The Quin sisters love continues this week as The Spinner gives us a live look at one of the standout tracks from their latest album “Sainthood”.

And “On Directing”..

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Recorded at Jack White’s “Third Man Records and Novelties” that popped up in the city in August, “Live From Third Man West” is a new five-song/four-video digital EP from The Dead Weather that is now available on iTunes. Along with highlights from the band’s debut LP “Horehound”, the EP features a cover of “Forever My Queen”, originally recorded by doom metal overlords Pentagram. Full tracklist is below.

01 Forever My Queen (Pentagram cover) (audio)
02 Hang You From the Heavens
03 I Cut Like a Buffalo
04 So Far From Your Weapon
05 Treat Me Like Your Mother
06 Hang You From the Heavens (live video)
07 I Cut Like a Buffalo (live video)
08 So Far From Your Weapon (live video)
09 Treat Me Like Your Mother (live video)

Thanks to PitchFork for the heads-up.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooa! Whoa! Whoa. Whoa!!! How did I not hear about this? Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) on drums, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass, and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal) on lead guitar and vocals? I can’t even… I can’t even think straight! They are releasing an album titled Never Deserved the Future sometime soon and are having a lil’ North American tour to support it.

Oh yes, I will be at the Columbus, Ohio show. You can count on that. Who is coming with me?

North American Tour 2009
October 1, 2009: Austin, Stubb’s
October 2, 2009: Austin, City Limits Music Festival
October 5, 2009: Nashville, War Memorial
October 6, 2009: Columbus, Lifestyle Communities Pavilion
October 8, 2009: Detroit, The Fillmore Detroit
October 9, 2009: Toronto, Sound Academy
October 11, 2009: Boston, House of Blues
October 12, 2009: Philadelphia, Electric Factory
October 14, 2009: Washington, D.C., 9:30 Club

Here is a tiny little snippet from one of their songs titled “Scumbag Blues.”

Looks like We Are Scientists are pretty far along on a new album. You Ain’t No Picasso unearthed three or four videos of them performing new songs at their live shows, and apparently they’ve been recording demos as well. Here’s three of the new songs.

I Don’t Bite:

Pittsburgh:

Jack and Ginger:

Caught this tonight on PBS during their money begging session. Awesome.

So this is a half-assed review and recap of Lollapalooza 2009, but quite honestly this festival is so big with so much to do and see yet there is still so much I missed, words just aren’t really adequate. I will say this for starters, Sunday was the most fun I’ve ever had at any concert. Ever. Not necessarily the “best” show or even legendary show I’ve seen; it was 150% pure joy and adrenaline. I’ve never experienced anything quite like how happy Jane’s Addiction made me.

Other highlights: sitting next to Tom Gray from Gomez at Breakfast. Seeing Kings of Leon at the Pub Friday night. A fat guy passed out but still managing to roll in the mud and his own vomit. White Lies. No Security. Good friends. Old friends. New friends. Cheap food. Free Water. Friendly people. Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing just a brief bit of “What ya Want” by The Beastie Boys. Museum of Contemporary Art. New Belt Buckle (pictured below). Striking a good deal with the art dealer. Trees.

So here’s a recap of my personal weekend mostly told through images and photos that I managed to shoot while partying my ass off…

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All Points West Festival got a bit muddy on Saturday and Sunday. But that didn’t stop Coldplay from going on and rocking an incredibly long set with two encores. That’s right, I like Coldplay – a lot actually. But here is some footage of some unconventional (though given recent circumstances, apropos) covers. Probably would’ve been more impressive to see these in person, but hey. For what it’s worth YouTube gives us the heads up…

full setlist show

Sunday was a gorgeous day in Minneapolis. What did I do? I got sucked into listening to live webcasts from two different amazing festivals going on over the weekend: Newport Folk Festival and All Points West 2009.

Sunday got pretty wet at APW in New York. Actually that’s an understatement. Much of Sunday’s lineup unfortunately was cancelled due to severe weather and all of the rain from Friday and Saturday turned the venue into a giant mudpit. But as I type this, I’m listening to a fantastically beautiful performance by Elbow. I’m a big fan but have never had the opportunity to see them live – which as I realize now is a major oversight and a real shame. I hereby pledge to see them soon. The live shows were airing on the iClips Network – the shows may be archived when the festival ends. If not I’ll be seeking out the shows and will post them here if I can find them.

