Longwave’s third album, There’s A Fire, will be seeing release on May 24. The band has undergone some lineup shifts over the last couple years and now features a new rhythm section, including Jeff Sheinkopf of the late, lamented Sea Ray on drums keys (though I believe the photo here has the old lineup, sorry guys). The bio on their website (which will hopefully get a do-over for the new record) has been updated as well.

When they first started gaining notice in mid-2002, Longwave were supposed to be the next Strokes but never quite managed to catch on with the general populace. RCA, who signed the band on the strength of their independtly-released Endsongs, was probably hoping to shoehorn them in with the great Garage Rock revival from a couple years ago, but their atmospheric style drew far more from shoegaze and space rock than their contemporaries at the time, and the sophomore album The Strangest Things didn’t manage to grab that elusive hipster cachet.

Maybe with the new album they’ll have more luck connecting with the teeming masses. Surely they’ve got as much appeal as fellow Noo-Yawkers Ambulance Ltd, who seem to be doing alright? I certainly hope so, these guys are good and I’d like to see them do well. I sort of lost track of them for a little while (and haven’t picked up last year’s Life Of The Party EP yet) but the new album comes along at just the right time for me, it’s just what I’m in the mood for. I posted this track from the new record a couple weeks ago, but I like it quite a bit, so I’ll post it again.

MP3: Longwave – “The River (Depot Song)”

See Longwave at Lee’s Palace tonight for me (tickets $10.50) – I’m sorry I have to miss this one, but I’ve got to be up for like 3:00AM tomorrow morning to catch a plane. Gads.

And speaking of bands MIA, something is afoot at Sparklehorse.com. It’s still under construction, but at least someone is tending to it. They’re supposed to have a new album this Spring.

Shearwater will be supporting The Mountain Goats on their upcoming tour, including the May 11 show at Lee’s Palace.

JAM! gets Kathleen Edwards to ruminate a bit on the current state of her career.

Chart talks to Emm Gryner about Songs Of Love And Death and her penchant for making covers albums. Emm plays a solo acoustic show at Hugh’s Room on March 29 with Matthew Barber.

The National Post wonders just why it is so many Canadian bands these days have rosters that look more like hockey teams (including the injured reserves) instead of good old-fashioned power trios like Rush.

np – Doves / Lost Souls

After leaking tour dates one show at a time, the complete itinerary for the Doves’ North American tour is set and brings them to the Kool Haus on May 16. And in keeping with their habit of touring with great – or at least greatly hyped – support acts (The Strokes, Shitsailor, My Morning Jacket, Elbow), they’re coming to town with Upstate New York’s finest psych rockers, Mercury Rev, who will release their latest The Secret Migration the day after the show.

Capitol Records has links to a video interview with the band conducted by NME about the new album, Some Cities. I’ve been living with Some Cities for over a week now, and it’s still growing on me. There are some amazing tracks and some decent ones, nothing I’d call filler, but it hasn’t come together as a cohesive album for me yet the way the first two records did. I saw them live twice for Lost Souls and not at all for The Last Broadcast, so I’ll be looking forward to this one. I hope they’ll have decided to splurge and bring along a touring bassist/guitarist so as to not have to rely on pre-recorded tapes this time, but I’m not holding my breath.

Another reason I’m glad they announced the Toronto date is that it means I can skip out on their SxSW showcase without worrying about missing them. Going to their evening show would have basically meant I was stuck in one place for the whole of Thursday night, and that would have sucked – I’d much rather be mobile and right on the main drag. I will still be catching their instore at Waterloo Records on Saturday, though.

And it’s official – Doves have the dullest promo photos in the world. Come on, boys! Strike a pose!

Thanks to the wonder of browsable directories, you can grab a Broken Social Scene session with Austin radio station KVRX circa March 2003. Link via My Old Kentucky Blog. There’s craploads of other stuff available there, if you feel like digging around. Lemme know if you find anything especially good.

On the occasion of the re-release of all their Warner albums, Pitchfork takes a look at the major-label output of REM. Hey, nice idea guys – or it was when I did it LAST YEAR. Feh.

I couldn’t help but notice several used copies of The Radio Dept’s Lesser Matters in the used shops over the weekend, as well as some new copies in the new release section… does this mean that someone’s been sending out promos of this record recently? Maybe trying to generate some buzz in advance of, oh, a North American tour? That would make me a very happy camper indeed, Lesser Matters is maybe one of my favourite new albums of the past few years. Sooo good. So, it’s either that, or several people around town went simultaneously insane in deciding to sell the record. There’s no other explanation.

