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

On March 18th, The Decemberists will give the debut live performance of their epic new song cycle The Hazards of Love when they headline NPR Music's SXSW showcase at Stubb's in Austin. To mark the occassion, Capitol Records (who will release the album on March 24) and Imeem are inviting fans to design the official poster for the showcase with a contest -- the winning design will be hand-picked by the band and contestants can enter on the Decemberists' Imeem page . The Decemberists will play The Hazards of Love, in sequence, in its entirety. Joining all five members of the band on stage will be Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, who lend leading vocals to the album. Opening bands are North Carolina trio The Avett Brothers, set to debut songs from its forthcoming album produced by Rick Rubin, and bluesy rockers Heartless Bastards, riding the success of its third record, The Mountain. The concert will begin at 10pm CST and will be str...

Touch and Go Records , that purveyor of indie rock based in the heartland of America, is closing up shop--or at least closing a few of the shop doors. Very soon--the exact date is still unknown--the Chicago label will stop issuing new albums, focusing instead on the distribution of its back catalog. Aversion Music News has more: The Chicago indie label, which launched in 1981, will scale back operations after its next batch of new releases hits stores, Billboard reports. The labels that piggybacked Touch and Go Distribution will also be forced to find new distributors. Label sources cite everyone's favorite handy excuse for everything, economic turbulence, as the source of the shutdown. For anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, the loss of T&G will be particularly poignant. Along with labels like Matador, K, Up, and RoughTrade, Touch and Go was a name indie kids could trust. Often when browsing the local used CD shop's plenitude, I would flip the plastic case over and loo...

Source: Aversion It could be a while before we hear from Nine Inch Nails again. Trent Reznor is looking to take Nine Inch Nails out on the road for one last time before putting the band's live incarnation on ice, citing the fact that he feels as if he's taken the band's show as far as he possibly can. I've been thinking for some time now it's time to make NIN disappear for a while," he said in a statement on the band's website. "Last year's 'Lights in the Sky' tour was something I'm quite proud of and seems like the culmination of what I could pull off in terms of an elaborate production. It was also quite difficult to pull off technically and physically night after night and left us all a bit dazed." He also kicked out the idea of tapping the perpetually breaking up/reuniting Jane's Addiction out on the road for the jaunt as payback and thanks for being part of the original Lollapalooza lineup in 1990, which was organized by J...

Another successful commercial holiday is here, and all the ads are instructing us to buy flowers, chocolates, jewelry, and other pieces of shit because obviously we don't know how to express ourselves without spending our hard-earned dough. Am I cynical? Yes. But I'm also a helpless, swooning, irrational romantic who falls for it every time. So if you hate Valentine's Day, but continue to leave yourself emotionally unguarded, then you'll like this anti-love pop number from Sam Bisbee and le Grand Magistry (Pas/Cal, Stars).Sam spends a lot of his time writing songs for other people (he has a publishing deal with Nettwerk and composes/arranges songs for film, TV and other artists), but celebrates the release of his own, fourth album, Son of a Math Teacher , this week. The album features guest appearances from Naess, Lucie Wainwright Roche, Mike Viola, and Liz Tormez. Download "Never Fall in Love".

". . . bank robbers, violence, sex and blood! Only with sock puppets instead of humans!" Sounds Like: you truly understand Don Quixote, the man--windmills and all. RIYL: James, American Football, Do Make Say Think, Sigur Ros, Appleseed Cast A Few Words: At a time when the bounty of new bands are immulating Brian Wilson (projecting harmonies and melodies about as symetrical as The Elephant Man), it's refreshng to hear something performed in a major key. And while they employ some of the same musical devices as Mogwai and jazzy, off-beat meanderings similar to The Sea and Cake, their tendency to shift course sets them apart from both. Mimas is neither loud-soft-loud nor ambient soothe pop, though they apply hues of both to their canvas. The result comprises complex layers of overlapping lyrics, guitars both distored and buoyant, shouts, and great, emotive trumpet blasts. Mimas are from Denmark. But this means as much as saying "Mogwai are form Glasgow" or ...

source: Digital Music News Live Nation and Ticketmaster released official details of their definitive merger agreement on Tuesday morning, a pact that could have serious implications for the music industry. In the blue-sky announcement, the parties noted that the merger would "improve live event attendance, supporting venues and a healthier industry," while also ensuring "greater access, transparency, and choice" for concertgoers worldwide. As the expected, the combined group will be called Live Nation Entertainment, a namesake potentially designed to shed baggage associated with Ticketmaster. The parties pointed to an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $2.5 billion, and operational savings of $40 million. In terms of deal mechanics, Ticketmaster (TKTM) shareholders will receive 1.384 shares of Live Nation (LYV) stock, and both camps will carry a 50-percent stake in the combined company. Read the full article

Sounds Like: ". . . what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." RIYL: Wilderness, Sully, afternoons spent looking pensive Press Release: Call it ambient post-doom. Call it alchemic psych-rock, only without all those annoying freeform guitar freakouts. Call it "pure spirits by ritual dismemberment." Either way, Black Math Horseman is Sera Timms (bass/vocals), Ian Barry (guitar) Bryan Tulao (guitar) and Sasha Popovic (drums). They are from Los Angeles. Their debut album, Wyllt, was recorded and produced by desert guru Scott Reeder (Kyuss, Unida). The rest is a discovery about to be made. Download "Deerslayer" from Black Math Horsemen's debut LP, Wylt , available 21 April.

Sounds Like: Walking away from a near-death experience in uber-dramatic slow motion. RIYL: Black Angels, Bardo Pond, flutes, oooos and aaaaahs Press Release: San Francisco's Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound is a soundtrack for strange days and futures bright and bleak. But there is also a crooked thread that runs backward through every Assemble Head record— the celestial trajectories of The Notorious Byrd Brothers and circa ‘70 Floyd; the dusty canyon stomps of Crazy Horse, slashing action pop of the savage young Who, Italian bastardizations of Lalo Schifrin cop movie scores, and the scuzz-bomb shrapnel of latter-day garage mongers like Mudhoney and Monoshock. The band’s third LP, When Sweet Sleep Returned , is propelled to some extent by that same glorious distillate. But it also finds the group speaking their own twisted tongue more assuredly than ever—marrying hazy Saturday moods, interstellar sonics and wrecking-ball swing to song and harmony in poems for California, lovers, gho...

Sounds Like: if you could hear a daydream. RIYL: Dirty Three, Do Make Say Think, Earth, Russian Circles Quick Review: From the press release : Like Bells is a predominately instrumental band, but avoids many of the pitfalls that are commonly found in the genre; such as over-reliance on the "loud / soft" dynamic, and the need for all songs to be of epic length and needlessly esoteric. Rather, this trio of Oberlin College / Conservatory students don't shy away from a catchy melody and songs of pop-song length...utilizing their instruments to their fullest (violin / viola, guitar, drums, cpu) to create songs and arrangements that are both beautifully complex and accessible. At times they approximate a melding of the Dirty Three, Sea and Cake, and Do Make Say Think---all the while retaining a youthful enthusiasm and an ear for the melody. o Make Say Think---all the while retaining a youthful enthusiasm and an ear for the melody. Download "Yeti" off the new S/T...

Imagine Neko Case and Mazzy Star on a road trip through the sparse American Southwest, and you're close to the sound of Marissa Nadler on her new single, "River of Dirt". Throw John Denver in the back of the truck and you're even closer. The blend of Nadler's subtle vocals and rolling guitar riffs lull us into a sense of acceptence: about what's behind us, about the distance we have yet to travel, about the fact that John Denver is strumming happily in our flatbed. . . "El Camino, take me home." Download Marissa Nadler's song "River of Dirt" here .

Sounds Like : You wandered into the flat of some hipster college kids who've stolen a black-and-white copier and have decided to revive the zine scene. RIYL: Sleater Kinney, The Chills, Elastica, cut-and-paste with left-handed scissors. Quick Review: Hot Cha Cha's EP, Rifle, I Knew You When You Were Just a Pistol , begins like many grrrrl rock indie punklettes begin, with big guitar, big drums, and tommy gun staccato vocals. Yet it's the direction they take the next three tracks that makes Hot Cha Cha worth watching. They sing in French. They sing in German. They're from the Midwest. Go figure. But their talent is most evident by the third song, "It's Hard to be a White Boy in 1992." Mirroring the grammatically jarring tense shift of the title, the song bounces from contemporary indie pop to meandering riffs more reminiscent of alt-rockers in the previous decade like Pavement and Yo La Tengo. Check out the video, and don't pass up a chance to see the...