominating the individual's ability to vocalize and interact with the external world, essentially being forced into speaking."

Whoah, those are some big words. At any rate, Daniel Pujol himself adds that he performs in the "loudest person's language", which "only resembles truth because a lot of people heard it simultaneously. I wanted to stab at making a narrative that would cyclically feed back into itself, oscillating between the individual's and the cultural lexicon. I finally got to assemble those songs together on a single release."

While you chew on all that, you can check out a couple of video clips, one a live version of new EP track "Mayday" (Pujol: "This song is about my friend Richard Houston attaining maximum grooviness by harnessing different viewpoints to gain a clearer perspective aside from feigning teenage omniscience.") and the other a previously released number called "Black Rabbit." And you can get a free MP3 download of "Mayday" at the Saddle Creek website to boot!

PUJOL - BLACK RABBIT from Stewart Copeland on Vimeo.

Tour Dates:

Gearing up for an inevitable battle with major record labels.

By Fred Mills

Eagles motormouth Don Henley is rarely our go-to guy in day-to-day BLURT matters (well, maybe when we need tips on upcoming Wal-Mart sales). But there's no questioning his intelligence and, pertinent to the matter at hand, ability to be an effective advocate when there's a cause he's passionate about. Last month we reported on the looming battle between record labels and artists over song rights; scores of musicians are soon to be potentially eligible to gain ownership of recordings made over 35 years ago, and needless to say, in the instances of, say, the Eagles or Bruce Springsteen or any number of ‘70s mega-selling stars, there's a lot of money that stands to be put on the table for artists and labels to go to war over. See this excellent New York Times story about the "termination rights" situation.

Yesterday at RollingStone.com, Henley weighed in during a revealing interview, and it's well-worth reading. He's convinced the aforementioned battle will in fact take place - gentlemen, start your lawyers, or as Henley puts it, of the labels, "They're not just going to roll over" - but he's also equally convinced that musicians are in the right. A couple of his better quotes:

On Musician's Options: "Artists have several things they can do. They can re-up with the label and use this as leverage to renegotiate a recording agreement. They can invoke termination rights and take back their master recordings and see what they can do themselves. If they get it back, they can shop it around and see if anybody else wants it - another label or an indie label or they might market it themselves on the Internet. Or artists can go back and re-record everything."

On Artists' Point Of View Versus Labels: "Record companies insist sound recordings are "work for hire" and artists are employees of the companies. Which is a real interesting claim because we don't enjoy any of the benefits or obligations a normal employee would be granted. They don't provide health insurance for us. They don't pay Social Security for us. They don't withhold taxes from our royalty checks. They don't provide us a place of employment. It's a real stretch for the record companies to claim we're employees. We're independent contractors."

Digs deep into the making of and the relationships behind Achtung Baby.

By Blurt Staff

The Hollywood Reporter has disclosed that U2 documentary From The Sky Down, directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) to mark the 20^th anniversary of Achtung Baby, will be aired on Oct. 29 at 8pm on the Showtime Channel. It will make its official premiere tonight, Sept. 8, at the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Guggenheim was recently quoted as saying,"In the terrain of rock bands, implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable, U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction, this band has endured and thrived. The movie From The Sky Down asks the question why."

According to the Reporter: "From the Sky Down is produced by Ted Skillman, Belisa Balaban and Guggenheim, with Paul McGuinness as executive producer." Word also has it that artists Michael Brook and Daniel Lanois (who has, along with Brian Eno, produced and engineered U2) worked on the film's soundtrack.

Also nab a free MP3 at the link below.

By Blurt Staff

With the previously announced Los Campesinos! album Hello Sadness firmly en route via Arts & Crafts on Nov. 15, the Welsh band has now unveiled the first single video from the record and announced a handful of tour dates. It's titled "By Your Hand" and you can watch it below.

