The three-day fiasco was home to tens of thousands of mainly Rock revelers, who flocked to City Park in New Orleans to catch Jack White reunite with The Raconteurs, watch Snoop Dogg blaze up the joint and the ever-detestable Odd Future slapping a female photographer, among other notables.

Check out our photo highlights of the festival (complete gallery at bottom)!

Soundgarden

The Raconteurs

The Raconteurs

Boots Electric

TV On The Radio

TV On The Radio

Fitz & The Tantrums

Fitz & The Tantrums

My Chemical Romance

Blink-182

Band Of Horses

X

All photos: Ben Bubbett for Antiquiet

World Café LIVE Tracklisting:

1. Caffeinated Consciousness

2. Will Do

3. Red Dress

4. Province (CD and 12” vinyl only)

5. Repetition

Keep an eye on TVOTR’s official site for more updates. Thanks to The Audio Perv for the heads up!

Most members of the band have been children of war and military conflict in their areas of inhabitance and thus their music has a passion and vigor that cannot be duplicated in a European or North American setting. Thankfully, through years of touring, their music and their voice has gained the attention of many around the world, and the consistently-growing band has been able to recruit some of the most talented musicians of our time for the release of their newest studio album, Tassili, due out on August 30^th. This list of musician includes: long-time Wilco member Nels Cline on guitar, contributions by New Orleans’ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and what some would call the backbone of TV on the Radio, the pair of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone.

The video has been unveiled for Tenere Taqqim Tossam, a song beautiful in both sound and sight (including the aforementioned contrabass from TVOTR) off Tinariwen’s most recent effort. It most certainly is worth your time and your ears.

If you like what you hear, be sure to catch the band on the road, as they will be touring Europe and North America throughout the summer and fall of 2011. You can see the dates on the band’s official website.

New York-based director Barney Clay’s video for TV on the Radio’s latest vid is based on a false premise: A year after breaking up, TVOTR gather at a diner to reconnect. They’re all involved in outrageous projects and plans: singer-guitarist Kyp Malone has fallen in with a “Peanuts”-inspired live action role playing community, another’s begun a dojo, another sunk all his money into the “Bush Administration on Ice” show, and so on.

After four minutes of this, th video then shifts to focus on the travails of singer Tunde Adebimpe, who’s been passing his time performing on desolate NYC streets in a sassy wig and getup straight out of Purple Rain.

Ok, so he looked more like Dave Chappelle doing a Prince impression. But I didn’t want to plant that seed in your head until you’d seen the vid for yourself.

Check out our review for Nine Types of Light.

At the time of the diagnosis, the band had released a statement stating that Smith was receiving excellent medical treatment and was already experiencing improvements in his health. Nevertheless, the band confirmed his death on their website:

“We are very sad to announce the death of our beloved friend and bandmate, Gerard Smith, following a courageous fight against lung cancer. Gerard passed away the morning of April 20th, 2011. We will miss him terribly.”

So will his fans.

Gerard Smith’s tragic and untimely loss comes as a shock to us all. Our deepest condolences go to Smith’s family, friends, and fans.

TVOTR’s latest engages the listener with stirring harmonies and delicate croons, instantly grabbing the listener’s attention and refusing to let go. On opener Second Song, the band’s change in direction is instantly discernable. Unlike their previous hard-hitting openers, Second Song has a depth of heart. It’s not dancing nor is it shouting over a noise-confined background – it’s singing a genuine love song.

The band’s transformation fully displays itself on Keep Your Heart. “If the world falls apart, I’m gonna’ keep your heart” guitarist Kyp Malone levelheadedly chants, with the rest of band serenely providing harmony during the escalating six-minute ballad. The song never ceases to expand, and Jaleel Bunton’s steady drumming moves the song forward into the electronically enthused You.

“You’re the only one I ever loved,” echoes throughout the track as pastiches of noise and hummed commotion surround the song. The band then return in full form to their familiar furrow with No Future Shock, an upbeat dance tune that demonstrates how easily the band can switch between Magnetic Fields-like heartsongs to seasoned anti-establishment anthems of youth and desperation. Bringing the album back home, Killer Crane takes control, and with its multilayered and perfectly synthesized resonance provides us with one of the most handsome songs the band has produced in a very long time.

