Boston Calling Music Festival

The National will put on their first hometown show in over a year and a half when they perform at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on June 5th. Their last New York appearance was a sold out run of six consecutive nights at the Beacon Theater. Tickets go on sale to the public at 11:00 AM on Friday, January 18th via ticketmaster. The 17,000 capacity Barclays Center opened in September of 2012 and not only serves as home to NBA’s Brooklyn Nets but has also hosted concerts by Jay-Z, Coldplay and the Rolling Stones in its inaugural year. Youth Lagoon is set to open the show.

Formed in 1999, The National consists of vocalist Matt Berninger fronting two pairs of brothers: Aaron (guitar, bass, piano) and Bryce Dessner (guitar), and Scott (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums). Their first full-lengths, The National and Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, and a crucial mini-album, Cherry Tree, preceded their signing to Beggars Banquet in 2004. Alligator (2005), included underground anthem “Mr. November,” and raised their profile as the National grew into an incendiary live band. Boxer (2007), featuring songs like “Fake Empire”, “Mistaken For Strangers” and “Start A War,” sold over three times as many copies as its predecessor and saw them transformed from underground stars into a rock institution. High Violet (2010), released on 4AD brought the band global critical and commercial success. Both individually and collectively The National’s members have been involved in countless artistic, charitable and socio-political pursuits.

Of Monsters and Men is an amiable group of day dreamers who craft folkie pop songs. But last year, the normally mild-mannered six pack -- who's releasing their EP, "Into the Woods," on December 20, 2011 -- transformed into total rock stars after stomping out their competition during Musiktilraunir, a yearly battle of the bands in their native Iceland.

"We just kind of... won," recalls co-singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdottir. "We weren't expecting it at all. So I said, 'Everybody come to my place!'" Beer-swilling friends spilled out of her flat. "I was like, 'Oh fuck, my neighbors aren't liking me right now.'"

Those neighbors won't be making noise complaints anymore. With the group's bright, trumpeting single "Little Talks" winning over one blog at a time, Nanna and her bandmates (co-singer/guitarist Ragnar "Raggi" Thorhallsson, guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, drummer Arnar Rosenkranz Hilmarsson, piano/accordion player Arni Guthjonsson, and bassist Kristjan Pall Kristjansson) are well on their way to becoming citizens of the world.

Their rapid rise transpired in just one year. Nanna, who began as the acoustic act Songbird, recruited extra hands to bolster her sound for a solo show. She liked how her vocals commingled with Raggi's, so they started writing songs together and in 2010 morphed into Of Monsters and Men. As victors of 2010's Musiktilraunir, the new group earned a slot on the influential Iceland Airwaves festival later that year, followed by Seattle's radio station KEXP posting "Little Talks" from a Living Room Session filmed there, setting the telltale ripple effect in motion.

By the summer of 2011 "Little Talks" hit No. 1 in the band's native country, and "people around the world seemed to be listening to us," marvels Raggi. The band was asked to perform again at Iceland Airwaves 2011, where KEXP then anointed the group as "easily the most buzzed about band."

Though their reach is growing broader, the group's appeal has remained distinct: Their music is as fantastical as it is pretty. For inspiration, they often reference random stories they've read. The chanting, tribal "Six Weeks" was inspired by the true tale of American frontiersman Hugh Glass, seemingly left for dead after 86ing a bear that attacked him. Explains Nanna, giggling: "I was reading a post about the six most badass guys in history." As for the swelling, epic "From Finner"? "It's about a whale that has a house on its back" says Raggi "on which people travel across the ocean, exploring different places and having adventures."

They also dig deeper, past legends of grizzly men and whale riders. "Little Talks," for instance, explores loneliness and insanity, while "Love Love Love" ruefully ruminates on heartbreak. "If you listen to the lyrics, they're not as uplifting," he says. "But our music is meant to be fun to sing along to."

In September, Of Monsters and Men threw another party -- a more thoughtful gathering to celebrate their full-length debut, "My Head Is an Animal." (The album, which was released in Iceland and hit No 1 there soon after, will drop worldwide in early 2012.) For the occasion, they cut out animal masks for the attendees to wear, making them makeshift monster-men/women. "Iceland can be a very isolated country and that translates to the music," Nanna says, adding,"We get stuck in our little world."

