Dean Wareham has posted his reasons for retiring Luna on their website, in a playful and enigmatic top-10 list format:

1. Rock and Roll is killing my life.

2. The Universe is Expanding.

3. There are too many bands out there, travelling around, singing their songs etc.

4. Too much time spent in 15-passenger vans. According to 20/20, these things flip over.

5. Too many hands to shake, that means germs.

6. Too many dinners at Wendy’s.

7. People are dying in Iraq.

8. This is what bands do (with a few exceptions, like R.E.M. and Metallica, and the Rolling Stones). Those bands, however, are multibillion dollar corporations. You don’t break that up unless the government forces you to.

9. Hotel Electravision.

10. Time to Quit.

In other words, he’s tired. Understandable – he’s been doing the touring musician thing for sixteen years. But not too tired to release swan song Rendezvous on October 26 and hit Lee’s Palace on November 7.

Thanks to Morecowbell.net for the tip-off that the long-rumoured (by me, mostly) Matthew Sweet/Velvet Crush tour is finally happening and it’s stopping at the Mod Club in Toronto on November 8. It’s expected that Matthew will play guitar with the Crush and they will in turn act as his backing band. The Weakerthans are also supporting on at least one other date on the tour, but there’s no information as to whether that’s a one-off or an ongoing thing – more information as it comes. My formerly quiet November has now been transformed into a tsunami of rock – six shows in ten days, two of them in a foreign country, eight in November altogether, and quite possible more to come. Wheee.

That’s all I got for today. Come back tomorrow.

Update: Okay, one more thing – did anyone else see the Vice-Presidential debate last night? Notice when Cheney told people to go to Factcheck.com? He better hope that the viewership was as apathetic as everyone says, cause that’s not the website he meant to refer them to… Go – it’s pretty funny. Slate has a full writeup on the gaffe.

np – Drive By Truckers / The Dirty South

Well that was one crazy-ass traffic spike yesterday. Yow.

Just for the record, I’m writing this post in a not inconsiderable amount of discomfort. I seem to have pinched an incredibly painful nerve in my back, I had another muscle spasm in my left calf the other night and I’m coming down with a cold. NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME. But I’m here for you.

Haven’t had much Wilco content lately… let’s rectify that. I realize my jones for Jeff and the boys is a bit of a running joke, but the Britney-watch has sorta been done to death. I need a different angle. Anyway:

Firstly – much sleuthing has revealed the openers for this Saturday’s show at Massey Hall will be The Priscillas. Not these Priscillas, but THESE Priscillas. Apparently they’re a group of local scenesters (Tara from Elevator, Colleen from By Divine Right) who don beehive wigs and perform covers and originals. Should be interesting.

Secondly – The Chattanooga Pulse nabs not only a terrific interview with Jeff Tweedy about the tour, his anti-Bush rants and religion, but a crank call to the writer’s girlfriend.

Thirdly – the CD tracks from The Wilco Book have officially leaked. I’m not going to tell you where to get them, but they’re out there. And they’re… interesting.

And finally, Bradley’s Almanac has an mp3 of their performance of “Theologians” from Late Night With Conan O’Brien last week. I’ve never heard John Stirratt’s backing vocals so high in a mix before.

</Wilco content>

This week, I rule the school… press, anyway. My pics from Friday’s Arcade Fire show will be gracing both University of Toronto newspapers this week – The Varsity’s current issue is borrowing one pic and The Newspaper is running two other photos, including one for the cover, and my entire review in their next issue (out Thursday I think?). Reminds me of my days writing for the University of Waterloo student rag, The Imprint. Sure, the free CDs and concerts were nice but I really did it to associate with someone – anyone – who wasn’t an engineer for a change. Didn’t work, but hey.

The Independent gets Wayne Coyne to reflect a bit on the career of The Flaming Lips and look ahead into the future.

Great thanks to Dave Weiss who has graciously provided a much better quality mp3 of Lush’s cover of “Outdoor Miner”, the bonus cover for this week. I’ve uploaded it so if you grabbed the lousy-quality one earlier this week, try it again. Tangential thought – I really need to get some Wire. Pink Flag is the place to start, obviously?

