Against Me! is a late addition to this year’s Lollapalooza in Chicago, IL. The band will be hitting the stage on the Saturday at 2:45 PM just after wrapping up the second leg of their ongoing tour with the Silversun Pickups. Other bands set to appear include Green Day, The Strokes, The Arcade Fire, Social Distortion, Gogol Bordello, AFI, Devo, Jimmy Cliff, The New Pornographers, Metric and Stars. The event will take place from August 6th through the 8th in Chicago’s Grant Park.
The band has also confirmed several months of touring with appearances in Europe, Australia and the UK. The band released White Crosses in 2010.
This year The Bouncing Souls and Hot Water Music are going to put out a split. They’re going to cover “True Believers” and I think we’re going to cover “Wayfarer” but we haven’t decided yet. We’re going to cover each other’s songs; put out a split seven inch and we’re going to go on tour in Australia and New Zealand.
Social Distortion have announced their fall touring schedule. The veteran punks will be hitting the road with Lucero and Frank Turner beginning October 14th and travel until later November. On this run, the band will be hitting venues in the US and also Eastern Canada including Toronto.
In a new Velocity Magazine interview cited by Buzzgrinder, beloved indie/punk musician Ted Leo mulls over the future and how he and his band can continue on. Quotes from the interview have been widely misinterpreted to state that Leo is considering retirement in 2011. In a post on his website he states that this isn’t true.
It’s true – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – doing this as a full-time thing, as wonderful as it is, has been a losing proposition for us for a while now. The crowds, while amazing, are mostly diminishing, the record sales, while appreciated, are a pretty weak percentage of what they were during the brief two year window in which we actually seemed to crack some sort of indie glass ceiling and make all ends meet and have a little left over to boot; and regarding other income streams that everyone likes to point to, I don’t sell my songs to commercials, and we keep our CD, LP, and t-shirt prices $10.00 a piece. There’s no money in it for us anymore, and to maintain even a semblance of solvency, we have to keep up the same touring schedule that we and I have been keeping up for the last nearly twenty years – a touring schedule that even the most hardened in our community will tell you is exceptional.
The energy we have inside us is not as boundless as it once seemed, and the amount we have to expend each year becomes more and more of a drain for less and less pay off. These are simple facts – it’s not at all a “woe is me” type of complaint – in fact, it’s not even a complaint at all – anyone who’s seen us play in the last few months knows that we’re having as good a time doing it as we ever have, and from my side of things, I can tell you that we’re actually having MORE fun most of the time – but I’ve decided to be honest with interviewers who ask me about “the state of things,” because what’s the point in sugar coating the realities? As we all push toward forty, exactly how to go forward wisely, in a way that allows each of us to live a full life (and not die between rest stops on I-80), is something I need to think about, and I am thinking about it.
It’s true – there’s no way we can continue forever as we have – but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue in some other way.
Queens of the Stone Age will be reissuing their 2000 album, Rated R. The band is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the critically acclaimed album with a double CD reissue including a second disc with six B-sides and the band’s summer 2000 Reading Festival concert–featuring nine previously unreleased songs, including live versions of Rated R’s “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer,” “The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret,” “Better Living Through Chemistry” and “Quick And To The Pointless.” The B-sides are “Ode To Clarissa”; “You’re So Vague,” a spoof of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”; covers of Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” and the Kinks’ “Who’ll Be The Next In Line”; a live version of the album’s “Monsters In The Parasol”; and a re-recording of “Born To Hula,” an early QOTSA song. The other Reading Festival tracks are concert takes on “Ode To Clarissa,” three songs from the band’s debut album (“Regular John,” “Avon” and “You Can’t Quit Me, Baby”), and “Millionaire,” a song originally from Josh Homme side project Desert Sessions.
Hardcore act The Effort have launched a stream of their brand new album, Wartime Citizens. It’s their first for Panic Records and is the follow up to the four-star reviewed Iconoclasm from 2008.
Cee-Lo has released a new video featuring his cover of the Band of Horses favorite, “No One’s Gonna Love You.” The original track comes from the Horses’ 2007 Sub Pop Records album, Cease to Begin. Note the video is NSFW.
Cee-Lo, who is well-known for his work in indie/r&b sensation Gnarls Barkley, will be releasing his solo album, Lady Killer in August.
Relapse Records has signed Toronto-based hardcore/metal outfit Titan. The band describes their sound in their bio:
Maintaining roots consistent with traditional Canadian hardcore established by the likes of Union Of Uranus, Buried Inside, Cursed and more, Titan enhances a rich, thunderous history with their own furious approach.
R.E.M. has launched a stream of the 25th anniversary reissue of their 1985 album, Fables of the Reconstruction. The album was polarizing when released, and saw the band departing from the art/punk sound of albums like Murmur and embracing more folk and Americana elements.
2010 has seen the 20th anniversary of Jawbreaker‘s monumental full length debut, Unfun. Not so coincidentally, it also featured the first formal remaster and reissue of the album in 20 years by Adam Pfalher’s own Blackball Records. To help go over the five W’s Pfahler dialed in for a marathon phone call with Punkews own Rich Verducci. In the first part of this two part interview, Pfahler discusses the process of remastering Unfun, as well has his plans for future Jawbreaker reissue.
Bloomington Indiana’s Austin Lucas has added more dates to his ongoing tour. The singer / songwriter recently wrapped up a performance at Calgary’s Sled Island festival and has now hopped the border to head southwards with Mississippi’s Cory Branan.
The erratically scheduled Day 2 review of 
In a new Velocity Magazine interview cited by 
