If anyone’s been messing around with the new version of ITunes and its integrated podcasting features, feel free to subscribe to the Donewaiting podcast. Robert Duffy plays great music that I haven’t even heard of. If you’re using ITunes, just drag this link into the ITunes window and you should automatically subscribe.

I’ll be co-hosting fairly soon, so you can hear me stumble and stammer my way through one of these things if you feel like. I’m terrible but I have a sexxxy voice.

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Arthurfest being the combo efforts of local Arthur Magazine and Spaceland Productions. I wish they could swap out Sleater-Kinney and Sonic Youth though. I think the Sunday lineup looks stronger overall, and I still hate Merzbow with a passion.

ArthurFest takes place Sunday, September 4 and Monday, September 5 on Labor Day Weekend at the historic Barnsdall Art Park on Olive Hall in the Little Armenia/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.

The two-day lineup features

Sunday, Sept. 4
SONIC YOUTH
THE BLACK KEYS
CAT POWER
THE JUAN MACLEAN
COMETS ON FIRE
SUNN 0)))
SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN
WOLFMOTHER
GROWING
JOSEPHINE FOSTER
EARTH
RADAR BROS.
MAGIK MARKERS
just added: BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT
LAVENDER DIAMOND (FEAT. BECKY STARK)
WINTER FLOWERS

Monday, Sept. 5 (Labor Day)
SLEATER-KINNEY
OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL
MERZBOW
DEAD MEADOW
T-MODEL FORD
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
CIRCLE
VETIVER
just added: MODEY LEMON
MARISSA NADLER
JACK ROSE
FUTURE PIGEON
just added: BRAD LANER (Electric Company, Medicine)
just added: NORA KEYES (Centimeters)
just added: VIKING MOSES

with additional acts to be announced shortly.

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I’ve seen Sleater-Kinney many times now, and with the two shows last week I am now in my teens. It’s telling enough that I’ve gone so many times, but it’s shocking that last week’s shows were the best I’ve seen them, ever.

It starts with The Woods, their latest album and arguably their strongest to date. It’s been billed as a reinvention of sorts, but more accurately, it’s a picture perfect snapshot of their evolving live show. The band has always sounded immense in concert, loose and loud and including increasing amounts of instrumental work over the years. This is the first set of songs where those aspects have bled back in the songwriting, resulting in a record that shoots from riot grrl roots to Zeppelinesque psychedelia and back again.

The album itself is so loud and distorted, the amps seemingly cranked so far beyond eleven that I figured the live renditions might feel a little tame, but holy hell was I wrong. These were the loudest shows I’ve been where I wasn’t standing directly next to some sort of monitor or speaker stack. There were times where it was stretching the PA beyond recognition, so I’d recommend bringing earplugs if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. It sounded great though, gargantuan, terrifying and physically punishing. The music was intrusive and actively involving. You couldn’t passively ignore it because it was too busy grabbing you by the throat.

As ever, Sleater-Kinney rides on the primal wail of Corin Tucker, the guitar heroics of Carrie Brownstein and the sheer indomitable will of drummer Janet Weiss. Weiss remains the best drummer I have ever seen, and impossibly, she seems even greater now, conducting the band with masterful precision and bringing down the heavens every time she raises her sticks.

Of all the new material, the off-the-rails adventure of “Rollercoaster” and the sidewinding suicide tale of “Jumpers” crackled best, while the anthemic indictment of “Entertain” still riles up the crowd as Carrie Brownstein rips into the lyrics with obvious relish. With more jammy stuff worked into the actual material, there wasn’t much of it in the performance, besides the titanic raveup between “Let’s Call It Love” and “Night Light.” On the first night, the bonus cover was of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” a joyous rendition with all the women taking a turn on vocals. Night two found the band getting in touch with their metal side, blowing out Danzig’s “Mother” with ease and parlaying a subsequent drum solo directly into a wrecking ball version of “Dig Me Out” that turned the place inside-out. While all the new material was well received, there’s still not that much that hits with as much immediacy and authority as well worn classics like that and “Words and Guitar.”

This band, these songs… I don’t have the vocabulary to really describe it. In the Sleater-Kinney blog, Carrie Brownstein said “Los Angeles surprised us by being the fire. It was the heat we always try to get to, the hot core where everything disintegrates into liquid and love and then when it’s over it’s like the whole structure has been reshaped and it’s hard to remember what it looked like before.” I’m not even sure what that means, but it sounds just about right.

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Last night, Sleater-Kinney started their big tour for “The Woods,” which means I’m back at work for the Sleater-Kinney Concert Review Archive again. I never came up with a catchy name for that site, by the way. Next week I have tix for their Henry Fonda shows, which should be a face-melting good time.

Also of note: Carrie Brownstein lists 10 Songs For a Fair-Weathered Sunday over on Pitchfork. Hunh. Randy Newman, Fiery Furnaces, Richard Thompson and the Dead’s “Box of Rain?” That sounds like one of my mixes. I’m sure that in bizarro universe Carrie Brownstein runs a blog that catalogs of all my trips to the 7-11.

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I asked a few different people if I should get these and all of them, instead of rationally talking me out of $150 worth of doll purchases, encouraged me to buy them. BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL FUCKING ENABLERS.

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That’s right, new shit from The Gossip. “Jealous Girls” is a sneak off their new record, the first one with new drummer Hannnah Blilie from Shoplifting. I don’t know if it’s indicative of the album as a whole, but the dirty blues are gone and replaced with some dancepunk stuff that I’ve just heard too much of. Beth Ditto’s still got a great voice but she never seems to cut it loose here.

Download Fire/Sign or Ain’t It The Truth for comparison. The new song’s nice, but it lacks that physicality that I always loved from this band. Hopefully the rest of the new material is a little punchier.

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… here’s what TinyMixTapes thinks of NIN’s With Teeth.

Sadly? I went to click YES over and and over again until I remembered I didn’t have it on my hard drive.

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The new Weezer album is the emo equivalent of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. To clarify: the average listener will think it’s OK, but not really good. Conversely, people that sleep with Pinkerton pillowcases will have aneurysms and fits of apoplectic rage.

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The Decemberists live on KCRW is up and archived! Listen or Watch.

New Sleater-Kinney site is up and about, including a video for their new single, Entertain, a blog, Janet Weiss’s mixtapes and a Sleater-Kinney quiz.

According to the remarkably difficult quiz, unsurprisingly:

“I Am The 4th Member of Sleater-Kinney”
Either you are a good guesser or you have been living inside our heads for the last ten years. When people want to know about Sleater-Kinney, they call you instead of Sub Pop. You feel a little upset when you see people in baseball caps at the shows. You notice things like the band members wearing the same thing two nights in a row on tour, and you make sure to post about it on your blog. You don’t have the band member’s phone numbers, but that’s not for lack of trying.

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The LA Weekly ran a nice little interview with Petra Haden this week. Haden is a fixture in the LA music scene, as part of both that dog and the Rentals and a session player on albums by Beck to Mike Watt. It was Watt that convinced her to do her acapella reading of “The Who Sell Out,” and her all-vocal, all-cover album is garnering her quite a bit of attention. She also quietly snuck into the Decemberists and is currently on tour stealing hearts across the nation.

The most intriguing mention in the article is the prospect of a live version of Petra Haden: Sings The Who Sell Out.” Putting together a 10 woman choir (and possibly more), Haden is looking to put together the show some time during the summer of 2005.

I’m. Totally. There.

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