4 Strings Pictures

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

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

Hype Monitor: Amazing Baby (With “Bayonets” Download), France Has the Bomb and P.O.S.

The Band: Amazing Baby The Buzz: Witness the reinvention of glam rock: sighed vocals, sizzling riffs and sky-high choruses, all delivered with the perfect amount of prissiness. Listen If: You’ve seen Velvet Goldmine more than twice, or always wished Marc Bolan sang for Roxy Music. Key Track: “Bayonets,” where disco strings get tangled up in rock guitars to sublime results. Download it for free right here: • “Bayonets” [right click and select “save as”] The Band: France Has the Bomb The Buzz: The new sound of Minneapolis! Rocketing tempos, right-angle guitars and ragged-throated vocals. Listen If: What matters to you is the melody, not the fidelity. Key Track: “Grim Trigger,” which strolls along on a dapper bassline and contains all the fine pout of early ’90s emo — the good kind. The Artist: P.O.S. The Buzz: The other new sound of Minneapolis! Speed-of-light rhyming runs wild over fantastically dusky production, pulling the classic sound of hip-hop forcefully into the future. Listen If: Your biggest problem with Das EFX and Bone Thugs N Harmony is that they don’t rhyme fast enough. Key Track: Explosive first single “Drumroll,” where P.O.S. narrates the apocalypse over a beat that sounds like 400 horses having seizures.

Published: 2009-02-19 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Breaking

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

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

“The Beatles: Rock Band” Reveals Vintage Guitars, Opens Pre-Order

The makers of The Beatles: Rock Band have revealed the two vintage replica guitars that will be available for purchase when the game hits stores September 9th, 2009: John Lennon’s Rickenbacker 325 and George Harrison’s Gretsch Duo Jet. According to an official press release, the plastic six-strings will be available as “standalone music peripheral controllers,” meaning they won’t be included as part of the Special Edition package that features the vintage bass, drums and microphone. The guitars

Published: 2009-05-05 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

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 counterpa

Published: 2007-05-31 Provider: Rolling Stone

Secret, Profane & Sugarcane by Elvis Costello

T Bone Burnett returns as producer for Elvis Costello's latest album, featuring an acoustic strings band. [Country]

Published: 2009-06-03 Provider: Metacritic

Jonas Brothers Talk World Tour, Fourth Album and TV Show

Photo: West/WireImage With the Jonas Brothers on the verge of embarking on their first world tour, the trio recently held a conference call to discuss their new concert arrangement, their Monkees-inspired JONAS television show and their new June album. “The tour will be in-the-round,” Nick Jonas tells Rock Daily about the arena shows that will plant the band at center court. “We’ve always talked about wanting to do a tour like that, and this has been our first opportunity. It’s a way for us to really connect with our fans.” The tour will kick off this Sunday, March 22, with a show in the Bahamas, after which the JoBros will invade South America, before returning to North America and then heading to Europe. In our Spring Music Preview, Nick Jonas explained to Rolling Stone the origins of the title of their fourth album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, due out June 15th. “Lines are something that someone feeds you, vines are the things that get in the way, and trying times—well, that’s obvious,” Nick said. (Despite these “trying times,” top-tier JoBros ticket prices have leapt to $89.50 from $49.50 last year.) Nick hinted at his current influences, mentioning Elvis Costello six times, and Prince four, during the call. “This new album for us I wouldn’t say it’s a big jump but it definitely is a progression in our music and a growth for us. We’re very excited about this new album,” Joe Jonas said. “It feels like just a good growth in our music and it has a lot of more kind of horns in the record and a lot more strings. Also there’s more to the music rather than just a typical kind of relationship song.” For much more on the Jonas’ new album—and upcoming LPs from Dave Matthews Band, Eminem, the Flaming Lips and many more—check out our Spring Album Preview: Spring Music Preview: Inside 45 of the Year’s Biggest Albums

