Rockshows to Know will be our attempt to regularly list shows that are of interest to us and probably you as well, mostly in and around the Louisville area, and will often be accompanied by sample MP3s. The news about Caribou/Toro Y Moi playing at the intimate Zbar last week was epic, and there’s more good jammage around the bend.

The in-fucking-comparable Josephine Foster plays the intimate Skull Alley in Louisville on May 7th. As the show was just confirmed, expect additional acts to be added to the bill in the next couple of months. Another excellent booking from Joel Hunt. (Show info)

Joel also picked up lovely power electronics noise+vocals unit and Jagjaguwar recording artists Sightings. Bring ya mams to Skull Ally on May 6th, as Mother’s Day will be just around the corner at that time. The Teeth also perform. This show will be radical and possibly upsetting, but in the right kind of way. (Show info)

Just announced, like, five minutes ago, the mighty Eluvium will chill your shit out at Louisville’s amazing 21c on May 26th. (Show info)

Black Lips will test the structural integrity of Headliners in Louisville on April 8th with the Box Elders. Hilarity might ensue. (Show info)

Acid Mothers Temple are flying on thunderbirds to Cosmic Charlie’s in Lexington on April 14th. I will probably be thinking about Dogen from LOST most of the time. (Show info)

There is a darkness spreading about your bro, Jack

Beach Fossils hit up Al’s Bar in Lextown en route to SXSW on March 12. They’ll be joined by The Beets, whom I believe to be a different entity from these Beets. (Show info)

On the same day, Titus Andronicus do a free in-store at ear X-tacy in Louisville, starting at 6 p.m. sharp. The band, not the Roman. (Show info)

In typical Will Oldham fashion, the Billy Prince is playing a non-venue on Sunday, March 28th, at the Salvation Army Old Male Campus (I have no idea what this is honestly) as part of The Rudyard Kipling-sponsored Motherlodge Fest. Tickets are only $10, but $15 buys you a meal. Dinnah and a flick, dahling. His facial hair should be amazing. (Show info)

While Vetiver’s last album might’ve suck a big ‘un, they’re still an awesome band (can’t hit it out of the park every time), and they storm Newport’s Southgate House on March 7th. (Show info).

Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow swings through Cincinnati’s Northside Tavern March 13th. Vocoders! (Show info)

Woods and Real Estate are very appropriately touring together and visit The Bishop in Bloomington on March 23rd. Smoke tree. (Show info)

UPDATE: Just got word that No Age is swinging through Lexington and playing a WRFL-sponsored show at… Gumbo Ya Ya? That’s according to the official Gig List. Friday April 23rd is the date to save. Fun fact: that’s Shakespeare’s bday!

Finally, The Decibel Tolls is sponsoring a just-confirmed upcoming show at Zanzabar that I’m pretty stoked on, but I can’t announce yet, and currently working on other exciting shows. More soon….

MP3 :::
Eluvium – The Motion Makes Me Last
Acid Mothers Temple – Ange Mecanique de Saturne
No Age – Loosen This Job
Josephine Foster – She Sweeps With Many Colored Brooms
Sightings – Tar and Pine
Woods – Echo Lake
Real Estate – Snow Days
Beach Fossils – Time

Kinda late, but here are some photos of the Bonnie Prince Billy and Bachelorette show earlier this month at Lexington’s The Red Mile. Photos by my bro Chris Reynolds.

Cheyenne Mize in Oldham’s band

Yes, Bonnie Prince Billy’s latest releases, Beware and his Among the Gold collaboration with Chyenne Mize, are excellent. But Bachelorette’s My Electric Family (The Deicbel Tolls review) is next level shit. This is your heads-up to arrive early to the show tonight at The Red Mile in Lexington. Doors are at 9 p.m. Get there at exactly that time, render your $12, and have Annabelle Alpers destroy your brain for 45 minutes (show info).

Congrats to Alex for gripping the tickets in last week’s giveaway. Enjoy this video of “Intergalactic Solitude” from Isolation Loops in Brooklyn. Yay for mushrooms.

And man… I. Just. Can’t. Stop. Listening. To. “Instructions For Insomniacs.” Good gawd, ya’ll. Enjoy this too.

MP3 :::
Bachelorette – Instructions For Insomniacs

There’s nothing I love more than a good old fashioned murder ballad.  Maybe it’s the juicy juxtaposition of the details of a grisly crime uttered sotto voce style over a plaintive dirge.  Or maybe I’m just sick.  But this isn’t about me.  This week TDB brings you modern day murder ballads from some of today’s hottest new artists!  You get hangings, stabbings, scorned lovers and much much more.  This very special collection is only available through TDB and is not sold in any stores.  And if you act now, we’ll include matricide as a bonus gift! 

I’m sure there are entire doctoral theses on the distant origins of murder ballads but more recent history almost universally cites Johnny Cash and Nick Cave as pioneers of the modern genre.  Cave’s haunting duet with Kylie Minogue, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, ends an obsessive love affair Crispin Glover style with a stoning by the river.  Cash is a different breed of cat and in “Delia’s Gone” exemplifies an Appalachian fetish for firearms and the ‘wife as chattel’ meme where you take them out in back of the barn and shoot them for misbehavin’.

Both are brilliant examples of the genre and the quintessential murder ballad paints a vivid portrait of the killer and his crime.  Okkervil River’s “Westfall” is the prison diary of a small-town boy grown up and grown bored enough to kill.  With creepy details like “One was named Lori.  That’s what the story said next week in The Guardian…”, it’s the dispassionate chronicle of a psychopath.  In classic murder ballad style, the song builds to the eventual capture of the killer who, paraded out of the jailhouse, tells the inquisitive crowd that, “evil don’t look like anything.”  Take that, Nancy Grace.

Former Palace Brother, Will Oldham, dons his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy moniker and reaches back to 18th century Ireland with an update of the traditional “Molly Bawn.”  In an episode that makes Dick Cheney look like Annie Oakley, poor Molly Bawn is mistaken for a swan and shot by her fiancé in a tragic hunting accident.  I’m serious.  This is probably more accurately called a manslaughter ballad with the possibility of time served and probation.

And in what starts out as a childhood game but presumably ends in tragedy, Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” is given guitar god treatment by Terry Reid circa 1968.  More metaphoric than literal, it’s representative of an era of artful phrases in music.  Thirty years ago euphemisms like ’squeeze my lemon’ garnered a knowing wink from the hipsters while today we get 20 year old Hillary Duff cooing “touch me boy don’t you make me wait.”  Ah, good times.

- Xavier Van Zandt

MP3 :::
Terry Reid – Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
Bonnie Prince Billy -  Molly Bawn
Okkervil River – Westfall