It takes significant range and ability to cover an assortment of different sounds on an album without falling apart in complete disarray. David Bowie’s Low is a prime example of an album that was fully able to fluidly switch over from the somber pop-oriented habitat of its first side, to the haunting and breathtaking instrumental atmosphere of its second. Nine Types Of Light follows the same arrangement, and Will Do, the first single off the record, is the glue that holds the two sides together.

While the first half of the album is mostly focused on stagnant yet beautiful ballads bounded by ho-hums of despair, the second half moves on, and takes an entirely new identity. Will Do asks an absent lover “what choice of words will take me back to you?” as the song progressively howls itself into the vexed and angry second half of the record.

“The bullshit’s got you stuck up heavy on the shelf!” New Cannonball Blues heatedly pronounces with strut-spunk that was mostly inexistent in the ballad-rich first half. The love that instigated so beautifully in Second Song is now replaced with electric throbbing in Repetition, which continues this pattern with further fervor as Tunde Adebimpe incessantly shouts, “my repetition, my repetition is this” in the excellent dynamical track. Forgotten justly slows things down in explosive falsetto before Caffeinated Consciousness rips all that despair apart. “We’re gonna’ survive!” the song pronounces with triumph, bringing the album to an exultant close.

When Nine Types Of Light concludes, it’s astounding how smoothly the 45 minutes spent listening to the album have rolled by. The album guarantees several back-to-back listens, not because it requires fans to “get it,” but simply because it is so rich and unassuming that it lures the listener towards itself again and again.

It has become almost a convention for critics to hail every new TV On The Radio record as “the band’s best work yet,” but that custom persists for a reason; this is a band that continues to reinvent itself even when it doesn’t need to do so. By fully employing the much-forgotten concept of “the album,” the band rematerializes with a novel sound and takes on a whole new temperament with each release. This is precisely what establishes TV On The Radio as the noteworthy pioneers that they are. The incessant perfectionism of all five members of this band and its glimmering results vindicates us when we say: Nine Types Of Light is indeed the band’s best work to date.

Preorder Nine Types Of Light at the band’s official site.

SXSW’s defining characteristic of being ground zero for all things buzz sort of makes it a weird place for Antiquiet to be, in a sense. But we were there to do our own thing, not see Yuck or Smith Westerns or OMGWTFKA or whatever their fucking name is. Thus we present what is sure to be a unique highlight roundup, with relevant bands that will still be relevant even after being relevant goes out of fashion.

The Foo Fighters obliterated the Stubb’s stage on Tuesday night to a full house, while The Strokes drew a capacity crowd of 25,000 to Auditorium Shores on Wednesday. Police were summoned to the scene as hundreds of eager concertgoers rushed the fences, the first of several “riots” reported.

Earlier that morning in a crowded parking lot, as Aziz Ansari, The Kills and the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh looked on, Jack White personally debuted Third Man Records’ Rolling Record Store, with a brief solo performance; Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away and The White Stripes’ Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground. Our camera was front and center, and you can watch both here, along with the performance by Third Man recording artist Seasick Steve that followed.

As Johnny gushed, we had the delight, honor, and complete surprise of being picked up later that afternoon by the now-legendary Foo Fighters’ White Limo, to drive around the city of Austin on the outskirts of SXSW, listening to the band’s new album Wasting Light. The ‘89 Caddy had 45,000 miles and rode like a champ, blasting the Foo jams with the windows down, watching the necks snapping as we passed music fanatics on their own adventures.

Dax Riggs upped the ante at Emo’s on Red River with a searing set of rockers, as fans of Michael Cera’s band Mister Heavenly angled forward for positioning found themselves enthralled by the Louisiana rock sensation they were waiting out.

Thursday, Janelle Monáe filled a steep vacancy at La Zona Rosa, a major SXSW venue, created after Cee-Lo Green canceled. We’ve been singing Monáe’s praises as we watch her rise into the mainstream, and we were pleasantly unsurprised to be dealt a furiously on point set, a tightly knit and passionate batch of breathless tunes radiating soul, confidence and total independence from the uninspired status quo in R&B.

