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Tuesday, Oct 17 2017, 6AM
The National are live on KEXP Wednesday, November 29th at 9:30 AM. This one is only for broadcast so hurry and get tickets for their Paramount shows the 28th and 29th!
"A whole lot of life happened to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s Kip Berman in the run-up to his fourth LP, The Echo of Pleasure. He got married in 2014, shortly after the release of that year’s Days of Abandon. And much of Pleasure was recorded just at the onset of Berman’s wife’s third trimester, the point at which shit tends to get particularly real. From the initial rush to the all-too-familiar crash, the Pains have spent the better part of a decade charting the highs and lows of young love. But Berman, like many of us, isn’t quite so young anymore. What happens when all the love in your life is no longer as fleeting as a three-minute pop tune? Echo of Pleasure tries to get to the heart of the matter" Read the full pitchfork review here: bit.ly
The Jesus and Mary Chain are playing Portland's Crystal Ballroom on the 25th! Find all their dates here: thejesusandmarychain.uk.com
On the subject of voice in his albums, Callahan has said, "It’s usually one character per record. So, the character appears in all or most of the songs on one record and then is gone. Though it makes me feel weird to talk about. Because I don’t really think in clear terms of characters. My albums as a whole could be seen as one character with many voices."
Chad VanGaalen will be live on KEXP Friday, November 10th at 1:00pm. This one is open to the public so come join us in the performance space! That night Chad will be playing the Sunset and then off to Portland for a show on the 12th. Find all the dates here: www.flemisheye.com
Back in 2015 Four Tet put together a thrillingly kinetic genre-hopping mix for Midnight In A Perfect World that spotlights his incredibly deep crates filled with amazing rare gems both new and old from all over the globe. Find it here: blog.kexp.org
In September 2016, freelance journalist Craig Williams claimed Robert '3D' Del Naja was in fact the elusive graffiti artist Banksy or as an alternative theory, that Banksy is in fact a group of artists led by Del Naja and associated with the band. Williams plotted Banksy artwork appearances and found some coincided with Massive Attack tour dates. Del Naja immediately dismissed the claims saying "He is a mate as well, he's been to some of the gigs. It's purely a matter of logistics and coincidence, nothing more than that."
We've been entranced by Greek synthpop band Keep Shelly In Athens for years now, so we can’t help but be thrilled they’ve released a song about our city. So much so that it was the song of the day on September 26th blog.kexp.org
Confirming they would split after their Manchester show a year ago, Lush issued a statement... "It’s been a fantastic year for Lush. We received an incredible reception to our Blind Spot EP and the three beautiful career-spanning 4AD releases, sold out two Roundhouse shows, toured North America with great success and had a ball at our European festival appearances. It’s been wonderful to revisit our old music and to create new material. However, it is now time for us to return to our families and homes, and bring our time together as a band to a close. We offer heartfelt thanks to all our fans – this reunion would never have happened without your overwhelming support and dedication."
Broken Social Scene will be live on KEXP on Monday at 3:00pm! Get on the list to see them starting at 1:30. They're also at the Neptune on Sunday and Monday
"Saturdays=Youth is dense with 1980s new wave tropes and teenage memories, reflecting the soft-focused mythology of eternal summers and young love." Read the Pitchfork review here: bit.ly
Odesza will be playing Portland on November 2nd, then two nights in Vancouver B.C. the 3rd & 4th. Check on Odesza's 2013 in-studio here: bit.ly
"... an icily detached Faris Badwan channelling his inner Gary Numan..." Do you need more reason to check out the Guardian's review of V? bit.ly
David Lynch loves music the way Benjamin Horne loves that bike his Dad bought for him, and it’s reflected in the soundtrack for Showtime’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Most of the episodes end with a band performing at the Bang Bang Bar aka The Roadhouse, the local bar in the city of Twin Peaks.
The Chromatics' Johnny Jewel submitted lots of different tracks, including demos and half-finished songs. blog.kexp.org
Monáe recently appeared in an anthology series based on the work of Philip K. Dick titled, Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.
They're playing the Crocodile on November 13th! In the meantime, check out their most recent in-studio: bit.ly
“It’s a dark record, for sure,” affirms Beliefs co-founder, Jesse Crowe. “I feel like we were drawing a lot more from, like, me being a Goth teenager and Josh only wanting to listen to Aphex Twin and me only wanting to listen to Portishead’s Third for the last year and stuff like that. But also it was time to embody the elements of being a ‘wall-of-sound’ band with some space and the idea of being able to be quiet when you should be quiet, and you can’t do that with three guitars. There’s no space. It just becomes all push and no pull.”
Gothic Tropic are from L.A. and have a couple shows in California in November. Recently The Guardian's "New Band of the Week!" bit.ly
St. Vincent is out on tour in support of the new album and will hit the Moore on January 19th. There are also VIP tickets which get you into a mini-soundcheck and Q&A
"Search and Destroy" was written by Stooges' frontman Iggy Pop and lead guitar James Williamson. The name of the song comes from a Time magazine article Iggy Pop saw about the Vietnam War. The lyrics are ripe with further references to the general Vietnam War scene, including napalm, nuclear bombs, fire fights, and radiation. The title refers to a military tactic used by the US military in the Vietnam War: to seek out the enemy, destroy them, and withdraw.
"Future Starts Slow" was used in a promotion for the episode "The Wait Is Almost Over" of the TV series True Blood and also as the theme music for the 2012 TV series Political Animals.
L.A. Witch performed in-studio last Tuesday on the Morning Show. You have another week to hear them in the streaming archive and we'll get the video posted soon!
