Today's Hotness: Dananananaykroyd, Video Nasties, Jesus Lizard

>> We had completely forgotten how much we were anticipating the release of the full-length debut from Dananananaykroyd until the band posted the video above for the exceptional new single "Black Wax." The track, whose b-side is the non-album track "No Wage," is taken from the sure-to-be-gigante long-player Hey Everyone!, which will be released by London-based Best Before Records April 6. Get ready to embrace your Glaswegian fight pop overlords by pre-ordering the set from BanquetRecords right here. The "Black Wax" single streets March 23 in the U.K., and it is also being vended by BanquetRecords; pre-order it here. If you are all amped up to hear "No Wage" now, the band soundchecked it in Hamburg last month and someone captured it to video. Check it out here.

>> It's been more than a month since we checked in on London indie fivesome Video Nasties. The latest is that the band's next single will be for the track "Jellybean," about which we offered some remarks here in January. The track is already receiving hype from prominent BBC DJ Steve Lamacq, and it will be issued March 23 in the U.K. and will also be available digitally via ITunes and perhaps other digital music storefronts. Video Nasties' full-length debut On All Fours will be issued April 13. It's unclear, to us anyway, what label will release the single and full-length. The band's 2007 EP Karl Blau was issued by Way Out West, and last fall's Albatross EP, well, we don't know who put that out.

>> To celebrate Record Store Day, that's April 18 in the U.S., Touch and Go is releasing a box set of Jesus Lizard vinyl singles that sounds very compelling. It is titled Inch and it will be available on that day and date only, apparently. All the tracks were remastered by Bob Weston of recording-stuff fame and the Shellac Of North America cohort. Highlights of the collection include "Puss," which was the Jesus Lizard side of the noted split single with a little rock trio called Nirvana, and "Gladiator," which was only offered at a 1992 Brixton Academy show in London. Every one of these singles has been out of print for more than six years. There's 17 tracks in all, which is weird, but perhaps the flip of the "Puss" single is blank or etched or something? For those of you not up on your Jesus Lizard in contemporary America, the original line-up has reformed and will play dates in 2009 including ATP: The Fans Strike Back and London's The Forum; both gigs are in May. The entire Jesus Lizard catalog is also being reissued this year by Touch and Go. We reviewed the DVD "The Jesus Lizard -- Live" here in June 2007; European correspondent Lars Ro filed a review of a Qui show here earlier in the same year. So how about some rock music? Here's the brutal rocker "Boilermaker," courtesy of the label.

The Jesus Lizard -- "Boilermaker" -- Inch
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[more info at Touch and Go here]

>> British electro-twee duo Psapp will release to ITunes April 6 a compilation of early and previously unavailable tracks called Early Cats And Tracks Vol. 2. As the title suggests, this is the second such collection. The band also reports that it will not come support its recent full-length The Camel's Back with a tour of America, although Psapp embarked on a short European tour Wednesday. There are still the singles, right? The second single from The Camel's Back is for the track "I Want That," a video for which the band has recently released to the Internerds.

Today's Hotness: Assembly Now, Answering Machine, Qui, Silver Jews

>> The electronically affable (we've only ever "met" him via email) Lush, drummer for London indie rock quartet Assembly Now, is now the former drummer for London indie rock quartet Assembly Now. Lush chalks his departure up to musical differences in a departure message to fans. In his stead for the foreseeable future (or at least foreseeable from across the Atlantic) will be John Sutton, brother to current bassist Howard Sutton, meaning now perhaps the rhythm section will have some sort of fraternal telepathy. Or maybe they will just pound each other like the Davies, Robinson and Gallagher brothers. Either way it will be exciting, no? We bid a fond farewell to Lush, who happily answered our questions when we featured Assembly Now in our on-again, off-again featurette Show Us Yours. Check out Show Us Yours #6 featuring Assembly Now here. The band's most recent release, the single "Graphs, Maps & Trees," was issued on the Kids label Aug. 6. Lush drummed on some pretty great singles. Here are the a-sides of the first two.

Assembly Now -- "It's Magnetic" -- "It's Magnetic" b/w "Out On 24s"
Assembly Now -- "Leigh-On-Sea" -- "Leigh-On-Sea" b/w "Tenement"
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[buy the "Leigh-On-Sea" and "Graphs, Maps & Trees" singles from ITunes here]

>> According to a recent interview in the 'zine Noize Makes Enemies, The Answering Machine's next single will likely be for a track called "Light Bulb." According to the parley with band fronter Martin, the track was produced by Robin Houseman, who also produced the Manchester, England-based quartet's excellent "Silent Hotels" single, which streeted June 18 and sold out its vinyl edition of 500 in two days. According to the interview The Answering Machine's next single will be out in November. Will new drummer Ben play on it? We guess we'll find out in a couple months. In the meantime, kids in the UK have scads of chances to see the band live. Check out all the tour dates at the band's MySpace teepee here.

