The Hidden Cameras are playing a show at Trinty-St. Paul’s on July 23rd to celebrate the release of Mississauga Goddam on July 12. Tickets $10 at the door. Of course, this is the same night I was planning to see Camera Obscura at the Horseshoe… Two photographically-named bands on the same night – what are the odds? The Toronto indie-kid contingent has some hard decisions to make that night. Hard decisions indeed. Hidden Camera shows are always a blast, but Camera Obscura have come such a long way from Scotland and I already have my ticket… I figure I’ll still go to that and hope the Hidden Cameras play more local shows through the summer. Or at least one more.

Blah blah blah Wilco blah blah blah New York Times article blah blah blah… Look, I can’t help it that people keep writing about them and I have to keep linking them. It’s a compulsive disorder. Help me. Oh, and some may have noticed that Amazon.com was offering a bonus track for those who pre-ordered A Ghost Is Born before it’s official release tomorrow – if you’re curious, it’s a studio version of “Kicking Television”, which was a staple on the last few tours. I have a copy and honestly, it’s a throwaway. Live, it was a punkish treat amongst the slower numbers in the set but the recorded version is pretty lifeless. Download it if you like – I’m sure it’s available everywhere by now – but if you don’t find a copy don’t lose any sleep over it.

And if you ever wanted to learn to make cookies the Tweedy family way… now you can.

Fans of Wonderfalls may want to kick up their Bit Torrent clients – screener versions of unaired episodes 5 and 8 have made their way onto the internet and you can find the seeds on Suprnova. Save Wonderfalls also has good news for those waiting for a DVD release – series writer Tim Minear recently posted the following on a message board: “Looks as though 20th is going to go through with Wonderfalls DVDs. The folks on the DVD marketing side love the 13 episodes and see great potential. We’re talking about extras and commentary and all that good stuff. December/Holiday release was mentioned. I’ll keep you updated.” YAY.

Watched Stephen Frears’ The Grifters last night, after having the DVD-R sit on my shelf for at least a couple months. Interesting film – a story about con artists where there’s not actually any con. Nice performances by Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening and a very young John Cusack.

Made lasagna last night for the first time ever. Pretty fucking good if I do say so myself.

np – Royal City / Little Heart’s Ease

Death Cab For Cutie have a website! Lots of good stuff there – journal, news, mp3s and videos and a breakdown of all their gear for the guitar geek-inclined. From Tomorrow Is Already Here.

Glorious Noise interviews The Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot, author of the Wilco book Learning How To Die. And Jeff Tweedy will be appearing as a guest voice on the Canadian animated series Odd Job Jack, starring Don McKellar. The episode will air July 17 at 8:30pm on the Comedy Network in Canada.

A note related to the current mp3 of the week – the Daniel Johnston tribute album The Late, Great Daniel Johnson: Discovered Covered will be out on September 21. Check out the all-star lineup and tracklisting at Filter.

Clinic and their surgical masks will be at Lee’s on November 5.

Note to Liz Phair on the occasion of her Stuff Magazine photospread – no one cares anymore. Sorry.

Cheers to Largehearted Boy for including Lake Holiday in his list of daily downloads. Must’ve been a really slow day, eh? But to make it worthwhile, we’ve added an mp3 of a new song recorded this past Thursday at Sneaky Dee’s. Check it out in the ‘Music’ section of the website.

I may hate Clear Channel with every fibre of my being, but I am pleased they’re bringing the Blue Man Group to Toronto. That was the one show I had really wanted to see in Las Vegas but didn’t feel like trying to explain exactly what it was to my parents. Now I’ll be able to just go down the street to see it! Nice.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did my democratic duty a week early and voted in the Federal election at an advance poll. So much more convenient than rushing out on Monday night after work. So while I’m still anxious about how things are going to turn out, my part in all this business is done.

np – Calexico / Hot Rail

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”

Good show at Sneaky Dee’s last night. Between Lake Holiday, Pine Music and Code Name Laurentians we were able to offer a solid and eclectic set of music to a surprisingly good turnout (there was a lot going on in town last night for a Thursday). Pine Music were up first and played a short but very nice set of folkish rock rooted somewhere between The Band and Royal City. Bonus points for incorporating the bowed saw. We were up next and were tighter than usual, which was a nice surprise. The new stuff sounded good though we botched the cover – that’s okay, it’s someone else’s song. I’m glad we had the opportunity to work the cello back into the arrangements. Finally, Code Name Laurentians brought some natty suits and a hip sound not unlike Scott Walker fronting Franz Ferdinand. Definitely some Psychedelic Furs/Echo & The Bunnymen mojo going on. If it was a dancing-type crowd, they’d probably have been dancing.

