(photo via The National's Instagram)

As mentioned, The National are playing small NYC shows today, including Mercury Lounge at 10 PM (tickets go on sale at noon), Public Assembly at 5 PM (free), and now they've announced a very-last-minute one happening at Sycamore in Ditmas Park at 12:30 PM. The venue is (or was) booked by Jessica Dessner, sister of The National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner.

The show was announced via the instagram which is pictured above. It was announced so last minute, as to obviously keep anyone but their neighbors and people who knew about the show away from the super small show in in their hood of Ditmas Park.

If you can't get into any of today's small shows, there's still the huge Barclays Center show on June 5 with Youth Lagoon. Tickets for that show are still available and we're also giving away a pair.

The National's new album, Trouble Will Find Me, is out today. Video for its single, "Sea of Love," below...

Continue reading "The National playing Sycamore in Ditmas Park at 12:30 PM" at brooklynvegan

by Fred Pessaro

Lets face it, I've always been more of an East Coast guy when it came to hip hop. In the classic 2Pac vis BIG (happy birthday Mr. Wallace!) discussion, I fall BIG every time. Wu-Tang was always more important to me than No Limit, the south or Cali crews like Freestyle Fellowship and Heiroglyphics. Yet there is always an exception to every rule, and this exception is Souls of Mischief's classic, 93 til Infinity:

93 'til Infinity is the debut album by Souls of Mischief[, and was] ...propelled into success by its title track and lead single, which reached #72 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also featured singles "That's When Ya Lost" and "Never No More" which reached the Hot Rap Singles, but never charted on The Billboard Hot 100. According to Allmusic author Steve Huey, "Although the title cut is an underappreciated classic, 93 'til Infinity makes its greatest impression through its stunning consistency, not individual highlights." Huey also goes on to remark that 93 'til Infinity is "one of the most slept-on records of the '90s". -[Wiki]

Yes, it has been two decades since the release of 93 Til Infinity, but you can celebrate the record's release and here it in its entirety on the "Stillfinity" tour, currently on a campaign throughout North America. Look for Souls of Mischief to hit SOBs on July 3 with a live band in tow. Tickets are still ...

In the video for “Iodine,” the latest single from Copenhagen electro-poppers When Saints Go Machine, a mysterious radiation-suited figure drives an old-school ragtop out to the middle of the desert, descends into a bottomless pit, and explores the crystalline cave he finds down there. You know, normal Sunday-afternoon stuff. Kristian Nordentoft and William Reynish direct the slow but absorbing clip; watch it below.

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by Andrew Sacher

Philly neo-soul singer Bilal returned this year with his highly accessible and slightly psychedelic new album, A Love Surreal, which came out this past February. He celebrated it in NYC with a "nearly packed" release show at Highline Ballroom that month, and earlier this May he kicked off the album's world tour. That tour brings him back to NYC for a show at SOB's on June 9. Tickets for the SOB's show are on sale now. All dates are listed below.

Last week (5/14), Bilal performed with The Roots (who he's collaborated with before) on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, playing a cover of Steely Dan's "Black Cow." You can check out that video, the music video for A Love Surreal single "Back to Love," the tour trailer, and tour flyer, below...

Continue reading "Bilal released 'A Love Surreal', on tour (dates & videos)" at brooklynvegan

Well, here’s what I want for Christmas: The Clash have announced plans to reissue their entire back catalog in a new box set shaped like — wait for it — a Boombox. Due out September 9th, Sound System collects the band’s five studio albums — 1977′s The Clash, 1978′s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, 1979′s London Calling, 1980′s Sandinista!, and 1982′s Combat Rock — yes, even they’ve disowned Cut the Crap (!) — along with three discs of singles, rarities, demos, and B-sides.

There’s also a DVD featuring all of the band’s videos and “unseen footage by Julien Temple and Don Letts”, reprints, a new issue of the band’s Armagideon Time fanzine, an exclusive poster, dog tags, stickers, badges, and more. It will all be housed inside said Boombox, which was designed by bassist Paul Simonon. Guitarist Mick Jones calls it the “best box set ever,” and it’s hard to disagree.

Speaking to The Guardian, Jones digresses on the rarities:

There’s so much there that you wouldn’t have heard before. It was like discovering stuff, because the advances in mastering are so immense since the last time [the Clash catalogue] was remastered in the 90s… We had to bake the tapes beforehand– the oxide on them is where the music is, so if...

Tomorrow’s harvest: a transmission from the increasingly enigmatic duo.

Apparently, a month-long mystery was not enough intrigue for the Scottish brothers. Boards of Canada just tweeted the following date, time, and location: “May 22nd 24:00 @ 1-23-10 Jinnan Shibuya-ku Tokyo”. The address is in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya-ku district, and searches lead to either a bank, a Hello Kitty store, or department store 109Mens. This story is developing.

Update: As Tokyo-resident Matt Lyne points out via Twitter, the address leads to “a video screen at the big crossing,” nothing that Radiohead tried a similar event in 2011 that was cancelled due to police fears about crowd size.

