Brakes / Give Blood (Rough Trade) Brakes could be described as a UK supergroup if you have a very loose frame of reference for “super”. Fronted by British Sea Power keyboardist Eamon Hamilton, Electric Soft Parade principles Tom and Alex White and The Tenderfoot’s Marc Beatty, they’re not exactly Traffic. The 16 tracks clock in at under half an hour and the entire album has an incredibly loose, off the cuff, occasionally country-ish feel with straightforward punky arrangements and goofy, snotty vocals. There’s little doubt the manifesto for this project is to drink, goof off and have a lark, so it’s a little surprising that the results are so listenable. It’s not going to change anyone’s life, but it’s a good, quick bit of fun. The kitchen sink aesthetic is a real departure for the ESP boys, who I’ve always thought failed to realize their potential by falling prey to serious overproduction on their own records. Maybe they’ll take something positive away from this to apply to their day job? Oh, and in case you’re wondering, “Sometimes Always” is a cover but “Fell In Love With A Girl” is not. The album, out in the UK last month, gets a North American release on September 13. Incendiary has an interview with Brakes.

The Perishers / Let There Be Morning (EMI) The Coldplay-led sensitive rock phenomenon that has been sweeping across the UK now has a standard-bearer in Sweden in the form of The Perishers. Perhaps the only band on the face of the Earth that Coldplay could beat up, The Perishers (whose name inaccurately conjures up images of death metal – for me, anyway) are all about piano and acoustic-y ballads with just enough electric instrumentation to lend some texture or edge. Ola Kluft’s voice is more than a little reminiscent of Travis singer Fran Healy’s, but the songs lack his wry sense of wit – instead, the lyrical content is more naval-gazing and generally simplistic and glum. Think about that for a minute – there now exists music that is Travis lite. Be afraid. Let There Be Morning is delicate, heart on sleeve emotional and utterly unnecessary.

Some By Sea (MySpace) I am well aware that it’s hypocritical of me to rag on one act for being artistically redundant but not do the same for another act that doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but whatever. I’m capricious like that. Sea-Tac’s Some By Sea sound not unlike the lower-fi offspring of Matt Pond PA’s cello-seasoned chamber pop and Death Cab For Cutie’s earnestly melodic and verbose indie rock. Chris Du Bray’s voice is a little on the thin and nasal side, and the songs benefit when cellist/keyboardist Rachel Bowman adds her harmonies to the mix. The four songs on their MySpace page offer a mix of live and studio tracks and it all sounds quite good. They’ve got an album and EP in the discography and will expand that on September 27 with a new EP, The Saddest Christmas, and a second full-length is in the works for early next year.

np – various artists / Never Lose That Feeling Volume One

Zoilus annotates his review of The New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema for The Globe & Mail. I’m not sure what it is about this band that prompts such analysis and verbosity from critics, but it looks like PopMatters’ guy was getting paid by the word. Metacritic doesn’t have a page for Twin Cinema up yet, but early indications are that it’ll score quite well.

And some more New Porn bits – Carl Newman tells Macleans how his posse nearly threw down West Side Story-style with east coast supergroup Broken Social Scene in New York City. WFMU’s blogged about the band’s appearance in their studios earlier this week, including audio and video archives of their performance. Twin Cinema is out Tuesday and they band is in town at The Docks on October 9.

And on the topic of criticism, Pandas That Won’t Screw To Save Their Species ponders the curious and imprecise science of music reviews.

Dallas’ Old 97’s will release a double-live album this Fall – maybe even as early as September – called Live and Wired, which is culled from a couple of live shows recorded in San Antonio earlier this Summer. Furthermore, frontman Rhett Miller will be putting out his second solo album this Fall.

The Elvis Costello DVD set I mentioned earlier this week, The Right Spectacle, will be out in North America on September 27 courtesy of the good people at Rhino.

And in an effort to help you select something worthwhile at the video store this weekend, Roger Ebert offers up a list of his worst movies of all time.

np – My Morning Jacket / Z

Does the world really need another Sufjan Stevens post? No, no it doesn’t. But as it turns out, everything I had to post today was related to an artist who’s coming through town in the next few months and are (for the moment, at least) on my “to-do” calendar, and Mr Stevens is up first, chronologically speaking. I can’t resist a good meme, no sir, I cannot.

NY News Day does some lousy prep work in advance of their interview with Sufjan (Via Largehearted Boy). Dear Ms George – Illinois isn’t his second album, it’s his fifth. Thankfully, Sufjan redeems some amazingly banal questions with decent answers. AZCentral offers up a better piece on the man and Illinois. He’s at Trinity-St Paul’s on September 10.

