Woot! My guesswork has been proven correct, as The Wedding Present is confirmed at Lee’s Palace on April 26! It will have been almost four years since the patron saint of romantic losers has been through town, and it’s not a minute too soon, thank you very much. Their last time through was as Cinerama and they drew only a modest crowd at Lee’s. I wonder if touring under the more familiar name and maybe with some “reunion” press will draw a larger audience, despite it being essentially the same band?

I personally don’t draw any real distinction between the Wedding Present and Cinerama. I only discovered the Wedding Present after it had morphed into Cinerama and while their debut Va Va Voom was a bit of a stylistic departure from the Weddoes material, their sound became more and more like the Wedding Present as time went by – if you graph out the evolution of Wedderama’s sound from George Best through Torino, I think you’ll find that the name change was almost wholly cosmetic. I like the Cinerama material as much as anything that came out under the Weddoes moniker and am a little sad that there will probably be far less Cinerama material played on the upcoming tour, if any at all. But of course, that’s tempered by the fact that I’ll get to hear more classic Wedding Present material – the five Weddoes tunes they played in 2001 weren’t nearly enough.

The new Wedding Present album is Take Fountain and you can hear the first two singles on their MySpace page. While the record isn’t due out until February 15 (new music from Dave Gedge on Valentine’s Day – how perfect is that?), I’ve been told that it’s already available on iTunes.

As promised last year while opening for The Delgados, Crooked Fingers will be back in town March 31 at the Horseshoe (tickets $10) to push Dignity And Shame, out February 22. They/he was quite good performing solo last time, this time he promised to bring a band. Also returining are Oakland’s Gris Gris, who by all accounts kicked serious ass the last time they played, will be back on April 5 and/or 6 (details unclear) at the Silver Dollar.

Brendan Benson’s new one, The Alternative To Love, is out March 22 and he’s at Lee’s Palace April 11 to promote. The Stands support. Get it? “The Stands support?!?” Oh fuck, I kill me. Seriously, I need to go sit down for a minute.

The lineup for this year’s edition of the Exclaim cross-Canada tour will feature Stars, The Organ, Wooden Stars, and Montag at the Phoenix on April 14. The lineup will shift a bit as the tour crosses the country, full details here.

Caribou, who used to be Manitoba, is at the Horseshoe April 28. His new album, The Milk of Human Kindness, is also out in April. And finally, the British Sea Power show that had been scheduled for April 21 at Lee’s Palace apppears to have been rescheduled for May 17, same venue. Their new one, Open Season, is out March 21 in the UK.

Check out the first official list of acts at SxSW. MADNESS. There’s over 1000 acts on this list and it isn’t even all of them… Donewaiting has done the good deed of expanding the listing into a list format, and I’ve made a nice little spreadsheet of the info, for easy access to info. I was going to start putting in confirmed show data, but that just sounded like work. But if anyone wants to download the spreadsheet for their own scheduling purposes, you can grab it here, with my compliments. And if you want to plan out what I’m going to see while I’m there, feel free. Hell, if anyone wants to assume full control of all aspects of my life, I’d be grateful. I’m not doing a bang-up job on my own.

NOW profiles the Chromewaves-approved Frontier Index, playing tomorrow night at the El Mocambo with Beneath Augusta and League Champs. I just realized I referred to myself in the third person. That’s not a good sign.

Zoilus reports on how Arcade Fire (and Final Fantasy) are conquering New York City. He has a link to an .avi of their performance on Conan O’Brien the other night and Brooklynvegan has a rough but perfectly listenable recording of David Byrne joining the band onstage last night to sing on their cover of Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody”. Also in attendance was David Bowie – I dunno, anytime I think about David Bowie in the audience for something, it just turns into the walk-off scene from Zoolander.

I was watching this Girls Guitar Club short film that someone sent me and it wasn’t until about 2/3 of the way through that I realized, “Holy shit – that’s Chloe!!!” Yes, no other than Mary Lynn Rajskub, Five Seventeen’s secret girlfriend. I’ve never understood that guy…

np – Heavenly / Heavenly Vs Satan

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