Festival Updates: Bonnaroo Additions, Lollapalooza Lineup, Coachella Happened

Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo has decided to jump into the “curating” game that All Tomorrow’s Parties has made so popular. The are letting David Byrne pick the lineup for one stage on the evening of Friday June 12. He has chosen the following acts to play it:

Santigold
Dirty Projectors
Ani Difranco
St. Vincent
Katzenjammer

Most of those acts were already on the lineup, but Dirty Projectors is an addition, and a pretty badass one at that. What is unclear to me right is what part of the “evening” these acts would play. They seem an unlikely group for late night, although that would be cool. Maybe Bonnaroo will actually have something else going on during the headliner spot. By the way we are only 50 days away from this, I’m starting to get excited.

Bonnaroo website

Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza has announced its lineup and it is looking very similar to Bonnaroo’s outside of the headliners. Check it out:

Click here to read the entire post…

Live Show: Silversun Pickups (11/17/2007)

Sunday night I caught the first half of the 99x Mistle Toe Jam and it was pretty cool. I learned a few things from the night:

1. I really hate having to drive Outside The Perimeter for a concert.
2. The traffic situation at The Gwinnett Center Arena is horribly ridiculous.
3. I’ve decided that some of The Shins stuff is amazing, and a bunch of it is way too boring to me.
4. Paste magazine, which I usually enjoy, has the worst top album list of 2007 I’ve seen so far.
5. The Silversun Pickups are as great live as I had hoped they would be.
6. Silversun Pickups have been touring for 2 years straight and this was their last show of that tour. Hopefully they are going to go make another great album. So, here’s a show from last month to jam:

Silversun Pickups – 2007-11-17, Paris, France; Nouveau Casino

Silversun Pickups
2007-11-17
Le Nouveau Casino
Paris, France

Source: Sony ECM-719 > Sony Hi-MD RH10 (PCM mode) > USB / Sonic Stage > WAV > Adobe Audition 2.0 (normalization and track splitting) > shntool (fix SBE) > FLAC
Location: 4 meters in front of stage
Taper: XWayne

01. Intro
02. Melatonin
03. Well Thought Out Twinkles

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Best 2006 Albums Of 2007

Before I inundate you with all of my best of 2007 stuff, I want to do a little addendum to my 2006 top 50 Albums list. Over the course of this year I discovered some albums that came out last year but wasn’t aware of because I wasn’t blogging and researching obsessively then. These albums here should all have deserved to be on my top 50 list because they are all amazing. Despite being released in ’06, though, these albums will always make me think of this year because of all the great times I had with them as the soundtrack. Pick up these essentials:

Beach House : Beach House

Final Fantasy : He Poos Clouds

Midlake : The Trials Of Van Occupanther

Portugal The Man : Waiter: “You Vultures!”

Silversun Pickups : Carnavas

Snowden : Anti-Anti

Untied States : Retail Detail

Mistle Toe Jam 2007

This is gonna be a pretty awesome show:

They’ve just announced set times:

5pm doors
Silversun Pickups 5:30-6:15pm
The Shins 6:40-7:25pm
Silverchair 7:45pm-8:45pm
Modest Mouse 9:15-10:30pm

For more info, check here.

Some jams:

Silversun Pickups : Carnavas : Melatonin
The Shins : Wincing The Night Away : Sleeping Lessons
Modest Mouse : This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About : Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset
Silverchair:

What The Hell Am I Listening To?!?

Theme for today is bands I should have known about last year:

Silversun Pickups

Brian from Slow Motion Crash suggested this band to me at an ISP show earlier this year and I’m really glad he did, because I’ve been listening to it constantly. It is pretty much straight-up rock with a hint of dissidence weaved throughout. Carnavas is the name of this Los Angeles, California four-piece’s first full length and I highly recommend checking it out. Give these tracks a listen:


Sliversun Pickups’ Myspace

Buy Carnavas here

Portugal. The Man

I just recently discovered this Alaskan band and I feel like they could emerge as truly great. They released an EP earlier this year called It’s Complicated Being A Wizard and that’s what turned me on to them. In addition to being a great piece of music utilizing drum machines in a rock format, it’s also a concept album where the first 23-minute track is then revisited broken down into several different tracks named after types of magic. After getting heavy into that EP, I discovered their album from last year Waiter: “You Vultures!”, and its really good too. There’s certainly parallels you can draw to the vocals of The Mars Volta, but they incorporate many different influences and create a distinct sound of their own. They are currently working on a new album due out this year and I am excited. Give them a listen:

From Waiter: “You Vultures!”:

From It’s Complicated Being a Wizard:

Portugal. The Man‘s Myspace page

Buy Waiter: “You Vultures!” here

Buy It’s Complicated Being A Wizard here