If you read the paper or have talked to me since late last year about local music, you’ve probably noticed my downright affection for DeYarmond Edison, who moved wholesale from Wisconsin last August. This story chapped some people, but that’s OK. Fact is, less than a year after arriving, this band has reinvented itself in a fascinating way, veering from their roots-rock origins while still maintaining a Band-like soul and eartnestness in what they do. They play tonight at Chaz’s Bull City Records in Durham with half of the often mesmerizing Nola and Richmond’s hit-andmiss Homemade Knives (the songwriting is fantastic, but the arrangements leave me wanting something more). DYE frontman Justin Vernon just released a seventrack solo album, too, and I haven’t been able to get the first track, “Hazelton,” out of my head for a month. In two minutes, it builds a simple, shouted verse into a seven-part, multi-tracked vocal line, contrasting lines splitting in and out of one another, Steve Reich re-arranging a prison song over shimmering fingerpicking. Or maybe you should just download it. It’s spectacular.

If you haven’t heard, Tom Waits makes an ultra-rare appearance in Asheville on August 2. Here’s what the promoters had to say about tickets, which go on sale tomorrow.

“Tickets for the Tom Waits concert scheduled for Wednesday, August 2, 8 p.m. at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium go on sale Friday, July 14, at 10 a.m. local time. Tickets are $76 and $55.50 each, plus applicable service charges. There is a 2-ticket limit per purchase.
WILL-CALL ONLY TICKETS, which include many of the best seats, can ONLY be purchased online via Concertwire.com, Ticketmaster.com or by phone at 828-251-5505. Tickets will NOT be sold at Ticketmaster outlets or the venue box office. These tickets may only be retrieved through WILL CALL on the day of show and cannot be delivered via any other method. Purchaser must enter the venue and bring (1) their guest, (2) government-issued photo ID and (3) the credit card used to purchase the tickets. Designated box office windows will be set up on the day of the show beginning at 4 p.m. These tickets are non-transferable and may not be picked up by any other individual — no exceptions. Ticket purchaser and guest will be wristbanded at that moment and given the 2 tickets, which will be stamped with a special ID code. Ticket-holders must present their stamped tickets and be wearing undamaged wristbands for admittance. The venue will open at least an hour before show time; check www.concertwire.com for exact door time. Lost or damaged tickets and wristbands are not replaceable.

ALL REMAINING TICKETS can be purchased at www.ticketmaster.com or by phone at 828-251-5505. Tickets will be delivered by standard mail about a week before the concert, or buyers may choose to have them held at will call. Purchasers of these tickets can arrive and enter the venue beginning at 7 p.m.

Please adhere to published ticket limits. Persons who exceed the 2-ticket limit may have any or all of their orders and tickets cancelled without notice by Ticketmaster at its discretion. This includes orders associated with the same name, email address, billing address, credit card number or other information.

Showtime is 8 p.m., and there will not be an opening act.”

And now, a track from ANTI-: “Hold On.”

Peoples’ minds are already getting boggled for the middle of September, with conflicts like Tom Petty versus Lambchop/M. Ward/Portastatic on September 19 and Sufjan Stevens pitted against Jose Gonzalez on September 21. Those shows come flanked by Richard Buckner and Eric Bachmann on the Local 506 stage, Doc Watson in Raleigh, a rare Thad Cockrell and Caitlin Cary appearance at The Pour House and folks like Band of Horses, Art Brut and Calexico in Carrboro.

Happily, though, September 7 and 9 present no such choices: Rhys Chatham brings his new band, Rhys Chatham’s Essentialist, to Local 506 on September 7. In researching “Working with the Elements,” the cover story I wrote for Signal to Noise #42, a look at the entire Table of the Elements family, David Daniel—half of Atlanta/New York/Chicago duo (or trio) San Agustin—told me that, while on tour with Chatham and Tony Conrad in a small van driving to TOTE’s huge SXSW showcase in March, he started playing metal by bands like Sleep, Sunn 0))) and Earth. Chatham had never heard any of it before, and he told the rest of the van that he was going to change his musical direction in response to this new music. Just six months later, he’s already got a band together to chase down his new love of doom metal. It’s called Essentialist. Chatham is given to artistic epiphanies. He studied tuning with Glenn Gould and avant garde composition with New Yorkers, founding The Kitchen’s ultra-fruitful music program in 1971 at the age of 19. A Ramones concert in 1975, though, pushed him to a love of rock, leading Chatham to combine the minimalism he had studied with the rock that floored him, resulting in his groundbreaking “Guitar Trio” and, later, in his piece for 100 guitars, “An Angel Moves Too Fast To See.” Glenn Branca, Thurston Moore and Michael Gira all count as his former bandmates. Jonathan Kane, the Swans co-founder who has been drumming with him for two decades, will join Essentialist, as well as members of San Agustin and Bear in Heaven. For a video of Chatham conducting his Guitar Army at SXSW this year, see YouTube. That performance included members of Sonic Youth, Tortoise and Come. To read what I wrote about the performance, see this.

