Underworld pictures from Rolling Stone

Hype Monitor: Celeste, Jean on Jean, La Roux

The Band: Celeste The Buzz: Grim, grinding French metal band releases latest album for free, giving unlimited darkness and doom to all. Listen If: You consider Dillinger Escape Plan “soft rock.” Key Track: “Que Des Yeux Vides et Seches,” a knot of razor-wire guitars and seared-larynx vocals, the sound of an elevator ride to the underworld. The Band: Jean on Jean The Buzz: The inverse of Celeste: sweet, soft, female-fronted pop that blend shoegaze vocals with starry-eyed strumming. Listen If: You’re excited about the return of lo-fi, but wish some of the melodies were a bit stronger and a lot warmer. Key Track: “Cold Horse,” which sounds like it was rescued from the dusty archives of forgotten dreampoppers Lush. The Band: La Roux The Buzz: Dance dance revolution! Big beats and bright synths make for perky, catchy electropop. Listen If: You’re DJing a dance night in Berlin and you’ve run out of MGMT remixes Key Track: “In for the Kill,” where breathy female vocals float over morse code synths like cotton balls over a bed of nails.

Published: 2009-02-26 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Breaking

Grizzly Bear’s Tour Blog: Grilling Burgers for Radiohead and All Points West

All Points West festival had been getting tons of bad press about it being a dressed up Radiohead show, or overpriced, and aside from a crew member carelessly destroying Dan’s amp (the festival reimbursed us for it), I had a really great time there. The setting was gorgeous with the NYC skyline behind us. The grounds were clean. People seemed relatively sober thanks to a five-beer maximum policy and the shows and sound were on point. Highlights for me were watching pieces of Andrew Bird and CSS and the raucous party set by Girl Talk, complete with toilet paper guns (not very green of them, but we’ll just look past that). A special treat for me was getting to see Underworld whom I’ve loved for a good decade or so but never seen perform. They were quite the amazing band to come on before the main event of Radiohead, who played one of my favorite tracks “You and Whose Army.” During that song there was a great fish eye lens directly on Thom’s face while he played the piano that was edited and modulated across dozens of screens. Have I mentioned how insanely amazing their light show is? I was talking to some of the band about it and they said this is definitely their biggest production yet and they were really happy to hear how enamored we were with the lights (and music of course). Our own set at APW was surprisingly great. As I’ve mentioned before we aren’t exactly a festival band, and so when it was raining during the Mates of State who played right before us we all got a bit doomed about the prospect of playing to a wet crowd (having just done so in Montreal) but the sun cleared right before our set and a gorgeous dusk light came out and we plowed through our new songs to a really really great crowd. Probably one of the better festival experiences we’ve had. Of course I can’t not mention our hometown show the following night at the Williamsburg Hall of Music, which was truly incredible for us. We’ve never been the type of band to sell out a show in a few hours but t

Published: 2008-08-13 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Tom Waits Spins Yarns, Sings About Jesus at Tour Opener in Phoenix

“The world is not my home,” Tom Waits sang on the opening night of his highly anticipated U.S. tour. “I’m just passing through.” One place Waits has always made his own is the stage, so no surprise that last night’s looked like a junkyard at midnight: nebulously lit and hung in mist. Flanked by a menacing installation of horn speakers crackling out old-time phonograph music and surrounded by a graveyard of cigar-box banjoes, bullhorns and ramshackle guitars, Waits’ sextet took the stage at Phoenix’s Orpheum Theatre around 8:30 and powered into a lurching medley of “Lucinda” and “Aint Goin Down to the Well.” Set against his own towering silhouette, Waits was a drawn sketch of twisted limbs: heaving and panting like a stalled locomotive. Clutching the microphone with both hands as if it were the only thing keeping him up, he stomped his workman’s boots so hard the floorboards coughed up thick clouds of dust into the spotlight around his legs. The 25 songs the band played were fever dreams from an old, weird America whose greatest trick has been convincing the world it’s been eradicated by modern life: an underworld of “Rain Dogs,” “Eyeball Kids” and “Black Market Babies”; of “Trampled Roses” and “Christmas Cards from Hookers in Minneapolis.” “Jesus Gonna Be Here” Waits coughed, but “God’s Away on Business.” Waits’ subjects are down and out American grotesques, and he spent the better part of his performance playing the demented preacher to that set: slightly oversized suit and bowler hat, arms spread out to their length, palms down, wide hands quavering or waggling an index finger. “Does life seem nasty, brutish and short?” he sang. “Come on up to the house.” Sonically, Waits still sings like the devil he’s slated to play in the new Terry Gilliam flick, and h

Published: 2008-06-18 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows