Liturgy Are Somehow Playing the New Yorker Festival

The New Yorker Festival, the annual and upwardly-mobilely priced arts and culture series, has announced most of its 2009 line-up. The relevant, music-related graf in the press release: "Pop-music offerings will include interviews with and performances by Neko Case, Bon Iver, Steve Earle, and Loudon Wainwright III; a pub-rock reunion with Ian Hunter, of Mott the Hoople, and Graham Parker, of Graham Parker and the Rumour; and a panel discussion about the music industry with Jace Clayton, Josh Deutsch, Melvin Gibbs, Danny Goldberg, and Livia Tortella. In addition, a special Brooklyn Playlist concert at Brooklyn's Bell House, curated by Sasha Frere-Jones and Kelefa Sanneh, will feature Dirty Projectors, House of Ladosha, Jubilee, and Liturgy." Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's Liturgy--an early YIMBY subject, back in July--would be the surprise here (given that their uncompromising and harsh brand of black metal seems excessive, even for enlightened yuppies and the like), but note the two very well informed music critics who booked the show. So no surprise at all, actually.