Story by Adam Daniels

Photography by Dorothy Hong

“Do you need a drink?”
”Yes, I need four double whiskeys and four PBRs.”

It was Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson’s record release show at Williamsburg’s Union Pool one year ago, and while he was among a roomful of friends, he was not at ease. Robinson’s former fiancé obliged the request, assuming it was on behalf of the entire band. This was not the case.

Robinson wasn’t a household name in indie rock at the time. But he had a lot of the pieces in place to be one. He had all but conquered Brooklyn through marathon-style touring. There was a close-up of his mug on the cover of FADER magazine, and a camera crew from SPIN was at the record release show waiting to document the event. What transpired after those four double whiskeys could only adequately be described as a shitshow.

He spilled beer on equipment. He picked a fight with a heckler who called him out for singing his songs not all like they appeared on the album, insisting on dedicating every subsequent song to him thereafter. Robinson blacked out just before the third song. This was the beginning of the end of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. And the funny thing is, if it wasn’t for the occasion, that particular evening at Union Pool would have only qualified as a mere footnote in his story.

The scene is a giant, rock n’ roll cliché. No one knows this more than Robinson. He practically grew up on them, an ardent student of rock biographies while coming of age in Portland. One of the first things Robinson mentions when explaining the issue with the way his own story has been written thus far was the way one of his musical idols created part of his own mythology. “Kurt Cobain never really lived under a bridge you know,” he says. “He made that up himself.”

Cobain and the muddy distortion of 90s alt rock represent just one half of the tones that show up in his music today. The relationship that much more directly spawned Robinson’s just-released second album, Summer Of Fear, was his love affair with classic rock. A heady homage to the golden sounds of Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac, it’s also a record in which Robinson might have created the youngest divorce rock album ever, devoting much time to the struggles and eventual failure of his engagement to his former fiancé and girlfriend of six years.

But the divorce theme is rarely all that direct in Robinson’s lyrics. Rather, it’s underlying layer of melancholy that tugs at the album’s narrator as he tells various stories. By way of his eponymous self-titled debut, these stories filled the bar last summer in Williamsburg, songs he’d fleshed out while befriending near half the bartenders of North Brooklyn, diving headlong into piles of drugs, sleeping in parks, and wrestling with a heavy brand of cynicism as handed down by his stand-up comedian father. These things came together through Robinson’s compulsive addiction to songwriting, a gift in which a lot of people saw a lot of potential. One such song was “Buriedfed,” a folk explosion similar to Robinson’s relationship with music as a whole: part link to the demons in his own life and part introduction to a string of characters and the way they cope with their own mortality, depression and simple daily existence. The song served as the closest thing to Robinson’s autobiographical introduction. Interestingly, a line from that song more closely resembled the crowd at Union Pool’s introduction to Robinson that night. “Didn’t like people much at all, tasted better with alcohol, you know how that one goes,” he states. That’s who he was that night: the asshole that baited the crowd to call him on it while he used alcohol to cope with expectations. It resulted in a theatrical breakdown. But that breakdown was part of a self-destruct mission Robinson had been stumbling to almost the entire time he’d lived in New York.

By age 16, Robinson felt compelled to move to the city. At 17, his acceptance to NYU made this a reality. At that point, his idea of the city was carved out much more by those same rock biographies.

“I was reading (Legs McNeil’s) “Please Kill Me” and all this stuff about ’70s New York and you know like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Talking Heads, The Ramones, just like really sort of wanting to bask in that,” Robinson remembers. “Not even really understanding that New York in the ’90s and 2000 was going to be a very, very different place. I think I literally still thought it was going to be like 1979 when I got here.” But the punk scenes of ’70s era New York are little more than legends whose visual cues had been replaced by condos and food chains by the time Robinson moved in 2000. However, the New York City Robinson stumbled upon had its own bubbling scene.

Within weeks, Robinson found himself in attendance at some of the very first Strokes shows. So while the New York scene Robinson envisioned may not have existed, luck and timing gave him a front seat to the first relevant one in rock n’ roll the city had seen since.”I just had like a very zeitgeist-y kind of a, experience, the whole time I’ve been here,” he says.

A few years later he would happen upon a sort of invitation to the city’s next cultural vanguard: the indie music scene developing in and around Williamsburg. On his way to a Grizzly Bear show he stopped in a thrift store and ended up running into and befriending TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone. They went to the show together, and within a few months he was hanging out with not only Kyp, but the band they had paid to see. Eventually, both would play a vital role in Robinson’s music, initially helping turn his tales and words into actual musical landscapes and then more literally with Kyp on the production side and the Grizzly Bear guys backing him instrumentally.

But even while all this was going on, Robinson lived day-to-day life in a state of near-depression, seeming almost un-phased by the encouraging signs in both his musical and personal life. “I treat good things the way other people treat traumas,” he says. “I kind of push them down and try to get over it, you know?” Throughout his time at NYU, Robinson worked and played as hard as he could. Though he ignored class, he wrote songs and dove into pools of drugs and alcohol with equal abandon. He did it all with youthful abandon, albeit with a much larger arc in mind. Romantic only by rock ‘n roll standards, it was encapsulated further by one pivotal chapter in Robinson’s life and legend: a summer of near-homelessness, carrying a duffle bag and a guitar around while rotating between friends’ couches and strung out nights in Washington Square Park and on Coney Island benches. He likens this much more to being a bit of a troubadour than any sort of dire circumstances, but he also admits he “was getting pretty fucked up all the time then, too.”

But eventually, that all changed. “I went back (to school), ended meeting somebody who sort of helped me get cleaned up and stuff,” he says. That someone was his eventual fiancé. Soon after meeting and falling in love, the two found an apartment in Williamsburg. For a moment, he was on the verge of feeling like he had it all figured out before 25, on the verge of letting himself be happy for a bit without overthinking it.

And then it all fell apart: his relationship and in turn his sobriety. Everything he thought he’d figured out was called into question. Out of this was born Summer Of Fear: a celebration of relapse, depressions and reaffirmed self-doubt.

