It's got to be kind of hard to find someone to open for you on Christmas. Maybe that's what led to Dump, the other project of Yo La Tengo's James McNew, opening for Yo La Tengo at Maxwell's on Sunday, December 25th (Hanukkah, night 6). Maybe Dump's recent show at Spike Hill was scheduled as a warm-up.

Yo La Tengo is keeping a diary. Their friend Kelly Reichardt writes:

Dump is on the stage. I know, I know, this reporter is asking herself the same question. How in the world did Yo La Tengo get Dump to play their Christmas night show? I guess everybody in this business has connections. In any case, it's our good fortune and listening from my perch I forget all about my duties and just let myself get lost in the music (not in any kind of freaky arm-waving way, but just in a quiet-inside way). I'm in my zone. Enjoying myself along with everyone else in the room. It's somewhere in the middle of the Prince cover tune, "Another Lonely Christmas" that the older, more disgruntled looking red-shirt-wearing door guy makes a beeline over to me. He's shouting something I can't make out, but I can clearly read his lips as he keeps repeating YOU SURE LOOK GOOD TONIGHT KELLY! I finally lean closer and take out the earplugs and it turns out what he is actually yelling in my face is YOU CAN'T STAND ON THAT STOOL!

Comedian Kurt Braunhohler, who will return to the Hoboken venue to open for Ted Leo, also opened the Christmas show. Tara Key and Rachel Blumberg were the other special guests that night. Full setlist HERE.

Last night, night 7, Kurt Vile & the Violators and Leo Allen opened. Dave Schramm played guitar with Yo La Tengo, and Peter Stampfel also joined the band. Full setlist HERE.

Tonight, 12/27, is the final night of Hanukkah 2011. Who do you think the openers will be? I bet James McNew (not to mention the rest of Yo La Tengo) would be excited if it were the Feelies.

Browse the Yo La Tengo tag for more.

James McNew in Philly in Sept (more by David Andrako)

Yo La Tengo, who are now selling a Hanukkah t-shirt for charity for a limited time (if you can get the link to work), are playing eight sold out Hanukkah shows at Maxwell's later this month.

Dump, aka the other project of Yo La Tengo's James McNew, is playing a show at Spike Hill in Brooklyn tonight (12/11) with The Medium Necks and Asuna. Tickets are still available (and probably will be at the door).

Spike Hill, the Williamsburg bar and music venue conveniently located on Bedford right near the L, has also announced that O'Death will be playing there on New Year's Eve. Tickets are on sale.

O'Death have also announced a January 2012 tour with Brownbird that has them playing another NYC show at Le Poisson Rouge on 1/21. All O'Death dates are listed below...

Continue reading "Dump playing Spike Hill tonight; O'Death playing New Year's Eve (and other dates)"

DUMP playing Hot Tub @ Littlefield this past Monday (by DoneWaiting)

Tickets go on sale at noon for the eight Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows:

*12/20 Night One Buy Tickets Here!
*12/21 Night Two Buy Tickets Here!
*12/22 Night Three Buy Tickets Here!
*12/23 Night Four Buy Tickets Here!
*12/24 Night Five Buy Tickets Here!
*12/25 Night Six Buy Tickets Here!
*12/26 Night Seven Buy Tickets Here!
*12/27 Night Eight Buy Tickets Here!

Tickets are also still on sale to see Yo La Tengo as the Condo Fucks at Mercury Lounge.

Tickets for the four Phish shows at MSG go on sale Saturday at noon.

Mavis Staples, The Head and the Heart & Dawes have a show coming up at Beacon Theater. Tickets on sale at noon.

Speaking of holiday shows at the Beacon, Cyndi Lauper and friends are playing one too. On sale now.

By noon tickets will also be on sale for Yelle, Nada Surf, Devo and BOBBY.

One of those Devo shows is at the Paramount in Long Island where Cheap Trick also have a show coming up at. It went on sale today.

Ill Fits recently played some shows at CMJ. They play Mercury Lounge on December 7th with Ladybug Transistor and The Echo-Friendly. Tickets on sale at noon.

The Clean at Cake Shop in 2007 (more here)

The Clean will hop on the bill of the recently added Teenage Fanclub show (their third in NYC overall) with Radar Brothers at Bowery Ballroom on 9/28 (tickets). Tickets are also still available for TFC's appearance with Belle & Sebastian on 9/30 AND their first Bowery show (without The Clean) on 9/27 at Bowery.

