Mid Week Music News

By londonist_mark Last edited 227 months ago
Mid Week Music News
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OK, so hands up all those who are going to get tickets for Billy Corgan's solo show in June (15th) at the Forum. Yeah, thought so. Old razor bonce himself has never really been forgiven for burning his t-shirts and inventing the Morpheus look 5 years too early. The jury's still out on whether his new solo outing thefutureembrace is going to disappoint the old Pumpkins fans even further but Londonist really liked Zwan and the acoustic work he did for Jonas Akerlund's hyperkinetic Spun was excellent. Check out if you can his cover of Iron Maiden's Number Of The Beast. What with Corgan, Slint and Dinosaur Jr (that'll be yet another namecheck then) playing this year it looks as if the Forum is becoming the spiritual home for reformed moody American rockers. And that's no bad thing. Well, so far. The Slint show was great. And award yourselves a prize if you can connect two of those bands. Answer at the end.

There's another titan of temperment returning to our shores this summer (summer???). Nick Cave and his B-Sides play Alexandra Palace on 25th August, and although it's a horrible cavernous venue and a nightmare to get to it's a good chance to catch up with the Band in Black on devilishly good form. Of course Ally Pally isn't the only grand old London building to host a few shows this summer. Which can only mean one thing...

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The Somerset House shows are back! Only pretty much everyone's reported this by now (including our good selves) but just for the record, or in case this is the only music news you read (unlikely but just in case) here's the diverse, almost complete and pretty damn excellent line up so far:

* Beth Orton (July 5 )

* Doves (6 )

* Queens Of The Stone Age (7)

* Super Furry Animals (8)

* Mars Volta (9)

* Sigur Ros (10)

* Bright Eyes (11)

* Bloc Party/The Kills/The Cribs (12)

* Los Lobos / Orishas Wednesday (13)

Full details should be appearing soon on the Sommerset House site and tickets for all the shows go on sale Friday. If past experience is anything to go by there'll be none left by lunchtime. Can't wait to see what Josh Homme's going to do to those beautiful buildings...

Elsewhere this week Londonist caught The Tears at their Virgin instore. It used to be that the only way you'd catch Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler in the same picture was on a satellite photo but there they were nostril to nostril doing their new thing. Brett's certainly not lost his ability to pen a good tune and he's obviously still obsessed with winsome young couples on the run, heading off for a life of freedom in a caravan by the sea. But those wanting a return to the early days will be disappointed. If anything, the sound of The Tears most closely resembles Suede in their Coming Up phase only a little bluesier. And before you start shouting, I know Butler never played on Coming Up but there you go.

Now it's not that we wanted to fill this week's MWMN with artists who've names made for themselves as moody old codgers, but since we're here there's a new Radiohead song online. Taken from Thom Yorke's performance at Methodist Hall during the War on Want march a couple of weeks ago the recording is pretty rough but it's a beautiful track, coming on a little bit like REM's 7 Chinese Brothers meets Pyramid Song and you can hear House Of Cards here. It's guaranteed to keep the old guard happy.

Talking of new stuff Londonist accidentally heard Shane Lynch's cover of The Hothouse Flowers' Don't Go recently and we highly recommend you check it out because it's stupendously awful. It had us rolling out of bed with laughter, not bad for a Monday morning. Sounding like the muttered ramblings of some background player in a dodgy soap it's a sure bet for the worst record of the year so far and will no doubt be a huge hit. But if you need a good chuckle then you could do much worse.

It's also a week when our (Bothan) spies returned from ATP to reveal that Kevin Shields has been asked to curate next year but only if he reforms the band. Needless to say our sources reported that he wasn't most keen on the idea, before being carted off to the Spice Mines of Kessel. Still, you heard it here first. Also looks like the mad Mars Volta will be curating ATP in December. We can't wait to see who they're going to have. The Fimbles doing Orff? The complete works of Slayer in Latin?

And finally before we disappear up our own iPods here's a couple more shows to look out for. Tomorrow night Kaibosh will be playing upstairs at the Garage. Check out their track Mirrors and Arrows here. If you like it go along and say Londonist sent you, they might buy you a beer. Or they might not. Go anyway if that Soundgarden / Alice In Chains sound does it for you, it does it for us.

And The Delta Blues are at The Borderline next Friday (6th May). You can check out a couple of MP3s on their site but if you like the sound of The Verve filtered through dirty blues rock then you won't go wrong.

Londonist is currently listening to Tornado by The Rainmakers.

PS, Dave Pajo of Slint also played in Zwan. But you knew that anyway, didn't you.

Footnote: no apologies for the rotten Star Wars reference, we still want to see Episode 3 no matter what.

Last Updated 27 April 2005