The concept of Summer of Fear actually began as a screenplay, a running joke between Robinson and friend Christopher Bear, drummer for Grizzly Bear, in which the questionable choices they made each night could be written off as part of a movie rather than some reality rife with consequence. However, somewhat ironically, it is this album born out of the clichés, born out of making yourself a character in your own life, that has the opportunity to finally separate Robinson from his own. It is this album that charts out the personal failures that gave Robinson a second chance to play an active role in his own successes.

Whatever comes next, the Robinson that looks back at you on stage these days is an entirely different creature than the one that created a spectacle that night at Union Pool. While Robinson admits he still knows a few too many bartenders, he no longer drinks at his shows. Headlining a CMJ showcase concert at Le Poisson Rouge the same week Summer Of Fear was released, Robinson could barely get a big goofy grin off his face long enough to look properly solemn to sing about self destruction. He played off of his band, played on his back in three feet of the ground. There’s no denying that he was having fun on stage, a notion even he seemed surprised by when he noted, a few songs in, that he was taking a sip of beer for the first time that night.

This man much more closely resembled the one you imagine when you hear his cries and wails on the first record, a man who despite the demons living in his closet is absolutely at peace within music. The more you talk to him the more you realize this may be the only place he is truly at peace.  And while his music seems almost painfully tied to these demons, maybe the fact that he can now own them on stage is but one triumph. Whatever it has become, it’s forcing the world that already knew him to break the box that contained Robinson before.

Regardless, for now Robinson will go out and relentlessly tour behind an album that champions his own failures and past misadventures. If he can make it through the experience, it might even let his music finally catch up to him. For years now, he’s been singing about traumas that have been replaced over so many times in his life they feel like reopening old scars. But who knows, maybe this time next year Robinson will be testing out some happy songs. Whatever those would sound like. The “Ocean’s 11” line he supplied un-ironically to sum up his day-to-day existence makes it seem like he might slowly be coming around on his own story, one he’s chosen to retell in the third person every night on stage.

“Are you suicidal?”

“Only in the mornings.”

The gushing love affair between hip-hoppers and indie-rock bands (in particular, Brooklyn-based indie-rock bands) in recent months has been well-documented. Jay-Z swooned over Grizzly Bear in Williamsburg. ?uestlove received a special private performance from Dirty Projectors. But these blooming relationships had a certain subtlety to them. Fawning from afar escalated to real life bro’ing out. Well, last week D.C. rapper Wale threw his name into the hat as well when the tracklist to his long-awaited proper debut Attention Deficit hit the net. The news that he was working with producer Dave Sitek on the album is not new news. However, the news that he did a song with the TV On The Radio dude called “TV In The Radio” is. Your move Snoop? (Via: Nah Right)

Words & Photography by Jenn Hernandez

The good weather continued for giddy Outside Lands second day concert-goers eager to soak in as much sun as possible while also getting their fest on. As we listened to a smooth Raphael Saadiq croon from the main stage – who started out dressed in a three-piece suit to later strip down to a rolled-up collared shirt – it was worth admiring the diversity in the crowd as well as the lineup we were about to drink in. We had metal time with Mastadon, the most magical five minutes with Bat For Lashes, and rumpshaking with TV On The Radio courtesy of Tunde Adebimpe’s hips, all in the course of one day.

The big news of the night, however, happened at 7:40 p.m. at the Twin Peaks stage. As I got situated in the photo pit, The Mars Volta were into their second song and more or less blowing out my ear drums. My camera was in love with singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, following him everywhere he went: handstands, spazzing and tossing the mic stand effortlessly into the air. At one point, he dived belly first onto the floor, popped back up, grinded against his mic stand, and then shuffled off to the side of the stage to drink tea out of a white mug.

Bixler-Zavala then grabbed the sign adjacent to the band that spelled out “THE MARS VOLTA” in giant capital letters, hocked it on his back, and then proceeded to kick the shit out of it, breaking it in the middle before nearly throwing everything into the crowd and grabbing another photographer’s camera in the process. All photographers were promptly bounced out of the photo pit breathless, and I was just glad to not have been caught in the crossfire. Best ten minutes of the whole weekend.

Other boring highlights included:
- find out trampolines really are as good as you remember from childhood
- the awkward hug I received at the Hug Station
- the Os Mutantes broken string incident
- TVOTR absolutely dominating “Wolf Like Me”
- Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox not knowing who else was on the festival bill with his band: “Who is Conor Oberst? Is he a singer?” (after being clued in by an audience member: “Oh, you mean Bright Eyes?”)
- eating something called a cookie pie
- nearly getting demolished in the photo pit during The Mars Volta set, but getting bomb Indian food to make up for my near-death experience

Sadly, news of DJ AM’s untimely death the day before had gripped everyone, and lots of people in lines, drinking near each other, or standing near one another in the crowds discussed the tragedy.

Raphael Saadiq

Portugal. The Man

Mastodon

Os Mutantes

TV On The Radio

Deerhunter

The Mars Volta

TV On The Radio is a band of many positive descriptions, but direct is rarely one of them. This is what makes the second track from Malone’s Rain Machine project all the more interesting, “Smiling Black Faces” is a chilling tale of genocide and horror and police brutality that seems to leave much less room for interpretation than most of the layered ditties Malone has been touring on for some years now.

Malone also just announced a Rain Machine tour, which will begin in Brooklyn’s Bell House on September 21, one day before his album is scheduled to come out for the masses. Dates are as follows.