The schedule for Ear To The Ground, going down at Exhibition Place September 15 through 17, is up. Grok the lineups for the Friday, Saturday, Sunday – looks like a helluva thing. Also noteworthy is that Andrew Bird is now appearing as well. Nice.

Seattle Weekly does a quick Q&A with Carl Newman about the new New Pornographers album Twin Cinema, out Tuesday (via LHB). Meanwhile, The East Bay Express ponders the New Pornographers’ place in the power pop firmament. They’re at The Docks on October 9.

Paste kindly reprints the entirety of their cover story on Death Cab For Cutie from the new issue. Death Cab are also on the cover of the new Under The Radar and really, if Plans does nearly as well as it’s expected to, you can expect to see their earnest faces on a LOT of magazine covers over the next while, not to mention at the Kool Haus on October 15.

John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats articulates his vision of a perfect hockey league to PopMatters. The Mountain Goats are at Lee’s Palace on October 17.

Paste draws lines from Son Volt 1 through Jay Farrar’s solo work and back to Son Volt the second and his need to rock out again. Farrar and the (new) boys are at the Opera House October 17.

The Courier-Journal reports that My Morning Jacket were awarded the number 14 spot on Esquire‘s list of the best-dressed men in the world. Anyone who saw that coming, hands up. LIARS. The dapper gents from Kentucky will be at the Guvernment October 20.

np – British Sea Power / Open Season

Jim Jarmusch is a tricky one. With his latest, Broken Flowers, he manages to convince you that you’re watching a story about a lifelong bachelor who sets out in search of a long-lost son he never knew he had. And the film functions pretty well on that narrative level for most of its length, but if that’s the only level on which you’re taking it in, it’ll almost certainly be a disappointment. But if you’re appreciating it as a character study of a man searching for some sense of who he was and how he’s become the person he is today – all done completely internally and silently – it’s far more compelling.

I’ve not seen many of Jarmusch’s films before this – just Coffee & Cigarettes and I don’t think that can count as representative of his work… I thought he did a good job of balancing out the humourous moments (mainly Bill Murray’s exchanges with neighbour Jeffrey Wright) and the more thoughtful, introspective ones (there’s lots of shots of highways, roads, maps, etc – he’s on a journey, get it?). This probably counts as one of the more conventional films in Jarmusch’s ouvre, though. His other films seem considerably more out there – maybe this one was a bit of a departure for him?

Murray continues to milk his now-trademark deadpan, catatonic hangdog persona to an almost zen degree. No one else conveys so much or so little with a placid stare or slightest expression. Is he contemplating the emptiness of his existance or wondering what he’s going to have for lunch? YOU DON’T KNOW. One could argue that by now he’s phoning it in and probably has to work harder at voicing Garfield, but when the performance works as well as it does in the film, complaining seems crass. If there’s any question, it’s how someone like Murray could have been a playboy in his youth, let alone now. But perhaps that’s the point of contrasting Murray today with the women he was once with – to make you wonder who he had to have been back then to be with them, and how he’s ended up as he has. Hmm.

Remember how MTV banned the video for British Sea Power’s “Please Stand Up” because of their use of the apparently objectionable phrase “wetter and wetter”? Not that you can really make those words out unless you’re really listening for them… well anyway, you can see the vid here. It’s not as if MTV would have played the clip anyway… Via Salon’s Audiofile. If the link doesn’t go directly to the video, just search/browse a bit. The site has some good stuff, but is a little tough to get around.

The new and improved Junkmedia has an interview with The Decemberists. Well, it’s really just Colin. Gothamist also has an interview. Junkmedia’s doing the blog thing, too. Gothamist doesn’t have to – it’s already a blog.

Prefix has a nice little two-part interview with Eric Johnson of The Fruit Bats.

More shows – A Stille Poster has info that Australian pop collective Architecture In Helsinki will be in town on October 1 at a venue to be determined (Pitchfork has their tour diary as this week’s feature). Also, The Hold Steady/Constantines tour is finally stopping in Toronto at the Opera House on November 2, and as Chris from The Final Bell pointed out in yesterday’s comments, Richard Thompson will be at Trinity-St Paul’s on October 20 with Danny Thompson and Eliza Gilkyson. The October concert sched is rapidly getting out of hand. Decisions are going to have to be made. Hard decisions.

