The Smashing Pumpkins have released the first track from the band’s upcoming “album,” Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, which will span 44 songs over the course of 11 (!) discs. “A Song for a Son” finds front man Billy Corgan crooning and snarling over piano, guitars, and 19 year-old Mike Byrne’s...

Liam Clancy, the last surviving member of the seminal Irish folk band the Clancy Brothers, died on Friday at a Cork hospital at age 74. The balladeer, who Bob Dylan described as “the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life,” suffered from incurable pulmonary fibrosis (which also afflicted his...

The 2009 Grammy Awards nominations were announced last night during a live broadcast on CBS from L.A.’s Club Nokia. Beyonce leads the pack with 10 nominations, including Album of the Year. Also receiving nominations were Lady Gaga, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews and the Black Eyed Peas. [Variety.com]...

Three Lobed Recordings issued a statement over the weekend that Philadelphia-based acoustic guitarist Jack Rose passed away over the weekend of a heart attack; he was 38 years old. Rose was self-taught and made a name for himself originally as the guitarist in the band Pelt in the 1990s, but...

Two years on from his last record, Calika refines his sound processing and delivers two quite radically different EPs on Audiobulb and Highpoint Lowlife.

A review of the ICA's nine-day experimental music festival A nine-day festival of experimental music at the ICA, ‘Calling out of Context’ comprised an exhausting programme of gigs, discussions and workshops in the lower galleries, with the upper galleries converted into open recording studios where artists and musicians were invited to record a track in the space of a day (many of which are streamed on the ICA website). Curated by Richard Birkett and Jamie Eastman, the tightly packed week and a half saw performances and contributions from avant-garde mainstays (The Red Krayola) and artists’ bands (Ei Arakawa’s Teppich, Luke Fowler’s Rude Pravo, Melanie Gilligan’s Petit Mal), through to...

This cartographic study of musical incest started out as a personal (and let me add, super nerdy) project of mine. I was trying to map out how the bands I’m in (Disclaimer: I’m in a few bands around town, including Partman Parthorse and Butts), and my friends bands, were interconnected. Kind of a 6...

We covered 2007 in a similar way before -- way back in 2007 -- but not to this extent. Some of these lists from our editorial staff go up to 20 rather than 10, so there is more Radiohead, Panda Bear, White Stripes, UGK, and probably M.I.A. (There is the exact same amount of Amerie, Frank Zappa, and...

Fleet Foxes have holed themselves away in Seattle to drum up material for a second album, which the band promises to release sometime next year. “I listened to the first record again, and I was kind of nonplussed,” says frontman Robin Peckfold. “There are definitely super-upbeat songs that are...