Sometime in the wee hours of last night, at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom, Luna played one last encore, said farewell and left the stage for the last time. They leave behind seven studio albums, one live album, several EPs and a sad spot in my heart as one of my favourite bands ever are no more.

Andy, who runs the Galaxie 500/Luna website Full Of Wishes, has started a groupblog – Luna’s Last Waltz – to document the final days of the band, collecting reviews, photos, testimonials and reminiscences from fans over the course of their final tour. There’s some really nice dispatches and photos from last night, including a pic of Dean loading his guitar into a cab to go home.

For my part, I bid the band farewell last Fall, first in Toronto and then Chicago (from where today’s photo was taken) even though that turned out to not be their final date in the Windy City – they stopped by once more last month on their way back home to New York City for their final four shows over three days.

Update: Photos from the last show.

As a parting gift, I present a farewell track – a Velvet Underground cover, natch – recorded June 3, 1993 at the Borderline in London.

MP3: Luna – “Ride Into The Sun” (live)

Goodbye.

One to put in your distant future pipe… Joe Pernice is trying to add a solo Toronto date onto “his very extensive 2-4 show tour of the world” (mailing list’s words, not mine) which currently includes London, New York and probably Boston. If it happens, it’ll probably do so around late April/early May. I admit, when Joe moved up here last Fall, I was hoping it would mean at least a couple local appearances, but the man’s been keeping a very low profile. But still, I’ll take what I can get.

The Times and The Guardian both run Manchester-angled interviews with Doves, whose Some Cities came out a couple weeks ago in the UK and is out today in North America. From Pop (All Love). And anyone who’s not rushing out today to buy the new record and needs a little more convincing, there’s a streaming audio sampler here. And if you like other people to tell you what to like, Pitchfork testifies.

You can preview a couple of tracks from The Carlton Chronicles, the new album from Centro-Matic side-project South San Gabriel. It’s out April 5.

David Bowie tells Rolling Stone why he likes Arcade Fire.

Wait for the punchline. Wait for it. From Golden Fiddle.

24: Well, I guess they decided that schizophrenic daughter storyline wasn’t going anywhere. So that’s the second major plotline wrapped up (kidnapping, meltdowns) by 6PM. Thirteen hours to go – what will they do next? Hopefully Jack will get a chance to have a sandwich or something, the boy hasn’t eaten all day. But really, I must once again applaud the producers for not dragging things out. Lots of believable (relatively speaking) mini crises are much more interesting than one drawn-out completely incredulous one. Of course, they’re also not going to convince anyone that the terrorists have yet another contingency plan in place… but they’ll try anyways. Let’s see what’s next. Maybe they’ll spend the next few hours in couple’s therapy where Audrey will confess that seeing Jack apply live electrical wires to her ex-husband’s nipples didn’t repulse her so much as excite her.

np – New Order / Power, Corruption & Lies

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