You got the cure, now get the voodoo...


By Blurt Staff


Less than a month ago we were all creeped out by El-P's video trailer for his new album Cancer For Cure, which arrives May 22 on Fat Possum. To compound the damage, he's now submitted a 2nd trailer. Enjoy!

Longtime alt-American fave prepping to sell the proverbial White Buffalo this year, in fact. Love the new EP's cover art, by the way...

By Blurt Staff

Coming July 20: erstwhile Squirrel Nut Zippers mainman Jimbo Mathus' six-song vinyl EP Blue Light on the Big Legal Mess label and recorded with producer Bruce Watson at Watson's Water Valley, Miss., studio, Dialed Back Sound. The platter is described as "Southern musical alchemy.... from the proto garage rock of "Haunted John" ("up and down Saint Charles/rides the streetcar all night long"), to the sideways-with-the-law Southern rock of "Blue Light" to the dead-end gospel-fueled country weeper of "Burn the Honky Tonk."

Mathus, of course, was heard from not all that long ago on 2011's Confederate Buddha. Coming next is White Buffalo, billed to Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition and produced by Eric "Roscoe" Ambel (Steve Earle, The Bottle Rockets, Del Lords).

Of the band's recording, Mathus says, "White Buffalo is a collaboration with our producer, ‘Roscoe' Ambel, who brought a fierceness, a keen edge to our sound.  I've never been prouder of any recording." Ambel offers, "There is an effortless, natural feeling that comes from Jimbo & Tri-State's music that in today's times cannot be mistaken for anything less than ‘great.'"

Tour Dates:

Fri., May 4, 6:15 p.m.  MEMPHIS, TN   FedEx Blues Tent

Sat., May 5, 9:30 p.m.  COLUMBUS, MS (downtown)

Sun., May  6, 4:30 p.m.  WATER VALLEY, MS   (downtown)   

Thurs.,  May 17, 7 p.m. OXFORD, MS   The Powerhouse

Fri-Sat., May 18-19, TBD MARKSVILLE, LA  Chief Joseph Alcide Pierite Pow Wow Grounds

Sat., May 26, 7:30 p.m.   MEMPHIS, TN   Levitt Shell at Overton Park   

Fri., June 8, 10 p.m. LITTLE ROCK, AR   Whitewater Tavern

Sat., June 9, TBD  HELENA, AR   Levee Stage   

Fri., June 15, TBD  ATLANTA, GA   Star Bar

Fri., June 22, TBD  NASHVILLE, TN   Grimey's Basement   

Sat., June 23, TBD  CHARLESTON, SC    The Pour House

Sun., June 24, TBD  ATHENS, GA    The Melting Pot

Thurs., June 28, 9 p.m. OXFORD, MS   Rooster's Blues House

Sat., June 30, TBD  WATERFORD, MS    Hill Country Picnic Stage   

Fri., July 6, TBD  MOBILE, AL    The Shed-Mobile   

Sat., July 7, TBD  OCEAN SPRINGS, MS   The Shed-Ocean Springs   

Sat., July 21, 7:30 p.m. MEMPHIS, TN   National Ornamental

Sat., July 28, TBD  PHILADELPHIA, MS  Neshoba County Fair   

Sat., Aug. 11, TBD  CLARKSDALE, MS   Delta Blues Museum Main Stage   

Sat., Aug. 11, 9 p.m.  HOPSON, MS   Hopson Plantation Commissary   

Thurs., Aug. 23, 8 p.m. BRADFORDVILLE, FL   Bradfordville Blues Club   
 

Subject header says it all...


By Blurt Staff


Last night Santigold turned up on the Fallon show to perform "Disparate Youth" off her just-released Master Of My Make Believe album. Check it out, below.

Watch the game's trailer, below.

By Blurt Staff

Rockstar Games' new Max Payne 3 game has its official soundtrack out on May 23 - and it was composed and recorded by LA's Health. Their brand-new single "Tears" will coincide with the game's launch on May 15; it's the electronic group's first new material in two years.

"Working on the soundtrack to Max Payne 3 was a great experience," said John Famiglietti of the band. "Rockstar gave us the freedom to bring our own sound to Max's dark story, and we're really proud of the results."

Excerpts from "TEARS" can be heard in the latest Max Payne 3 TV spot:

The soundtrack also features new and exclusive tracks from Sao Paulo based Brazilian hip-hop artist, Emicida, with tracks and remixes to be released over the coming weeks. DJ mixes for the game's nightclub chapter were compiled and mixed by Brooklyn based DJ collective Trouble and Bass, and will be available free for download post-launch.  

All seven of its original albums heightened to re-mastered perfection with discs of b-sides, demos, rarities and requisite live DVDs (at Alexandra Palace 1994, The Singles Night 1999).

