I didn’t pay much heed yesterday when the rumours started going around that Graham Coxon had rejoined Blur – it sounded like the UK press making far too much out of nothing… However, it looks like it may have been something after all. Intersting news indeed – though I don’t know if either Blur or I are still in a place where we matter to one another. Well, I’m pretty certain I don’t matter to Blur, either way. But while I refused to even give Think Tank a chance, I may have to give their next effort a spin to see if there’s still anything there. Of course, this is all contingent on the news actually being true – all we’ve got so far is an unnamed “record industry insider” saying, “The meeting went well – probably better than any of them expected. It’s very positive for everyone and Graham will still be able to do his solo work as well as working with the band again.” Curiouser and curiouser.

So bad news for Camper Van Beethoven – all their gear was stolen after their show in Montreal Tuesday night. There’s a full list of the missing equipment here. They’re scheduled to play Lee’s Palace in Toronto tonight and hopefully they’ll be able to either find or replace their instruments in time for the show, but it’s a shitty situation either way.

Chuck Klosterman considers Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born and recollects a conversation he had with Jeff Tweedy this past Spring wherein Jeff mused that the biggest obstacle to an Uncle Tupelo reunion isn’t the fact that he and Jay Farrar haven’t spoken in many years, but that he doesn’t know if he’s dexterous enough to play the bass parts anymore. Link from More Cowbell. Meanwhile, another Minnesota paper talks to John Stirratt and Wilco will grace the cover of the next issue of The Big Takeover, which should be out within the next few weeks. BTO interviews are always pretty extensive and have a different angle from other publications, so this should be a good read.

I’m a little surprised none of the local weeklies have opted to do a piece on the Mission Of Burma show at Lee’s tomorrow night (for whom local post-rock outfit From Fiction will be opening) – I thought it was a pretty big deal. The Toronto Star doesn’t drop the ball, however, except that they’re now a registration-required site. Blah. Oh well, Tiny Mix Tapes reports that the band is releasing a new iTunes-only live EP on November 2 called Snapshot and Metromix talks to Clint Conley about the reunion that no one thought would ever happen. From LHB.

Sort of a last-minute show announcement worth noting – Rachael Yamagata will be playing a free show at the El Mocambo this Monday – it’s an early one, doors at 6, show at 7. I’ve only heard a little of her stuff but for free? I will be there.

Now that Superman has been cast, the question is who will play his leading lady? Cinescape claims to have the short list of candidates (thus giving me a legitimate excuse to link to pictures of pretty girls):

• Mischa Barton (Skinny girl from The OC and the vomiting dead girl in The Sixth Sense – thumbs down)
• Charisma Carpenter (Annoying girl from Buffy and Angel – thumbs down)
• Mia Kirshner (Mandy the traitorous lesbian assassin from 24, and Canadian no less – thumbs up)
• Evangeline Lilly (No idea who this is – apparently she’s on Lost, but she’s Canadian and hot so why not)
• Natalie Portman (My secret girlfriend – thumbs up, though I don’t know if I can really see her as Lois Lane)
• Keri Russell (girl from Felicity – does this girl even work anymore? Not a fan – thumbs down)

NOW interviews Art Spiegelman about his latest work, In The Shadow Of No Towers. Spiegelman is in town for the International Festival Of Authors where he will be interviewed by fellow cartoonist Seth tomorrow night at Harbourfront.

