Conan tickets: PROCURED! Now let's just hope for good guests on May 11th.

Tapes 'N Tapes: moving up in the world, from self-releasing their album to XL Recordings. Not too shabby.

The full-length Ladytron review is up now on Radio Free Chicago. Expect another review and more pictures next week from this Saturday's Wrens/Tapes 'N Tapes show!

The Gilmore Girls to the OC: I see your Death Cab for Cutie and raise you a Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.

Last night I dreamt that Sufjan Stevens was in town, and we were hanging out. Actually, I think I was listening to his music and he magically appeared, or something. In my dream, he was the coolest, funniest guy ever, a total blast to hang out with. We saw a poster for some upcoming Metro shows, and he saw one of the lineups and was like, "Christian music? Who'd want to listen to that!" all poking light fun at himself and all. What a cool dream version of Sufjan. I have a feeling he's not quite that fun in real life.

I was out late last night and didn't get a chance to post the podcast for yesterday's show, so expect it up sometime tonight.

Woohoo, the new Streets is in the studio! And the song I played was excellent. Also featured in this morning's show: Sigur Ros, perfect for the rainy Tuesday morning dreariness, and a great, funky track from Jamie Lidell, who I'd heard much about but had yet to seek out until now. The podcast will be up late tonight or tomorrow.

This is funny, ridiculous, and sort of sad. My humps!

Ladytron w/ the Presets, 4/21/06

Ladytron
Originally uploaded by Nicolemc99.

The PFFR photoblog returns with last night's Ladytron experience. I dug openers the Presets, an Australian electro-goth duo clearly influenced by Joy Division/New Order, the type of stuff the Faint has been trying to do and succeeding only on occasion. After a short break, Ladytron's four disgustingly beautiful members came on stage joined by an additional drummer and bassist and proceeded to play almost robotically. This fit their sound very well and I almost expected it, though it did get boring at times. I think frontwomen Mira and Helena are Bulgarian fembots of some sort (in weird priest/nun-like clothing, judging by the picture above), which again, makes sense considering their robo-sound. Thankfully, the band broke this convention for the encore, when they began to show a bit of emotion and get the audience involved with some dancing, handclapping, and an extended electronic jam of "Seventeen." Ladytron's set leaned heavily on songs from their latest, The Witching Hour, including highlights "Destroy Everything You Touch," "Sugar" and "The International Dateline," but they still pleased the crowd with older hits like "He Took Her to a Movie," "Playgirl" and the aforementioned "Seventeen."

A full review is forthcoming (probably to be published on RFC and/or tinymixtapes), so stay tuned for more!

Ladytron tonight at the Metro! A report over the weekend, along with some pictures, if the Metro will allow it.

Metromix is sponsoring the second annual "Rock 'N Vote" contest, where local bands send demos to the Metromix music staff, who then choose their 10 favorites, which will battle it out online as Metromix readers vote on their favorites. The top four acts get to headline a free concert at the Metro. Not a bad idea; more info here.

I feel like it's time to make over my blog template, but I'm having difficulty picking one because I'm averse to change. I want to keep it simple, but at least have things like an archive, which I still don't understand why one doesn't show up here. I wonder if there's somewhere on the Internet that has blog templates other than the Blogger standards? It's funny, I can quit jobs at the drop of a hat, but the idea of changing my blog template is incredibly difficult to me. Go figure.

Version Fest >06 is coming up, starting this Thursday, April 20 and running a monstrous 17 days of art, music, activism, DIY, etc. That's seriously insane. I'll avoid copying and pasting 17 days of bands and workshops, so get more info at http://www.versionfest.org.

It was requested today that I play Camper Van Beethoven's "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and Camera Obscura's "Shine Like a New Pin" back to back. I think I'll have to listen again to the recording tonight to try to find the enlightenment in the pairing.

Word on the street is that my blog was mentioned in the latest issue of UR Magazine. I need to pick up a copy for confirmation, since it's not online!

The new Neko Case album is puuuuuurdy.

Lyrics from "The Frontier Index" by the Silver Jews:

A robot walks into a bar
orders a drink
lays down a bill
The bartender says, hey we don't serve robots
and the robot says, oh but someday you will

Awesome.

More acts added to Intonation, including former Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard. I wonder if he'll still be able to suck down bottles of Jack Daniels on stage in the Chicago heat and sun? I'm going to guess- probably.