The Torontoist week in shows leads off with the Three Gut 5th anniversary party going down on Saturday. Related articles – Three Gut’s Lisa Moran gave NOW a list of favourite reminiscences of the last five years, eye compiles their ultimate Three Gut mixed tape and Cokemachineglow has an interview with the gut of three himself, Jim Guthrie.

Anyone familiar with The Zephyrs out of the UK? Allmusic describes their first album When the Sky Comes Down It Comes Down on Your Head as combining “the epic grandeur of Mogwai with the country-rock of Gram Parsons“, which would pretty much make them my favourite band ever. Okay, it doesn’t HAVE to sound like a “Hickory Wind”/”Like Herod” mashup (but how great would that be?) but is it good? Their stuff is muy expensive over here, if you can even find it, so I’d like to get some testimonials before I start plunking down import prices.

np – Archers Of Loaf / Vee Vee

This started out as a Shearwater post, and then after I got Black Sheep Boy, grew into an Okkervil River post as well, and then after poking around Jound.com a bit, it’s just a big ol Will Robinson Sheff respect post.

I think I sampled some Okkervil many moons ago from Said The Gramophone and quite frankly, wasn’t impressed. From what I recall, the fidelity of the recording made Sparklehorse sound like Pink Floyd and the singer’s voice was off-key and raw enough to cause me actual discomfort. I mentally filed it under “thanks but no thanks” and put them out of my mind. Fast forward to May 11, 2005 and seeing Shearwater open for The Mountain Goats. Even if John Darnielle and company hadn’t put on a fantastic show (they did), I would have been quite satisfied – Shearwater really impressed live and on disc (I bought a copy of Shearwater at the show). I was aware of a connection between Shearwater and Okkervil River and since Okkervil’s latest Black Sheep Boy had been getting such good reviews, I ordered me up a copy of that, mostly unheard. And damn if it’s not excellent as well.

With all respect the the members of Okkervil and Shearwater who aren’t Will Sheff, I find the two acts to be somewhat interchangable (based on the one album of each I own) Update: And incorrectly so, apparently. Please refer to Kathryn’s comments below and, um, ignore my shoddy critical analysis. If you were to do a random play of both albums together, it’d still sound cohesive to me – both draw from Americana gothic/folk song traditions but neither are traditional sounding by any means. Sheff’s voice in both is rich, resonant and vulnerable, and perfectly suited to expressing his intricate and evocative lyricism. I’m having trouble figuring out why I couldn’t get into this a couple years ago – it seems like a no-brainer now. Ah well, better late than never. If I have to draw distinctions between the two projects, I’d say Shearwater is a little more delicate and late-night sounding, Okkervil more likely to get up and shout, but both tread a similar musical landscape. I couldn’t imagine liking one but not the other.

Here’s some audio (and video) – the mp3 for “A Makeover” is only 56kbps, but is far and away my favourite track off of Winged Life so I posted it anyway – Sheff’s Jonathan Meiburg’s Sheff’s voice suits the vocal melody so perfectly, it makes my head explode with joy. And representing Okkervil is “For Real”, complete with suitably creepy animated video and making-of feature. The first time I played Black Sheep Boy on my stereo, the big guitar stabs leading into the pre-chorus literally made me jump out of my seat. Played loud through a decent stereo, that will get your attention. There’s scads more media available at the respective band websites. And for reading, Lazy-I has an interview with Sheff in the Okkervil context.

MP3: Okkervil River – “For Real”

MOV: Okkervil River – “For Real”

MOV: Okkervil River – The recording of “For Real”

MP3: Okkervil River – “Black”

MP3: Shearwater – “A Makeover”

MP3: Shearwater – “The World In 1984”

KEXP recently had the band in for a radio session, some of which you can hear here (via Central Village) and more of which you can hear courtesy of Dreams Of Horses.

Between you and me, I’ve been sitting on this post for a while. So why am I finally getting around to finishing it up and publishing it? Okkervil River will be in Toronto at Lee’s Palace on November 7. Tickets $10 in advance. Excited about this one, obvs. It’s all about the topicality, man.

So, Liz Phair, I see you’ll be in town at the Phoenix on October 23. Oh, Liz. What happened? We used to be friends. But the last time we got together at the Guvernment, well that was just awkward. For both of us. I think it was your headset mic, to be honest. What’s up with that?

Torr reports that Idlewild’s Warnings/Promises has had its North American release date – which was supposed to be yesterday – pushed back to September 6. What’s up with that?

np – Bob Dylan / Biograph