Apparently the Postal Service's two weekends at Coachella has brought them out of their 10-year-long hiding place, as the band has just announced a 12-stop headlining tour across the West Coast and the UK.

Tucson fans won't have to go far out of their way to catch the Postal Service during this tour cycle. A Phoenix stop is scheduled for April 18 at the Comerica Theatre.

The tour's announcement comes just a few weeks after the band announced a 10-year anniversary edition of Give Up, the duo's one and only record to date, which just went platinum last year. The re-release includes the album's original tracks, plus a handful of new songs, b-sides and covers of songs by other bands.

The tour itself will consist of Postal Service founding members Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jimmy Tomborello (Dntel and Headset), along with Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and Bright Eyes' Laura Burhenn, who both performed on the original record.

Tickets for the upcoming Phoenix show can be picked up either at the band's website, or at the Comerica's website. The show is general admission only, and currently sits at $50 a ticket. The tickets are up for grabs right now for anyone with a login into the band's website, though the website does not indicate when the presale will end and open ticketing to the public. Buyers have a number of options with tickets, including buying them in a CD or vinyl album bundle.

File #3: Lou Reed, New York (1989, Sire)

There is not enough room on the Internet for a treatise on Lou Reed. As Bangs suggests in his unending (unedited) analysis of Reed—the lack of periods are pure Bangs—Reed is both genius and hack. Wherever one sides on the debate Reed’s dueling personas trigger, it is impossible for anyone who gives a damn about rock music (in all its multiplicities) to ignore him. Literally the most simply put: the Velvet Underground.

Now, when it comes to solo Reed, as should be abundantly clear from the 2011 collaboration with Metallica, Lulu (to say nothing of his frequently bad Metal Machine Music from 1975), you can never be sure what Reed you’ll get—perhaps explaining New York’s cover art. When he’s in full possession of his powers, as with 1972’s glam masterpiece Transformer or 1978’s grotty smash Street Hassle, Reed seems every bit the cracked genius; I’ll leave the commercial disaster Sally Can’t Dance (1974) and the (arguably) brilliant bummer Berlin (1973) aside for the moment. After another debacle due to attempting to keep himself contemporary, the absurd Mistrial (1986), or, as it could also be dubbed “the one where Lou raps,” Reed turned his gaze inward.

The resulting album, New York (1989), is a personal and public excoriation of a skuzzy metropolis by one of its most famous native sons. It’s also a cracking great album: louche, cranky, loud, direct, raw, and inspired. In many ways, New York’s unfiltered, driving rock is a direct response to the synthesized, electronic atmosphere that choked the music scene, Reed included, during the 1980s. In this sense, the album’s nervous, vicious sound feels like Reed and collaborators rediscovering the primal joy and cathartic release of rock ‘n’ roll. How can we be sure? Well, Reed uses the liner notes to remind listeners, in the era of the CD (remember when?), how to properly listen to New York: “THIS ALBUM WAS RECORDED AND MIXED AT MEDIA SOUND, STUDIO B, N.Y.C., IN ESSENTIALLY THE ORDER YOU HAVE HERE. IT’S MEANT TO BE LISTENED TO IN ONE 58 MINUTE (14 SONGS!) SITTING AS THOUGH IT WERE A BOOK OR A MOVIE.”

Luckily, the mesmeric qualities of New York equally work to ensure that listeners remain affixed. Further suggesting the thesis that this album is about reviving rock, things begin with a false start before embracing the muscular gallop of “Romeo Had Juliette.” Elsewhere, the prickly shuffle of “Good Evening Mr. Waldheim” suggests Reed was paying attention to post-punk—he should, since VU essentially helped launch the musical genre. And, if New York is truly to be considered as a book or movie, then it makes sense that the moaning guitars and satisfying crunch of the penultimate track, “Strawman,” is meant as the climax. The noir-crawl of closer “Dime Store Mystery” (a tribute to Warhol) is pure resolution.

New York is also a fascinating cultural document, an incisive catalogue of the controversies and the injustices of its era. A variety of public figures are put on blast: Jesse Jackson for his perceived anti-Semitism, subway vigilante Bernard Goetz whose contemporary analogue would be George Zimmerman, and UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim whose Nazi ties sunk his political career. Meanwhile, the breezy “Halloween Parade” is actually a surreal, haunting eulogy for the AIDS epidemic. Rather than being a tortured, depressed affair, however, New York maintains a buoyancy and vitality. Credit is certainly due to the album’s collaborators, famously including drummer and VU-alumni Maureen “Moe (Tea Party, Please)” Tucker.

Centered in New York because Reed knew it was a satellite for the United States, the album’s prescience maintains. On the jazzy, dissonant “Last Great American Whale,” Reed registers discontent that feels eerily familiar (the NRA, the end of an empire), and it makes most sense to conclude with Reed’s jaundiced analysis that ostensibly makes the case for New York's ugly appeal: “Americans don’t care too much for beauty/ they’ll shit in a river / dump battery acid in a stream.”

