The day many have been anticipating/ dreading arrived yesterday – the first real tangible fruits of Brett Ratner’s labour on X-Men 3. There’d been a lot of doomsaying since director Bryan Singer jumped ship for Superman Returns and the man responsible for bringing us Rush Hour (both parts!) took over the helm, but I have tried to hold out hope that a decent flick might still come out of it all (though studios announcing release dates before they have a director doesn’t usually instill great confidence). Well, USA Today was first with pics from the new film, including the first look at Kelsey Grammar as Beast. Yeah, he looks a little odd, but I actually don’t mind it. I’ve gotten used to the more feline Beast of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, but the celluloid version looks more reminiscent of the 80s-era Hank McCoy (though with the current Beast’s fashion sense). There’s also some shots of Angel, whose torso looks inexplicably plastic. Not surprisingly, the peanut gallery at Newsarama had lots to say about the released images.

But that was just a teaser for what would come last night, with the online release of the teaser trailer for X3… and I gotta say, it’s not making me afraid. Of course, it’s relying on road-tested images to get the fans worked up (Magneto smashing stuff, Wolverine snikt-ing, Jean Grey without any pants on) with a smattering of new treats (Shadowcat, Juggernaut, Beast, Angel), but still, I’m glancing at my calendar to see how far off May 26 is. Newsarama is talking about the teaser, natch. I *think* you need to have iTunes installed to see the trailer – the latest version of Quicktime is bundled with it, so if you wanna see it, you gotta have it installed. Boo, Apple. Also new is the official “title” for X3 – The Last Stand. While I’m sure no one is going to say it, it appears they’re prepared for this to be the final X-Men movie (excepting the Wolverine spinoff slated for ’07). Considering how much trouble they’ve had coercing cast members to come back for each production (hello, Halle Berry), I’m not surprised and I won’t begrudge them if they wrap things up – I just hope it’ll be on a high note.

Also on the topic of Marvel-to-film, here are some screenshots from the Ultimate Avengers straight-to-DVD feature film that’s coming out in February. Looks good, and if the writing is half as good as the Ultimates story it’s based on, it should be a winner as well.

And apologies to anyone who saw the post title and was hoping for some Mogwai news… sorry. Mr Beast is still coming out March 7, but there’s no preview MP3 yet or anything. Mogwai do have a MySpace page, though, so you can add them as your friend and get Stuart Brathwaite to curse at you all fancy-like in Scottish.

Sigur Ros are currently streaming the entire two-hours-plus of their recent hometown show in Reyjkavik right here, a perfect treat for those who missed them on their North American tour this Fall (like me). The band will be returning to the US next February for more dates, but will be skipping Canuckistan. Alas. Thanks to Mishie for the link.

Chart surprises the hell out of me by posting a news item about the new EP and album from Amelia Fletcher’s Tender Trap. The EP is called Language Lessons, which is out today, and the album, Talking Backwards, is out in January.

More year end listiness. Indie Interviews and Marathon Packs have their lists up, Metacritic has scientifically calculated the best albums of the year from their meta-scores and Stylus is running down their 50 singles of the year all this week.

np – Supergrass / Road To Rouen

Taunton, Massachussetts’ Wheat never got big enough for a lost album story to take on mythic proportions, but the unreleased version of their last album (so far) Per Second, Per Second, Per Second Every Second certainly attained minor Holy Grail status for me over the last couple years. For those unfamiliar with the Wheat story, check out this post and get up to speed. Anyway, thanks to one of my readers, I recently came into possession of the mastered version of the album that was originally to be released by Nude Records before they went belly up, allowing me the opportunity to finally compare and contrast the two versions instead of just imagining what the original record was like.

What’s interesting is that the Nude version (henceforth referred to as PS-N of the album isn’t THAT far removed from the officially-released Aware version (now dubbed PS-A). My analogy would be it’s the same guy, but forced to stand up straight, comb his hair and have his clothes dry-cleaned and pressed. And while it looks good on him, you can see he’s itching to let it all hang loose again. Even if the Nude version had come out as originally intended, there would surely have still been fans who would have complained about the slick production values. Some of the differences are subtle, like replacing grainy synth sounds with proper pianos or whatnot, and some differences are more pronounced like the all-new anthemic chorus in “Closer To Mercury”. The quirky vocals that defined the original “Hey So Long (Ohio)” were redone completely and offbeat numbers like “We Will Rock” were dropped completely. Being able to compare the two records is particularly interesting in that you can practically see the list of “notes” that the A&R guys handed Wheat after signing them, but it also puts PS-A in a kinder light because you can see how much of the band’s shift in sound was theirs and theirs alone. But all in all, I think I prefer the Nude version. What can I say? I like the rough edges.

