There's a permanent sway that has held over the music festival market, drifting in one improbable direction in the past six years. Availability for music festivals, such as Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and Coachella, have become slim in recent years, selling out earlier and earlier every season. What results is a fundamental change in the way we, as fans, approach the idea of festivals.
Bonnaroo will take place June 13-16, with tickets going on sale February 23 at noon EST (here). Firefly will take place the following weekend, June 21-23, with tickets going on sale February 21 (here).
Sasquatch!, held every year in the Pacific Northwest, isn't regarded as one of the bigger music festivals in the United States, but is usually regarded as one of the best.
Last year, festival organizers enlisted the talents of the Foo Fighters, Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, and lot more over the course of four (yes, four) days. While that may be fairly impressive for what isn't regarded as one of the year's bigger events, this year's does boast a fairly heavy - although not as top-heavy - lineup, which you can read in it's entirety here.
Notables in this year's lineup include, but are not limited to Jack White, whose solo album is set to debut a few weeks before the fest, and is the first confirmed show of the ex-White Stripe. Alongside White will be Bon Iver, who seem to be on pace to play every festival this year, the ever-elusive Beck, The Shins, Tenacious D, The Roots, and native heroes Shabazz Palaces, among many others, including comedy acts.
Tickets are on sale now for $315. The event will take place May 25-28
The days when Wilco is performing on late night TV still seem incredibly far away for the Chicago veterans. Last night, the band appeared on Conan to promote their new iTunes session (available now), performing two tracks from their latest release, The Whole Love. Watch them both below.
America's best current band, Wilco, performed for the very first time on everybody's favorite music video blog, La Blogotheque's Take Away Show.
Jeff Tweedy and Co. performed "Country Disappeared," off the group's 2009 self-titled Wilco (The Album), after stopping by Montreal for a performance at the Olympia. If one were to suspect that the band would be able to deliver in such an intimate, sullen setting as they do on stage in front of 20,000-plus people, well, you'd be more than right.
If you're looking to see Wilco in the states, you should already know if you're going or not because every U.S. show scheduled so far this year has sold out. You can try the UK in September if you're interested.
Wilco - Country Disappeared (Live on the Take Away Show)
Seven years after Wilco's 1995 debut A.M., Jeff Tweedy, through the multitude of changing band-mates and inner turmoil, crafted (with the visionary assistance of Jay Bennett) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album comprised of the tender alt-country folk that Tweedy made famous with the group's first three records and collaborations with singer/songwriter Billy Bragg, and a creative virtue that combed and cultivated one of, if not the decade's greatest records. By far the most jarring and bleak records Wilco ever produced, songs like "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" and "Poor Places" were briskly profound in that they teetered on the border of heart-clenching and metaphorically uplifting.
"Distant has a way of making love understandable," Tweedy croons on "Radio Cure," making an unmistakable assurance that love, or at least the idea of it, can be as disconnected as the rest of us, but at the same time simple as anything. The same goes for "War on War," when Tweedy proclaims "You have to learn how to die/If you want to be alive," which can transplant the listener to the end and right back to the beginning again. It's not as if these ideas aren't completely contingent on the album; each song parlays some images of hope, loss and distance, while still keeping everything on track.
Quite possibly, it's all explained in "Jesus etc.," one of the most beautiful and harrowing songs of the decade. "Tall buildings shake/voices escape singing sad, sad songs," Tweedy writes, confirming the tilt of humanity's beauty and hopelessness in a short three minutes. Almost every song on the album, away from the touchy electro-blips, chrome sounds and shaky but appropriate drum beats hits the listener's nerves, both touching and relative to everyone.
For those wondering why so many people consider Wilco to be America's best band, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot gives it all away -- their ingenious creativity and Earthy tremble are everything that defines a band at their peak. And this record is portrait of not only the band, but the era itself.
With the end of 2009 rapidly approaching, it's finally time for Bears and Bullets' annual Top 25 Songs of the Year list. Singles from The Walkmen and The Very Best topped our list in what many consider to be a somewhat paltry year in 2008, but with a huge 2009 from artists like Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, and many, many others, 2009 became one of the best years for music this decade.
First, however, lets clear some rules about what can and what cannot be considered for this list. Rule one; The artists' albums on this list must be released within the 2009 calender year - these aren't skewed Grammy rules. Rule two; songs considered for this list must also only be released within the calender year, so this is excludes songs like "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit and "While You Wait for the Others" from Grizzly Bear, which were heard long before the year started, even though the albums those songs were featured on were released this year.
Now that the rules are clear, lets start with number 25.
#25: Daylight - Matt & Kim
"Daylight," oddly enough, was probably heard more than the other 24 songs on this list. The lead single from Matt & Kim's January album Grand was featured in several TV shows and an immensely popular Bacardi ad, utilizing the song's saloon-esque piano lead and teenage daydream whimsy to capture a sound of youth and playful escape. Kim's light percussion back drop flows through Matt's often high-pitched voice and the gentle electro bass humming behind it, creating a sprawling and yet minimal sound that crashes quickly in the end.
Bacardi Mojito Ad (Featuring Matt & Kim's "Daylight")
#24: James Blues - J. Tillman
J. (Joshua) Tillman, part time solo artist and drummer for Fleet Foxes, released Vacilando Territory Blues (his fifth of sixth lesser-known studio albums) earlier this year. Tillman's quiet acoustic folk is a bit more stripped version of his more well-known band's sound, humming rusty, minimal sounds in "James Blues," a two-and-a-half minute short-story of "poor, poor James" behind slow clapping and aged piano. The end result is the sad story of James, cold and alone, weeping, trying to make sense of what he wants, looking for the same "purpose" as the rest of us.
Wilco's 2009 self-titled album saw a temporary end to the Chicago band's nearly endless album to album drift of trying to find their own identity since 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The new album's key song hit, thanks in large part to Feist's vocal contribution, is a heartfelt and warm "You and I." The song glues together in Feist and Jeff Tweedy's vocals, combining to a simple little love song and a minimal departure for the band.
Wilco - You and I ft. Feist (Live on Letterman)
#22: Don't Lie - The Mantles
The Mantles album debut clings to a late 50's/early 60's garage niche that explores the gnarling and rusty pre-punk era with fuzz laden-guitars and analog tones. "Don't Lie," is a slow march, compared to most of the other more frenzied tracks on the band's self-titled album, but the sketchy sounds like a journey down a dusty road with nothing around in sight; a minimalist portrait of the older jangly sounds that have found a delightful resurgence as of late.
Passion Pit truly broke out last year with their most popular and best single to date, "Sleepyhead." This year's full-length debut, Manners, however featured a stronger collection of songs than 2008's Chunk of Change EP, including "Moth's Wings." Lead singer Michael Angelakos, for as shrill as he may sound at times, never comes off so smooth and fluid as he does here, with the band building a lush score into the drum-lead and piano driven chorus the explodes and carries the song until it flutters away in a gloss of beauty and light.
It may be an oddly strange assumption that Wilco are the best band in America, but the assumption while sounding other-worldly is tastefully accurate. The Chicago group recently released seventh studio record Wilco (The Album) debuted at number four on the Billboard Album Charts this week, the highest ever for the Nonesuch alums.
If anyone missed it, the band recently performed on the Late Show with David Letterman with frontman Jeff Tweedy working the vocals of the single "You and I" with an impossibly cheerful Leslie Feist, just as they did (along with Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste) at their Coney Island show several nights before.
Two songs from Wilco's upcoming self-titled album have been leaked (courtesy of Pop Tarts Suck Toasted) online. The result, which is good to hear, is that Wilco (The Album) is a much finer and outstanding album than their last effort, 2006's Sky Blue Sky.
The band, currently on the final leg of their European tour, will be back in the U.S. in mid-June, supporting the release of Wilco (The Album), June 30, via Nonesuch Records.
For those who are still dreadfully unaware, Wilco's new album Wilco (The Album) is set to be released June 30 from Nonesuch records, but us lucky fans can listen to the entire album for free here, for a limited time.
The band is currently on the Spain leg of their world tour but they'll be hitting the states by June, so look for tickets while you still can.
), after stopping by Montreal for a performance at the Olympia. If one were to suspect that the band would be able to deliver in such an intimate, sullen setting as they do on stage in front of 20,000-plus people, well, you'd be more than right.
With the end of 2009 rapidly approaching, it's finally time for Bears and Bullets' annual Top 25 Songs of the Year list. Singles from The Walkmen and The Very Best topped our list in what many consider to be a somewhat paltry year in 2008, but with a huge 2009 from artists like Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, and many, many others, 2009 became one of the best years for music this decade. 
Two songs from Wilco's upcoming self-titled album have been leaked (courtesy of Pop Tarts Suck Toasted) online. The result, which is good to hear, is that Wilco (The Album) is a much finer and outstanding album than their last effort, 2006's Sky Blue Sky.
For those who are still dreadfully unaware, Wilco's new album Wilco (The Album) is set to be released June 30 from Nonesuch records, but us lucky fans can listen to the entire album for free here, for a limited time.