09.21.09 Brooklyn, NY @ Bell House
09.25.09  Echo Park, CA @The Echo
09.26.09  Los Angeles, CA @ The Getty Center
09.28.09  San Francisco, CA @The Independent
09.30.09  Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
10.01.09  Seattle, WA @ Neumos
10.02.09  Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
10.09.09  Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree
10.10.09  New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
10.12.09  Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
10.13.09  Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
10.15.09  Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
10.16.09  Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
10.17.09  Chicago, IL @ Double Door
10.18.09  Detroit, MI @ Small’s
10.19.09  Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
10.20.09  Montreal, QB @ Il Motore
10.22.09  Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Upstair
10.23.09  Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

(Via: Urb & Steoeogum)

Like we were saying last month, Kyp Malone, bearded guru of the TV on the Radio gang, is about to release a solo album under the name Rain Machine on September 22 via Anti-. Not content to leave TVOTR fans in the dark as to his activities, Malone has released a dark, slightly strange image that will be used for his album’s cover, and whet fans’ appetites with a track-listing for his latest musical endeavor. Check the album artwork out for yourself (and draw your own conclusions) above.

Tracklisting for Rain Machine:

01 Intro
02 Give Blood
03 New Last Name
04 Smiling Black Faces
05 Driftwood Heart
06 Hold You Holy
07 Desperate Bitch
08 Love Won’t Save You
09 Free Ride
10 Leave the Lights On
11 Winter Song

“Buying and listening to this album will be more than just pleasurable, more than just horizon expanding. This record will bring the listener to a higher level of consciousness, that peace and happiness are attainable through bathing in its sounds…LOL!!! Really though, I had a great time making this record and I hope listeners enjoy it.”

Conan played these clips of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Bonnaroo on The Tonight Show last night, and we have to say that the endings of both parts (pt 2 after the jump) are troubling in very different ways.

Miles B.A. Robinson, who last year released his excellent if overlooked self-titled LP, recently moved to Portland from Brooklyn (a trend we’ve been noticing lately) to either clear his mind or muddy it further. His follow-up album, produced by TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, is supposedly still coming out soon and will presumably increase his popularity among fans of his friends’ band Grizzly Bear, but since we have heard zero songs from that record, we’ll settle for a pair of songs he recorded in the UK recently while there playing the Stag & Dagger festival. One is a Thin Lizzy cover, the other is the never before heard “Gold and Grey.” Both are available here along with an extensive interview.

The 2nd annual Roots Picnic took place in Philadelphia, PA this past Saturday, June 6th. The day long festival was curated by The Roots included performances by Santigold, Kid Cudi, TV On The Radio, Public Enemy, and two sets from The Roots themselves.

Santigold pretty much stole the show with her new live band and a special guest spot from Philly hometown hero Spank Rock. The band behind her provided the live show with that extra spark she’s been missing on stage. She’s decided to hold onto her two fly-girl, both of whom who are still really dope. Good move.

Kid Cudi brought a lot of energy to the seriously inferior side tent. It felt like a high school gym with a stage set-up on low risers. Cudi fought threw the loud sound coming from The Black Keys playing on the main stage to gain control of the mostly under-age crowd. People were singing along and bouncing around as Cudi’s charismatic stage presence took hold.

Public Enemy killed it with Antibalas and The Roots backing them up for a complete live rendition of their 1988 album It Takes A Nation Of Millions… As seemingly nutty and (wh)acked out as Flava Flav has become, he still destroys it onstage with great energy. Combined with the consistent militaristic tone of Chuck D (and Black Thought on most songs), the album got solid treatment.

TV On The Radio brought the night to a close for me. They played a beautiful, simple set mixing oldies such as “Staring At The Sun” with new crowd favorites off of Dear Science.

It was a well-organized event in a beautiful setting right on the water with a real sense of Illadelph pride and community. As concert organizers work out some kinks it should become a summer-staple a few weeks after Coachella and a few before Bonnaroo.

— Words by Will Suter, Photos by Thomas Pacchia

Are You Reading This?

I don’t know if I would be.

In 2009, how does one offer an over-saturated musical blogosphere another column worth reading? How does one differentiate themselves from the legions of blogs offering the same imitated or emulated musical opinions as the next? Can we expect a Darwinian effect that will see the demise of websites and blogs that have no sustainable reason for their existence? Or can we expect a continued influx of under-qualified and over-spoken neophytes wanting their own site on Wordpress? I voiced my online-existential anxieties to Stuart Berman (of Pitchfork Media and Eye Weekly) a few months ago. “Where is there left to go? What’s left to offer when there’s already a Pitchfork, already a Rolling Stone, already a BBC, etc.?” I asked, knowing full well the impossibility of actually addressing such inquiry in a casual discussion. He was unbothered. “Honestly, good writing is good writing. At the end of the day, that is the stuff that will make it.” Touché, Stuart. Cynical Me wanted to say, “Well, easier for you to say when a part of wildly reputable organization with a cult-like following.” Reasonable Me stops Cynical Me from actually saying it.

I talk to Derek about this.

mcranston: How does a music blog sustain itself?
derek: realistically, or theoretically?
mcranston: both …
derek: theoretically, it’s through ads and sponsorships, etc
derek: but realistically, it’s traffic
mcranston: isn’t that more realistically?
mcranston: theoretically, i think blogs sustain themselves through constant updates, contemporary relevance, and expositions of new bands.
mcranston: realistically, it’s obviously just about money.
mcranston: and site traffic is intrinsically linked to money.
derek: yeah, i agree
derek: ultimately good content will bring people in
derek: or i should say, keep them there
derek: but honestly, that’s not so true
derek: it’s really about luring them in
mcranston: Exactly.
mcranston: and that’s the question I’m trying to ask.
derek: it can also mean a big exclusive story or MP3
mcranston: okay …
derek: the first site to post an Animal Collective MP3 is going to get a ton of traffic, so it’s a game a little bit. bit then a pfork or fader they have a built in audience, so they can kind of expose new people and not worry about whether they have enough “big” content on their site.

We don’t get very far and my queries subsist. How does any music blog sustain itself? Berman’s right: patience, trust in quality writing, patience, a unique voice, patience and some sort of cohesive/organized body. Granting these elusive qualities, what then is the ultimate aspiration of the Music Blog? Perhaps to present a mode of thinking that allows the reader of any genre to appreciate a sound or style to which he or she may not commonly gravitate (I guess?). Successfully articulating why an artist is worth listening is no easy task. Most websites don’t accomplish this feat, and few writers come close. Besides, this presupposes the reader is willing to read past the rating.