But you know, I probably wouldn’t have been so vocal about my distaste for PS-A when it was released if it had simply omitted the re-recorded version of “Don’t I Hold You”. I can accept retconning in comic books and TV shows, but not beloved pop music moments. The glossed-up version of that perfect song felt more like a slap in the face to old Wheat fans than any extra major label buff and shine… But that’s all in the past now. The “everyday i said a prayer for kathy and made a one inch square – 2006” message that appeared on their homepage recently gives hope that Wheat’s hiatus will be over sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Ricky Brennan has just released Elate, the debut EP from his new/other band Duresse, the whole of which is streamable off their website.

I’ve taken the liberty of ripping a couple tracks from PS-A and posting them alongside the PS-N versions that Wheat has posted on the audio page of their website, so you too can comparison shop, and there’s also a live show archive here.

MP3: Wheat – “World United Already (Naked)”
MP3: Wheat – “World United Already (Aware)”
MP3: Wheat – “Closer To Mercury (Naked)”
MP3: Wheat – “Closer To Mercury (Aware)”

As I mentioned in this week’s MP3 Of The Week blurb, So Much Silence has been working overtime converting radio sessions to friendlier MP3 format. His latest feat was converting the NPR stream of last week’s Calexico and Iron & Wine show in DC. Check out his posts for Calexico’s set, Iron & Wine’s set and both acts together.

The Arcade Fire have a creepy-cool new vide for “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)”. Link courtesy of The New Pollution.

One of the tracks from the new Trespassers William album Having topped this weekend’s edition of Anti-Hit List. Though the album isn’t out till February 28, John Sakamoto included an all-too brief clip in his podcast of the same list. The TW clip starts around the 12:30 mark. PS, John – Trespassers William are now proudly based out of Seattle.

Rolling Stone gets a sneak peak at the in-progress third album from The Shins, which should be out next Summer. The working titles are Wincing The Night Away or Sleeping Lessons.

np – Explosions In The Sky / The Rescue

This week – books I’ve been sent over the past few months!

Nicholas Zinner / I Hope You Are All Happy Now (Evil Twin) This book is a collection of photographs taken by Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitarist Nick Zinner whilst on tour around the world with his band. There’s candid backstage shots, a series of images of just hotel beds, city scenery, wounds… most interesting are the audience shots. The thing that struck me most about that chapter is just how WHITE everyone is. Seriously, no matter where you go in the world, indie kids are white. Except Japan. There, they’re Japanese. But seriously, I had originally sort of expected this to be a bit of a vanity collection from Zinner, but I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting life through his lens was. He definitely manages to convey the surreality of life on the road with a band (or his band, at the very least), actually getting past the carefully cultivated public image that the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s put forth. Worth a flip through at Chapters is you’re interested in off-the-cuff photography.

Tm Riley / Fever: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Transformed Gender in America (St Martin’s Press) As the title states, Fever attempts to document how starting in the 1950s, rock’n’roll redefined the perception of gender in America, but while it uses that as a starting point, it’s really just a selective history of rock music in general. Tim Riley starts out interestingly, pitting Elvis Presley’s hips against John Wayne’s stoicism, carrying on through the girl groups of Motown and Phil Spector and Tina Turner’s liberation from Ike. At that point, Riley’s thesis begins to waver a bit. He spends a fair bit of time analyzing Pete Townshend’s writing for The Who, and while interesting, there’s not really a strong to be made for the impact on gender issues made by Tommy or Quadrophenia (“I’m A Boy”, yes). A more interesting 70s case study would have been David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, but he’s only mentioned in passing. Similarly, if you were to read the analysis of the Carole King, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor on its own, you might not have any idea that it was anything but an essay on the artists and not part of a larger treatise. Also, an entire chapter is dedicated to Bruce Springsteen and though it did succeed in making me want to go back and listen to all my Bruce stuff, there’s not much argument to be made about his importance in gender issues beyond that he was a man’s man (but a sensitive sort). If I were actually looking for an in-depth study of the impact of rock on gender in America, Fever would be a decent jumping-off point, but it’s far from a definitive tome on the topic. Good reading as just rock history with a bit of an angle, though.

np – Trespassers William / Different Stars

Hey look. It’s John Lennon and Bob Dylan in the back of a cab. Two of the greatest songwriting talents of the past century. Stoned out of their minds. AWESOME. I wonder if this is an outtake from No Direction Home?