By Blurt Staff

As previously announced, Blur will be releasing a career-encompassing box set on July 30 titled Blur 21. Each of the original albums will now come as a two-CD set, while a separate vinyl box will also be manufactured. Blurt Contributing Editor A.D. Amorosi recently got a sneak peek at the collection and came away drooling, noting that "the rarities are the true gem - demos of classics like "Beetlebum," the never-heard "Saturday Morning," the legendarily lost sessions with Blur's immediate forefather, XTC's Andy Partridge.... Despite occasionally cranky words to the contrary, Blur is still on Damon Albarn's mind, especially during this the year where his wonky art pop collective turns legal age at the London Olympics. With that in mind, collecting one band's oeuvre into twenty one albums for twenty one years doesn't seem merely lavish: it's necessary. A magical must."

Watch for the new print edition of BLURT soon with Amorosi's complete review. Meanwhile, check out the trailer for the collection:

All about connectivity... listen to a live track, below.

By Blurt Staff

Stereolab songstress Laetita Sadier debuted as a solo act with The Trip and now delivers her follow-up LP, Silencio, on July 24.

Her label, Drag City, describes it thusly: "That noise preventing your connectivity comes from society - the noise of commercialism and the marketplace overwhelming your ability to cut deeply inward, prohibiting your inner-connections. Silencio may help you understand how to resist the rules of these systems, but only if you listen."

On hand: former Stereolabber, Tim Gane; and musical drifter-man James Elkington provides writing for two tracks in addition to recording and playing on much of the record. Also in the mix is Sam Prekop of The Sea And Cake.

Following last year's solo venture touring parts of the country with Beirut, Laetitia will return with full band this fall.

 Tracklisting:

01. The Rule of the Game

02. Find Me the Pulse of the Universe

03. Silent Spot

04. Auscultation to the Nation

05. There is a Price to Pay for Freedom (and it isn't Security)

06. Moi Sans Zach

07. Between Earth and Heaven

08. Lightning Thunderbolt

09. Fragment pour le Future de L'homme

10. Merci de M'avoir Donné la Vie

11. Next Time You See Me

12. Invitation au Silence

While we wait for the album, let's listen to a live Stereolab cover, "International Colouring Contest," from Sadier:

Laetitia Sadier - International Colouring Contest (Stereolab Cover) by Chronic-México

Anyone who says that relentless social networkin doesn't pay dividends is clearly nuts...


By Fred Mills


As the screen shot above demonstrates, avant-pop diva Amanda Palmer knows how to get the grass roots sprouting - to the tune of $379k in barely two days of fundraising via her new Kickstarter program to raise money for a new album. On April 30 she launched the pledge page, with the target date/goal being May 31 and $100,000.

Think about it: she beat the goal by more than three times the hoped-for amount, and there's still 29 days to go.


Billboard.biz reports:


Palmer, a solo artist and member of the Dresden Dolls, has received pledges - effectively donations - from 6,626 backers through midday Wednesday. According to a Kickstarter spokesperson, the project already holds the site's record for value of pledges and number of pledges. Nearly 2,400 people have pledged $1 and will receive a digital download of the album. About 2,900 people have pledged $25 and will get a digital download and CD in a hardbound case. Funding tiers go all the way to the Kickstarter limit of $10,000 - 1 of 5 has already been taken. For people who want to chip in more than $10,000, Palmer has created an alternative financing vehicle called the Loan Spark that facilitates loans rather than donations.


Read the full report at the Billboard.biz link. Pretty damn impressive, Amanda. Wonder what your former handlers at Roadrunner Records - who as you also noted in the article, wouldn't even have agreed to a recording budget of that $300k - are thinking about now? Maybe that they should mount their own Kickstarter programs for their artists, perhaps...

The pastor of pure pop!


Nick Lowe just debuted a new song as a web exclusive for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, "Tokyo Bay." Check it out:

No, that wasn't former Baltimore first baseman Boog Powell playing San Jose's H.P. Pavilion on April 26. It was "Bruuuuuce" Springsteen.

By Jud Cost

The Shark Tank in San Jose was packed to the gills and the natives were getting antsy. Cascades of "Boooooooo!" bounced off the walls of the cavernous building, and it wasn't because the San Jose Sharks had been knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Of course not, those were  fervid cries of "Bruuuuuuce!" reverberating from the rafters where they normally store the huge papier-mache shark-head the local hockey team skates through before every game. The Bruce Springsteen concert was supposed to start at 7:30, it had just turned half past eight and the fans were in the mood to shake some action.

Suddenly, there he was, dressed in black (you expected avocado?) with the always superb E Street Band in tow. With a rear phalanx of brass and reeds now added, its ranks have swelled to the point where they are almost uncountable (at least 16, maybe as many as 20). This mighty unit is still driven by the muscular drumming of Max Weinberg and the twin guitars of Steven Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren. In a nice touch, Jake Clemons has been added for those familiar lead breaks as a new tenor saxman, ably taking the place of his uncle, Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011.

