popwreckoning

If you haven’t heard already, Berkeley’s own The Morning Benders released a groovy cover of The Strokes classic hit “Last Nite.” The boys sent out an email earlier this week to their mailing list about the cover, and it’s available to preview and download over here at their Tumblr page.

Or to download it directly, click HERE.

I’m personally digging the Morning Benders’ slowed-down angelic take on the garage rock hit. It’s like they threw the song to the west coast, put it at 70%  speed, and slapped on some synthesizer. What do you think?

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I had my doubts about Kanrocksas when I received the email regarding the press conference to announce the festival’s lineup. “A festival held at Kansas Speedway,” I thought to myself “will no doubt be a bunch a metal bands.”

Man was I was wrong. Offering a lineup featuring servings from some of the best bands in the world, Kanrocksas was the real deal and had landed right in my backyard. So, as I drove under the speedway into the VIP to catch the day’s first band, I felt as excited as I had for a festival in years. I parked, slid into the media center briefly, then bolted for my first band.

UME:

You know that groggy feeling that you sometimes will get when you wake up early for work on a day following a long night? You fumble to collect your clothes, somewhat unsuccessfully, gathering whatever laundry has pooled in piles on the floor of your bedroom. Skipping the shower, you rush to your neighborhood gas station to grab a red bull to supply whatever energy you can muster up to kick off the day.

In terms of the first annual Kanrocksas Music Festival, UME was that red bull. Taking stage early, these Austin, Texas firecrackers kicked open the door for what would be a great first day, with an energy and poise that left many bands standing in their shadow.

Rocking kind of a Jeckle and Hyde image, Lauren Larson sound checks and speaks in a shy and sheepish manner, before exploding into a large energetic ball of chaos. Sporting a great 1990′s sound, complete with swirling guitar and raspy snarling vocals, UME’s stage show is unquestionably worth mentioning. Their set left a thumbprint on me that would last the whole day, as they showed up several bands lower on the bill. I expect huge things from this band and will be disappointed if the world offers them anything less.

Fitz and the Tantrums:

There is no questioning the fact that the chemistry between Michael Fitzpatrick and Noelle Scaggs is real. While watching this band, every line of every song seems to be a tip of the hat to the passion that these two share for both each other and for music.

With a jazzy retro sound and soul train moves, Fitz and the Tantrums plowed through a stellar set, which included covers “Steady as She Goes” by The Raconteurs (corrected at 11:46 p.m. 8/7/2011) and “Sweet Dreams” by Annie Lennox. As if that were not enough to please, their crowd interactive set lit the Kanrocksas crew up, causing a stir I hadn’t expected in the 192 degree weather. Dancing and grinding around the pit area of the speedway, one would have to assume those in attendance put their complaints of sunburns and dehydration on hold, trading them for a prom dance throwback.

A stellar set from a stellar band.    

D12:

Sadly, my streak of sets that captured my heart would stall right there. D12 seemed rack with technical difficulties and lackluster efforts in front of roughly 2,000 viewers, the group honestly serves as my biggest disappointment of Kanrocksas. Having seen D12 before (when I was like, 16) I remembered them as a high energy, wicked funny rap group, slightly out of place at Warped Tour. However, I also remember walking away both impressed and stunned enough to grab their albums off the shelves. Sadly, the D12 on stage at Kanrocksas was not the D12 I remembered loving. Flowing over beats that seemed misguided and somewhat sloppy, the set simply flopped.

However, that would not stop a large mass of fans to sit, hopeful to catch an early glimpse of Eminem. They would in the end walk away empty handed.

Jack’s Mannequin:

I was of the small percentage of journalists who skipped Arctic Monkeys set to catch former Something Corporate front man Andrew McMahon’s newish project Jack’s Mannequin. Having always been a fan of his emotional performances and energetic stage presence, I figured I would no doubt find a bit of recovery from D12′s lackluster set.

Without a doubt, I was. Busting out old favorites and premiering new singles Jack’s Mannequin left nothing to be desired. Shifting, twitching and switching between two mics, McMahon ran the gambit of emotional content, ranging from cancer, coming to age and coming to terms with breakups.

While I’m sure some people would question my choice to skip Arctic Monkeys for a band that causes 16 year old fangirls to crowd the stage with “I fucking love you Andrew” signs, I have no regrets with my decision based on one solid fact: Andrew McManon is truly the nicest man in music. That should always be supported.

Regardless, for those who desire them, here are Scott’s Arctic Monkey’s Photos:

Check out Kanrocksas: Day One, Part Two featuring  Kid Cudi, Ween, Bassnectar, Flaming Lips and Eminem soon!

Kanrocksas Music Festival recently released the official set times for the bands preforming at the event to be held at the Kansas Speedway on August 5th and 6th. Below are the times of each band, arranged chronologically by the start of each band’s set time. In addition, links to each band’s website have been linked to their name in order to allow our readers easier possibility for line up research. Enjoy!

Friday August 5th

• 1:30 – 2:00 p.m. Winner of the Local Band Contest – Main Stage
• 2:10 – 2:40 p.m. UME – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 2:50 – 3:30 p.m. The Joy Formidable – Ad Astra Stage
• 2:50 – 3:30 p.m. Fitz and the Tantrums – Main Stage
• 3:40 – 4:20 p.m. D12 – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 4:30 – 5:10 p.m. Jack’s Mannequin – Ad Astra Stage
• 4:30 – 5:10 p.m. Arctic Monkey – Main Stage
• 4:30 – 5:10 p.m. R/D – Critical Mass Tent
• 5:20 – 6:00 p.m. DOOMTREE – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 5:20 – 6:00 p.m. Paper Diamond – Critical Mass Tent
• 6:10 – 7:00 p.m. Ellie Goulding – Ad Astra Stage
• 6:10 – 7:00 p.m. Kid Cudi – Main Stage
• 6:15 – 7:00 p.m. 12th Planet – Critical Mass Stage
• 7:10 – 8:10 p.m. Primus – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 7:15 – 8:00 p.m. Treasure Fingers – Critical Mass Tent
• 8:15 – 9:05 p.m. Major Lazer – Critical Mass Tent
• 8:20 – 9:20 p.m. Ween – Ad Astra Stage
• 8:20 – 9:20 p.m. Bassnectar – Main Stage
• 9:20 – 10:50 p.m. Kaskade – Critical Mass Tent
• 11:00 – 12:30 a.m. Eminem – Main Stage

Saturday August 5th

• 12:30 – 1:00 p.m. Winner of the Local Band Contest – Main Stage
• 1:10 – 1:50 p.m. Rival Sons – As Astra Stage
• 2:00 – 2:40 p.m. Garden & Villa – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 2:50 – 3:30 p.m. The Black Angels – Ad Astra Stage
• 3:40 – 4:20 p.m. Best Coast – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 4:00 – 4:40 p.m. Local Winner of Critical Mass Contest – Critical Mass Tent
• 4:30 – 5:20 p.m. OKgo – Ad Astra Stage
• 5:00 – 5:45 p.m. Kerli – Critical Mass Tent
• 5:30 – 6:20 p.m. Grace Potter & The Nocutrnals – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 6:05 – 6:55 p.m. Bag Raider – Critical Mass Tent
• 6:30 – 7:20 p.m. Cage the Elephant – Ad Astra Stage
• 7:10 – 7:55 p.m. Krafty Kuts – Critical Mass Tent
• 7:30 – 8:20 p.m. Flogging Molly – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 8:15 – 9:05 p.m. Tinie Tempah – Critical Mass Tent
• 8:30 – 9:35 p.m. Girl Talk – Main Stage
• 8:30 – 9:35 p.m. A Perfect Circle – Ad Astra Stage
• 9:35 – 10:45 p.m. John Digweed – Critical Mass Tent
• 9:45 – 10:50 p.m. The Black Keys – Stageasaurus Rex Stage
• 11:00 – 12:30 a.m. Muse – Main Stage
• 11:15 – 1:00 a.m. Sound tribe Sector 9 – Critical Mass Tent

Additional Features:

• Fireworks Display – Friday night.
• MUSE Laser Light Show – Saturday night.
• Ferris Wheel of Lights – A seven-story rotating light Ferris Wheel will spin and light up the festival.
• Hot Air Balloon Glow – World champion balloonist John Petrehn brings multiple hot air balloons as backdrops for a “balloon glow” as night falls over the festival.
• Water Slide – At 40-feet long and 200-feet high, this is a water slide on steroids for festival guests to cool down in between sets at the Kanrocksas Music Festival.
• Bungee Jumping Trampolines – Jump to the music at up to 24 feet with bungee trampolines.
• Live Art – World renowned artist John Bukaty and Amanda Day Vance-Bukaty with DeltaBlu Visionaries (www.deltablu.com) will direct a cast of as artists and performers for live, interactive and functional art throughout Kanrocksas Music Festival.

Yuck ( http://yuck.bandcamp.com/)is an indie rock group hailing from London, England. They are currently enjoying buzz band status centering on their self-titled debut record which was released on Fat Possum last February. The album is full of fantastically catchy songs, including the noisy “The wall”

The band plays a brand of fuzz rock that rides a wave of ‘90’s alternative rock nostalgia. They’ve garnered comparisons to legendary acts such as a Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic youth. The comparisons are certainly justified, but Yuck updates the sound of ‘90’s Indie Rock with a sound uniquely their own.

Recent live shows have been well reviewed, and Friday’s set should be outstanding.  Their show is eagerly anticipated, and the crowd should be rapturous. Yuck are not one to miss.

Yuck will be playing on Friday at 10:15 p.m. at Neumos.

Lonely Twin starts with a blast of joy: “open up the door and let me in” sings frontman Jordan Geiger, through a nest of strange instruments. The song is a pop bomb, and it leads us into the new Hospital Ships record.

Hospital Ships is primarily Geiger, occasional member of Shearwater, and former frontman for obscure indie rock group Minus Story. Minus Story was a great band, criminally underrated, and sorely missed.  This is his second record under the Hospital Ships name.

The aforementioned track, “Love or Death” starts the album incredibly. It sounds like an outtake from the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, while starting a theme of confusion and love that continues throughout the album. The album is at times painfully sad, but the melodies bring the reality of life to the surface, and turn a lot of it into a sing-a-long. The song is quickly reminiscent of the last (and best) Minus Story album My Ion Truss. It’s loud but not loud, and epic, especially for a pop song that lasts just over two minutes.

A few tracks later, “Galaxies” begins with a piano, and an easy to miss acoustic guitar in the background. The vocals kicks in quickly, which brings us to another fantastic thing about this album. Quick notes kick in and out throughout the record, and in this song especially. Even a couple dozen listens in a listener will notice new things. The songs are built with quirky sounds in a way that is a little mind bogglingly.

The next song, “Phantom Limb” is a sweet ballad that is at times a bit tricky. Odd vocal melodies float in, and at one point something that sounds like a train chugging comes along. Geiger begs for a relationship to die, and you feel the heartbreak throughout. The end of the song sounds like a funeral and it’s almost enough to leave a person weeping.

Immediately after, is “Carry On.” This kind of thing has been done before, but unlike “Float On” there is no sarcasm here. The song has an honesty that is missed in most “fuck it, we’ll get by anyhow song.” It feels weary and depressed, but that makes it all the more human.

A couple tracks later is “Old Skin,” a dirge of a pop song, and probably the best thing here. “We always knew these songs would get lost, and they’re gone, but we go on,” sings Geiger, and it’s a kind of manifesto for the entire album. A lot of the songs are centered around the idea of struggling through loss, and dealing with life’s mishaps. Geiger shapes his thoughts through pop melodies, and the random noises could be seen as a metaphor for life’s little struggles. The more you listen, the bigger the album gets.

You should buy this. You should buy all of the old Minus Story records all well. Lonely Twin is one of the best records of 2011, and it’ll provide you years of joy. It improves on the first Hospital Ships record in every way, and it’ll be exciting to see what comes next.

Tracklisting:

1. Love or Death
2. Honey Please
3. Bird in Furs
4. Galaxies
5. Phantom Limb
6. Carry On
7. Anyone Everyone (free mp3)
8. Old Skin
9. Reprise
10. Little Dead Leaf
11. New Life
12. Dani Love of Mine (Bonus vinyl only track)

When I reviewed a Land of Pines (http://landofpinesmusic.bandcamp.com/) show at The Tractor last April, I predicted they’d be one of Seattle’s next big breakout hits. They are a very young band, with only a couple EP’s to their name, but they put on very strong performances.

If you like noisy, slightly eccentric pop songs Land of Pines could very well be your new favorite band. They have incredible chemistry, and are tighter than many older bands. I’ve been meaning to see them again for months. Get to the Vera stage early, because in a couple years you’ll be able to brag that you saw Land of Pines “way back when.”

Land of Pines are playing on Sunday 2:00-2:30 p.m. at the Vera Project.

Handsome Furs consistently manage to top themselves. Their last album, Face Control, was fantastic, but Sound Kapital improves upon it in nearly every way.  Face Control often felt lyrically dense, whereas Sound Kapital is a much more streamlined effort. It probably helps that the husband and wife duo of Dan Boeckner and Alexi Perry wrote the album entirely on keyboards.

The other problem Face Control had was that it occasionally seemed too obvious. It was full of massive choruses, and thumping bass, but after twenty or thirty listens the songwriting reveals itself to be relatively by the numbers. Sound Kapital doesn’t have this problem.

The album continues the Eastern European themes, but is more influenced by ‘80’s German Techno. It looks strange on paper, but the sounds work very well. The album opens with “When I Get Back,” a slightly claustrophobic fist pumper. The beats are fierce, and the lyrics let loose a sense of uncomfortable tension that runs through the rest of the album.

A few tracks later, “Memories of the Future” continues the themes of the past colliding with the present. The phrase “nostalgia never meant that much to me” is yelped almost like a battle cry. The song plays like a massive club hit in an alternate universe.

Track five, “Serve the People” begins slowly, with a discordant piano. The song gets thick about forty-five seconds in, with slow bleeps, before the chorus comes in, and turns the whole into an epic anthem. “’Til the cops said move along,” sings Boeckner, increasingly alienated by law enforcement.  He continues: “but they don’t serve the people.” It’s a tense, weighty song that improves with every listen. It feels like there’s a story behind the thing, but leaving it open this way, it builds a sense of intrigue, and makes it feel more human.

After three more songs (including first single “What About Us”), the album ends with the seven minute “No Feelings.” It’s a joyously nihilistic jam full of hand-claps, and sing-along lyrics.  It’s the perfect way to end a fantastic set of songs that is recommended unreservedly to anyone who enjoys indie rock. It’s also probably one of the best new albums that will come out this year.

Tracklisting:

1. When I Get Back
2. Damage
3. Bury Me Standing
4. Memories of the Future
5. Serve the People
6. What About Us
7. Repatriated
8. Cheap Music
9. No Feelings

Razor & Tie has announced the signing of Brooklyn based singer-songwriter Kevin Devine. His new full length album, Between the Concrete & Clouds, will be released September 13, 2011 via Razor & Tie / Favorite Gentlemen. Devine will head out this fall on a headlining tour with The Features as direct support on its first leg. The tour will kick off on September 6th in Pittsburgh, PA at Club AE and make stops nationwide, concluding in Upland, CA at The Wire. (Dates below, 2nd half forthcoming). Stream or download the title track.

Between The Concrete & Clouds is a record full of firsts for Devine, both sonically and technically. Perhaps best known for his solo acoustic songs, this is the first record he’s made that is fully backed by a band. After settling back home in Brooklyn after being on tour for most of 2009 and ’10, Devine spent time in his rehearsal space playing around with ideas on his own.

Produced by Chris Bracco and mixed by Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith, Dr. Dog), Between the Concrete & Clouds was recorded in 10 days over a span of a month. The 10 track album features musicians Brian Bonz (keyboard), Chris Bracco (bass, keyboard), Mike Fadem (drums, percussion), Russell Smith (electric guitar), and Mike Strandberg (guitar, mandolin).  This is the first recording Devine’s done with his version of this band, and it had an inspired impact on the final product.

“The combination of Chris and Rob on this record kind of marries the best aspects of everything I’ve tried to do over the past ten years,” Devine said. “I tried to explore a bit musically and make an album that still has a lot to chew on, but serves it with a scoop of ice cream,” he said. “I took the lyrical density of what I typically write – which are not-simple stories about not-simple people, or what I feel life is most accurately like – but give them more of a traditional pop structure.”

Tour Dates
Sept 6 – Pittsburgh, PA – Club AE
Sept 7 – Akron, OH – Musica
Sept 8 – Detroit, MI – Magic Stick
Sept 9 – Chicago, IL – Bottom Lounge
Sept 10 – St. Louis, MO – Old Rock House
Sept 11 – Kansas City, MO – Record Bar
Sept 13 – Denver, CO – Marquis Theater
Sept 14 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
Sept 16 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon Lounge
Sept 17 – Portland, OR – Bunk Bar
Sept 19 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill
Sept 20 – Upland, CA – The Wire

For more information visit www.kevindevine.net

Popwrecker Scott Spychalski and Editor in Chief Joshua Hammond had a chance to rock out at Warped Tour in Bonner Springs, KS last Wednesday with cameras in tow. Check out their amazing shots from the festival. Click on any artist’s name for more information.

*Larry and His Flask: (Keep an eye out on Popwreckoning for an interview with Larry and His Flask!)

*Bad Rabbits:

*Against Me!:

*Foxy Shazam:

*Less Than Jake: (Keep an eye out on Popwreckoning for an interview with Less Than Jake!)

*I Set My Friends On Fire:

*Moving Mountains:

*It Boys:

Black Veil Brides:

Pour Habit:

Foxy Shazam:

The Devil Wears Prada:

Sharks:

Big D and the Kids Table:

Bad Rabbits:

Grieves (with Budo):

New Years Day:

Acacia Strain:

General Festival Shots:

*Photos by Joshua Hammond

All others by Scott Spychalski as marked

English band the Horrors will be releasing their third album, Skying, on August 9th in the U.S. (July 11th in the UK) on XL Recordings. Ahead of the album release, the band has released the first promo video from the album, for the song “Still Life.” Watch it below.

The Horrors will be touring North America in September, starting on September 7 in Vancouver and ending in Washington DC on September 30. More information on these dates can be found on the band’s official website.

The Horrors: website | myspace