We can now announce that Radiohead drummer PHILIP SELWAY will be supporting JAMES YORKSTON at his annual Christmas shindig on 20th of December.

We’re also delighted to announce that Gruff Rhys will be playing Cadogan Hall in February.

Eat Your Own Ears presents
GRUFF RHYS
Y NIWL
Plus Special Guests

Tuesday 22 February 2011
Doors 19.00

CADOGAN HALL
5 SLOANE TERRACE, LONDON, SW1X 9DQ

Tickets £15.50 from:
www.seetickets.com
0870 264 3333
www.ticketweb.com
0844 477 1000

http://www.gruffrhys.com/
http://www.myspace.com/gruffrhys24hrs
http://www.myspace.com/yniwl

GRUFF RHYS will tour the UK in February. The recently confirmed dates – which are listed below – will see Gruff check in and out of hotels and venues across the country in what is his first UK tour for over 3 years.

Gruff will be joined on the road by North Wales’s instrumental surf rock quartet, ‘Y Niwl’. In addition to playing as support at all gigs, the band will be putting in a double shift and helping out on some of Gruff’s songs too.

The shows kick off in Sheffield on 14th February, the same day as Gruff’s new Hotel Shampoo album is released. The record is inspired by, and takes its title from, the raw material used to construct Gruff’s recent art installation of the same name – disposable, wasteful complimentary hotel products acquired whilst touring the world over the last 15 years. “Having never kept a journal these items have become like diary entries, triggering memories of all those buildings and random people I’ve met and inspiring songs on the album” explains Gruff.

Gruff Rhys’ Shark Ridden Waters single is out now and the video is online here. The song is taken from the Hotel Shampoo album, out 14th February.

Plus TWIN SHADOW announce a show for February too:

Tuesday 25th January
Doors 7:30pm
The Lexington96-98 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JB

http://www.myspace.com/thetwinshadow

Twin Shadow is the nom de plume of Dominican-born George Lewis Jr. Escaping the palm trees and still heat of the Sunshine State, George travelled north to New York where he began writing debut album Forget over a series of months in his Brooklyn apartment. Inevitably, his nomadic impulses meant that the sound of Twin Shadow wasn’t to remain tied to the Big Apple.

Drawing inspiration from extended trips abroad to Copenhagen and Berlin, and a distinctly European sensibility that takes in Can, Bowie and a classic pop melodicism, Twin Shadow has proven broad in scope and enterprise. As such, Forget offers a panoramic view of a musical landscape that spans decades. Veering from the full-throttle power ballad ‘Slow’ to the shimmering Niles Rodgers-tinged disco of ‘At My Heels’ and the new wave synthesized breaks of ‘Castles In the Snow’, Forget speaks of a carnivorous musical mind not afraid to venture down unknown paths.

It was venturing down these paths that led Twin Shadow to the attention of Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor in 2009. Impressed by the ambition of the music, Taylor not only lent his skills to the project by co-producing the record, but also offered to release Forget in the US on his newly established label, Terrible Records. Soon after, Twin Shadow signed to 4AD for the rest of the world, a deal George sees as allowing him to “share his music through his dream label”.

“Lewis’ music has serious depth.” Mojo ****

“A major musical talent.” Fact 4.5/5

“We didn’t expect 2010 to throw up such a last minute highlight.” The Fly ****

“Understatedly, subtly, almost perfect.” NME 8/10

We also have several other brilliant new shows on sale this week:

FREELANCE WHALES / BROKEN RECORDS
Plus Special Guests

Wednesday 2nd February 2011
XOYO, 32-37 Cowper Street 
London 
EC2A 4AP

FREELANCE WHALES crackling harmonies, occasional computer beats and baroque-pop arrangements should also prove irresistible to people with soft spots for the likes of The Postal Service, Sufjan Stevens and Lambchop.

Seven-piece BROKEN RECORDS’ brooding cellos, pounding piano and lead vocals embittered and indelibly inked in pain all create an epic swirling and mystifying sound, with a warm passionate heart beating, and the thump of interesting little flourishes like glockenspiel and accordion and trumpet to round out an impressively bursting sound.

http://www.myspace.com/freelancewhales
http://www.myspace.com/brokenrecordsedinburgh

THE VASELINES
Plus Special Guests

Friday 4th February 2011
XOYO, 32-37 Cowper Street 
London 
EC2A 4AP

Formed in Glasgow in 1987, cult act THE VASELINES released two singles and one album, Dum Dum, on the 53rd & 3rd label. Splitting up in 1989 (in the same week their album was released), they might have faded into obscurity but for the intervention of a certain band from Seattle. Nirvana covered three Vaselines songs, helping to fuel a growing after-the-fact appreciation of their seedy, two-and-a-half chord, garage pop manifesto.

http://www.myspace.com/thevaselinesband

Tickets for both shows available from:

www.ticketweb.co.uk
08444 771000
www.seetickets.com
0870 264 3333

Eat Your Own Ears present
THE AIDAN MOFFAT VALENTINE’S REVUE

14 February
Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Road, London, W12 7LJ 020 8222 6955

Tickets £13 advance from
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk
08444 771000
http://www.seetickets.com
0870 264 3333

http://www.aidanmoffat.co.uk/www.myspace.com/lesshelleys
http://www.myspace.com/aidanmoffatmusic

Never an avid follower of convention, Arab Strap founder Aidan John Moffat plans a Bush Hall show around the release of his new mini-album of condensed material. Having written a short song for a potential advert pitch (which he never got) he decided to apply the same economy to nine other tracks, coming up with ‘ten short short songs for modern lovers’. The mini-album features ten new recordings of no more than one minute in length.

“How To Get To Heaven From Scotland”
Deluxe Box Set Edition ‘Valentines Day release’ Saturday 14th February
Album released 16th February 2009 on Chemikal Underground

Last time we heard from Aidan Moffat, it was with the wonderful, darkly humorous, spoken word album and book package I Can Hear Your Heart, which received rave reviews on its February 2008 release. Less than a year later, 35 year-old Moffat was back in a new guise, as frontman of Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs.

Moffat’s certainly been keeping busy since the demise of Arab Strap, the duo he fronted for 11 years from 1995 to 2006. Alongside his many musical guises, the latest of which is a collaboration with Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite named Aloha Hawaii, he’s taken up a position as an agony uncle for website The Quietus, specialising in sex, of course. He’s already forming plans for the next album, and the next – but don’t expect it to be with The Best-Ofs.

“I’m currently of the notion that I won’t make a record with the same band or under the same name twice,” says Moffat. “My next album will most likely be one that I’m writing and recording with Bill Wells. I’ve also started a sequel to I Can Hear Your Heart, but it won’t be any kind of conventional music album so I don’t think that falls under the new rules. I reserve the right to change my mind anyway.”

Plus guests