The show is one of two NYC area shows of the five scheduled in the US so far (Chicago, two on the west coast), as the band will also play Maxwell's on 9/29 (tickets). Dump (James McNew of Yo La Tengo) and Italy's Vermillion Sands (who also play Knitting Factory and Cake Shop while they're here) will support the band at that WFMU-presented NJ date.

The Clean released their LP Mister Pop last year on Merge Records. Full tour dates and some video is below.

Continue reading "The Clean added to Teenage Fanclub show, playing WFMU show @ Maxwell's & other tour dates "

by Andrew Frisicano

Grouper @ Terminal 5 in May 2009 (more by Natasha Ryan)

So we managed to sneak into Grouper's rare Brooklyn gig on Friday night and still aren't sure what we witnessed over the course of her main 60-minute set. (She also presented a new tape collage piece.) To be honest, the entire thing looked/sounded incredibly creepy, as if one of The Shining's redrum-happy twins suddenly learned how to sculpt dronescapes and acoustic something-or-others from an ancient keyboard and several effects pedals. It didn't help that the room was humid as hell--literally--with Issue Project Room's single, solitary fan getting switched off in the middle of the first 'song' because it was interfering with Liz Harris' signal. [self-titled]

Grouper's Friday, June 4th show at Issue Project Room was one of the events that opened the venue's Darmstadt series, which pairs new and old boundary-crossing music and art over the month of June.

Coming up, Matt Mottel (Issue's artist-in-residence) brings his jazz duo Talibam! to the venue for a free performance on Wednesday, June 9th. On Friday, June 11th, composer and tape artist William Basinski presents his piece "Vivian and Ondine" at a free show at 110 Livingston (Issue's new being-remodeled space).

Man Forever (Kid Millions from Oneida's new composition for multiple rock drummers) performs with composer/musicians Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, Frank Vigroux and Hélène Breschand on June 25th. Tickets are on sale. Man Forever have a new record almost out, and the project will be touring this summer.

The self-titled debut - two monolithic, hypnotic improvisations for arrays of carefully tuned drums- is due out [June 22nd] in an edition of 300 LPs featuring hand-pulled screens on recycled record jackets from Jagjaguwar vinyl imprint St. Ives. The touring quintet of Kid Millions, YEAH YEAH YEAHS drummer Brian Chase, Oneida cohort and KNYFE HYTS drummer Shahin Motia, drummer Allison Busch of AWESOME COLOR, and SIGHTINGS bassist Richard Hoffman, will be augmented by local percussionists in each city.

(Oneida has a new record, Absolute II , due too.)

Man Forever plays tonight (June 8th) at the Tank with Dump (James McNew of Yo La Tengo), M&M and the New York debut of the Sloppy Heads (who have a new Kid Milions-produced 7", First Gasp, which you can download here as a ZIP). That show has tickets on sale.

Man Forever also headline a Monster Island show on Friday, June 11th.

The night after Man Forever at Issue - Zs, who just put out a new record, play Issue with sound/multimedia artist David Linton (on Saturday, June 26th).

Separate from Darmstadt is the venue's ISSUE Project Room's Sunday Concerts in the Courtyard series that'll be bringing a Sunday, June 27th lineup of Omar Souleyman (who plays Central Park the day before with Tinariwen) and CSC Funk Band (featured here) to the Old American Can Factory courtyard. Tickets are on sale. The other shows in that series are posted below.

On top of all that, Issue will be participating in the two-venue, 65th-birthday celebration for improv legend Anthony Braxton (father of Tyondai from Battles) happening on June 18 and 19th. It's at (Le) Poisson Rouge on the 18th and Issue on the 19th. Details, tickets links and video are below.

The full Issue/Darmstadt schedule, video from Zs' Gulf Coast benefit show at Shea Stadium on June 2nd, and more are posted below...

Continue reading "Darmstadt continues @ Issue Project Room, Man Forever, Zs, James McNew, Omar Souleyman & Anthony Braxton's birthday"

DOWNLOAD: Yo La Tengo - Periodically Double Or Triple (MP3)

We have an old saying at Matador HQ, "the only thing predictable about Yo La Tengo albums is their high level of excellence and crazy amount of musical ground covered". Trouble is, even if you believe we really have an old saying that unwieldly, it doesn't really do justice in this instance. The new Yo La Tengo CD/2XLP/digital album 'Popular Songs" (OLE 856-1,2) could be the bravest musical statement to date in a career full of 'em. Recorded in Hoboken and Nashville in early 2009 with longtime associate Roger Mountenot, 'Popular Songs' finds the trio of Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew at the height of their creative powers, fashioning an epic work that's cooly confident as it is wildly adventurous.

