I’ll freely admit I expected the worst before I listened to Catfish Haven’s Please Come Back EP – for whatever reason, I steeled myself for some indie-friendly faux-blues act like (insert name of preferred two-piece, colour-themed band here) which has never been my cup of tea. So how pleased was I to find instead a slab of raw, deep Southern soul straight out of the land of Stax and Volt? Singer/guitarist George Hunter’s rasp is raw, anguished and utterly convincing, especially when propelled by the lean, insistent rhythm section. Opener “Please Come Back” is easily the high point of the six-song, 24-minute set, but the rest, composed of yearning ballads and gritty rockers, aren’t far behind. It’s a compact debut, but a gripping one.

Daytrotter has an extensive feature on the band (via Grant Manship), who play Sneaky Dee’s on May 6 with Asobi Seksu and PAS/CAL as part of The Over The Top Fest. Three disparate but wonderful bands on one bill. Awesome. Check out a some of their tunes below – there’s more music on their website and MySpace.

MP3: Catfish Haven – “Please Come Back”
MP3: Catfish Haven – “Madalin” (new demo)

CTV reports on Neil Young’s appearance on CNN Tuesday night while Reprise head honcho Howie Klein offers his thoughts on the record after having heard it, and it looks like any fears I had about them not having the guts to market or release it were unfounded. Look for Living With War in the early Summer.

John Vanderslice loves being interviewed, like by NOW. Yell rude and unexpected questions at him when he plays the El Mocambo on Friday night.

The Tufts Daily has an interview with Rhett Miller, who is currently pushing his solo record The Believer. His day job will be releasing a best-of on June 20 called Hit By A Train: The Best Of The Old 97’s. Full details here.

New Buffalo, who represents the Australian arm of Arts & Crafts’ global empire, will be opening for The Concretes on their two Canadian dates, including May 4 at the Horseshoe. I’ve had a chance to listen to the Concretes’ In Colour a few times now, and am enjoying it maybe more than most. It’s definitely a lot more immediate and pop than their first record, and while I can understand missing some of the orch-Motown vibe, the new country-ish vibe also sits well with me.

And in a similar musical vein – Glasgow’s Camera Obscura will release their third full-length Let’s Get Out Of This Century on June 6. Hear one of the new songs on their MySpace, a wonderful tribute to fellow Scot Lloyd Cole. I totally need to listen to Rattlesnakes again.

Also noteworthy in local concert news – Minneapolis’ Brooklyn’s Hold Steady will be at Lee’s Palace on July 31 (full tour dates here) while The Charlatans are at The Phoenix May 22, tickets are $27.50 and go on sale Saturday. The Jose Gonzalez/Juana Molina show on June 26 now has a home – it’ll be happening at Trinty-St Paul’s, absolutely the perfect place for it but that means it won’t be cheap. And finally, punk legends Stiff Little Fingers will be at the Horseshoe on June 13, tickets $23, while 80s Bossa Nova revivalists Nouvelle Vague are at the Mod Club on September 14.

np – Centro-Matic / Fort Recovery

May 15 will see a couple of bands roll into the Horseshoe, both of whom have new records out that look to distance themselves from the “emo” tag/slag that was often attached to their earlier works. Hailing from New York by way of Madison, Wisconsin, Rainer Maria just released Catastrophe Keeps Us Together while Richmond, Virginia natives moved to Chicago Ambulette’s debut release is The Lottery EP.

I haven’t heard all of Catastrophe yet as I’ve been too busy/lazy to go out and get a copy, but based on what I’ve heard both live and online, it sounds great. Caithlin De Marrais’ voice is so much stronger than it once was, no longer sounding like she’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown whilst being egged on by Kyle Fischer. Fischer’s self-proclaimed “peculiar” voice is apparently completely absent from the new record. While I was never a fan of his leads because of the aforementioned peculiarity, I thought it could be effective in certain contexts. Regardless, producer Malcolm Burn, who might at first seem like an odd choice with his roots-heavy resume featuring the likes of Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan, has done a terrific job of helping the band along in the maturing process first evidenced on 2003’s Long Knives Drawn, though The New York Times (Bugmenot) thinks they’ve actually gotten less mature but holds that up as a good thing. Metacritic in general is tilting for them rather favourably.

