Alrighty. It's Friday the 13th and wouldn't you know it -- there's a new Friday the 13th opening in theaters nationwide today. Confessions of a Shopaholic, which is also opening, aims to give the non-thrill seeking constituent something to do. Two Lovers, a movie that will probably snap you right out of the Valentine's Day mood and make you rethink love, relationship et. al. also opens. Check out a clip of its star Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman below. Awwwwwkward. -IL

For any Deadheads out there still hoping for one more reunion tour, good news is on the way! The Dead (as the surviving members of The Grateful Dead call themselves now) will be embarking on their first tour in five years starting April 12 in Greensboro, NC. The tour will end May 10 in Mountain View, California. Performing with the four remaining members - Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann - will be guitarist Warren Haynes from Gov't Mule and the Allman Brothers Band, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti from Weir's band RatDog. - AK

Peter Vallone, Jr., longtime crusader against graffiti in New York City (back in 2006, you may recall a billboard in Manhattan sprayed with the not-so-subtle message "Fuck Vallone") has started the battle again. This time, the city council member from Queens wants to make business owners get rid of the traditional metal storefronts, first adopted in the seventies to prevent looting, in lieu of new, 70 per cent see-through ones. Though Mayor Bloomberg agrees that metal storefronts are a scourge upon New Yorkers eyes, his administration is not sure the economic climate is stable enough to start forcing small business owners to buy new storefronts. As the battle rages on, can't we all just assume graffiti artists will still tag the see-through storefronts? Or any of the other numerous surfaces in NYC? -AK

Disc 1
01) Dearest Forsaken
02) Morning
03) Loud as Hope
04) Peng! 33
05) Sacred Vision
06) Friends They Are Jewels
07) Hickory
08) Waitin' for a Superman
09) Swans and the Swimming
10) Call Your Boys
11) Such Great Heights

Disc 2
01) Communion Cups & Someone's Coat
02) Belated Promise Ring
03) God Made the Automobile
04) Homeward, These Shoes
05) Love Vigilantes
06) Sinning Hands
07) No Moon
08) Serpent Charmer
09) Carried Home
10) Kingdom of the Animals
11) Arms of a Thief
12) The Trapeze Swinger

Back in October when Joaquin Phoenix first announced his retirement from the acting industry, did any of us truly believe he was serious about pursuing a career in hip-hop? Well, Doubting Thomases, bite your tongue, because here is the new incarnation of Phoenix's persona, and it is weird. Observe his taciturn behavior on Letterman's Late Show, in which he asks Dave "what he's gasses the audience up with," wondering if perhaps it is nitrous oxide that has them filling in all the awkward pauses with laughter. But I'm pretty sure there's not any nitrous oxide in the Death+Taxes office, and I was laughing pretty hard during this gem of an awkward interview. Enjoy the video of Dave and Joaquin chatting about the new beard and the new career after the jump.

Phoenix's brother-in-law Casey Affleck is making a documentary of Joaquin's crossover into the hip-hop world, so get ready to watch all the fascinating details of his journey. I mean, if it's all like the Letterman interview...it must be golden. In the meantime, enjoy Joaquin's rapping (also after the jump), and prepare for what's to come (he's working on new stuff with P. Diddy). -AK

Are we the only ones who love Dent May and his Magnificent Ukelele? Hell no! His debut full-length, The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, was just released last week on Paw Tracks, but has been on our radar for months. I guess that's what happens when Animal Collective signs and champions your band. (PS - keep an eye out for Animal Collective on the cover of the next D+T, on stands Feb 22.) Dent will be touring Europe with Animal Collective, and the U.S. with AC Newman. Check here for dates. His new video just premiered today. And yes, it makes us feel good. Click through to watch.
-AM

Joseph Priestly, the natural philosopher who, among other things, aided in the discovery of photosynthesis, once said, "No plant grows in vain." Sony recently released the downloadable Flower on the PlayStation 3's PSN network, and its gameplay echoes Priestly's sentiment.

The game mechanics are simple enough: You maneuver a tail of flower petals through environments using the PS3's sixaxis controller. But it's the concept that makes Flower so compelling. You begin controlling a single petal, but collect more as each level progresses, bringing life back to hay-colored, unenriched land. You won't stab or shoot anyone in Flower; you'll simply bring things back to life, making it one of the few eco-conscience games available. And if a sweep of green covering a field or a tree coming back to life can't bring a smile to your face, what can? -SB

Flower is available now on the PSN network for $9.99.