Two days after Chatham comes through, another band that’s certainly at the footing of his new path rolls through. Japanese doom-and/or-trash lords Boris play Local 506 on September 9. This is kind of a big deal, as Boris shows are pretty rare. Consider this: I almost drove to Ohio in May to see them. Sets from these gear savants are enormous, loud and ambitious, much like their records. Though they’ve gotten more love lately thanks to Pitchfork’s review of Pink, Boris has been phenomenal for half of this decade, and their second album, 2001’s Amplifier Worship, is as good as metal this decade gets or likely will get. For a fantastic 53-minute video of Boris live in Philadelphia last year, see this YouTube gem.

I am very excited.

Before the Lincoln Theatre closed to add a balcony in order to increase its ticket capacity back in May, co-owner Mark Thompson told me that, when the club returned just before the start of the school year, they would be concentrating on big-deal bills, large enough to fill their expanded space. Thompson also said the balcony would support a few hundred ticketholders, but the first month would involve experimenting with how many people it could fit while actually allowing for lines of sight. It looks like Thompson is holding true to that. Bands confirmed for the Lincoln (but not necessarily by the venue’s website) include World Party, The Walkmen, Reverend Horton Heat, Buju Banton and the One Love Reggae festival, Supersuckers, Hank III and Buckethead. That’s a decent schedule coming off a hiatus, and it’s certainly better than the last year at the Lincoln.
David Menconi says the club should open around August 11, which is good news for The Walkmen: Bobby Bare Jr.’s publicist says he opens for The Walkmen (A Hundred Miles Off is a wreck, eh?) at the Lincoln on August 13, and their MySpace confirms it.

Consistent quality bookings in Raleigh? Hmm, let’s see.

Fresh on the the heels of two of his best works as Portastatic—last year’s Bright Ideas and this year’s score for Matt Bissonette’s movie Who Loves the Sun?—Mac McCaughan is set to release the ninth full-length from his 13-year-old band on October 10. Over nine tracks, the Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder pairs some of his darkest and most brittle lyrics to date with some of the band’s most enthusiastic, contagious arrangements. “Sweetness and Light,” for instance, combines a light-handed tropical melody, island percussion and a winsome violin line, as McCaughan waxes about the problems with his own pechant for gloom: “Why can’t you sing of hopeful things/ And skies that go from gray to blue? I know my voice is like a broken song/ I know my voice is like a tightening screw.”

When Be Still Please works, as it does on “Sweetness and Light,” it’s magnificent, finding McCaughan casting his introspection at a wayward world with pretty intense ire. “You Blanks” is the epitome of that notion, as it’s an impossibly well-conceived rock song, slowing and speeding through verse-chorus-verse rigors with a Top 40 ease. “Well all my songs used to end the same way/ Everything’s going to be OK/ You fuckers make that impossible to say,” McCaughan sings above a teasing oboe and a commanding rhythm section. Imagine it: Those lyrics come tagged by a bright “Yeah, yeah, yeah” plea, a deceptvely soft challis draping the discontent hammer.

I can’t really describe how taken I am with McCaughan’s “I’m in Love (with Arthur Dove),” the third cut here. The song will fall victim to the pre-emptive skip button of hipsters turned off by its R.E.O. Speedwagon-ish intro. But stick with it: Those multi-tracked harmonies come stacked atop a radio-ready electric guitar and thick, chugging chords from a heavy-handed acoustic guitar, all in an ode to an American abstract painter. It’s perfect, easily the most intriguing (and, at this point, I think best) track here.

One complaint, though: On an album written so well, with arrangements and ideas that stretch across McCaughan’s discography, “Getting Saved” seems way out of place, too pedestrian and too much of a rock reclamation for its own good. It’s the most minor song on Be Still Please, not only because it sounds like it could be an attempt to match wits with some of the more forgettable bands Superchunk influenced, but also because its pedantic solipsism seems too extreme here. Still, Be Still Please will make October good.

Merge is eager to keep most of the album off of the Web until October, but, in the meatime, here’s “Sour Shores,” the first cut.

Orange County Social Club, the hipster haven and musical mecca of a watering hole on Carrboro’s East Main Street, celebrates its fifth birthday in September, and it’s going to be a month-long party worth attending, even if you too have sometimes felt slightly uncomfortable drinking on that side of the Orange County line. Three big shows are planned around the event: Superchunk () and Tenement Halls at the Cat’s Cradle on September 1, David Bazan, Louis Schefano, Jenny and Lee Waters and Jeremy Chatelain at the bar on September 18 and The Rosebuds, Adam Price’s new band Hundred Aires, Ron Liberti’s new band Victory Factory and Chuck Johnson & Phil Blank at the bar on September 24. Oops, almost forgot: ASHLEY STOVE IS REUNITING FOR THAT NIGHT, TOO.

Merge has the news, so check that shit and buy that White Whale record.