MTV and The News & Observer have conversations with Fischer about the new record. Official MP3s from the new album are hard to come by, I guess new label Grunion isn’t as generous as their old friends at Polyvinyl were, but this one submitted for their SxSW profile is still good – there’s also a couple more tracks on their MySpace.

MP3: Rainer Maria – “Burn”

Ambulette (née Bella Lea), Rainer Maria’s tourmates for this jaunt, haven’t been quite as successful at shaking the emo label that frontwoman Maura Davis’ old outfit Denali wore. The Lottery boasts a couple exceptional rock tracks, but much of the rest is still too heavy on the (melo)dramatic wailing. While the strength of Davis’ voice is undeniable, you get to wishing she’d use it in a different manner every now and again. But for what it is – a moody, sultry slice of alt.rock – it’s not a bad start. No MP3s available, but you can hear a couple tracks from the EP and a couple that aren’t at their MySpace page. Denali also has a MySpace page if you want to hear something from their salad days. And Spin recently named them “Band Of The Day”.

I caught both Rainer Maria and Ambulette at SxSW last month (linky 1, linky 2), so I can attest that the Horseshoe is going to play host to some fine rock on the 15th. Tickets are $10.50 in advance, $12.00 at the door.

Thanks be to Five Seventeen for tipping me off that The Wedding Present would be continuing to affirm their status as maybe the most fan-friendly band on the planet by releasing Search for Paradise: Singles 2004-5 on May 16. The CD/DVD collection will compile all the singles and b-sides released for 2005’s Take Fountain as well as all the videos. While the Weddoes have always been good about making their b-sides and whatnot available – witness all the compilations out there – it was during the Cinerama years that they began releasing a companion disc for every one of their proper albums. As an avowed fan of b-sides but not so much of having to buy all the singles individually, I applaud them for this. Clap clap.

And also check out My Mean Magpie’s list of albums that are better heard than seen (he’s talking about ugly artwork, yo).

The now-defunct Comes With A Smile offers an unpublished interview with Stephin Merritt, whose new album Showtunes, consisting of songs written for a pair of operas (via For The Records). Gigwise and Opera News Online also have interviews with Merritt about his collaborations with director Chen Shi-Zheng. Opera News Online. Now THAT’S a website I never thought I’d be linking. As for the record itself, apparently it’s a little confounding. The Magnetic Fields guy writing operas scored entirely by traditional Chinese instruments? I can’t see why that wouldn’t be ultra-accessible.

So lately I’ve been more than a little obsessed with bags. Yes, bags. Besides this addictively voyeuristic Flickr group, my recent adventures abroad have shown me that my current sac, this ubiquitous (in Toronto) MEC bag, just isn’t big enough or suitable for my current junks, my DSLR and attendant lenses in particular. So I’ve now been looking for something better – I gave up on camera bags since I want something that can serve multiple duty, ideally hauling my laptop, camera gear and assorted sundry items in whatever configuration I desire. I’m now looking for something courier/messenger style, bigger than a standard briefcase/satchel but not as big as a real bike messenger bag. Something that’ll handle my apparently gigantic laptop (it seems that most bag manufacturers only acknowledge the existance of Apple-sized laptops? WTF? Windows people don’t ever travel?) as well as offer space for me to slap in some of these for toting camera gear. Padding, waist strap for cycling and not butt-ugly are also concerns. I’ve found a couple of good candidates, but an inability to find them locally to measure and test them out is annoying (Update: Bah – Timbuk2 says my laptop won’t fit, it’s maybe 1cm too thick. Anyone want a used Dell Inspiron 6000?). I can easily order them online but am not terribly comfortable with doing so without being sure they’re what I want. Any other suggestions? And I know someone is gonna recommend Crumpler, but I can’t see any of their current models fitting my exact needs – by the time they get big enough to do what I want, they’re mammoth both in physical size and price.

np – The Concretes / In Colour

I had to double-check Noah Baumbach’s IMDB entry after seeing The Squid And The Whale to verify that it was The Life Aquatic he worked on with Wes Anderson and not The Royal Tenenbaums (though Anderson produced Squid). His semi-autobiographical film about a family slowly fracturing before, during and after a divorce plays like a sort of looking-glass version of Anderson’s film, but instead of reveling in eccentric, fairy tale-ish irony, Baumbach’s (fictional) family comes across all too real, flawed and pained. But still funny, if heartbreakingly so.

Set in 1986 Brooklyn, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are the two academic/writer parents whose marriage decays for various reasons while Jesse Eisenstien and Owen Kline are their two sons trying to cope with the changes in their life, and not especially well. The cast was uniformly terrific, conveying tremendous depth of character with minimal gestures, though not the emotional catatonia that, say, Bill Murray would have brought to the table. The seven or eight minutes of the opening scene alone offered more subtle and nuanced characterization than some films manage to get out of two hours. Jeff Daniels in particular was superb as the father, probably initially the least sympathetic and outwardly jerk-ish character but by the end, the saddest. Ireland’s Event Guide has an interview with Daniels about his role in the film.

It’s a great film and highly recommended, though if you’re the sort of person who hates the sort of films that critics love, you’d best stay away. And because it’s fun to play segue, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, who provided the score for the film (Dean also scored Baumbach’s Mr Jealousy) have made one of the songs available to download. And Dean contributes a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Hey You”, integral to the film, to the soundtrack.

MP3: Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips – “Family Conference”

There’s also a pretty instrumental piece cryptically titled “Luna movie soundtrack” available to stream/download on their MySpace page. The duo has also updated their website with photos and video footage from the recording sessions for their second album, and getting back to the forthcoming Luna doc, Head Full Of Wishes has an interview with drummer Lee Wall about Tell Me Do You Miss Me. You’ll recall Britta went a couple weeks ago.

It’s Cinnamon Girl day at Stereogum – he’s got a tidy dozen versions of the Neil Young classic available to download – eleven covers and the original. More one-note solos than you can shake a stick at. And Billboard has more on Young’s Life In War, which Young describes as “A metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan … metal folk protest,” recorded in power-trio configuration. Interestingly, his label hasn’t heard it yet – they get to listen to it today, and I’m sure after hearing/seeing all the rancour the album’s very existance has caused amongst their red state markets, are more than a little nervous about what’s coming their way. But whether it’s awful or brilliant, offensive or inspired, does Reprise have any option but to release it? Has an album from an artist as high-profile as Young, especially one that’s gotten this much ink already, ever been turned down by a label? Somewhere, deep in Reprise HQ, some exec is watching Prairie Wind and shaking their head, saying, “we were doing so well, Neil…”

Feist tells Glide she’s not at the Neil Young stage of her career yet. So no protest albums from Ms Leslie. Yet. Just her rarities comp Open Season, out next week.

Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers talks blesssings and curses with Philly.com. The new album is out today and already doing pretty well on Metacritic. Via Largehearted Boy. Billboard mentions that the Truckers will be on tour with Black Crowes but that bill doesn’t kick in until June 10, considerably after the Crowes play Massey Hall on May 16.

The Secret Machines are at the Mod Club on May 15 and The Plastic Constellations are at the Horseshoe on June 20.

24: Is it strange that I spent the first ten minutes waiting for a sniper to take out the Secretary of Defense? And while his position on not turning in the tape isn’t actually that surprising, his throat punch on Jack was. Probably just wanted to see if he could do it. And is this the second time today that Chloe’s been arrested? Or was that last season? Anyway, Peter Weller’s rented Hong Kong Cavaliers weren’t very smart. “Let’s take cover form this firefight behind a giant fuel tank!” Geez, are there really seven more hours to go? And check it out – Kiefer and 24 are on the cover of Rolling Stone. Don’t get too caught up in the online quiz – some of the questions were kind of tough, but I don’t think it actually ends. It just keeps going… and going…

np – Calexico / Feast Of Wire

After several delays, it’s been officially announced that Mojave 3 will release their fifth album, Puzzles Of You, on June 20. You can take a look at the album art here. Neil Halstead talked to Billboard about the new record and says that it’s more of a pop record than the relatively drifting and gauzey Spoon And Rafter. Halstead also says the band is planning to tour North America in September (yay) and that he will record a second solo album later this year (double yay).

