Portlandia is a show by, for, and about indie rock types, so it’s no surprise that indie big dogs show up in sketches every so often. This past weekend’s episode featured two. St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, who first collaborated with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein back when they were the online sketch duo ThunderAnt, played a model who showed off a proposed police-uniform redesign. Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock, meanwhile, played someone attempting to donate records to the local elementary school. Watch both of their sketches below.

Also, we asked Fred Armisen to name his 10 favorite Portland bands. Here’s what he gave us.

Read More...

Tonight, as anyone who’s been near a TV in the past month already knows, the much-hyped Fox singing-competition show The X Factor makes its debut. The Americanized version of the hit British show might be new to us, but then again, it’s not really new to us. Simon Cowell is the man responsible for putting the show together, and he’s brought back his former American Idol colleague Paula Abdul. As someone who’s spent a shameful amount of time watching (and writing about) American Idol and its imitators, I’m way more excited than I probably should be.

So, in honor of this inanity, here’s a fun little party game: Which indie rock types would do well on X-Factor or one of the many, many other big singing shows we’ve seen lately? And which ones would bomb spectacularly? It’s not impossible to imagine an indie rocker winning on one of these shows; Dia Frampton, one half of the mid-’00s alt-pop duo Meg & Dia just came in second on the first season of The Voice. So after putting the question to my Stereogum colleagues, I’ve come up with a list of five of each. Check it out below, and argue your own cases in the comments section.

Read More...

Mister Heavenly, the side-project of Islands’ Nick Thorburn, Man Man’s Honus Honus, and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer, release their debut Out Of Love next month via Sub Pop. Here’s the stomping opening track, “Bronx Sniper.” You can hear a bit of all the aforementioned bands in it. As well as Ugly Casanova.

Read More...

Modest Mouse headlined Sasquatch! on Sunday night, and debuted a couple new songs as part of their set. NPR streamed their concert, so the two new tunes, “Poison,” and “Lampshades On Fire,” are here, recorded from the soundboard thanks to YouTube user ChiefTragedy. Earlier this month we mentioned that Big Boi and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below producer Chris Carmouche were working with the band at Atlanta’s Stankonia Studios. I don’t think you can hear that in these two songs, but “Lampshades On Fire,” does remind me of Man Man — Isaac Brock called their album Six Demon Bag the best album of the ’00s in Rolling Stone a couple years back.

Read More...

On April 27 Big Boi tweeted about working with Modest Mouse in the studio.
Yesterday MTV New caught up with Big Boi to figure out what the artists have been working on. The rapper tells MTV News that he, Modest Mouse, and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below producer Chris Carmouche spent time in Big Boi’s Stankonia Studios working on tracks:

Read More...

This week we’ve got a lot of new videos– clips from Wale, Toro Y Moi, the New Pornographers, Damian Marley and Nas, the Black Keys, and Modest Mouse, among others. The Tyler, The Creator video is the darkest and hardest to shake of this lot. But once that’s out of the way, many of this week’s other videos, like New Pornographers’ cameo-filled video, the Black Keys grindhouse trailer, and Wale’s relationship mini-tale should make you laugh.

Read More...

Mister Heavenly, the recently-signed-to-Sub-Pop supergroup, is Man Man’s Honus Honus and Islands’s Nick Thorburn (who met over their love of all-denim outfits aka “Canadian tuxedos”), and Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer. The band just started their first tour with Passion Pit, and they’ve enlisted Canadian actor Michael Cera on bass. Cera, if you recall, starred in Islands’s video for “No You Don’t.” Here’s video of the quartet playing in Portland, and Cera introducing himself to the audience:

Read More...

Amrit and I saw Inception just before the start of this year’s Pitchfork Festival, so you have to read this post with the understanding that the first day may have been a dream, or maybe you are in a dream reading the review, or maybe this is a shared dream (deep). So it was a shock to go from a cool dark IMAX theater to the 90+ degree heat and sun at Chicago’s Union Park. It was a shock for everyone: Someone took to the stage before Robyn to say that water prices had been cut in half to $1. Good vibes to start out the festival. Bad vibes (in a good way) came from Liars’ set. Angus Andrew seemed prepared for the heat: he had on a sleeveless Men At Work shirt (they need the support) and short shorts for his set, though, they would be capri shorts on a normal-sized man (guitarist Aaron Hemphill played directly to a box fan on the side of the stage). But Andrew was still as menacing, intimidating, etc. as ever. Their cover of Bauhaus’s “In The Flat Field” helped, too.

The countdown-to-launch that started Robyn’s set really began when “Fembot” leaked. She kicked off her set with it, in fact, and included lots of otherBody Talk PT 1 tracks: “Cry When You Get Older,” “Dancehall Queen,” “Dancing On My Own.” She did the video’s dance moves for the latter song, perfect if you love her armpits. She also did “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do.” I do wish she’d ended her set with it, but you know what she’d say to that.

I blame Robyn, and not the heat, for the worked-up crowd at Modest Mouse (they performed at the same stage, while Broken Social Scene followed Liars on the other side of the field). Isaac Brock, for his part, is always agitated. But their show, peppered with newer, banjo-and-trumpet songs, was mellower that expected. They did start their headlining slot with “Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes,” which stirred up the kids closest to the stage, and invited the first thrown object of the night. But it was just a Frisbee, and it sailed way over the band, so it was probably an invitation rather than a threat. You know, good vibes.

Enjoy this spread of photos of the fest’s first day, and late night sets from Neon Indian (Thursday @ Bottom Lounge) and Titus Andronicus (Friday @ Subterranean) by Graeme Flegenheimer.

Last week we brought you video of Ugly Casanova performing “Here’s To Now” at the premiere of the adventurist surfing/climbing documentary 180° South. Here’s another new one from the soundtrack: It’s a gentle, rough back porch jam with banjo mandolin and trumpet backing up Isaac Brock’s spirited vocal. According to one of the filmmakers, the song was recorded in Brock’s attic/studio in Portland.

Read More...

Ugly Cassnova’s only album, Sharpen Your Teeth, was released back in 2002. The band looked like it was on permanent hiatus until it was announced a month back that UC would contribute nine songs (eight new tracks, one from Sharpen Your Teeth) to the 180° South soundtrack. Brock performed one of the new songs, titled “Here’s To Now,” at the film’s premiere in Santa Monica on May 25. As you can see from the video, the song was performed in stripped-down acoustic form, but it could sound exactly the same on the album, really.

Read More...