Jane Birkin finishes a short North American tour at Town Hall in NYC tonight (12/11). The great NYC entertainer Joey Arias opens the show and tickets are still on sale.

Jane will be performing the work of her late husband Serge Gainsbourg backed by a group of Japanese performers. As a recent review reads:

A Japanese-originating quartet of piano, drums, trumpet and violin (originally assembled, she told us, to play post-tsunami benefit shows in Tokyo which has since coaxed out on tour) executed the tunes with both original details (those cafe jazz breakbeats when called for) and a modern panache that was needed to hold the whole shebang together. One audience member with an accent explained to another that Birkin was "not rock" just before the show. It was, of course, more beatnik-jazz-pop-cabaret than rock. Still, hearing the likes of "Do Di Dah" without guitar picking might not have been the same, but its playful spirit came shining through in a jazz rendition. Birkin's voice and easy way with a tricky series of notes here and there was a bit of a revelation to some, for sure, and proved more than capable of carrying tunes when the band receded. If it wavered over the high notes, it shouldn't have come as a surprise. That delicacy and naturalism was surely what drew Serge and us to her the first time around--um, and the drop dead gorgeous thing, probably.

Jane starts up touring again in January, in Spain, Israel, Turkey, and many other places.

Meanwhile, Jane's daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg whose 2010 Beck-produced album IRM gained her lots of attention and brought her to our shores for shows at places like The Bell House, Coachella and Webster Hall, recently released an EP and then an album. The longer album, Stage Whisper, "includes seven unreleased studio recordings and eleven live songs. Many of the studio tracks come from sessions for IRM." The EP, Terrible Angels, was released earlier via Because Music / Elektra, and contains "two unreleased studio tracks, two live recordings, and two videos." All four of the songs are also on Stage Whisper.

You can watch one of the videos, with more info on the two releases, below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg released an album; Jane Birkin on tour (plays Town Hall w/ Joey Arias tonight)"

photos by Chris La Putt

"Last night, Webster Hall was packed with audience members camped out on the floor and conversing in French or English, sometimes both. Fitting as Charlotte Gainsbourg is fluent in the two languages.

Opener AM was delicate, cool and vintage, grafting folk and rock with Brazilian lounge sounds. The New Orleans artist has just released his sophomore album, Future Sons and Daughters, and plans to soon be touring with the French electro-pop band, Air. The set closed with the song "Darker Days," lyrically, a sophisticated song frosted with AM's warm and pacifying voice." [NY Press]

Charlotte Gainsbourg concluded her first-ever tour, that included Coachella, at Webster Hall in NYC last night. Charlotte's first-ever live shows just took place in January, and were also right here in NYC. More pictures from Webster Hall below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg & AM @ Webster Hall in NYC - pics "

photos by Rachel Carr

Devo

"An aggregate 225,000 people bought tickets to see a [Coachella] roster headlined by Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz during the April 16-18 event at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio.

The previous attendance record was set in 2007, when the headliners included a reunited Rage Against the Machine. Final figures are still being tallied, but AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips said the gross will exceed $20 million.

Phillips said the future looked bleak for AEG Live's nascent All Points West festival, which took place in 2008 and 2009 across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J.

"We're probably going to kill it," said Phillips. "As beautiful as (the site) is, it's very hard to get New Yorkers to cross that river. All Points West is an experiment that just didn't work." [Reuters]

The 2010 edition of Coachella actually began excactly one week ago today, and we already posted full picture sets from: DAY ONE, DAY TWO and DAY THREE. Now here is one last group that contains unposted outtakes from all three...

Continue reading "more photos from Coachella, more confirmation that All Points West is not happening"

photos by Rachel Carr, words by Daiana Feuer

Gorillaz Clash

The third and final round of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival was funky, and not just because the port-a-potties reeked. Keeping a loose theme every day (see Friday & Saturday), Sunday focused on relentless rhythm and groovy basslines. The absolute golden moment belonged to Yo La Tengo's blistering final song. Rhythm that revels in repetition + guitar that tries to destroy itself = wee mind blown. Sometimes the moodiest things are the most uplifting.

Thom Yorke brought his dancing shoes, his favorite Flea, and Nigel Godrich. His band Atoms For Peace played almost every song off The Eraser, many of which featured strong world rhythm sections. When Yorke didn't have a guitar in hand, he danced, whirled, and punched the air like he was rehearsing a scene from Fame. We wanted a high kick, but it didn't arrive. King Khan & The Shrines, on the other hand, featured legs flying all over the place, DJ Lance Rock and Yo Gabba Gabba characters, burning money, as well as a visit from the police-who crept on stage to snap pictures. Probably the first time Khan runs into cops and doesn't leave wearing cuffs. Sunny Day Real Estate had the audience offering bids to buy property, and Phoenix had people choking on dinner as they tried to dance and eat at the same time.

