Skip to content
News

Mars Volta Plot ‘Goliath’ Tour; Albert Hammond Jr. Details Forthcoming LP

Getting behind the Jan. 29 release of Bedlam in Goliath, the galactic rockers’ otherworldly follow up to 2006’s Amputechture, Mars Voltahave mapped a handful of club tour dates set to kick off Jan. 9 inBurlington, Vermont. From there, the spastic duo and their backing bandwill hit cities like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Toronto, andDetroit.

Mars Volta tour dates:

1/9, Burlington, VT (Higher Ground)
1/11, New Haven, CT (Toad’s Place)
1/12, Providence, RI (Lupo’s)
1/14, New York, NY (Terminal 5)
1/17, Philadelphia, PA (The Fillmore at the TLA)
1/18, Baltimore, MD (Rams Head Live)
1/19, Columbus, OH (Newport Music Hall)
1/21, Toronto, ON (Phoenix Concert Hall)
1/23, Detroit, MI (St. Andrews Hall)
1/25, Kansas City, MO (Beaumont Club)
1/27, Boulder, CO (Fox Theatre)

Albert Hammond Jr. Details Forthcoming LP

Continuing to trump the musical output of his Strokes counterparts, ragamuffin New York-based rocker Albert Hammond Jr. is currently wrapping efforts for the follow up to his 2007 solo debut, Yours to Keep. Detailing the forthcoming, yet-to-be titled record to Pitchfork,Hammond said he and his collaborators — including Sean Lennon andtouring drummer Matt Romano, guitarist Marc Philippe Eskenazi, andbassist Josh Lattanzi — recently wrapped a five week studio sessionand “got 16 very different songs.”

“Now we’ve got to mix it.So about another week and a half of mixing and then mastering onJanuary 8th and then we’ll be done,” Hammond said. “I have a studio athome, so I did a lot of pre-production at home with an engineer I workwith, Gus Oberg… Matt [Romano] would come and lay down drums on MIDI,so we still have a lot of problems there, but the songs range from aneight-minute instrumental to a two-minute-30-second pop song to…”

Hammondadded: “You know, the biggest difference, I’m thinking about it now, isjust the different extremes that we didn’t really have on the firstrecord. Just from the softest thing I think I’ve ever written to thehardest thing I think I’ve ever written, to everywhere in the middle.That’s kind of why we went in to record so many songs — we didn’t knowwhich direction the album was going to go in. And now we have to sitdown and pick which ones really fit the record.” Included in the 16song titles Hammond has to choose from is “Victory at Monterey,” “GfC,””In My Room,” “Lisa,” “You Won’t Be Fooled By This,” “Modern Jazz,””Spooky Couch,” “Bathroom Time,” “And So We Go.”

Okay, okay, all this solo Hammond stuff is awesome, but when’s the new Strokes record going to drop, you ask? Hammond: “No idea, man.”

Pete Wentz Blogs on Grammys

Just last week the 2008 Grammy nominations were announced, exemplifying the academy’s lack of relevance with today’s popular music. And guyliner-rockin’ bassist Pete Wentz, who along with his fellow Fall Out Boyconstituents played a Grammy nomination party and were then shunned bythe academy, accumulating nary a nod, has taken to the web to offer histwo cents on the Grammys’ growing absurdity.

“The first reaction is jealousy mixed with a slight sense of entitlement,” wrote Wentz.”We just want to be a part of your club. Other than the fact that weplay the events for you and the right parties all the time (which is abit embarrassing either for you or us, not sure which, possibly both.It’s kind of like being invited to a birthday party and then notallowed to eat the cake.) — it shouldn’t mean much.”

ButWentz explains who really chooses the gravity of a band — the fans.”We want our songs to be immortal and a statue doesn’t do anything tohelp them live forever. A fifty year old white man shouldn’t decidewhether we are relevant or not and he doesn’t. We wanted to thank youfor making us feel relevant for sitting up all night to get into ourshows and for buying our music. It means more in the wake of momentslike this. We know who we are based on those who would walk throughhell with us.” [Via NME.com]

Black Mountain to Hit West Coast

British Columbia-based indie rockers Black Mountain have mapped a mini-tour of America’s West Coast in support of the Jan. 22 release of sophomore set, In the Future. The band, braving the stringent borders of Washington State (just ask Chris Walla)will drop in to Seattle and head south, hitting Portland, SanFrancisco, and Los Angeles before capping their outing in San DiegoFeb. 7.

Black Mountain tour dates:

2/1, Seattle, WA (The Crocodile)
2/2, Portland, OR (The Doug Fir)
2/4, San Francisco, CA (The Independent)
2/5, Los Angeles, CA (The Troubadour)
2/7, San Diego, CA (Casbah)

Share This

Tags: