The Led Zeppelin Tour: A Call to Arms!

Now the pleading begins. A Led Zeppelin superfan left this message on our voicemail demanding in colorful fashion that we pull some strings to get Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to tour: Random caller, we heed your cry. Now it’s your turn, readers: Post your most compelling argument as to why Led Zep should take their show on the road right here. All comments will be directly forwarded to the band’s management. Related Stories: Led Zeppelin: The Full Report From David Fricke Led Zeppelin Returns: Photos From the Reunion Show and More Led Zeppelin Roundup: Backstage and Beyond

Published: 2007-12-14 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Led Zeppelin Reunion

Kanye Inspired By Portishead

KANYE WEST was inspired to add orchestral horns and strings to his sound by British 'trip-hop' band PORTISHEAD. The rap star reveals he loved the loo

Published: 2007-09-16 Provider: Contact Music

Silverchair - Young Modern

Artist: Silverchair Review: In the mid-nineties, the Australian trio Silverchair was a true boy band - very young men playing strong, original hard-rock songs on their own instruments. Drummer Ben Gillies, bassist Chris Joannou and singer-guitarist-songwriter Daniel Johns are still young (in their late twenties). They are also aggressively modern in the long reach of Young Modern, their first studio album in five years, from the balled-fist fuzz of "Mind Reader" to the sumptuous glam of "Strange Behaviour" (with strings... Rating: 4 Stars

Published: 2007-08-15 Provider: Rolling Stone

Voxtrot - Voxtrot

Artist: Voxtrot Review: Over the past two years, this Austin, Texas, quintet built significant blog buzz with a couple of EPs and some hot South by Southwest shows. The band's debut LP offers more manna for indie kids: tuneful stuff with a fluid, detailed guitar sound and daubs of Eighties Brit pop and Leonard Cohen. Outfitted with Ramesh Srivastava's sweet melodies, cuts like the sorta swishy piano-and-strings-laden "Steven" are well-manicured pop -- slightly more openhearted counterparts to the Shins' hyp... Rating: 3 Stars

Published: 2007-05-31 Provider: Rolling Stone

Fricke’s Picks: Boredoms

Japanese trance-rock band Boredoms were far fewer in number for their recent in-the-round show at New York’s Terminal 5 — three drummers, an onstage sound processor and shamanistic singer-loops guru Yamantaka Eye — compared to the seventy-seven-member army that played at the group’s outdoor drum-prayer spectacle in Brooklyn last July. But in fighting trim in an enclosed space, Boredoms still made a music as big and bright as a high-noon sky: long, rolling polyrhythms played by what sounded like a trio of Keith Moons, Eye’s volleys of sampled whoop and animal howl, and his furious hammering on the Sevena, a huge vertical wedge of seven guitar necks in various tunings. When he pounded on all of the strings at once, with a javelinlike pole, it was like the Lord hitting power chords: massive bursts of lush, blurred harmonics. Eye did not have the Sevena at the 2004 Christmas Eve concert featured on Boredoms’ latest U.S. release, Super Roots #9 (Thrill Jockey), but something even closer to godliness: a twenty-four-voice choir, electronically manipulated in rhythmic tides of group whisper and full-tilt gothic-church hosanna. The entire record is a single forty-minute piece. But like the best Christmas presents, it keeps on giving. [Photo: Jason Bergman]

Published: 2008-04-24 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Fricke's Picks

"Camping Shaabi" by Think of One

If eccentric world music from Antwerp, Belgium is what you are looking for, then halt your search with Think Of One's Camping Shaabi. To say that this collaborative collective is a musical anomaly would be a bit of an understatement, since these musicians travel to different countries to record with various Moroccan and Brazilian musicians. That’s about as unorthodox as it gets, and it sure makes for unpredictable, non-structured, and wholly adventurous music. While Think Of One's free-spirited approach to music is to be commended, you really have to be a fan of this type of music in order to appreciate the scope and the breadth of what the band is doing, or songs like "J'Etais Jetee" will sail clean over your head and feel esoteric. Camping Shaabi clearly isn’t designed for the average or the casual music listener, but for one who wants to be challenged by beats, strings, and arrangements that have origin in other cultures and parts of the world and for those who like amalgams of

Published: 2008-04-01 Provider: Artist Direct

"Unbreakable" by Backstreet Boys

What becomes of the now-defunct boy band? Aborted trips into space, reality TV humiliations, or, for the Backstreet Boys, that difficult transition from boy-band to man-band. Trading lewd dance moves for staring moodily into the middle distance, their sixth studio album sees the "vocal harmony group" switching fast beats for ballads. Lots of ballads. There's something dignified in this sedentary path, at least, and backed by expert arrangements, the band know how to milk every moment of emotion from their shattered hearts. With lashings of sincerity and sweeping crescendos, the collection is one long parade of metaphoric misery: rain pours down, doors close and card houses stand fast in the midst of hurricanes. Lead single "Inconsolable," full of strings and tormented harmonies, delivers a mid-tempo lament typical of the collection, but it's the scaled-back melodies on "Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon" that are most touching—the minimal chorus drifting down the