King Khan Gabba Gabba

Not every Julian Casablancas song captivated, but his band delightfully binged on rhythms. Each musician had a personal backbeat player supporting each fill. The drummer plus his sidekick especially sounded great. Matt & Kim's ebullient smiles inspired chaos in the audience, as usual. Mayer Hawthorne and the County revived Motown soulful brassiness and covered Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." The Big Pink played some new songs from next year's album, reaching out for Depeche Mode with a drummer in a pink bathing suit. Electro sweet popper Little Boots forgot her pants as well, wearing a sparkly shirt and knickers, and played with the lasers on stage. Charlotte Gainsbourg inaugurated her "first tour, first everything" with a feminine "Candy-O" sensibility, sometimes in French. Florence & the Machine rounds out the great lady performances of the day, and brought on Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids.

All clad in white, France's DJ ego-powers Club 75 demonstrated the ability to cooperate together with just a few elbows thrown. Cassius, Justice, Busy P, and DJ Mehdi still use CD's (so old school), and took turns passing on the headphones between them and finishing each other's remix sentences, trading places at each station. Backstage security bobbed along while staying tough. When it was their turn, Rusko turned the Sahara tent into a mechazoid robot battle and Orbital live-produced virtual reality anthems for Satan wearing Matrix miner lights around their heads. Infected Mushroom instructed on the benefits of "Becoming Insane" flanked by two mushrooms with red eyes.

The Middle East should not be confused with The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims. The former may be from Australia but it sounds like a back porch band from Woodstock, and the latter offers a "Parasite" infestation that's as pure as sunshine and a neat drum set up that packs a giant tom punch. What appears as regular rock on headphones reveals its brilliance when experienced live. One of the strangest live moments of the festival belongs to Sly Stone, who played four hours late and on the wrong stage. He bitched, he slurred, he cursed, lay down, walked off, stopped songs and good grief, made a total mess of himself. But that's rock and roll.

Sly Stone made history look unable to get past its youthful drug phase, but Jonsi, Pavement, and Spoon come from a music scene that did a little bit less cocaine. Jonsi repped the awesomeness of Sigur Rós and great hats. Steve Patterson of White Rabbits joined Britt Daniels and the rest of Spoon to add percussion on "I Turn My Camera On". Spoon's tour-mate Bradford Cox (who played earlier in the day in Deerhunter) also joined Spoon on stage, like he did on their recent Kimmel appearance. Pavement ran through the hits during one of their first U.S. shows since reuniting. "That's the 90's in a nutshell," said Stephen Malkmus after the angsty "Unfair"...

"...Pavement, the iconic slacker band of the '90s, who took the main stage against what turned out to be one of the fest's chief attractions, the finally wildly popular French dance-rock band Phoenix, who wowed possibly the biggest crowd of the entire fest ... while Pavement played to a field half-full of true believers rather than the massive throngs many expected, and thought the band deserved.

No matter, though. Pavement still delivered a set that vindicated the group of prior crimes -- namely a Coachella performance near the end of their career so notoriously bad, many in attendance point to it as the moment the band decided to break up.

This night, however, they were tight, they were loud, and they sounded large on that vast field -- an odd statement, given the fact that in their heyday they were far more known for being introspectively small rather than arena-ready..." [The OC Register]

Virtual Snoop Dogg introduced the Gorillaz set, but Blur's Damon Albarn appeared in the flesh, with a few special guests including Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, De La Soul-who kicked their own old school jams earlier in the day-and Little Dragon's Yukimi. One unique rhythm transcended the next, showing the mutability of hip hop and dance music. And then that was it, suddenly. The festival ended and tens of thousands of people started wondering where they left their car keys...

Radiohead Peppers For Peace

Daiana's Weekend Top 10:
1. Yo La Tengo's last song
2. Little Dragon's Yukimi
3. Gossip leading a revolution
4. Thom Yorke dancing to African rhythms
5. PiL giving a history lesson
6. Sly Stone wigging out
7. Bouncing penises + fat people in undies (Die Antwoord + Major Lazer)
8. Devo putting on the hats that ushered in modern pop culture for "Whip It"
9. John Waters corrupting many young minds
10. The Gorrilaz lyric: "Super fast jellyfish going super fast. You can't even see him but you wanna eat him."

--

Owen Pallett, Local Natives, Miike Snow, and Yann Tiersen also played the fest Sunday. Gary Numan was among those who couldn't. Reviews & pictures from Day One, HERE and Day Two, HERE. Setlists (Thom Yorke and Pavement), pictures, and videos from Day Three, below...

