Photos & Haiku by Kyle Rother

On three summer eves,
as music permeates heat,
Spoon comes home again.

Barely a week after Spoon sprung their quick new Got Nuffin’ EP on our unsuspecting ears, the quartet now turns their energetic drive towards efforts of festival promoting with SPOONX3, a consecutive trilogy of hot nights that find the band nuzzling themselves amongst a number of handpicked artists (Black Joe Lewis!), in an effort to showcase not only some new material from their forthcoming album, but also how serious this city is about its namesake (however self-christened it may be).

The venue? Austin (the land of music festivals) and its large-yet-oddly-intimate Stubb’s Amphitheater which somewhat recently (SXSW) had the pleasure of playing part in what was probably the smallest Metallica show since 1982. The bill? Every spectrum of the musical landscape including Quasi, Dale Watson and the Strange Boys.

Tickets look to be right at $28 per night and are still available. Check the lineup though, all three nights look to be worth it, (Spoon’s playing every night).

July 9 – Spoon, Quasi, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
July 10 – Spoon, Low, Dale Watson
July 11 – Spoon, Atlas Sound, the Strange Boys

—Kyle Rother

Spoon got sneaky and announced their Got Nuffin’ EP just a week before it’s release. That just so happens to be today. In keeping with our newfound commitment to poetic brevity, we’ve got an extra-special Haiku Review today from a Tripwire contributor in Spoon’s hometown of Austin, Kyle Rother. Close your eyes and breathe easy, people.

And thus it might seem
that if Spoon has Got Nuffin
then I’m in the red.

The good people at Merge Records have been gearing up recently for their big 20th anniversary celebration, an event that, like Sub Pop’s last summer, will celebrate the label’s entire discography. To kick the festivities off, The Triangle Youth Ballet will be performing Merge In Motion, a choreographed contemporary dance performance set to the music of the Arcade Fire, Spoon, Destroyer, Caribou, Polvo, The Magnetic Fields and a host of other roster standouts. The show’s going down at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC on July 18th with a special performance by the Rosebuds. Valuable ticket information can be found riiiiight here.

The line up for the five-day-long Merge Records 20th Anniversary Celebration has been announced, and the event to bound to be nothing but stellar with headliners like label-founders Superchunk topping the bill.
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