Holy shit to the Red Sox. I always like seeing the Yankees self-immolate, but this collapse was just spectacular. Some damn fine baseball, too – reminded me of the Jays’ back-to-back World Series titles over a decade ago. Hell, you wanna talk about your ex-Jay content, they almost had Timlin facing Olerud for the final out, and then pinch-hit Ruben Sierra, who was a Jay for a while. Yeah, I’m reaching… Anyway, the World Series is going to seem anticlimactic after all this – unless the Curse is waiting until the really big show to make things extra entertaining…

np – Gemma Hayes / Night On My Side

Elliott Smith’s last album, From A Basement On The Hill, came out yesterday. Elliott Smith died a year ago tomorrow. I remember being floored when I heard the news – if I’d heard it a year previously, when Smith had pretty much disappeared off the radar and there were rumours that he was in bad shape in regards to his drug use, I admit that I may not have been surprised. But throughout 2003 there were encouraging reports that he was clean, productive and hard at work on his new record – and then on the morning on October 21 on my usual rounds of the music news sites, there it was – “Elliott Smith dead at 34”. What the hell. And I still shudder when I think about HOW he died. If it was suicide, which still isn’t conclusive (though the last thing anyone needs is a Cobain-esque conspiracy theory), then the sheer violence of the act is still incomprehensible to me.

The San Francisco Bay-Guardian looks at the aftereffects of his death, one year on and talks to engineer Dave McConnell, who believes that Basement is not the album Elliott would have wanted. He says that the family-endorsed mixes stayed too close to Smith’s past works whereas he had intended the album to be a stylistic step forward. You can hear some of those more experimental tangents on tracks like “Coast To Coast” and “Shooting Star”, with their denser, rawer production values – even after being mixed and mastered under the ministrations of Smith’s family, they still stand in pretty stark contrast to the more conventional, prettier numbers on the record. Is this the direction that Smith would have ultimately moved in or just a detour in his musical path? We can only speculate. As it is, it’s difficult to listen to the record without considering the context of its creation, without hearing some manner of foreshadowing of his death. Grim, but true.

NPR also has an audio piece on Smith and the record, including interviews with many of the principals involved with preparing the final album for release. The Grand Rapids Press wonders if Smith’s death will overshadow his body of work. And as a final note, the Elliott Smith – Olympia, Washington live DVD which was supposed to come out November 30 has been postponed due to legal wranglings with Smith’s former label Dreamworks. What a surprise.

The New York Times reviews the Arcade Fire’s show at CMJ this year. Verdict? They likey.

In talking about the release of Aimee Mann’s live album and DVD Live At St. Ann’s Warehouse on November 2, Chart reveals that her next studio album, King Of The Jailhouse, should be out in March of next year.

The Brett Anderson/Bernard Butler project has a name – The Tears. Um yeah. That’s bad, sorry. NME has an interview with the, uh, Tears, about the new record due out in the Spring.

Season premiere of The West Wing tonight! Finally, something presidential that doesn’t make me want to gouge out my eyes with dessert spoons.

This clip from an old UK children’s TV show called Rainbow is insane. From Pop Tart.

I am giving up the guitar. Anyone who needs someone to rock one of these in their band, take a number. I am going to be the coolest kid on my block, fo’ shizzle. From Gizmodo.

Kurt Vonnegut grills Kilgore Trout about voting, giraffes, and the tying of shoelaces. Trout then kills himself by drinking Drano.

Oh – and to the guy I made fun of earlier this week for getting to my site by Googling “odds of red sox winning from three nothing defecit”? I take it back.

np – Calexico / The Black Light

Saturday Looks Good To Me the studio band and Saturday Looks Good To Me the live band are two very different propositions.

Hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan (is it bad form to call Ann Arbor Detroit?), the former is a massive collective effort (the last two albums featured 27 and 19 different credited players and singers, respectively) masterminded by Fred Thomas, creating massively ornate, unapologetically retro-sounding pop in the spirit of Motown, Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. The use of a large cast of singers makes the records sound more like long-lost mix tapes found in the back seat of a 1969 Chevelle.

The live experience, on the other hand, varies depending on who can come out on the road with them. Their show last July at Rancho Relaxo was as bare bones as could be, with Thomas fronting a three-piece unit that rearranged the songs into highly-charged fuzzy pop blasts that while entertaining, didn’t do the recordings justice. To their credit, they did the best they could and did put on an entertaining show, but if you’d heard the albums you couldn’t help but be a little bit disappointed.

