Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The New Drive-By Truckers Album But Were Afraid To Ask

The Drive-By Truckers announced the first part of The Big To-Do tour, screenings of their documentary, The Secret To A Happy Ending and offer free MP3. The Big To-Do is slated for release on March 16, 2010 on ATO Records. DBT and ATO Records are offering up the first single, “This Fucking Job”, from The Big To-Do for free [CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]. The premiere screening of the DBT documentary, The Secret To A Happy Ending, is scheduled for February 5, 2010 at AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD. This is a film about the redemptive power of rock-and-roll; […]

PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies

BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]

Vampire Weekend Contra Is #1 Album In The Nation

Now playing on Phawker Radio! EW: It’s a grand day for indie rock, as Vampire Weekend have just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Go ahead and hoist a refreshing glass of horchata in their honor. The preppy foursome sold 124,000 copies of their sophomore album Contra, according to Nielsen SoundScan — a nice number that, combined with weak retail competition, was enough to make them the biggest band in the nation for at least one week. Considering that the No. 1 spot generally belongs to major-label acts like Ke$ha and Susan Boyle, it’s impressive to see a […]

BACK FROM THE GRAVE: Roky Erickson Teams Up With Okkervil River For New Album

ANTI RECORDS: Legendary musician Roky Erickson triumphantly returns on April 20th with the Anti Records release True Love Cast Out All Evil his first new album in fourteen years. Produced by Will Sheff and featuring his band Okkervil River backing Erickson, the record is comprised largely of unreleased songs that Austin, Texas native Erickson wrote throughout his decades-long career — detailing with heart-breaking candor a harrowing life that has included shock treatment, imprisonment, mental illness, and irreversible loss. With a wisdom that can only be marshaled by someone who has been through all of the this, Erickson also interjects the […]

CONCERT REVIEW: Julian Casablancas At The Troc

BY JAMIE DAVIS Julian Casablancas must be feeling good considering all the end-of-decade praise his band The Strokes are getting for their debut album, the generation-defining Is This It. He certainly looked like he felt good on Saturday night at the Trocadero, giving us the good old rockstar poses he perfected years ago. And really, this is part of what makes him unique, that he is willing to act like a genuine rockstar, throwing his drinks at the lights with nothing more than a sarcastic “oops.” For the last song before the encore he even climbed up on the stack […]

HEAR YE: Vampire Weekend Contra

Out today on XL Recordings. Now playing on Phawker Radio! SIMON REYNOLDS: Already I hear the naysayers bleating, “Something New?! But they’re so derivative!” (This, from Deerhunter fans.) No new instruments have been invented, it’s true, and here and there on Vampire Weekend, you’ll pick up a faint scent of things you might have heard before: a bounce of Beat in “A-Punk,” Orange Juice’s just-brushed sheen, Monochrome Set’s suave wit. The most common reference point (apart from Graceland, which seemingly crops up because it’s the sole example of African-influenced rock most people know) is early Talking Heads. And that’s a […]