Recorded in London in 2008.

Sigur Rós will release Inni  in November on XL Recordings.  Inni comprises a double live album and seventy-five minute film of Sigur Rós' last show before their well-documented "indefinite hiatus" at the end of 2008.  Recorded and shot over two nights at London's Alexandra Palace at the close of the world tour around their fifth full length album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Inni sees the band at the peak of their powers, captured on film for the first time as a core four-piece since they were joined by string section amiina at the start of the century.  Directed by Vincent Morisset (Arcade Fire's Miroir Noir), the film is set to debut at this year's Venice Film Festival on September 3^rd, 2011.

Inni is Sigur Rós' second live film following 2007's hugely-celebrated tour documentary Heima.  Whereas that film positioned the enigmatic group in the context of their Icelandic homeland, providing geographical, social and historical perspectives on their otherworldly music, Inni focuses purely on the band's performance, and stands as a stark counterpoint to Heima's kaleidoscopic richness.  Where Heima was lush and colorfully expansive, Inni is spare and near-monochromatic in its tunnel vision.  Filmed in a manner that invites both intimacy and claustrophobia, Inni cocoons the viewer in a one-on-one relationship with the band, eschewing the audience for closeness, depicting how it feels for both band and fan to experience Sigur Rós live.

The film's elegance and atmosphere are enhanced by Morisset's re-filming of the original digital footage on 16mm, which was then re-filmed again, sometimes through prisms and other found objects, allowing Inni to look and feel like something recovered from the past.  Interspersed with this is archival footage drawn from the band's previous decade, dating back as far as 1998.  This juxtaposition gives viewers the full scope of Sigur Rós' origins, evolution, originality and influence.

The live album Inni - a first for the band - features the full set from Alexandra Palace, played in order with just one omission, and clocks in at one-and-three-quarter hours.  Recorded by Sigur Rós' in-house studio engineer Birgir Jón Birgisson, Inni's live audio recording is far and away the best way of replicating the full-force effect of standing in front of one of the world's most extraordinary bands for an evening.

When taken in together, Inni's film and live album give us an incredible account of one of the most celebrated and influential rock bands of recent years, showing where they've come from, where they've been, and like all things Sigur Rós, where it is they will be going next. 

The trailer is available to watch now at www.sigur-Rós.co.uk.

Event leading up to the September 6 release of new album.

By Blurt Staff

Hipsters everywhere will be tuning in to Ustream this evening, starting at 8:30 pm EST: that's when The Rapture will cue up their new album, In the Grace of Your Love, which arrives Sept. 6 on DFA. The entire record will be broadcast from the label's offices, and following that the band members will take to Twitter for an hour of tweeting merriment.

Fans can ask the band questions at that point via Twitter: @itstherapture . Apparently you'll also be eligible to win some freebies from DFA as well, and you are additionally encouraged to log on to the session's Facebook page. So get loggin'...

"Bad As Me" single listed as arriving next week.

By Fred Mills

Last night Anti- Records, Tom Waits' label, sent out a cryptic email that read thusly:

"There have been rumblings and rumors. New music from Tom Waits, you say? Come to TomWaits.com on Tuesday August 23rd, and Mr. Waits himself will set the record straight."

The message was concurrently posted to the News section of Waits' official website. Coupled with an even more cryptic lyric/photo posting about a month ago, this made it obvious that something must be afoot, release-wise. As a lot of folks have already noticed, last night at Amazon.com a new MP3 single (3:10 in length) from Waits titled "Bad As Me" was listed and slated for an Aug. 23 arrival.

Waits' last studio album of new material was 2004's Real Gone, although since then there have also been compilation and live releases. So let the p.r. campaign begin - and let's hope that an album is in the offing.

Set to drop via Fat Possum in September; tour dates listed below.