And speaking of Swedes, here are the photos from Sunday’s Jens Lekman show at Wavelength. I don’t remember holding the camera at a funny angle, but there you go. And if you want more Jens, La Blogotheque continues to be my new best friend, pointing me to an mp3 of “No Time For Breaking Up”, which Lekman recorded exclusively for them last Winter, as well as an interview from December. Thanks!

Bad news for those heading to Coachella this year to see Cocteau Twins… the reunion is OFF. Details on the news section of their website.

Ain’t It Cool announces Matthew Vaughn as the director of X-Men 3. Um, who?

USA Today compiles 24’s greatest hits, and by hits, I mean gratiutious acts of violence. And speaking of 24… It takes them twelve hours to address critics and point out that there are non-terrorist Muslims in America. They’re the ones who speak perfectly unaccented English and favour wholesome, American pastimes like firearms and gunplay. And it’s good to see that CTU’s definition of securing a location doesn’t include moving corpses (or almost corpses), nor collecting stray handguns lying around. I approach the Tony/Michelle soap opera with some trepidation. Granted, their history is well established so their friction is to be expected, but I hope they don’t get too into that plot thread – after all, they’re professionals… Okay, who wants to start a pool as to which hour they’ll get caught going at it in the broom closet?

Another year, another ugly bridesmaid’s dress. Congrats to Rannie Photojunkie on winning the Best Canadian Bloggie and to fellow Torontonian Sam Daily Dose on winning in Best Photoblog, both worthy recipients, as is Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again as Best-Kept Secret. And Largehearted Boy wuz robbed! Defamer Shmefamer. Just goes to show that hard work and daily posting will never get you as far as a picture of Tara Reid’s tit falling out of her dress. Me, I will at least take solace in the fact that I wasn’t beaten my Moby, and maybe I’ll get another shot next year. In the meantime, I will get my sense of self-worth and dignity from the same place I always have – the bottom of a bottle.

np – Mercury Rev / Deserter’s Songs

Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman utterly beguiled Toronto yesterday, first at a half-hour in-store at Soundscapes and then again at Wavelength at Sneaky Dee’s.

At the in-store, he performed accompanying himself with a ukelele and backed by a double-bassist, singing wry and jaunty songs about life, love and other such trifles. For the evening show, he was backed by members of The Hidden Cameras since he had left his band behind in the US, coming to play in Canada on the sly (though he will return in the Summer to do a more thorough Canadian tour). It was a brief set, maybe barely 45 minutes, Lekman thoroughly entertained the packed house with his rich croon, impeccable melodies and penchant for clever wordplay.

He brings to mind a cross between Stephin Merritt (but without the deadpan gallows humour) and Stuart Murdoch (but without the lisp or wispinesS), with a touch of Morrissey (but without the archness). Who he reminds me the most of, though, is Jonathan Richman – particularly on the folkier ukelele-led stuff. When he picked up the electric guitar and brought the full band out to back him, it was a full-on pop explosion straight out of the Sixties. It was really quite superb.

After finishing his set, Lekman invited everyone out onto College St for an encore, but I couldn’t stick around for it, what with it being a work night and already running later than I’d expected. And for the same reason, pictures won’t be until tomorrow, sorry.

France’s La Blogotheque has a couple of live Arcade Fire mp4s (Winamp will play it as an audio file but Quicktime will play it as video) recorded at Le Nouveau Casino in Paris last Thursday. There’s “Crown Of Love” and “My Heart Is An Apple”, which is quite rare. Also, here are some pics of the band performing a White Session for French radio last week. Note – the pages are all in French, but don’t be afraid. They’re mostly harmless. Thanks to Chryde for the link.

This week’s Splendid interview features Toronto’s own Sadies.

Of The Record has finally gotten over last Fall’s election results and has returned to life. Go say hello, grab some music on your way out.

I finished Knights Of The Old Republic 2 yesterday, great game but man – was it easy. I only had trouble with one battle and it wasn’t any of the end guys. A little disappointed with that. I will probably re-play it on the Dark Side later, but for now it’ll be good to have the time I was spending playing it back to waste on other things.

np – The Wedding Present / Take Fountain

Just bits and pieces today.

Thanks to Hold My Life for pointing me to Billy Bragg’s website where he’s offering a number of free live download clips (and one full-length track for newsletter subscribers) taken from his Live At The Barbican album (which is available for sale in digital format). I am still sore at Billy for not making good on his promise to tour through North America last year – he said he would when he played here for his Talking Woody show, but a year and a half later, I’m still waiting for him and The Blokes to show up. WHY DO YOU LIE TO US, BILLY? WHY? A poke around his website reveals a pretty good archive of materials, however – there’s a wealth of reading in the Words section. Note – not recommended for those who don’t like politicking.