If Weeds only leaves you craving more Mary-Louise Parker, check her out in Hedda Gabler, a Roundabout Theatre Company production on Broadway. Though the revival earned a searing review from the New York Times, I didn't really think it was that bad. Parker tries out some dry humor over the course of this dark tragedy and sure, sometimes the voices are a little monotone (don't see it when you're tired) but she still got some laughs. All in all I was still entertained. It's fun to see who else pops up in the cast, too: Peter Stormare (the guy in the second Jurassic Park who gets eaten by tiny dinosaurs because he keeps shocking them) plays, surprise, surprise, the creepy, lecherous judge. Paul Sparks plays the old flame for Mary-Louise's character - if you don't know who he is, take a closer look at Synecdoche, NY. Yep, Sparks played Derek from the flaming house's basement. So, if you happen to be in Times Square at the American Airlines Theater anytime soon, check out a Norwegian, 19th Century version of Mary-Louise. - AK

Whether you live in New York City like us, or you just like thinking about all the tall buildings and yellow taxis, check out Elliott Erwitt's New York, a compilation of monochromatic photos taken of the city over the course of this photographer's career. Born in Paris, Erwitt emigrated to the United States at the age of ten, and has worked in advertising and journalistic photography since the 1950s. He's famous for the picture he took of Nixon poking Krushchev's lapel in Moscow in 1959 during their "kitchen debate" - which escalated to a point where, according to a 2003 interview in The Guardian , Erwitt thought he might have heard Krushchev tell Nixon to "go fuck his grandmother" in Russian. The picture (which you can see here) definitely captures that kind of tension - I mean, look at that guy standing behind Nixon raising his eyebrows. If you do live in New York, check out the display of Erwitt's NYC photos at the Edwynn Houk Gallery, and if you don't live here, retreat to the nitty gritty of New York streets with his new book. -AK

Rockstar Games will release it's first round of downloadable content to accompany it's next-gen megahit, GTA IV on February 17th. The DLC is called The Lost and The Damned and is available exclusively for the Xbox 360. The game centers around a new character named Johnny Klebitz who is a member of Liberty City biker gang, The Lost. The game is not a continuation of GTA IV hero Niko Bellic's story, and shows a new side of the GTA universe. The trailer is below (M 17+). -SB

Harley-Davidson unveiled a new bike on Friday in L.A., and threw a big party to celebrate, which they called the Harley-Davidson Rebel Art Show. Basically, they gave tanks from the new bike (which is called Iron 883) to a bunch of great artists like Shepard Fairey, and had each artist paint them with their own interpretation on the theme of rebellion. The tanks are being auctioned off for the Art Matters charity, and are still on display for 2 weeks at Robert Berman Gallery in L.A.

I was one of the lucky few to check out the new bike at the unveiling, and one of the even luckier few to actually borrow one of the new Iron 883's for a weekend romp around Cali. Yes, I did have my motorcycle license prior to tearing up Route 1, but I was still downright shocked when the nice folks at Harley offered to let me keep one of their new babies overnight.

[More on the adventure after the jump.]

I don't know my way around Southern Cali too well, so I intended to just motor around the parts of L.A. that I know. But once I got on Rt 1, with the ocean on my left and mountains on my right, the bike was growling, imploring me: "Dude, don't be a jackass, let's fucking cruise!" Next thing I knew, I was up past Malibu, tearing that town up Lebowski-style.

I hooked back down to L.A., rode through the hills on Mulholland, leaning into the corners so hard that I scraped a foot peg on the pavement. This bike is so much fun it's insane. And here's the best part: It costs less than $8K brand new. It's the lowest priced Harley ever introduced--it's a sneeze more than a new scooter, except you get you get a full-on machine that will take you anywhere, and you get to be a Harley rider, which, you know, beats the living hell out of being a Vespa rider. And it easily gets over twice the gas mileage of your car. Bottom line: You need one of these.
(Event photos courtesy of Colin Young-Wolff)
-AM

Japan's Cornelius is coming to the U.S. -- well, part of it. Check out the dates below. For those not in California, or willing to travel, peep the video of him live in Tokyo shot on April 7, 2008. -IL

CORNELIUS TOUR DATES
5/08/09 Mexico City - Lunario
5/09/09 Guadalajara - Festival de Mayo
5/12/09 San Francisco - The Fillmore*
5/13/09 Santa Cruz - Rio Theater*
5/14/09 Los Angeles - Mayan Theater*
5/16/09 Pomona - The Glasshouse*

*with Deerhoof

Remember when artists used to change their names to unintelligible symbols? That was great. Nowadays we get one lousy letter, like Daddy to Diddy. Santogold has just announced a name change. From this day forth Santogold is now Santigold. Why? No reason -- just sounds cool. At least Diddy got into a gun fight at a club and went on talk-show apology tour before changing his name. Now look at him: biggest billboard in Times Square. -SB

The Iraqi metal band, Acrassicauda, have moved to the United States and settled in New Jersey, a state only slightly better than Iraq. The band was discovered by Vice, who wrote a profile on the band in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and later returned in 2006 to film a documentary involving the band called Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Acrassicauda's compelling story has since been covered by major news outlets, including the New York Times and Fox News. As you can tell from the photo, they look pretty metal. Not sure if they have a fatwah against them, though. But if they do, you know who loves that shit? Padma Lakshmi. Anyway to get these dudes on Top Chef? -SB

Steven Alan Outpost 465 Amsterdam Avenue (between W. 82nd and W. 83rd streets) 212 595 8451.

School Of Seven Bells are in our forthcoming issue. You can get a sneak peak of the feature on the post below and check out their video for "Half Asleep" here. And no, you're not seeing double. They are twins. Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. The trick to telling them apart is in the bangs. ...Maybe we've spent too much time with this video. -IL

Though it's a few weeks away from hitting shelves, Death+Taxes 18, featuring Animal Collective on its cover, is now available for digital perusal in issuu format. Click here to check it out. It's not quite the same as having a magazine in your hands, but when you click on the full-screen option, which we recommend, the pictures pop and the text is readable. Enjoy. The issue will be on stands on 2/24.