Being Jaded Is Easy

The torrent of information has already flooded and we’re bored and stagnant. The stories on Stereogum take two minutes to read. Pitchfork’s precise numerical grading system renders a careful reading of the actual review completely extraneous (i.e. an 8.1> is worth getting when you have time, an 8.8> should be downloaded within the day). Hipster Runoff is the absolute pinnacle of a frighteningly self-aware (and self-referential) media that has come to realize the ridiculousness of its environment. It’s like a fish being aware he swims in a fish tank. William Bowers, under the Puritan Blister pseudonym, recently explored Twitter’s insidious effect on the written word. To synthesis his article (though his distinctive prose should encourage a close reading): Bowers worries about the ADD of today’s technological culture and its affect on aesthetic taste (and cerebral development). Is the 140-character limit Twitter all we have to say? Whereas Bowers worries about the macro state of reading and writing, I worry about being read at all. Sure, I post the occasional link on my Facebook page when an album is really fucking good, but familial support via social networking sites only goes so far.

It’s tough not to worry I’m the journalistic equivalent of a Pitchfork echo. What am I to offer other than further confirmation that Animal Collective reign over indie-rock, or that TV on the Radio are the celebrated post-Dubya era band, or that Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay? Hell, even further, how do I strive to not become a Pitchfork-related derivative while simultaneously lauding Deerhunter, Fucked Up or Okkervil River?

Attracting Readers

I’ve given great thought how to attract more readers to The Tripwire, particularly in the vein of new sections. But most of my suggestions were predicated on sensationalist or dumbed down journalism: giving a ranking system to our album reviews, offering 250-word controversial opinions that would at least “get people talking” or just writing trivial details on our favorite bands (you know, like, who Sufjan’s dating). Inevitably, the question comes down to site credibility and reputation. Do we want to be the Perez Hilton of music journalism? After all, Hipster Runoff is as nauseating as it is funny. Actually no, the question comes down to attracting a large and consistent reader-base. How do I get you to read our site more? Is it a matter of venerability?

mcranston: okay, so with the sites that don’t necessarily have the fortune of a “built-in audience,” how do they establish one?
derek: that’s the “game.” one is persistence. doing something well and doing it over time. the other, which is easier for sites that specifically post news (like us and Daily Swarm) is SEO-friendly titles and the kind I like to consider “yellow journalism” that help lure people in
derek: but yes, also having a unique angle like hipsterunoff
derek: oh, and social networing assets, but that’s a whole other conversation

I can only hope it’s venerability. After all, my blog created this past summer, In The Gnar, joined the landfills after just one entry (but what an entry it was).

Effable Solipsism

Can I talk my shit again?

I suppose it takes the most vain (and dubious) of solipsists to open a column with self-referential concerns. It’s very Klosteran-esque to be reviewing oneself in the first place, let alone with such scrutiny. But my considerations are not ill founded. I honestly don’t know if you’re reading his. I don’t receive feedback. I don’t know how many of you there even are.

mcranston: Puritan Blister by William Bowers of Pitchfork is one of the best columns I’ve read on a music website
mcranston: he’s wildly erudite. his prose is unique. he’s complicated. a very fascinating read,
mcranston: so why do you think his column isn’t a staple among p4k readers?
derek: you just answered it
derek: he’s wildly erudite. his prose is unique. he’s complicated.
derek: people want simple and easy to understand
derek: Filet Mignon is amazing, but more people eat MacDonalds
derek: I guess what I’m getting at is it’s so broad and generalized (his topic that is) that people don’t really understand what Puritan Blister is until you delve into it
derek: which is why it’s so great
mcranston: Yes.
mcranston: so with that in mind, what lessons do we take for this column here
mcranston: – simple idea?
derek: I think the answer is talking to these people who’s opinions we take as “experts”
derek: because that allows you/us to delve into these very broad and expansive topics under the veil of a very simple concept

Or maybe I need a change of scenery. Writing in Starbucks is too cliché, too rom-com-esque, too “You’ve Got Mail”-ish. I need to start smoking, and get a type-writer, and probably grow a better beard. I bet that’s how Pitchfork does it.

There is no doubt that Austalia’s Wolf & Cub will make you want to dance, with their forthcoming Dot Dash release coming this summer. Remixed by BFAM, the lead single “Seven Sevens” gets even more glossy.

After the success of their debut album, Vessels, Wolf and Cub recorded the new album, Science and Sorcery, with Chris Colonna, who took the bands early demos and helped shape their sound into the dark, dancey mix that is heard on tracks like “Seven Sevens”. Alongside the summer release of Science and Sorcery, Wolf & Cub will also be touring in support of their album. The band has already toured with the likes of TV On the Radio, The Killers, Queens of the Stone Age, Wolfmother and Primal Scream, so we are sure that their tour this time around will be just as promising as in the past.

Wolf & Cub “Seven Sevens” (BFAM Remix)

MP3 Download.

Some people dig Wavves, others do not. A listening experience not dissimilar to running your favorite rock record through a analog lo-fi grinder, it’s not hard to hear why Wavves’ much-hyped almost-eponymous debut album Wavvves has been polarizing. But wow, in Psychedelic Horseshit’s interview with the Washington Post, they really tear the kid a new one. Brandishing “Wavves Suxx” t-shirts, the dudes in Psychedelic Horseshit go on to lament their current situation: “We should have named ourselves Wavves. We’d be rich now if we would’ve. We’re better than Wavves, he does the same kind of [expletive].” And that’s not all:

MW: Right it’s one person with GarageBand and a few chords and like — Wavves to me sounds like [expletive] TV on the Radio. That band sucks [expletive]. It’s one of the worst bands to get popular in a long time. They [expletive] trump No Age because I think it’s worse than No Age. No Age is just like, [expletive]. It’s really [expletive].