By Blurt Staff

Tyler Ramsey - Band of Horses multiinstrumentalist and solo artist in his own right -  has a new album, The Valley Wind, set for a September 27^th via Fat Possum. Ramsey wrote the album while on and off the road over the past year, and recorded the album at Alex The Great studio in Nashville, TN over six days in early January. Friend and BoH bandmate Bill Reynolds (who's worked with The Avett Brothers and Lissie) produced and aided on bass, while friend Seth Kauffman (Floating Action) sat in on drums and guitar. He'll be supporting the record with a tour starting in early October.

According to the label: "The Valley Wind is a crystalline yet warm album, nine finely spun songs filled with Ramsey's rich, plaintive vocals and expressive, intricate guitar playing. Opener "Raven Shadow" is a brief instrumental introduction that highlights his stirring guitar lines, and is followed by the evocative and cinematic title track. Elsewhere, the album ranges from the lush yet simple, finger-picked guitar of "1000 Blackbirds" to the rolling, fuller band sound of "Stay Gone"; from the hypnotic, contemplative "Time Is A Changing Line" to the insistent, chiming "When It's Done"; and from the slowly waltzing "Angel Band" to the moody "All Night.""

Ramsey's previous album A Long Dream About Swimming Across The Sea, originally released on the Echo Mountain label, was re-released by Brown Records/Fat Possum in January. Here's what we had to say about it:

Tyler Ramsey is just about the luckiest singer-songwriter in America. The Asheville, NC, singer-songwriter is suddenly a loud blip on the indie-rock radar, having joined Band of Horses. With his debut album just out, the match-up is well-timed. Ramsey's velvety vocals pull you in immediately on "Ships," a sweetly-sad fingerpicked lullaby. "No One Goes Out Anymore" evokes a melancholy CSNY with close-knit, ‘60s inspired harmonies. A vivid dream about swimming underwater sets the tone for Ramsey's debut. The result is a collection of songs that have a consistently floating, weightless feel, and brim with water imagery.

Maybe it's the beards and long hair, but the mellow/moody Band of Horses lilt and Ramsey's solo work are definitely in the same reverb-heavy, vocal-driven vein. Never underestimate the value of bonding over booze. Ramsey's induction into Band of Horses started during a beach trip with frontman Ben Bridwell and Ramsey's longtime friend, BoH bassist Bill Reynolds. ("We were just out drinking tequila at this little bar and they asked me to open up for [a] tour," explained Ramsey.) When BoH guitarist Robin Perringer decided to quit, Ramsey was asked to join.

Track listing:

Raven Shadow

The Valley Wind

1000 Blackbirds

The Nightbird

Stay Gone

Time Is A Changing Line

Angel Band

When It's Done

All Night

Tour dates:

Oct. 6           Asheville, Nc                  The Grey Eagle

Oct. 8           Charlotte, Nc                 The Evening Muse

Oct. 10         New York, Ny                   Joe's Pub

Oct. 11         Vienna, Va                        Jammin Java

Oct. 12         Harrisburg, Pa                The Gallery At The Abbey Bar

Oct. 13         Pittsburgh, Pa                Club Café

Oct. 15         Staunton, Va                   Mockingbird

Oct. 19         Decatur, Ga                     Eddie's Attic

Burning Your House Down, out this week on Punk Rock Blues/Burnside, will be doing exactly that. Any questions?

By Michael Toland

Burning Your House Down, the third disk from the Jim Jones Revue, is not only the best record by the band (including last year's self-titler), but the best record the titular hero has released in his long career. Jones has made plenty of solid albums with his prior acts Thee Hypnotics and Black Moses, and has always been Mr. Excitement on stage. But, just as the JJR finally fits together all the pieces of the rock & roll puzzles Jones loves, so does Burning Your House Down near-perfectly encapsulate what the band is all about.