Alvvays are live on KEXP Friday, October 27th at 3:00pm. Come see them for free!
This Sunday at 1pm you'll hear Courtney & Kurt live on KEXP. This one is broadcast only so come on down but you won't bump into them. They're playing Saturday at the Moore.
Purity Ring were at KEXP for an in-studio with Cheryl in 2015. Find it here: bit.ly
Shabazz Palaces stopped by KEXP's Street Sounds for an in-studio in July. Their performance includes "Shine A Light" bit.ly
This LCD Soundsystem cover of Suicide vocalist Alan Vega's 1980 song was released in 2009 to coincide with the Record Store Day offshoot, Vinyl Saturday.
Back in 2014, a true dynamic duo, Montreal’s King Khan and BBQ Show dropped by the KEXP live room to flaunt their tasty brand of retro garage and doo wop ditties. Marinated in all types of awesome sauce, this gruesome twosome wet our palates with a preview of succulent songs: bit.ly
This song was written by "?," the band's frontman who wanted to be anonymous (he's listed on the composer credits as (Rudy Martinez). At one point he referred to the individual band members only by three-letter names (for a bit, the band was known as XYZ). The mystery helped market the group, who wore dark glasses to add to the intrigue.
Since mystery has always been a staple of their act, it's hard to know which stories about the group are factual. When they recorded this song, they were a five-piece whose families migrated from Mexico and Texas to work in the Saginaw Valley in Michigan.
The True Loves will be on KEXP THIS FRIDAY at 9:30! Come join John and see them live! They'll also be at the Tractor on November 10th with Country Lips!
"Some bands find the perfect lineup from the get go, but for others, that journey can take many turns. Low Hums founding members Jonas Haskins (vocals/guitar) and Miles Panto (guitar) watched their band go through eight years of constant lineup changes, including a short stint with Father John Misty himself, Josh Tillman, as one of the band’s two drummers, but nothing felt right.
“We’ve had bowed saw, upright bass, pedal steel, banjo, cello players,” Haskins explains from his home in Seattle, WA. “We had a version with no drums and only guitars, we’ve had a few bass players, multiple guitar players…the list goes on.”
In 2011 they added drummer Mike Bayer for good, but there was still something missing. Five years later, the trio found their proverbial missing link in bassist Crystal Perez and that long, winding road now finds Low Hums as a cohesive quartet, ready to release the Jack Endino produced Night Magic Wine" bit.ly
For all the collectors, you can get 'Wolf Lie Down' on clear vinyl. Limited to 300 and there are only 10 left... thefreshandonlys.bandcamp.com
This was a very complex song to record. Marr broke the process down to The Guitar Magazine: "I wanted it to be really, really tense and swampy, all at the same time. Layering the slide part was what gave it the real tension. The tremolo effect came from laying down a regular rhythm part with a capo at the 2nd fret on a Les Paul, then sending that out in to the live room to four Fender Twins. John was controlling the tremolo on two of them and I was controlling the other two, and whenever they went out of sync we just had to stop the track and start all over again. It took an eternity."
"It takes a full minute for Tyler to enter the scene of “Boredom,” and as is increasingly regular for him, large parts of the song is an exercise for him to flex his production skills. The opening flourishes of a simple guitar strum explodes into funky drum rolls and waves of electric organ that provide a red carpet for his collaborators—Rex Orange County, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Anna of the North—to strut on, making this coterie sound great. The song only gets more opulent as it progresses, when a string orchestra and chorus step in to turn this into a full blown reverie. With “Boredom,” Tyler fully activates all his gifts as a producer, channeling everything from the Neptunes to Satie into a gorgeous little package." bit.ly
Wolf Alice's most recent in-studio will be posted soon but in the meantime you can enjoy their 2015 session with John: bit.ly
On 'Freaks Of Nurture', the band combines elements of psych, Nuggets-era garage pop, and surf rock before slathering the whole package in the requisite coat of reverb. It’s the kind of dream that would be easy to get lost in, but there’s always a warm guitar riff to guide you out of your reverie, like a ray of sunlight shining on closed eyelids. Nicely counteracting out gloomy fall weather.
Back in June, John hosted Pickwick for an in-studio. They played Ascension, Lying Awake In The Dark, In Time, Thought It Was You, & Which Way You Go. Watch the performance here: bit.ly
The Black Angels will be live in the performance space this Monday at noon! Only room for 75 people so get here early. Sign-in starts at 10:30am
Vice.com asked DoNormaal, do you feel boxed-in when people label you a rapper?
"I'm a rapper. But that's just like any songwriter to me. I think all vocalists are doing the same thing, just in different shapes and with different stylistic values. Whatever lines were drawn between genres in the past are thinning, anyways. I think it's fun to compare and contrast music, but what you name it is almost irrelevant. I do feel like there's something special about hip-hop, though, that I'm always trying to get at in my music. And it's not about a sound. To me it's about how honestly and vulnerably I'm willing to tell my story in the music itself and what telling that story could do for people with similar stories, for people who have never heard of such a story, for the whole world." More DoNormaal live on KEXP last year: bit.ly
In an interview with Kotori Magazine, Tobacco explained "with Tobacco, I wanted to embrace my beats and get darker and sleeker with it all. I want to make you feel paranoid in a good way. There’s something seriously fucked about workout tapes from the mid 80s, and just about everything obscure on beta tape. They make me feel awful, but really good and curious at the same time. With this Tobacco stuff, I’m trying to translate that feeling." Here is his KEXP in-studio from October of 2016: bit.ly
Troy hosted The War on Drugs' in-studio August 1st. They played Pain, Holding On, Strangest Thing, & You Don't Have To Go. bit.ly