Washington Post: Do you think it’ll be fleeting, or will these bands maintain fans?
MW: I don’t know. Honestly I hope so because somehow if those [expletive][expletive]-[expletive] bands, by default, are like the leaders of the lo-fi movement now and we’re somehow under that umbrella because we made a lo-fi album. So it’s like, if those bands [expletive] don’t do good, I’m going to hunt them down and kill them because that’s the end of us. They’re [expletive] representing a bunch of good bands. Somehow the [expletive] bands get to represent the good bands. But it’s like that all through [expletive] history. Psychedelic Horse[expletive] – I think we’re better than Wavves, for sure….

I don’t care if people like Psychedelic Horse[expletive]. It’s for me. It’s for me to make music that I like. I don’t give a [expletive] if anybody likes it. Those bands, they’re all about like, Oh, we’re girls! Or, Oh, we’re skaters! Or, Oh, we’re California bros! Yeah, but, can you write a good song? No. You [expletive] put a couple chords together – I don’t know. I shouldn’t be talking so much [expletive] in an interview about Psychedelic Horse[expletive]. But it’s so prevalent now, everybody’s getting a [expletive] about all these bands…

Washington Post: Anyway, so you think this will make it harder for the “good” bands to break through?
MW: Well now it’s like if we make a record people are gonna be like, Oh, this Psychedelic Horse[expletive] record sounds like Wavves! Because it’s lo-fi! No. No, it doesn’t sound like Wavves. Wavves sounds like TV on the Radio, which [expletive] sounds like some really bad [expletive].

Washington Post: Yeah, I don’t really get that band, they’re not the worst.
MW: It’s just like Wavves if he had some black dudes and a full band

Well, whatever the incredibly nice dudes in TV On the Radio did to deserve this verbal thrashing, I’m sure they’ll get over it with their (deservingly) award-winning album’s and world-tour. [Via Stereogum]

Last week, Telepathe finally released their long-awaited, David Sitek-produced LP Dance Mother to the world, and we figured what better way to celebrate than a friendly game of bowling? Shot on the exact date of the physical U.S. release (April 14), we quickly came to realize that the competitive spirit burns brightly in this duo as the game soon became anything but friendly.

Telepathe is a band I have struggled with since their inception. From the origins of Busy Gangnes teaming up with ex-Ex-Model and current-Knyfe Hyt Shahin Motia to the addition of Melissa Livaudais (who played with Busy in the band Wikkid) and formation of Telepathe as we know it, they have seemed to live on the precipice that exists between Brooklyn’s diy scene and the star-studded Brooklyn that has produced, among others, Animal Collective and TV On The Radio. This is the basis for my struggles, because this ‘edge of everything’ that they have inhabited has been widely reflected in their music.

It’s as much a testament to their musical-inclinations and creativity as it is to the influence others have had on their records. It would make sense that their two Social Registry records — the Farewell Forest EP and the “Sinister Militia” 12″ — would pay homage to the Brooklyn and New York avant-garde, while the David Sitek produced Dance Mother, patterns all of the sounds together using heavy bass and synth as the glue. While Sitek’s production hand, and the fact that the album was long overdue for release (it’s been out in the UK and digitally everywhere since January), has played a large part in this transformation, the stark contrast in their recorded sounds are ultimately, a product of Busy and Melissa’s tastes.

So with these intellectual thoughts circulating in my head, I was ready to ask Telepathe serious questions about all of these notions I had about why there have been drastic sonic changes to their recorded material and where they are now as a band. And then we did shots to celebrate the record release. And then we started bowling. And I realized that despite all of these notions I had, there was nothing to suggest this duo was anything but genuine. From their contrasting personalities (Busy being the quiet soft spoken straight-woman to Melissa’s color commentary), to the people they befriended on the alley next to us (being the only people interviewed can be quite awkward in such a public place) down to their suspect bowling skills, it was one of the most enjoyable interview moments I’ve had. They seriously battled it out until the 10th frame of the game, I still got to ask a few difficult questions and in the end, we were all a little bit sad that I won’t be able to be one of the touring Telepathe dancers.

At last, the Lollapalooza rumors are put to rest — Depeche Mode, Tool, The Killers, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon and (of course) Jane’s Addiction will be headlining this year’s festival, along with an impressive cast of supporting bands, Lollapalooza organizers confirmed today.

More than 100 bands/artists/DJs will take the Lolla stage this year, including TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Arctic Monkeys, Fleet Foxes, Silversun Pickups, Bon Iver, Crystal Castles, Los Campesinos! and Passion Pit. This year’s event will also introduce “Perry’s”, a nightclub style stage featuring dance and electronic music. The DJs set to spin include MSTRKRFT, Bassnectar, DeadMau5, Animal Collective and Bloody Beetroots.

After selling out last year for the first time since Lollapalooza took roots in Chicago, ticket sales don’t seem to be lagging. Early bird discount passes went on sale at the end of March for $195. Regular priced tickets are $205, and of course if you’re not like the rest of us, worrying about saving $10 on a $200 concert ticket, you can always check out the VIP options at Lollapalooza.com.