I had been more nervous than usual going into this one not just because it was us organizing the show, but because I was having ‘technical difficulties’ with my playing – which is a euphemistic way of saying that I was playing like shit lately. More accurately, there were a couple songs in the set that I seemed unable to play consistently and when I was off, BOY was I off. I was prepared to just roll my volume off when necessary and say that my gear was cutting out. Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary as I guess I got my swing back just in time. I was just trying to stay in key but I managed to make it tuneful as well, which was gravy. I was trying to channel Son Volt’s Dave Boquist but it was commented afterwards that I may have misdialed and gotten Poison’s C.C. DeVille. Um, okay. Next time, I play less notes. And leave the spandex and wig at home. Photos here, courtesy of Garry.

Tired today. Even though I didn’t have to haul gear back to the space afterwards, I still didn’t get to bed till after 2AM. Thank God for half day Fridays.

Pitchfork continues their love affair with Toronto bands, giving Controller.Controller’s debut record a very solid 8.3 rating.

Billboard has some info on the two forthcoming Elvis Costello albums on September 21.

The new Ted Leo joint has a title of Shake The Streets and will be out October 19. He will be in town shaking Queen St from the Horseshoe on Monday the 21st.

np – Heavenly / Operation Heavenly

Okay, so who else knew that Mystic River was NOT the sequel to Mystic Pizza? Would it have killed you to mention it to me before I rented it? Anyway, having now watched the almost-universally praised film, I will confess to being a little perplexed. What I saw was a workmanlike and fairly predictable drama that walked mostly on the wrong side of melodrama. Granted, the performances were quite solid – you can’t really go wrong with a cast like this – but I found Eastwood’s direction heavy-handed and uninspired. I kept waiting for the story to come up with some sort of twist that would make it more worthwhile, but by the end, everything was explained in the most logical and pedestrian manner possible. I didn’t want Shyamalan-esque corkscrews, but something that could have outsmarted a mind that wasn’t really working that hard might have been nice. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s a bad film or not worth seeing, but it’s hardly exceptional. I am thankful, however, that Kevin Bacon was not given the opportunity to take off his pants and show his bare ass.

Has indie rock’s time in the sun come? And if so, will it be it’s very undoing? Oh, the tension! From the GPC.

Sarah Harmer continues her tour of the really really nice theatres in Toronto – next stop, Massey Hall on September 17 with Josh Ritter as support. Tickets are $29.50-$35.50, on sale Friday. Or, if you’re special and have the advance sames password like I do, they go on sale today. Anyone who wants it, email me.

And now we reach the Wilco portion of today’s post: Rolling Stone has a nice long feature on the band in their latest issue, contrasting interviews with Jeff Tweedy before and after his rehab session. Nude As The News has a song-by-bong review of Ghost. And that was a fine performance of “Hummingbird” on Letterman last night, but man does Jeff look strange on stage without a guitar. Dancing? What?

NOW puts Montreal’s Arcade Fire on this week’s cover to hype up their show June 23rd at Lee’s Palace. June 23rd? Why that’s the night that we’re playing a show at the Rivoli with Wax Mannequin! That’s okay, we’ve also got a show tonight at Sneaky Dee’s with Code Name Laurentians, you can catch us then… unless of course you’re at Lee’s (again) to see Jay Farrar, whom NOW also profiles this week. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya. But that’s okay – if we weren’t playing, I’d probably be at both of these shows myself. But if you are coming down tonight, Pine Music should be up by 10:30, we’ll be up by 11 and Code Name Laurentians around 11:45.

Update: Pine Music got a stellar review in this week’s eye, in case you needed extra incentive to come out tonight. It’s even stopped raining!

np – …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead / Source Tags And Codes