Nellie McKay was pissed at Columbia Records for making her condense Pretty Little Head (Out January 3), and she let everyone at a recent show know about it, and The LA Times was happy to relay the message to the world at large. Now it appears Sony has capitulated… but in exchange, they are installing spyware ALL over her CD. You can hear one of the tracks from the new album on her website right now in a variety of streaming media formats (via Largehearted Boy).

The Fader gets some inside info on the new Drive-By Truckers album from Patterson Hood. A Blessing And A Curse is due out in April of next year.

Bob Mould tells The Washington Square News he thinks music audiences are all reunion-ed out.

My Blog Is Poop has some suggestions on how to assemble a proper blogger year-end list.

PopMatters wants to help you with your Christmas shopping with a handy-dandy gift guide.

Thoughts on the alternate ending stunt on Veronica Mars this week? I thought the original was good, the alternate WAY over the top. I can’t imagine they’d allow either scenario to pull the overall plot too far from the other – there’s no way they could have filmed different versions of every episode left in the season. I just hope that the VM audience is sharp enough to not get sucked in by the more sensationalist ending, but I guess we’ll just have to see. Or maybe they’re not going to listen to the audience’s opinion either way, and this is just a test to see how vicious Veronica Mars fans are. It was also fun to see Alyson Hannigan and Charisma Carpenter get catty at each other again, what with Veronica Mars being the natural sassy-girl show successor to Buffy – it even has Joss Whedon’s seal of approval, as given to Entertainment Weekly.

I have survived the first cut in the Canadian Blog Awards, and am one of five finalists for “Best Culture Blog” with a block-rocking 9% of the votes (or 54 in total). Woot. Vote for me! It’s nice to get nominated for stuff, but someday I’d like to actually, you know, win. For a change.

You’ll note I’ve added one of those comment spambot protection thingees – I apologize for the extra step in leaving me pithy remarks, but I was getting deluged with comment spam.

np – Explosions In The Sky / How Strange, Innocence

I think they’ll take away my indie snob decoder ring if I don’t report on these Neutral Milk Hotel demos which have suddenly surfaced, like so much early Christmas presents for the indie kids. Basically, the story is as follows – Skipgoshannon moved into a house formerly occupied by one Jeff Mangum, and came into possession of a number of cassettes featuring demos by the future King Of Carrot Flowers. Eleven years later, it has dawned on her what she has in her possession, and the tracks are slowly being converted into digital form for sharing. What a lovely story, no? She has some of the tracks available to download, as do NeutralMilkHotel.org, My Old Kentucky Blog and You Ain’t No Picasso. I’m sure that before long, all the tracks will be happily converted to 1s and 0s and collected together in an easy to carry bit torrent form. But if you like doing the whole scavenger hunt thing, go to it. Those tracks are out there. Somewhere.

Harp puts one Mr Neil Young on their cover of their new issue, and the world is a better place for it. The extensive feature article is now online. Also in the new issue, Jeff Tweedy ranks his top-ten greatest all-time live albums… and topping the list is one Live Rust, by the aforementioned Mr Young. I had a copy of that CD taped from the library way back when I first started getting heavily into music, and damn if I didn’t wear that thing out.

Popmatters talks football, Noo Yawk and Harry Potter with American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny.

The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle pays tribute to The Days Of Our Lives for Nerve.

Largehearted Boy has unleashed his year-end list on the world. I have finalized my top 10, and am going to start on the writeups, um, soon. I’ve set a personal deadline for getting that finished though, so barring catastrophe it should be ready in the near future. Meanwhile, the wet blankets at Pitchfork wonder why we even bother. Easy – to get out of having to write new content for a day.

LA Weekly considers the role of blogs in breaking new bands. Via Coolfer.

Londonist has what they claim is inside information on NME fixing their year end list, and a wonderful shitstorm ensues. Now considering how high I hold the NME‘s journalistic integrity, I’m fully prepared to believe the story, but Londonist does themselves no favours by offering no evidence or proof of their accusations. It’s still an entertaining read, though.

Ooh, more random award nominations! Gridskipper, allegedly an “urban travel guide”, is running something called The Urbs: 2005 Urban Blogging Awards, and I’m nominated for World’s Best Urban Music Blog. Hear that? THE WORLD. Oooooh.

np – Bruce Springsteen / The Essential Bruce Springsteen