Duck & Cover :: Indie rock music writing from Arcade Fire to the Zygotic Minci

You do what you do with what you've got I received a very helpful email the other day from Ian from tech support at Arts and Crafts Records. You'll recall I bought the new Constantines vinyl, Kensington Heights , and I don't have a record player (this is a story in itself; a story for later). Luckily, the album came with a code for a free MP3 download. Unfortunately, my code didn't work. So the emails began. After two emails in as many days, I got a response. "Your code is missing a letter," the message informed me. "The letter is 'j'." Indeed, the code was missing the letter 'j' for when I added it, the download worked like a charm. So after minor setbacks, here's the review. If some dude tells you rock is dead, don't listen. Two reasons: 1.) he's probably some 19-year-old hipster wearing neon lightning bolts on his hoodie who repeats everything he reads on Pitchfork, and 2.) He has not heard Constantines. While plenty ba...

I sing of Clae shoes, and what I shall assume you shall assume I like shoes. This not a secret. But I'm not the kind of sneaker freaker who will buy a new pair of Air Force Ones just because they're a limited edition. For that matter, I would never buy a pair of Air Force Ones, period. For me, the shoes need to be conversation starters; they need to be manifests of mood. It's not good enough for a pair of shoes to define a look. They must be a definition unto themselves, regardless if they are a celebration of color and fabric like D.A.T.Es , or pieces of subtle beauty like Zeha Berlins . The summer 2008 range by Clae Shoes fits this motif. And I mean the entire range. Clae began in 2001 as a sort of anarchic reaction to both athletic footwear and leisure footwear when they released their "athleisurewear" shoe hybrid. However, they haven't really released anything since 2005. I'm not sure if the three years was spent researching and designing, or if they ...

Or, "The review that WOULD have been of Constantines could I download the damn album from the label" I've been looking forward to buying the new Constantines album, Kensington Heights, ever since it came out six weeks ago. Reasons why I didn't buy it at the time stack up like beer coasters: I was between contracts, having just moved from New Zealand to Canada; I had a list of other albums to buy first; It was either new music or maintain my subscription to WoW; I couldn't find my wallet. See? Lots of reasons. Now gainfully contracted, caught up on albums, and happily resting my Night Elf, I decided to part with my money. I was in Zulu Records on 4th to buy tickets to Frog Eyes/Destroyer (watch for a live music review) when I saw Kensington Heights for sale on vinyl. Forever a geek for outdated formats, I grabbed it. And it wasn't until I was paying for the LP that I noticed a silver sticker on the cover, shimmering with potential like a new idea: "free di...

Guest post by Drew Zackary Ed. Note: Sometimes, we at Duck & Cover solicit reviews from other writers or musicians. We value the insight they can provide into an industry, of which we are little more than casual observers. Sure, the D&C crew loves music, buys music, watches live music. The problem is we don't actually play music (high school trombone doesn't count as "music"). No matter. You get to a point in your life when you just have to accept the fact you're never going to be a rock star, and no Guitar Hero score will change that. So we go about our lives living vicariously through the musicians whose music we follow. The solicitations for their written opinions are little more than thinly disguised invitations to participate in our fantasy. Because we don't have rock star lives; we have geeky, music-hungry, shoe-obsessed lives. So when I received this month's Guitar Player Pick from sporadic contributor and dedicated guitarist, Drew Zackary,...

After weeks and weeks of rain, the weather in the Pacific Northwest has finally changed. It's sunny. It's hot. It's no time to be at the computer research all those lovely musical tidbits we bring you here at Duck & Cover. So have a good weekend, readers. To paraphrase Comet Gain, if you're looking for me, I'll be drunk at the beach. Band :: Comet Gain Song :: Fist in the Pocket Album :: City Fallen Leaves

New Zealand bands--you can't get much more indie than that. Powering through the newly released EP by New Zealand indie power-pop duo The Naked and Famous is like being the star of your own action movie. Or at least the part of the movie where you're either a.) battling an army of zombie ninjas, b.) driving a rocket car down 4th street in the middle of the afternoon, or c.) driving a rocket car through an army of zombies who are waiting for the bus on 4th street at 2:30pm . . . Okay, it got out of hand there but that's because I'm listening to the aforementioned EP, This Machine , and I simply can't keep up. Although it's heading into winter down under, you'd think they wrote the album just for our northern hemisphere summer. This Machine is fast; it's poppy; it's perfect for right now--and frankly, that's all it has to be. My only complaint is that it always seems to end too quickly. Since releasing the EP in May, they've also received very ...

Because we all have at least one . . . hell, some of us are one It was 2001, and I was still living in Wichita, KS. Dakin, smart boy that he is, had high-tailed it to Seattle the previous year. Since arriving, he'd been diligently emailing me bands I needed to hear. Of course, most of the bands he mentioned had little more than an EP out, thus making their discovery in the Bible Belt somewhat rare. Thank god, then, that we still had Napster (or KaZaa, actually. Napster had just been shut down a few months earlier, come to think of it) because Dakin had told me the latest must hear: a little band from New Mexico called The Shins. I downloaded all I could; listened, loved, and decided I had to see them live. That year The Shins were touring to promote Oh, Inverted World . Being that they were a relatively unknown indie band at the time, they were hitting a lot of the college towns in the mid west. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch their show at my local college town (Lawrence...