To oversimplify, the Revue combines the wildest impulses of the original wave of rock & roll in the ‘0s with the Detroit/New York power rock that (should have) ruled in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, while never forgetting the music's R&B roots. (A good alternate name for this band would be Little Richard & the Stooges.) Melding riffs, muscle and roaring sexuality into a powerhouse package that doesn't shirt on brains or agility, the band rips through the songs with feral grace, like a tiger taking down a kill. Drummer Nick Jones and bassist Gavin Jay keep a swing in their step, even when kicking down the door, and pianist Elliot Mortimer breathes old-fashioned boogie-woogie wind into the storm. Jim Jones and Rupert Orton splatter six-string paint all over the walls, but it's not indiscriminate mortar fire - there's a precision to every lick and solo.

Of course, the music really belongs to Jones and his gritty, soulful blare - if there's a vocalist more emblematic of the spirit of rock & roll right now, we haven't heard him. (Wayne Kramer should give him a call next time he tours the DTK-MC5.) Producer Jim Scalvunos of the Bad Seeds organizes the chaos just enough to be accessible, without compromising an ounce of the band's tornado energy.

Jones' tunes will never be mistaken for the work of a Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello acolyte, of course. But there's a lyrical acumen not unlike the winking wit of Lemmy Kilmister driving the libretto of "Killin' Spree," "Dishonest John" and the title track. And with catchy-as-hell hooks like the ones powering "Shoot First," "High Horse" and "Elemental," it's hard to give much of a shit about the words anyway.

Mind you, this record isn't the equal of a JJR show - this is possibly the greatest live rock & roll band currently invading stages. But Burning Your House Down is still a corker of a rock record and more than worth your time and attention.

Go here to read our previous interview with Jim Jones.

Recently published by Faber & Faber, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past finds the author waxing more than just a little bit anti-nostalgic.

By Logan K. Young

Back in 1990, Greil Marcus saw the 20th century as a patina of punk gobsmacked on an entire epoch. Some twenty years in the future, Simon Reynolds sees the fledgling 21st more a patois of post-punk's postures. With the narrative obliterated, representational painting cubed and even film abstracted so long ago - all "punk" manifestations of modernity - we waste now wanting for Godot's return. If Marcus were right, this should've been a true blank generation; apropos of Attali, all the rest since should have been noise. Progress is indeed a forward march, ho! Wagons west, destiny manifest. But modernism, even in its most po-mo strain, is no longer a destination fit for today's youth -- the "Re Decade," quoth Reynolds. Moreover, their overall journey, itself, has been irrevocably altered. According to Reynolds, "... instead of being pioneers and innovators, they've switched roles to become curators and archivists." Even more arresting, for both Simon and me: "The avant-garde is now an arrière-garde." C'est la vie, it seems, here in 2011.

To be fair, many a culture has had an unhealthy obsession with her antiques. Remember the Renaissance? (Or, since Reynolds is a London émigré to LA, the Victorian fascination for all things medieval?) "Decades usually have a retro twin: the seventies looked to the fifties; in the eighties you had multiple different versions of the sixties vying for attention; and then seventies music started to get rediscovered in the nineties," Simon does say. But the real crux of "retromania," at least as Reynolds proscribes here, is that no civilization in the history of humanity has been so obsessed with the still-warm relics of her own immediate past. Of course, "there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously," he contends. True, the Net makes us experts with one click of the mouse, but in turn, it also makes us jealous and contrite that we weren't there for the real-time unfurling. In other words, I can't help that I was born too late to see the original Gang of Four. But I sure as hell will catch what's left of them today. You, me and Simon -- we're all in this together. Complicit consumers, each has digital blood on his hands. From the outset, though, Reynolds portends, "... my gut feeling is that pop and the museum just don't go together." But because this is Simon Reynolds, he'll always be righter than me.

