February 2005

Former Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty will on May 3 release his debut for the Dave Matthews-co-owned ATO Records, “Haughty Melodic.” The 12-track set was produced by former Semisonic principal Dan Wilson and boasts a guest appearance from Matthews on “Tremendous Brunettes.” Other guests include N*E*R*D drummer Eric Fawcett, cellist Jane Scarpantoni and Groove Collective’s Jay Rodriguez.

Doughty tells Billboard.com that ATO is “basically my dream label” and that after years of releasing his own music, he resolved to pitch his services to the company when both he and Matthews played the Bonnaroo festival last summer.

“I burned up a big old stack of rough mixes of my record and had this fierce determination to find Dave,” he recalls. “I had no idea how to actually do this, with the different circles of important at Bonnaroo. Finally I get backstage and he literally had just finished rocking 70,000 people. The irony was that someone had given him a copy of my EP, ‘Rockitty Roll,’ a month beforehand, so apparently I didn’t even need to make all that strenuous effort to see him.”

Doughty says he knew he wanted Matthews to appear on the album, but how to fit him in was not immediately apparent. “I’ve always envied hip-hop artists, because they can come in and do a verse and make a featured appearance on someone else’s record,” he notes. “It’s difficult to do that in the context of a pop song. So I asked Dave to sing a verse of this song and just said, ‘pretend you’re Lil’ Kim!'”

As for what else listeners can expect from “Haughty Melodic,” Doughty describes the sound as “a lot like the ‘Madchester’ bands of the late ’80s, early ’90s. You ask an artist and he’s going to say something completely unlike what it actually sounds like. But to me it sounds like a very American take on that sound. It’s kind of dance-y. There’s a lot of congas. But it’s rock, you know? It’s much more rock and its much more sung than Soul Coughing was.”

Doughty is gearing up to tour in support of the album, most likely beginning in late April. “I’m not sure if I’m going to do a full band or just go out with a piano player at first,” he says.

Beforehand, fans can watch out for Doughty’s involvement in two non-musical projects. He wrote the storyline for an entry in DC Comics’ upcoming book “Bizarro World,” in which “Aquaman wants to become a folk singer. He goes to open-mic nights and tries to meet girls.”

Doughty also shot “a bunch of soft-core porn pictures of a very tattooed lady” for the Web site Suicidegirls.com. “I get to put comics artist and pornographer on my resume now,” he says with a chuckle.

Source billboard.com.

Coldplay’s as-yet-untitled third studio album is likely to see a June release as the band continues to tweak the final product. As previously reported, initial sessions for the album with producer Ken Nelson were set aside, with the U.K. rock act opting to start over with producer Danton Supple, who mixed Coldplay’s 2002 breakthrough, “A Rush of Blood to the Head.”

“I think we were in no hurry [to finish] because the prospect of touring again was so daunting that we felt we should take our time, and also we wanted to make sure that it was the best it could possibly be,” drummer Will Champion says in a new online newsletter on the band’s official Web site.

“But in the end, having no deadline became a problem because we never really felt the need to finish anything. As soon as we gave ourselves a proper deadline we started to be much more productive and the stuff we were doing was miles better. It’s always the same with us — the best stuff comes when we start to panic.”

Besides, Champion says the new album has “got to be better than the other two, otherwise there is no point in releasing it.”

Asked the fate of some of the new songs Coldplay performed live at the tail end of the “Rush of Blood” tour, Champion reports, “Some of them have morphed into new songs [and] some old song titles have been given to new songs, so there might be some familiar bits and bobs in there.”

The actual recording process has found Champion laying down his tracks in a variety of ways. “On one song, I played the pump organ and we all sat in a room together recording live takes,” he says. “On others, I would play the drums to a guide piano or guitar and singing and then we’d layer it up from there.”

For now, the only confirmed live dates on Coldplay’s schedule are a March 12 benefit for California radio station KCRW in Los Angeles and an April 30 headlining slot at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., although Champion hints that U.K. dates may happen in the “spring.”

Source billboard.com.

Death Cab For Cutie is about to release a seven song live EP

Two years after the release of its last original set, “Wormwood,” veteran jam band moe. is planning a return to the studio. “We have a lot of songs ready,” drummer Vinnie Amico tells Billboard.com. “We just have to get into the studio. We’ve been really busy doing a lot of things and we haven’t had the time. Hopefully, we’ll pop out another album sooner than later.”

The drummer expects the band to begin recording in late summer or early fall, with a tentative late 2005/early 2006 street date. With roughly 20 new songs currently in its live repertoire, including “Tale Spin,” “Putting the Boy Down,” “Wicked Awesome” and “The Pit,” Amico believes the band will employ the same unique recording technique used for “Wormwood.”

“We multi-track taped a summer tour, brought it into the studio and sort of edited it together,” Amico says. “And we did all of the overdubs and all of the studio magic that we needed to do over the top, as well as creating some of the segues between some of the songs. So, there is a live feel throughout.” moe. plans on releasing the album via its own Fat Boy label, unless a better deal comes along.

As far as new live material, the fourth installment of moe.’s concert series, “Warts and All,” is due out in March. Recorded in 1998 at the Copper Dragon in Carbondale, Ill., the set” features the band at its improvisational height. “It’s usually good energy, a good show and not a lot of flubs,” says Amico. “It’s like a bootleg but a little bit higher [fidelity].”

Also in the works for release in 2005 is a concert DVD release, as moe. will be taping its April 1-2 Denver shows for a tentative fall street date. Beforehand, the act can be seen tomorrow through Friday (Feb. 16-18) guesting as the house band on NBC’s “Last Call With Carson Daly.”

Source billboard.com.

Sleater-Kinney will christen its new deal with Sub Pop via the May 24 release of the album “The Woods.” As previously reported, the 11-track set was produced by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) and recorded during a November burst at his upstate New York studio.

“The Woods” makes good on details guitarist/vocalist Corin Tucker revealed to Billboard.com just prior to the band hitting the recording studio. “The songs we’ve written are really heavy,” she said. “We want them to have an organic feel that is simplistic and yet sophisticated at the same time.”

“Some of them are much longer than we’ve ever written before,” she added. “There’s actually a space jam in between two of the songs.” Said jam bridges the thick rocker “Let’s Call It Love” and the echo-laden closer “Night Light” with five minutes of dirty blues guitar interplay and effects pedal assaults.

Much like Fugazi’s last two albums, “The Fox” finds Sleater-Kinney effectively broadening its sound without damaging the unique dynamic between Tucker, guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss.

The album opens with the sludgy, overdriven “The Fox,” before offering up Hendrix-worthy guitar licks on “Wilderness,” chilly, harmony-tinged verse/emphatic chorus juxtapositions on “Jumpers” and a straight-up, sunny ballad (albeit with Fridmann’s arsenal of production tricks) on “Modern Girl.”

Sleater-Kinney begins a short run of live dates Feb. 25 in Bellingham, Wash., followed by a show the next night in Vancouver, a March 2-3 stand at New York’s Mercury Lounge and a March 16 gig as part of the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

A more extensive tour is in the works for later in the year.

Here is the track list for “The Woods”:

“The Fox”
“Wilderness”
“What’s Mine Is Yours”
“Jumpers”
“Modern Girl”
“Entertain”
“Rollercoaster”
“Steep Air”
“Let’s Call It Love”
“Night Light”

Source billboard.com.