Here you go. Trippy goodness from Chairlift and director Ray Tintori. -IL

Behold Morrissey's video for "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris." The latest single from Years Of Refusal. Look out for an astounding acrobatic maneuver from his drummer -- it happens about half way through. If you blink, you might miss it. -IL

Morrissey - I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris

By Joe Colly

When the fellows of Animal Collective were tinkering with found sounds and tribal-skewed noise in band member Brian Weitz's New York apartment in the early part of this decade, the prevailing musical landscape of the city was defined by musicians looking backwards, most notably the Strokes' stylish -- if unoriginal -- aping of punk's glory years. Animal Collective's philosophy, though, shaped by a spirit of experimentalism and a desire to look beyond the present and far into the distance, was one of unrestrained creativity and vibrant improvisation. Now, almost ten years later, the group -- alongside fellow everything-but-the-kitchen-sink adventurers Black Dice and Gang Gang Dance -- has shifted the paradigm towards itself by releasing a string of groundbreaking records that may be looked upon in years to come as those that most defined an era of indie music.

What's even more remarkable is that their latest effort, Merriweather Post Pavilion (loosely titled after the verdant lawns of the outdoor arena in their home state of Maryland) is probably their best album yet. The record has everything we've come to expect from an AC release: a wild shift in style from its predecessor (here, the sinister, coarse tones of 2007's Strawberry Jam are swapped out for blissful, aquatic ones), a childlike sense of awe and wonder, and layers upon layers of boundary-pushing sound explorations tied to a pop-focused core. This time, though, the band -- perhaps encouraged by the success of vocalist/percussionist Panda Bear's hook-laden 2007 solo release Person Pitch -- has leaned even further in the direction of melody. And as a result, Merriweather Post Pavilion is the most accessible piece of Animal Collective's catalog to date.

On a blustery Manhattan morning just five days before Barack Obama was to become the president-elect of the United States, I got together with Brian Weitz (Geologist), Dave Portner (Avey Tare), and Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) to discuss what went into the creation of this extraordinary record and how they came to make it with one band member living on a different continent. We found that nothing is simple when it comes to the band's creative process, and much like our new leader's creed, everything revolves around the notion of change.

With the three of you living in different places -- Brian in DC, Dave in New York, and Noah in Lisbon -- how did you collaborate from a distance when you started thinking about the record?

Noah Lennox: I'd say that the real work goes on once we're all in a room together. Maybe twenty or thirty per cent of the process -- the skeletons of the songs -- happens in our respective places. Everybody gathers sounds and just mentally gets in the zone for it. There isn't a whole lot of conversation about what we're going to do, but there is some aligning ourselves and thinking about what we'd like the songs to be. We sent a couple song files to each other, but the demos we send to each other are pretty basic, and, like I said, the songs really come together once we're all in the room and we can see what's working.

Especially because, with this one, we were thinking about the three of us trying to operate in three different frequency ranges. We didn't want two of us to be doing the same thing at the same time, especially with all these electronic sounds and samplers, they would really collide a whole lot. So it was Dave's idea to have all these speakers on stage, the sound on the stage is really, really loud and then that is being projected out in to the crowd as well. In terms of that setup, if we were both occupying the same space it would get really muddy and clouded, so we were constantly trying to find our own spaces in the songs. That was a lot of the work -- just trying to find the right sounds. We had a lot of samples of ourselves playing rather than sampling a lot of other records.

Do you come into the process with ideas for a feel or a vibe for the record ahead of time? Is that discussed ahead of time?

Brian Weitz: Yeah, we talked about it a lot over email going into the songwriting session.

NL: I feel like it changed over time, too, slightly. As we worked, the idea kind of morphed. But there was definitely a focus on bass from the very beginning.

BW: And on Strawberry Jam, even though there were a lot of traditional instruments on it, we worked really hard on trying to get it to sound more like an electronic record -- really synthetic and futuristic. And, for this one, going into it we knew the setup was going to be primarily all of us doing electronics, but we wanted the source samples for a lot of the sounds to be more organic and acoustic, and kind of environmental in terms of the field recordings. Even though the way we perform it is more like an electronic composition, a lot of the samples are us using traditional instruments in the practice space or at home. Then it's tweaked further to sound more like an electronic record. But on this record there is more straightforward organic stuff -- even more than there is on Strawberry Jam.

When you normally head into the studio, yu've already been playing most of the new material live for a while. Was that the case with this record as well?

BW: Yeah, except for two songs -- "Bluish" and "Lion in a Coma" -- that we didn't play live beforehand. They're both Dave's songs; he sent us his demo versions for them. I worked on a few ideas but we didn't actually get together and play anything or actually practice them until we got to the studio. Then we spent, like, one afternoon working on them and then recorded them after that.

And you did the record in two different places, right?

Dave Portner: Yeah, two different places. Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, and then we mixed it in Athens where Ben Allen, the producer, grew up. He was just familiar with the studio there, he likes the room, and it had a lot of cool eighties and older electronic effects and plate reverb. We really don't like to use computer effects at all, if we can help it. Sometimes they can be used subtly, and if you're running so much stuff out you actually can't do it any other way. But especially for this record we liked the natural spring reverb and that's utilized a lot on it.

