The divine Ms PJ – Polly Jean Harvey – will be at the Phoenix on October 15 to promote her new record Uh Huh Her. This isn’t a Lollapalooza make-up show since she wasn’t slated to play the Toronto date anyway. Tickets on sale September 17, no pricing info yet. I would like to go to this show but I really think I’m tapped out for the month of October. I’m at eight shows in 23 days – that’s just getting out of hand. But for more PJ goodness, head over to Bradley’s Almanac – he’s got an mp3 of PJ doing “The Letter” on The Tonight Show. Image from www.pollyharvey.co.uk.

The release of Elliott Smith’s final album From A Basement On The Hill will be accompanied with a live DVD, Elliott Smith – Olympia, Washington, featuring a live performance from the Yoyo A Go Go festival in the titular city in 1999. It’ll be mixed in 5.1 surround sound, even. The album is out October 19, the DVD November 30.

The Decemberists have posted some exclusive video footage from the recording of their new record. I was so hoping to hear Colin say, “Car…. Game on!” but alas, no luck. The Infanta is due out next March but if you don’t want to wait that long, their EP for Billy Liar is out next week. Scuttlebutt from Cap’n Catbirdseat.

Zoilus and K Records say that Calvin Johnson will be at Lee’s Palace on September 28, but Lee’s seems to think that The Black Keys will be there that night, with no mention of Mr Beat Happening anywhere. Maybe it’ll be a bass-less face-off?

The Rocky Mountain News asks Jay Farrar why he’s gotten political. Jay is just thankful they didn’t ask him what’s up with his new haircut. From Largehearted Boy.

The Beat has some stills from the forthcoming Sin City film, directed by creator Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. Looks neat.

MSNBC takes a look at the current big-time crossover in the DC Universe, Identity Crisis. I found the piece surprisingly non-patronizing for comic book story from a major media outlet. I’m reading Identity Crisis and it’s surprisingly dark for a DC comic – and though it’s only three issues in, it seems to be getting darker. I can understand why some of the faithful are upset, of the Big Two, DC has always had the lighter storylines (gross generalizations, yes – I’m not including stuff like Dark Knight) and operated on a more fantastical scale. Even when they killed off The Flash and Supergirl, it was in a cosmic-scale battle, thus avoiding any real hitting-at-home for the reader. To off a long-standing character in such a mundane and gruesome manner is very un-DC. I, for one, applaud them for tackling one of the big questions of superhero comics – how effective can secret identities really be and if these super-villains are such evil geniuses, why can’t they figure out how to hit their enemies where it really hurts? I’m very interested in how this is going to play out.

np – Drive-By Truckers / The Dirty South

So it seems people still make music videos. Who knew? Revolver Films is a studio based out of both Toronto and Los Angeles that specializes in creating mini-music commercials, and they’ve even got full-length samples online (you have to go through the ‘recent works’ links under each director’s profile) but there’s stuff there from Interpol, Broken Social Scene, Modest Mouse and Stars. Link from The Big Ticket who also has direct links to most of the good videos if you don’t feel like wading through the site itself.

Another excellent site for seeing videos you’ll probably never see elsewhere is Sputnik 7 – I’ve linked it before, but it deserves to be praised on a regular basis. I mean, where else are you going to see high-quality vids for the likes of The Decemberists’ “The Soldiering Life”, The Postal Service’s “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”, Spoon’s “Everything Hits At Once” or The Shins’ “The Past And The Pending” – I mean, that wasn’t even a single, was it? And dig those old Elvis Costello clips! Wow. You can lose hours digging through this site.

Odds-on favourite to become the next blogged-to-death link on the internet… Dubya singing “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. At least that explains what Bono was doing at the Republican National Convention – he wanted to collect royalties.

Tift Merritt tours her sophomore record Tambourine through Lee’s Palace October 7, tickets are a mere pittance at $7. Funny timing – I was listening to her first record Bramble Rose yesterday afternoon and I noticed a mark on the underside. Tried to rub it off to no avail – turned out some of the reflective coating from the top of the CD had been scratched off, which is usually death for a CD (nothing to reflect the laser back, y’see). I figured I was going to have to buy another copy of the album, but it played fine. Weird. This was no small scratch either. Yeah, fascinating, no? Anyway, I like Tift. She plays nice country-esque music, has a sweet voice and is purdy as all heck. Plus she did some nice backing vox in Portatstatic’s Autumn Was A Lark mini-album, so there.

Hey, some of you post-Britpop kids like Muse, dontcha? We’ll they’ll be at the Kool Haus November 1, tickets $23.50. Me, I don’t care for em. I like the old Britpop. Like The Boo Radleys. Giant Steps was a great record.