The album will be preceded by a single on May 29 in the UK for “Breaking The Ice” which will be accompanied by a video that has already been shot. 4AD has posted some photos from the video shoot. Is that a beard, Neil? The video should be posted online for your viewing pleasure any time now. But in the meantime, enjoy the fact that a bunch of M3 shows are now available to download from Archive.org and once again, I direct you to a demo version of a Puzzles Of You track that the band graciously made available on their website a little while back.

MP3: Mojave 3 – “Big Star Baby” (demo)

Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene discusses the importance of community with The Independent. The Olympic Island website has been updated with some details of the BSS-curated festival being held there on June 24. Apparently there is one more act that is waiting to be confirmed for the show.

Sigur Ros keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson discusses the band’s futility at being rock stars with The Japan Times. The band will re-release their “Hoppípolla” single on May 1, thanks to the song’s use in the BBC’s Planet Earth television program. The band will be at Massey Hall with string-wielding compatriots Amina on May 13.

Ireland’s Event Guide discusses the lifespan of Low with Alan Sparhawk. This link and many of the above courtesy of Largehearted Boy.

Dose talks to Calexico’s Joey Burns about shifting sytylistic gears on Garden Ruin.

One of The Big Takeover’s bloggers thinks it’s just a matter of time before MP3 blogs get made an example of for their/our constant copyright infringement. It’s interesting that the tone of the piece seems to be eagerly anticipating the day that sites like Fluxblog gets the smackdown. I find it a little puzzling that someone writing for BTO would have such a conservative view of enforcing copyrights and support for the record industry’s big hammer tactics towards dealing with online media.

np – Decoder Ring / Fractions

The Paper Cranes / The Paper Cranes (Unfamiliar) Yelping is the new singing. This is the only conclusion I can draw from the number of bands these days that employ this manner of vocal expression. Or maybe it’s just something in the water out in Victoria, BC, the same sleepy burg that gave us Hot Hot Heat and Wolf Parade and now The Paper Cranes. Head Crane Ryan McCullagh sounds not unlike Robert Smith with more than a dash of David Byrne, two fashionable influences if ever there were any. If you like that sound, then this is a golden age for you. If not, and I can’t say I’m a huge fan, then it can be a bit of a struggle to not dismiss an act as soon as the singer/yelper opens their mouth. Luckily, on their debut EP The Paper Cranes offer enough musical goodness to merit sticking around and getting past any initial aversions. There’s some of the guitar jagginess you’d expect, but also some great melodies and songwriting. The one song they’ve made available for download, “Deus Ex Machine Gun”, is not an example of this. It’s rather dull and derivative, but the other tracks on their Myspace page are definitely worthy. They’ll be on a cross-Canada-and-back tour this Summer that lands them in Toronto on June 9 if you want to check them out. MP3: The Paper Cranes – “Deus Ex Machine Gun” (thanks to Greg for the MP3 update) MP3: The Paper Cranes – “I’ll Love You Til My Veins Explode” The Paper Cranes @ MySpace

Bound Stems / The Logic of Building the Body Plan (Flameshovel) Chicago’s Bound Stems piqued my interest at SxSW, so their EP – which had been sitting in a large pile for some time – got moved to the smaller pile and now here it is. Like the Paper Cranes, they also have a penchant for yelping but it’s more the Isaac Brock type than Robert Smith. In fact, there’s a distinct Modest Mouse vibe across the entire record, though rather without the latent anti-socialness and anxiety of that outfit. Instead, Bound Stems are sweetly poppy but still kinda proggy. Rather than seeking catharsis, they exult in the inherent joy of just making music. Not really sure what to make of some of the spoken-word interludes, but the musical bits? Lovely. PS – note to Bound Stems? Next time you print liner notes, you may want to avoid black type on black illustrations. Just a suggestion. MP3: Bound Stems – “Crimes & Follies” MP3: Bound Stems – “My Kingdom For A Trundle Bed” Bound Stems @ MySpace

np – Luna / Rendezvous