In terms of those recording techniques, obviously the music is very intricate, so how would you describe the process to a layperson? How many samples, would you say, are on a given track?

BW: I could only speak for myself; I don't think we usually have a good grasp of what each other person is doing.

DP: And it's kind of different for every song, too.

NL: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. For a song like "Summertime Clothes," Dave went out to run an errand or something, and we pretty much wrote the melody. Then he came back to the practice space where Brian and I were working on something, played the guitar part, and then we just started adding stuff in there. For that song I've got maybe six little sample things, there's Dave's guitar part, and Brian's got a good four or five.

BW: I think I have six. I mean the strings are like multiple parts.

NL: Plus two singing parts.

DP: I've got a rhythm track, too, of Noah hitting a drum stool. Plus we did, like, tons of overlay percussion on that song to get it to have that kind of roomy, wall-of-sound percussion feel.

So it all depends on the specific track, then?

DP: Yeah, because some tracks are just based on really repetitive elements, so for those we'll try to keep it to that. Like "Brothersport." Even thought there's a lot of percussion added in the studio, the live tracks that we would play are pretty simple. In that song we all play the same thing over and over -- well, maybe not Brian -- but Noah and I pretty much play the same elements throughout the whole song. Whereas some stuff we're constantly changing what we play or adding in new things.

This record feels more lush and more approachable than your previous stuff. Did you want to make something more instantly accessible?

DP: Not really. There have even been times when we've thought that this harkens back to some of our weirder records. I feel like we always go back and forth about this for every record we make. With Strawberry Jam, at the time, we thought it was really dark and abrasive. Then we played it for a lot of people and they thought it was the poppiest thing we've ever done because the vocals are really up front and clear in the mix. And for this one, since there's just three of us, we talked more about leaving a lot of open space and making sure we were adding something to each song -- we weren't just getting crazy and throwing whatever in there.

NL: Yeah, like I was saying earlier about each of us trying to occupy a separate frequency range...

DP: Yeah, in the past it's been very wall-of-sound-y with all four of us playing, especially with the guitars. So just talking a lot about the elements we were going to use really helps, and making sure that there was a lot of room in there. I think that maybe adds something to the accessible quality of the record.

BW: Also when we first started doing this stuff live we would just play most of the record all the way through, and even our sound guy said that it was kind of hard to wrap your head around, initially. He said once it clicked for him, it clicked. But I still remember going into the studio with that thought of him, who knows our music better than anyone, saying that it took him a little bit to get used to. After recording a few songs in the studio -- I don't think we thought of it as being accessible but we were thinking it was going to be a pretty heavy-hitting album.

DP: It's definitely the most melodic thing we've done. Brian's parts, especially, for the most part are all really melodic. And a lot more of the parts in these songs fit into the melody or the rhythm -- there aren't as many noises and sounds thrown in.

BW: That was part of my personal challenge for the record. Because I'm not a multi-instrumentalist like these guys who can change a source of inspiration with what they choose to play. And I don't really have good pitch; I often needed Noah's help to pitch myself into being melodic. But I tried to find samples that could be placed melodically into songs.

I feel like there's a joyful, upbeat quality to some of things you do live and on record. Do you ever think of your music as "positive?"

DP: In terms of lyrics, I think we're writing about whatever is happening for the most part. I think a lot of the songs I contributed here maybe came from a sadder, but positive place.

BW: I don't know about positive, because there are sentiments behind the songs that are sadder because our lives aren't one hundred per cent positive and happy all the time. But I think starting from the beginning, coming out of the nineties it felt like music was getting very serious and stale and over-thought. In 2000 when we started playing, even if the content isn't super happy, which it isn't for those early records, we still wanted to put across that playing music is fun and joyous and that it makes us happy. And to put that across in our live shows. Since the live shows have influenced the records, it still comes out there.

NL: There's that kind of manic excitement and energy that we've subverted into something slightly different now. But I don't think any of us want to force this positive vibe just for the sake of it.

Though on first listen, Merriweather Post Pavilion seems much prettier than something like Strawberry Jam.

DP: A lot of our older records have this kind of hyped-up, 'Let's go!' feel, especially in the vocal style -- sort of shout-y and call-out based on how we used to -- and still -- play live. These songs immediately didn't seem to be right for that. Even though there is there is a hyped-up, electronic, maybe even dance quality to some of them, I feel like there's also this calm, mellow aspect to them that didn't need that kind of vocal from us. At least on my part, I tried to mellow out the vocals a bit more.

NL: I feel like that was dictated by the way we had to perform the songs. Just in terms of -- you have to be doing this a lot [mimes playing synths] and singing in the mic. Dave dances around a little bit, but it's not like with a guitar where you can go crazy, so the mood is much more mellow.

DP: They've definitely gotten more intense and excitable as we play them more because it's taken us a long time to get used to how perform them.

When you're using samplers and drum pads, do you try to play them as you might a traditional instrument to keep it more organic?