After an intensely beautiful set from J. Mascis, Mini Mansions took to the stage later that night to a patiently underwhelmed crowd, unfortunately for frontman Mikey Shoes, who surely noticed a contrast after midnight as he held his bass onstage with Queens Of The Stone Age. After a powerful set by The Black Angels, the Queens illustrated another meaning of the word buzz while blasting through a bottle of Ketel One and the entirety of their self-titled debut album. The encore set was a power-play sampling of their strongest and favorite material from later releases. Check out Johnny’s full review here.

Friday’s events kicked off with a screening of the new Foo Fighters documentary Back And Forth, a phenomenally produced narrative of the birth of the Foo Fighters after the demise of Nirvana, with footage as recent as the band’s secret club show at the Roxy in Los Angeles last month.

Technical problems marred the first two songs of The Kills’ hotly anticipated performance at Stubb’s that afternoon, which set the duo of Jamie Hince and the Dead Weather’s Alison Mosshart  on an odd footing, as they debuted new tracks from their just-leaked Blood Pressures album. Mosshart had a hard time concealing her frustration at the inconsistent levels coming from the house board, and at one point, Hince sacrificed a little bit of etiquette and announced (I’m paraphrasing), “This is why we don’t play these corporate sponsored gigs.” It didn’t help the fans in the front rows that the dozens of photographers in the generous photo pit showed no shame in climbing practically onto the stage for a shot of the “it” band.

The “it” band then made way for “it” DJ Skrillex, who delivered on the hype train’s promise with a short but blazing set that featured an incredible remix of Henry Rollins infamous “record player player” rant on electronic musicians, where the 23-year old Los Angelean retuned the mockery and turned it into a song with a more inspired structure than most of Rollins’ own. Hey, we love the guy, but credit where it’s due. It’s his move now.

Skrillex then made room for TV On The Radio, who, after being introduced by a couple of the Yo Gabba Gabba! monsters, proceeded to obliterate the Stubb’s stage with a pulverizing buoyancy after a two year hiatus. Bassist Gerard Smith was on downtime following his diagnoses of lung cancer (we wish him well), so drummer Jaleel Bunton stepped in on bass duties. Guest drummer Japhet Landis filled in behind the kit, and no chemistry was lost as the band debuted material from their imminent album Nine Types Of Light.

Meanwhile, Liam Finn, son of Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, played the Lustre Pearl stage in the gorgeous Waterfront District, a full band backing his passion-rock exhibition. Accenting the end of several of his tracks by attacking a drum kit set up stage right, Finn unleashed a torrent of heartsongs that were anything but subtle and soft-spoken. Eddie Vedder brought him along as an opener on his 2009 solo tour, and the raw talent the man has with an acoustic guitar, a loop pedal and a microphone is enough to tempt any aspiring musician give up the craft for good, knowing their natural talent will never reach his.

After a magnificently passionate rock set from The Dears (who we’re looking forward to digging into further), Fitz & The Tantrums closed Friday’s events with a hip-shaking dance-a-thon bursting with Motown greatness at the Dangerbird records showcase. For the unenlightened, F&TT are a six-piece 60’s soul revival band which features a keyboardist, a sax/flute player, a bassist, a drummer, and two vocalists: Noelle Scaggs, a gospel / R&B singer who has worked with Dilated Peoples (and The Black Eyed Peas, which we won’t hold against her) backs up the man known only as Fitz, who sounds like a non-cheesy Daryl Hall but looks like a soul-brother Michael Keaton. Their set was one of the absolute highlights of all of SXSW 2011 music week, reigniting the burning frustration we all felt back in January when Rachael Ray got them for her Saturday showcase before we could lock them for ours.

But partly to show up Rachael fucking Ray, and mostly just to destroy all who would oppose us, our showcase on Saturday was not only a glorious success for us personally, but one of the most well-organized and energetic events of all of SXSW, if we may say so ourselves. With over 10,000 RSVPs, Peckerhead’s was filled to capacity. The party featured fourteen truly great artists (carefully selected by five music sites over six long months) over eight hours, on two stages, with no more than a few minutes of downtime between each one, and more than a fair share of audience interaction. We’ll have a full summary of that party up separately, very soon.

Mars Volta guitarist/songwriter Omar Rodríguez-López announced in advance that his March 19th show at SXSW would feature a special guest, so it came as no great surprise when none other than Cedric Bixler-Zavala appeared onstage. After all, Omar’s group included Juan Alderete, Deantoni Parks, and Marcel Rodríguez-López, all of which have been or are currently members of The Mars Volta.

Bixler-Zavala’s appearance completed a full reunion of the group, who played 4 new songs. “This goes out to the fucking parents out there who allow their kids to follow their balls,” he explained, before the band tore into a new song that sounded considerably more aggressive than the majority of their previous album, Octahedron. Watch it here.

For many, the main event of SXSW wasn’t even officially a part of SXSW, at an amazing abandoned power plant outside a few miles out from the downtown area. It was there that Kanye West ran through the vast majority of his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album Saturday night just after midnight, with appearances from most of the record’s guest stars: Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Kid Cudi, John Legend, Mos Def, Bon Iver and more. The performance was the perfect cap on a weeklong festival marathon. Head to Rap Radar for some incredible pics from the show.

Simultaneously, the Death From Above 1979 reunion turned into a riot as fans who were unable to gain access to the packed venue to see the band’s first performance in over 5 years broke through a fence barricade. Moments later, police on horseback were fully engaged with the musicgoers, who were reportedly throwing punches. Head to the ever-predatory NME for details and video of the incident.

All in all, SXSW laid shame to CMJ and traditional festivals alike, with a massive block party spirit in a unique city where Starbucks and McDonald’ses are surprisingly scarce next to countless independent establishments and truly local forces. Every hour of every day brought dozens of choices for badge holders and freeloaders alike. The beauty of it is that there’s no singular organizer; As easily as we put together our own show, countless other sites and promoters were able to craft their own corners of the massive event, completely free of outside influence. As easy as you can make fun of the relevant VIP authentic buzz wristband-centric shitshow aspect, you can find bands and promoters in it for the right reasons, and experience music purely, up close and personal, with one or two once-in-a-lifetime experiences every day if you just get out there and follow your nose.

Come back later today for our coverage of the Axis Of Audio showcase.

Sitek, best known for his production work on TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Foals, will be writing and playing bass on the new album. Producer Rich Costey (Muse, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol) is playing a significant role in the record’s creation as well.

The as-yet-untitled new Jane’s Addiction album is on track for a summer of 2011 release on Capitol Records, with the band currently in the studio in Los Angeles.

“Dave, Steve and I are fully immersed in the process of making modern music,” says Perry Farrell.  “It has been a great experience thus far, and the results have so much potential.”

“This process has been both inspiring and incredibly freeing,” says Dave Navarro. “The events over the last year have proven themselves to be a necessary part of the journey as they have led us to our current creative team and direction.”

It’s both fascinating and, somehow, respectable that they’re calling the recent additions part of their “creative team” rather than rushing to tell everyone how in love they are with their new bassist. It’s admirable that they’re putting the record as a top priority as opposed to making sure they had semi-permanent gel with a new guy before moving forward.

Across the way, Raphael Saadiq threw some retro-Motown flare into his set as the reunited Brazilian group Os Mutantes floundered badly in a sea of technical errors and failed tropicália. The sonic disruptions didn’t entirely damper the mood’s spirits, however, as they put the pieces back together and created a dance frenzy among the few remaining holdouts in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Portugal. The Man delivered the blistering performance we predicted they would, ripping through live staple Church Mouth before a psychedelic segue into a gorgeous cover of Three Dog Night’s One. Multi-instrumentalist Ryan Neighbors provided otherworldly soundscapes to counter John Gourley’s eager tenor as he led the band through a set that spanned the band’s career. One noteworthy highlight was the crowd singalong during the “It’ll be alright…” section of People Say from this year’s nearly-flawless The Satanic Satanist.

By many accounts, TV On The Radio was through the proverbial roof with energy, turning out a performance that proved even further that the band gets an unfairly bad rap due to their unfortunate hipster-obsession associations.

