Goths, eh? Did you know that in Dumfries & Galloway, an ancient ordinance permits the public burning of Goths, as long as you bring your own kindling, and make sure the fire is upstream from any public washing lines. S'true. Which roundabout way brings me to Acedia, album number three from electro-gothers History of Guns. They're a right miserable shower, so that will doubtless go down very well with the black clad masses who spend their time vacillating between misery and anger. Imagine Fields Of The Nephilim offspring, NFD, with a sense of their own ludicrousness. The brilliantly named Del Alien and the less brilliantly named Max Rael are the mainstays of the band, bringing in supporting musicians as and when they need them, along with the guest return of original co-founder and almost as brilliantly named as Del Alien, Stagger Lee. The studio is where they are mainly based, although they have stepped out at the Goth Woodstock aka the Whitby Gothic Weekend, and it's the many, many hours they've spent in the studio that makes this such an enjoyable release. If anything, this is their rockiest album ever, with the guitars pushed right up in the mix, ahead of their more established electronic bleeps and swooshes, with lots of bass driven boombastic moments that will get their leather clad minions shaking their tush down the Goth discotheque. Check out "What Have They Done To Us" for a prime example of what I'm talking about. Probably the best track on the album is the Glitter Band stomp of "'No Eternal Reward", a feisty tune well at odds with its lyrical content, and all the better for it. The lyrics are by far the bleakest thing about this album, as befits one called Acedia, which means a total absence of spiritual light. However, the music often strays into the realms of the life affirming when it mashes up goth, industrial, and a wee bit of glam rock. I'm not sure that was the intention, but here's hoping it was. There's still plenty here for the more traditional Goths to enjoy, and if anything History Of Guns are looking backwards to the days of Bauhaus and Alien Sex Fiend rather than to the 21st century electro nonsense that a lot of the Gothsters out there seem to be getting into. It's a mighty fine album and if they keep on turning out tunes as good as "Born, Brutalised, Bought Then Buried", then I'll be cheering in their corner for a long time to come.

Rex Mettler, 42, of Lancaster, obtained contact information for the sisters and also made threats by phone, police detective Nick Snyder said. No further details were released. Mettler appeared in Fairfield County Municipal Court on Friday, a day after his arrest on a felony charge of menacing by stalking. Bond was set at $50,000, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for July 3. The court did not have an attorney listed for Mettler, a clerk said. No plea was entered. Aly & AJ were scheduled to perform Friday night in Cincinnati, 110 miles southwest of Lancaster. Snyder said he could not comment on whether any of the alleged threats involved the Ohio show. The Cincinnati concert would go on as planned, said Rosemarie Moehring, spokeswoman for National City Pavilion at Riverbend. The charge against Mettler stems from incidents that began Dec. 15, Snyder said. “Rex displayed a pattern of activity over that time that reflected multiple attempts, if not numerous attempts, at stalking these females,” he said. The investigation began in southern California, where the entertainers live. Lancaster police were contacted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which provided assistance that led to the arrest, Snyder said. Aly & AJ are Alyson Michalka, 19, and her sister, Amanda, 17, who toured earlier this year with fellow Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus of “Hannah Montana.” The Michalkas had a top 20 album in 2007 and top 20 single with “Potential Breakup Song” and are now touring on their own. A Disney Channel spokeswoman did not return messages seeking comment. http://www.alyandaj.com http://www.nationalcitypavilion.com/

It's summertime, and no band says good times, hot babes, and cool rays quite like Motley Crue, right? Currently out pillaging the countryside on their Cruefest tour, the original bad boys of the Sunset Strip are also back this week with Saints of Los Angeles, their first new album in eight years. With song titles like "Mutherfucker Of The Year," "Down At The Whiskey," and "This Aint A Love Song" (we'll let you guess what it actually is then), the Crue-boys also look to be trying to extend their already over-extended adolescence a few more years. The only thing missing here is the tittie-cam. Speaking of bad boys, Pete Doherty checks out of rehab long enough to grace us with Babyshambles new live CD/DVD set Oh What a Lovely Tour. Elsewhere, we have a new one from Ry Cooder in the sci-fi influenced I, Flathead. Sigur Ros are back with Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust. Earlier this week Blogcritic Clayton Perry wrote a glowing review describing Anthony David's new Acey Deucy as nothing less than the future of soul music. On the hip-hop side of things, southern rappers Three 6 Mafia are down to a duo on their new CD Last 2 Walk. Wu-Tang Clan's resident alchemist RZA checks in under his alter-ego Bobby Digital with Digi Snacks. Donald Gibson will be along shortly to talk about the new one from Jessie Baylin. But first, we welcome Josh Hathaway to our revolving cast of contributors, making his debut pick for NAR this week. Regular visitors to BC already know Josh as an assistant music editor here, and publisher of Confessions Of A Fanboy. Josh can also be heard Thursday nights on his Blogtalk/BC Radio show, B-Sides Concept Album. Josh Hathaway's Fanboy Pick: Watermelon Slim & The Workers - No Paid Vacations Watermelon Slim & The Workers are ready to defend their title. No Paid Vacations follows last year's The Wheel Man, which took home the Blues Music Award for Album of the Year. Vacations — his third album in three years — doesn't stray far from the vision of the blues he's crafted on previous records, which is good news. There's massive amounts of slide guitar, tasty harmonica licks aplenty, and Slim telling stories with that unique cadence of his. These are the ingredients that make his albums work, and No Paid Vacations has all of them.page 1 | 2

The Motown years were an exceptional time period in the musical history of the United States. The number of hits that poured out of Detroit was prodigious, and their quality was exceptional. It didn’t much matter what your social strata or color or religion were. Teenagers and young adults of this period, the mid-1960s through 1972, were, as youth of every era, wrapped up in their music, but they also lived their music in many ways. And the music was magical in many ways. By the 1960s, the postwar boom that had been promised to Americans was coming to fruition, after long years of deprivation and shortages. And the music showed it as much as the American lifestyle during this time. The music was happier, more carefree, more relaxed. Today’s music seems angrier, more hostile, more extreme. And it, too, is a reflection of the times. The Funk Brothers were lost to the pages of history for many years for several reasons, the most prominent being the existing mores of the recording industry at the time regarding naming of musicians other than the principals on a record. Simply put, if you weren’t the star, you weren’t worth mentioning. The Funk Brothers played on more hits than the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys, and Elvis combined, and yet, outside of a small circle in Motown, were relatively unknown. And to add insult to injury, the Funk Brothers got almost no warning when Motown decided to pull up stakes and move to Los Angeles in 1972. Motown’s stars called the steps leading to Hitsville’s basement the bridge to the land of dreams. The session musicians, however, called the cramped, smoke-stained, dimly lit room the Snakepit for the nearly fourteen years where they were on call seven days a week. Their pay? Ten bucks a song for as long as it took to get everything right. And yet these very guys were the master planners of the famed “Motown Sound,” the guys who worked out the notes and chords and tempos that made the stars sound good.page 1 | 2

Also release new single With their full-length debut, Elephant Shell, in the bag and on the shelves for a couple months now, it’s time for young Canucks Tokyo Police Club to hit the road again. In addition to shows already scattered throughout the world this summer, TPC have announced some U.S. dates for the fall. The band have also joined forces with the Lupus Foundation of America to raise money for lupus research by offering their cover of the Rentals’ "Friends of P" (from Elephant Shell’s UK bonus disc) for stream and download at FriendsofP.org. The song is free, but visitors to the site are encouraged to make donations to the foundation online. The first 50 donations of $15 or more get a blue "Friend of P" tote bag. And just yesterday (June 23), Memphis Industries released the latest Elephant Shell single, "In a Cave", in the UK. It’s available as a 7" and a download, backed by an acoustic version of Elephant track "Graves". The iTunes version of the single also comes with the RAC remix of Elephant’s "Sixties Remake". Tokyo Police Club: 07-05 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival 07-08 Ottawa, Ontario - Ottawa Blues Fest 07-09 Quebec City, Quebec - Espace 400 (La Grande Scene) 07-19 Halifax, Nova Scotia - Summersonic Festival 07-20 Toronto, Ontario - Rogers Picnic 07-24 Los Angeles, CA - Hammer Museum 07-29 Melbourne, Australia - Ding Dong Lounge 07-31 Brisbane, Australia - The Zoo 08-02 Byron Bay, Australia - Splendour in the Grass 08-05 Sydney, Australia - Oxford Art Factory 08-09 Tokyo, Japan - Summersonic 09-14 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks (Monolith Festival) 09-18 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theater 09-20 San Diego, CA - Street Scene Festival 09-21 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Music Festival 10-18 New York, NY - Webster Hall

The Mooney Suzuki scored a radio hit (and, curiously, an endorsement deal with Suzuki automobiles) in 2004 with “Alive & Amplified,” a song that – in its title and irreverent disposition – pretty much describes their sound. This New York City garage-rock band had already carved out its niche a few years before, though, as evidenced on CBGB OMFUG Masters: Live June 29, 2001, The Bowery Collection. Given the hallowed (albeit grimy and dilapidated) ground of the now-defunct Lower East Side haunt, it’s refreshing (and appropriate) to hear this concert in the context of its setting rather than some overdubbed or polished version thereof. What’s documented here captures the unadulterated spirit of a club gig, rife with late-night chatter, indiscriminate racket, and rambunctious rock and roll. Led by singer/guitarist Sammy Jones, Jr., the band bashes out swift blasts of raw guitars, bass, and drums. Thick riffs with a backbeat abound, as songs like “Everything’s Gone Wrong,” “Half of My Heart,” and “Make My Way” rumble forth like locomotives running off the rails. Almost half of the songs come from Electric Sweat, their second (and hitherto unreleased) full-length studio album. Of those, “A Little Bit of Love” and “Oh Sweet Susanna” translate particularly well, the climbing guitars of the former and the melodic lift of the latter distinguishing them among the straight-ahead rock that characterizes much of the other material. One can hear Sammy Jones, Jr. working the room, energizing and engaging the audience as his bandmates take a much-needed breather between songs. “It wasn’t too long ago…we couldn’t even get a show at CBGB’s,” he says before “I Woke Up This Mornin’” brings the concert to a rousing and cacophonous end. On this edition of CBGB OMFUG Masters, the Mooney Suzuki not only make the most out of playing the landmark music club; on this night, they rock the joint, sounding unabashedly alive and, yes, amplified.