Just a few miles away in our smallest state, The Newport Folk Festival raged on without a hitch on a gorgeous day. I listened to a little bit of Arlo Guthrie and almost all of Neko Case’s set (who I’m pretty stoked to see next weekend in Chicago). Other guests included Joan Baez, The Decemberists, Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes among others. The good news is if you missed any of it NPR has all of the shows (most in their entirety) available for free download.

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A definite highlight of Lollapalloza 2008 for this guy was certainly Nicole Atkins’ rad singing voice and mad crazy songwriting skills. Looking around the web and with some help from my boy Scott, I found two good nuggets of information.

One, there is a free download of her new single, “Ben”,over at her personal blog.

Two, there are several dates remaining on her current tour. I think I may just take a quick drive down to Madison and crash with some of the old school friends to check out Nicole again before she heads back into the studio.

If you’re a fan of artists like Neko Case but have a bit of a nostalgic soft spot for 50′s pop/country like Patsy Cline, do yourself a favor and dig on some Nicole Atkins.

07/25/2009 Annapolis MD USA – The Ramshead On Stage
w/ Aimee Mann
SOLD OUT

08/06/2009 Brooklyn NY USA – The Bell House

08/12/2009 Haddon Heights NJ USA – Robert Norcross Memorial Dell
FREE SHOW

10/18/2009 Boston MA USA – House of Blues
w/ The Avett Brothers

10/20/2009 Iowa City IA USA – Englert Theater
w/ The Avett Brothers

10/21/2009 Madison WI USA – The Barrymore Theater
w/ The Avett Brothers

10/23/2009 Milwaukee WI USA – Turner Hall Ballroom
w/ The Avett Brothers

10/24/2009 Urbana IL USA – The Canopy CLub
w/ The Avett Brothers

10/26/2009 Ann Arbor MI USA – Michigan Theater
w/ The Avett Brothers

Last night while 15,000 people were watching Beyonce do her thing at Target Center in Minneapolis, a smaller (but I’m sure more devoted) crowd gathered across the street at First Avenue and were treated to an enthralling set by The National. Opening with the tenatively titled “Runaway” (see “National Week Part 1″), the show started with this new, slow burning material and was followed by tracks largely drawn from the bands last two releases, Boxer and Alligator. An increasingly animated Matt Beringer was a treat to watch culminating in his singing from the upper tier of stairs during “Mr. November”. Padma Newsome added some terrific flourishes of violin (and other instruments), while the two man horn section proved themselves absolutely indispensable. The National prove that this is a band hitting it’s stride after five (six?) records, and are only on the way up.

Kudos to the sound board helmsman as the mix and volume level in the legendary First Avenue club was absolutely pitch perfect. The aforementioned musical additions to the band were inserted wonderfully without ever missing a beat or a sound cue. The music enveloped the crowd phenomenally but sans the ringing ear (tinnitus) syndrome as the exits filled.

Before said exit, the band really brought the house down with an exceptional encore. Typically when a band plays unreleased material as their encore the crowd leaves with a vague sense of disappointment at not getting the opportunity to sing along and really rock out for the final minutes of their experience. Not so with The National as they took to the stage with their new tune “Ohio” and finished up with a much more intense version of “About Today.”

Killer show.

SET:
The Runaway (new song) / Start a War / Mistaken for Strangers / Brainy / Secret Meeting / Baby, We’ll Be Fine / Slow Show / Squalor Victoria / ?? (new song) / Abel / All the Wine / Racing Like a Pro / Ada / Apartment Story / Green Gloves / Fake Empire

ENCORE: Blood Buzz, Ohio (new song) / Mr. November / About Today

Gotta love U2. Their IMAX 3D concert last year was quite the spectacle. Now Bono has decided to destroy his fans retinas with a laser coat. Hey, at least they seem to be enjoying it. And also, a microphone you can swing around on? These guys are entertainers of the highest order. Good tunes to.

Ultraviolet:

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I used to be a drummer back in high school and Tommy Lee was one of the guys I tried to emulate. This was some pretty rad shit back in the day – still is actually. Audio is NSFW.