"But what happens when we run out of past?," Reynolds then questions. Culture, like coal, is non-renewable. Once the mountain top is blown off, a real inconvenient truth remains: we simply cannot continue to burn through the retrol at our present rate. Time after time, from Frank Sinatra to Cyndi Lauper, pop will repeat itself. Time and again, from R.E.M. to Pavement, such saturated fats of nostalgia - a "temporal" and "vicarious" malady now - will not go gentle into the belly politic. And in that sense, Reynolds has brilliantly diagnosed the problem. Furthermore, he does so non-invasively -- not worsening the symptoms he's tasked with examining. It's love in the time of a cholera, too, as Reynolds' toughly researched affection hurts him more than it hurts the affliction he's so obsessively scrutinizing. "This attachment on the part of young people to genres that have been around for decades mystifies me," he admits. And while he never explicitly admits the slippery slope I'm wont to take, I sense he's worried all the same. ("I come not to bury the 2000s but to appraise them," he confesses in his best, albeit oblique Mark Antony.) Likewise, if you care at all, even just a smidgen, about the future of music, art, fashion, film, television, sports, cuisine, cars, etc. ad inf., you would be, too. If I had but one wish for Simon Reynolds' latest tome, it's that it would prescribe a proper remedy. Given the "hyper-stasis" he coins - "the paradoxical combination of speed and standstill" endemic to our time - alas, we might be beyond saving, even for our own Simon Peter here.      

Staying Biblical, like Lot's wife fleeing Sodom, if we acknowledge history in the act of new creation, we are doomed to repeat at least some part of it. And insofar as progressive aesthetics is concerned, that fate is worse than the briniest pillar of sea salt. But as Reynolds deftly points out, there's infinitely more at stake than little ol' rock ‘n' roll. "The world economy was brought down by derivatives and bad debt; music has been depleted of meaning through derivativeness and indebtedness." With so many dot-coms forced to heed Alan Kirby's digimodernism, "we are still waiting for the music-about-music bubble to burst." Ultimately, in spite of this boom-time overaccumulation, the "recombinant decade" has yet to produce any genre of music on par with its parent trinity -- rap, rave or grunge. And that, I'm afraid, is its greatest sin. In fact, history might hold that the present will be the first one remembered more for how its sounds were found, versus how those sounds actually sounded.

Back to Marcus, Ian Svenonius once had a 13-point program to destroy this very nation. At 500 pages, Reynolds' Retromania is a virtuosic dossier on how the entirety of civilized culture will self-destruct. Dystopias don't typically sell all that well, so whereas Simon Reynolds can't write it outright, I most certainly will: Stuck between the year we make contact and the year the Mayans have us going silent, we look back because we have no future. Antichrist...meet the archivist. 

Yet the court shenanigans continue. Can't we all just get along?

By Fred Mills

Rock ‘n' roll would be a far, far duller milieu were it not for lawyers, as was evidenced last year when Vampire Weekend got sued over the photo gracing the cover of their Contra album. The young lady on the sleeve, Ann Kirsten Kennis, appeared courtesy a 1983 modeling photo, and the 2010-era Kennis maintained that she had never authorized the reproduction of her image; photographer Tod Brody had licensed the photo to the band, claiming Kennis had signed a release form. That claim, however, was disputed by Kennis, who told reporters, of her decision to file a $2 million suit against Vampire Weekend and XL Recordings, "It felt like someone was exploiting me. Who do these people think they are that they can just take my picture from god only knows where and plaster it everywhere?"

So we learn today from Pitchfork that Kennis has settled with the band and the label "for an undisclosed amount" and the case was dismissed on August 11 by the federal court in Los Angeles. In addition, Photo District Online reports that Brody received $5000 from Vampire Weekend for the image, but as it is likely that Brody used a forged signature on the model release form,"it is unclear who shot the image, or how Brody obtained it."

This is good, because we are fookin' sick of seeing that damn record sleeve every few weeks anyway.

Interestingly, though, the story's not done yet. VW and XL had also filed a counter-claim against Brody, saying that he holds the liability in this case, and since the court did not dismiss the counter-claim, Brody now has the task of defending himself: his lawyers quit after he failed to pay them the bills he'd accumulated to date.

New EP features appearances by Best Coast and Fucked Up.