Music happens to be one of those things that is always ever changing, constantly astounding, and never unenjoyable. If music can do that, then logically the previous statement should also apply to music's creators… or at least some of them. Nashville, Tennessee band Computer vs. Banjo happens to be experimenters of a surprising unique blend of folk electronica, a musical mix thankfully already coined "folktronica." It might sound like a silly subgenre, but listening to the resulting fusion of two seemingly contrasting (both in age and sound) styles can prove the term's validity. CvB is comprised of a couple of experienced artists, both hailing from successful bands despite different originating musical backgrounds. Johnny Mann was a jazz studies major before playing guitar for Gran Torino; while Beau Stapleton taught himself, focusing on roots music before playing the mandolin for Blue Merle. What started out as a side-project for the two turned into a 12-month odyssey of musical exploration, culminating in their band's self-titled debut. Stapleton revealed in a public statement that he felt "really lucky to have had that time to just experiment and be creative."  The opening track "Jubilee" helps kick off the album with the kind of subdued quasi-soul that only dudes could provide. The pseudo funky folk of "Guitars Need A Sinner's Touch" (see video here) extends the duo's commitment to the almighty thing called love, which is later highlighted by the two managing to turn an adolescent poem about a crush into a workable make-out song ("Magazine Queen"). That's not to say CvB is all fluff and no puff. They show off their edge with the air of dusty endlessness and the breath of hesitant lawlessness in the Beck-like "Give Up On Ghosts" (download mp3 here), in the dour rebelliousness of "San Joaquin," and in the uncertain nature of romantic courtship with "Lost." Say what you will, but juxtaposing themes of starry-eyed happiness and realistic misfortunes isn't easy. Computer vs. Banjo is a pleasant debut for the Nashville duo, who crafts the brisk minimalism of folk's blunt and depressing core with the peppy modernism of electronica's penchant for getting anything to sound remotely body-movable.

Lykke Li has announced a tour of North America, with shows in Los Angeles and New York in August, and more dates to follow in the fall. The Swedish singer will support the release of her forthcoming debut album �?Youth Novels’ , which comes out August 19 on her own label, LL Recordings. The 22-year-old earlier this year performed several well-received sets at South By Southwest in Austin. The dates are… Los Angeles, CA Hotel Café (August 25) New York, NY Le Poisson Rouge (28) Washington, DC Black Cat (October 19) Boston, MA Paradise (23) Toronto, ON Mod Club (24) Chicago, IL Empty Bottle (25) Vancouver, BC Richards on Richards (28) Seattle, WA Neumo’s (29) Portland, OR Doug Fir (30) San Francisco, CA Independent (November 1)

Cult novelist Irvine Welsh, The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess, and legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke have all been confirmed in the final line-up for this weekend’s (June 21/22) ‘Reification’ the Tony Wilson Experience’ event in Manchester. The 24 hour non-stop talking marathon is being held in memory of the broadcaster, journalist and Factory Records supreme, who died last year aged 57. Other names taking part include actor and comedian Steve Coogan, who played Wilson in the 2002 movie ‘24 Hour Party People’, Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, DJ Mark Radcliffe, writer Paul Morley and New Order’s Peter Hook. Funded by Manchester City Council, the event takes place at Cathedral Gardens and Urbis in Manchester city centre from 12 noon Saturday to 12 noon Sunday.

Guitar Hero is set to go all Rock Band, as the mega-popular video game is adding drums and vocals for the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour. The game’s new guitar will feature a touch pad that allows note sliding, and the ax will larger, nearly replicating the size of an actual guitar. The drum kit is more sophisticated than the existing Rock Band model — the drums are wider in diameter, touch sensitive (so hitting harder produces a louder note) and include dual adjustable cymbals. Van Halen, Linkin Park and the Foo Fighters are among the initial artists that will have playable songs. Plus, players will be able to make their own music tracks (without vocals) by starting with premade bass or drum loops, then using the various instruments to play with tempo, pitch and sustaining notes. For more details on the characters and the Music Creator feature, check out IGN’s preview.