Has a supergroup ever lived up to its classification? The best (Traveling Wilburys, Dead Weather) have been great at times, but to say that they were ‘super,’ better than the bands from which they came, would be foolish. “Handle with Care” was good, but one of those Wilburys wrote Blonde on Blonde all by himself. And another one was a Beatle.
So could we really expect Them Crooked Vultures—the rock spaceship helmed by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Dave Grohl—to be greater than the sum of its parts? No way, especially when a third of the band played bass on “Dazed and Confused.”
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If you noticed a bit of a drop off with Interpol’s last album, 2007’s Our Love to Admire, you weren’t alone. Says drummer Sam Fogarino, “[The album] was not our most cohesive moment… It was when reality kicked in as to where we were and where we were never going back to.”
Although the band has kept relatively quiet in the ensuing years, its members working chiefly on other projects, Interpol spent the spring recording its still-untitled fourth album in Manhattan’s famed Electric Lady studios. It will be released on Capitol Records in early 2010. “The new record falls back towards the first,” Fogarino says over dinner in his now-home city of Athens, Ga. “In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can’t let go of your sonic-defining tag. There was an effort in Daniel [Kessler]’s guitar tone; he rediscovered it playing in his loft space for a year without anybody. The quality of that tone, played in a big room, is just beautiful. It creates an atmosphere.”
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Mastodon loves a good story.
The Atlanta metal band wrote an album based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick with 2004’s Leviathan. This year’s Crack The Skye told of a paraplegic traveling through space. But the band’s next project may tell its most ambitious tale yet. As previously reported, Mastodon has written the score to the film adaptation of the gnarly comic book Jonah Hex, which is slated to hit theaters in June 2010.
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Video may have killed the radio star back in those dark and desperate times known as the ’80s, but today, video games are bringing the radio star back to life. On Oct. 27, gaming giant Activision will release DJ Hero, the hip hop/electronic cousin to its popular Guitar Hero series. The game includes over 100 songs licensed from some of music’s heaviest hitters. Eminem, Jay-Z, Beastie Boys and M.I.A. all contribute tracks, to name a select few, and electronic music’s biggest French-robot duo, Daft Punk, even created 11 exclusive tracks just for the game.
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The Appleseed Cast is, with alarming consistency, a very powerful and emotionally-leveling band, much as front man Chris Crisci, as it would follow, is, with alarming consistency, a very powerful and emotionally-leveling songwriter.
Alright, so after that massive shitstorm of a sentence, you, reader, are probably in one of two camps: Either you A) disagree to some extent, and hence, because I started the review with such a blunt assessment, will discontinue taking my opinion seriously for the rest of the review, if you do choose to read it at all, or you B) agree to some extent, and are intrigued to see how this ends up being about the new Old Canes record, or (I almost forgot the third) you C) thought that first sentence was verbose bullshit and could give a fuck whether or not the Appleseed Cast or Chris Crisci matter at all, because my writing pissed you off.
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Ron Minor doesn’t have skeletons in his closet, but he does have records in his basement.
And just like a relic of the past creeping into the present, the records in Minor’s basement play only a small role in his current life. As DJ Indiana Jones, one of the city’s most well-known and established DJ’s, Minor has, like so many old-school music masters, switched from vinyl to digital DJ-ing to keep up with — and ahead of — the young talent constantly nipping at his heels.
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Ray Davies was kicked out of his school choir at age 11 for singing off key. But it wasn’t due to lack of talent; the future rock star just wanted to be with his friends. “A few of my mates were on the soccer team and they couldn’t sing a note, so I got myself thrown out,” Davies tells Paste from a tour stop in Norway. “It takes a lot of talent to sing poorly enough to get thrown out.”
Half a century later, the choir is back. And this time, Davies is leading it.
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Eddie Vedder beefs with the best of ‘em.
From his quarrels with Ticketmaster to drunken barfights, Vedder’s been involved in one beef or another for much of his long career, and he’s more apt to tackle it swinging from the rafters than sitting down. But which of Vedder’s beefs have been truly palatable morsels and which are just throwaway scraps? To sort through all the beef, we turned to an expert. Lynne Sawicki of Sawicki’s Meat, Seafood and More (an establishment which, it should be mentioned, makes a damn fine sandwich) in Decatur, Ga. weighs in on each of a handful of Vedder’s beefs below:
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Although Cranberries frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan may be best known for her alt-rock hit “Zombie,” when she calls Paste from a Toronto hotel, she couldn’t sound more alive.
O’Riordan’s voice, much like when she sings, is full of tonal twists and turns; her deep Irish accent carries her words like a melody. But on this particular evening, there’s more than just the musicality of her voice pushing her energy through the phone; not only has O’Riordan just released her second solo album, No Baggage, but she’s also announced that The Cranberries will reunite for a tour after a seven-year hiatus.
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Just when you thought it was safe to start comparing them to Guns N’ Roses the gentlemen of Outkast may finally be coming out of hiatus and back into the spotlight.
The ingredients were all there, too.
Both acts released hugely successful double albums at the peak of their careers (we’ll call “Roses” Outkast’s “November Rain”), then shuttered themselves in the sound booth for years keeping hopes afloat with frequent mentions that, yes, the album is coming.
But while Chinese Democracy, left, well, much to be desired, the new material from Outkast — at least, new solo work from Big Boi (the Slash to Andre 3000’s Axl Rose), that is — is not only great, but also finished, he assured us last night. “The album is done. It’s in the can,” Big Boi told Paste at Atlanta’s Velvet Room. “I’ve been working on it now for two years and nine months. It is ready to be released.”
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