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Picture: Exclusive: Stream the Entire Les Savy Fav Live Album “After the Balls Drop”

Fricke’s Picks: Porcupine Tree, the Future Kings of England and the Raspberries

The Art of Nightmares Porcupine Tree – the long-running British progressive-rock band founded and commanded by singer-guitarist-composer Steven Wilson – are rare in their field: obsessed not with fantasy but the death of it, particularly in children. At a recent head-trip gig at New York’s Beacon Theatre, films of sickly-white preteen zombies – hypnotized by computer screens, gulping medication, brandishing handguns – were projected on a screen behind Wilson during his tangled distortion-bomb riffing in the long title track of the recent album, Fear of a Blank Planet (Atlantic), and the record’s even longer centerpiece nightmare, “Anesthetize.” A schoolgirl ran amok in what looked like a ruined psych ward during the convulsive title instrumental from the group’s new EP, Nil Recurring (Transmission). Wilson started Porcupine Tree in 1987 as a home-studio experiment that has since evolved, live and on an extensive series of records, into an aggressively modern merger of Rush’s arena art rock, U.K. prog classicism – especially Pink Floyd’s eulogies to madness and King Crimson’s angular majesty – and the postgrunge vengeance of Tool. There are no dragons evident on Fear of a Blank Planet or Nil Returning. But there are plenty of demons. And King Crimson guitarist-sage Robert Fripp plays on both records, an impeccable seal of approval. New Royal Freaks Witches and fiends run riot through the lyrics and instrumental vapors of the six extended tracks on The Fate of Old Mother Orvis (Backwater), by the Future Kings of England. The audaciously named British band’s mix of art rock and freak folk is also rife with other specters – the pastoral Floyd, ’72 Genesis, the echosoup psychedelia of Amon Düül II – whipped together with an ardor that sounds like yesterday and tomorrow at once. Seventies Rock Candy Hard and sweet, the Raspberries were never the second coming of the Beatles. They were, in the early Seventies, and still are – based on a show I just saw by the original li

Published: 2007-11-08
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Fricke's Picks

Single Minded: Jack White Duets With Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Lily Allen, Of Montreal and More

Every Tuesday Single Minded highlights new tracks hitting stores (or the Web) this week. On Fridays, come back for rarities, remixes, mash-ups and more. Jack White and Bob Dylan, “Meet Me in the Morning” [Live Duet] It’s genuinely difficult to figure out who this duet benefits more. It’s like God doing a duet with PJ Harvey in an all-you-can-eat burrito bar while The Big Lebowski is playing in the background. Lily Allen, “Don’t Get me Wrong” [Pretenders Cover] Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: young British female singer crosses paths with uber-producer Mark Ronson, crafts an album that’s championed by blogs, becomes tabloid sensation and slowly begins exhibiting erratic behavior. Instead of flaming out in a series of increasingly embarrassing public scuffs involving marital scratching and horse pills, this one toughs it out, stays the course and eventually turns in a charming little cover of a Pretenders song. Oh, America. Always hitching your horse to the wrong cart. Of Montreal, “Friends of Mine” [Zombies Cover] Athens costume-pop band drag a Zombies chestnut into the big, dark Romper Room of the soul. For everyone who ever wondered what a pop song would sound like if it was made out of Nerf. Elvis Costello, “Beautiful” [Christina Aguilera Cover] This version features some kind of clanging electro-percussion and lunar lounge xylophones. Also known as the “Dad, stop embarrassing me!” mix. Wale, “Good Girl” [Cousin Cole Remix] It’s obviously a little ridiculous to post a remix of a song by a semi-obscure D.C. rapper, but we’re still living in the ideal universe, remember? The one where Lily Allen beats Amy Winehouse. In that one, Wale is huge and Shop Boyz are marginal regional celebrities. So enjoy this remix of his number-one single. [Photo: Jim Dyson/Getty Images; Sean Gardner/Getty Images]

Published: 2007-09-29
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Single Minded

Picture: You Me At Six turn into zombies!

DragonForce guitarist: "I'm not a Nazi!"

Sam Totman, guitarist with this week's Kerrang! cover stars has spoken out against his old band, Demoniac White Power lyrics. The New Zealand-based black metal outfit achieved a certain amount of notoriety in the '90s when a song entitled Hatred Is Purity appeared on their second album, 1996's Stormblade. The song featured lyrics such as 'Aliens invade this place, white man stand up for your race...' and 'So much anger but so much pride, I want to see them all dying', White Power lyrics which sat awkwardly with the tales of bloodthirsty demons, zombies, witches and warriors elsewhere on the album. "Everyone in Demoniac used to write their own songs, and one guy wrote lyrics for about three songs which were kinda White Power Nazi lyrics," Totman told Kerrang! magazine. "It wasn't really serious. We thought singing about Satan and heavy metal was funny and he liked singing about that because that's what he was into at the time. I don't think he's into it now." But when people read those lyrics, they might think it's something you endorsed, given that you stood on a stage beside him. "Yeah maybe. I actually listened to lots of Nazi bands, not so much now, but like, I don't really think that listening to a Nazi band is any different to watching, say, a horror movie: just because you watch a horror movie doesn't mean you wanna go and murder people and just because you listen to a Nazi band doesn't mean that you wanna go and kill black people either. If you listen to Cannibal Corpse it doesn't mean you wanna go and chop up babies either. If it's good music..." You don't think that people might find those kind of lyrics offensive on a different level than, say, an Evil Dead movie? "Well yeah, it's offensive, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to it. We probably sold about 10 copies of that record, I don't think I'm gonna be on Ophrah's show trying to say 'Oh sorry, I'm not a Nazi really'."

Published: 2008-09-12
Provider: Kerrang!