​We're about five and a half weeks out from the first annual 4Knots Music Festival, which is happening on July 16 at South Street Seaport. And today (hooray!) we can announce the free show's other three bands: battle-flag-wavers Titus Andronicus, nervy rockers Obits, and velvet-voiced Fiery Furnace Eleanor Friedberger will join Black Angels, Oberhofer, and Davila 666 on the Seaport stage. Music from the three new additions to the lineup after the jump.

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Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​The shaggy garage-punks in Obits have returned for a second round of three-minute yowlers and blues-rawk howlers. Already beloved as a grown-ass version of frontman Rick Froberg's manic indie-punk legacy (including San Diego wildman fit-spitters like Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes), Obits are taking an even more mature turn, turning down the blood-gargling yelps (Froberg hurt his throat) and turning up the ecstasy and bubble-twang. If 2009's I Blame You was a stripped-down, bratty MC5 tantrum, then follow-up Moody, Standard And Poor (out March 29 via Sub Pop) is a more focused Wipers implosion. With surf licks and lo-fi bristle poking through their hooks, it's a gritty blast with a sunny center. First taste "Shift Operator" is the second slowest of its 12 tracks, a mid-tempo boogie that gets its ominous creep from fuzz-drone, its energy from a blank-eyed Brit-punk churn, and its pointed repartee from John Locke's ethical theory (seriously).

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Come to think of it, we'd been meaning to mention this show.

​Bold! Not surprising! One hopes Brooklyn Vegan's little year end thing they just got rolling--in which various musicians talk about their year, via questionnaire--will yield further surprises, but the opening salvo here is pretty good. First on deck is Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion who, after chiding journalists for seizing on his frontman Rick Froberg's quote that "we're not into innovation as a band" (guilty!), offers up his own useful sound bite:

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Here we have the peculiar and awesome spectacle of a band that normally can't sell out even the Mercury Lounge playing to an audience of tens of thousands on national television. Hot Snakes and Jehu did a lot of things but they never did this. [h/t Prefix]

Courtesy Jonathan LeVine Gallery

​Because we we're incorrigible Obits/Rick Froberg stans: Beach Blanket Bingo, a group exhibition featuring Froberg, Elbow-Toe, Natalia Fabia, and over thirty other artists, just went up at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Froberg, whose campy, graphic cartoons have illustrated many of our favorite records over the past ten or twenty years, has two drawings in the show, but much of the work--"original paintings, drawings, and sculptures created using an array of mediums in a vast range of different styles"--looks equally stirring. The show, subtitled A Summer Mixer, is up through August 22nd.

​The SOTC-beloved quartet Obits recorded at three song set at Minnesota's public radio affiliate KCMP on Monday, performing the relative rarity "I Can't Lose" (it was released on a Record Store Day 7" as the A-side to a Graham Nash "Military Madness" cover), a super-mellow "Two-Headed Coin," and a predictably boss version of all-time-greatest Obits track "Back and Forth," which they appear here to call their "Lionel Richie song." Also: we'd underrated "I Can't Lose," or at least hadn't had the pleasure of this version--emo blues-rock, or blue-eyed indie, or something equally awesome. Listen below.

Obits perform live in The Current studios [KCMP]

Evil Brooklyn quartet Obits have released a video for "Pine On," the sneering, crab-walking first single from I Blame You, the band's nickel-plated and self-consciously unlovely debut. As with most of the visual paraphernalia that surrounds this band, the video teeters somewhere on the edge between fuck you and ha ha: gruesome, unshaven lips and chins and tongues and erratically brushed teeth pounding out lyrics and rhythm section and even a few orally demonstrated guitar licks, the occasional nostril poking into view. It's sort of impossible to look at. Why they didn't just take one of those romantic black and white YouTubes that circulated right before I Blame You was released and put that out instead, who knows. Not sadistic enough, maybe? [Pitchfork]

Well that's over with. To complete my spiritual journey, I will now both provide my top-five greatest moments (Metallica excluded) and explore how non-SXSW revelers might enjoy their music, immediately or in the immediate future.

1. Ms. Janelle Monáe, of course. Her deeply, defiantly weird dystopian-diva routine is way more exhilarating live than on her Metropolis: The Chase Suite EP, wherein the lovesick-android-on-the-lam shtick gets a little distracting. More Suites are planned soon, though, and power-r&b smash-in-the-making "Tightrope" is a monster, so. See her on tour this summer opening for No Doubt, of all people, including stops at PNC Bank Arts Center June 26 and Nikon at Jones Beach Theater June 27.

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American Analog Set/Handsome Furs/Obits
Club De Ville
SXSW Friday Afternoon, March 20

"I think this is the first show where I haven't been drunk in four years," is how Handsome Fur Dan Boeckner puts it, his poor sentence construction a further sign of fatigue/sobriety/broad-daylight disorientation. Obits, a prominent SOTC crush, don't have to say anything to get that feeling across: It's 12:30 or so and they look half-dead, and the half that ain't dead appears to be asleep. This does not render them ineffective. "Back and Forth" still kills, with an almost nursery-rhyme simplicity to its "Be My Baby" beat and surly-anthemic chorus. They're not exactly over-emoting at the moment, but it's nice to know the songs don't necessarily need over-the-top aggression to get over. Back to bed with ye.

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Love these two-couplet verses: "You say nobody knows anybody else/That's not true, 'cause I know you /You say this atmosphere is poisoning your health/That's not my concern anymore--no!" This titanic, minor-key anomaly closes Obits new I Blame You, out next week. Not on mp3 yet, but check the above video, which really quite suits the song: black-and-white, slowly rotating prom lights, big reverby sound echoing around the room, Froberg's voice hinting at something raw and worn out. This band's slow songs are even more caustically bitter than their fast ones.