Baltimore’s Human Bell—seen here performing at the Adams Morgan record store Crooked Beat—just announced a national tour with Japan’s Boredoms, a band that Washington City Paper’s Aaron Leitko described as the most bizarre “ever to have graced the roster of a major label.”

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band might dispute that claim, but I can say for certain that the Boredoms are one of the top-five best live acts I’ve ever seen (Brown’s Island, in 1994, with Sonic Youth and Superchunk).

Human Bell is Dave Heumann, frontman of Arbouretum, and Nathan Bell, best known as bassist for Lungfish. According to both bands’ label, Thrill Jockey, the Boredoms “handpicked” them for this tour.

Here are the dates. Alas, no DC:

Mon Mar 10 Lousiville, KY Ear X-Tacy (in-store)
Wed Mar 12 Dallas, TX Good Records (in-store) w/ Kid Dakota
Thur Mar 13 Marfa, TX TBA
Sat Mar 15 San Diego, CA Canes w/Boredoms
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Family (in-store)
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda Theater w/Boredoms
Mon Mar 17 San Luis Obispo, CA Boo Boo Records (in-store)
Tue Mar 18 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore Auditorium w/Boredoms
Thu Mar 20 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom w/Boredoms
Fri Mar 21 Seattle, WA Neumos w/Boredoms
Sat Mar 22 Anacortes, WA Department of Safety w/ Mt. Eerie, Photosynthesis
Mon Mar 23 Missoula, MT The Palace (Badlander downstairs, free show)
Tue Mar 25 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue w/Boredoms
Wed Mar 26 Chicago, IL Congress Theater w/Boredoms, Soft Circle
Thu Mar 27 Chicago, IL AV-Erie

The Boredoms will be at the 9:30 Club on April 3rd

Dischord announced it has a few copies of Cynthia Connolly’s seminal Banned in DC photobook available. So grab one while you still can.

In Dischord news, “Medications are soldiering on as a duo and have a show booked in March in Washington at DC9.”We know that drummer Andrew Becker has left the band. But Dischord doesn’t say what form the duo will take. Both of the remaining members, Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter, excel on multiple instruments.

Here’s what Medications’ Web site has to say: “we have yet to work the kinks out. please come out as it will be interesting if only to see us fail miserably.”

Lungfish has had a lot of bassists–three, last time I counted. While I wouldn’t count Nathan Bell as my favorite (I’m a Sean Meadows man) but he did play on both Necrophones and The Unanimous Hour, so….respect.

As it turns out, his new band, Human Bell–a duo with Arbouretum’s David Heumann–has a self-titled album that just came out on Chicago’s Thrill Jockey records. What’s more, they’ll play a free in-store at D.C.’s Crooked Beat on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. Human Bell isn’t bombastic, but it does rely on the same cyclical picking and deep vibes of both Bell and Heumann’s former groups. Here’s the MySpace if you want to check some sounds; the Thrill Jockey page for the album also includes streams of the tracks.

is here. [HT: Idolator]

A few days ago I was walking past Crooked Beat Records with some friends and one of them pointed out the promo poster for Nothing Is Underrated, the sophomore solo album by Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. He mentioned the image’s similarity to Phil Collins‘ scarlet-tinted, egg-shaped visage as it appears on the cover of No Jacket Required–Collins’ Grammy-winning third solo effort, which spawned such rockin’ radio singles as “Sussudio” and “Take Me Home.” At first I wasn’t convinced, but after referencing No Jacket Required’s cover, I’m not so sure. I don’t think Lally will be hearing from Phil’s management any time soon, but they certainly have something in common–the faint red light, the neckless head hovering alone above a bottomless darkness.

Well, I guess I can scratch “Played the Last Show at the Wilson Center” off of the short list of musical accomplishments I oh-so-casually mention when wooing the womenfolk at the Black Cat’s Red Room or telling well-worn tales of indie-rock glory to a wide-eyed showgoer who has absolutely no idea who I am or what venue I’m blathering about.

According to Positive Force co-founder Mark Andersen, the Evens will perform this Sunday night at the former Wilson Center—now the Capital City Public Charter School. (Doors are at 7:30; the Evens perform at 8 p.m. If it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten where the building is located, it’s at 15th & Irving Sts. NW. $5 gets you into the show—which, of course, is all-ages.) The last-minute announcement came after the original venue, All Souls Church, had to cancel due to an accidental scheduling conflict. After a brainstorming session, Andersen says in an e-mail, MacKaye suggested that they look into booking the CCPCS. (The last show at the Wilson Center was more than six years ago in October of 2001; the lineup, if I remember correctly, featured Strike Anywhere, Q and Not U, Crispus Attucks, Kill the Man Who Questions, Pg. 99, Virginia Black Lung, Del Cielo, Trial By Fire, Teddy DuChamp’s Army, and Tim.)

“It was a total long-shot, but I went by and peered in the window (a bit like a burglar casing the joint, I am afraid!), and Ian was right, the space had a stage, was decent sized, all in all looked like it could work. Nothing to lost by trying, I figured. I found the number to the school and did a ‘cold call’ to receptionist, was passed along to Anne Herr, their executive director, who turned out to be a member of All Souls and eager to help,” Andersen says. “I explained who I was, what the mission was… and to my surprise, Anne was somewhat aware of the special significance of the multi-purpose room of her school in D.C. counter-cultural history. Even more astonishing she was willing to consider the request, as they had not had their space used by an outside community group yet, but wanted to make it available in this way to worthy events.”

Andersen then provided Herr with copies of both the Evens CD and Dance of Days (which Andersen co-authored); the CCPCS board was supportive and—after what Andersen describes as “much back’n'forth between Ian/Evens and Anne/CCPCS…with me as the intermediary”—“[a]gainst all odds, the Evens show at CCPCS/Wilson Center (with six days notice) was go!”

