Archive for March, 2009

With the release of Sounds of the Universe just three weeks out — although for the curious/impatient, the record did leak last week — Depeche Mode continues to crank up its publicity blitz.
The band has given Yahoo! Video a pair of in-the-studio live performances off the new album: “Corrupt” and a deliciously downtempo take on lead [...]

With touring and promotion of 2008’s Accelerate now finished, R.E.M. this year will issue, at a minimum, a pair of archival releases, hitting both ends of its long and fruitful career.
According to a post on the band’s Web site, R.E.M. is preparing a deluxe edition of 1984’s Reckoning that “will be done in the same [...]

Perhaps best known for his bio “The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop,” Brit rock scribe/musician John Robb has set his sights on the slightly broader picture for his next work: Manchester’s place in the world of U.K. music.
This week sees the release (in Europe, at least) of Robb’s “The North Will Rise [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: Ministry
ALBUM: Adios…
BACKSTORY: Al Jourgensen says goodbye to his long-running industrial juggernaut with this 13-track live album — to be followed by a companion live DVD in May — which features a tracklist curiously devoid of anything remotely resembling a well-known Ministry [...]

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Public Image Ltd.’s classic second album, Metal Box, as beloved for its aural contents — the collision of Jah Wobble’s dub basslines and Keith Levene’s fractured guitar sound —  as its unique packaging: three 12-inch records encased in a metal 16mm film canister.
Getting an early [...]

For fans of Siouxsie and the Banshees, April and May will bring a bevy of archival releases — specifically the next four albums in the band’s reissue series, plus a box set of BBC performances.
Unfortunately, they all appear to be U.K.-only releases at this point, so be prepared to pay import prices.
On April 6, the [...]

The reunion of its classic ’80s lineup — J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph — still intact, Dinosaur Jr this week revealed the track list and release date for its second post-comeback album.
Jagjaguwar will release the 12-track Farm on June 23, after the band completes a lengthy, and previously announced, club tour of the [...]

One of those bands whose fans — namely a certain Kurt Cobain — are better-known than the group itself, Scotland’s recently reunited Vaselines will receive a well-deserved reintroduction on May 5, thanks to Sub Pop’s 2CD, 3LP deluxe reissue Enter The Vaselines.
Cobain famously declared the Vaselines’ founders Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee his “most favorite [...]

Now three years into their second reunion, the Kirkwood brothers this week announced a new spate of Meat Puppets dates to coincide with the May 12 release of the band’s 12th studio album, Sewn Together.
The band —founding members Cris and Curt Kirkwood, plus drummer Ted Marcus — recorded the new album, its first in two [...]

Video: Morrissey performs “Black Cloud” on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” 3/23/09

PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS:

Morrissey’s ‘Years of Refusal’ tour marred by cancellations, immigration trouble

Angry older man Elvis Costello follows up 2008’s quick-turn Momofuku by reteaming with T Bone Burnett, who worked with the rocker on 1986’s King of America and 1989’s Spike.
Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, as the new disc is dubbed, will be released June 2, Costello announced today on his Web site.
Recorded over three days in Nashville, [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: Pet Shop Boys
ALBUM: Yes
BACKSTORY: PSB’s 10th studio album — featuring another guest turn by Johnny Marr — doesn’t drop on these shores until April 21, but it’s out this week in the duo’s native UK. There’s also a limited-edition Japanese [...]