Coolfer is more diplomatic than I’d be in pointing out the market for post-punk/disco/new-wave-inflected bands is getting pretty damn saturated. Death to disco hi-hats! It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even have to listen to a band to write them off, their haircuts are enough to tip me off as to what they sound like. Unlike Coolfer, I don’t think it’s necessarily the fact that the mainstream has latched onto the sound so much as the fact that the newer bands who are trying to hop the sytlistic bandwagon just sound so BAD. And by bad, I mean so derivative and obvious. Sounding like a band that was big twenty years ago is one thing. Cribbing from a band that was big twenty months ago is another. Call it the indie rock equivalent to the Pearl Jam->Creed->Nickelback syndrome, call it the second law of thermodynamics in action (each copy will be less perfect than the predecessor), or just call it tired, but bands have really got to find some new marrow of inspiration to suck dry.

And in this interview with The Oregonian, M Ward agrees with me. Via LHB.

Kathryn Yu has been working on a documentary film on The Wrens and has just released a ten-minute preview of the work-in-progress. It does make me wonder how much longer the band will be working The Meadowlands (which still has to come out in Europe!) and when we might expect some new music from them.

Another year, another 4AD reunion tour. Dead Can Dance comes to town on October 1 at Massey Hall.

Electrelene are in Toronto at a venue to be determined on June 8 to promote their new record Axes, out May 10.

N’oubliez-pas! Jens Lekman instore at Soundscapes this afternoon at 4, show at Wavelength tonight at Sneaky Dee’s… sometime!

It is with no small amount of apprehension that I realize today will probably be the last day for at least a week, probably two, that I will have anything resembling free time. I still have a number of things to do to get ready for SxSW (like play with this PDA app with the complete schedule). Between travel, work, various extra-cirricular activities, it’s going to be a pretty exhausting fortnight before I get to the Easter long weekend. I will endeavour to reply to some emails and whatnot that have been gathering dust in the past few days because if I don’t get to them now, they’re never getting taken care of.

np – Sigur Ros / ( )

At first thought, a gritty, blue-collar town like Hamilton, Ontario is probably the last place you’d expect to produce practicioners of atmospheric space-rock like A Northern Chorus and Sianspheric, and yet here they are, or there they were at the Drake Underground last night. Both acts had been on my radar for years now, being local and all, but I hadn’t seen either live in some years, nor really heard any of their recorded output. But we were in a spacey sort of mood, so off we went.

A Northern Chorus has gone through a number of lineup changes in the last while, losing flautist Julie MacDonald, acquiring a new drummer and adding a cellist (who unfortunately wasn’t at this show), but despite this, their sound has remained remarkably consistent. They still play impressively large-sounding but still quiet-ish, heavily delayed space rock with high, delicate vocals. It’s a shame they had to play without a cellist as I could hear where that would have fit in and it would have sounded great – as it was, their set was pretty impressive and prompted me to pick up their last album Spirit Flags. Their new one, Bitter Hands Resign, is due out April 17 and they were supposed to tour North America with Raising The Fawn and Damon & Naomi, but apparently got removed from the bill by the headliners rather, er, unceremoniously for whatever reason, and will now be trying to make up the dates on their own. Pity, that.

Comparatively, is A Northern Chorus were the sonic equivalent of a gentle rainshower, Sianspheric were a tidal wave. No stranger to lineup changes themselves, they were playing down one guitarist and with a guest vocalist in fellow Steeltown-er Mayor McCa. Favouring a looser, less-structured approach than their tourmates, Sianspheric alternately unloaded huge, deafening slabs of distortion and quieter bits adrift in seas of reverb. It’s a little hard to assess a band’s songwriting chops in this sort of context, but their live assault was pretty entertaining and quite deafening (thank god for earplugs). Either way, an impressive output of decibels from just a three-piece band (not counting the Mayor’s harmonica and shaker). I don’t want to imagine what it had been like if they still had a second guitarist.

Fun trivia (for me, anyway) – Sianshperic (in their former incarnation as Gleet) and Mayor McCa (in his former band Gorp) both played at the same coffee house at my high school back in 1993 where my first band made our live debut. McCa was just as enamoured of running his vocals through a delay pedal then as he is now. Photos here. It was a black-and-white sort of night.

Sigur Ros has pushed back the release of their next album from May to September, citing a need to take a break from mixing and return with fresh ears. Thanks to Unfinished for being the bearer of bad news.

In a follow-up to yesterday’s post, Chart gets in-depth with Sloan about Twice Removed and what it was like making the best Canadian album of all-time as selected by, uh, Chart.

After some more experimental forays in Modulate and Loudbomb Bob Mould, returns to making guitar music with Body Of Song, a new collection of acoustic-based songs which I hope are in the vein of his Workbook album. Dang that was a good one. Billboard has more details on the record, which is scheduled for a July 26 release on YepRoc.

np – The Comas / Conductor