This time around, however, they got it totally right. The six-piece touring band comprised all the main players who recorded Every Night and the difference they made was night and day. The most key addition was of Betty Marie Barnes to handle all the female vocals on the album (as well as provide some nice visual benefits… read: she’s a cutie) – I couldn’t imagine numbers like “The Girl’s Distracted” or “Underwater Heartbeat” without the boy/girl duets. In addition, the saxophone and separate bassist and keyboardist (last time it was one guy, the saxophonist, ironically, who handled both duties) really filled out the sound and brought the album arrangements to life.

The turnout was pretty meagre, to be expected for a Monday night, but the band put on a terrific show regardless – my butt was bopping pretty much the whole night. Thomas was oddly charming as frontman, though not as hyperactive as last time around, and full props to Scott DeRoche who, despite breaking the e-string on his bass three-quarters of the way through the set, still managed to finish the show by tuning the a-string down a fifth and playing everything on one string. That’s impressive. I highly recommend anyone who can catch this tour while it’s still going – they’re in Canada for the next few days:

Oct 19, 2004 @ Irene’s Pub – Ottawa, ONT

Oct 20, 2004 @ El Salon – Montreal, QBE

Oct 21, 2004 @ The Underground – Hamilton, ONT

Oct 22, 2004 @ Call The Office – London, ONT

I only arrived in time to catch the second opener, Picastro. Their PJ Harvey/Cat Power-esque droney narcolepsy-core was an odd match for SLGTM’s buoyant retro-pop, but they kept their set short so it didn’t throw off the mood too much. Don’t get me wrong – I like some of what Picastro does, but it just wasn’t the sort of thing I was in the mood for last night.

Photos from the show here.

…So I missed The Daily Show last night, on account of being at the aforementioned concert. Anyone know where I can find a downloadable copy of it? It hasn’t shown up on bit torrent yet.

Comic book fans will be pleased to know that the Miracleman drama is apparently finally over. While on the road, Neil Gaiman confirmed that the series would be returning to stores within 18 months or so courtesy of Marvel, presumably in the form of trades collecting both Alan Moore and Gaiman’s legendary runs on the title, and the conclusion of “The Silver Age” storyline. There’s some question as to whether it will return as Miracleman or Marvelman, seeing as how the latter was the character’s original name and it was only changed when Marvel – the same company who will be publishing it – complained in the 80s.

Hamsters piloting giant robot hamsters to combat evil make me happy. From Gizmodo.

There is a courtyard of naked men at the club/lounge outside my office window. They appear to be shooting something. It’s like 6 degrees Centigrade out there – not very flattering weather. The girls in my office have gone to take pictures regardless. A very perplexing way to start the morning.

np – Charlotte Hatherley / Grey Will Fade

Comic blog The Beat is reporting that the title role in the next Superman film has finally been cast. According to their sources, Some dude named Brandon Routh will be donning the tights and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and unnamed Warner Bros execs have confirmed the casting. There’s even pics of him dressed up like the big blue banana for a costume party of some sort circulating – though how these got out so quickly, I don’t know if I want to know. I realize those big black plastic National Health-type glasses were supposed to make Clark Kent look extra nebbish, but nowadays they just make him look like some hipster or emo kid. But I suppose that’s offset by the fact that he sometimes wears his underwear on the outside. Interesting bit of trivia – Mr Routh’s birthday is October 9 – the same day that the last Superman, Christopher Reeve, died. Last movie Superman, anyway. Dean Cain is still alive, even if his career isn’t. Zing!

And not to be outdone by his Metropolis rival, Gotham City’s Batman today released additional cast photos from the his upcoming film, Batman Begins, including a shot of Ken Watanabe as Ra’s Al-Ghul.

