RecaPitulation: Robert Pollard, Polvo, All Smiles, Drums, Sufjan Stevens

Hey homies. We’ve got a big ol’ RecaP for you, with loads of news from today and some leftover bits we didn’t get around to pubbing last week. Enjoy.

If it’s Monday - hell, if it’s any day of the week - you know there’s Robert Pollard news. We recently tried to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s in terms of what he’s up to lately, but anyone familiar with indie-rock’s busiest body knows that any such attempt results in futility every time. Beyond everything we already told you about, he’s also adding another title: the DVD “The Devil Went Home and Puked: Robert Pollard’s Rock Show.” Coming November 17 on Rockathon/MVD Visual, it’ll downpour Guided by Voices videos, and rare clips from that band and other Pollard projects. That said, it’s only 89 minutes long, a short length that doesn’t do justice to the inexhaustible rock god. …

Speaking of prolificness, we’re also doing our damndest to stay on top of Nick Cave, but the updates just keep coming. The latest news surrounds his upcoming second novel, “The Death of Bunny Munro,” which we told you all about last week. Right here, on the book’s site, you can kick back and listen to Cave recite more words from “Chapter 11,” while this page has new tour dates - in the U.K. only, alas. …

Bon Iver + Collections of Colonies of Bees = yes please. Here’s a new song, “Island IS,” by Volcano Choir, which features members of both bands:

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Sounds more like the soundtrack to a walk in a forest than a trip to an island. And look here, we may have guessed right:

Unmap unfolds all its post-folk worth September 22 on Jagjaguwar. …

Here’s another one to stick in your ear: “Frozen Heart Frozen Mind” by the Opposite Sex:

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One of the stronger post-punk songs we’ve heard in recent months, with expert transitions, a great Albini-esque guitar sound and some Factory Records-sounding vocals planted on top. The D.C. band’s self-issued Live + Burn lands September 1. …

In case you haven’t heard, tropicália is in. Maybe it’s because of all the cross-pollination, general crossings-over and other forms of globe-trotting that are going on in the indie world these days. Either way, Apostle of Hustle are some of the best exemplars of this new ripple, and Gogol Bordello seem to have caught wind of that. The Apostle will open for the gypsy punks throughout October, in Canada, along the West Coast, into Arizona, up to Kansas, over to Virginia and down to Atlanta. Finally the Northeast gets screwed over. …

Chunklet knows we Mastodon fans are in this all together, so they’re offering a tee for the band at the sinfully cheap price of $3 - so long as you throw down a fiver for shipping and pick up something else from their store. We have so many great things to say about the Chunklet crew, but we’re afraid they’ll mock us if we get too mushy. Just look at the wrath they unleashed upon Victory Records last week. …

Merge Records fans, do yourself a favor and preorder the upcoming albums by Polvo (In Prism, 9.8) or the Clean (Mr. Pop, also 9.8) - or anything else the label is putting out in September. If you do, you’ll get a chance to win a subscription to Merge’s ridiculously massive “Score!” box set, which has so many CDs, rarities and other goodies that it’d take all night to list ‘em. Do it before September 8. …

Kylesa, Wino, Dälek, Bob Log III and William Elliott Whitmore made the grade for the 35th edition of Alarm, the second to be presented in book form. It costs a pretty penny ($14), but subscribing will save you a few dimes. …

We’re pretty psyched about Evangelista’s new one, Prince of Truth (Constellation) - so much so that, you know, we’re writing about it and all. Tiny Mix Tapes has a download of one of the songs, “The Slayer,” a noisy, almost-beatless track of abstraction and spoken-word spookery. Sounds like a more neo version of Jarboe. If you’re looking for the record in the racks, keep your eyes peeled for this cover:

Or just, you know, look under “E,” for “Evangelista.” …

This one cracked us up. So Math the Band have been regularly hyped as having the same spirit as Andrew W.K. (hey, we just wrote about him) - even if they’re more of a twisted, inside-out punk band, while he’s mocku-metal. Well, hype, prepare to be validated: The maniac has given his blessing to Math the Band’s recently expelled acoustic, super-sweet cover of his song “It’s Time to Party.” And we can’t stop laughing:

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Heartfelt tribute or loving prank, we wish we had some sort of prize to give them. …

Jim Fairchild (he of the Grandaddy family) checked in with us - and probably countless other media “types” - about what he and his All Smiles band are up to. Calling to mind that Pirates Press release we talked about a couple of weeks ago - the one that features bands performing an electric and an acoustic version of the same song - All Smiles are pumping out five samplers that find them taking five different tunes and presenting them in both demo and finished form. “If you dig it, please tell your friends,” he said in his e-mail. “Spread the word. Word. We appreciate it. And be on the lookout soon for the 5 best of the aforementioned demo songs from the latest album to pop up together in one form or another. We won’t charge a damned thing for them when they appear.” He added that All Smiles’ Fall Never Fell EP is finally done and will be out in the next month or so. And also that he’ll be playing three solo shows in September - San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, you’re the lucky ones - before hitting the tarmac with Modest Mouse. And here we thought we were busy. …

The Drums, one of our earlier participants in “The Rising,” rolled out their video for “Let’s Go Surfing” on Brooklyn Vegan late last week. But we were given a legit embed code from their camp, so we’ll re-run it here:

Fiery Furnaces fans, burn this into your brains: Matthew Friedberger’s first solo trek, Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School, will be revisited by Thrill Jockey on October 6. The Friedberger re-release will be beefed up with four bonus tracks. …

