In the News: My Morning Jacket, Yuck, Battles, last.fm

I'm expanding this blog slightly, as you can tell. on-Tenori-on is far from a hotbed for the latest musical occurrences, but if I find a cool thing or two to share this'll be where I do so.


My Morning Jacket

Firstly, Southern-tinged rockers My Morning Jacket's new LP Circuital arrives on the 31st of this month (on ATO), and to tie in with that release the band will stream a live concert from The Louisville Palace Theater that same night from their Vevo channel on Youtube, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Todd Haynes. The webcast is part of American Express' Unstaged series, in partnership with Youtube/Vevo, which has seen artists team up with directors; in the past these have included Arcade Fire and Terry Gilliam, John Legend and the Roots and Spike Lee, and Duran Duran and David Lynch. Todd Haynes' previous forays into musical work have included his music video for Sonic Youth's "Disappearer", and the movies Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There, the latter of which featured MMJ frontman Jim James singing "Goin' to Acapulco" with Calexico in one scene. I can vouch for that film. It's very good. And so is Circuital, which you can stream for a limited time via NPR here, as well as download the title track below (after giving your email address). The live webcast starts at 9pm ET, 6pm PT and 2am GMT (therefore on 1/6/11), by the way, stream it from here closer to the time, but for now there are a few trailers and other tidbits to enjoy.

Yuck

Last Tuesday 90's indie revivalists Yuck featured on the BBC2 show Later Live... with Jools Holland, playing an excellent rendition of their debut album opener "Get Away". Although when I reviewed that album a few months ago I may have painted it as less than flattering, "Get Away" was definitely a highlight of which I was more than happy to be reminded of. Chances are I might decide to see Yuck when they play Reading Festival later this summer, still undecided whether I'm to do a feature on the blog about that yet. Watch Yuck's performance below, the whole show is available to UK, licence-paying residents at the BBC iPlayer (i.e. here) which also featured Friendly Fires, Beverly Knight, Donovan and others. The Friday show (technically Saturday, 00:20) will feature new live (prerecorded) performances from all of the above too,

Battles

As my excitement for the new Battles LP Gloss Drop becomes ever more palpable, (6/6/11 on Warp Records) the band release the video for the first single "Ice Cream", featuring vocal contributions from Matias Aguayo. The single is has now also been released on limited edition 12", appropriately in three flavours: Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate, with 1000 copies of each. The as-of-yet unreleased "Black Sundome" features as the B-Side. Find out more about that release here.
Though that's not the only Battles news. The band also featured in the latest instalment of La Blogotheque's Take Away Shows, performing a new song "Wall Street" in Paris' Hôtel De Ville, fine wine included. It kicks ass. Look for it below.
Finally, although it was announced a while ago, Battles will be one of three curators to host one of the two Nightmare Before Christmas All Tomorrow's Parties events in December. The weekend, which will run from 9-11th December sees Battles curate Saturday's events, with Les Savy Fav and Caribou hosting the Friday and Sunday respectively. Other musicians appearing across the weekend include Flying Lotus, Gary Numan, Four Tet, No Age, Marnie Stern, Toro Y Moi, Surfer Blood and others. There's a small chance I'll be attending, but if not at least I'll probably see Battles take down the HMV Institute on the 27th June. Info on the ATP weekend is here. Tour dates and info on everything I just mentioned can be found on the band's website here.

last.fm

Finally, something which I failed to mention sooner, is that on-Tenori-on is now on last.fm, though there's not a lot to see there other than my playlist for the top songs of this year and my Radiohead fetish :P I found that I generally suck at making playlists so don't expect to see too many, although if there are any I'll probably make space for them here as well. The 2011 song playlist will be reduced to form the basis of my end-year list. Just don't expect me to update too regularly. Here I am anyway.