Tomorrow

photos by Dana (distortion) Yavin

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers @ Beacon Theatre, 5/20/2012

Petty doesn't play a supercharged oldies revue like the Rolling Stones. Nor does he distort his catalogue into willfully eccentric renditions that separate "true" fans from mere pretenders, a la Bob Dylan. (Don't get me wrong: I love this about Dylan.) Petty doesn't perform for three and a half hours, like Bruce Springsteen, and he doesn't rely on expensive bells and whistles, like pretty much everyone else.

Monday night, at least, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers satisfied themselves with a tight, confident, two-hour set that featured a handful of hits, a few well-chosen covers and lots of deep album cuts. (You can check out the complete set list at the bottom of this post.) His band has been playing together for more than 30 years -- he was only half-kidding when he introduced drummer Steve Ferrone, who joined in 1994, as "the new guy" -- and they couldn't be more in sync. Lead guitarist Mike Campbell shreds aplenty, and keyboardist Benmont Tench unleashed a solo during "Melinda" (a staple of the band's live set that has never made its way onto an album) that ranged from Jerry Lee Lewis to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. But that was the extent of the fireworks. - [Huffington Post]

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers kicked off their five-night run at NYC's Beacon Theatre last night (5/20) and pi...

At long last one of our favourite tracks of the last 6 months, the bubbling BRTSH Knights track If I Was To, is seeing a release on Technicolour Records. It will have a b-side, Hazed, and will feature remixes by garage legend El-B and Brainfeeder’s Mono/Poly:

The-Dream’s new album IV Play is now a week away from release, and on its latest single, the slippery but heartfelt “Where Have You Been,” he teams up with the former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland. Both singers showed up on The Tonight Show last night to perform the song and to show surprising levels of onstage chemistry. Watch the performance below.

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With the 50 And Counting tour, the Rolling Stones are back on the road rocking arenas. Prior stops featured special guests Dave Grohl, Tom Waits, Katy Perry, Keith Urban, and Gwen Stefani, but on this particular night the Stones (including former guitarist Mick Taylor) shined all by themselves. Check out the photos in the gallery above and the setlist below.

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BTW alumni TEEN’s Kickstarter-funded EP Carolina is out next week, but you can stream it with us first. The sisters have crafted five tracks of complex psych-influenced but wholly unique indie pop that was produced by Daniel Schlett, who was also responsible for DIIV’s Oshin. I would tell you “Circus” is a stand-out, but I’d also tell you “Cannibal” is a stand-out and so on. Each track has exists in its own hyper-detailed, hypnotic space. Check it out below.

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photos by PSquared Photography

Iron & Wine at the Capitol Theatre - 5/19/13

Iron & Wine is currently on a tour with the Secret Sisters in support of his new album, Ghost on Ghost, which hit NYC last week (5/14) at Beacon Theater and then circled back to the area for a Port Chester show at the Capitol Theater this past Sunday (5/19). Pictures of the latter are in this post.

For the tour, Sam Beam is being backed by a 13-piece band, and also takes some time out of his sets to do some solo acoustic material. Both NYC-area shows saw him playing the bulk of Ghost on Ghost in addition to a good amount of earlier material, but he had some surprises thrown in there too, including his cover of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" at the Cap show.

More pictures from the Cap and setlists/videos from both shows below...

Continue reading "Iron & Wine played the Capitol Theatre & Beacon Theatre (pics, videos, setlists)" at brooklynvegan

Preview by Dan Lucas

(for some reason DiS' back-end won't currently let us tag him as the author)

If our Twitter and Facebook feeds are anything to go by, the boards are the heartbeat of DiS, and as such you

photos by Dana (distortion) Yavin

Father John Misty / Lee Fields / Sharon Van Etten

Saturday (5/18) at Great GoogaMooga in Prospect Park was Misty both onstage and off. J. Tillman (aka Father John Misty) played mid-afternoon set as light, atomizer-like rain frizzed hair and kept everything just a little moist. (Sunday the rain got worse and producers pulled the plug on the event.) Unlike Friday's paid-ticket kickoff event with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Flaming Lips and The Darkness, Saturday's admission was free (though you had to order tickets) and also featured sets from headliners Matt & Kim, plus Lee Fields & the Expressions, Sharon Van Etten, Jovanotti and more. Pictures from Saturday are in this post. Did you brave the not-too-bad-weather for some music, beer and grub?

You can check out Friday pics of YYYs, The Flaming Lips and The Darkness. More pictures from Saturday below...

Continue reading "GoogaMooga day 2 in pics (Father John Misty, Lee Fields, Sharon Van Etten, Matt & Kim ++ more)" at brooklynvegan

In Portland punks the Thermals’ video for “The Sunset,” the second single from their new album Desperate Ground, badass bassist Kathy Foster gets a star turn. She plays a boxer training for a big fight with, as far as I can tell, the camera operator, and she also gives us her version of Rosie Perez’s dance from the Do The Right Thing opening credits. The band co-directed the video with Jeffrey Rowles, and you can watch it below.

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