One thing hasn't changed: Springsteen lights up a building like very few entertainers. Only Tony Bennett (whom Springsteen vaguely resembles) comes to mind as having a similar effect on a crowd this large. Springsteen bursts into "We Take Care Of Our Own," and "Wrecking Ball," the powerful opening salvo from the new album,  Wrecking Ball (Columbia) and that's all it takes. You will not resist. He's gotten under your skin for the rest of a mammoth set that's taking dead aim at the three-hour mark before it's all over.

To prove how much they love the guy, the standees at the front of the main floor, reverentially return Springsteen's prostrate body to the stage after passing him hand-to-hand for about 25 yards, deep into the crowd. Most stars of this magnitude would never think of attempting a potentially risky maneuver like this. But with Springsteen's true believers, there is almost no chance that he will be injured by an over-zealous souvenir hunter.

After recalling the days when he once played "VFW Halls, CYO dances and supermarket openings," Springsteen brings up a more recent career highlight. "Last month we played the Apollo Theater in New York, where all the masters once stood," he says before saluting Motown legends the Temptations with their Smokey Robinson-penned 1964 hit "The Way You Do The Things You Do," then capping the medley with the Marvelettes' "Beechwood 4-5789."

It's a tribute to Springsteen's staying power that some of the best tunes he played tonight - "We Are Alive," "Shackled And Drawn" and the Irish penny whistle-flavored "Death To My Hometown" - in a set list that always seems like a career retrospective, come from the new longplayer. He even manages to put a brave face on a national job market that may never completely recover, with "Jack Of All Trades" ("I'll mow your lawn, clean the leaves out your drain/I'll mend your roof to keep out the rain/I'll take the work that God provides/I'm a jack-of-all-trades, honey we'll be all right").

By the time the sand begins to fill the bottom half of the hourglass with familiar flagwavers "Born To Run," "Thunder Road" and "Dancing In The Dark," the building begins to levitate like a NASA booster rocket. The sheer exhaustion of such a full night may have crept into your body like that of a long-distance runner. But a Springsteen show also has the restorative powers of a visit to Lourdes or the Vatican by the afflicted. Just point one hand in the direction of Brother Bruce and place the other one where it hurts. It's bound to make you feel better.

The Ghost in Daylight, out this week on the Warp label, is "folk music going into unknown territory, braving dangers, making new footprints, and, in the process, changing into something else entirely."


By Jennifer Kelly

Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst inhabits the forward-looking edge of folk-based music, moving its misty modal chord progressions into the now and even past it, into the future. His delicate melodies are surrounded with space-age drone and hiss. His lyrics are elliptical and mysterious, hinting not at some runic past, but at becoming. It makes sense, then, the Talbot reveres Flying Saucer Attack as much as Fairport Convention, that he pursues a hushed feedback as much as latticed picking.

The Ghost in the Daylight (Warp) is a quieter, more overtly folky album than 2007's Western Lands. There is no obvious focal point - nothing like gorgeous, pick-clawed "Trust" from the previous album - only a series of acoustic songs that flare gently from rueful nostalgia to sudden melancholy. "The Prize," the album's first single, builds the subtlest kind of momentum in its close-harmonized chorus, an unsweep of interlocking vocals that is only partly moderated by its message, that "the ties that bind us blind us to the emptiness of the prize." The cut is delicate, spare and moving, a folky ephemera right up to the end, when the future breaks in with howling, descanting guitar feedback and billows of stringed instruments.

Talbot says that he was heavily influenced by Brian Eno for The Ghost in Daylight, and two longer tracks splice ambient atmospheres with Nick Drake-ish folk. "Fitzrovia," near its end, frames a shifting wash of tones and echoes with the warmth and friction of guitar chords, a folk song hurtling through interplanetary space. "Islands," by contrast, begins in an electronic mode, with a programmed beat, a hum of synthesizer and a wavery melody of organ notes. Denatured voices whisper and recede into these textures. The song works without narrative or even very defined melodic structure, a sort of journey through imagined, synthetic landscapes.

Even at his most accessible - pretty, glowingly picked "In Miniature," moody "Three Fires" - Talbot injects a certain amount of mystery into his songs, a melancholy indefiniteness that defines mood but leaves subject matter open to interpretation. His imagery comes from daily modern life - a television, an armchair, a deceased father figure prominently in "Three Fires" - yet takes on the symbolic qualities of a vivid dream.  His voice, soft, cool and surrounded with echo, brushes past the day-to-day into places that can only be imagined. "The Foundry," the most beautiful of these songs, piles violent picture on violent picture -- wolves chasing a white hare, burning books and bodies, guns - against a music of almost surreal serenity.  This is folk music going into unknown territory, braving dangers, making new footprints, and, in the process, changing into something else entirely.