It takes very little for me to enjoy French-speaking musicians, hopeless Francophile and that I am. A few years ago my little sis burned me a couple Mara Tremblay discs. I played them so often I knew the words, even if I didn't know what they meant. I even made the mistake of playing them for a few French friends while I was living in Ireland. They rolled their eyes and began berating French Canadians (and here I thought they were all friends). So when I heard a track by Montreal's Le Husky on local BC radio, I e-rushed over to eMusic and downloaded Chanson Moderne pour Cyniques Romantiques . It's an album I will recommend, whether you are Francophile or non. The album picks up and grabs you by the lobes from the second song, "Mourir comme un chien" (track one is just an intro). With the tempo initially set by the synth (Eric Shaw), the drums come stomping in and set a solid 4/4 beat that I guarantee will raise your pulse. It's one of those songs that made me ...

This morning going through the blogs I happened across a headline on Tiny Mix Tapes that seemed familiar.... So familiar that I got a little confused and thought for a moment that maybe I had actually stumbled onto Stereogum by mistake. But no, it was Tiny Mix Tapes essentially reblogging Stereogum and taking the occasion to take a swipe at them as well. The best part? The article on SG had been up for, oh, a good 24 hours before they came up with a not so clever dig that managed to essentially recycle someone else's headline. Perhaps I'm just a bitch this morning because I managed to not get quite enough sleep last night, or perhaps I'm just really, really sad that I never had a chance to see Gang of Four, who have always been one of my all time favorites. Let's go with the latter, shall we, and all of us give the band's classic Entertainment (one of the best records ever written by humans) a few spins at top volume today. Seriously. Best. Record. Ever. Stereogum ...

Sometimes, a lot of the time, and to be honest, most of the time, there are things that we like at Duck & Cover that we, for whatever reason, never get around to talking about. There are countless bands that we love love love, like Lennie and his mouse, but, instead of loving them lifeless, we do something worse. We fail to mention them; and it's not that we have illusions about having some great influence, but little bands need all of the love and support that they can find, especially the really good ones. Fortunately for everyone there are many, many other sites on the internet that do take the time to promote music that they love, and give it to the world instead of keeping it in their pocket as if it were some magical talisman. At Duck & Cover, we like to consider ourselves Enthusiasts, and not critics. Musical criticism is mostly all bosh, frankly, and I'd rather talk about something that I really love than deconstruct something that I don't think is all that ...

If you're in the Seattle area this Mother's Day weekend, be sure to hit the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill to check out a little band called Yarn Owl. Well, assuming that you're a fan of clear, uncluttered melodic indie pop, that is; and we can imagine that you are, so you should go! Yarn Owl hails all the way from Pullman, WA, and features members of Ether Hour (Javier and Ted), Augustusus (Tyler), and Band of Horses(Tim Meinig). From what we've heard so far, we can bet that it's going to be a pretty good show, and there's also a debut ep in the works that we can't wait to get our hands on. Check out their myspace page for more details as well as some rough mixes of songs.

Marshall Scott Warner Wanda Jackson All photos 2008 Laura Musselman

And the haters shall be revealed to be hopeless fanboys... OHMYGODOHMYGOD!! My. Bloody. Valentine. Is. Playing. West. Coast. Shows! And some other places too! We were snide, we were a little catty, but to say that we are not excited to the core at the prospect of seeing MBV live would be an outright lie. Also, in Santa Monica! My Bloody Valentine in the sun and near the beach seems somehow appropriate, as their shimmery pop happy sound could easily soundtrack a trip, to, uh, the beach. Or a lazy day in the park watching clouds and soaking up the sun; they're just dreamy! And happy! And we're really sorry that we made fun of them a little bit, but it's been so long, and maybe at the time we thought they had it coming just a little bit, but we see now that we were wrong wrong wrong, and to make it up, ok all right we'll come see you in California. Via Pitchfork , and we kind of hate you for using the "omg" tag, but we're just going to steal that anyway, ok? ...

Lovable and at times frightening eccentric genius mad man Tom Waits announced tour dates Friday via a YouTube press conference. The "Glitter and Doom" tour (God bless you, Tom Waits, for the best tour name ever!) kicks off in Phoenix, AZ 06/18, and then passes through a whole mess of towns that, uh, we don't care so much to go to. Hopefully Mr. Waits will bring his sideshow in the vicinity of the West Coast, but, in the interim, we can't lie and say that we aren't intrigued at the idea of seeing Tom Waits in Tulsa, OK. But hey! At least we get Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ! Not a shabby consolation prize at all. GLITTER AND DOOM 2008 06-17 Phoenix, AZ - Orpheum 06-18 Phoenix, AZ - Orpheum 06-20 El Paso, TX - Plaza Theatre 06-22 Houston, TX - Jones Hall 06-23 Dallas, TX - Palladium 06-25 Tulsa, OK - Brady Theatre 06-26 St. Louis, MO - Fox Theatre 06-28 Columbus, OH - Ohio Theatre 06-29 Knoxville, TN - Civic Theatre 07-01 Jacksonville, FL - Moran Theatre 07-02 Mobil...

All photos 2008 Laura Musselman

All Photos 2008 Laura Musselman

For the past 31 years in Honolulu, the Brothers Cazimero have hosted an annual May Day variety show at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheatre (because May Day is Lei Day!). When living there, I had the privilege of attending twice, the last time being the 30th anniversary, and just after the sad passing of the legendary Don Ho. Both times were, at the risk of allowing my cynical mask slip, magical. The May Day show is great fun, and follows the format of an old time variety show -- there is an aura of glamour interspersed with a decidedly camp sensibility, with hula stars of past and present gracing the stage. Spirits are high, and the banter among the performers is priceless; at times it feels as though you've wandered into a family reunion, and are a long lost cousin -- instantly at home and enveloped in the warmth. It's a time to celebrate the spirit and culture that truly do make the islands such a special place. There's a song that plays before the Sunset On The Beach movies...