>> More news out of the Johnny Foreigner camp... so the signing was with Best Before as we expected. If you are a "friend" of "the band" on "MySpace" then you got the awesome bulletin the band sent out Friday night showing their names (and BLOOD) on the proverbial dotted line, as well as some shots of the recent recording session at Southern Studios and sundry other scruffy label and A&R types. The planned EP Arcs Across The City may be more of a November thing, as opposed to October, according to the latest missive, and is going to come in a cool package with pop-up art. Did we mention the Southern Sessions were recorded by a fellow named Harvey Birrell, whose credits include the Irish act Therapy? (whose song "Teethgrinder" errr, "Screamager" is totally the band's best jam). After stalking them via the Internet for half a year, we are hoping to get a proper interview with Johnny Foreigner later this fall. Watch this space.

>> Drowned In Sound has an informative and amusing interview with badman rocker David Yow, former fronter of The Jesus Lizard and newest addition to the trio Qui, here. Qui's record Love's Miracle streets next week on Ipecac. To hear Yow tell it, since leaving The Jesus Lizard he's spent most of his time drinking too much and playing with Photoshop. On the new record Yow is mostly singing vocal parts writting by Qui's Matt, but the now trio did write one song together, "Today, Gestation." We reviewed a recently released The Jesus Lizard live DVD here, and our foreign correspondent Zoz reviewed a Qui live date in January here.

>> More news from Drowned In Sound, who are really holding shizz down lately, no? The site reports that there will be a new Silver Jews record in 2008. The band, led by troubled poet David Berman, was to have finished recording the set last month and may be released as soon as January. More details are here.

Today's Hotness: Lilys, Dinosaur Jr., Qui

>> Hot blog Built On A Weak Spot here examines Lilys' stellar 1992 debut In The Presence Of Nothing, and offers up a few MP3s to boot. The record is obscenely out-of-print, but there are used copies out there. In the comments to the post we advised interested parties to track down the Lilys' superlative and even more rare Tone Bender EP, the main selling point of which is the track "Eskimo." The track isn't available on CD anywhere else, so far as we know. We think we've posted "Eskimo" before, but for those of you who haven't heard it, here it is once again for a very limited time. The Tone Bender EP was released by Summershine but we are not sure which year -- likely 1993, but that's just a guess. Anyway, we wrote about the EP previously here. The excitingly rejuvenated Slumberland Records site is hosting MP3s of other tracks from the EP including "February 14th," which we've linked below as well.

Lilys -- "Eskimo" -- Tone Bender EP
Lilys -- "February 14th" -- February 14th b/w Threw A Day 7"
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[buy Lilys records from Newbury Comics here]

>> Speaking of buying music, we are very excited about the Other Music digital store that is online here. Idolator breaks down the salient whys and wherefores here. Basically, the tracks are encoded at a very nice 320Kbps and retail for about $1.11 a piece. We already ran over to try to buy a digital version of Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2007, which we accidentally purchased on vinyl from Forced Exposure. Anyway, we were all set to punch in our credit card information at Other Music Digital when we glanced at the page URL and noticed the usual HTTP as opposed to the secure HTTPS. The site's FAQ states that it uses SSL to protect transactions, but we weren't about to give our credit card number without double checking. We wrote to the customer service address and we'll let you know if we learn anything interesting.

>> According to the industrious folks over at FreakScene.net, alternative rock behemoth Dinosaur Jr. is slated to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman on April 30. That happens to be the eve of the release of the band's fantastic new set Beyond, which we reviewed here. The FreakScene freakers also tracked down a clip of J Mascis performing on Norwegian television recently. It's a little tricky to access, and in fact we couldn't quite figure it out, but if you've got some time to kill, the details are in this thread.

>> Just a bit of a follow-up on our item from last night: we had no idea today would be the day that Qui news was going to break, but broke it did less than 24 hours after we mentioned them in the intro to yesterday's A Silver Mount Zion review. Anyway, Pitchfork reports here that the band has signed with Touch And Go and will issue the set Love's Miracle Sept. 11. Amazingly, the set will include a cover of Pink Floyd's epic "Echoes." Wild.

>> Pun Canoes just published a lengthy interview here with the filmmakers of the excellent documentary "American Hardcore," which we wrote about previously here and here and here. Worth sitting down and spending some time with, and if you haven't seen the documentary and are a fan of any sort of modern alternative music, well, you have to see this.