I Eat Music

Pavement have confirmed rumours that they will reunite next year, with the line-up of Mark Ibold, Scott Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West.

Kannberg told Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview yesterday: “It’s been a long time coming. I think in the back of our minds, we always thought we’d do something again. But we never really talked about it until the last couple of months. It’s come together fast. [Frontman] Steve [Malkmus] and I just had a conversation on the phone, and we’d never talked about it before at all. We’ve talked over the years, but the subject never came up. Then our agent asked us about these New York shows, so we went around to everybody in the band, and they said, ‘Yeah, the time is right – if everybody’s ready to do it, then we’ll do it and see what happens’. There was no real impetus – it just kind of happened naturally”.

As expected, the band are booked to play one show at the Central Park Summerstage in New York on 21 Sep, although there is the possibility of more. Kannberg continued: “We’ll do some rehearsing in the new year. The Central Park shows… we’ll probably end up doing one or two of those. There’s festivals and stuff that we’re talking to, like Coachella. After that, anything that happens in the future is in the future”.

Speculating on what the band dynamic would be like after ten years apart, he added: “It’s not gonna be like Echo And The Bunnymen, where they don’t talk to each other, yet they tour every year. I flew in to see them do ‘Ocean Rain’ at Radio City last year, and it was good, but it wasn’t the same, you know? I don’t think we’ll be that way. We’re not still trying to flog a record or anything. It’ll probably feel like we’re just starting again. It’ll be fun to play these songs”.

Further information and that can be found at www.crookedrain.com

Incidentally, Kannberg releases ‘The Real Feel’, his debut solo album, under the name Spiral Stairs, on 19 Oct via Domino.

Following that spat with Sonisphere promoters Kilimanjaro, which lead to them cancelling their appearance at the UK finale of the Sonisphere touring festival, it seems that Machine Head have changed their minds. Thrash Hits noted on Sunday that ‘Special Guests’ had been added to the second day’s line-up underneath Limp Bizkit, and claimed to have been told by a “very well-placed source” that the band were back on the bill. Now Blabbermouth say that they have also been informed by a “very reliable source” that Machine Head will be appearing at Sonisphere this Sunday.

In case you’ve not been following this story, let’s have a quick recap. Machine Head announced that they were cancelling their appearance at the UK leg of the touring festival after Limp Bizkit were added to the line-up above them. In a statement, the band said: “In a turn of events that has left us absolutely baffled, the promoter of the UK Sonisphere festival recently placed, unbeknownst to us, Limp Bizkit in our third slot on the festival. Seeing as the running order was a significant part of the negotiation and agreement between us and the promoter, and the fact that we had been advertised in that slot since the festival’s announcement, you can imagine our surprise when we were ‘told’ that we would now be playing in the fourth slot, under Limp Bizkit, and bizarrely, it was actually expected that we would quietly move down the bill without issue. We will not”.

The band did, however, honour the bookings with the other Sonisphere events around mainland Europe, which put them in a good position to continue talks with the festival’s organisers. As we reported yesterday, when guitarist Phil Demmel collapsed on stage in Finland last week, bassist Adam Duce told the crowd “I wanna thank everyone for coming out and supporting Sonisphere and supporting Machine Head”, which would suggest they were on better terms than they were three weeks ago.

This is officially the most exciting thing that has happened all year, so keep reading. CMU favourite Bat For Lashes has announced that she is touring the UK in October, including two nights at London’s Roundhouse, and she has personally asked fellow CMU favourites Yeasayer to join her.

Bat For Lashes, or course, released one of the year’s best albums ‘Two Suns’, back in April, which featured contributions from members of Yeasayer on a number of tracks. All four members of Yeasayer, meanwhile, are currently working on their second album, the follow-up to 2007’s ‘All Hour Cymbals’, which is set for release in 2010.

Tickets go on sale today and the tour dates look like this:

1 Oct: Bournemouth, Opera House
2 Oct: Brighton, Dome
4 Oct: Cambridge, Corn Exchange
5 Oct: London, Roundhouse
6 Oct: London, Roundhouse
9 Oct: Bristol, Colston Hall
10 Oct: Liverpool, Academy
12 Oct: Nottingham, Rock City
13 Oct: Leeds, O2 Academy
14 Oct: Manchester, Academy
16 Oct: Cardiff, University Great Hall
17 Oct: Sheffield, Octagon
19 Oct: Glasgow, Academy
20 Oct: Edinburgh, The Picture House

Faith No More have confirmed that they are to play the Reading and Leeds festivals. Again.

You might remember the band briefly announced the dates back in April and then retracted them within minutes, seemingly so as not to impact on ticket sales for last weekend’s Download festival, where they were also booked to play. Live Nation, who promote the Download festival, also co-own Reading/Leeds promoters Festival Republic, of course. With Download now safely out of the way, the official confirmation of Mike Patton et al’s Reading/Leeds booking was issued.

Of course there had been clues they were playing the end-of-August festival, other than the premature announcement by the band themselves. The eagle-eyed guys over at Thrash Hits had already spotted that the Reading and Leeds dates were printed on the band’s official tour t-shirts that were being sold at their Brixton show last week.

The real surprise, though, is that Faith No More will not be playing the main stage, they will be headlining the NME/Radio 1 Stage. Which will be nice for some people, perhaps not so for the hundreds who will no doubt be forced to stand outside the tent and listen to whoever’s on the main stage at the same time.

So, when it was announced that Faith No More’s only UK show on their European reunion tour would be at Download, it was a bit of a kick in the balls for the newly launched rival rock festival Sonisphere. Now though, Download might be about to get a quick thwack on the knackers too.

Yesterday the Reading and Leeds festivals were added to the tour dates section on the Faith No More website. Later in the day, bassist Billy Gould said via Twitter: “I didn’t want to post this until it was 100% confirmed, but because the demand has been so high, we’re going to come back for more UK dates. Reading 28 Aug… Leeds 30 Aug”.

However, there is a twist in this story. Shortly afterwards, Gould announced: “I’m getting conflicting info. At the moment agent will not confirm. Dates are off fnm.com site now”.

The band are still not confirmed for the twin festivals, which may have something to do with the fact that organisers of the not-yet-sold-out Download, Live Nation, also own half of Reading and Leeds organisers Festival Republic.