Link to "By Your Hand" MP3

Tour Dates:

11-o7 London, England - Kings College
11-08 Brighton, England - The Haunt
11-09 Cardiff, Wales - The Globe
11-10 Glasgow, Scotland - Oran Mor
11-11 Leeds, England - The Cockpit
11-16 New York, NY- Bowery Ballroom
11-17 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
11-18 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
11-19 Washington, DC - Black Cat
11-24 Tokyo, Japan - Unit Daikanyama

For this year's acclaimed Let England Shake, natch.


By Blurt Staff



Britain's annual Barclaycard Mercury Prize went to PJ Harvey and her 2011 album Let England Shake. This marks Harvey's second win; in 2001 she nabbed top honors for her Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea.


Harvey won the award last night in London, topping an intriguing queue of nominees that included Adele (who we thought was a shoo-in; but whatta we know!) and Elbow, among the high profile acts, and a host of other lesser-knowns (on these shores, at least). Here's the original list, and congrats to BLURT's favorite cover girl, PJ Harvey.


Adele: 21
Anna Calvi: Anna Calvi
Elbow: Build a Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything: Man Alive
Ghostpoet: Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock: Good Days at Schloss Elmau
James Blake: James Blake
Katy B: On a Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine
Metronomy: The English Riviera
PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah: Disc-Overy

Erstwhile New Order and Joy Division bassist to tour North America doing both of the JD albums. Check out video of unreleased JD song performed by the Hook band, below.

By Blurt Staff

Barely a day after we received word of New Order reuniting minus bassist Peter Hook, who had a huge falling out with guitarist Bernard Sumner some time ago, news arrives that Hook, not to be outdone, will return to North America this fall with his band The Light to perform the two landmark Joy Division albums CLOSER and UNKNOWN PLEASURES. The trek will kick off next week in New York City and wrap on Oct. 1 in Mexico City, and full itinerary is listed below - but note that depending on where you see the band, you will get one or the other album.

Hook and his band (bassist Jack Bates, guitarist Nat Watson, keyboardist Andy Poole, drummer Jack Kehoe) already enjoyed a successful run last year performing UNKNOWN PLEASURES; go here to read a review of the December concert in Washington DC. They subsequently  released their debut EP 1102/2011 digitally this spring on Hacienda Records, available exclusively at: www.fac51thehacienda.com. The EP features a previously unreleased Joy Division song titled "Pictures In My Mind" as well as new renditions of "Atmosphere," "New Dawn Fades," and "Insight."

Tour Dates:

Just out via Chrome Dreams, it's a career-spanning documentary that, though unauthorized, still manages to get the subject himself on camera.

By Lee Zimmerman

At 2 ½ hours in duration, Robert Plant's Blue Note seems long. Very long in fact. It takes 45 minutes before Led Zeppelin even enters the picture, for gosh sakes. Then again, considering the fact that this narrative, which covers the evolution of Bobby Plant's musical journey, sets out to survey nearly 50 years of the tawny-haired singer's stylistic evolution, 155 minutes could otherwise seem like a somewhat scant compendium. Better to have spread it out over a multi-disc set, one to cover each decade of his career.

As the creators of this epic have envisioned it, Plant's coming of age parallels the evolution of pop music itself. Indeed, at times especially early on, the viewer forgets that it's Plant's tale being told. Rather, it could be lesson 101 on Rock's Evolution in the 20^th Century. There's Elvis, wiggling his hips and driving America's teens into a frenzy. There's the giants of the Blues, with Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Son House bringing the voices of the Mississippi delta and Chicago's urban environs to white audiences who were previously unawares. The ‘60s are represented in the sounds of West Coast rock... and folk rock... and British Blues, all part of the palette from which the young Plant would glean his influences. Zep of course gets some screen time, but with its singer's ambitious explorations of Arabic and North African tradition, the film offers the inevitable conclusion that Plant is indeed a musical chameleon, one whose eagerness to embrace the fickle dictates of his nomadic instincts make him every bit as much an iconoclast as Bowie, Byrne, Eno or the other artistic adventurers who earned that distinction years before.