The Raincoats - yes, those Raincoats, the ones who were on Kurt Cobain’s short list of favorite bands - are getting some reissue love from the immortal Kill Rock Stars. The first album by the London punk squad, which started around 32 years ago and lasted for about another seven (we trust you can do the math) - will now feature one precious extra song, “Fairytale in the Supermarket.” If you’re itching for this one but don’t have a record player, then you’d better be a collector not planning to actually listen to it. The Raincoats are also reawakening for four gigs, in San Fran (10.9), L.A. (10.11), Portland (you know which one; 10.13) and NY (10.16) …

No, Of Montreal won’t be appearing at this year’s Pop Montreal extravagala - but Yo La Tengo, Sufjan Stevens, Jay Reatard and Lullabye Arkestra will. The just-added artists will hob-knob with Mono, Destroyer, Butthole Surfers and other already-announced acts at the five-day fest. It’s going down September 30 through October 4, with, on average, 30 daily performances. …

Especially compared to punk and metal bands, indie-rock groups - at least not the big ones - are running up a deficit in the live-album column. Brakesbrakesbrakes - or, as they’re known for short, “Brakes” - will try to help balance the scales on October 6 with the digital-only Rock Is Dodelijk. Most interesting aspect of the album, from first blush: Equal parts were remixed afterward to make the songs meet the band’s liking, while the rest were left in rough form. As we told you before, the Fat Cat kittens have been adopted by the Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jetpacks for part of the introverted Scots’ fall tour. We’d call it “much-anticipated,” ’cause it is, but then again, how many of this fall’s tours fit that bill? Five dozen? So we’ll clarify ourselves: much-anticipated by us. …

We haven’t listened to Q and Not U in ages, but we’re curious about a new band called Title Tracks that features John Davis of said Dischord act. In particular, because they’ve done a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest” with Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell. Just signed to Ernest Jennings, their It Was Easy LP is pegged for early next year. …

Summer cancellations: Abigail Williams off the Goatwhore/Dååth tour; Aerosmith extinguishing theirs after Steven Tyler took a nasty fall onstage in South Dakota. Just so you know. …

Imagine being 19, wishing you were in Smashing Pumpkins - and then you get the call of your dreams. That’s what happened to one Mike Byrne, who has been touched by Billy Corgan to warm the seat left vacant by drummer Jimmy Chamberlain. We don’t have any respect left for the Pumpkins, so we’ll stop talking about them momentarily, but it’s undeniably cool that an aspiring musician found such a golden ticket in his chocolate bar. …

Aaron Turner and James Plotkin go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it only makes sense the Isis and ex-Khanate frontmen have put their heads together for a new endeavor, Jodis. We haven’t heard a drop from them yet, but we’ve heard it’ll be cerebral and intense (as you’d expect). October 27 will mark the release of their first effort, Secret House. It’s coming out on - you guessed it - Hydra Head. …

Years - or, six weeks - ago, we brought you up to speed with Every Time I Die’s new one, Junk Aesthetic (Epitaph, September 15). Well, at the time we didn’t know that they would eventually reveal that they also have a deluxe edition - you know, the kind that comes with extras - tucked up their collective ass. It comes with two extra songs - plus “Party Pooper,” a bonus DVD that’s in the spirit of their classic “Jackass”-inspired tour doc, “Shit Happens.” With excrementitously named material like that, it’s a wonder how those guys still meet women. …

Here’s the lamest metal promo pic we’ve seen in a while. It’s for Five Finger Death Punch, so, really, we shouldn’t have expected much:

Let us know in the comments below which is more grating: the dreads the guy on the right is wearing; every aspect of the guy second-farthest to the left; or the fact that the guy in the tank top (presumably the lead singer, but really, these guys aren’t worth the fact-check) has his hand in the form of a “five-finger death punch.” Please, begone. …

Less than a month ago, we got word that, thanks to Southern Lord, Nihill had locked in a North American release date (September 15) for their Krach debut. Now we learn that the second chapter in the kvlt band’s trilogy, Grond, will be scaring up stores a mere month later, on October 13. Be aware - or beware - that Nihill are a challenging listen. Or, rather, an impossible challenge to listen to. Have fear. …

Was it our DVR acting up this weekend, or has MTV2 made yet another major adjustment to “Headbangers Ball“? We taped it as usual but discovered that the feed - for a show that compiles videos, mind you - was “audio-only.” It’s bad enough that you can never keep track of when it’ll be on, whether it’ll be one or two hours in length, etc. But if this is some new strategy in which visual-free videos are supposed to be appealing, we’re not getting it. …

Troy Oftedal is no longer Cattle Decapitation’s bassist after he had those ever-cryptic “musical and personal differences” with the gore-grinders. Rahsaan Davis is doing the honors for the rest of their tour. …

Are they still making those “Pupper Master” movies? If so, there are a couple of critters we’d like to see in the next installment, represented by these 5-and-a-half-inch toys:

Hey, HeWhoCanNotBeNamed and Blag Dahlia/Blag Jesus/Blag the Ripper do call their punk band “Dwarves” after all. Just out, only 1,000 of the toys (all them numbered) were made by Aggronautix, which also previously cut G.G. Allin and Tesco Vee down to size, so to speak. …

Fun fact: Boone’s Farm - yeah, the candy “cocktail” - sponsored this year’s US Air Guitar Championships. So put that in your glass and drink it. …

And finally, some good news from Squirrel Nut Zippers and their drummer, Chris Phillips:

“Honestly, the band is getting along better than we ever did in the past, and I believe the desire is there to try recording a new album for release in 2010.”

We’re in a forgiving mood today, so we’ll quash the cracks before they tumble from our thumbs.