Published: 2007-11-07 Provider: Artist Direct

"La Cucaracha" by Ween

Perhaps the eleventh full-length album from Gene and Dean Ween, their first in four years, is called La Cucaracha ("the cockroach," in Spanish) to reflect the band's surprising longevity. It's astonishing that any group can spend 23 years getting to do exactly what they want to, and while Ween's scattershot approach means that not all of the people will like their material all of the time, it is oddly inspiring in its consistent inconsistency. Unlike some of Ween's albums, there's no concept running the show on La Cucaracha. It's just a grab-bag of this and that, some of which works and some of which doesn't. "Learnin' to Love," a stompy, twangy bit of nonsense, harks back to 12 Golden Country Greats, while "Lullaby," a piano-driven ballad touched with strings, could be their tribute to Randy Newman. "Your Party," for which the duo managed to snag David Sanborn on sax, is yacht rock that moves beyond parody into actually embodying the genre.

Published: 2007-10-24 Provider: Artist Direct

"Our Ill Wills" by Shout Out Louds

Indie-pop seems to have become the unofficial national genre of Sweden. Anchored by the freewheeling, childlike approach of I'm From Barcelona and the breakout popularity of Peter Bjorn and John, twee-pop is becoming just as common as Ikea. Following in line with their Scandinavian peers—and the trajectory of their excellent 2005 debut Howl Howl Gaff Gaff—Shout Out Louds' second offering, Our Ill Wills, is a scrapbook 12 songs deep of insecurities, lost nights and lost loves. 1980s British mope-pop is an undeniable influence, as the band cribs The Smiths' juxtaposition of bouncy, jilting guitars with sardonic and self-deprecating lyrics and the vocal stylings of The Cure's Robert Smith. But Shout Out Louds aren't short on creativity of their own. "Tonight I Have To Leave It" kicks off the record (and sets the bar high) with a Johnny Marr-style chord progression fused with staccato percussion and bursts of waltzing strings that undulate

Published: 2007-09-13 Provider: Artist Direct

"Mentor Tormentor" by Earlimart

It's hard to find fault with SoCal quasi-duo Earlimart: Aaron Espinoza and partner Ariana Murray's songwriting is workmanlike, and Espinoza's delivery is sincere—his sound the very definition restrained, folky indie rock. And yet, on Mentor Tormentor, Earlimart's first album since 2004's Treble & Tremble, the band can't seem to move beyond its well-worn sound. The mild deviations that are present on Tormentor are predictable (pumped-up production flourishes, strings, a choir), and the songs, while often catchy, are so in line with their genre as to barely make an impression. Album opener "Fakey Fake" matches a menacing acoustic guitar riff to a sudden explosion at the halfway point: handclaps, feedback and extra drum kits kick in, but Espinoza's Elliott Smith-lite whisper and unremarkable lyrics ("I was the fake and you were the fool / We'll never be clean, you know what I mean") just don't carry the charisma to justify the bombast. The

Published: 2007-08-15 Provider: Artist Direct

Wilson/McCartney Duet Rumor Debunked: No London Collaboration

A representative for Brian Wilson sets the record straight regarding the rumor that Paul McCartney will join Brian Wilson onstage at London’s Royal Festival Hall to perform a track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “There has never even been a discussion about Paul and Brian performing together at RFH ever! Brian has been working hard on his commissioned piece and is teaching his amazing band along with the Stockholm Strings ‘n Horns the parts. He is doing his favorite song off the Sgt. Pepper album along with other Beach Boys songs that he’s never performed live before but that’s it.”

Published: 2007-08-07 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Smoking Section: Modest Mouse, Zooey Deschanel, Kings of Leon

Modest Mouse’s ‘07 disc, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, is so awesome that we were inspired to dial up frontman Isaac Brock and find out what’s on tap. “My big priority is to finish up this Modest Mouse EP,” he reports, adding that tunes like “The Whale Song,” “Satellite Skin” and a track with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (”The horns are frickin’ rad!”) are all repolished outtakes from MM’s last two discs. Also, Brock has been fishing with the Shins‘ James Mercer (”I haven’t caught a thing”), is building a workshop in his basement (”I need a nice bed frame”) and will sing with Frank Black and the Catholics on a re-creation of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘63 debut, Trouble Is a Lonesome Town. Finally, Brock told us that he and Johnny Marr will start writing new tunes in March and that in the spring, MM will hit the road with R.E.M. Says Brock, “I’m not really good at taking it easy.” * * * * “If I cloned myself many times over, started a choir, and that choir sang music influenced by midcentury pop — with a lot of great musicians.” That’s how actress Zooey Deschanel describes Version One, her first album, on which she collaborated with the brilliant M. Ward. The duo, a.k.a. She and Him, first duetted on a cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “When I Get to the Border” while working on the soundtrack to her 2007 film The Go-Getter. “I sent him some of my home demos, and he suggested we record them with some incredible musicians that he knew in Portland [Oregon],” Deschanel tells the S.S. With a band augmented by piano (played by Deschanel), strings and pedal steel, her jazzy lilt soars over cuts like “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today” and “This Is Not a Test.” “I have been writing music since I was a little girl, but the record features songs writt

Published: 2008-02-05 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock Daily