photos by Dana (distortion) Yavin

The Hives @ Irving Plaza

While on tour with Pink (which included a MSG show on Friday [3/22]), The Hives stopped in NYC for their own headlining sold out gig last night (3/24) at Irving Plaza. It was a crazy show, and doubled as a celebration of The Hives' 20th year as a band. With a horn section and backup singers (including special guest Paloma Faith), they ripped through career-spanning favorites and also did a bunch off of 2012's Lex Hives. Livids opened the show.

More pictures and videos from Irving Plaza are below...

Continue reading "The Hives played Irving Plaza w/ Livids (pics, videos)"

Alt-J at Mercury Lounge in May (more by Dominick Mastrangelo)

Big day for award nominations. The Oscars announced theirs this morning and the Brit Awards just wrapped up their ceremony for 2013 nominations, with Emeli Sandé grabbing four and Mumford & Sons and Alt-J each getting three. All three of those artists were nominated for British Album of the Year, a list that also included Paloma Faith and Plan B. If you don't know, The Brits are basically the UK's equivalent of the Grammys, though nominees are all British apart from a few "International" awards.

Jessie Ware, Muse, and Adele each got two nominations, and single-digit noms went to Bat for Lashes, The xx, Richard Hawley and The Vaccines.

Mumford & Sons have two nights at Barclays Center in February and Alt-J will swing though town in March.

The entire 2013 Brit Awards nominees list is below.

Continue reading "2013 Brit Award nominees announced (Emeli Sandé, Mumford and Alt-J lead the pack)"

Ray Davies has a new LP on the way entitled See My Friends due on November 1st. The release will see The Kinks frontman pairing with multiple bands to re-record, and sometimes re-imagine, Kinks songs. And these bands have names like Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Spoon, Black Francis, Metallica, Mumford & Sons... and the legendary Alex Chilton (RIP).

"This project came about almost by accident," says Davies of the project, which was kick-started when he recorded a version of 'Till The End Of The Day' in the summer of 2009, with Alex Chilton.

The full list of collaborators is below.

Davies is getting back on the road as well, though so far he just has scattered dates in Europe, and a newly-announced show in the United States. He'll be performing his 2009 LP The Kinks Choral Collection with the Dessoff Chamber Choir at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, NJ on November 26th. Tickets go on sale at noon today (10/8). NYC got that show in 2009.

All dates, the See My Friends tracklisting, and some video are below...

Continue reading "Ray Davies re-recorded Kinks songs w/ special friends, playing NJ & other dates "

"There's a good reason why the new record is called Scars," says Felix Buxton. "Making it has been a grueling process. When we finished recording, it felt like we'd come out of a boxing ring." His bandmate Simon Ratcliffe nods in agreement.

Basement Jaxx's new album 'Scars' will be released by Ultra and XL Records on October 6th. A little less than a month later the band will visit North America to DJ in a few major cities, including New York City of course. Tickets are now on sale for a November 7th gig at Santos Party House which doubles as FIXED's 5-year anniversary party.

'Scars' is full of guest appearances including Kelis, Maleka & Chipmunk, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Sam Sparro, Lightspeed Champion, Amp Fiddler, Yo Majesty, Yoko Ono, Paloma Faith, Lisa Kekaula, Jose Hendrix, and Jose James. All dates, the tour poster, the Scars (cover art above) tracklisting, and the video for "Raindrops", below....

Continue reading "Basement Jaxx - 2009 DJ tour dates (NYC on sale), new album w/ Kelis, Yoko, Eli Reed, Lightspeed Champion, more"