weekend2011

Weekend touring w/ Wire (whose Red Barked Tree is out now)

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Wire – Two Minutes (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Weekend – Coma Summer (MP3)

Weekend
Weekend

San Francisco’s loud and awesome Weekend have been picked as openers for Wire‘s upcoming spring tour, which will hit the NYC area on April 5 at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Weekend won’t be playing Wire’s other NYC show —  Bowery Ballroom on April 6 — where openers are Belgian rock band Madensuyu. Pretty inspired pairing, as Wire’s arty minimalism is a pretty obvious influence on Weekend’s sound. Weekend will also open for Wire next month for a tour of Europe and will also be at SXSW in March.

Weekend’s debut album, Sports, made a few Best of 2010 lists (including this writer’s at #16) and if you haven’t heard it yet, check out “Coma Summer” at the top of this post. The band were great back in November when I saw them at Glasslands and it will be interesting to hear them through a super-pro system like MHoW’s. Maybe they’ll squeeze in a small club date while they’re here? We shall see.

If you’re looking for something new from Weekend check out the stream of the Water Borders remix of Sports track “Monday Morning/Monongah, WV” at the bottom of this post.

Wire
Wire

Meanwhile, Wire’s new album, Red Barked Tree, came out last week and is pretty fantastic, easily the best record they’ve made since 1989’s A Bell is A Cup Until it Is Struck. The band’s Read & Burn series of EPs and 2008’s Object 47 showed that the band — now a trio after guitarist Bruce Gilbert’s departure — still had creative fire. But Red Barked Tree finds songwriters Colin Newman and ominously-voiced Graham Lewis in top form, sonically somewhere between the aggressive Chairs Missing and 154‘s more ethereal moments. (There’s some Bell Is a Cup era Wire in there too.) To think that this comes from a band into its fourth decade is pretty amazing. Colin Newman talked about the new album in the February issue of MOJO:

It’s not like, “We’ve got to get back to the ’70s,” it was more “What was the method that made those things work?” There was a period when songwriting was derided within the band. It became subsumed by other ideas. What made Wire different from everybody else in the ’70s was the level of discipline, and the arrangements for the pieces on the record remained very close to the writing. Then the band thinking, “I’ll do this on top of that,” is quite magical. That’s how you get “Practice Make Perfect,” that’s how you get “I Am the Fly.” And that’s how you get Red Barked Tree. That is Wire.

You can download “Two Minutes” (the track’s length exactly) from Red Barked Tree at the top of this post. Live, Wire are now augmented by guitarist Matt Simms who some of you may know from the band It Hugs Back.

Wire were here last in October 2008 when they played Irving Plaza. Wire and Weekend part company after their 4/7 date in D.C. but Wire continue on to some West Coast shows after that. All Weekend and Wire dates are after the jump.


Weekend – Monday Morning/Monongah, WV (Water Borders remix)
Weekend – Monday Morning/Monongah, WV (Water Borders remix) by Water Borders

Weekend – 2011 Tour Dates
01/23 Los Angeles, CA Echo / Part Time Punks * #
01/24 San Diego, CA Soda Bar
01/29 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern
02/08 Edinburgh, UK Voltaire %
02/09 Glasgow, UK King Tuts %
02/10 Bristol, UK The Fleece %
02/12 London, UK Windmill
02/14 Amsterdam, NL Paradiso %
02/17 Madrid, ES Moby Dick %
02/18 Barcelona, ES Sala Apolo %
02/19 Rimini, IT Velvet %
02/21 Rome, IT Circolo Degli Artisti %
02/22 Milan, IT Live Club %
02/25 Munich, DE Atomic Cafe %
02/26 Berlin, DE Postbahnhof %
02/28 Cologne, DE Luxor %
03/01 Hamburg, DE Knust %
04/01 Toronto, ONT Lee’s Palace %
04/02 Montreal, QC Cabaret Du Mile End %
04/03 Cambridge, MA Middle East %
04/05 Brooklyn, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg %
04/07 Washington, DC Black Cat %
* = w/ Catwalk
# = w/ Exploding Flowers
% = w/ Wire


Wire – 2011 Tour Dates
Jan 19: Corner Hotel, Melbourne, Australia
Jan 20: Beck’s Festival Bar, Sydney, Australia
Jan 21 & 23: Moma Fona Festival, Hobart, Australia FREE ENTRY
Jan 25: The Bakery, Perth, Australia
Feb 01: Komedia, Brighton, UK
Feb 02: The Scala, London, UK
Feb 03: Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK
Feb 04: The Roadhouse, Manchester, UK
Feb 05: Academy 2, Dublin, Eire
Feb 06: Spring & Airbrake, Belfast, UK
Feb 08: Caberat Voltaire, Edinburgh, UK
Feb 09: King Tuts, Glasgow, UK
Feb 10: The Fleece, Bristol, UK
Feb 11: Botanique, Brussels, Belgium
Feb 12: Point Ephemere, Paris, France
Feb 14: Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Feb 17: Moby Dick, Madrid, Spain
Feb 18: Sala Apolo 2, Barcelona, Spain
Feb 19: Velvet, Rimini, Italy
Feb 21: Circolo Degli Arti, Rome, Italy
Feb 22: Live Club, Milan, Italy
Feb 23: Abart, Zurich, Switzerland
Feb 24: Les Docks, Lausanne, Switzerland
Feb 25: Atomic Cafe, Munich, Germany
Feb 26: Postbahnhof, Berlin, Germany
Feb 28: Luxor, Koln, Germany
Mar 01: Knust, Hamburg, Germany
Mar 02: Debaser, Malmo, Sweden
Mar 03: John Dee, Oslo, Norway
Mar 04: Blaest, Trondheim, Norway
Mar 05: Garage, Bergen, Norway
Mar 08: Debaser, Stockholm, Sweden
Mar 09: Little Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark
Apr 01: Lee’s Palace, Toronto, Canada
Apr 02: Le Cabaret du Mile End, Montreal, Canada
Apr 03: Middle East Downstairs, Boston, USA
Apr 05: Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA
Apr 06: Bowery Ballroom, NYC, USA
Apr 07: Black Cat, Washington DC, USA
Apr 08: Mohawk, Austin, USA
Apr 09: Metro, Chicago, USA
Apr 10: First Avenue, Minneapolis, USA
Apr 12: Dante’s, Portland, USA
Apr 13: Neumos, Seattle, USA
Apr 14: Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver, Canada
Apr 17: Slim’s, San Francisco, USA