I must confess, I'm a bit of a movie soundtrack geek. The first album I ever bought with my own hard-earned allowance was the A View to a Kill soundtrack, the James Bond movie with Duran Duran performing the theme song. I was a junior Duranie, I had to have it.

Beyond the theme song was the film score, composed by the legendary John Barry. I fell in love with the tone and mood of the music, and afterwards my ears perked open every time I watched any movie, always taking note of the score and how it matched the action on screen. A soundtrack aficionado was born.

I love soundtracks so much I have a show on 91.3 KXCI dedicated to them.

Imagine my delight when I found out the Loft Cinema is having a spaghetti western triple feature this Saturday, Feb. 2. Not just any spaghetti western triple feature, this is the Holy Trinity of spaghetti westerns, the "Man with No Name" trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All three of them are directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood and with music by the king-daddy film composer of all time, Ennio Morricone.

The award-winning maestro has well over 500 credits to his name, but it's the innovative spaghetti western scores he'll always be most well known for. Taking the "kitchen sink" approach to the films, Morricone threw in gunshots, whip cracks, whistles, music boxes, shouts, church bells, horror movie organs and surf guitar along with a sparse orchestra. The music, rather than being listless background fodder or cues for stock horse chases, gets first billing in the films. Morricone's score is always in the forefront, punctuating action or ratcheting up tension. Who can forget the scene in the graveyard at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach and Eastwood in a Mexican standoff while "The Ecstasy of Gold" builds up the momentum to dizzying heights? It's no surprise that Leone actually directed the films to Morricone's scores, choreographing the actors every move to the whims of the music.

While I'm super excited to watch these great films on the big screen, I'm even more excited to simply listen.

The triple feature kicks off appropriately at High Noon. Ticket prices, individual show times and other information can be found at the Loft Cinema's website.

• Photo from Flickr Creative Commons by Rolf Venema

There’s something really hipster-ish and cool about having a record player and records, like it's proof that says you’re really committed...or at least that’s what it says to me. That imperfect, static sound that emanates off the player when the needle glides across the shiny vinyl signifies to me that you've really achieved something. It indicates that you are truly dedicated to the sound of the music and not just one piece of a band, but the entirety of an album you may find particularly awesome.

If you do decide to commit, though, where do you start? Do you go hunt down the old, classic albums at thrift stores and music shops, looking for special editions and rare finds? Or do you start with the new stuff that maybe you are listening to now, that might be a tad bit simpler to find in stores like Urban Outfitters?

As it typically goes every year when the Coachella lineup is announced, the anticipation, rumors and hype leave room for some to be disappointed, and this year is no different. A number of critics have commented on the shrugs and yawns that came from the Stone Roses' Friday headlining spot, as well as the foiled talks that the Rolling Stones would be there.

But if you needed any reason to get excited about the bands that were slated on Thursday to play the festival, allow me.

Just from the standpoint of indie rock, the first night has a great stack of artists, all in a row. As far as I'm concerned, it all starts with Tegan and Sara, whose new record "Heartthrob" drops on Tuesday. Taking the stage after them is Band of Horses, coming off a tour after their latest record release from about four months ago. Down the line sits Local Natives, another band who has a record due out on Tuesday, immediately followed by Of Monsters and Men, who stopped by the Rialto last May. Japandroids, a newly discovered personal favorite, rounds out the start to a great weekend, and it's only Friday.

The rest of the festival doesn't have as tight a grouping of really solid acts as the first day, but there are still plenty of great artists scattered throughout, including Grizzly Bear, Two Door Cinema Club, the Airborne Toxic Event and the Gaslight Anthem. I also expect Rodriguez to see a huge turnout for his set, thanks largely to the spectacular documentary released last month about the folk singer's failed music career and its subsequent, epic revival.

So, while the Rolling Stones won't be making an appearance, there's still plenty to look forward to for the two weekends in Indio. Thanks to a presale that started less than a month after last year's festival was over, the general admission festival passes have long since sold out, so if you haven't picked up tickets yet (which you can try to do here), you'll have to either buy passes with a shuttle pass, or poke around eBay and pay an outrageous amount for someone else's profit. Regardless, depending on what acts you catch, the money could be worth every penny.

And it looks pretty damn good.

• coachella.com

I'm pretty damn excited about this line-up, with Blur, the Stone Roses, Phoenix and the Red Hot Chili Peppers headlining (though I tend to be jazzed for anything involving the Chili Peppers), but I still can't get my head around the inclusion of 2 Chainz — I get that he's got the Kanye West connection, and that he was nominated for a Grammy, but...man. I just don't get his music. Whatever.

We've got the full line-up in text form below the jump if you couldn't read the image. Tickets go on sale Sunday, Jan. 29, at 10 a.m. Good luck.

File #2: Band of Susans, Here Comes Success (1995, Restless Records)

Band of Susans: the iron fist in the velvet glove; beauty and brawn; Sonic Youth and the Rolling Stones. All the elements that make Band of Susans truly great also make their relative obscurity baffling. Emerging from the same No Wave scene in New York City that spawned Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca, and with a deliriously rusty sound that encompasses both, Band of Susans lasted only a decade, but left behind a veritable bounty of great music. Despite their ability to assault listeners and audiences alike through sheets of distortion and the gravelly crunch of throbbing percussion, Band of Susans’ music succeeds by embracing contrapuntal melody. It’s a neat trick, and the balance between the dark corners and the spritely stretches is partially indebted to the Stones—a group they liked enough to cover (twice).

In sum, Band of Susan enthrall through its elastic, yawning guitar-driven sound, pulsating rhythms, and ability to work within and press beyond typical song structures. The group has been called shoegaze, which is fine, but it’s also acceptable to label them a rock band, albeit one that favors the complexity and repetitive rhythms of post-punk or avant-rock. As a Band of “Susans”—one of the more interesting factoids is that the group did start with three Susans, but various lineup shifts meant losing two of the three Susans (guitarists Lyall and Tallman); to say nothing of picking up and losing guitarist Page Hamilton, who left to create metal-grunge heavyweights Helmet—the name, perhaps fittingly, became ironic by the time the group hit its stride.

Yet, irony doesn’t comfortably fit Band of Susans, which doesn’t mean the group is humorless. In fact, calling your most challenging (in terms of patience required) and last album Here Comes Success, as well as a general proclivity for a silly song title (“The Last Temptation of Susan”), suggest the group embraced an easygoing approach to its seriously brilliant music that all but guaranteed a niche audience. Regardless, led by principles Robert Poss (guitar/vocals) and Susan Stenger (bass/vocals), Band of Susans went on a bafflingly great three album run before closing up shop. Starting with the group’s gorgeous, buzzing third album, The Word and the Flesh (1991)—the most accessible and perhaps finest hour by the Susans—the group went sonically more ambitious on the smoky, terse Veil (1993) before pushing even further with Here Comes Success.

Whereas The Word and the Flesh opened with a roar of guitars, and Veil began with a cascade of ricocheting guitars, the final album in the group’s vaunted triptych opens with a low guitar figure, gently played. Only after three minutes of a slow burn does the nine minute track, named for a victim of Jack the Ripper (“Elizabeth Stride [1843-1888]”), build into something more looming and monstrous. The song’s opening drawl and title only hint at the malice and menace enacted by its rampaging dénouement. It’s a shot across the bow, and the rest of the album is a colossal tour de force that consistently ups the ante. Here Comes Success is such an astonishing culmination of the band’s strengths and experiments, an incredibly difficult balance to execute, that it would have likely rendered any follow-up (however strong) pallid by contrast.

Throughout Here Comes Success, Poss never gilds the lily with his hammer-fist vocals, and Stenger’s bass never loses prominence amidst the guitar-heavy atmosphere—her funky, serpentine opening to the otherwise cacophonous and pummeling “Hell Bent” is remarkable. Many of the album’s highlights lean toward the lengthy side. At eight minutes “Dirge” is a beautifully droning ballad, while the 10 minute instrumental “In the Eye of the Beholder (For Rhys)” allows for fits and bursts of manic energy between generous stretches of locked down shoegaze. Still, the jaunty twists of “Two Jacks” and the funneled drive of closer “Sermon on Competition, Part 1 (Nothing is Recoupable)” offer glimpses of the tight, melody rock group buried under the layers of distortion. An unequivocally fantastic album from an equivocal Band of “Susans,” Here Comes Success is ripe for rediscovery.

I posted an interview last week that got to know the Phoenix band, Blessthefall, in a little more depth, after their recent feature in Alternative Press magazine's issue, "Most Anticipated Music of 2013."

I found out in that interview that Blessthefall will be on Warped Tour's main stage this year, which was released later that day (Friday) on a show called "Warped Roadies" on Fuse.

Shortly after it was announced that they would be on the main stage, Blessthefall posted this funny, yet epic video about it to show their excitement and get the fans pumped.

Here's the video:

For more about the band, check out the other article here.

The strings tip-toe around the whispering percussion, and then the girl states her case: "He hit me, and it felt like a kiss". Turns out that she slept with another guy, confesses to her boyfriend the next day, and he smacks her up. Call 911 and have the cops haul this guy away? No. Call the record company, because they have a different kind of hit ready to go.

