Matthew Solarski reports:
Hot on the heels of fellow Broken Social Scenester Amy Millan (and in line with speculation about pretty much everyone else in BSS), Metric frontwoman Emily Haines has just announced a foray into the sometimes treacherous realm of solo-record-dom. Will she soar all Justin Timberlake stylee, or crash-n-burn like that dude from the Dismemberment Plan? How will Metric fans respond? How will the blog-o-verse receive her? What will the adult contemporary community think??

In an attempt to dispel at least some of the drama careening through these questions, Pitchfork caught up with Miss Haines for a revealing little tête-à-tête. But first! The facts: Canada's Last Gang Records (also home to Metric, DFA1979, MSTRKRFT, and Tiga) will deliver Haines' debut solo outing, Knives Don't Have Your Back, on September 26. There's talk Knives may come with a bonus disc, or possibly even be a double album.

Tentative tracklist? You got it:

01 Our Hell
02 The Lottery
03 Doctor Blind
04 Nothing & Nowhere
05 Crowd Surf off a Cliff
06 The Maid Needs a Maid
07 Mostly Waving
08 City of Night
09 Reading in Bed
10 Detective Daughter
11 Winning
12 The Last Page

Just don't expect the slick, hooky, electro-tinged rock that has Metric fans living it out on the dance floor. Knives is a decidedly quieter affair, awash in plaintive piano, deeply personal, and downright melancholy at parts. "An intimate and subtle collection of mellow, piano-driven tunes complimented by soft string and horn arrangements," exclaims the press release.

However, as Haines told Pitchfork, these two sonic outlets have more in common than one might think. Knives draws from "the same source material as every Metric song," she said. "That's pretty melancholy, too. We just have the mandate to put energy behind it. [Metric] is all about pulling yourself out of what's making you feel bad by being honest about it, by naming it, you know?"

"These [solo] songs are still the same, they're the source mood for every Metric tune, but without the benefit of my friends rocking out behind them."

To sharpen Knives, Haines enlisted the aid of producer John O'Mahony, as well as Metric's Jimmy Shaw, Sparklehorse's Scott Minor, string-arranger Todor Kobalov, and some requisite Canadian indie supergroupies: Stars' Evan Cranley and Chris Seligman lay down some horns, while BSS's Justin Peroff provides occasional drum-work.

So why take the solo plunge? "I've always written [music]. I've always played the piano," Emily explained. "And until recently-- with Metric being a touring band-- that's what I did. I'd be at home, usually hiding in some room playing the piano. It just made sense that I would finally release some of this music. Friends sort of encouraged me to do so."

Four years in the making, Knives serves as a collection of story-songs from Emily's life and wears its influences proudly: namely noted jazz-composer Carla Bley, art-rocker Robert Wyatt ("when I was a kid I always wrote him letters, because he just meant so much to me," mused Emily), and most of all, her father, the late poet Paul Haines (who, incidentally, wrote the libretto for Bley's Escalator Over the Hill).

The unexpected death of her father in 2003 gave Emily a renewed sense of purpose. "When he died, I was just like, 'Oh fuck.' It's important that these things don't get lost-- just a sense of urgency and just that if there's music, we should make it."

Emily plans to play out her songs later this year, and already has a gig set at the Toronto Film Festival in mid-September. For the occasion she hopes to put together a multimedia presentation invoking images from Canadian film director Guy Maddin. That is, if she can summon the nerve to perform!

"Really, it's scary. It's so hard to just be alone up there. But I like it."

Wait, Emily Haines, scared? "Oh, that's funny. A lot of people tell you, usually there's a reason, that when people have to get up a lot of nerve, it's because they're really shy. Why do you think Prince needs all those outfits?"

Metric, meanwhile, play Coachella this weekend and have already begun "sketching out ideas for the next record." They hit up Europe next month with the Rogers Sisters. Behold:

04-30 Indio, CA - Empire Polo Field (Coachella Festival)
05-10 Munich, Germany - Atomic Café *
05-11 Cologne, Germany - Prime Club *
05-12 Hamburg, Germany - Molotow *
05-13 Berlin, Germany - Karrera Klub *
05-15 York, England - Fibbers
05-16 Glasgow, Scotland - Barfly
05-17 Birmingham, England - Barfly
05-18 London, England - Barfly
05-19 Brighton, England - The Great Escape

* with the Rogers Sisters

* Pitchfork Review: Metric: Live It Out
* Metric: www.ilovemetric.com
* Last Gang: http://lastgangrecords.com

Neil Young Embraces Blogging, Streaming

Kati Llewellyn reports:
News on Neil Young's upcoming protest album, Living With War, hit the Internet at a rate of approximately 100mph over the weekend. With a Living With War blog to track details on the release, a bare-bones official website to run lyrics, and a load of reporters on their toes, Young certainly has the Reprise Records new media department working overtime.

The tracklist features the previously reported "Living with War" and "Let's Impeach the President", as well as eight other not surprisingly titled songs.

