After their much-anticipated 2010 reunion at Matador Records' 21st birthday party in Las Vegas, lo-fi rockers Guided by Voices buckled up and went on a two-year bender of tour dates and recent album releases. Now, with an art exhibition called The Big Hat & Toy Show, frontmen Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout showcase their visual art. The exhibit, which is described as a "menagerie of installations," can be seen at the headquarters of Brooklyn band the Library is On Fire.

TLIOF frontman Steve Five (who is a GbV fan and fellow Ohioan) presents the two-day "interactive conceptual installation" in Bushwick where he has curated other events with his band at this performance space.

Pollard and Sprout aren't strangers to exhibiting their visual work. So why is their latest offering presented at a DIY space, as opposed to a trendy Chelsea gallery? We caught up with Five to discuss the art show, and what fans/art lovers can expect from tonight's art opening. Apparently, Pollard likes the "non traditional environment that a space like this provides" and "It's a lot more fun." Read on.More »

Curiosity led us early Tuesday evening toward Fred Torres Gallery in Chelsea. Courtney Love, visual artist? That sort of makes sense. Given Love's unpredictable reputation, we were not expecting to see her at the press preview for her debut art show, "And She's Not Even Pretty," let alone have a sit-down conversation with her.

Inside the gallery, we encountered what seems like a show consisting entirely of self-portraits—just about every work has a big-eyed blonde in it—done with colored pencils, watercolors, ink, and pastels on paper. Pain, sex, violence, drugs, and celebrities (including a portrait of Gwyneth Paltrow holding her infant son) feature prominently in the approximately 45 works on display. Handwriting is scrawled on every piece, but it's often anyone's guess what exactly Love has written. A few lines we could make out: "It takes sleeping with a snake like you to rip apart my soul"; "Let you bleed all over me." Ouch.

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Recently, the multi-instrumental Latino hip-hop rock troupe Ozomatli were appointed United States Cultural Ambassadors. They've been vocal proponents of a growing, musician-led boycott of Arizona, have written songs in support of gay awareness in the Latino community, and bear as much responsibility as anyone for dropping the barricades between American pop and traditional Spanish and Mexican music. This week, they've come to New York as part of the Latin Alternative Music Conference; tonight, they'll play a Celebrate Brooklyn show in Prospect Park. We caught up with vocalist/guitarist Raul Pacheco last week via email--at the time, he and his Los Angeles-based band had just finished banging out a tour in Europe, and were somewhere roaming the Adriatic coast.

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Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the poofy-haired, three-piece-suit wearing, multi-instrumentalist of the Mars Volta, can now add actor, writer, and director to his extensive inventory of careers. His debut film, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival back in February, is a coming-of-age story that follows Barlam (Lopez), an awkward twentysomething El Paso grocery-bagger virgin who haphazardly has a semi-incestuous relationship with his sister (Tatian Velazquez). Engine Slayer, which lists John Frusciante as executive producer, has its New York debut at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. Recently, we called up Lopez to ask about his new career.

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XYX, the junkyard noise-punk, drum-n-bass duo from Monterrey, Mexico, can be heard live this weekend at Todd P's MtyMx Festival, which is being held in XYX's hometown. The duo consists of Mou, 27, on drums, and Anhelo, 29 on bass and vocals; they formed back in 2007, when the two ran their own separate record labels, Nene Records and Penetración Cósmica Tapes. One way to differentiate XYX from the loads of bands playing MtyMx, they tell us, is to listen for Anhelo singing "weird stuff about sex and obscure things." Another way? Just follow the "psychedelic frenzy." We called XYX up to ask what else the rest of us can expect when we finally make it down to Monterrey.

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Chances are if you're not going to local promoter Todd P's MtyMx Festival--the DIY indie-rock gathering happening in Monterrey, Mexico next week--you'll never get to see Quiero Club live. Along with their counterparts Kinky and Plastilina Mosh, the electro-pop quintet have become local heroes in Monterrey, playing various festivals throughout Mexico, and releasing two records since their inception in 2002. Nueva America, their latest, was released in 2008 and got them a spot as openers for Depeche Mode last fall at the massive Foro Sol arena in Mexico City, where they performed in front of 60,000 people. But unlike Kinky or Plastilina Mosh, Quiero Club doesn't have the financial backing to tour outside of Mexico. As frontman Gustavo Mauricio, 32, tells us, the MtyMx Festival is like a blessing because as of now, the only way to see Quiero Club is to come to them. So we did.

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Nice cape, dude. Photo by Araceli Cruz.

"The first thing that struck me was the boat," said Billy Corgan, onstage Saturday at the Rubin Museum, where he was being psychoanalyzed. In front of him was an image from C. G. Jung's The Red Book. The illustration was of a vessel at sea, with a spear-clutching man perched on its bow. Beneath swam a large fish with teeth. "I think Egypt...boat...death...crisis of doubt...the confrontation of faith. I think of the myth of Orpheus," Corgan said. "Do I need to be committed?"

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Bands like this one just don't play venues as small as the Mercury Lounge. And yet there was Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch, a chatty jester clad in black shades and black coat, warming up for a November Hammerstein gig by playing a tiny LES room on a frigid Saturday evening, band in tow. The entire spectacle was straight out of a John Hughes movie scene: small packed club, impeccable sound, modish men swaying from side to side. "Lips Like Sugar" was on the schedule, but didn't make the cut. Otherwise, well: "I don't know what's next," McCulloch said. "Oh yeah, this one's a classic."

Diana Gomez

The sugary alt-pop quintet Those Dancing Days, an all-female band hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, named themselves after Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" and formed four years ago while in high school. The cute quintet--Cissi Efraimsson (drums) Rebecka Rolfart (guitar), Lisa Pyk Wirstrom (keybords), Mimmi Evrell (bass), and singer Linnea Jonsson-- are already something close to stars in their native country, and prime candidates for an Urban Outfitters catalog stateside, if anyone here actually knew about them. The band is in town right now, remedying our ignorance: During their first New York at Mercury Lounge, on Tuesday, Rolfart suffered an instrument malfunction when her "guitar broke." After a drum solo and Jonsson's cry for help--"is there a guitar doctor?"--the band continued on, playing songs from their debut, In Our Space Hero Suits, which came out last year on Wichita Recordings. At Mercury, they had grown, bearded men dancing. Jonsson took a time out on the eve of New York show number two--at Union Hall tonight--to discuss the band's new existence as a touring outfit, the obstacles of the life on the road, and what's it's like to be underage in rock clubs from coast to coast.

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The Costume Institute's latest exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum is "The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," sponsored by Marc Jacobs. The outlandish exhibition captures the evolution of fashion models from the last half of the 20th century while also delving into fashion photography, clothing, and the ways that the best models defined and inspired their respective generations--from the postwar resurgence of American fashion led by the sophisticated glamour of Dorian Leigh to the '90s skin-and-bones heroin chic of Kate Moss, and beyond. The exhibition features about 70 masterworks of haute couture and ready-to-wear through video footage, photography, and advertising. The show begins today, and below, Voice editors Eudie Pak, Araceli Cruz, and Stacey Anderson pick out some of the highlights in each section of the exhibition.

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