It looks like the Streets and Lady Sovereign's stop at the Intonation Festival is part of a tour they're doing together this summer. That's a pretty killer matchup. I find British hip-hop so much easier to digest for some reason (though calling the Streets purely "hip-hop" is a bit of a stretch).

What about that Pitchfork story, however, is "exclusive?" Can a story about tour dates truly be "exclusive?" Interviews are exclusive, stories that any ol' website can report on by looking at a band's website are not "exclusive." Maybe they mean they are just the first to report on it. Once we posted a tinymixtapes news blurb about some random tour that said "exclusive" as a joke, and Pitchfork's news editor actually emailed us requiring we take it off because they had already reported it as "exclusive." No sense of humor over at the Fork, I guess.

According to Pitchfork, Radiohead's June 19 and 20 shows will be at the Auditorium Theatre. I've never been there, is it huge? I've seen Radiohead 3 times, but never indoors.

Meanwhile, the new Radiohead album is in the works, and Thom says its "scarier than OK Computer." Sweet.

The webcast was down this morning, so I'm trying my hand at burning the show and uploading it from CD tonight. Hopefully that will be as easy as I think it should be, and the show will be up for downloading within a reasonable time :) . Some highly anticpated albums are finally in the studio and got airtime this morning, including the new Pretty Girls Make Graves, Mates of State, Band of Horses, Spank Rock (featured song quote: "I ride that like Kelly Bundy") and controller.controller.

Here's a cool new website that promotes touring bands that come to the midwest by having the bands stop by their studios while on tour to record a couple songs that are posted on the site. It's a pretty impressive list of bands they've done and have in the pipeline:

Catfish Haven
The Impossible Shapes
Erin McKeown
Drakkar Sauna
Harry and the Potters
The High Strung
Jason Forrest
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
Hockey Night
The Donkeys

Coming up in April:
Wilderness
Parts & Labor
Casey Dienel
The Living Blue
Voxtrot
Irving
Tapes N Tapes
Essex Green?
Margot & The Nuclear So & Sos
The Deathray Davies
The Ms

Coming up in May:
Midlake?
Frog Eyes
Sunset Rubdown
Two Gallants
Koufax
Cordero

I really want Harry and the Potters to come to Chicago, I can't think of a cooler band concept.

In honor of Liz's comment that she hates the name Band of Horses but is looking forward to hearing the CD, let's go through some good bands with bad names:

Pulp
13 & God
Neutral Milk Hotel
Ms. John Soda
Mountain Goats
Death Cab for Cutie
I Am the World Trade Center
The Heavenly States (good name) used to be called Fluke Starbucker
Girls Are Short
Clem Snide
Earlimart

Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure I'll think of more.

From Radio free Chicago today: This is freaking AWESOME.

Didn't they just get re-married like, five minutes ago?

I finally got the new Band of Horses debut in the mail (mighty cheap from Insound.com, I might add). All the reviews claim them to be the Shins meets My Morning Jacket, which is pretty much exactly right. I'd say 40% Shins (mostly in the vocals), 60% My Morning Jacket (the guitars and the general sound). More listening needs to be had of course, but on first listen I'd say it's pretty good.

Due to some organizational issues, it turns out the WLUW Record Fair's infamous 3rd gym is not going to be DJ-operational this weekend, so alas, my musical tastes will not be on display this weekend. I'll still be at the WLUW merch table from 1-4pm, however, so feel free to stop by anyway and say hi! Then tell the DJ in gym 2 how much better I'd be :)

Celebrity gossip is really more the domain of Liz's blog, but People.com has some real gems this morning I had to share:

WTF?!?!?!

This guy needs to get out and meet some women he doesn't work with

I heart Catherine Keener

Playing some Built to Spill on the show this morning is really getting me excited for the new album, You In Reverse, which comes out next week!!! There's a great song from the album up on their myspace page, and I can only hope the rest of the album is as good. It's a bummer that they had to cancel their upcoming dates due to Doug Marsch's eye surgery, but they're coming back in September to the Metro, so never fear.

I've been listening to the new Liars album, and I'm still not sure what I think of it- it definitely needs more time to sink in. It has proven to be much better listening on the stereo than on headphones or in the car. The last song on the album, however, is totally different from the rest of the album and totally beautiful- "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack." It's not dance-punk or weird tribal music, just a slow, sad ballad. Very purdy.