Posted by George Kaskanlian Jr in San Francisco on November 20th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Noise Pop Festival Returns in 2008!

posted 11.16.07

The Noise Pop Festival returns in 2008 from February 26 to March 2. Over six nights, Noise Pop 16 will take over the best-loved venues in San Francisco, to host unforgettable performances by Magnetic Fields, The Mountain Goats, The Gutter Twins, Cursive and dozens of other important indie rock, electronic, punk and cutting edge musical artists, transforming the city into an almost week-long celebration of the finest that the underground and not-so-underground has to offer, nationally and locally.

2007 marked Noise Pop’s 15th year as San Francisco’s premier celebration of independent music, art, film and culture and 2008 is the festival’s sweet 16 party. Established in San Francisco in 1993, Noise Pop started as a one-night event featuring the best underground rock bands that the Bay Area could dish up. Flash forward to 2007 and the Noise Pop Festival is another beast entirely. With live music as it’s focal point, Noise Pop has developed into full-scale cultural happening, adding gallery art shows, a music-themed film festival, educational panel discussions with musicians and music industry professionals, an indie designer trunk sale and a number of planned as well as spontaneous shin-digs.

Stephin Merritt’s Magnetic Fields will headline two shows at the beautiful Herbst Theatre as part of Noise Pop in support of their long-awaited new album, “Distortions.”

One of Magnetic Fields‘ most significant works is the 1999 triple album “69 Love Songs” which showcased Merritt’s songwriting abilities and the group’s musicianship, demonstrated by the use of unorthodox instruments. Their 2004 album “i” was also themed, with each of the 14 songs beginning with the letter (or, in the case of half the songs’ titles, the pronoun) “I”. Most recently, Stephin Merritt contributed a song “Man Of Million Faces” to NPR’s new Project Song Series where an artist is shown six vivid images, along with six words or phrases printed on white cards and asked to write and record a song in two days with the following instructions, “Choose one photo to inspire the subject of the song; choose a word or phrase that will inspire the style.”

Lo-fi legends The Mountain Goats will also perform three shows at three different venues during Noise Pop.

Another exciting addition to Noise Pop 2008 is The Gutter Twins, the anticipated collaboration between Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan. Dulli and Lanegan have been working together periodically since 2000. In July 2007, Pitchforkmedia.com announced that “two of the alt-rock era’s greatest frontmen,” had signed to Seattle label Sub Pop. The Gutter Twins will perform for Noise Pop in support of their debut album “Saturnalia,” currently set for an early 2008 release.