BW: Yeah, totally. It's also just more fun to play that way. Eventually the samplers start to feel almost like you're playing an instrument or keyboard, but it's just a pad with numbers on it and it takes a little while. It's sort of like learning a song on piano -- eventually your hands just know the motions.

NL: Eventually you stop thinking about it.

DP: And in addition to the samplers, we use outward effects and have a lot of stuff that enables us to constantly change whatever's coming out -- to keep a flow going so it never feels like it stays the same. That keeps it organic. So it does feel like you're playing even if it's a piece of equipment that might just run the whole time. You still have the ability to change it, and move it around. It's never going to be the same every night. It still feels like you're putting some of yourself into the performance.

BW: The last two engineers we've worked with, Scott Colburn and Ben Allen, who did this new one, have commented that how we play is not traditional. I remember Scott talking about the way we all played our mixers as if they were pianos. And Ben, too, he thought when we said we were making more of an electronic record with lots of samplers, he asked how we would sync up with each other, like the tempos, how everything would lock. And we said, "It doesn't, we do it manually." And he didn't understand, because he comes from a hip-hop background where that's not how it's done. The first day we were in the studio, he said, "I just need to watch you guys play a song 'cause I don't still get it." And we did it for him and he was like, "Oh, you just play them like they were real instruments." He told us that was how Public Enemy used to do it, too, because they couldn't afford the samplers back in the day, or maybe they just didn't exist.

In terms of the live show, a few years back you made the switch from playing traditional instruments live to using electronics. Have you grown more comfortable with that setup?

BW: For me, it's what I've always done live. I guess in the old days I used a little bit more keyboards and percussion. But it's not a change for me.

NL: It was definitely kind of a slow transition for me from playing drums to loops and rhythms on samplers, then playing full songs with the sampler to playing solo stuff with two samplers, and then sort of incorporating the two-sampler stuff into the Animal Collective stuff. So it was always a process of slow steps that never felt like a big, "This is totally new to me, I don't know what I'm doing" thing. At this point though, yeah, it's super comfortable. Maybe too comfortable.

Would you ever consider going back to using more organic elements on-stage?

NL: Sure, yeah. I feel like we always like to switch it up, so I'm sure we'll go back to something completely different sooner or later.

So, back to the album, your pal Bradford Cox from Deerhunter is on record as loving it and even likened it to Echo and the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain...

BW: He told me that. I had to test it out in a car and I just happened to be staying with him at the time, so we drove around his old neighborhood in Atlanta, which is very much like the area we grew up in Maryland. He went on a whole thing about why it's the Ocean Rain of this generation.

NL: They're both really wet-sounding records, I think.

BW: Yeah, he was saying that Ocean Rain has, like, everything in it. There's the rock aspect and there's the strings and it has fun rhythms to get into and a very grand feel.

DP: Actually right before we recorded I remember listening to Porcupine by Echo and the Bunnymen and I remember thinking, Oh, I can see some similarities between us. Brian and I really liked Echo and the Bunnymen when we were growing up, and those records have stuck with me for sure. There's a weird quality to their percussion at times, and there are similar effects. We've said the whole time that there's a certain eighties vibe -- the better side of eighties production -- that sneaks into our music sometimes. And I think Echo really rides the line of very subtle and kind of sweet, almost psychedelic eighties production.

And the record's title -- where did that come from?

BW: Well, we talked about this record about being a record that sounds like it could be listened to outdoors. Not specifically at Merriweather Post Pavilion but out on a lawn or a blanket or something, especially with Maryland-type surroundings. And it sort of fit that way because Merriweather has that big lawn. And we were talking about this Terri Riley all-night performance that we had heard about and Dave said that it'd be awesome to see that outside just chilling out at the lawn at Merriweather. And when he said it we were just like, Oh man, that's an awesome album title. Also, it has the word "weather" in it, which we like. And it's three words, which we decided we needed three or more words in the title this time. And Noah really likes the word "pavilion" because he thinks its sounds kind of futuristic. And then just to divorce it completely from what it is, those words just kind of sound awesome together.

How about the very trippy cover art?

BW: We saw a magazine when we were going down to mix, like Scientific American or Discovery, one of those things from the airport and the theme of the magazine was optical illusions. We saw that one in there. And we really liked looking at it and how it moved and it kind of moves in wavy way. We just kind of kept it around the house when we were mixing and it just became this image that we associated very much with at the time. We thought it would be sweet if we could do this as a record cover. Our friends who are graphic designers who help us with our artwork spent a lot of time with the pattern and changing the background. I guess it was kind of difficult with the color ratio and stuff to actually keep the illusion. They spent a lot of time with it. But that's not the whole artwork -- it'll be the outer slipcase and there's an inner thing with more artwork. Noah wanted the illusion for the cover to be more like wrapping paper, and inside is this present. And what's inside is alive, and somehow making the outer packaging move.

By Matt Fink

Believe it or not, Dan Deacon never wanted to be a solo artist. While studying composition at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in New York, he had been performing in ensembles, playing tuba for Langhorne Slim, and kicking up a racket in a grindcore band. But when he found himself alone in Baltimore, with no friends and no real prospects for collaboration, he had a decision to make. He'd already made a handful of records, experimented with sine waves, and made sound collages, but he wanted to attempt something different. "I knew that I could either spend a year trying to convince someone to play my music," he says, "or I could just do it myself and not lose the momentum that I had going in school."

