The new Velvet Crush album has very quietly been released. Parasol has copies of Stereo Blues on sale for $12 to everyone in the world except for folks in Japan – apparently the Crush still has a record deal there, so they’ll have to wait till the label decides to release it proper. Though the band is still comprised mainly of Ric Menck and Paul Chastain, the new record also features a slew of guest performers. Hopefully this will be a bit livelier affair than 2002’s Soft Sounds, which was quite pretty but too languid overall. They hope to tour in support either in late Autumn or early Winter, possibly with Matthew Sweet along for the ride on guitar. Folks, it doesn’t get more pop than that.

Everyone who fell in love with The Wrens’ The Meadowlands and has been trying to hunt down the band’s earlier material without paying extortionist eBay prices gets a little bit of good news with the announcement that their Abbott 1135 EP from 1999 will be getting a re-release this October expanded with extra tracks to album length. That’s great, but what about their first two records, Secaucus and Silver? Well the rights to those records are the property of their old label, abhorrent Creed-peddlers Wind-Up Records, who refuse to revert the rights back to the band. Why? Cause they’re fuckers. So if you want to see justice done, I suggest writing a letter to the Wind-Up powers-that-be to cajole and persuade the to see the light and do the right thing. To get you started, I’d suggest opening with something like, “Dear Asswipes; Give the Wrens back their music or I will come down there and cut you. I swear I will. I’m a crazy man. Sincerely, blah blah blah”.

The new Interpol album has been titled Antics and will be out out on September 28. Rejected potential titles included Shenanigans, Hijniks and Wacky Escapades. Tracklisting at Matador Records.

The Toronto Star profiles Wilco and becomes the first article in ages to not mention Jeff Tweedy going into rehab. Instead, Vit Wagner draws heavily on Greg Kot’s Learning How To Die in considering the argument that Wilco are America’s Radiohead. Not available online is a sidebar offering an album-by-album comparison of the two bands’ careers.

Some shows coming to the Horseshoe – country chanteuse Carolyn Mark holds a CD release party for The Pros And Cons Of Collaboration on August 27 and Austin’s instrumental anarchists Explosions In The Sky will blow the shit out of the club on October 11. With loudness.

Now Michael Moore things that Fahrenheit 911 can save Canada’s elections as well as the US’. Well, he certainly has a high opinion of himself and he seems to not be aware of the fact (sad or not) that no one who’s planning on voting for the right in either of our countries is going to see his film, so his impact on the outcomes will be, uh, nothing. Further on the topic of Mr Moore, Roger Ebert succinctly articulates my beefs with the man, his tactics and how he may be doing more harm than good. From Heart Murmur.

Not much going on this weekend, which suits me just fine. I’ve been stuck in ‘go’ mode for a couple of weeks now which is really wearing me out. I need some decent ‘sit around and do nothing’ time to get it all together again.

np – The Olivia Tremor Control / Music From The Unrealized Film Script “Dusk At Cubist Castle”

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.