I won passes to see an advance screening of I Heart Huckabees this Thursday from NOW! Yay. Reviews have been somewhat mixed, but I’m looking forward to it anyway. Watch for a review here Friday.

np – Saturday Looks Good To Me / Every Night

To quote Danny Glover, “I’m getting to old for this shit”. The last of three shows in three nights was queued up for last night, and it was probably my most anticipated of the three. Rilo Kiley can lay claim to having released one of my favourite records of the year in More Adventurous so I was obviously hoping the live show could enhance the musical experience.

Interestingly, the bill for the tour read like a snapshot of Saddle Creek through the ages – you had Rilo Kiley, who left the label, Tilly & The Wall, currently on the ‘farm team’ imprint, Team Love. Not that that means anything, I just found it interesting.

Tilly & The Wall are a 10-legged tap-dancing diabetic coma waiting to happen – they are so cute it borders on sickening. Taking the stage with a “T! I! L! L! Y!” chant, the combo immediately got their game on tapping, stomping and singing. As was pointed out to me, only Jamie Williams actually taps – Neely Jenkins and Kianna Alarid just stomp along while singing. But whatever you want to call it, whenever you get three cute girls in short skirts dancing and singing, a good time is going to be had. Their music is buoyant and happy and infectious like ebola, and while it is gimmicky (they tap dance for pete’s sake), it’s never jokey. They played a short 40-minute set, and while the crowd wanted more (they took a little while to comprehend what they were seeing), it might be for the best that they kept it brief. I’m not sure how much a body could take without needing an insulin shot.

The middle slot belonged to Athens, Georgia’s Now It’s Overhead. If you want to know what they sound like, just imagine what you’d think college rock in the mid 1990s would sound like. You’re pretty much there. NIE are a jangly, riffy, electronic-tinged, earnest and no doubt sensitive amalgam of everything you’d think a US college radio station would have played during the Clinton years. Live, their material was stronger than the samples I got off the website had hinted at and any act that brings uber-cutie Orenda Fink to town has my gratitude (leave me alone, I’ve had a crush on her since her Little Red Rocket days). Curiously, her Azure Ray cohort and NIE keyboardist Maria Taylor wasn’t along for the trip. Overall, I didn’t mind their set at all though follwing the nuttiness of Tilly & The Wall and leading into the hotly anticipated headliner, they came off as a little bit bland. They could be going onto bigger and better things, though – after they wrap up this tour, they will be supporting fellow Athenians REM on a leg of their North American tour.

If nothing else, Rilo Kiley can say they drew an exponentially larger audience this time around last time around – instead of the seven people or so who caught them at their Toronto debut in 2002, there were at least 49 in the audience last night, probably more. The band wasn’t to be outdone, though, doubling their on-stage contingent to eight – in addition to the core band there was a 2-piece string section, Orenda from Now It’s Overhead on trumpet and a third guitarist. The setlist drew mainly from More Adventrous and The Execution Of All Things, though they reached back to Take-Offs And Landings for “Small Figures In A Vast Expanse”. A nice treat was having the introduction to “The Execution Of All Things” rearranged for plucked strings, to great effect, and the charming-if-not-entirely-successful false ending of “I Never”. For the encore, Blake performed “Ripchord” solo, stopping between verses to gently chide a couple audience members for talking while he played (“This isn’t like TV, I can hear you!”) and then bringing the band back on to close things out.

All in all, a great and energetic performance that was sadly marred by the atrocious sound – everything was excessively loud, the mix was bad and the show suffered for it. This isn’t just my old man ears complaining, I know loud but my ears were almost in physical pain from the sonic assault. The vocals were barely audible at the start of the show and only improved incrementally as the night went on. The biggest culprit was the third guitarist who apparently felt that being number three meant having to be louder than one and two put together. I tried putting the earplugs in for the louder numbers and taking them out for the quieter ones with limited success. Note to self – get some proper fitted earplugs. NOW.

As always, lighting at the show started out great and got progressively darker. Sigh. Stupid Horseshoe. Pics here.

The New York Times profiles Nonesuch, the little major label that actually believes in crazy things like artistic integrity and good music. What a concept.

News from Pernice Brothers-land. They are prepping a DVD for release next month and have a new CD ready to drop in late January/early February of next year which will feature the recording debut of the current touring lineup.

