It began with a benign four-minute ferry ride through calm waters to a little-trafficked landmass in the Upper New York Bay, but Saturday night at The Beach on Governors Island proved to be anything but gentle.
Mark Hoppus has heard all the talk about the Blink-182 album not coming out until 2011, and he’s determined not to let that happen.
Last year the Brooklyn-based quartet Grizzly Bear went on the road for a two-week East Coast tour as the opening act for Radiohead. This time around, the indie rock band is aiming just as high — hoping to arrange a collaboration with none other than rapper Snoop Dogg. Grizzly Bear singer-songwriter Ed Droste “has actually been using Twitter to stalk Snoop,” said the group’s Daniel Rossen, a singer-songwriter and guitarist. “We’re both going to be at Bonnaroo, the Tennessee music festival, and although there will be a bunch of people there and the chances of us actually seeing Snoop are… Read more »
PARIS — Alternative act MGMT has beef with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “No time to think of consequences/Take only what you need from it,” sings American psychedelic indie rock band MGMT in its popular anthem “Kids.” This was exactly what French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party did when it used the song without the band’s permission. Now the ruling UMP party, which faced the threat of a lawsuit, has agreed to pay a financial compensation to the band, MGMT’s French lawyer said on Tuesday. Asked if the settlement fee amounted to 30,000 euros ($39,050), a sum cited by France Info… Read more »
When the Silversun Pickups were writing “Swoon,” the follow-up to their breakout “Carnavas” album, they were given access to parts of the universe where mere mortals dare not tread. And they soaked in them. “We were on jets that landed on hovercrafts that rolled us onto Jacuzzi-shaped planes,” frontman Brian Aubert laughed. “And on one Jacuzzi plane, there was a submarine, and that was the VIP, and that was going crazy. And that’s where we wrote the album. We wrote “Swoon” on the backs of hookers. In crayon.” He’s kidding. But there’s no denying that the past few years have… Read more »
The Fray just demoted the Boss. One week after Bruce Springsteen scored the first No. 1 debut of the year, the Denver rockers displaced him with their eponymous sophomore release. The Fray sold 179,000 for the week ended Sunday, per Nielsen SoundScan to 102,000 for Springsteen’s Working on a Dream at No. 2. The Fray’s breakthrough debut, How to Save a Life, never cracked the Top 10, but the success of singles like “Over My Head (Cable Car)” and the title track pushed sales of the 2005 release north of 2 million. The Fray leads at radio with “You Found… Read more »
DELETED SCENES HAVE been working on their debut album, “Birdseed Shirt,” for a long time – at least in indie-rock years. Having recorded the basic tracks at Magpie Cage studio in Baltimore in September 2007, the D.C.-born quartet spent roughly 10 months mixing, tweaking and re-tweaking the album. In that time, three members of Deleted Scenes relocated to Brooklyn and two of them have come a few hairs away from completing graduate degrees. Luckily, “Birdseed Shirt” was worth the group’s relative struggle to finish it. The songs Deleted Scenes recently posted to their MySpace page are surprisingly ambitious – delicately… Read more »
Indie rock band Death Cab For Cutie claimed the No. 1 spot on the U.S. pop album charts for the first time in its decade-long career on Wednesday, while a hits package from Frank Sinatra opened at No. 2. “Narrow Stairs,” the band’s second album for Atlantic Records, sold 144,000 copies during the week ended May 18, according to Nielsen Soundscan. Death Cab’s previous album, 2005’s “Plans,” debuted at No. 4 with 90,000 copies and spent 50 weeks on the chart. The Sinatra collection “Nothing But the Best” (Reprise) followed with 99,000. It’s been nearly 15 years since Old Blue… Read more »
Beck’s new album is shaping up to be a game of Cat and Mouse. The Grammy-winning alt-rocker plans to issue his eighth major-label studio album this summer, an as-yet-untitled 10-song set produced by Gnarls Barkley board whiz Danger Mouse and reportedly featuring a guest appearance by indie rocker Cat Power. The new material clocks in at a concise 30 minutes and is the follow-up to 2006’s The Information, which peaked at No. 7 and sold 380,000 copies. Beck touted the project on his website, but neither he nor Interscope have announced a specific street date, leading to speculation that it… Read more »
Harp magazine, which folded last month, is at least the third music magazine to cease publishing in 2008, joining alt-country title No Depression and indie rock mag Resonance in the dead pool. For a certain section of the indie world focused on a more mature, college-educated demographic, the loss of Harp and No Depression hit especially hard. “Those two outlets really spoke to our consumer,” says John Biondolillo, general manager at Dave Matthews’ ATO Records, which handles such critical darlings as singer/songwriters Patty Griffin and David Gray. Josh Wittman, group marketing director at Redeye Distribution and Yep Roc Records, home… Read more »