Deerhunter appeared late onstage to a massive crowd, but frontman Bradford Cox quickly set about erasing any frustrations by insisting that Conor Oberst doesn’t actually exist (despite the fact that one of his bands played the same day), as well as the insistent reminder that Deerhunter was “a professional rock band from Atlanta.” Despite the delay, the need for a replacement kick pedal and an uneven vocal mix, the crowd was hazily enthusiastic, seemingly too caught up in reveling in the fact that the Deerhunter pit was the go-to spot for potheads to be upset about the disruptions.

Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan did her best to create the ethereal atmospherics in the afternoon sun as she and her band rolled out a set of breathily-passionate nu-hippie jams that resonated well with the stoned and sentimentally-inclined. Khan’s keyboard duet with Sarah Jones before a gorgeous rendition of Horse And I, the lead track from her debut album, was a performance highlight.

Meanwhile, several thousand of the festival’s masses made their way over to Mastodon’s set at the Twin Peaks stage, leading with tracks from their high-concept Crack The Skye album before working backwards through their catalogue to the roaring delight of the event’s few metal fans. Frontman Brent Hinds’ throat got a full Cookie Monster workout as the band powered through one of the day’s most intense performances.

Any festival where the Black Eyed Peas are on the same bill as The Mars Volta is bound to be a study on colliding tastes. One can only wonder how much BEP were paid to have Transformers characters parading onstage during their set… but that’s where our coverage of the big-business pop circus ends.

“I think it’s very appropriate that we’re on the Twin Peaks Stage,” The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala told the audience, who were clearly on the edge of losing their minds in anticipation of one of the most enigmatic and powerfully psychedelic bands in existence today. “Just remember… do not drink the coffee, there’s a fish in the filter,” he finished, before leaping into an absolutely searing rendition of fan-favorite Drunkship Of Lanterns. and a set that dabbled heavily in the band’s back-catalogue, offering only a few gems from their latest, Octahedron.

The band was “straight fucking wild, as if electrical currents where running through them,” according to our on-site photographer Alicia Roldán. Cedric was on fire, back-flipping and leaping from the drum riser before tearing down a massive sign and engaging in a sort of epileptic wrestling match with it that ended with Zavala body-slamming himself beneath it. The signature manic intensity of Guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López worked in symbiotic concurrence with Cedric’s cartwheeling insanity and vocal kaleidoscopics, leaving those in attendance breathless with extended solos on Dares and Wax Simulacra.

With a relentlessly crushing 90-minute set, The Mars Volta further cemented their reputation as psycho-funk rock gods, eclipsing all the day’s previous acts and doing little to prep the audience for the Birkenstock jams of headliner Dave Matthews.

His unsuccessful, brief attempt at breakdancing aside, Dave Matthews and Co. delivered a raucous set of hits that included Don’t Drink The Water, Ants Marching and an overly-indulgent, this-goes-out-to-the-trippers 20-minute version of Lie In Our Graves. Mathews’ longtime guitar-partner Tim Reynolds sat in for the entire set, and the recently-passed sax player LeRoi Moore (who the band’s latest album was dedicated to) was substituted by a three-piece horn section.

Dave’s throat was shredded by the show’s end (starting to see a pattern among the headliners here… Mr. Black better be in top form Sunday!), but not too shot to tear off a slowed version of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, with Robert Randolph on the lap-steel six-string. The Stairway To Heaven cover was received as less of a joke than it might have under different circumstances, leaving the Wayne’s World generation a bit confused by the notion that the iconic song can actually be played straight.

After two full days of spectrum-spanning live music, Outside Lands has hit its stride, and with the wildly eclectic day three waiting to unfold (where else can you see Ween, M.I.A., The Dead Weather & Atmosphere all in one place?), there’s bound to be plenty more action to report. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out our gallery for Outside Lands 2009, day two:

Antiquiet’s complete coverage of Outside Lands can be found here. All of our pictures from the festival can be found on our Facebook Page.

