XL Recordings

Welcome once again to the Pitchfork Guide to Upcoming Releases, our seasonal guide to upcoming releases! Four times a year, we round up a big ol' list of albums, singles, EPs, and DVDs set to be unleashed over the coming months, hoping to get you pumped about going out and buying records. (You do still do that, right? RIGHT?) This installment covers summer 2009.

JULY

07-06

DJ Food: One Man's Weird Is Another Man's World [Ninja Tune]
Of Montreal: "For Our Elegant Caste" [Polyvinyl] [UK release, out now in U.S.]

07-07

900X: Library Catalog Music Series: Music for Lubbock, 1980 [Asthmatic Kitty]
Animal Collective: "Summertime Clothes" 12" [Domino]
BLK JKS: Mystery (Osborne Remix) [Secretly Canadian]
Bowerbirds: Upper Air [Dead Oceans]
Broken Records: Until the Earth Begins to Part [4AD]
Casey Foubert/James McAlister: Library Catalog...

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The late, legendary NME writer, Steven Wells, always told it like it was. With extra expletives

Some very sad news: Steven Wells, one of the greatest music journalists on the planet, has died of cancer. Swells, as most of you will know him, was the NME's funniest, most expletive-prone writer throughout the 80s and 90s. To say he had a way with words is something of an understatement â€' a way with rampaging, amphetamine-crazed, cock-shaft metaphors was closer to the truth. He was a journalist who didn't so much write as spit, curse and hyperventilate. He was brilliant.

I won't attempt a proper obituary here (I'm currently in a tiny cabin having just arrived at Glastonbury festival â€' I don't think I could do it justice), but I will mention that Swells was a personal hero of mine. He singlehandedly made the NME worth buying every week when I was a teenager (the phrase "the stench of fetid cock meat" in a Green Day feature still sticks in my mind â€' oh, the poetry!). Whether it was scrapping with Stuart Murdoch, enthusing over System of a Down or picking a fight with every racist, sexist, homophobic music-industry fool on the planet, he was an inspiration. It didn't matter that he hated every band I adored at the time (Radiohead, Belle and Sebastian) or that we only ever truly agreed on one band (the pop genius of Daphne and Celeste!). What mattered was...

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This week I'm into first goes....and:

Bartok Violin Concerto No,1
Brahms 1st Symphony
Penderecki 1st Symphony
John Cage First Inerlude for Prepared Piano
Shostakovitch Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor
Bartok First String Quartet
Debussy First (and last) string quartet (G Minor)
Ravel (ditto) in F

..are all ace





Jonny

The Dead Weather gave their first UK performance in London tonight (June 22) for Nigel Godrich's From The Basement sessions.

This past winter, former Crowded House/Split Enz frontman Neil Finn assembled a dizzying cast of music luminaries in New Zealand. Johnny Marr, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, and Pat Sansone, and plenty of others got together with Finn to record a follow-up to Finn's all-star 2001 album 7 Worlds Collide. The album will be a benefit for Oxfam International. Now, NME reports that it'll be out on August 10.

NME says that the album, titled The Sun Came Out, will be a double album, and it'll feature the singing debut of Radiohead drummer Selway. And according to NME, Marr collaborated with Wilco on the song "Too Blue". The tracklist, via NME, is below.

Earlier this month, we told you about the New Zealand TV documentary about the recording of the album. Unfortunately, it has since been pulled from YouTube.

The Sun Came Out:

CD1:

01 Too Blue
02 You Never Know
03 Little by Little
04 Learn to Crawl
05 Black Silk Ribbon
06 Girl, Make Your Own Mind Up
07 Run in the Dust
08 Red Wine Bottle
09 The Ties That Bind Us
10 Reptile
11 Bodhisattva Blues
12 What Could Have Been

CD2:

01...

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Capitol isn't done with Radiohead yet! Thom Yorke and co. may no longer have any ties to their old label, but Capitol has the band's entire pre-In Rainbows catalog at its disposal. And if there's still money to be made off of these old Radiohead records, best believe Capitol is going to make it.

Last year, the label released a Radiohead greatest-hits collection without the blessing of the band. We hated it. But this past March, the label released expanded double- and triple-disc versions of their first three albums, and we loved it.

See, there's a difference between good reissues and bad reissues. The full-album reissues are the good kind. With those first three albums, Capitol crammed in every B-side and rarity they could find, and in doing so they actually managed to flesh out those classic titles (and one not-so-classic title) even further. And, of course, the albums themselves are still great. We dropped 10.0s on the expanded versions of both The Bends and OK Computer, and we're probably not done handing out rave reviews yet.

On August 25, Capitol will complete their expanded reissue project with the next three Radiohead albums: 2000's Kid A, 2001's Amnesiac, and 2003's Hail to the Thief. Once again, these reissues come stuffed to the gills with B-sides, live songs, studio sessions, and everything else that didn't make it...

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Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway and The Cribs' Johnny Marr have all contributed to 'The Sun Came Out' - a double album of original material that will raise money for Oxfam.

Photo by Beck/Drew Brown, front page photo by Autumn de Wilde

Yesterday, we told you about Beck's new Record Club project, wherein Beck and friends will pick an album, spend one day recording a cover of the entire thing, and then post it on the internet, one song at a time.

Beck's starting the project off with his version of the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico, and today he posted the first song from the project, perennial mixtape staple "Sunday Morning". You can hear it now, complete with intentionally grainy footage of the studio session, on Beck's website.

Considering that Beck and friends recorded the entire album in a day without rehearsing or arranging anything, you'd expect this version to sound pretty ramshackle. Not so. These guys are pros, and their version of the song is totally lush and gorgeous. The xylophone is absolutely perfect. I can't wait to hear what they did with "Venus in Furs".

On his website, Beck says that the other people in on the session included actor Giovanni Ribisi, producer Nigel Godrich (who seems to be really into covers these days), drummer-for-hire Joey Waronker, Icelandic singer-songwriter Thorunn Magnusdottir, and somebody named Yo. He also says that they came close to recording the Digital Underground's Sex Packets, which would've obviously been amazing.

When most British dudes hole up in some basement, get a bit tipsy, and start stumbling through songs by the Kinks and the Sex Pistols, we really couldn't care less. But when said dudes happen to be members of Supergrass and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, it's a little different. (Via NME.)

The Hot Rats-- not to be confused with the Celtic jammers of the same name-- are Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey from Supergrass and Godrich. The side project/cover band are reportedly working on songs by the Kinks and the Pistols, along with Gang of Four, Syd Barrett, and Roxy Music for an upcoming LP due this fall. (Beastie Boys, Elvis Costello, and the Doors, too!) They'll also show up at a few festivals in England this summer, including Glastonbury.

(Is it wrong for me to automatically think: "That's all well and good, but what does this mean for the next Radiohead album?!") Read the NME story for more details.

Meanwhile, hundreds of punters are cranking out "God Save the Queen" to no avail.

Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich has revealed how Supergrass's new side-project was inspired by Michael Jackson.