Young the Giant is a band that has meticulously written and crafted songs together for three years, lived out of shared bedrooms and messy suitcases for two years, and hopped on and off of planes, buses, vans, cars and their beloved bicycles for over one full year, having played more than 160 shows in the past 365 days on 3 different continents.

To date, the band has received innumerable "Band To Watch" accolades from outlets like The New York Times, Spin and Nylon to name a few, and were selected by MTV to perform at the 2011 Video Music Awards and MTV Unplugged. And, with their singles "My Body" and "Cough Syrup" hitting #4 and #2 on the Modern Rock charts while reaching over 10 million YouTube views of their videos, clearly there's something undeniably special about this band.

Andrew Bird will reprise his intimate solo “Gezelligheid” performances this winter, bringing them to Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church December 19-20 and, for the first time, New York’s Riverside Church December 10. Appropriating a Dutch term that loosely translated means “cozy,” the performances concentrate mainly on instrumental violin pieces amplified only by Bird’s signature giant Victrola horns. Bird notes, “What I hope to do with these shows is adapt my music completely to the atmosphere of the space and the season. I want the audience to be both lifted and comforted as we head into another cold and dark winter. I feel the space should be sacred so the audience can experience my music in a different atmosphere.” Bird will also be performing with his full band at Minneapolis’ State Theater December 17; please see below for a list of dates.
Bird is currently on tour in anticipation of his forthcoming Hands of Glory (due October 30 on Mom + Pop Music), a companion piece to the critically acclaimed full-length record Break It Yourself. The new record is the product of a pair of recording sessions prompted by the overwhelming response to Bird’s “old-time” sets on recent tours. Reinterpreting songs from Break It Yourself and featuring covers of classic country tunes, these “old-time” performances find Bird and his full band playing to a single microphone with an entirely acoustic setup. Drawing inspiration from these sets, Hands of Glory features two brand new original tracks, a new interpretation of “Orpheo Looks Back” from Break It Yourself and covers of Townes Van Zandt, the Handsome Family, Alpha Consumer and others.
“The past three summers now we’ve had these band get-togethers at my barn in western Illinois,” Bird recalls. “They begin with little more pretense than to capture the way we make music together. After a few days sleeping, eating and jamming under one roof we get increasingly inspired and ambitious about what we’re doing.” Of recording the new record, he notes that, “Hands of Glory begins with two songs we actually recorded in a church in Louisville on a day off on our July tour. The rest was recorded around a single microphone at the barn in August. We ended up putting the drums on the back porch. I hated to exile Martin like that but it just sounded better. ‘Something Biblical’ I started writing in July well into the severe drought that hit the Midwest this summer. I kept having dreams of a great flood. Nothing biblical—just a local deluge. The day we left the barn it rained pretty hard.”
Since its Billboard Top 10 debut, Break It Yourself has continued to receive rave reviews. In celebration of the record’s release Bird appeared on “The Colbert Report” (stream the video at http://bit.ly/weFuiE), “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” (stream the video at http://bit.ly/He1rUR) and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (stream the video at http://abc.tv/JqPLyy) as well as NPR’s “Weekend Edition.” The press has gone on to hail Break It Yourself as “a quiet, careful grower…it blooms into something beautiful” (NPR Music), “perfect for the sensitive souls among us” (Newsweek) and “a shimmering collection of clever and carefully constructed songs,” (The New Yorker), while Rolling Stone raves that “[Bird’s] emotional urgency energizes his fluid multi-instrumental elocution,” USA Today calls it a “swoon-worthy set of rapturous tunes that bristle with embraceable eccentricities” and TIME praises Bird’s “delightful pop songs disguised as beautiful violin and whistle-laden ballads.”
Produced by Bird, Break It Yourself was recorded at his barn in Western Illinois near the banks of the Mississippi River. Paired with the album’s deluxe CD package is the DVD Here’s What Happened. The thirty-minute performance film was shot at Bird’s barn during the recording of the album and captures the energy of the room in which the new release was conceived. Footage from Here’s What Happened of Bird performing the track “Eyeoneye” can be viewed at http://bit.ly/GNr9gi.
Chicago-based film score composer, multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. As a teen Bird became interested in a variety of styles including early jazz, country blues and gypsy music, synthesizing them into his unique brand of pop. Since beginning his recording career in 1997 he has released 11 albums, his first solo record Weather Systems coming in 2003. Bird has gone on to record with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Most recently Bird composed his first ever film score for the movie Norman (hailed as “a probing, thoughtful score” by The New York Times; available now on Mom + Pop), contributed to the soundtrack of The Muppets and collaborated with inventor Ian Schneller on Sonic Arboretum, an installation at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Beyond the aughts-era duality of retromania and neophilia, David Longstreth has found the beautiful, generous simplicity of the heart and soul. Same as it ever was. And this must be exactly the place where he’s planted the seeds for his band’s finest album to date.

“It’s an album of songs, an album of songwriting,” says Longstreth.

Another reinvention in a career defined by reinvention, "Swing Lo Magellan" does what no Dirty Projectors album has done before: It’s about songs. Few songwriters can pull off the challenge to write as simple and direct as possible, and fewer still can do it and be left with something that feels irreducibly personal and idiosyncratic. "Swing Lo Magellan" gives us 12 such songs, one after another.

The album contains some of the biggest choruses of the band’s career (the explosive and anthemic "Offspring Are Blank" and "Unto Caesar"), as well as some of simplest and most disarming (the closer "Irresponsible Tune"). "Gun Has No Trigger" is a fever dream of ecstatic paranoia, while "Dance for You" is a song of searching, spiritual depth (“in the language of Gyptian and Ligeti,” Longstreth suggests). The tender love declared in "Impregnable Question" would have resonated in any musical era of the last hundred years. The title track, "Swing Lo Magellan," is a gorgeous lament to the night sky. Amber Coffman’s solo turn on "The Socialites" adds a compelling new layer to her persona. Each of these songs is a world unto itself – one that can be explored endlessly. Indeed, "Swing Lo Magellan" feels so unique in the context of much of today’s music because it is more about its content than about its frame and reference. It’s more heart than sleeve.

Dirty Projectors was formed in 2003 by David Longstreth, using the moniker to release wildly imaginative albums spanning guitar-based experimental song, scored composition, electronic music, hardcore, and medieval vocal polyphony. The early years of the band featured an evolving cast of musicians, eventually solidifying around Longstreth (vocals & guitar), Amber Coffman (vocals & guitar), Nat Baldwin (bass), Angel Deradoorian (vocals and keyboard) and Brian McOmber (drums). Haley Dekle (vocals) joined in 2009. 2009’s Bitte Orca was Dirty Projectors’ breakout moment, landing them on almost every Album of the Year list in the country and bringing them to five continents over two years. 2009 saw the band collaborating with David Byrne and the Roots, appearing on "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," as well as playing myriad club shows and international festivals. In 2010, the band collaborated with Björk on the "Mount Wittenberg Orca" EP, which generated more than $60,000 for a "National Geographic" endeavor to preserve wild ocean reefs. They also presented the 2005 album "The Getty Address" with 20-piece chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound at Lincoln Center in New York, the Barbican in London and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, as well as selling out New York’s 3,000-capacity Terminal 5. At the dawn of 2011, Longstreth began writing songs for the band’s next LP.

The songs of "Swing Lo Magellan" are culled from a sprawling 12 months of constant writing and recording in a weird house in Delaware County, N.Y. (four hours northwest of the city). Longstreth, who produced and mixed, wrote 70 new songs and beats. The band—Amber Coffman (vocals & guitar), Nat Baldwin (bass), Brian McOmber (drums) & Haley Dekle (vocals)—often joined him, rehearsing the new music more or less constantly in the house’s A-frame attic. (Vocalist Angel Deradoorian is on hiatus). The 12 songs of "Swing Lo Magellan" were winnowed down from about 40 finished demos. The finished recordings bear the impress of this informal working style: the album is a collection of moments: accidental, fortuitous, spontaneous. The performances feel warm and imperfect. Unguarded intimacy is somewhat of a new look for this band, and it turns out it’s a very good look.

The sound of this album is totally unique—with an aesthetic that explodes in two directions at once. The grain of the voices and live-in-the-room quality of the amps contrast the rich orchestral layering of Longstreth’s arrangements for contemporary ensemble yMusic, the warmth of the bass and the sheen and blast of the beat programming.

