A statement on the band's website reads:

"We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management."

"The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve's presenting this advert with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support."

"The White Stripes support this nation’s military, at home and during times when our country needs and depends on them. We simply don’t want to be a cog in the wheel of the current conflict, and hope for a safe and speedy return home for our troops."

"We have not licensed this song to the Air Force Reserve and we plan to take strong action to stop the ad containing this music."

Quite right. The advert, for recruitment, has since been removed from the Air Force Reserve's website, as well as the from YouTube itself. Probably a wise move from them, to be honest.

In other Jack/Meg news, Pitchfork reports that there more, North American, shows for a ballet which will feature the band's music, in orchestral form. The production, by Wayne McGregor, is called Chroma and debuted way back in 2006 in London.

The songs line-up as below:

1. 'It's Working'
2. 'Song for Dan Treacy'
3. 'Someone's Missing'
4. 'Flash Delirium'
5. 'I Found a Whistle'
6. 'Siberian Breaks'
7. 'Brian Eno'
8. 'Lady Dada's Nightmare'
9. 'Congratulations'

Their official website currently features a countdown timer and an image of a beach. What pseudo-arty bollocks. Apparently some of the songs are going to be about surfing, a pursuit we can all relate to. If you look closely at the picture, you can see Benjamin Linus skulking around. Honestly!

And now, watch the most redundant, head-smashing, suicidal version of their song 'Kids' (or any 'music') you're ever going to hear. From The Mentalists. Apparently.

Sorry about that. You can also watch the official video for 'Kids', featuring BAD MUM Joanna Newsom below:

The record, the follow-up to 2008's Number 17 album This Is Not The World, which received generally positive reviews, will be called The Chaos and will be released through their own label, Nul, on April 26.

Below are the dates for the nationwide tour which accompanies the record's release:

April:
26 - Norwich, Arts Centre
27 - Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
28 - Leeds, Cockpit

May:
1 - Middlesbrough, The Empire
2 - Manchester, Academy 2
3 - Sheffield, The Leadmill
4 - Birmingham, Academy 2
6 - London, Scala
7 - Gloucester, Guildhall
8 - Coventry, Casbah
10 - Bristol, Thekla
11 - Exeter, The Cavern
12 - Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms
13 - Northampton, Roadmender

Tickets for all shows go on sale on Friday February 12, with pre-sale tickets being available to mailing list subscribers from the day before, Thursday 11. Click below to watch the making of their new video 'Heartbeat Song', which is also the lead single from The Chaos.

Schreifels said:

“Sam [Rival Schools drummer] plays basketball with Adam and he said, ‘Hey, will you mix a song?’ and Adam said yes. It could go on the album, it depends how good the mix is.”

He added:

“It might just be interesting because Ad-Rock did it, or it could be brilliant! I think he’s a talent, but I haven’t heard it. It’s cool that he’s doing it – he sent me an email saying he had an idea for it. It’s called ‘69 Guns’ and we’re thinking of it as a single. I have no idea what a single is these days but it’s got a good beat and, y’know, it could be played at a rock disco.”

Let's hope it's more than just interesting. I don't think anyone has much of an idea what a single is these days, anyway. A song what is better than most of the others on the record, maybe.

In days of yore, this could be viewed as a slightly left-field pick, but the time we inhabit has Zooey Deschanel duetting with M. Ward and Solange Knowles doing likewise with of Montreal. That's not mentioning Le Tigre and Xtina. Still, it's not like A-D-R-O-C-K is particularly averse to more abrasive forms of music. This also includes his rapping style.

The band re-united in 2008 after splitting up in 2003, with their second full-length never being properly released, and in January last year the band announced that they were entering the studio to record a brand new record. Some of the song titles we know include: 'Big Waves', 'Paranoid Detective', 'On the Frey', '69 Guns' and 'Sophia Lauren'. The record, which currently has no name, should be out in the summer.

The song itself? Well, it's fucking filthy. In a good way. Not in the way demonstrated in that brand of 'sexy' hip-hop, you understand. The video? Follows in a similar vein to the previous two, with members of the band being levitated in the freezing cold weather as a horse trots through the night. Make of that what you want.

