Optimistically touted the 'first major festival of the summer', with the Saturday of this year's Camden Crawl quite factually cooler than Christmas the notorious bank holiday blowout gets off to a somewhat slow and strangely tepid start. Three Trapped Tigers bemuse with virtuoso, if exquisitely accomplished aspirational unpleasantness that's ultimately as insipid as an infinity wired into Xfm, whilst Samuel Manville's Hymns breed a reedy unholiness in the grim depths of The Underworld. Its newly snazzed exterior belies its inner filth, just as Manville et al. negate any originality through the assimilation of the loud/quiet dynamics ...

alabama shakes : lee's palace, ontario, canada (april 17, 2012) julia holter : le poisson rouge, n.y.c. (2012) laura gibson : epitonic saki session 2012 lower dens : s.x.s.w. 2012 raincoats, the : london acklam hall (may 10, 1979) wild flag : coachella 2012

It's that time of the year again, ladies and gentlemen! Time to pack up the tent, get out the raincoats, wash that sleeping bag and test your strength with ten or so crates of something cheap and alcoholic. Well, unless you’re attending the first major festival of the summer that is, where you can just storm around some warm, cosy venues in North London, all with fully stocked bars and (this is the best bit) fully working toilets! Camden Crawl is an annual amble, shuffle, saunter, rush, push, skip and (of course) crawl around a number of venues ...

WHAT : Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival WHEN : May 4-6 WHERE : Memphis, TN WHO : Girl Talk, My Morning Jacket, Big K.R.I.T., Jane's Addiction, Florence + the Machine, Black Lips, Wiz Khalifa, Al Green, the Cult, Lupe Fiasco, War Kids">Cold War Kids, Little Richard, more WHAT : Camden Crawl WHEN : May 4-6 WHERE : London, England  WHO : Actress, Charli XCX, Rustie, Kwes, Niki & the Dove, the Raincoats, the Cribs, the Big Pink, Veronica Falls, Loney Dear, the Futureheads, Shelly in Athens">Keep Shelly in Athens, Glasvegas, Young Man, more WHAT : Asymmetry Festival WHEN : May 3-5 WHERE : Wroclaw, Poland ...

Anche quest'anno l' Handmade si conferma uno dei festival più belli in Italia, e il cast è come sempre stellare. Ma se, da una parte, non vedo l'ora di ritrovare dal vivo Gazebo Penguins, Karibean o Mojomatics, gente che sopra un palco non delude mai, dall'altra c'è un nome in mezzo alla scaletta, forse ancora poco conosciuto ma che già mi ha fatto sobbalzare il cuore, e che aspetto curioso di vedere live. Lettrici e lettori di polaroid alla radio, è con grande piacere che vado a publicare la prima intervista alle She Said Destroy! , ovvero ...

Brighton collective Shrag have firmed up more details of their forthcoming album 'Canines'. Named in honour of an imaginary arts collective, Shrag's mix an imaginative sense with a real taste for mischief. The band's unkempt clatter and longing for noise recalls groups such as The Raincoats, who managed to make their probing analysis sound... FUN. New album 'Canines' promises to place Shrag's music in a much more linear fashion. Recorded at Gargleblast Studios with producer Andy Miller, the material seemingly retains their Fall-like clatter alongside a pop touch. Two quotes from the band. Helen King: We wrote ...

George is joined by special guest Sara Wintz to pose the eternal question: what is a hoarder, and am I one? ------------- THE ETERNALS - Babalu's Wedding NAHAWA DOUMBIA - Kungo Sogoni - La Grande Canatrice Malienne Vol 3 (Awesome Tapes From Africa) THE RAINCOATS - Red Shoes - Odyshape (We ThRee reissue) MOLLY THOMPSON - Small (live video Dec 9, 2011) CYNTHIA DALL - Be Safe With Me - Sound Restores Young Men (Drag City) CYNTHIA DALL - Holland - Untitled (Drag City) KIT - Lazarus Taxa - The Animal Within Us (Caring Is Cool) BONE AWL - Six Within Death - By Ropes Through Dirt J.J. BURNEL - Freddie Laker - Euroman Cometh ...

If part of a manager’s job is to arrange a client’s life so he might be inspired to do his best work, then Kelley Lynch is one hell of a manager. Lynch (not to be confused with 90210 actor Kelly Lynch) forced her best-known client, Leonard Cohen , out of retirement by siphoning some $5 million from his accounts, forcing the singer-songwriter to go back out on tour in his seventies. (Battered fedoras and famous blue raincoats don’t just pay for themselves.) In 2006, Cohen was awarded a $9 million settlement in a civil suit against Lynch, but ...

The Raincoats : Lola [ purchase ] No 23 minute epics about physical transmutation and the apocalypse or 8 minute maritime revenge sagas this week. Instead, sexual humor. Maybe my imagination is limited, but I had problems figuring out what to write about this week. I mean, there are tons of songs about sex, and there are a bunch of funny songs out there, but songs with sexual humor? The two that I thought of immediately were by artists that I have already written about, and I’m trying not to repeat myself. Then, I thought of “Lola,” the Kinks classic about a ...

An ihrem Sound haben Shrag demonstrativ die Ecken und Kanten stehen lassen. An ihrem Songwriting haben die Pop-Post-Punks jedoch deutlich gefeilt. Etwas weniger Rotz, dafür mehr Pathos und große Geste – oder anders gesagt: etwas weniger Raincoats und X-Ray-Spex, mehr The Slits und Elastica. Die neue Single “Tendons In The Night” ist eine zickige Pop-Schönheit [...]

Ana da Silva, Anne Wood, and Gina Birch of The Raincoats (All Photos by Daniel Ahrendt) I first encountered San Francisco post-punk trio Grass Widow last year smack dab in the middle of SXSW 2011, performing on Friday the 18th at Red 7. Almost exactly one year later and Ravon Mahon (guitar), Hannah Lew (bass), and Lillian Maring (drums) [...]

San Francisco's ramshackle post-punk revivalist trio Grass Widow haven't released a full-length since 2010's Past Time on Kill Rock Stars ; since then, they toured with the Raincoats and released a split 7" with Nature on M'Lady's . On May 22, they'll follow up Past Time with a new album, Internal Logic , on the band's own HLR label. Here's the lead track. Grass Widow: "Goldilocks Zone" MP3

-- The 2012 EMP Pop Conference takes place at New York University March 22-25. The conference will include panels and lectures featuring the Roots' ?uestlove, GZA, Chuck D, Santigold, Das Racist's Heems, and DJ/rupture, as well as writers and scholars including many Pitchfork contributors and editors. -- Sonik Kicks is the new album by  Paul Weller , the legendary frontman of the Jam and the Style Council. It's out March 27 on Yep Roc and features guest spots from Noel Gallagher and Graham Coxon. Watch the video for "Green" here . -- The Pop Group 's Mark Stewart releases a new solo ...

Photos by Simon Godley All Tomorrow's Parties festival is one of my favourite events, but there were a few things that worried me about this one. Would Jeff Mangum be able to pull together a bill and a performance that would reflect his brief but stunning legacy from his Neutral Milk Hotel? Also, after this event was postponed from last December amid rumours of financial difficulties, would the festival itself deliver the same experience as previous years? I need not have worried, because after three packed and varied days where it was difficult to find any musical disappointments, I ...

View a photo gallery of ATP - curated by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, with Low, Joanna Newsom, The Raincoats, Scratch Acid and Sun Ra Arkestra. Photos by Rosie Welsh Follow these links to read a review on each day: ATP, FRIDAY ATP, SATURDAY ATP, SUNDAY