"Swing Lo Magellan" is an album that comes from the hearts of one of the most fearlessly cerebral bands of the last 10 years. The album has both the handmade intimacy of a love letter and the widescreen grandeur of a blockbuster, and if that sounds like a paradox—it’s because it was until now.

Ra Ra Riot’s third album Beta Love is set for release January 22 on Barsuk Records. The album marks the band’s first outing as a four piece with members Wes Miles on vocals, Milo Bonacci on guitar, Mathieu Santos on bass and Rebecca Zeller on violin forming the core of the group. Beta Love’s songs are informed by the works of cyperpunk novelist William Gibson and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s musings on the technological singularity and transhumanism.
Inspired by their lean new lineup, the recording process found Ra Ra Riot’s members exploring and re-defining their roles within the new makeup of the group. They built upon demos created mostly by Miles and producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello, Wavves) at Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, MS. For the first time in their history the band recorded in a warmer climate and found themselves stimulated by the balmy Southern air and the physical setting of Oxford. Joined by session drummer Josh Freese (Devo, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer) the band enjoyed exploring its potential, experimenting with new influences and exciting sounds.
Santos said of the sessions, “Making the record was a lot of fun for us, because we were in a completely different environment, trying a completely new approach. We’d been used to arriving at a session with every song totally arranged and figured out, but in Oxford, a lot of the creative decision-making happened in the studio, on the fly. We wanted to be outside of our collective comfort zone for this record. We wanted to be open to new things happening. There was a lot of building up and tearing down with Dennis—a lot of problem solving, a lot of trial and error, and that was really exciting for us.”
Formed in the basements and attics surrounding Syracuse University in 2006, Ra Ra Riot released their debut The Rhumb Line on Barsuk in 2008. NPR Music said their 2010 release The Orchard’s “10 songs positively burst with sophistication, precision and polish.”

“The detachment you can feel throughout our younger records is gone.  We felt like it was time to make a bigger, more
generous statement."  

When describing the new album, Heaven, the Walkmen lead singer Hamilton Leithauser portrays a band hitting maturity,
comfortable in its mastery, after a decade together.  Adds guitarist Paul Maroon, “when you’re starting out, you’re sitting
there trying to come up with a big idea, but after a while, you learn about the process of writing. You learn about your
friends in the band and how they work best.”

It's been ten years since the Walkmen made their debut album, Everybody Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone.   Ten
years since they mixed the lovingly recorded analogue tapes down to the cheapest CD burner they could find. Ten years
since lead singer Hamilton Leithauser snapped guitarist Paul Maroon’s arm in a celebratory wrestling match. Ten years
since critics attached them to a New York scene they never wanted any part of.

 But when Leithauser sings “We Can’t Be Beat,” on the opening track of their new album, he means it, like Cool Hand
Luke getting up off the floor for one more round. “The world is ours,” he declares. This time, he may be right.

This spring, the band played a series of 10th anniversary shows that demonstrated how far they have outstripped their
peers: two sets over two hours, no filler, rapturously received.  In contrast, fellow graduates from New York's celebrated
rock revival class of ’02 have burned out or faded from view.

The Walkmen are the great New York band of their generation, and in Heaven, they have delivered their third killer album
in a row. Although Leithauser argues that “our biggest accomplishment is just being here,” they are making the best music
of their career and filling their largest venues yet. Their spot at the top of the bill at May’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival,
curated by The National, demonstrates the respect in which they are held by the current wave of bands making music in
the city.

“In The New Year”, a standout track on their fourth record, You & Me, implies that at one point there was pressure to
quit: “My friends and my family, they are asking of me, how long will you ramble, how long will you still repeat?” Lauded as
a stunning collection of songs, beautifully arranged, the 2008 album revitalized their career.

 Lisbon, released two years later, confirmed that trajectory, winning five star reviews for its short stories and spare, Sun
Records sound. The clanging tones of Paul Maroon’s Rickenbacker Capri 360 and Gretsch Streamliner set the 1950s
mood, as Leithauser channelled Orbison and Sinatra, in all their melancholy defiance.

 On last year’s tours with Arcade Fire and Fleet Foxes, the Walkmen formed enduring friendships – and resolved to write
a song that would make them headliners, once and for all. “There’s a kinship,” says multi-instrumentalist Pete Bauer. “You
feel like someone else is out there taking music as seriously as you’re taking it. You realize that you’re a lifer.”

 So when Fleet Foxes producer Phil Ek approached them, asking if they’d like to make a record with him, they traveled to
the studio he uses in the woods outside Seattle for the most intense recording sessions they had ever experienced. “He
was relentless,” says Maroon. “And in the end, you can hear the difference.”

 “We have never been on better behavior,” agrees Leithauser. “When Phil had an idea, we would be ‘OK, let’s try it.’
That’s not who we are! But we came up with a sound that we love.” Although the chime of Maroon’s guitar is unmistakable
in the cascading arpeggios of “Song For Leigh” or the driving metallic riff of “Heartbreaker”, the setting is fuller, the
production lush.

 “There can be something brittle about our sound,” Maroon says. “He made it just a little bit warmer, a little bit stronger.
When I play it in my car, it sounds strong, which I love.” On “We Can’t Be Beat”, Leithauser is Dion and his bandmates
The Belmonts, singing pitch perfect doo-wop. On “No One Ever Sleeps”, Fleet Foxes vocalist Robin Pecknold plays Don
Everly to Leithauser’s Phil, supplying a low harmony at once classic and contemporary.

 “Love Is Luck” started out as an attempt to replicate the spacious, reverberating tone of Jamaica’s Studio One in the
formative days of The Wailers. “Phil said ‘I hear this as a rock song,’” remembers Leithauser. “Then Matt came up with the
drums and it started sounding like the Pixies: a big, loud, bombastic thing.”

 The one song that the Walkmen insisted on, over Ek’s objections, turned out to be the track that pulled the record
together and gave it a title. “Our children will always hear romantic tales of distant years,” sings Leithauser. “Don’t leave

me, you’re my best friend. All of my life, you’ve always been.”

 After 10 years, the Walkmen have everything that a great band needs. Leithauser is a mature singer of phenomenal
stamina who can trade “The Rat’s” raw anger for the yearning of “Southern Heart” in a beat. Drummer Matt Barrick can
pummel ferociously and drop down to Buddy Holly’s tramcar click. Bauer is a consummate sideman, effortlessly switching
from guitar to farfisa to piano as required, or trading instruments with bass player Walter Martin, who has also written his
most resonant lyrics yet.

 All five members of the band have kids now and if the impact of parenthood is hard to pin down in a single lyric,
there is definitely a new openness and emotional honesty to the songs.   Most importantly, the old gang mentality has
deepened, becoming something worthwhile and lasting. “I’m very proud of what we’ve done. We’ve stayed friends and
those friendships have grown,” says Bauer. “We have survival experience and real love that children generate in your
life.” Heaven is a definitive statement of purpose and commitment, from a band at the peak of its powers that is finally
winning the recognition it deserves.

- Andrew Purcell

Trevor Powers, whose stage name is Youth Lagoon, began writing his debut album The Year of Hibernation in 2010. Based around the idea of psychological dysphoria, Powers tried to document the trails of his mind through songs of minimalism and hypnotic ambience. Powers later described his writing process as "my mind communicating with me, not the other way around...it can take me to scary places but I've realized those bizarre thoughts I have don't define me." After signing with Mississippi-based label Fat Possum Records in 2011, he toued much of the following year before going back into solitude to write.

Wondrous Bughouse, Powers' sophomore album (due March 5 worldwide via Fat Possum), was spawned from what he describes as "becoming more fascinated with the human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world." During the time he wrote, Powers became intrigued with the metaphysical universe and blending those ideas with pop music.

"Youth Lagoon is something so personal to me because writing music is how I sort my thoughts, as well as where I transfer my fears," explains Powers.

"My mental state is usually pretty sporadic...a lot of this record was influenced by a fear of mortality but embracing it at the same time. Realizing that human life is only great because it is temporary. Experimenting with ideas about dimensions. I'm not a gifted speaker, so explaining things is difficult for me. But music always makes sense."

"Caspian is attempting to chisel away a little niche in the wall, swimming against the overwhelming tide of an increasingly overcrowded genre. "Tertia" succeeds in this endeavor surprisingly well... There is heavyweight contender status here."
- OUTBURN