I‘ve never made it to a music festival before (largely because I didn’t really get into festival-type music until a few years ago), but when this year’s Coachella featured several of my favorite bands I decided to spring for it, since it’s the biggest festival close enough for me to drive to rather than fly. And even though everything’s overpriced, it’s hotter than Hades, and I ended up only seeing full sets from seven bands rather then the eleven or twelve I wanted to see, it was worth it. The downside is I think I’ve caught the festival bug – I’m drooling over the Lollapalooza lineup Andrew posted the other day.

Anyway, here’s a recap of my subset of Coachella, which woefully underrepresents the available audio overload. Especially since I skipped Sunday altogether – fewer bands I wanted to see meant I didn’t care to spend the money for the extra day and night.

Details of bands after the jump.

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SxSW is like pop culture overload skydiving in a blender at 78rpm. There is so much to take in that aside from a few choice acts, you’re probably better off not planning anything and just stumbling from to bar to catch some random act. Chances are you’ll be surprised with something new. And if not, the next stage is 100 feet away. Not that I’ve ever been there.

There’s so much that I’m not even going to pretend that RowThree is able to even come close to covering it. Probably the best site to do so however has been NPR.org/sxsw. They have all the usual blogggy type stuff (interviews, reviews, news, op/eds, etc…), plus up to the minute Twittering and a huge list of live streaming sites from the festival. But probably best of all: loads of full live concerts from SxSW on .mp3 for free download.

While I claim to know very little about 99% of the 1800 bands from around the country/world performing at SxSW, I did discover a couple of choice cuts while lurking around the site. So here are a few key locations that should definitely be checked out by your casual (good) music fanatic:

Up to the minute Twitter
10 Free-song download of various SxSW performers (iTunes)
Live Webcasts of about 30 different bands
List of online radio stations streaming live from SxSW

Enjoy!

The Submarines are a favorite local LA duo starting to make a splash in a bigger way, thanks to the inclusion of their song “You, Me and the Bourgeoisie” in recent iPhone commercials and the appearance of “Xavia” on the soundtrack for the film Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. And if you look beyond the poppy, commercial sound bytes, you’ll find songwriting with a good deal of depth and literary quality. Plus, they’re so freakin’ adorable you’ll just want to put them in your pocket and take them home with you. Unless you’re the overly cynical type, in which case you may want to stop reading now.

The main members of the band are Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti, who both sing and play guitar (she also plays xylophone on several songs); when they perform live they include drummer J. Stare. Blake and John initially met a few years ago through mutual music friends, dated for a while then broke up. Both kept writing songs individually and then discovered that all the songs they’d been writing were about their sadness at having broken up. So they got back together. Super-awww, right? They recorded their break-up songs and one of their friends produced their first album Declare a New State! as a wedding present to them.

The songs on Declare a New State! alternate between Blake and John, with opening and closing songs that they both sing, celebrating their reuniting after the break-up that the other songs lament. Their second album Honeysuckle Weeks (released in 2008) is more upbeat, sunny, and an infectious celebration of love. Blake is the great-granddaughter of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and though her lyrics tend to be much happier than his work, it’s not hard to think that some of his way with words got passed down to her. Note especially the evocation of a newly empty apartment after a breakup in “Brighter Discontent.”

I’ve been fortunate enough to see them twice (and I’ll pretty much see them every time they play a local show); thankfully last Saturday I thought ahead enough to order tickets in advance, because they played to a sold-out house at West Hollywood’s Troubadour venue for the last stop on their recent tour. They’re so adorable live, because every once in a while Blake and John share a look and you just melt; not to mention the fact that I think they’re still a little dazed by all the attention they’re getting. Here are a few shots from the Troubadour show – not the greatest quality, since I took them with my iPhone, but I’ll try to remember take my actual camera to get better shots at future shows I go to.

And a few MP3s for sampling. From Declare a New State!:

Brighter Discontent – Brighter Discontent
Peace and Hate – Peace and Hate

From Honeysuckle Weeks:

Swimming Pool (this one is my ringtone right now ^_^) – Swimming Pool
1940 – 1940

More info/buy albums:
Amazon MP3
Official Site