"Robert just bends to every trend," Jimmy Page is quoted as saying, and indeed, of all the talking heads gathered to comment on the course of Plant's career - journalists and fellow musicians alike -- it would seem he'd know best. Fortunately, Plant himself is given ample opportunity to weigh in, and while the cover sleeve points out that this is an unauthorized documentary, clearly someone managed to coax him to the camera in order to speak for himself. It's nice after all, to have the subject's own input. Trivia buffs will relish the occasional factoid tossed in at infrequent intervals - the fact that singer Terry Reid was Page's first choice to helm Zeppelin and that even after their eponymous debut, Plant's future with the band was far from certain. The archival footage is also intriguing - Messers. Wolf, Waters and House captured in full blazing glory, a clip of Buffalo Springfield performing "For What It's Worth," even a rare fragment of a latter day Arthur Lee and Love concert appearance. Less mesmerizing are the promotional videos of Plant parlaying his ‘80s wares, given that his blow-dried coif and a dapper outfit that looks as if it was lifted from Don Johnson's wardrobe locker find him looking helplessly dated. Likewise, the cursory glance at Plant's solo outings seems to go by in a blur, up-staged, as it were, by Plant's increasing pilgrimages to areas that would later become the ignition points of the recent Arab spring.

It's remarkable then, that by the time Plant alights in Nashville and reaches ground zero in his musical quest - or at least the geographical juncture for all the disparate influences that informed his initial progression - his shift towards Americana becomes almost a seamless segue way. His union with Alison Krauss and the resurrection of his Band of Joy branding (which fell into disuse after he and John Bonham abandoned it in favor of Led Zeppelin) is made to seem inevitable, although when it initially transpired, many diehard Zep fans found it somewhat perplexing. Likewise, those who follow the film from start to finish may find themselves shaking their head at the amount of enthusiasm Plant's able to muster for each and every indulgence. Yet, it's also hard not to appreciate the dedication he devotes to straddling his music with his muses, many though they may be. Now it seems Bob's come full circle, but it's been a long time indeed.

Longtime indie record store veteran "on the verge of shutting down"; Facebook page established to mobilize friends, fans and community.

By Blurt Staff

We'll just cut right to the chase... Creative Loafing in Atlanta reports:

Criminal Records is on the verge of shutting down. Rumors have been circulating around Little Five Points over the last few weeks, but 11 Alive News confirmed this morning that the end is extremely nigh. According to 11 Alive's post, "Store owner Eric Levin says Criminal Records has been increasingly unable to turn a profit since the rise of digital audio." The post later adds that Criminal will begin liquidating inventory immediately."

D Day for the store is November 1.

According to Levin, "liquidation plans are in effect," but haven't been implemented yet. Levin also says that a "save Criminal Records" campaign is currently being planned as well, but it's going to be an uphill battle. The store has to raise approximately $150,000 by Nov. 1 to pay off a sizable debt that the store has accrued since moving to its current location at 1154-A Euclid Ave., in Oct. '08. Since the move the store has tripled its expenses while watching sales dwindle in the face music becoming increasingly available for free via the Internet.

Levin also added that one of the final straws showing just how bad the situation had become occurred in Sept. '10 when the Hoboken, NJ -based indie rock trio Yo La Tengo played an in-store performance for a crowd of about 350 people, but the store only sold 9 CDs and 11 LPs. "That was a real bummer that pretty much sums up the situation for everyone that's involved with this business," Levin says.

The campaign to save the store is still on the drawing board. No specific events have been confirmed yet, but money raised will be used mostly to pay a sizable debt that the store owes to the Georgia Department of Revenue.

Indeed, a Facebook page named "Save Criminal Records" was just established and it's already accumulated over 6,000 supporters, so any self-respecting indie music store fans out there reading this, please go show your support at the Facebook page and keep track of the matter to find out how you can help. It appears a benefity concert may be in the early stages of planning. As everyone in the Atlanta area - and beyond - who's ever shopped at Criminal knows, it's one of the greats. Just to utter the term "last of a dying breed" is depressing enough....