He translated that momentum into 2007's Spiderman of the Rings, a leftfield classic that married cartoon samples with pitch-shifted vocals and candy-colored electronics, setting him across the country on a public bus to play basements and houses. By the end of the year, he was an underground sensation, filling clubs with sweaty throngs of kids who just wanted to dance. Then he got the itch: He wanted to play music with people again.

Few knew at the time, but even while he was touring with his brand of electronic pop, Deacon had already started writing his next chapter. While he was writing Spiderman of the Rings, an album he never expected anyone outside of his friends and fans to hear, he was writing music for ensembles again. Heavily percussive and elaborately layered, these arrangements would show off his compositional chops -- if anyone ever heard them. "If the album is never going to exist anyway, I might as well make it as awesome as possible," he says, recalling his fantasies. "I started composing in a different way, and that's when a new body of songs came on the scene." Those songs became Bromst.

Did this album change much from the way you had originally envisioned it?

Yeah, I'd say it did. A lot of the tracks that I wrote for Bromst were very slow and very droning, and I think there are only a couple tracks that reflect that way of thinking. I worked on it for a long time, so while I was writing it, my musical tastes would slowly evolve and the shows I was playing were changing, and that would effect how I thought about the music I was making and how the crowd would react to it. But I never thought Bromst would exist, because I didn't think Spiderman of the Rings would be as successful as it was. I didn't think I'd be able to play pieces that were both loud but delicate at the same time through PA systems that were good.

When I first started, I was playing basements and house shows, so I was up for whatever equipment was there. I toured by Greyhound bus, and it blew my fucking mind that I was able to play for large crowds through good PA systems. It was working, this weird music that this weirdo dude was making. People seemed to like it, and I am very grateful for that. And it changed my approach. But, at that point in my life, if I had tried to play a track like "Of the Mountains" or "Snookered" through those types of PA systems, it would have sounded like garbage or it would have blown the PA. The timbre of the piece would have been completely compromised. After Spiderman of the Rings came out, and I found out I would have that kind of opportunity, I started thinking about having live performers and not just me playing the tracks. Does that make any sense?

I think so. Listening to this record, it definitely sounds like this it isn't going to let people construct any sort of easy caricature of you.

Cool! Then it worked. I think a second record -- and for a lot of people this will be my second record -- is a good opportunity for an artist to figure out if this is the style they want to continue working in or to branch away from it. I didn't want to write another record like Spiderman of the Rings, and I didn't want the same kind of show. I didn't want it to be a sequel. I wanted it to be something that was in the same nature and had the same musical ideology but had a different focus and different overall feel.

In retrospect, do you think the reaction to the last record created a caricature that you weren't comfortable with?

Like in terms of the "wacky" shit? Yeah. I read a lot of reviews of the record where they put on the album, listened to the first song, reviewed the album, and took it off. "Woody Woodpecker," the opening track, is certainly absurd to a lot of people. It seemed to paint a very vivid picture in people's minds of the music that I make. There are definitely "wacky" parts of the album, but they are also juxtaposed against some pretty serious counterpoint. It wasn't the goofy, jerk-off record that a lot of reviewers put it as. I think a lot of press, at least within blog culture and the internet, feeds off of itself, and someone will read a review and then write a review based on that review. And it will start feeding back in on itself, with certain key words. And those key words would be the things that everyone would hear, and before they'd even hear the record, those are the things that would stick out in their minds. Like, "Oh, he pitch shifts his voice, and he uses a cartoon sample, so he's a wacky jokester. Let's put him in the wacky jokester pile and not write about anything else on the record."

I wanted there to be lightheartedness, because I think a lot of electronic music is way too esoteric and pretentious and full of it. I wanted to write something that was accessible yet radical at the same time, and I feel like a lot of people couldn't get past the absurd element of it, and that was a little disheartening. But it's okay. I was really worried about being typecast as a joke, because nothing about the show is a joke.

Just like the "dark" thing, where I said in an interview last year that this album is much darker than the previous one, and all of a sudden that became the word for this album. And it's not a fucking dark album! It's not a goth album. It just has more dark tones that the last one and a story that's focused on an apocalyptic view of the future. That's what I was talking about, but the early press was focusing on that word so much, so I decided I had to squash this or dark would become the new wacky. And people are going to put it on and think it's going to be dark and be like, "Well, what the fuck is this about?" It sets expectations, which I don't think are ever good. When I go to the movies, I don't want to know anything about it. I just want to see it and enjoy it at face value. I think a lot of stuff gets too hyped. Does that make sense? Sorry, I keep saying that...

No problem. Did you construct this album as a complete narrative?

No. Musically, there is a narrative, but lyrically it varies from song to song. It's about cycles in time and parallel existences and what happens after we're done with this stage of life and what happens after we die. I think there is going to be a shift in the way humanity exists, and it can be a positive direction or a negative one. I think we can enter into a new age of enlightenment and collective consciousness or we can enter into a dark age and it will be an age of kings and horrible exploitation and greed and fear. The album focuses on those lyrical aspects, and I guess the last one was about having guns that shoot rattlesnakes out of them and cats made of crystals. It's a different lyrical approach. Does that make sense? God! I need to fucking stop saying, "Does that make sense?"