Lollapalooza 2009
Depeche Mode
Tool
The Killers
Jane’s Addiction
Beastie Boys
Kings of Leon
Lou Reed
Ben Harper and Relentless 7
Thievery Corporation
Snoop Dogg
Rise Against
Andrew Bird
TV on the Radio
Vampire Weekend
The Decemberists
Neko Case
STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector 9)
Animal Collective
Band of Horses
Of Montreal
Arctic Monkeys
Coheed and Cambria
Ben Folds
Fleet Foxes
Silversun Pickups
Kaiser Chiefs
Crystal Castles
Bon Iver
Santigold
Atmosphere
Dan Auberbach
Cold War Kids
Deerhunter
Lykke Li
Robert Earl Keen
Peter Bjorn and John
Heartless Bastards
Gomez
Glasvegas
Federico Aubele
Dan Deacon
Passion Pit
The Raveonettes
The Gaslight Anthem
The Airborne Toxic Event
White Lies
Ra Ra Riot
No Age
Asher Roth
Los Campesinos!
Bat For Lashes
Chairlift
Gang Gang Dance
The Virgins
Amazing Baby
Portugal. The Man
The Knux
Ida Maria
Delta Spirit
Friendly Fires
Manchester Orchestra
Constantines
Ezra Furman & The Harpoons
Hockey
Miike Snow
Alberta Cross
Hey Champ
Sam Roberts Band
The Henry Clay People
Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam
Cage the Elephant
Living Things
The Low Anthem
Blind Pilot
Langhorne Slim
Other Lives
The Builders and The Butchers
Eric Church
Joe Pug
Kevin Devine
The Green Cards
Carney
Thenewno2

Featured performers at Perry’s
Bassnectar
MSTRKRFT
Simian Mobile Disco
DeadMau5
Boys Noise
KiD CuDi
Crookers
A-Trak
Hercules and Love Affair (DJ Set)
The Bloody Beetroots (DJ Set)
LA Riots
Kaskade
The Glitch Mob
Hollywood Holt
Rye Rye
He Say, She Say
Car Stereo (Wars)
Dark Wave Disco
Moneypenny
Yello Fever
Animal Collective (DJ Set)

Featuring Superchunk, M.I.A., Fleet Foxes, TV On The Radio, Dr. Dog, Glass Candy and Amanda Palmer.


[Superchunk]

[M.I.A.]

[Fleet Foxes]

[TV On The Radio]

[Dr. Dog]

[Glass Candy]

[Amanda Palmer]

Rolling Stone. Spin. The Guardian. MTV. Alongside Pitchfork’s reader’s polls and several other smaller sites, the aforementioned were just a few publications to award TV On the Radio’s fourth studio release Dear Science the title of Best Album of 2008. Hailed as the musical coming of the Obama Era (not a self-ascribed label), Dear Science was (and is) an aggressive coming-of-age album that poignantly captured cultural life last year. “The age of miracles!” Kyp Malone proclaimed on “Golden Age”, and we had our soundtrack to American life. On Inauguration Day, Obama may have been ushered in to office to the tune of Air & Simple Gifts, but “Golden Age” was playing in our heads. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that no band captured the cultural zeitgeist better than TV On the Radio.

Last week, we spoke to TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe. Incredibly humble and incredibly endearing, Tunde reiterated his incredulity at his band’s current stature, their impending tour, his impending movie role, fan videos and health food stores.

TV on the Radio embark on a large world tour tonight in Pomona.

Where are you guys right now?
Most of us are in Brooklyn, Dave is in Los Angeles, but we’re all going to meet up with him on Monday (April 12), and we’re doing two shows in California … with Coachella.

Do you get to relax before the tour starts?
Yeah kind of, we did Big Day Out in Australia in January. So from the second week of January until next week, that’s when we’ve had a break. Everyone’s been reassembling their lives after being away for so long, calling friends and seeing if they’re still friends …

Are they?
For the most part, yeah. Some things you can’t patch up. (Laughs.)

How has the process of touring changed for you guys? Is the tour bus bigger?
Well, the tour bus exists. (Laughs.) Since then, it hasn’t shifted in size much. We’d usually go in two vans and most of the band would ride in one van, and certain members would ride in the other because we had a smoking van and a non-smoking van.

Which van were you a part of?
I had been in the smoking van for a while, but decided I valued my voice a little more so switched to the non-smoking van.

Do you ever miss the more simplistic touring days?
The only thing that gets to me with touring is when it stops making sense. You wake up in the morning and think “what am I running away from” instead of “what am I going to do tonight”? I wouldn’t say I miss any of that stuff, we were different people then and a lot of what we did then I don’t think we would have the tolerance for now, both physically and psychologically.

What do you do in the filler hours while touring?
Super nerdy stuff. The first thing I try to do is find a health food store. It’s the easiest thing, while on tour, to eat anything. At first, you’re like “so what”? But then you realize, if you’re eating shitty food all day then sitting for six hours, and have to get up and do something — it takes its toll after a while. Every fourth grade teacher you had talking to you about nutrition appears in your dreams.

Then, I’ll try to find a bookstore. In this order: a book store, a comic book store, a record store. In the process of doing it, just try to walk around and get a sense of the place we’re going to be playing in.

So there were no health food stores in the earlier days?
Absolutely not. In the earlier days, you might find a coffee shop or a bookstore, and then a liquor store and whatever neon-sign is telling you can get the most burgers into you for cheap.

How do you deal with inter-band tensions on tour?
First thing you learn is to take your own space, because no one knows what’s going on in your head. If you’re getting annoyed, it’s just your problem. You learn from that, especially being on tour with a band, it’s necessary (to learn). With a band, not only are you working with your friends, but you wake up next to your coworkers, get on the same mode of transportation to go to work, spending all your free time, and when you’re done with your “job”, you commute home with them, but home is actually the thing you’re commuting in. There’s no escape … we’re basically family, so any spikes that arise are smoothed over pretty quickly. It’s to the point now where someone will be the way they are, and well “that’s just the way they are and that has nothing to do with me.”

That comes with maturing and age, though.
Definitely. Slapping happened five years ago (laughs) … it was the kind of thing that if it happened now it would be the end of the band cause there’s no reason for it, but back then you’re age 26 and still huffing the fumes of your teenage years out of there.

When did you find out Dear Science was award Best Album of 2008 by Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.?
The last tour we had in Europe was one of the worst times we’ve ever had. Three years ago, someone started the “God Hates TV on the Radio” theory and it was in full effect in Europe. Everything with wheels broke down. We were getting sick. It was bound to happen on tour, but during one of the worst times, we got a call saying “are you sitting down”, and we were told “Rolling Stone picked you as the number one album of the year.” We all looked at each other, and the feeling was “I don’t know if that’s a joke or not.” If it’s a joke, it’s the worst possible joke. And if it’s not a joke, it still might be the worst possible joke.