Continue reading "Coachella 2010 - Day Three in pics, video & review (the Thom Yorke & Pavement setlists included) "

Charlotte Gainsbourg @ The Bell House in January (more pictures)

Charlotte Gainsbourg played at the Bell House and Hiro Ballroom last January as part of a short-string of dates in support of her new record, IRM.

She'll be back in North America for shows around her Coachella performance on April 18th. As part of those, she'll play NYC's Webster Hall on Sunday, April 25th. Tickets TBA.

Beck, the producer and songwriter for Charlotte's album, joined her to perform their "Heaven Can Wait on L.A.'s KCRW. That video and all tour dates are below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg announces more 2010 tour dates "

Of Montreal @ Terminal 5 in September (more by Chris La Putt)

tonight in NYC
* HAIL! @ BB King's
* moe. @ Brooklyn Bowl
* DJ Krush @ Bowery Ballroom
* Oh No Ono @ Sound Fix Records
* .357 Lover @ Knitting Factory
* Charlie Hunter @ Rose Live Music
* Darius Jones Quartet @ Roulette
* Daniel Merriweather @ Gramercy Theatre
* Jenny Scheinman & Robbie Fulks @ Barbes
* Pretty & Nice, Drunken Sufis @ The Cameo
* Mirror Mirror, Omega Jarden @ Glasslands
* Beach House, Jana Hunter @ The Bell House
* The London Souls, Turkuaz @ Mercury Lounge
* Ebony Bones, Fire and Reason @ Mercury Lounge
* Of Montreal, James Husband @ Highline Ballroom
* M. Lamar, Justin Bond, Larkin Grimm, Novice Theory @ Galapagos Art Space
* Jump Into The Gospel, Brothers, Hymns, Locksley, Milk and Blood @ Pianos
* James Blackshaw, Max Ochs, Ben Hall, Nick Jonah Davis @ (Le) Poisson Rouge

On No Ono play Sound Fix today before their shows at Mercury Lounge on Wednesday with Bear in Heaven, and Union Hall on Thursday.

Fyfe Dangerfield was supposed to play tonight.

Galapagos Art Space hosts a CD release party for M. Lamar, who The New Yoker dubbed "a performance artist who celebrates and parodies the very idea of the chanteuse: he deconstructs the persona of the diva even as he wraps himself in divalike hauteur." The night also features performances by Justin Bond, Larkin Grimm and Novice Theory.

A selection of recent videos below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Tuesday?"

Charlotte Gainsbourg, with full band, played her first of two shows at The Bell House in Brooklyn last night (1/19). Beck was not there, but Wayne Coyne was (in the audience). Not counting Letterman (which she already taped and I think airs Friday), Charlotte will perform four shows total while she's visiting. The final gig happens on January 23rd at Hiro Ballroom.

The rumor at the show was that it was her first public show ever - not just her first US or NYC show, but her first proper show anywhere. Maybe that's related to why I wasn't blown away, but then again, others were way more into it. To quote Bill, she was "a bit nervous, but charlotte gainsbourg was great at the bell house. no beck, nor his band...but c'est magnifique!" One Max Miller said, "Amazing show!" I heard similar accolades from others after the show too.

One highlight for me was her cover of Dylan's "Just Like A Woman", a tune she recorded with Calexico for the soundtrack of I'm Not There, a film she also appeared in. And speaking of films she's in, I'm a little scared to see Lars Von Trier's Antichrist after hearing some of its graphic details (Charlotte won 'Best Actress' at Cannes in 2009 for her role in it).

Dean & Britta opened the show. The full Bell House setlist with a few more so-so pictures from the night, below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg played (her first public show ever?) at The Bell House in Brooklyn - pics & setlist"

If you've been wondering what Charlotte Gainsbourg's new album and Beck collaboration IRM sounds like, the full thing is now streaming on NPR.

Gainsbourg is playing two nights at Brooklyn's Bell House tonight (1/19) and tomorrow (1/20). Both are sold out. The opener for the first night is pop duo Dean and Britta; the second night's is Francophilic Brooklyn band Dinosaur Feathers (who have other dates, below, and their debut due this March). She plays Philadelphia's Theater of Living Arts on Friday, January 22nd, and then NYC's Hiro Ballroom (with no opener announced) on Saturday, January 23rd. Tickets for the Hiro show are still on sale.

Gainsbourg is on the lineup for Coachella in April. She recently cancelled some of her non-NYC shows (like Montreal and Toronto scheduled for the end of the month) due to scheduling conflicts. Those are expected to be rescheduled.