For your eyes, restless consumers:

01 After the Garden
02 Living With War
03 The Restless Consumer
04 Shock and Awe
05 Families
06 Flags of Freedom
07 Let's Impeach the President
08 Lookin' for a Leader
09 Roger and Out
10 America the Beautiful

Living With War will be posted on Young's website for free streaming starting April 28 (that's this Friday, folks). The record will then be made commercially available for digital download on May 2, and is slated to be well-stocked at yr local record store shortly afterwards.

Oh and this just in! According to Billboard.com, Young will join David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young "Freedom of Speech" tour this summer. Smart planning, guys: hit the kiddies with the free music and the blog, and the old folks with the expensive concert tickets. Got your demographics covered.

* Pitchfork Review: Neil Young: Prairie Wind
* Pitchfork News: Neil Young Disses President Bush on New Album
* Neil Young: http://www.neilyoung.com/

Leonard Cohen Celebrated in New Film

Amy Phillips reports:
Mel Gibson is a bigger Leonard Cohen fan than you are. Yup, Mel Gibson is such a big Leonard Cohen fan that he executive produced a movie about him: Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, due in theaters June 21. What have you done for Leonard Cohen lately, huh?

Part documentary and part concert film, I'm Your Man centers around a January 2005 Australian tribute concert, "Came So Far for Beauty", organized by producer Hal Willner and featuring performances by Antony, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, Linda Thompson, Teddy Thompson, the Handsome Family, Julie Christensen, and Perla Battala. Cohen himself performs "Tower of Song" with U2.

The movie also includes behind-the-scenes action and interviews in which "Cohen himself reveals his trademark wry humor and soulful intensity, using his own artwork, poetry and personal collection of photographs to reflect upon his colorful past and his creative process," according to a press release.

I'm Your Man was directed by Lian Lunson, whose previous claims to fame include a PBS documentary about Willie Nelson and work on the companion CD to The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's other movie about a Jew with a fanatical cult following.

The trailer can be viewed HERE.

In related news, Cohen protégé / backup singer Anjani Thomas will release her album Blue Alert on May 2 in Canada and May 23 in America. Cohen both produced and is featured on the album.

* Pitchfork Review: Leonard Cohen Sues Former Business Manager
* Pitchfork Review: Leonard Cohen: Dear Heather
* Leonard Cohen: http://www.leonardcohen.com
* Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man: http://www.leonardcohenimyourman.com/

New York Dolls Talk Reunion, New Album

A.D. Amorosi reports:
You're David Johansen. You're Sylvain Sylvain. You're the proud and the few. The very few. And you ain't the Marines.

You are, instead, the New York Dolls, the world's truly most forgotten godfathers (with all apologies to Raw Power-era Iggy). Not just of glam and punk and hair metal, where you staked your claim back when you started the band in 1971. But of a brand of ballsy, glittering, androgynous Bo Diddley-esque rock (with thick dollops of Spector-fueled girl group pop) that guys like Aerosmith would call their own and make millions off not too long after your first record in 1973.

You made one more record in 1974, Too Much Too Soon. Stayed around until 1977. Quit. And that was pretty much that for the New York Dolls.

Until One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, due out July 25 on Roadrunner Records. It's an album most people thought would never happen.

Frontman Johansen recently talked to Pitchfork from a recording studio in Manhattan's Chinatown. "After (drummer) Billy (Murcia) and (bassist) Arthur (Kane) came to my apartment at Sixth St. and First Avenue, they took me to John's (guitarist Johnny Thunders) house," he said, reflecting on the band's genesis. "We made music and then we were a band. I'm not kidding when I say it was that fast and that simple. Syl showed up a month later."

Billy, John, and Arthur died, as did drummer Jerry Nolan; Billy first, Arthur most recently. Kane's loss is the saddest, as he stuck around long enough to see the improbable: a 2004 Dolls reunion, cobbled together by Morrissey, ex-president of the British New York Dolls fan club.

"He called, wanted to do a show with us," said Johansen of Morrissey. "My immediate answer was 'no way.' I even asked him, 'would you do it?' And he said 'NO.' But then I really did have to think about how fun it would be to do one show-- one show-- having laughs, seeing the guys. But then...I had more fun than I ever imagined." So did Kane, the subject of the recently released documentary New York Doll. But he died of leukemia not long after that first reunion show.

"He didn't believe in chance circumstance," said Johansen of Kane. "It was really important for him to come full circle as a Doll."

Weeks later, Johansen and Sylvain joined with Sam Yaffa (of Hanoi Rocks) and several members of Johansen's solo band and took on Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival in New York City. Somehow, from that point on, Johansen and Sylvain were convinced they'd found the new New York Dolls. Not just sidemen but a solid batch of like-minds with whom they could commit to making further Dolls music in gang fashion. "Whatever we do is the Dolls, nothing we're doing is based on anything we've done before, but there is that vibe," said Johansen.

So here we are in a studio listening to the lovely "Beautiful Music", the punchy "Dance Like a Monkey", and the huffy "Gimme Love and Turn on the Light", all produced by Jack Douglas, who engineered the first Dolls album. These songs will all appear One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This.