The perpetrators? Convicted ladykiller Phil Spector and co-songwriter/feminist icon Carole King, along with King's husband Gerry Goffin. The Crystals recorded this 7-inch single in May and June of 1962, with Spector at the mixing board and teenaged singer Barbara Alston behind the microphone. Shortly after, it was released to a public who, at the dawning of the Women's Liberation movement, were shocked at a record that so brazenly condoned violence against women. Immediately recalled and shelved, the song grew in cult stature until by 1994, Courtney Love recorded an ironic cover version of it.

"He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" grows more tense as Alston sings about her boyfriend beating her up because he loved her; "he hit me, and I knew he loved me, if he didn't care for me, I could have never made him mad." And then the orchestra swells, the back-up singers explode, and the song climaxes, with Barbara Alston full-throatedly declaring, "he hit me, and I was glad!"

Listening to this song is like viewing violent pornography: You know its wrong, but it is sugar-coated and engineered to turn you on. "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" makes me nauseous, and this is why I love music.

One final note: Despite Spector's best attempts, The Crystals were not merely puppets for his agenda. When touring the segregated South, member La La Brooks refused to pander to white fans. "If I can't go to their bathrooms, then why should they have my autograph?" That sounds better than turning the other cheek.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox71pqO__ow

File #1: The Raiders, Indian Reservation (1971, Columbia Records)

As the inaugural entry of Attractive Nuisance, I should stipulate my aims for this space. My primary goal is admittedly indulgent: I wish to write passionately about misunderstood, overlooked, or dismissed albums, and the artist(s) responsible. I also, however, greatly hope that this space becomes a place that attracts and fosters a like-minded community of music lovers who feel compelled to express themselves in the comments (wink)—not uniform music lovers, mind you, as dissension is both necessary and encouraged. To start, let's head (Pacific North-) Westward, where we meet up with Paul Revere & the Raiders:

The first sound on Indian Reservation (1971), appropriately, is Paul Revere’s piercing, whinnying organ, helping to open the album with its titular smash hit. Funky and of-its-moment—Native American activists championed "red power" during the period, occupying Alcatraz Island in 1969 and clashing with federal marshals at Wounded Knee in 1973—the title track would go down as the only #1 song in the canon of the recently renamed the Raiders; only Revere and singer Mark Lindsay remained from the group’s halcyon days.

As Paul Revere & the Raiders, the group charted a fun path in rock primitivism, meshing colonial attire and daffy showmanship with a lean, raw rock ‘n roll sound—they even served as a kind of house band for Dick Clark's Where the Action Is. Many of the group's singles from the era, be it the nervous jangle of “Hungry” (#6 in 1966), the prickly vamp of “Kicks” (#4 in 1966), or the psychedelic tremble of “Him or Me, What’s it Gonna Be?” (#5 1967), remain sacred artifacts of an era where chart presence was tantamount to prowess; additionally, of course, they’re catchy, great fun that reminds listeners of the indelible fertility of this musical period. In an interview for with The Big Takeover from 2011, Mark Lindsay cites 1967 as his favorite year, musically and personally (“Everything was really poppin’”), before conceding that “rock ‘n’ roll began to develop a sad, dark undercurrent” in the following years.

Well, in that sad, dark undercurrent came Indian Reservation. The album was an evident slapdash attempt to capitalize on the astounding success of “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)”—the track itself arguably exploiting contemporary American history—by affixing the track with eight additional non-originals and Lindsay’s “The Turkey,” which sounds every bit the meandering studio gag. Still, there is both a resonance and a skillfulness to the Raiders’ exuberant handling of the material, which should be abundantly clear on the bounding funk-swarm of “Indian Reservation” (a track that, I would wager, has heavily influenced many of Jack White’s compositional decisions). Meanwhile, the Raiders twist Terry Melcher’s “Take Me Home” into a lascivious, ecstatic disco-boogie; “The Shape of Things to Come,” an apocryphal tune from the satirical cult film Wild in the Streets (1968), becomes a frenetic, unhinged barn-burner with plenty of ‘70s AM riffage; the Raiders nail both the soul and schmaltzy of “Heaven Help us All,” seemingly sending up Stevie Wonder’s po-faced take; and P.F. Sloan’s apocalyptic lament “Eve of Destruction” is deftly transformed from Barry McGuire’s shaggy, Dylan-esque folk into an almost dementedly giddy, bounding folk-rock number.

The only definitive assessment one can fairly have about Indian Reservation is that it does not serve as an ideal primer for Paul Revere & the Raiders. As an assured, idiosyncratic, disheveled, and appropriately angry musical document of its time, however, it demands attention. Although it is an extremely difficult album to locate digitally, Indian Reservation is worth a record store crawl for the seriously committed. For the rest (who can access Spotify), below are selections that exemplify both its eccentricities and feats.