Charlotte isn't the only member of the Gainsbourg/Birkin family in the news. As previously mentioned, Jane Birkin (her mother) is playing in NYC in February. And a biopic about her father Serge, titled Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque, comes out tomorrow in France (no US screenings scheduled as of yet, though it screens in the UK in September). The trailer for that (NSFW) and all Charlotte Gainsbourg and Dinosaur Feathers tour dates are below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg is here (openers), playing Coachella - new album streaming ++ Serge film out in France (trailer)"

Wow...Public Image Ltd, The Specials, Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Echo and the Bunnymen, Grace Jones, Fever Ray, Devo, Hot Chip, Phoenix, Orbital, Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sunny Day Real Estate, Yo La Tengo, Mew, Camera Obscura, Gil Scott-Heron, The xx, John Waters, Dillinger Escape Plan, Deer Tick, Gary Numan... Full Coachella 2010 lineup below....

Continue reading "2010 Coachella line up announced (Faith No More, Pavement, Muse, Gorillaz, Thom Yorke, Jay-Z, LCD Soundystem, ???)"

Tickets are on sale (@ noon) for the recently-added Charlotte Gainsbourg show at Hiro Ballroom. Tickets are also still on sale for the two shows at the Bell House.

Laura Veirs is playing Mercury Lounge on February 15th. Tickets are on sale.

Megafaun are playing Mercury Lounge on April 2nd. Tickets are now on AmEx presale.

Ulrich Schnauss plays the Bell House on February 25th. Tickets are on sale.

Tickets for the Murder City Devils show at Nokia are still on sale.

Cursive/Alkaline Trio tickets are on pre-sale.

More Wilco tickets are going on presale at noon.

Dam-Funk, Nada Surf, xx, jj, Xiu Xiu, Tune-Yards, Japandroids & other tickets are on sale too.

Tickets are on sale for the two shows Jane Birkin is playing in NYC in February. Tickets to the two shows her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg is playing in Brooklyn are still on sale too, but now there's a third option. Tickets ($37.50) go on sale Thursday at noon for a January 23rd Charlotte show at Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan.

Charlotte Gainsbourg, with a new Beck-produced album out in the US this month, is coming to NYC for a pair of shows on January 19th and 20th at Bell House. Clips from that album are streaming on her website.

Jane Birkin, her mother, is also going to be in town for a pair of performances soon. She'll sing at French Institute/Florence Gould Hall on February 11th and 12th. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, January 5th at 5pm.

Last September, Birkin put out Jane Birkin au Palace, a live collection of songs by herself and her late ex-husband Serge Gainsbourg (including tracks off her most recent studio record, 2008's Enfants d'Hiver). Clips from the album are streaming on her site.

Before coming to the US, Jane Birkin has January dates in France and Belgium. Her full schedule and a few classic and recent videos are below...

Continue reading "Jane Birkin playing two NYC shows (about a month after the two her daughter is playing) - dates & more"

New Years Eve at The Bell House is sold out, though there will be "limited tickets at the door".

Check out our end of 2009 interview w/ Sohrab Habibion of Obits

Tickets are on sale (@ noon) for Beth Orton's January 18th show at the Brooklyn venue.

Tickets are on sale (@ noon) for Charlotte Gainsbourg's January 19th & 20th shows at the venue.

Tickets are still on sale for Vetiver's January 21st show at the venue.

Tickets are now on sale for the Field Music / Spinto Band show there too.

When Charlotte Gainsbourg began planning her forthcoming album, she thought Beck might be a perfect producer for the musically adventurous and diverse approach she had in mind. From their first casual hours together in the studio, she recognized a shared sensibility and the potential for a collaboration that would be both free and seamless. Because Music will release the resulting work, entitled IRM, in January 2010...

...Over the course of a year and a half of their writing and recording together, Beck¹s role grew to encompass all aspects of the creative process: He wrote all of the music and co-wrote the lyrics and is producing and mixing the recording. (This is the first time he has ever been so involved in another artist¹s work.)

Beck brought in many of his regular collaborators, including Joey Waronker and James Gadson on drums, Brian LeBarton on keyboards, David Ralicke on trumpet and Beck¹s father, David Campbell, for string arrangements. Though Gainsbourg¹s unique voice is instantly recognizable throughout, her vocal performances here are as varied as the material.

Charlotte will play live at the Bell House in Brooklyn on January 19th AND 20th (right after Beth Orton plays the same venue). Tickets go on sale Wednesday at noon.

Check out the video for the album's first single, "Heaven Can Wait" (featuring Beck), below...

Continue reading "Charlotte Gainsbourg releasing Beck-produced album (video), playing 2 Brooklyn shows in January (dates)"