Sad sad day for Canadian baseball yesterday. The Expos played their final game in Montreal and the Jays capped their worst season in over two decades with another loss which was likely the final game of longtime franchise player Carlos Delgado. All that seemed inconsequential, however, with news that former Jay pitcher John Cerutti was found dead at the age of 44 in his hotel room before the game. Cerutti was a mainstay of the pitching staff in the late 80s when the Jays captured the AL East pennant in 85 and 89, when I started watching baseball, and had been Jays commentator for CBC and SportsNet since the 97 season. Rest in peace, John. Dave Perkins of The Toronto Star has a eulogy.

np – Tilly & The Wall / Wild Like Children

It was an eclectic-ish bill at the Horseshoe last night centred around The Magnolia Electric Co’s first Toronto show in something like seven years (that’s what I overheard, anyway). Mainman Jason Molina has a cultish sort of following that I don’t quite understand, but the club was quite packed early on with the faithful.

Starting things off was Jon-Rae Fletcher & The River, who trade in what I have henceforth dubbed ‘spaz-country’. This label goes beyond just looks, though Fletcher would certainly qualify in that department, but musically as well. While not the most polished or professional of performers (dude, tune your guitar BEFORE you start the song) The six-piece band played druken, goofy country-western music, all stomping and shouting and generally carrying on. It was pretty entertaining, but I couldn’t help get the feeling that the performers were in on a joke that the audience wasn’t.

Sea Snakes just released their debut record Clear As Day, The Darkets Tools on Guelph’s ultra-hip Three Gut Records and wouldn’t be a bad bet for one of the next breakthrough acts out of Toronto. Their deal is intricate, melodic and jazzy post-rock with high, keening vocals. Make no mistake – these boys can play, the intertwining guitarwork and intricate drums were mesmerizing, but I found the songs a little lacking. Maybe I’m too hardwired for pop hooks but nothing of their set really stuck with me, it was more like waves of lovely ambience that washed over me while they played but left nothing behind. Perhaps I’d have to hear the record to properly appreciate it.

When this was initially announced months ago, I had the idea that it would be a solo show for some reason. I was completely wrong as the current incarnation of the Magnolia Electric Co is six members strong. I can’t comment on how much of the set material was from the forthcoming Magnolia Electric Co album and how much was old Songs: Ohia material (I only have the Songs: Ohia Magnolia Electric Co album… yeah, don’t get me started) but juding from the polite response some numbers got and the enthusiastic response others did, I think he mixed it pretty well. The best adjective I can use to describe the MEC’s blend of psychadelic-country-blues-rock is ‘polished’. Everything just sounded so smooth, not least of all Molina’s clear voice. For an act that gets compared to Neil Young so much, I don’t think you could get much more opposite from Crazy Horse’s sonic chaos than Molina & co. They did let loose a little more in the encore (as well as putting on some paper animal masks – yeah, I dunno), but on the whole the hour-and-a-half set was a study in fine, professional songcraft and musicianship.

And I maintain that the Horseshoe is one tough room to shoot photos in. Even when it seems lit up, it’s actually dark, or so my camera would seem to believe. Check them out here.

The Boston Globe profiles tap-tacular Tilly & The Wall, opening for Rilo Kiley on their current tour, which includes a stop at the Horseshoe tonight. From LHB.

There is now a trailer for Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask. Gaiman says the music isn’t actually from the film (thank goodness) and there’s no sense of the narrative, but the visuals are quite neat.

So in addition to being on the CBC Radio 3 website playlist, as I mentioned yesterday, Lake Holiday also made the RADIO playlist. That’s right, at around 3:50 AM last night, we made our national radio debut with “American Summer”, sandwiched between tracks by local heroes From Fiction and The Hidden Cameras. That’s just keen, I must say, though no, I didn’t stay up to listen. I’ve heard the song before and I don’t actually have a radio.

FYI – tomorrow’s post will probably be a little late. I’ve got the day off and I’m a-gonna use it. To sleep, I mean.

np – Teenage Fanclub / Thirteen

I figure there were two types of people at last night’s Arcade Fire show – the long-time acolytes who’ve been following the band since they were playing much smaller rooms and peoples’ living rooms and the newcomers roped in by the unprecedented hype behind their debut album Funeral. And then I guess there was a third demographic of people like myself for whom the Arcade Fire has been on my radar for a while but I hadn’t made it to any of their local shows in the past year for whatever reason (and there’ve been quite a few opportunities). Regadless, last night’s super-sold out show could have qualified as a coming out party for the band as they’ve gone from well-kept secret to international superstars (in a very very relative sense) almost overnight.

Opening was extended family band Bell Orchestre, the outfit that supplied two of Arcade Fire’s members – multi-instrumentalist Richard Parry and violinist Sarah Neufeld. Another six-piece outfit, they played a set of instrumental pieces that ranged from dull (the jammier numbers – jam bands with French horns are as boring as the guitar ones) to sublime (the properly arranged songs were very very good). A very appropriate warm-up for the Fire.

I admit I had some question as to whether or not they could live up to their fearsome live reputation – I’ve heard many tales of jaded indie veterans who’ve walked away from their shows as if they’d just been on a road to Damascus. So what’s the verdict after my first Arcade Fire show? Yeah. Just, yeah. That was great. However, instead of trying to put into words the intangible essence of their performance, I will try to analytically dissect exactly what it is about the show that made it so great:

1) A kick drum that could punch a hole through a tanker truck. Listening to the album now, the drums sound disappointingly small by comparison. Live, the percussion could have propelled an SUV into the lower atmosphere, especially when Richard Parry strapped on the marching band drum and added back-cracking accents to the beat. It’s hard to not be moved when you’re physically being moved.

2) Choral vocals. When everyone on stage sings out with every ounce of energy, whether they have a mic or not, the audience can’t help but feed off that and sing with them – then you’ve got this big singing energy feedback thing going on that could well make your head explode if it went on long enough. Applying these to easy-to-sing-along-with vocal lines like “HEY!” and “AAAAAHHHHH!” help matters. It’s amazing the difference in delivery when it seems like someone is singing along because the music demands it.

3) Dancing like a dervish. All six band members moved like they were possessed by the music, that instead of playing it they were releasing it through their instruments and their bodies. Sound corny? Maybe, but it’s true. See previous point about head-exploding energy feedback with the audience.

4) Huge, anthemic, intense, raw, emotionally cathartic songs played with unbridled energy and passion. I think these are key.

5) Matching stage outfits. Very natty.

I’d have a hard time believing anyone at the show last night didn’t walk out of there either converted or having their entire belief system (as applied to music) reinforced. Hell, as good as Funeral is, it still doesn’t capture the power of the live show. They sounded massive without necessarily being overly-loud, I didn’t even need my earplugs. I feel a little bad about adding to the mountain of hyperbole that’s already built up around the band, but it’s warranted. Believe the hype.

It was also neat running into a whole bunch of people I hadn’t necessarily expected to see – I guess the show really was the place to be. In addition to Graig, Carla, Rannie, Garry and a bunch of 20Hz-ers, I met Travis from tbonedotcom. That ‘How to go to concerts alone’ thing I posted earlier this week? This was not one of those nights.

And, of course, there are photos.

Confirmed – Luna at Lee’s Palace, November 7. So I was wrong about both the date and venue but you know what? Don’t care. This is going to be so good – two Luna shows in a week. Here I was worried that I’d miss them when I went to Chicago, and instead they’re following me! Soooo good.

Reunion updates – The Son Volt webcam did not go live yesterday. The official word is “Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts, the session has been postponed,” but Left Of The Dial has information that the entire reunion is off. Let’s hope he’s wrong. Encouraging is the fact that the webcam page has gone from a 404 not found to a ‘proper’ page compelte with Java applets. More encouraging news from The Wedding Present camp – the new album is called More Fountain and will be out in 2005, not this Fall as originally hoped. It will, however, be preceded by a single – “Interstate 5” – which IS coming out this Fall. That’s good enough, I guess.

Exclaim has a quick piece on Interpol.

This is neat – a Lake Holiday track has made it onto CBC Radio 3’s playlist for this week. If you load up the playlist for this week’s issue, you’ll see our “American Summer” as the third track in their streaming audio soundtrack. Very cool. Thanks to Garry for the heads up.

np – Arcade Fire / Funeral