Alex Turner: From Monkeys to Shadow Puppets

March 2, 2008

Alex Turner: From Monkeys to Shadow Puppets
Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner is making good use of the band’s current temporary hiatus by kicking off a new band project that he’s calling The Last Shadow Puppets. Teaming up with his musical pal Miles Kane, The Last Shadow Puppets are set to release their debut album, The Age of the Understatement, on Domino Records this upcoming May. Produced by James Ford and featuring the conducting skills of Owen Pallett, who conducted the London Metropolitan Orchestra on several tracks, the set will be prefaced by a single, the album’s title track, which will hit radio and digital download formats on April 15; other tracks set for inclusion on the album are “Calm Like You,” “The Chamber,” “Black Plant,” and “Meeting Place”...
Four long years after their last studio effort, Phantom Planet are making a return with their new set, Raise the Dead, on their new label, Fueled By Ramen, this spring. After a lineup change and some busy tour times with Sting and ‘60s band The Zombies, the band got back in the studio late in 2006, and took 18 months to record songs from “Geronimo,” to the album’s expected first single, “Do the Panic” - Raise the Dead is scheduled to hit stores on April 15. The band is also slated to take part in the upcoming Honda Civic Tour with tourmates Motion City Soundtrack, Panic! at the Disco, and The Hush Sound; that tour begins on April 10 on the U.S. West Coast...
A couple of festivals have solidified their plans for this upcoming summer; on July 11-13, Kinross, Scotland will be the place to be for the T in the Park Festival, which will feature the likes of Interpol, Aphex Twin, Kaiser Chiefs, The Fratellis, Stereophonics, Ian Brown, The Chemical Brothers, The Kooks, KT Tunstall, Counting Crows, Hot Chip, Ben Folds, and The Pogues, alongside headliners R.E.M. and Rage Against the Machine. T in the Park will also feature the NME/Radio 1 Stage, which will present sets from The Raconteurs, among others...
And back in the States, the All Points West Music and Arts Festival has announced its full lineup, which will take place not on the West Coast (as would be expected), but on the East Coast, namely Jersey City, at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park. The weekend of August 8-10 will welcome this new event, as produced by the folks behind the Coachella Festival, with headliners Radiohead and Jack Johnson, and additional acts including Underworld, Kings of Leon, Youssou N’Dour, The Roots, Metric, The Go! Team, Mates of State, and plenty of others, with crowds of 25,000 expected per day...

MODERN ROCK LINK OF THE WEEK:
English singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt’s critically and fan-acclaimed album, The Beautiful Lie, was released back in 2006, but for one technical reason or another, never got a U.S. release date, forcing Harcourt fans to try and find the album as an import; now the disc is heading for America, with a June 3 release date and Harcourt himself appearing at this year’s SXSW Music Festival. Find out more about the album and Harcourt himself at
www.edharcourt.com...

MINI BUZZ:
The Police have tacked on a string of summer dates for May and June in North America and Europe, and they’ve snagged Elvis Costello and the Imposters as opening act...
Wallflowers frontman (and Bob Dylan’s son) Jakob Dylan has finished recording his solo debut album, Seeing Things, and it will now be in stores on May 13, supported by a spring tour by the singer-songwriter...
The Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am has been tapped for his acting skills in the next X-Men movie; Will.i.am will play Wraith, a mutant with the power of invisibility in the spinoff X-Men movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with his co-stars including Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth, Danny Huston as Stryker, and of course Hugh Jackman as Wolverine himself...
Popster Justin Timberlake will be flexing his acting muscle in another movie, too, namely The Open Road, in which Timberlake will play a baseball player alongside co-stars Jeff Bridges and Mary Steenburgen...
Moby, Mos Def, and 311 rocked the crowd with their shared headlining duties at this year’s University of California Riverside’s Heat Festival last weekend...
Swedish modern rockers Shout Out Louds are prepping to release a new EP on April 8; their Impossible EP will include several mixes of the tune “Impossible” as well as “Hard Rain” and “December”...
And it’s possible that you just might want some of this week’s releases for your very own... ON CD: Heavenly States’ Delayer... Various Artists’ Funky Nassau: Compass Point Story 1980-1986... Beach House’s Devotion... American Music Club’s The Golden Age... Bell XI’s Flock... and Son Lux’s At War With Walls and Mazes... ON DVD: Nickelback: Ultimate Video Collection... America: Live in Central Park 1979... Take That - Beautiful World Live... and B.B. King Live... and that’s the buzz for this week’s Modern Rock.

Questions, comments, rants, raves, suggestions on this column or your fave musicians? Send ‘em to Kristi at modernrocker@gmail.com