It’s great that we can make stuff that sounds like it does and gets noticed. When I first heard we got on a Billboard Chart (at no. 12), and I went to see who we were between, and Lil Wayne was no. 11 and Darius Rucker was no. 13. I just kind of stared at that for the longest time and said I really don’t know what’s going on anymore … It’s always weird to me seeing a list of anything. It’s flattering. But it’s nothing I ever paid attention to when I went out looking for music. Whenever I did pay attention to it, I was usually pretty disappointed by what someone told me the number one record is. For me, anything on the top 10, I just didn’t want to go near it.

Most “indie” fans wouldn’t even know what’s on Billboard these days.
I feel like I’ve looked at Billboard twice in my life. Once in 1989 when the Batman soundtrack was on it, and the other time cause someone told me we were on it. (Laughs.)

How did a song like “Golden Age” come about?
You’d have to ask Kyp for the best answer, because he wrote (the song) … and we don’t talk to each other about lyrics. He said he wanted to write a utopian pop song, which I thought “that’s a good idea, that’s better than ‘I’m so bummed out’”.

TV on the Radio – “Golden Age”

How did the election of Obama affect that song?
While we were writing the record, it was impossible to pull yourself away from the election. It was everywhere. Knowing us and knowing Kyp, the feeling of that song encompasses things like people dropping preconceived notions to give the best person for the job the job that needs to be done … but it’s also wider than that. In all corners of humanity, it’s a wish to get better and to crack open a couple roads … brushing away a lot of feelings that have built up over the past decade and being able to see a horizon or light.

How about the inspiration for “Family Tree”?
Sonically, it was totally different (than the rest of the album) in that it was voice and spare instruments. I wrote the melody a while ago and hadn’t done anything with it. I was going through my old stuff, and thought, “I could do something with it now.” The sentiment is vaguely about something that happened to me. It’s a culmination of friends telling me things that happened to them regarding falling in love with somebody but that going wrong because their parents didn’t approve of the race, or gender of this person.

Is that sentiment analogized through history?
Yeah, that’s what it got me thinking of. There’s a line, “They don’t know that we could be/Down where your cradle escaped the sea/and your raven haired Mama caught told you so’s.” It’ the (story) of this person’s mother who rescued them from drowning. There’s an old Nigerian story about a woman… and when her twins were born, they would be drowned because in this part of the country, twins were seen as a horrible thing, an aberration of nature … and she decided to go against this tradition and start saving these twins.

For whatever reason, you get thrown around by other people’s opinions of what you should or can be doing. By the time someone was in their youth, someone is … whatever someone older than me is telling me is wrong, by the time you get to be their age, you might have been knocked around so much that it’s easier for you to be like them.

Have you seen the fan-made video of “Family Tree” on YouTube?
Someone told me about it. Honestly, I did see part of it, but I was on tour and it’s hard for us to have internet. I’ve heard lots of good things about it. Kyp’s daughter said she really liked the “Family Tree” video and Kyp was like, “there’s no “Family Tree” video?”

I really like a lot of (fan-made videos). Someone made a video for “I Was A Lover”, they took old wedding footage and cut it to that, and it really worked in a way that none of us thought.

TV on the Radio – “Family Tree” (Fan Video)

Did you enjoy filming Rachel Getting Married?
It was the great. The entire process was awesome. The part that I had to play was one of the lighter parts of the film. Definitely, I’d take any hat I have off to everyone involved in that production, especially Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt … they had to be in that for a couple months, in a tense family environment and that I can see being exhausting. Filming is a lot of waiting around …

Jonathan Demme is one of the most generous and inspiring people I’ve ever met in my life.

What’s your favorite album of 2009 thus far?
Merriweather Post Pavillion.

Okay, well my next question, anyway, was how good is Merriweather?
So good! Still so good! I’m consistently going on for years now getting so psyched when I hear the words “Animal Collective”.

If you could meet anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?
Thelonious Monk would be pretty cool.

Which TV on the Radio song would you play him?
Hmmm. I don’t know.

Want me to pick?
Yeah.

“Province”.
That works.

TV on the Radio was greeted with a host of critical acclaim upon the release of last year’s Dear Science, and even though the record was marked as the band’s fourth release, it placed the Brooklynites on the road to commercial success. Now, TV on the Radio will be releasing a remix EP of their most successful album, making it the first time the post-rock band will have delved into the world of remixing their material.

The revamped EP, entitled the Read Silence EP was originally due out in February, but will finally hit stores tomorrow, April 14, off of the band’s label, Interscope. For the remixes, the band enlisted the help of Gang Gang Dance and Willie Isz among others, and rather than taking the usual route of remixing, Read Silence EP will include three non-single remixes off of Dear Science along with remaking of the released single tracks. We envision TV on the Radio’s electronically charged sound translating well to the remix, better than say if Justice were to remix U2.

The line-up for San Francisco’s second annual Outside Lands Music & Arts festival has been announced. The three-day festival will take place in late August at the Golden Gate park, and headliners include Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, M.I.A. Dave Matthews Band, and… Tom Jones. (If that’s not enough to make you want to go by itself, than we don’t know what to tell you.)

The festival runs from August 28-30, and along with it’s diverse line up, the event offers some of the best food and wine in the California region, as well as providing various eco-friendly options — like recycling and a solar powered cell phone charging station — for concert-goers.

Along with the aforementioned headliners, other acts on the roster include Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, Mastodon, Built To Spill, Atmosphere, Deerhunter, Portugal. The Man and Matt and Kim, among a whole bunch more. Tickets for the Outside Lands Music & Arts festival go on sale this Sunday, April 19, at 10 a.m. Some of the proceeds for each ticket sold also go to a good cause, helping benefit San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department.

Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival Line-up
Pearl Jam
Dave Matthews Band
Beastie Boys
Incubus
Black Eyed Peas
M.I.A
Jason Mraz
Ween
The Mars Volta
Thievery Corporation
Modest Mouse
Band of Horses
TV on the Radio
Dead Weather
Atmosphere
Tom Jones
Silversun Pickups
The National
Q-Tip
Brett Dennen
Built To Spill
Mastodon
Raphael Saadiq
Calexico
Os Mutantes
Midnite
JJ Grey & Mofro
Kinky
Deerhunter
Lila Downs
Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
The Dodos
Bettye LaVette
Dengue Fever
Heartless Bastards
The Dirtbombs
Lenka
Akron/Family
John Vanderslice
Matt and Kim
Portugal. The Man
The Morning Benders
The Duke Spirit
Zee Avi
Blind Pilot
SambaDa
Ryan Bingham
West Indian Girl
Extra Golden

Coincidentally, on the eve of the final Touch and Go record release tomorrow, word comes to us that one of T&G’s biggest selling artist will join former label-alumn’s TV On The Radio as performers on Saturday Night Live this season.

Hot on the heels of Phoenix’s performance this past Saturday, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs will grace the iconic stage this coming Saturday, April 11. Along with Phoenix and TVOTR, this season has seen Lil Wayne, Beyoncé, Kanye West and Fleet Foxes all play the late-night sketch comedy show. Special note for the ladies, Zac Efron will be hosting.

A rare gem from one of New York’s first most eclectic groups, Dissolver has been an awfully long time coming. Originally scheduled for release three years ago and tweaked, re-tweaked, renamed, and finally landing this past month via Narnack, Iran’s third album is their most straightforward yet.

Dissolver works in layers. Iran’s recording members — singer/songwriter Aaron Aites, along with Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio), Pete Hoffman (The Mendoza Line), and Aaron Romanello (Grand Mal) — come from diverse backgrounds, and it all comes together with resounding abandon on Dissolver. The appeal here is a departure from the band’s previous work; front and center for the first time are Aites’s vocals, revealing a more affable Iran with an unmistakable early-90s feel. Fuzzy, well-orchestrated melodies with moments of jovial dissonance punctuate the album throughout on standout tracks like “Buddy” and “I Already Know You’re Wrong”, which manage to encompass a dreamy land somewhere in between Yo La Tengo and The Walkmen. Elsewhere, on “Can I Feel What?, the band gets deliciously spacey with a hint of atmospheric soul, bolstered by Malone’s backing vocals.

Still, there are dangers in embracing one’s poppier side, and those come into play with unfortunate regularity on Dissolver. Aites’s strong voice here brings his lyrics into the forefront, and on songs like “Airport ‘79”, they prove to be a distraction. Too-obvious rhymes and an obvious airport-angst storyline mar what is otherwise a simple and understated pop song. These lyrical snafus tend to get in the way throughout the album, disrupting songs like “Baby Let’s Get High One Last Time” and “Evil Summer” and proving difficult to ignore.

Overall, the biggest surprise of Dissolver is how few surprises there are. Given Iran’s pedigree and its six years in the making, Dissolver comes with a heap of expectations piled upon its release that it never quite meets. Still, at its best, it’s a return to the kind of record that most “indie rock” fans grew up loving but haven’t heard in years. There’s a lot to be said for the straightforward.

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.

We’ve never seen violence against breakfast food go so right — the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are making a serious play for best album art of 2009 with the cover of their upcoming It’s Blitz! and it’s only February. Warning: this is not for faint-of-heart-Vegans.

It’s Blitz! is the band’s third studio album, produced by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek (who’s worked on the two previous albums) and Nick Launay, who’s also worked with the band before on their 2007 Is Is EP. No official release date yet, but we can expect the album sometime this spring on Interscope.

The album has a decent list of cameos, inlcuding TVOTR frontman Tunde Adebimpe, who sings on one song with Kyp Malone on the staple of rock ‘n’ roll instrumentation, the tambourine. You’ll also hear from Antibalas saxophonist and TVOTR member Stuart Bogie, Imaad Wasif (a member of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ touring band) and the bird and the bee’s Greg Kurstin.

The first single from the album will be “Zero.” If it kicks anywhere near as much ass as this album cover, we think they’ll probably do okay.

The Daily Swarm proposed it, so we decided to ask you. Was TV On The Radio’s SNL performance good or did it suck? You be the judge and let us know below.

“Golden Age”

“Dancing Choose”

Coldplay and The Killers must have made New Year’s Resolutions to be more like Bono — they’re hitting Shepherds Bush Empire in February for a one-night-only charity gig to benefit War Child. Mostly all we know so far is that it’s supposed to be super intimate, with you and 2,000 of your best friends. All good deeds and charities aside, they need to take a hint from Morrissey on how to make a show intimate.

Tickets for the February 18 gig are £50 each, and they’ll be available for very lucky fans through a lottery system. The lottery opens for entries at 9 a.m. tomorrow (that’s 4 a.m. EST), through the War Child web site.

War Child works to protect children in war zones. The concert actually celebrates the charity’s 15th anniversary and the release of the album Heroes, which is out on February 16 and features tons of big names (Hot Chip, TV On The Radio, Elbow, etc.) re-recording tracks to benefit the organization.

Of the gig, Coldplay said: In our eyes, War Child is one of the world’s most important charities, and The Killers are one of our favourite bands, so playing this concert is an absolute pleasure for us.

Not to be outdone, The Killers added: Coldplay were one of the bands that gave us hope when we were just four boys in a garage. To share the stage with them for the War Child cause is an honour.

We got our daily e-mail from RCRD LBL this morning and were more intrigued than usual. So we thought to pass along the wonderment of a TV On The Radio track remixed by Prefuse 73.

Our holier-than-thou opinionated comment of the day would be that stand alone, neither of these artists inspire us the way they once did. But when you combine the two, the result becomes something more akin to the excitement both elicited “back in the day.” Sometimes it’s nice to push aside the jadedness and rediscover your passion for bands.

TV On The Radio – “Dancing Choose” (Prefuse 73 Remix)