Yo La Tengo have one NYC show coming up. Ira Kaplan's sometimes-band The A-Bones have three. James McNew's band Dump has two - one with Oneida, and one August 22nd at Union Hall with Choo Choo La Rouge, Clint Michigan, and Jennifer O'Connor. That Brooklyn show is a Kiam Records release party. Kiam Records is Jennifer's label and she's released a bunch of 7" splits...

"Our split 7" single is finished and on sale now, alone or as part of a five record subscription series from KIAM Records, featuring collaborations between Jennifer O'Connor and guest artists. We join Jennifer on the A side for "Little Airplane Heart," and we each contribute a song to the flip: "Mostly Air" from our forthcoming album, and "Watching You Go" from Jennifer.

The artists collaborating with Jennifer on the rest of the series are Dump, Jesse Sykes, Mascott, and the Hotel Lights." [Choo Choo La Rouge]

Clint Michigan will be one of her future releases.

New Yo La Tengo song above. Some clips of YLT playing at last week's Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, below...

Continue reading "Yo La Tengo releasing new album 'Popular Songs' (MP3), Dump (James McNew) playing NYC w/ Choo Choo La Rouge "

DOWNLOAD: Oneida - I Will Haunt You (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Oneida - Saturday (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Oneida - What's Up, Jackal? (MP3)

Oneida @ The Yard 8/29/08 (more by Chris La Putt)

Welcome to Rated O, the triple album and second installment of Oneida's much-anticipated "Thank Your Parents" triptych of releases. In August of 2008 Oneida released the first installment, Preteen Weaponry, and now, Rated O, the centerpiece of the "Thank Your Parents" trilogy, has been bestowed upon us.

For the recording of Rated O the band expanded to five members, adding longtime brahs Shahin Motia and Barry London to the regular lineup. Motia has been performing with Oneida for several years; London is the sound engineer who has recorded the last several Oneida albums and is chief brah at the Ocropolis (Oneida's Brooklyn recording studio). [Jagjaguwar]

Oneida's Rated O comes out July 7th on Jagjaguwar. Three MP3s from that record are posted above.

The band will be touring North America in support of Rated O this summer. Those dates so far include a Friday, July 10th show at Maxwell's in Hoboken with This Moment in Black History and Dump (James McNew). Tickets are on sale.

Who is Dump?

Dump is a vehicle for releasing the four-track home recordings of Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew. His recordings occasionally feature guest performers such as Sue Garner and Fontaine Toups. For live performances McNew has been joined at various times by Ira Kaplan (who also plays with A-Bones when not playing with Yo La Tengo), Georgia Hubley, Todd Barry on drums, and Dave Ramirez on guitar. [Wikipedia]

Oneida's summer tour also includes a Todd P show Friday, July 24th in a venue tba.

The band is visiting Europe for Primavera Sound on May 30th, then again in August. All dates, album art, and track list, below...

Continue reading "Oneida - new triple album, MP3s, tour dates (NJ & Brooklyn)"

DOWNLOAD: Jennifer O'Connor - Here With Me (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Jennifer O'Connor - Valley Road 86 (MP3)

Both of the MP3's linked above are off Jennifer O'Connor's new album called 'Here With Me' - out on Matador Records August 19th.

Jennifer recorded her new LP/CD 'Here With Me' (OLE 787-1,2) earlier this year with John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth) at Brooklyn's Headgear Studios....Backed by a crack backing trio of Jon Langmead, Michael Broadlieb and Michael Strandberg (and joined, briefly, by Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay), O'Connor tackles her most evocative pile of relationship-tunes with something approaching surgical precision...

Jennifer's next NYC show is tonight (August 13) at McCarren Pool. She's opening for Wilco. Her next NYC show after that is August 21st at Mercury Lounge. 'Dump' aka James McNew of Yo La Tengo is opening. Tickets are on sale. She's also doing an instore at Permanent Records in Brooklyn on the 23rd and playing all the places listed below....

Continue reading "Jennifer O'Connor - new album, tour dates (w/ Wilco tonight)"

Why? news, why not?....

Continue reading "WHY? playing a $1 show in NYC, has cool friends"