Should you fancy watching them live, you can do so at the following places:

March:
3 - Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms | Tickets
4 - London, Koko | Tickets
11 - Warwick, Warwick University | Tickets
12 - Bournemouth, 60 Million Postcards | Tickets
13 - Leicester, Uni Queens Hall | Tickets
15 - Norwich, Waterfront | Tickets
16 - Exeter, Phoenix - | Tickets
18 - Liverpool, Academy 2 | Tickets
19 - Newcastle, Cluny | Tickets
20 -Manchester, Academy 2 | Tickets
22 - London, KOKO w/ Esben & The Witch + Everything Everything
25 - Galway, Roisin Dubh
26 - Cork, Cyprus Avenue
27 - Dublin, Academy

Thankfully, in some regards, the people who were behind putting it together, from founder Everett True right down to every contributor (many of which who contributed to this very website, and still do) are charitable people, and this is reflected in them giving away every back issue of the magazine entirely for free. All 46 issues of them, right back from 2004.

"Plan B was about the music we, its creators, loved, and it was about questioning the orthodoxies and attitudes of the mainstream music press. We would like it to be available to everyone."

...is what the message on the website reads.

Hold your bolting steeds if you think that means IN ACTUAL PRINT FORMAT, because that would be silly and more than a little impractical. The form they take is, of course, in PDF document, online. The whole batch is 673 megabytes, so make sure you've got sufficient disc space, ennit.

The files come in the form of a Torrent. You should probably be familiar with it, but if you aren't it's fairly simple. Download BitTorrent first, then download the file, then away you go.

Click here to get the torrent, and reminisce, delve into for the first time, or print out for yourself!

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‘The Children’

That one was deliberately a palette cleanser from the last era of Yeasayer, we’re reversing expectations, you know? We used to have tonnes of organic vocals, now we have one lead vocal being processed by a machine, a digital vocal peddle. The song was really written by Chris [Keating], and we added the production to it; we really wanted to get the sound of this futuristic, Orwellian work camp and the noises that you hear at prison camps. So there’s a pick axe hit and it’s actually a guitar, I’d be hitting a guitar with a drumstick ‘plink!’ to make that interesting sound. The whole track was slowed down half speed, that’s how we get such a subby sound.

‘Ampling Alp’

‘Ambling Alp’ was an instrumental track that Ira [Wolf Tuton] composed, he’d just purchased an electro-harmonica pedal, and we got these really cool flute sounding tones out of that make the riff, and then Chris wrote the song around it. At first it was all [makes disturbing wordless sound approximating the melody], and I think he was reading the Malcolm X autobiography, which mentioned Joe Lewis fighting Primo Carnera, also known as the Ambling Alp, and he shaped the verses around that story. The video was done by these guys Radical Friend, they’d done a Black Moth Super Rainbow video that we really liked, and so Chris got in touch with them. He talked to them about the concept and then they wrote a treatment for it and asked if we were okay with nudity and being in a desert and getting gunk poured over us. We were like “sure, whatever it’ll take”.

---

Video: Yeasayer: 'Ambling Alp'

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‘Madder Red’

‘Madder Red’ was a folky kind of jam that Ira had sent to me, and I wrote all the lyrics and the melody. I think I took a line from this book of Celtic verse that I had, which was “even when my luck is down”... it’s a Kenny Rodgers/Glenn Campbell type of song, just the idea of being on the road, not living a normal 9 to 5 lifestyle and following your passion and that means you’re away from your loved ones for long periods of time. It’s a song of resignation, really, but then we threw a massive industrial sounding beat over it, which created a very interesting juxtaposition with the sweet sounding vocal.

‘I Remember’

For this album we set out to make some love songs and I think Chris really hit the nail on the head here, ‘I remember this about the start of our relationship’, ‘I remember that’, ‘I remember you’, ‘I remember making love’... so he basically made that track entirely on his own on keyboard and I thought he really did a good job of choosing the right tone and frequency. For me that song was all about not adding too much to it.

‘O.N.E.’

Yeah, we just call it ‘one’. So O.N.E began as a little bit more Eastern sounding – and you’ll hear this version as the B-side to the single – and kind of almost like a Nineties dance sounding song, with a sampled drumbeat. But it was feeling kind of low energy, so we eliminated this really long riff I had written and tried out a completely new arrangement for the Bonnaroo audiences and everyone seemed to like it. That song is about addiction, specifically about alcoholism, kind of as if a bottle of booze was a love interest or somebody that you were breaking up with.