The show—sponsored by Positive Force D.C.—is a benefit for Neighbors Consejo and Anne Frank House, which Anderson describes as “two great groups that provide essential services to the homeless and the formerly homeless in the Columbia Heights/Mount Pleasant/Adams-Morgan communities.” Attendees are encouraged to “[p]lease bring peanut butter, whole grain cereal, or canned veggies for the We Are Family food bank to be delivered to low-income community seniors.”

Perhaps the best—or only good—aspect of Lungfish’s “not currently active” status is that singer Daniel Higgs is releasing solo records at an impressive clip. In just 13 months, the Baltimore trance-punk act’s heavily bearded frontman has released three full-lengths, one of which, Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, comes with a hardcover book of his psychedelic artwork.

Higgs’ droney, acid-folky latest, Metempsychotic Melodies, which is out now on the excellent Holy Mountain label, is more or less essential for Lungfish fans. But, for the uninitiated, it is no better an entry point than any other record in the Higgs canon.

In his new book Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff writes about artists like Higgs, musicians who seem to do nothing but work toward a single idea. “Many great musicians—Ali Akbar Khan, Björk, James Brown—essentially create their art as chunks of an ongoing discourse,” he writes. “The stronger the work is, the more it becomes a matter of sound rather than notes.”

Not too long ago, I wrote something similar about another Holy Mountain act, Om (a band that shares its name with one of John Coltrane’s later records).

By and large, the two songs on Om’s second full-length, Conference of the Birds—a title borrowed from Dave Holland’s ’70s free-jazz classic—offer mere variations on [the band’s first record] Variations. [Al] Cisneros seems to write the same bass line over and over again, which works because, hey, it’s a really good bass line. Loopy without being static, Cisneros’ playing twists and winds and folds back on itself, making Om’s five songs to date seem less like distinctive compositions than details from a larger work. The effect is of a band always playing somewhere—probably on a mountaintop or near something monolithic.

The same could pretty much be said of Lungfish and Higgs. To my mind, though, no one has written a more definitive piece on Charm City’s finest than my pal Joe Gross. This passage from his Chicago Reader review of the band’s 2000 album Necrophones gets at the very essence of this cult act and its otherworldly frontman.

Imagine a gnostic Ramones or an AC/DC peopled by Kabbalah scholars. Perhaps taking too seriously the old Lou Reed dictum that anything over three chords puts you into jazz territory, the Baltimore-based quartet has built whole, mesmerizing albums out of four or five notes. And as a lyricist, front man Daniel Higgs, at least according to Alan Kaufman, editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, is nothing less than the intellectual heir to poet Kenneth Patchen. (Memo to R. Meltzer: if you’re still looking for visionary postbeat rock music in the 21st century, buy the entire discography tomorrow.)

A veteran of the late-80s and early-90s performance-poetry scene, Higgs is 36 going on infinity. He cuts a striking figure with his rabbinical beard, myriad tattoos, and head-to-toe heavy clothing (he’s been known to wear two pairs of pants at once). Onstage, in front of the pathologically repetitious guitar-bass-drums drone of Asa Osborne, Nathan Bell, and Mitchell Feldstein, he’s riveting; if he’s not standing stock-still, he’s fiendishly contorting his face or trying to climb an invisible ladder. Sometimes he’s a preacher, preaching the gospel according to the plants and the animals; sometimes he’s the flowers themselves, opening their mouths and screaming.

Of all the guy’s attributes, the thing that is perhaps most impressive is Higgs’ ability to reduce the most cynical music fans to uncynical adoration. This puts him in excellent company. Tom Waits and Scott Walker–to name but two–do pretty much the same thing. Are they the real deal or jackdaws in peacock’s feathers? Of those who have seen him perform, what do you think about Higgs?

According to one of yesterday’s posts on the Baltimore Sun entertainment blog, Dischord founder and Evens frontman Ian MacKaye is very much alive:

A phone rings at 6:08 p.m. in Arlington, Va. A 45-year-old man picks up. The caller doesn’t even have the chance to offer a greeting.
“I am still alive,” reports Ian MacKaye, the frontman of such punk acts as Minor Threat and Fugazi, and the founder of Washington’s Dischord Records.
This would not be news except that The Sun and apparently many other organizations had been told that MacKaye was, in fact, dead. We were told that he died Monday night at Baltimore’s St. Agnes Hospital. A call to the hospital found no evidence of such a patient. We followed up with calls to Dischord (left a message) and to MacKaye’s home.
“I am happy to report that I am not dead,” says MacKaye. He and the record company had been blasted with calls, he says, after premature reports of his death were posted on MySpace and Wikipedia. He says he hasn’t been able to find the MySpace reference, but had the Wikipedia posting removed — and then re-removed, once someone reinserted the false news.

Joe Lally has been quietly working on a new album, and Dischord recently revealed some juicy details. The album will be called Nothing Underrated and boasts of some of D.C.’s finer musicians, including: Ben Azzara (The Capitol City Dusters, DCIC), Andy Gale (Haram), and Eddie Janney (Rites of Spring). Most awesomely, Lally jams with Fugazi bandmates Guy Picciotto and Ian MacKaye (who recorded the album).

His Fugazi songs were always standouts. But reading City Paper’s 2006 feature on Lally last year, you couldn’t help but feel that the transition from integral band member to frontman had been difficult. His first solo album, released last year, was a surprisingly contemplative affair. It will be interesting to see what Lally comes up with after spending a year touring, jamming and growing into his role as chief songwriter and the guy everybody stares at.