I’m quite excited about the release of Pavement’s Crooked Rain Crooked Rain in its expanded L.A.’s Desert Origins double-disc format next week. In addition to the original album, there’s an additional 37 (!) tracks filling out the set – as much as I liked the Slanted & Enchanted deluxe set, I think I’ll prefer this one simply because it collects material from an era where they were arguably at the peak of their powers. I like scratchy, lo-fi recordings with noisy, hamfisted guitar as much as the next guy, but the extra bit of refinement and polish that the CRCR material should have in the production, performance and writing departments will be quite welcome. Anyway, until the reissue hits the stores, both their North American and European labels are doing what they can to further whet peoples’ appetites – Domino Records is streaming 21 of the new tracks, one per day, through the rest of October. They’re already a cou[le days in so you’ve missed a wee bit of it. Meanwhile, Matador is letting you have only one track for the time being, but they’re letting you download it and keep it and rename it “Skippy” and build it a little house out of a matchbox if you so desire. Cause they’re just those kind of guys. Thanks to Catbirdseat and Stereogum for the tip-offs.

Spin gets Jeff Tweedy to list off the records that changed his life. Link from For The Records. Update: Odd, link doesn’t seem to be working anymore…

Stylus handicaps the Shortlist of Music finalists.

The Modern Age has come back out of hiding in her /temp directory.

Note for anyone else who’s planning to hit the Saturday Looks Good To Me at the Silver Dollar tonight – doors at 9, openers are locals The Don’t Be Shys and Picastro and the headliners should be on at approximately 11:15. Cover will be approximately $7. Approximately.

So I’ve been going through my Chromewaves email inbox and seen there’s been a number of emails that I haven’t replied to or have otherwise gotten lost in the shuffle – if you’re waiting for a response to something, I apologize. I am utterly slack sometimes. Um, but don’t necessarily interpret this as a sign that you WILL get a response back any time soon – I’m just apologizing.

np – My Bloody Valentine / Loveless

The Pernice Brothers have revealed a little more info on their upcoming live album/DVD. On the audio side, it’ll have a show culled from two nights at the Mercury Lounge in New York from this past January and the DVD will contain live footage from all over combined with wacky ‘on the road’ hijinks and the music videos for “Baby In Two” and “Weakest Shade Of Blue”, which you can also see on the website. They’re shooting for a Thanksgiving release (late November, for non-Americans) and it’ll be available almost exclusively through mail order domestically – it may get proper distribution overseas.

And on a Boston-related note, I found this as a search string in my referer logs yesterday: “odds of red sox winning from three nothing defecit”. Oh you poor, poor bastards.

Caught The Manchurian Candidate at the Bloor last night. Some interesting bits of political commentary, especially in the current climate, but the main story was too absurd to really consider as social commentary. I didn’t think Denzel Washington was nearly paranoid enough considering the scope of the conspiracy he was beginning to unravel, but that’s neither here nor there. Meryl Streep was suitably over-the-top hammy as Liev Schrieber’s manipulative Senator mommy though also creepy where the film demanded it. And in the ‘just odd’ department were Robyn Hitchcock’s brief appearance as a bad guy and having the film’s climax play out over Fountains Of Wayne’s “Better Days”. Overall it was just alright, nothing really special. Though I think John Kerry should keep a sharp eye on that John Edwards fellow. He looks a little shifty.

Jon Stewart is on the cover of the new Rolling Stone. Excerpt from the cover story here. I haven’t bought an issue of Rolling Stone in many many years, but I *may* have to put aside my general disdain for it this week.

Craploads of Calexico downloads available here. Don’t forget their World Drifts In DVD just came out and it’s supposed to be excellent. From Sixeyes.

Rolling Stone runs a brief piece announcing the dissolution of Luna. From LHB.

Cause you all know I’m a covers whore – Stylus compiles a list of ten cover versions that altered the meaning of a song.

Tickets for the December 2 Feist show at The Phoenix will run you fifteen bones, on sale now. Ah, hell – I think I’ll go to this.

np – Tift Merritt / Bramble Rose