‘Love Me Girl’

I was trying to sing a song that Justin Timberlake would sing and the really long intro I wanted to be something like a late Nineties Blur song, but then we reconceptualised it as an early Nineties club anthem. We wanted it to sound like a future band, all these different things coming in, like thre’s even a country and western guitar in there, but then it all comes in with a kind of Beatles-esque chorus, very simple, clichéd.

‘Rome’

‘Rome’ was a song that Chris had a full demo of, and we had this other song we were going to put on the album, but I was always happier with ‘Rome’, it has a great hook and almost a big band swing beat, which isn’t something we’ve ever really done before. We were looking for uptempo, high energy songs that would be great to play live, so we threw ‘Rome’ on literally at the last minute. I don’t think we’re going to do a video, but my ideal video for the song would be a bunch of multi-ethnic muppets having a really good time.

‘Strange Reunions’

‘Strange Reunions’ was a really stupid song that I wrote, and I cut it up and turned it into this really weird piece that goes from 5/4 to 6/4 to 5/4 back to 4/4. It was really my attempt at ridiculous time signature changes that bands like Dirty Projectors will effortlessly use in songs. But the subject is the debate between atheists and super religious fundamentalist people and how they’ll never see eye to eye, they’ll be feuding forever.

‘Mondegreen’

‘Mondegreen’ was a song that Chris made a long time ago and I laid some guitar over it. I really liked the lyrics, about a guy so paranoid he can’t even leave his house. We had a kind of cheap horn riff and then we recorded some real ones but were happier with the crappy synths ones we’d used. And I really liked the outro, using computers to slow everything down, like it was falling into this K-Hole.

‘Grizelda’

‘Grizelda’ was another track Ira had written on harmonium and then he sent it to me and I wrote all the lyrics. The subject of that song is Grizelda Blanco, one of the biggest... not a serial killer, but she was responsible for more murders in Miami’s history than anybody else. We were watching this video called Cocaine Cowboys and we thought it would be interesting to write this song from the perspective of one of her hitmen, kind of writing her a love letter. She was this really crazy woman who ordered all these people to be killed, kind of to the detriment of her own industry, because it drew all this law enforcement to Miami, which was otherwise a very peaceful centre of the cocaine trade.

For DiS's review of Odd Blood go HERE. For the band's full interview on the album, click HERE.

The initial bill includes the following 'acts':

Phoenix
Amiina
Beth Jeans Houghton
Caribou
Chilly Gonzales
Corsano And Flowers
Gold Panda
Esben & The Witch
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
James Holden
Joker & MC Nomad
Max Tundra
Memory Tapes
Mouse On Mars
Pantha Du Prince
Silver Apples

Solid start.

This year's Field Day takes place on Saturday July 31 in the same place it did the previous three years - London's Victoria Park. Tickets, currently, are on sale for £33.33 plus that all important booking fee. Tickets and more info are available from here.

Tom Baker (no, not that one) of Eat Your Own Ears and booker for Field Day says:

"We are delighted to be back now in our fourth year, incredible how time flies; it seems so long ago that Field Day began. I am really excited to have Phoenix headline, a great live band and a band that will get you dancing and singing... The rest of the bill is really shaping up, there are so many great albums out in 2010, it feels like an exciting time for music..."

Yes Tom. It does. Last year's line-up was pretty special. Let's hope the weather is actually in a less grumpy mood this time, eh, and I can finally put on some shorts.

February:
20 - Glasgow, The Classic Grand | Tickets
23 - Bath, Komedia | Tickets
24 - Leamington Spa, Assembly Rooms | Tickets
25 - London, The Garage | Tickets
27 - London, Blackheath Concert Hall | Tickets

The 'Long Live Pere Ubu' shows will be an 'extraordinary event' involving, we are told, electronic ambience, connective dialogue, choreography as well as animations by The Brothers Quay. Intriguing to the maximum. Oh, and it takes the form of a radio play, which can only add to the spectacle, right? The line-up is probably different from the above photo, but features the following persons: David Thomas – vocals, Keith Moliné – guitar, Robert Wheeler – EML synthesizer, theremin, Gagarin – electronica, Michele Temple – bass, Steve Mehlman - drums.

The reason the London Garage show won't be all about the new record is because it's entitled 'Pere Ubu: The First & The Last', which will see the band bring both ends of their career together in performing their 1978 debut album, The Modern Dance, and then the latest record over the course of two sets.