By Blurt Staff

L.A.'s Wavves follow up last year’s King of the Beach with Life Sux on Sept. 20, the debut release from singer Nathan Williams' Ghost Ramp label. It’s described as “telling the tale of two loathsome characters locked down in Bummertown. What follows is a downward spiral of wrecked cars, impossible dreams and fading faith set to pop-damaged punk and squalling grunge.”

Appearing on the album are members of Best Coast and Fucked Up. Williams also points out, "If you hate yourself and other people, you might like our record." It was produced by the band and recorded at Infrasonic Sound in nearby Alhambra.

Some descriptions, provided by the label:

*Opener "Bug" is an upbeat bomb lobbed at any enemies of fun-a thesis statement driven by Dino Jr. guitars and a pop-punk bass line. 

 *The blisteringly bright "I Wanna Be Dave Grohl" offers an arena-sized appeal to everyman excellence.

 *"Nodding Off" finds that escape fantasy failing even as Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino coos sweetly over the encroaching grime.

 *"Poor Lenore" is heavier and darker, awash in wasteland riffage àla Nirvana.

*"Destroy" is severe, with Fucked Up and Wavves teaming up to thrash in vain against a crushing apathy.

*Life Sux closes with "In the Sand," a longtime touring favorite recorded live at Black Iris Music in L.A. with drummer Jacob Cooper.

Tracklisting:

1 Bug
2 I Wanna Be Dave Grohl
3 Nodding Off [ft. Best Coast]
4 Poor Lenore
5 Destroh [ft. Fucked Up]
6 In the Sand [Live] *

* vinyl and iTunes bonus track

Get yr rooster on! Definitely our favorite album cover art to date this year... Record features Aesop Rock, John Darnielle, Nik Fraiture and others.

By Blurt Staff

Kimya Dawson has announced her upcoming self-released album, Thunder Thighs, due out October 25th via Burnside Distribution.  As her seventh album, the assumed lo-fi sound has taken a delightful turn with the addition of pianos, backing choirs, string arrangements and several beats produced by rapper Aesop Rock.  Although the personal touch of Kimya's delicate strumming and the crackling of her soft voice still sit forefront, the backbone is a more mature solid arrangement that supports her powerful poetry. 

The mother of one, who's worked with The Moldy Peaches and was prominently featured as a key voice on platinum selling soundtrack for the film Juno, recruited several artists to join the aforementioned choir, appearances by Aesop Rock, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, Nikolai Fraiture of the Strokes, Bryan Danielson, Forever Young Senior Citizen Rock and Roll Choir, Olympia Free Choir, and her own five year old daughter Panda create an eccentric journey through Kimya's revealing and honest songs.  The first of 16 tracks to be uncovered is "All I Could Do," a live performance for Kimya's chickens in her backyard shot by Aesop Rock. 

Tracklisting:

1. All I Could Do

2. The Mare and the Bear

3. Year 10

4. Miami Advice

5. Solid and Strong

6. Zero or a Zillion

7. Same Shit/ Complicated

8. I Like My Bike

9. Driving Driving Driving

10. You're In

11. The Library

12. Walk Like Thunder

13. Captain Lou

14. Reflections

15. Unrefined

16. Utopian Futures

One of the few punk bands today Who Matters cover The Only Band That Matters....

By Blurt Staff

In the newest installment of the A.V. Club's popular "Undercover" series, punk heroes Against Me! were caught performing the Clash's classic tune "Janie Jones." They crammed into the A.V. Club's infamous circular room back in June during their previous US headline tour.

Check it out at the A.V. Club site - it's downright uncanny how accurate and spirited it is, more so than you'll hear from a Clash cover anywhere else, we suspect.

The genesis of the performance? According to A.V. Club, "Wild Flag claimed the song, 24 hours before Against Me! said they wanted it. It was painful to have to deny the Florida punk band, and nothing else on the list really interested them. Then Wild Flag had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict, and the Against Me! dudes were gracious enough to step back in and slay "Janie Jones.""