Hola Primavera

been doing too much eating and rocking to post since our set on Thursday night, but it was a fun one. enjoyed the heavy rock sounds of the Fall earlier, caught a little Titus Andronicus, and then after our set hit the Broken Social Scene scenario and Paved it up...all were great. missed lots of good stuff too -- would loved to have caught Tortoise among others, just too much happening at once. here was our set:

Throwing Things
Detroit
Animated Airplanes
Learned to Surf
Iron On
Water Wings
Digging for Something
Driveway
First Part
Cast Iron
Precision Auto (w special guest Tim Harrington! awesome)
Slack MF
Hyper Enough

also, what about Game 1 Flyers v Blackhawks...6-5!? crazy game, Patrick Leighton finally looked like he usually did in goal for the 'Canes.... hope the whole series is like this...

The Cure for Jetlag

upon arrival in barcelona, never take a nap before hitting the boqueria!
looking fwd to the rock tomorrow...

Sound Smears

that's our term for any song slightly faster than it should actually be played by us...we played a few the other night! deep cuts, etc...

Tower
For Tension
Skip Steps 1&3
Learned To Surf
Digging For Something (w/xtra special guest John Darnielle on baking vocs!)
Ribbon
Sidewalk
I Guess I Remembered It Wrong
Florida's On Fire
Water Wings
Iron On
Package Thief
Everything At Once
Precision Auto

encore #1:
On The Mouth
From The Curve
Slack Motherf*cker

encore #2:
Hyper Enough (w/killer stage rush by John Darnielle)
Throwing Things

Good Stuff

lunch by Bahn's Cuisine in Durham, NC. it was great, though apparently it's only great on Wednesdays and Saturdays. lucky for me it's Wednesday.

what a great year for music so far...listening to some of it:
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening (some fun making of vids here)
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - I Learned The Hard Way
Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St reissue
The National - High Violet
Caribou - Swim
Ted Leo & Rx - Brutalist Bricks

Rocking Is Upon Us

Superchunk is gearing up for a couple shows in the coming weeks -- first up is our first Cats Cradle show since last Summer's XX Merge festival, we're there this Friday with Ryan Gustafson opening up, should be a fun evening! Gonna break out a couple new jams i'm sure, and on account of we're reissuing some older titles soonish, rock some of those ancient numbers as well.

Speaking of ancient numbers, we're playing between The Fall and Pavement next week at the Primavera Sound festival in lovely Barcelona, Spain. I think we've played that bill before! maybe not but seems like it. sandwiched btw two of my favorite bands in one of my favorite cities, can't wait...

UPDATE: we announced some dates for this fall, too....Merge site has the scoop.

(photo by Brian Vetter)

Friday Listening

first off, congrats to the Habs on their second series upset in a row, i was getting panicked texts from north of the border even when MTL was up 4-0 in the 2nd period, but i know how it is. pretty amazing run for them. still, this is one of the worst things i've ever seen/ heard:


cleansing my ears w the following:
The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
V/A - Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas
The National - High Violet
and looking fwd to LCD Soundsystem out next week....

Belated Knox Night Recap

spent a fun week in NYC (including seeing a great Shout Out Louds set on Wednesday night at Webster Hall, formerly The Ritz in my NYC era, Chris Williamson jokes ensued), capped off by a fairly epic but pleasantly low-key (if something can be both) night at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday, the Chris Knox Benefit Concert put together by (former Merge employee) Ben Goldberg. the show raised $52K for Chris and his family and the night was long, hrs-wise, but went by quickly thanks to the excellent music. you may have heard that Jeff Mangum played his first live set in some time, it's true and it was great to hear him again in person. his voice sounded possibly even better than ever, amazing. rather than list all the sets here, i will just say that everyone played well, and that ending any night with Yo La Tengo and the The Clean is a good thing! the whole thing even ran on schedule! what the hell? i was lucky enough to have YLT as my backing band for a 4-song set, and what a great band they are. they knew my songs better than me. here was our set....:

Vol-Au-Vent (Knox cover)
Noisy Night
San Andreas
Slack Motherfucker

good times! all that was missing was the man himself...
maybe next time!

Calling Out of Context

Arthur Russell, excellent Saturday AM listening....special thanks to Stinkweeds for locating the RSD vinyl of this for me!