Folks who enjoyed Andrew Bird’s opening set for The Magnetic Fields back in July may be interested to know he’s coming back to do his own show November 4 at Revival. Folks who didn’t enjoy his set… well, no one cares what you think.

The latest issue of Harp mentions that Rykodisc is in the process of putting together a box set for The Replacements which would span both the Twin/Tone and Warner Bros eras and contain loads of unreleased material. I don’t know how excited I am at the notion – having heard the unreleased stuff that came out on the All For Nothing/Nothing For All compilation a few years back, I was coloured unimpressed. I can’t imagine they have better Warner’s stuff in the vaults and a lot of the Twin/Tone stuff they DID see fit to release was barely keeping it together. Granted, that was a large part of the Mats’ charm, but would the stuff that didn’t make the cut really be of any musical value? I do not know.

np – Spoon / Kill The Moonlight

McSweeney’s presents a list of Pavement and Guided By Voices song titles and lyrics that could double as political slogans or terrorist training manual chapter titles, respectively. What a strange thing to compile. From Hold My Life.

And speaking of McSweeney’s, last night I finished issue 13 of their Quarterly Concern – the comics issue. Edited by Chris Ware, this volume collects essays on comic strips, traces the history of the medium (complete with early examples) and presents samples of work from some of the finest independent cartoonists working today (Joe Sacco, Seth, Chester Brown, Los Bros Hernandez amongst many many others). It’s a gorgeous hardbound collection that celebrates the history and potential of sequential art and storytelling and gives a lifelong fan of the medium such as myself warm fuzzies. Obviously with such a varied collection, I liked some of the pieces better than others (and some I found nigh unreadable), but almost all of it was worth at least a read to remind me that there’s comics beyond the mainstream spandex and superhero books that I tend to favour.

And speaking of mainstream spandex and superhero comic books, next up in my reading pile is Give Our Regards To The Atomsmashers!, a collection of essays by a variety of established authors about comic books and how they influenced their childhoods, lives and work. Or at least that’s what it promises from the sleeve jacket. As I said – I haven’t actually read it yet.

And speaking (further) of superheroes, I want to formally recommend everone with an interest in such things to watch the Justice League Unlimited cartoon – it’s fantastic. I’ve always liked the comic book-based cartoons that featured the less obvious characters (my favourite episode of Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends was “7 Little Superheroes”, which guest-starred Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Dr Strange and Shanna the She-Devil (!!)), and JLU delivers in spades. In addition to the predictable core cast of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, blah blah blah, it expands the Justice League roster to include almost every other b- and c-list hero in the DC Universe. The last few episodes I’ve watched have featured the likes of Zatanna, Elongated Man, Hawk & Dove, Etrigan, The Question and B’Wanna Beast (seriously!) in either feature roles or cameos. I love it. The writing and animation is excellent, combining just the right doses of humour and more mature-themed content. Till now it’s only been running on the Cartoon Network – I’ve been having to bit torrent each episode – but it debuts on YTV in Canada starting this Friday, September 10th at 9pm EST. Catch it, it’s good.

And speaking of comic books on the small (or big) screen, it looks like Joss Whedon will be directing X3. The Beat suggests it as a very strong rumour while other sources seem to think it’s a done deal. The truth will out in the next few days or so, I’m sure. I think Whedon would make a fine replacement for Bryan Singer – he’s doing a bang-up job as writer on Astonishing X-Men right now, and he knows a thing or two about directing.

Okay, enough comic stuff. Music!

So has no one else noticed that the title track from The Hidden Cameras’ Mississauga Goddam sounds a whole hell of a lot like XTC’s “The Disappointed”? I had to check the liner notes to see if Andy Patridge got a credit. It’s still a pretty song, but it seemed kinda blatant to me.

Pitchfork talks to Low about why they signed to SupPop and what to expect from their next album, The Great Destroyer, due out early next year. Two words: Grunge Revival.

Emm Gryner’s new record will be something of a departure for her – an album of covers! Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Lord knows I love a good cover song as much as the next guy, but that will make two of her seven full-lengths comprised completely of covers (plus one of demos and b-sides). I guess it’s tough to properly produce new material when you’re constantly playing sideplayer to the likes of David Bowie and The Cardigans. Anyway, Songs Of Love & Death has a theme – they’re all songs by Irish artists. A natural choice for a Canadian musician from just outside Sarnia of Filipino-German Filipino-Irish descent (see? I change one word and all the sarcasm just… disappears!). Yeah. Anyway, the album is out October 26.

