Seemed like when the whole Columbus Lo-Fi thing hit, Psychedelic Horseshit was in the spotlight.  After not too long Pink Reason was headlining shows over PHS and now Times New Viking has stolen the crown and got themselves signed to Matador.  Meanwhile PHS is somewhere complaining about how Wavves is such a rockstar.

The upcoming Times New Viking album, Born Again Revisited is due out on September 22nd.  It’s cool.  You’ll like it.  Play it in your car with your friends.  They’ll like it too.

Times New Viking – No Time No Hope

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Austin, Texas based three-piece Harlem recently signed a “multi-record, worldwide deal” with Matador Records. Hearing “multi-record” is not something that is said by record companies very often anymore and might make it sound like you’ll be able to get drunk to new Harlem albums every year until either you or they die. That may not be the case, but for now, you can certainly the 2008-released Free Drugs and enjoy the idea of whatever they decide to call their sophomore album when it comes out sometime in 2010.

The Matablog’s first post this morning was an exciting one. Turns out Philadelphia lo-fi folk gladiator Kurt Vile has signed to Matador Records. The indie juggernaut going so far as to call their new roster addition “one of the more important figures in American music circa 2009.” Vile’s first full-length on the label, Childish Prodigy, is set to unfurl this coming Autumn.

Sweet sixteen is quickly approaching for Sonic Youth — June 9 will mark the release of the band’s first LP with new label Matador, their sixteenth career album, The Eternal.

The album (with cover art by the late guitar great John Fahey) was co-produced by John Agnello, who also co-produced the band’s last album, 2006’s Rather Ripped. The heavily-Twittered recording process saw a few firsts: former Pavement member Mark Ibold also joined the band in the studio for the first time after playing and touring with the band for a good while, and for the first time, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo share lead vocals on a few tracks.

Even with a new album coming out, they’re not resting on their laurels. Besides Gordon’s fashion endeavors, the band also recently got together with former Led Zep bassist John Paul Jones and composer Takehisa Kosugi to write the soundtrack for a dance piece for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, debuting at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April. Matador is releasing a 7″ single of SY and Beck covering each other as part of Record Store Day festivities on April 18, and they’re performing at the No Fun Fest at Music Hall of Williamsburg in May.

If you buy the album through Matador’s Buy Early Get Now program, you’ll get some bonus features. Check out the track listing below.

The Eternal track listing
01. Sacred Trickster
02. Anti-Orgasm
03. Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)
04. Antenna
05. What We Know
06. Calming The Snake
07. Poison Arrow
08. Malibu Gas Station
09. Thunderclap For Bobby Pyn
10. No Way
11. Walkin Blue
12. Massage The History

Pavement — along with the people at Matador — are once again on the reissue train. With the expanded edition of 1997’s Brighten The Corners being released yesterday (the fourth Pavement record, and fourth of eventually five reissues by Matador), our friends at FADER posted this Q&A with original engineer Mitch Easter.

Easter, who engineered Brighten the Corners at the studio he had in his Athens, Georgia home at the time, ironically states that he was unaware of the reissue prior to the interview [excerpt below]. You can read the full interview here, and when you’re done, you can find out what kind of Pavement person you are.

Have you seen what’s going to be on the reissue?
I don’t know anything about it. The first I’ve heard about it is this interview. It’s funny because I felt kind of weird about the fact that I didn’t really work on that record on any kind of huge capacity, but I think when it came out, my name floated around for a little bit. Nobody really heard of me much around that time, but at the same time, there were still people that remembered me from a few years before and I got all this press for the record. And I didn’t deserve it. It’s Bryce’s baby. I felt kind of embarrassed about that. I think the New Yorker magazine mentioned me and said that I produced it, which is just wrong. I don’t remember what the credits are, but that was a very much band-produced record, if not a co-production between them and Bryce. That was an example of how beloved they were. They really did get people’s attention and it definitely did get people to start calling me again about recording them.