Among the initial list of indie rock acts confirmed for this year’s Musicfest Northwest in Portland, Oregon, are freshly reunited emo OGs Sunny Day Real Estate and the Get Up Kids, two bands that couldn’t help but pop out at us from amongst a heap of wussy no-names like Mudhoney, Explosions In The Sky, Bad Brains, Dirty Three, Twilight Sad, Pink Mountaintops, Amazing Baby, Girl Talk, Beach House, Monotonix, Grouper, Titus Andronicus, The Long Winters and fittingly, Pains of Being Pure At Heart. Good heavens! One of the Pacific Northwest’s largest, the Willamette Week-founded festival will be descending on PDX’s many venues for four days and nights starting on September 16. Stay tuned for additional lineup additions and snag your wristbands right here before they’re all gone and you feel silly.

It has been 10 years since Explosions in the Sky formed at a local Austin, Texas pizza place and started playing together. Now, in celebration of their anniversary the band has decided to play four shows with some very special guests this summer.

The shows will be hosted in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and the band’s hometown of Austin, and the band has announced they will be joined by No Age, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, The Octopus Project, Eluvium, Constantines, and The Wooden Birds for the anniversary shows. Along with the four celebratory showcases, Explosions In The Sky will also be playing as special guests of Broken Social Scene in July in Toronto.

Explosions In The Sky tour dates
06.27.09 – Los Angeles, CA (Hollywood Palladium)
06.30.09 – New York, NY (Central Park Summer Stage)
07.02.09 – Chicago, IL (Congress Theatre)
07.04.09 – Austin, TX (Stubb’s Waller Creek)
07.11.09 – Toronto, ON (Toronto Olympic Island)
09.09.09 – Antwerp, Belgum (Amphitheatre Riviernhof)
09.11.09 – Dorset, UK (End of the Road Festival)

The pAper chAse will be releasing their new album Someday This Could All Be Yours (Part 1), late next month on Kill Rock Stars Records, so we thought we would share a taste of what is to come from John Congleton and his band with an exclusive listen to “What Should We Do?”.

This Could All Be Yours (Part 1) will be the fifth album released by The pAper chAse, and will be followed up by Part 2 later within the year. Congleton is widely known for his work with Modest Mouse, Explosions in the Sky, and Antony And The Johnsons among many others, but his work with the pAper chAse is far different from the sounds he creates in the studio. If “What Should  We Do?” gives any indication of what The pAper chAse are preparing to deliver to us, then we’d have to say that they’re sticking close to the formula that has proven to work for them; with a taste of frantic, discord mirroring the conceptual ideas of natural disasters buried within the lyrics. Sure, “What Should We Do?” is a bit on the long side, but The pAper chAse manages to captivate your ears with it’s chaos. 

The pAper chAse – “What Should We Do With Your Body? (The Lightning)”

MP3 Download.

In the wake of the ever increasing pool of festivals and the possible merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the idea of paying $200 to see live music during a recession resulted in our pockets slapping us back into reality. But to be fair, the Sasquatch Festival — presented by Live Nation and tickets sold by Ticketmaster — is one of the cheaper weekend-long festivals and the line-up could quite possibly be the best yet.

Of course, this has left us all wondering at what point does the festival circuit become too congested, leaving them all a bit redundant and watered down? Those who remember the 90s will remember that Lollapalooza took time off for this very reason. But we digress, the Sasquatch Festival will take place May 23-25 at The Gorge in Quincy, WA and features the just-announced-today-union of Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction as the festival headliners. But the rest of the line-up is what excites us and looks like this:

Kings of Leon, Ben Harper & Relentless7, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Erykah Badu, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, TV On The Radio, Animal Collective, Silversun Pickups, Bon Iver, Santigold, Of Montreal, Explosions In The Sky, Devotchka, Peter Bjorn & John, Gogol Bordello, M. Ward, The Avett Brothers, Doves, Calexico, Grizzly Bear, M83, Girl Talk, The Gaslight Anthem, The Walkmen, Chromeo (dj set), Deadmau5, Mugison, Sun Kil Moon, Airborne Toxic Event, Blitzen Trapper, Shearwater, BLK JKS, The Wrens, Tobacco, Monotonix, King Khan & The Shrines, St. Vincent, Passion Pit, John Vanderslice, Bishop Allen, Blind Pilot, AA Bondy, Black Moth Super Rainbow, The Knux, Ra Ra Riot, The Dodos, Beach House, Arthur & Yu, The Submarines, Owl City, Viva Voce, James Pants, Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, The Builders & The Butchers, The Dutchess & The Duke, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, Dent May & His Magnificent Ukelele, Fences, School of Seven Bells, Death Vessel, Horse Feathers, Hockey, Point Juncture, WA, The Pica Beats, Loch Lomond, Vince Mira & more to come.

And the comedy line up includes:
Zach Galifiankas, Demetri Martin, Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job, Todd Barry, Jon Benjamin, God’s Pottery, People’s Republic of Komedy & more.

Ok, got that? Now, as for tickets, beginning on February 28 (on sale weekend only), a discounted 3-day festival pass will be available until March 1 at midnight at $154.50 for the entire weekend with single tickets costing $56.50. Beginning March 2 a 3-day pass will run you $199.50 and a single ticket $66.50 and if you wait until the last minute (and tickets are still available), starting May 11 the weekend pass is $229.50 and single tickets will be $76.50.

Oh, and Ticketmaster will have all your ticketing needs. Go figure.