New Order have finished recording their new record, expect to be done mixing by the end of September and hope to have it ready for the end of October.

np – The Hidden Cameras / Mississauga Goddam

The newly-engaged Geekent (congratulations Graig and Emma-Jane, by the way) was gracious enough to lend me a stack of DVDs a few weeks ago which I’ve been slowly making my way through. Besides the first season of Sledge Hammer!, I got a sampling of the The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim stuff. I’ve only watched a couple episodes of Space Ghost: Coast To Coast, but enough to know that I’m going to have to get my head into a particular space to properly appreciate the fairly gonzo humour, and I haven’t even started Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I have, however, powered through the first season of Sealab 2021, however, and that is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a dog’s age – I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud so much. A ‘remix’ cartoon, it takes original footage from the 1972 cartoon series Sealab 2020 and hacks it up to give it new stories, dialogue, etc. I realize I’m way behind the curve on this one (and all these shows) but I don’t think we get them up here in the hinterlands of Canada. Cut me some slack.

Also addictive is the theme song by New York band Calamine. You’d think that hearing it thirty-odd times over the course of the DVD set, I’d be tired of it, but I’m not. You can download it from their website.

Rilo Kiley’s very slick new website is finally up and to make up for the delay, they’re offering the very cute video for the first single from More Adventurous, “It’s A Hit”. They will also be on Conan O’Brien October 6 and in Toronto at the Horseshoe on October 3. Tip from LHB.

Sam Phillips is at the Lula Lounge October 17. Is this old news or new news? I think I heard someone mention it a while back, but am pretty sure this is the first I’ve seen of it. Anyway.

Recording of the Bernard Butler/Brett Anderson album continues to go swimmingly and the duo are eyeing an early 2005 release date for it.

That seems to be it for today. Post-Labour Day doldrums, I guess. And FYI, updates will probably be showing up an hour later than usual for the next few months – work has gone off Summer hours so my morning routine has made to make room for an extra hour’s sleep. And while the extra hour of sleep is good – no, GREAT – I’d forgotten how much more traffic there is on the streets at 9AM versus 8AM. Though the fact that much of that traffic is made up of pretty girls, especially when I’m cutting through the university, helps somewhat.

np – Rilo Kiley / More Adventurous

I went to see Hero last night, since I was apparently one of the six or seven people on the planet who hadn’t already seen it on DVD in the two years since it’s release back in China. For someone of Chinese descent, I have a remarkably lame grasp of Chinese history – I never even played Romance Of The Three Kingdoms on the Nintendo. I always have trouble keeping track of the names… Anyway, Hero is based on two thousand-year old Chinese history/mythology and purports to tell the tale of how six warring kingdoms were united as one. Centred around a conversation between a nameless warrior (Jet Li) and the emperor, most of the story takes place in the form of flashbacks and a shifting accounting of events. On the downside, the storytelling is distant and mechanical, and the acting is almost excessively sombre – stoicism was apparently the order of the day when making this film.

Still, I found the almost mystery-like structuring of the narrative sufficiently involving – I never got bored. The flashback structure was also a little difficult to follow at first, but it did allow the opportunity for Tony Leung to have no less than four different death scenes and Zhang Ziyi to get her ass kicked several times over. The martial arts sequences were decent enough, but didn’t especially razzle dazzle (at least no more than you’d expect from a couple of martial arts masters going toe-to-toe). The most amazing feature of the film was the cinematography – I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautifully shot movie this year, and probably not in the past few years. Some of the visuals are simply breathtaking – it’s the sort of film I’d like to get on DVD just to freeze-frame certain scenes and soak up the imagery. It’s sold as an epic martial arts tale but I think its strengths lie elsewhere. I did like it a fair bit but am still surprised at the effusive critical praise it’s getting. Some folks really really liked it.

Late post? Yes, but don’t chalk it up to sloth. I was up bright and early this morning to go down and claim my Film Festival tickets. The box office was to open at 9, I got there at ten to and was still pretty far back in the massive line-up. Apparently the first people had gotten in line at 2AM last night. That’s hardcore. The line moved pretty briskly though, and I had my tickets within an hour – ten for ten in my selections, though I didn’t really remember what I’d requested or why. So here’s the films you can expect some sort of writeup on over the next couple weeks:

Should be a good schedule, yes? Still, that’s going to be a helluva lot of movies and line-ups over the next while.

Lucinda Williams’ double-live set Live At The Fillmore West has been pushed back a month or so to October 26. Also delayed is the Mogwai BBC sessions disc, Government Commissions. It should be out in early 05 – tip from No Rock & Roll Fun.

np – Drive-By Truckers / The Dirty South