Germany’s Lali Puna, featuring Markus Acher of The Notwist (new record any time soon?  hello?), has joined the line-up for Iceland’s Icelandic Airwaves festival, joining Bloc Party, !!!, Mum, Bonde de Role, and Of Montreal on the bill, which takes place on October 17-21 in Reykjavik. Enter to win a trip to the festival here.

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French duo Justice has announced a brief US tour to support its debut full-length. When the southernmost date on the East coast is in Philadelphia, then South Carolina has less than no shot in hell.

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Uhh, not sure what to make of this video from Damon Albarn’s all-star band. Directed by Steven Pook, it follows excerpts from a Sufi ceremony.

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A Chinese punk band obsessed with Johnny Thunders sounds pretty fucking bad ass to me. Joyside channels the seedy underbelly of American punk rock through the lens of filmmaker Kevin Fritz. The band drinks itself senseless as it walks Fritz through its societal apathy, binge drinking, and rudimentary punk rock. And with songs like “I Don’t Care [...]

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This year’s CMJ Music Marathon will premiere Anton Corbijn’s Joy Division biopic, Control, at the Film Forum in New York City on October 10. This is the first chance to see the film, which we are guilty of hyping on more than one occasion, on US soil.

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Naming your band after something as transient as youth comes back to bite you if you try to stick around too long. And The Beastie Boys have certainly pushed the limits of absurdity, carrying their moniker into their respective 40’s. It’s beyond ridiculous when you think that these guys came out of the box flanked [...]

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If anything, Ryan Adams knows how to alienate everyone around him. He’s a petulant and defensive interviewee, a humorless spoiled brat on stage, and an indulgent virtuoso on record. It’s amazing anyone even pays attention to him anymore. I suppose his antics work to keep his name in print, but none of it helps his [...]

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Ride may have stumbled into some ill-advised musical tangents late in its career (on both Carnival of Light and the utterly disastrous Tarantula), but those early Creation singles are hard to top, as this video for “Chelsea Girl” attests.

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AntiMusic is reporting that Fugazi is reuniting for a show on September 3, 2007 at Fort Reno Park in Washington, DC, but Fugazi never officially broke up. The band has always referred to its lack of activity as a hiatus of undetermined length. The show marks not only its 20th anniversary of its first ever [...]

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It’s sort of pedantic in its brief historical glossing-over of entire musical movements, having been written from the perspective that the reader knows next to nothing about the subject, but Frere-Jones’ piece about how an English pop star of Damon Albarn’s pedigree came to score an opera is also informative and edifying.
http://www.myspace.com/monkeyjourneytothewest

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This song had almost become ubiquitous for me, as Sirius’ Left of Center plays it into the ground, but watching Matt Berninger toss off his working class poetry with that aching baritone live on national TV completely renewed my love for the song.

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With no new record in three years, it would have been safe to assume The Von Bondies were done, despite the critical acclaim of its major label debut, Pawn Shoppe Heart, back in 2004. After the band finished its tour that year, everything sort of fell apart. Members came and went. Lead singer Jason Stollsteimer [...]

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Now that he’s over a year sober, Ryan Adams is reluctant to admit it has any effect on his music, although he is well aware that his tantrums and occasionally questionable performances have dampened his star’s rise. But his latest, Easy Tiger, does, admittedly, show signs of an ear for commerciality. I have a [...]

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs have released a stop-gap EP entitled Is Is, partly to tide fans over between records and partly to re-ignite some excitement in the band after the lukewarm reception to Show Your Bones, the band’s slick follow-up to its raucous debut, Fever to Tell. Karen O does the obligatory chat with the Associated [...]

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Liars self-titled fourth record is due out August 28 on Mute. The first single and video, “Plaster Casts of Everything”, precedes the full-length on August 14 digitally and on 7″. Then the band hits the road with rather unlikely tour mates Interpol in September.

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Stereolab’s “Brakhage” off Dots and Loops set to footage by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

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Elvis Costello recently added Fiona Apple to his celebrity playlist on iTunes, saying “Fiona is light years ahead of everyone else.” Very high praise. This video is from Elvis Costello’s VH-1 special from last year, where Apple joined him for a few songs, including “Tymps” off Apple’s Extraordinary Machine.

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Slow on the uptake nu-metal fruitcakes, Korn, have a ridiculous trailer on their website, proffering a philosphy Devo cultivated and mastered over 30 years ago that claims that “humans are evolving backwards.” And Devo’s Jerry Casale is none too pleased by the band’s ignorance and lack of respect, writing on Devo’s site: “We denounce this [...]

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Devo has recorded a new single at Mark Mothersbaugh’s studio, Mutato Muzika, which will be available on iTunes very soon. Until then, the song can be heard in a new ad by Dell, which mimics Devo’s image and style. It’s been 17 years since Devo’s less than stellar Smooth Noodle Maps, but when your band’s [...]

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