When I was writing these songs, I was living at Wham City, which was this paradise land where nothing could go wrong, and we didn't need any jobs because our rent was so cheap and we could eat out of the dumpster. After we got evicted, that mindset didn't exist anymore, and everything became real. I became interested in researching the ideas of how society is run and books like The Power Elite and Democracy for the Few and Ruled by Secrecy. Those spoke to me very powerfully in that period of my life, and I wanted the record to have some sort of tone like that. Even though it was music that was meant to be played in a celebratory and uplifting way, I wanted it to bring light to these topics and have people geared toward a positive and more connected future. Where the last record was made for people to dance around to, I wanted this one to inspire something other than partying. Does that make sense? Damn it! I've said that five hundred fucking times!

So, overall, what would be a gratifying response to this record?

I don't know. Do you know that scene in Miracle on 34th Street where Santa Clause gets bags and bags of letters? I want to get Santa Claus' letters.

Hell's Belles

By Tobias Carroll

They keep you guessing. The music made by the New York-based trio School of Seven Bells shifts constantly, both from song to song and from version to version of the same. Alpinisms, released late in 2008 by Michigan label Ghostly International, was their full-length debut, but some of the songs on it could be heard with radically different arrangements on previous releases -- including the Face to Face on High Places EP on Table of the Elements -- released directly to the Internet; opener "iamundernodisguise" was first incorporated into their collaboration with Prefuse 73, "Class of 73 Bells." There's a sense of disconnect, then, but that's to be expected: The group conjures ghosts of its members' previous bands -- Benjamin Curtis in Secret Machines, Claudia and Alejandra Deheza in the drifting shoegaze of On!Air!Library! -- but shifts them ever-so-slightly, falling into a space beyond easy categorization. Or, as Curtis puts it: "This genre limbo is heaven for us."

"It's a blessing and a curse, starting a new project when people are aware of what you've done," says Curtis, sitting beside Alejandra Deheza in a bar in the East Village. "People have really heard the process, the development of these songs. It's weird because this year, when we made Alpinisms, we took everything we had and had to break it down to make the album we wanted to make. It was kind of a moment of crisis for us, doing that."

Mostly recorded in home studios and following the departure of rhythm section Joe Stickney and James Elliott, Alpinisms may owe some of its ethereal texture to those changes in lineup, exchanging the booming rhythms of their first EP for a negative sonic space. Though for Curtis, the renewed trio's sound reflects the earliest days of the group most closely: "Alpinisms ended up sounding closest to the original, very rough demos we had done."

Considerations of the group's music have referenced everything from West African pop to Appalachian vocal traditions. "If you listen to stuff that's the best music for us, like Can or something -- in a way, Can was consciously trying to incorporate music from different parts of the world, and we're digesting it thirdhand -- listening to Can and then listening to Tinariwen and then thinking, Oh my God, they sound very similar," Curtis says. "There's something very fundamental about a drone and rock music and percussive music."

The often-layered vocals of the Deheza sisters make for the most memorable aspect of School of Seven Bells' sound. Alejandra recalls, "In On!Air!Library!, Claudia and I rarely sang together. The weird thing about that is, ever since we were little, we've been singing together, and I have no idea why that element wasn't in that last band. Now that we didn't have any restrictions on ourselves, I'd start singing something and Claudia would harmonize over it. No one was going to say no."

Curtis adds, "One major, fundamental rule is allowing Ali and Claudia to go as far as they can with vocal ideas before we do anything else." And while it’s tempting to categorize School of Seven Bells alongside other genre-eluding New Yorkers like Gang Gang Dance and High Places, the prominent role of vocals in their sound seems indicative of a larger movement in independent music, one emphasizing a more controlled and polished singing style. "Even when that was so uncool, listening to Stephen Malkmus and Pavement, there is so much character and humanness in what he says," offers Curtis. "So I think even when it wasn't cool, people still gravitated towards this charismatic sound." For Deheza, vocals remain "the first thing I notice, aside from guitar. You hear somebody like Robert Wyatt, and you're like, God! He's got to sing that good all the time! There's no excuse to be lazy!"

Talking with Curtis and Deheza, there's a constant sense of a narrative that has yet to be solidified: of their place in music, of the group's trio/five-piece/trio progression, of their relationship with collaborators. Alpinisms has an assurance possessed by few debuts. For Curtis, that cyclical progression may have been the trigger for that assurance. "We were anti-band for no good reason, he says, "but what we forgot about was that making music is so much about chemistry -- we had to find that again. The chemistry was the three of us. [The band's live sound] sounds good; it sounds like our records, which is weird. We didn't mean for it to. We made the record with, really, no thought of who was doing what. When we got together after making Alpinisms, when we wanted to start playing again, it was the three of us, and we thought, Damn -- this sounds like our record; this is great. We're so lucky."

The emerging Brooklyn trio battles mass consumerism one fan at a time

By Doug Wallen

iPod commercials have been on a roll lately when it comes to tipping off the world at large about buzz-y indie acts, from Feist to CSS to the Ting Tings. Likewise, the Brooklyn label Kanine has been breaking bands since day one, releasing the earliest output from Grizzly Bear, Oxford Collapse, and Northern State. So what happens when they both throw their weight behind a single new band? In the case of Brooklyn trio Chairlift, a European tour right out of the gates and a spate of song-inspired user videos.