Published: 2009-03-20 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

The Decemberists Premiere Perfectly Over-the-Top “The Hazards of Love” at SXSW

Three weeks before the Decemberists premiered their new album, The Hazards of Love, at SXSW, the band’s singer-songwriter Colin Meloy told me that they had not rehearsed the record in its entirety yet. In that interview, Meloy also marveled on how the Who used to perform all of their rock opera, Tommy, with just guitar, bass, vocals and drums. At Stubb’s last night, the Decemberists came armed to the teeth for their album’s live premiere, broadcast nationwide by NPR. Guitarist Chris Funk had a full armory of strings, including pedal steel guitar and bouzouki. There were helpmates: singer-instrumentalists Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond. And there were five drum kits ready for banging in the percussion-and-chant orgy “The Bake Song” — a number which sounded especially big and right in the open-air venue. (See live shots of the Decemberists and more in our SXSW gallery.) Originally conceived by Meloy as a Broadway musical, The Hazards of Love is the consummation of his recent obsession with the antique melodies, arcane language and rock energy of the British folk revival of the 1960s and ’70s. Stark channeled Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior in the Yorkshire-country waltz “Isn’t It a Lovely Night,” a duet with Meloy. But Meloy has also discovered and let loose his inner progressive-metal head. The medley of “The Waiting Comes in Waves” and “Repaid” was an extended bomb of Jenny Conlee’s foreboding Renaissance harpsichord, the fourth Led Zeppelin album and, in Worden’s lusty vocal, psychedelic-R&B vengeance. Actually, in playing the whole album like a flesh-and-blood jukebox — with none of the charming budget theatricals of their Picaresque shows — the Decemberists sold the commercial savvy in Meloy’s songs like a classic rock band. In the ’70s, the Deep Purple-style muscle of “The Queen’s Rebuke/The Crossing” and the arena-climax vocal chorus in “The Waiting Comes in Waves” would have been FM-radio gold. Instead, 30 years later, th

Published: 2009-03-19 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Festivals, Videos, SXSW

Breaking: Lisa Hannigan

Who: Lisa Hannigan, an Irish folk singer who spent seven years backing Damien Rice before she was abruptly fired. Hannigan landed an opening slot on Jason Mraz’s tour last fall and launched her solo career. Sounds Like: Hannigan’s gentle, airy voice draws listeners into the quaint and cozy tunes on her debut disc, Sea Sew. “I Don’t Know” incorporates strings and horns into a charming anthem for hopeless romantics everywhere while “Pistachio” finds Hannigan comparing love to a nut over delicate piano (”I always trick you when you’re feeling low/When you feel like your flavor has gone the way of a pre-shelled pistachio”). Vital Stats: • Hannigan always knew she wanted to be a singer, but almost didn’t take the rock-star route. When she was 13, her mom brought home an opera compilation featuring renowned soprano Maria Callas singing “The Bell Song” from the French Opera Lakmé. “It was a crazy coloratura, a really technical song — and I could not stop listening to it,” Hannigan says. Inspired, she bought as many Callas recordings as she could. “I lost myself in it for about three years, then at the end of it realized that wasn’t my voice at all and I should really shut up,” she laughs. • Hannigan’s distinctively soft voice was almost her downfall. “I loved taking singing lessons each week in high school, but I never got the part in the school play because I was so quiet!” she says, but adds that once she graduated and added a microphone to her performance “things changed a lot.” • The small music community in Dublin helped Hannigan find her past and present bandmates: Hannigan met Damien Rice while she was in college, and her current band is made up of both musicians who used to tour with Rice, and others who Hannigan knew from around town. Hannigan’s roommate also doubles as her tour manager. “We do feel like a family on the road, like [The Sound of Music’s] von Trapps — only with less harmonies and lederhosen,” she jokes. Hear It Now: Sea Sew hit stores last mon

Published: 2009-03-11 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Videos, Breaking

OK Go to Preview Dancey, Prince-Inspired Summer LP on March Tour

Photo: Rose/WireImage Starting March 6th, OK Go are hitting the road to preview songs from their next album, the follow-up to 2005’s Oh No. On this upcoming third full-length, the band is looking to some unlikely influences: Aretha Franklin, Al Green and Prince. “I was in a heavy classic-soul/Purple Rain phase — that’s why there’s not that many guitars on the album,” says frontman Damian Kulash of the LP, due out this summer. “Those songs make guitars feel redundant and sledgehammer-ish. If you need a loud, heavy guitar to make your song rock, there’s a problem with your song.” Rather than become pigeonholed as power-popping treadmill rockers (thanks to their viral hit “Here It Goes Again”), the band traded their guitars for timpani, trombones and synthy strings to churn out orchestral, chamber-pop style tunes that Kulash says juxtapose club-ready beats and angsty lyrics. “It’s like Purple Rain through broken speakers,” he explains. “Maybe that’s a little unfair — obviously we’re not fucking geniuses — but it’s dancey and anthemic and expansive.” Recorded with Flaming Lips’ producer Dave Fridmann, the tentatively titled Help Is On the Way focuses on metaphorical plotlines: “In the Glass” ponders the consequences of trading places with one’s reflection (”not a la ‘Man in the Mirror,’ ” Kulash says) and “Shooting the Moon” is written from the point of view of an astronaut who’s involved in a conspiracy and doesn’t know what to do. “The songs are sort of sad,” says Kulash. “But instead of it being, like, ‘This is what happened to me in real life,’ the emotions are spelled out in a more surreal way.” The band will road-test the tracks when it launches that 13-date U.S. tour in March. Until then, they’re soaking in the scenery around Fridmann’s studio, a converted Amish barn in upstate New York. “It’s the middle of nowhere, but it’s not exactly idyllic,” says Kulash, whose car has been chased by hunting dogs. “When we got here, we thought, ‘Oh, we’ll be taking walks th

Published: 2009-02-18 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News