Fall Guide: Interpol Return With Their First Record in Three Years

Atari Teenage Riot
September 23
Gramercy Theatre

“Music is a weapon,” CX KiDTRONiK announces at the top of “Activate!,” the first single from Atari Teenage Riot since 2000. So right away you know some things haven’t changed for this Berlin-based outfit, an early pioneer of what group mastermind Alec Empire rather descriptively dubbed “digital hardcore.” What has changed, though, is the context in which ATR operates: The band’s shows were once known for their random outbreaks of violence, but in an age of casual laptop-noise terrorism, can that reaction still be provoked?

Lee Gwyn

Adios, Carlos D!

Details

FALL GUIDE 2010
Dance: Ken Swift Gets the Upscale Treatment
Theater: The Tricycle Theatre Invades With Its Epic History of Afghanistan
Books: Matthew Vincent Explains How It All Went So Freakin' Wrong
Dining: Let Burning Lumber Do the Cooking
Art: Ingrid Calame Finds Beauty in the Grime
Film: Oliver Stone Issues the Initial Public Offering of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Fashion: Karen O's Style Guru Takes Us Shopping

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• Phoenix (Band)
• Interpol (Band)
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Alice in Chains + Deftones + Mastodon
September 24
Madison Square Garden

Dubbed the “BlackDiamondSkye” tour after its participants’ latest albums, this hard-rock triple bill teams Alice in Chains with a pair of heirs to its sludge-metal legacy. Not that Alice is ready to give up the crown: Last year’s Black Gives Way to Blue, the band’s first effort since the death of former frontman Layne Staley, surpassed all kinds of commercial and creative expectations. But Deftones (supporting this year’s Diamond Eyes) and Mastodon (2009’s Crack the Skye) are both well suited to keep the gloomy spirit of “Them Bones” and “Man in the Box” alive.

Soulive
October 2
Terminal 5

Following a series of stylistic experiments that didn’t necessarily trigger the kind of mainstream breakthrough the band’s members might’ve been after, Soulive is back to its instrumental-trio roots these days, a retrenchment that’s hard to find fault with on Rubber Soulive, a just-released set of tastefully funked-up Beatles covers. Especially nice: the local outfit’s take on “Eleanor Rigby,” which somehow splits the considerable difference between death metal and elevator jazz.

Mavis Staples
October 6
City Winery

The gospel-music veteran wooed well-meaning NPR types in 2007 with We’ll Never Turn Back, a deeply felt set of civil rights–themed material produced by Ry Cooder; this fall, she’s set to scoop up more of their Paste-reading brethren with You Are Not Alone, which she made in Chicago with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. Beyond the Tweedy-penned title track, the disc includes covers of tunes by Randy Newman, Allen Toussaint, and John Fogerty.

My Morning Jacket
October 18–23
Terminal 5

My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James got his side project on last year, releasing a solo EP of acoustic George Harrison covers (under the name Yim Yames) and touring with Monsters of Folk. So perhaps this five-night stand is meant to assure MMJ fans that James hasn’t retired from his day job. Each show will find the Kentucky psych-jam band tackling a complete studio album from its catalog.

Phoenix
October 20
Madison Square Garden

How the heck did Phoenix get so big? Eighteen months ago, these French disco-rock dudes were probably dreaming of scoring an iPod spot; now, they’re headlining Madison Square Garden just like the real rock stars they’ve resembled for years. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the wonderfully titled 2009 disc that broke the band wide, certainly contains its share of effervescent delights: “Lisztomania,” for instance, still hasn’t worn out its welcome. But it’s still a song about Franz Liszt. That’s weird, right?

The Corin Tucker Band
October 26
Bowery Ballroom

The former (and perhaps future) Sleater-Kinney frontwoman spent the latter half of the ’00s concentrating on her family, but this fall, she’s returning to public life with 1,000 Years, an album of new tunes credited to the Corin Tucker Band, which also includes Sara Lund of Unwound and Seth Lorinczi of the Golden Bears. It’s a quieter disc than any of Sleater-Kinney’s, with none of the psych-guitar fury of that band’s 2005 swan song, The Woods. But Tucker remains a startlingly incisive songwriter, no matter her subject.

Blonde Redhead
November 3
Webster Hall

After working through their initial infatuation with Sonic Youth’s boy-girl art-guitar skronk, these internationally minded locals hit upon a unique indie-noir sound that’s been Blonde Redhead’s own since at least 2000’s Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons. Their new one, Penny Sparkle, is synth-ier and less discordant than the several that preceded it, but it still resembles the work of no one else. Live, the band physicalizes the sexual tension between singers Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace in a way that’s as arresting as it is uncomfortable.

The Levon Helm Band
November 26–27
Beacon Theatre

Here's something worth giving thanks for this Turkey Day: The man who already sounded like an old soul in 1969, when he sang "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" with the Band, is still recording and performing—and the results are as lively as anything 70-year-old Levon Helm did as a youngster. Expect this pair of post-Thanksgiving gigs to draw from 2007's Dirt Farmer and last year's Electric Dirt, but also from the history of American music; Helm's roots go deep, deep, deep.