"Our audiences are wider ranging now than ever before," admits Caroline Polachek, whose sleepy, cryptic singing is heard throughout Chairlift's sparkling debut, Does You Inspire You. "Kids listen to us now, [and] adults [and] jocks. That's cool. We always planned on having a slow build, but the press hit like 'wham' and it's taking some time before we'll see it reflected in people that are coming out to shows. People take time to internalize an album."

When all those kids and jocks do finally sit down with the album and let it sink, they're likely to feel a bit bewildered. While the iPod commercial uses the track "Bruises" for maximum cuteness -- by now you should know the line "I tried to do handstands for you" -- the rest of Does You Inspire You is a weird, woozy fantasia that smuggles subversive lyrics into balmy, electro-damaged pop. Polachek sings, plays vintage synths, and shares songwriting duties with guitarist-singer Aaron Pfenning and drummer-bassist-producer Patrick Wimberly, and both live and on the record there's lots of instruments switching instruments and old-school electronics.

The central trick to Chairlift is that while we nod and sway to their atmospheric tunes, Polachek is hypnotically unspooling cautionary tales about the consequences of global consumerism, the effect of waste on the environment, and the insidious rot of modern marketing. "That's the fun part!" she enthuses. "Feeding it back into itself. Since everyone's a [producer/consumer] now, airbrushing and manipulative marketing are becoming more and more obvious to consumers. Either we bypass it by fetishizing the real or pop stops hiding its real purpose: seduction, hypnosis, and advertising."

Does You Inspire You opens with the eerie mood-setter "Garbage" and the following lyrics: "All the garbage that you have thrown away / Is waiting somewhere a million miles away / Your condoms and your VCR / Your Ziploc bags and your father’s car / Dark and silent it waits for you." Polachek then sings, "So much garbage will never ever decay / And all your garbage will outlive you someday." That it functions so well on two levels is a testament to Chairlift's both sneaky M.O. and musical prowess.

"It would be totally boring if we were critiquing society in a punk song," explains Polachek, "because the concept is built right into the format. We expect it. But if we can get a ton of high school kids to sing along to mainstream-sounding songs that actually satirize the tactics of the mainstream, that forces change from the inside out. It puts the last nail in the coffin with a cherry on top!"

Inspired by the gaudy tourist traps that surrounded them in Boulder, Colorado, Chairlift gelled in early 2006 before relocating to Brooklyn later that year. There the band became pals with hotly tipped brethren like MGMT, who remixed their debut single "Evident Utensil," and Yeasayer, with whom they toured Europe this past November, less than two months after their album came out.

"A flight from New York to the U.K. is quicker and cheaper than van gas from New York to California," Polachek observes, "so having played the U.S. a few times now, the hop across the pond is the next natural thing to do."

While the band's formative time in Colorado bore more folky and acoustic-based songs, Brooklyn ultimately saw them introduce more beats and nurture the idea of subverting commercial pop. "Boulder was low-pressure," says Polachek. "The naiveté and distance from any real music scene gave us a really comfortable place to experiment and learn how to work together. The 'sound' on Does You Inspire You was developed in New York for the most part."

Long after the British press stops drooling over the Next Big Thing value of Chairlift and Apple moves on to newer bands for its eye-popping ads, Does You Inspire You should still be resonating with anyone lucky enough to have stumbled upon it. From the lurid eighties sheen of "Planet Health" and the country-tinged duet "Don't Give A Damn" to the lullaby-like "Ceiling Wax" and the Sinead O'Connor-ish "Territory," it's one of the most diverse and fully developed debuts in recent memory.

And if it subliminally points unsuspecting listeners towards an awareness of the fragility of our planet and the hollowness of consumerism, so much the better.

He deserves it. Yes. But maybe he could have been a bit more eloquent? Ahh, we kid. Mickey's self-deprecating speech is funny. He dropped two f-ck words AND thanked Marisa Tomei for taking her clothes off. Well done! Still, nothing will top Sacha Baron Cohen's Golden Globe's acceptance speech for Borat. Both clips are below. -IL

Here is a clip from last night's Grammy's. We don't know why color was swapped for black and white or why M.I.A. performed on her due date. Either way, we're glad her water didn't break. That would have been a little too much for us to handle -- in color or black and white. -IL

Yes, there really is a support group for everything. So if you're a newly single victim of a relationship gone belly-up from the stress of our country's economic crisis, you might want to look into attending the meetings (or at least reading the blog) of "Dating a Banker Anonymous" - the DABA girls. These are women who sympathize with the pains of romances withered by Wall Street; the tragedy of relationships manipulated by money; the porn industry's appeal for a bailout because everyone is too depressed to care about sex. Peruse the website and find a cornucopia of amusing anecdotes about woefully forgotten love affairs in the wake of a plunging stock market. Complete with their own vocabulary (AR - after the recession) and daily warning levels (green through red, telling DABA girls how much heat their man is feeling that day) the website acts as a support system for women in the unfortunate position of dating a banker. - AK