All Photos: Alicia Roldán & Rick Pickett for Antiquiet

A sense of genuine romanticism reverberates throughout the entire album, from the throbbing dance dreams of Soft Shock to the epic, strobe phasing beauty of the tip-toeing Skeletons. The album’s got heart, real, colorful, bleeding, stomping heart, and it’s laid out in soaring fashion. The band recorded It’s Blitz! with two producers: TV On The Radio’s David Sitek, who did production work on the last two albums, and Nick Launay, who co-produced the 2007 Is Is EP along with the band. The vintage synths come on strong on the album, finding Nick Zinner utilizing an array of guitar effects and various throwback synth instruments to develop a redrawn sound that certainly bears the YYY imprint, most comparably as a more developed Show Your Bones on the club scene.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who used to think the band have always sounded best when filtered through the New York punk-fuzz garage grit that was on their early EPs. Those conceptual elements, however magnetic and propelling they may have been for their career at the onset, are thrown out the window on It’s Blitz! without so much as a cursory rearviewmirror glance. There’s still a lot of guitar on the album, but this time its got heavy backups in synth-heavy atmospherics- definitely indicative of the sense of evolution throughout, translated through what’s more a soundtrack to electro-nightlife than a batch of concert anthems. 

Tracks like album opener Zero (listen below) or the creepily sensual Dragon Queen could find a cozy home between updated versions of Blondie and the Pet Shop Boys.

Zero’s a cocaine disco anthem for modern times, a pulsing mirrorball party that starts off like a red-pill digital assault, an immediately magnetic pulse in sixteenths that threatens to overwhelm the senses before Karen O’s gentle buoyancy sets in and leads the way. The theme stays strong through Heads Will Roll, a speedy satellite party in true glitter fashion, with a similarly ecstatic breakdown/outro to its predecessor. The hyper-reverberating electro-strings and looping beat build a dancefloor base for a vocal performance that little poplets like Lady GaGa could learn some things from; Karen’s passion is unrivaled, and songs like Heads Will Roll are solid proof that she’s got the chops to outshine the silly dance queens soaking up the charts these days.

Soft Shock slows the party down, a whirling instrumental track under the subtle peaks and valleys of Karen O’s pendular melody (listen for her canary-esque ooooohh’s near the end), which leads into the breathtakingly gorgeous and delicate Skeletons. By design, it’s not a far cry from the delicate beauty of Maps, but the chorus is much more fragile- and a hell of a lot less annoying. Buoyed by Zinner’s effects work and a rising march-like snare beat, the song becomes a soaring movement, Karen’s soft-vocal delivery serving as the voice of calm in an epically percussive, dropping each syllable like a slowly leaking faucet. As the soundscape builds around her, her gentle lullaby provides a light through the fog.

The guitars return to recognizable form for the radio-ready Dull Life as well as Shame And Fortune, a grinding bass fuzz monster that wakes and settles before rising up again with a guitar lead that’s not exactly groundbreaking, but serves the song perfectly. 

More traditional song structure returns as well with the epically majestic Hysteric, the melody and percussion giving the track an evolved Maps essence, but the repeated line You suddenly complete me… is achingly beautiful in a very primal nerve-stroking kind of way, a moment-of-clarity love letter, like a grown-up fairy tale. Moments like Brian Chase’s little fills around the 1:50 mark under Karen’s gorgeous The cinders, they splinter are what makes this album such a fantastic listen- and why good speakers or headphones would do the listener a world of good to utilize while doing so. The Devil’s in the details, and they love it that way. Staccato horns help build the song’s final act, a royal celebration that vaporizes suddenly, ending with a whistle and gentle feedback.

The heavenly Little Shadow closes the album with an apparent inspirational mix of Lamb, Goldfrapp and Sigur Rós. Karen’s reflective Little shadow / Into the night / Will you follow me? weaves gently through the organ’s rising, shimmering wall of sound and the minimalist perimeter set by the percussion. We’re sent out with a bittersweet mix of gentle yearning and muted sorrow, but there’s a strong undercurrent of victory as well- possibly because The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have outdone themselves here. If there’s any true harmony in the universe, It’s Blitz! will be remembered as the pinnacle of the band’s artistic achievement thus far. 

It’s Blitz
April 13, 2009
Interscope

01 Zero
02 Heads Will Roll
03 Soft Shock
04 Skeletons
05 Dull Life
06 Shame And Fortune
07 Runaway
08 Dragon Queen
09 Hysteric
10 Little Shadow