Yearly Archives: 2004

The new Cardigans album, Long Gone Before Daylight, finally has a stateside release and people are talking it up.

But did you know that donewaiting.com England writer Steve Miller had that album as his #1 favorite release of 2003? This is what he wrote:

Long Gone Before Daylight is a staggering album with not a single misstep on it. It?s a seamless melding of Nina?s country leanings and the bands previous pop power, and oh, it?s so forlorn and resigned. It?s worlds apart from the indie pop of their earlier career, older wiser, bruised. Nina?s obviously been through the wringer but like a boxer who doesn?t know when to call it a day, she keeps getting up to give love another go. Wrapping gorgeous country-pop around depressing lyrics, it?s an object lesson in subversion and it?s to their credit that despite it being such a down album, it never pisses you off.

Lyrical dexterity abounds, my favourite still being the verse in ?For What It?s Worth?, where her previous pledge of “I love you” becomes “I like you.”

It?s this years great lost album, surely destined to be rediscovered in a dozen years, and yes, it?s the one album this year that speaks to me, that touches me, and that can make me cry, and if I was asked to boil this year down and save one album for posterity, it would be this one, a hundred times out of a hundred.

The Cardigans are on a tour this summer with Liz Phair, and I forget the name of the tour, but I remember it being awful.

For everyone wanting to start their own DIY club or scene, read this article.

Everybody knows L.A. is nowhere. But instead of just bitching about the lame Hollywood rock scene, members of Bang Sugar Bang started their own club and kicked off an impressive D/I/Y community. Glorious Noise interviews Matt Southwell. (full story)

Mogwai Day continues with a donewaiting.com interview with the band by our Houston writer, David Cobb. Here’s a highlight:

Q. Explain the “Blur are shite” slogan to me. Have you ever had run-ins with the band as a result?

A. Well. It was said as a joke by our then sound engineer and we laughed a wee bit too much, then made the shirts as a result. It’s meant to be funny and it certainly is. People get very upset by it but you can’t mess with facts. They asked us for one when we had them made but we told them to get to fuck. They can pay like everyone else. Fuck them. (full interview)

Is there any band that DW writer David Cobb won’t intereview? The answer is no, he will interview them all.

Rob Strong, from the unofficial Mogwai fansite Bright Light!, is compiling and assembling (in conjuntion with the band) video from their first decade for a DVD to be released in 2005. Rob sez:

“mogwai celebrate their tenth anniversary in 2005. to mark the occasion, plans are afoot for a dvd compilation. at this stage, none of the content is fixed but i’m sure you can imagine the sort of thing that will be included. fancy being part of it? stuart has asked brightlight to put the call out for interesting fan-shot footage to be considered for inclusion.

‘it’s very tentatively scheduled for next year (our 10th anniversary!) so now would be a good time to start collecting footage. we won’t be able to pay folks but i’m sure we’ll give them something nice and credit them. spread the word my good man!’

got anything good? brightlight is, at the band’s request, collecting footage over the next few months. mail rob-bl@youngteam.co.uk and i’ll let you know where to send it. a couple of ground rules:

1) anything submitted probably won’t be returned – please don’t send your only copy
2) dvd preferred, mail before sending anything else”

A friend of a friend of a friend told me that PJ Harvey’s new album can be found in your favorite bit torrent or p2p file sharing community.

Billboard, listen, you’re not good for my mental health when you write headlines like Avril Goes Back To Basics.

Avril back to basics? WTF does that mean to a teenage girl? She’s keeping it real by going back to the days where she played the recorder in 5th grade music class?

Chip wants to know: How did you discover new music when you were in college?

They have a new album coming out, too.

July 20: Washington, D.C. (9:30 Club)
July 21-22: New York (Irving Plaza)
July 23: Boston (Avalon)
July 24: Toronto (Phoenix)
July 25: Detroit (Majestic Theatre)
July 26: Chicago (Metro)
July 28: Denver (Ogden Theatre)
July 29: Salt Lake City (County Fairpark)
July 30: Seattle (the Premier)
July 31: Portland, Ore. (Roseland Theatre
Aug. 1: San Francisco (Fillmore)
Aug. 4: San Diego (Soma)

Yo, Guided by Voices and All Golden fans. Todd Tobias (occasional GBV contributor/producer) and Chris Sheehan have released the first mp3 of their new collaborative project, The Celebrity Pilots: ““We’ve Lost Kasparov”

DW/Los Angeles writer Han is what we call a fanatic. Don’t believe me? Check out one of his other sites he manages, The Sleater Kinney Concert Review Archive.

Regardless, SK put on two shows in Los Angeles this past week and Han was at both of them. Here’s a highlight from his review:

The best thing about both nights was getting to hear the new songs. “I Don’t Care” is bratty and the poppiest of the new batch. “Everything” is based on a heavy, grinding riff and features a harsh clipped vocal from Brownstein and some top notch wailing from Tucker. I was standing pretty close to the speaker stack and the during the bridge of “Everything” I felt like Corin’s voice was going through my eardrum and coming out the other side. “Bomp” is the down and dirtiest of the new material and and Tucker brings back the scratchy, blood-curdling screams that have been mostly forgotten since Call The Doctor. (full review)