The record features several high profile guest spots: Michael Stipe jumps on "Dancing on the Lip of A Volcano", Iggy Pop sings his napalm heart out on "Gimme Love and Turn on the Light", Against Me!'s Tom Gabel squeals on "Punishing World", and the Dolls' hero, Bo Diddley, sings and plays on "Seventeen". David Bowie was supposed to stop by, but it didn't work out (guess he was too busy with TV on the Radio.)

"We had a reputation of being fuck ups" said Johansen of the talk of drugs, more drugs and failure. "We want to make this big [and] special for as long as we can. And rather than do lot of the negative nihilist shit that came out in our wake, be positive."

* Pitchfork News: New York Dolls Documentary Opens This Week
* New York Dolls: http://www.new-york-dolls.com//
* Roadrunner: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/

Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart DVDs Due

David Nadelle reports:
Is nothing sacred anymore? With every imaginable wack video, dodgy concert, backstage groupie session, and bowel movement (please, please no!) getting an unofficial DVD release these days, it's tough to separate the rip-offs from the gold. But we think that the video distribution company MVD, which is in charge of the in-depth documentary series "Under Review: An Independent Critical Analysis" (previous subjects have included the Small Faces, Queen, the Who, and Syd Barrett), is legit.

On April 25, the series' next two titles will be available through the Sexy Intellectual label. They focus on two influential heavyweights: the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart.

The 85-minute Velvets DVD boasts past footage and interviews with the famous crux of Reed, Cale, Morrison, Tucker, and Andy Warhol, as well as exclusive interviews with Moe Tucker, Doug Yule, and Billy Name. It also features assessment and commentary from Clinton Heylin (author of the book From the Velvets to the Voidoids), Robert Christgau ("the Dean of American Rock Criticism"), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna), and Malcolm Dome (rock writer and broadcaster). Also in there is the soft-porn-sounding special feature "Velvet Reflections". Oh! Sweet sumthin'.

And just because Don Van Vliet has shunned his stream-of-consciousness blues-noise music in favor of stream-of-consciousness abstract painting of late doesn't mean the world should do the same. The man known as Captain Beefheart will also be brought under the microscope in a two-hour film mapping the history of his enigmatic music. It includes archival footage, rare performances, contributions from most of the key Magic Band players...and "the hardest Captain Beefheart interactive quiz in the world ever." Finally!

We're dying to confirm some widely held beliefs about the Captain, like the marathon "pep talks", strict vegetarian diets, new identities imposed on Magic Band members, and, most of all, whether he ever actually sold a vacuum cleaner to Aldous Huxley using the pitch "Sir, this sucks."

Future "Under Review" Sexy Intellectual/MVD video subjects include Kate Bush, due out June 6 and the Smiths on June 27. MVD distributes all sorts of DVDs, from the totally unauthorized Bob Dylan documentary Rolling Thunder and the Gospel Years to Jug-cuzzi Pooltang!!.

* Pitchfork Review: The Velvet Underground: Gold
* Pitchfork Review: Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band: I'm Going To Do What I Wanna Do: Live at My Father's Place 1978
* Music Video Distributors: http://mvdb2b.com/

Bell Orchestre Tour, Go Unplugged

Amy Phillips reports:
With the Arcade Fire still holed up in some maximum-security bunker in Canada working on their second album, violinist Sarah Neufeld and multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry have plenty of time to concentrate on their new music ensemble Bell Orchestre. So they're headed out on another American tour, beginning tonight in Northampton, Massachusetts. The trek concentrates mostly on the Midwest, and its centerpiece is an appearance at the Music NOW Festival in Cincinnati, curated by Bryce Dessner of Bell Orchestre's good buddies Clogs.

Dates:

04-24 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse
04-25 Clinton, NY - The Annex at Hamilton College
04-26 Rochester, NY - German House
04-27 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
04-28 Pittsburgh, PA - Andy Warhol Museum
04-29 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center at Ohio State University
04-30 Cincinnati, OH - Contemporary Arts Center (Music NOW Festival) *
05-02 Ferndale, MI - Magic Bag
05-03 Kalamazoo, MI - Kraftbrau
05-04 Louisville, KY - The Clifton Center
05-05 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium #
05-06 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
05-07 Milwaukee, WI - Pabst Theater

* with Erik Friedlander
# with Clogs

Richard Reed Parry recently told Pitchfork that Bell Orchestre plan to play new material on this tour, "including a new piece WITHOUT AMPS OR MICROPHONES!!! It's pretty darned exciting...It's unamplified double bass and French horn and the rest of the band play percussion on the floor/stage."

As for the group's future plans, Parry said, "We're developing material towards a potential collaboration with Montreal dance company La La La Human Steps, although it's still tentative. We're gonna be recording a new record later in the year and possibly an EP before that. Oh and we're going to Europe again in July, for a couple of weeks' tour."

* Pitchfork Review: Bell Orchestre: Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light
* Pitchfork Feature: Interview: Bell Orchestre
* Bell Orchestre: http://www.bellorchestre.com/
* Rough Trade: http://www.roughtradeamerica.com/

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