P.O.D. (Payable On Dead) Pictures

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Picture: P.O.D. to Release New Album with Original Axeman

Coachella Day One: The Breeders, Tegan and Sara, Black Kids and More

While most attendees were still smuggling their stashes past security at the front gates on Coachella’s Day One, math-rock outfit Battles had a large, vocal crowd enraptured at the Gobi tent with their pounding single “Atlas.” Battles are more concerned with complex rhythms than melody, and with a pumped festival crowd feeding off their energy, the band effortlessly locked into curious, mind-blowing grooves, turning what can come off on record as slightly joyless exercises in syncopated songwriting into something spectacular and energetic, like a dancey, mutant Rage Against the Machine. A tent away, the Black Kids were proving that they’re rapidly growing into the band their early buzz promised they would become. The Jacksonville, Florida five-piece’s Motown-garage jangle came off as robust and charming in the mid-afternoon heat. The band got the crowd moving to single “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You,” a bit of poppy disco-rock that brings out the Robert Smith in frontman Reggie Young’s yelpy voice, and hit their peak on “Look at Me When I Rock With You” as Youngblood took a break from ripping out smooth-toned guitar flourishes to sling his instrument off his shoulder and boogie. Back at the Gobi tent, Dan Deacon took the stage — or rather, the floor just in front of it — and smashed away at his keyboard as walls of synth noise kept the kids jumping around to no particular rhythm, while at the Outdoor Theatre, Les Savy Fav frontman Tim Harrington scaled the scaffolding and threatened to jump, to the delight of his fans and dismay of security (he didn’t make the leap). Click here for photos from Day One of Coachella Meanwhile a modest (and slightly older) crowd gathered at the main stage to watch the Breeders play “some songs from Pod, some songs from Last Splash, Title TK and Mountain Battles,” as Kelley Deal put it. “I can feel it,” Kim Deal intoned as the band kicked into “Overglazed,” the triumphantly droning opening

Published: 2008-04-26
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News, Coachella

Picture: "When Angels and Serpents Dance" by P.O.D.

SXSW Day Four Wrap-Up: Jim James, The Breeders, She & Him, Robyn

Follow all of Rolling Stone’s ongoing SXSW coverage — photos, video, interviews and live reports — here. You could see the crowds of 6th Street in the distance from the window of Jim James‘ solo gig, but that was as close as the Mardi Gras atmosphere of SXSW encroached to this special show on the festival’s final night. Inside the music hall of St. David’s Episcopal Church, it was calm as a chamber music recital as the My Morning Jacket frontman performed gorgeous acoustic versions of his band’s most spiritual songs. He put aside his guitar and placed a small keyboard on his lap for the gentle “What a Wonderful Man” from Z, hitting high soulful notes that matched the God-like surroundings. Later he was joined by MMJ guitarist Carl Broemel for a stunning version of “Gideon.” The audience, which had been sitting quietly as church mice for the entire show, exploded into a standing ovation when it was over. Over at Waterloo Park, the Breeders kicked off their set with the droney, pounding “Overglazed” and “Bang On” from their forthcoming album Mountain Battles. The crowd stayed quietly reverent as the Deal sisters debuted some of the more low-key tracks from their first album in seven years (and its most upbeat track, “Walk It Off”), but perked up for their cover of the Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” (off their debut Pod) and Amps tunes like surfy “Tip City” and “Pacer” and went nuts when Kim Deal — who never stopped grinning — strummed her guitar with her thumb for Last Splash’s “No Aloha” and grabbed an acoustic guitar with an electric pick-up for “Cannonball,” bending over to squall into a microphone equipped with a fuzzy filter. Earlier in the afternoon, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s She & Him played their fourth-ever show in the garden of the French Legation Museum.

Published: 2008-03-16
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News, SXSW