The Sci-Fi Channel has posted the whole of their pilot for The Amazing Screw-On Head animated series online for your inspection. It’s based on the comic book by Mike Mignola, most notable for being a) one of the best and most distinctive comic artists of the last 20 years and b) creating Hellboy. Set in 19th century America, the comic – and show – chronicle the adventures of Screw-On Head, a secret agent of the United States government battling the strange and occult. And his head is a screw. Just so you know.

The show does a fine job of capturing both the look and spirit of the comic – It’s eccentric and dark and irreverent and really funny, thanks to the obvious glee displayed by Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce, who contribute the voices of Screw and his nemesis Emperor Zombie, respectively. The series is slated to begin airing July 27 but I guess they want to build some buzz or whatever for it beforehand so watch it, savor it and fill out the survey at the end. I don’t get Sci-Fi so I’ll have to torrent the show, but it’s a good ‘un. Giamatti talked to ComingSoon.net about the show and also his new film The Lady In The Water, which is – not surprisingly – getting savaged critically. I will defend Shyamalan’s Unbreakable as one of the best super-hero movies ever, but don’t have much to say about his other films…

The Decemberists have made a demo from their sessions for The Tain available to download off their MySpace site. It’s interesting to hear it so stripped down and shorter than 20 minutes. Their new one The Crane Wife is due out October 3. Via Donewaiting.

MP3: The Decemberists – “The Tain” (demo part 1)

Considering the last bit of news I heard from camp Spiritualized almost exactly one year ago was that Jason Pierce had almost died, this news that Pierce is embarking on an acoustic UK tour and that a new record will be out in early 2007 is good news indeed. Any news that doesn’t involve the artist being in intensive care is good news.

The Cardigans show at the Opera House may still not be confirmed according to the band, but everyone else seems to think it’s on. I bought my ticket from Rotate yesterday and the House Of Blues ad in NOW says that Mohair is opening. Yeah, whoever assembled that bill has a sense of humour.

And if if if for whatever reason that show doesn’t happen, you can always go see New York shoegazeniks Asobi Seksu at the Horseshoe that night. Tickets are $8.50.

And some concert merry-go-rounds – Midlake are no longer opening for The Hold Steady at Lee’s on August July 31. They have been replaced on that bill by Constantines alter ego Horsey Craze but will still be in town at Lee’s on September 11 to open for French Kicks, who themselves will make up their cancelled August 4 show. Got all that? No? Good, because the only really important thing you should take away from all that is that The Mountain Goats are at Lee’s on September 19, tickets $15. Get Lonely! could well be the album of the year. I haven’t heard it yet, but I feel it in me bones.

The new Pernice Brothers album Live A Little will be out October 17 3.

Harp asks Band Of Horses’ Ben Bridwell what he really really wants.

Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers tells Boston’s Weekly Dig he’s not so much a fan of the whole “Southern Rock” angle.

np – The Hold Steady / Separation Sunday

Rob Dickinson has a new solo acoustic record, Live And Alone, which he will be shilling whilst on tour opening for The Church over the next month. But for those of us not on the itinerary, fear not – he’ll be selling it online after the tour’s done. As a teaser, he’s made the track of Catherine Wheel’s “Heal” available to stream off his MySpace. There’s also an interview and some live studio performances available over at Rehearsals.com.

The Church are supporting the release of their umpteenth record Uninvited, Like The Clouds, which is an anthemic, stately and glistening thing. There’s not a lot of what you’d call fire or real urgency in the proceedings but the richness in Steve Kilbey’s voice, the textures of Marty Wilson-Piper’s and Peter Koppes’ guitars and general atmosphere of the record happily make up for it. They’re a band that seems oblivious to fashion, content to soldier on and turning what by rights should sound dated into something instead timeless. There’s something to be said for consistency.

You may (or may not) remember The Church from their one 1988 hit “Under The Milky Way”, which is probably as unfair as saying you may remember Rob Dickinson from Catherine Wheel’s one 1995 hit “Waydown”, but you know that’s how some of their shows are being billed… no justice I tells ya.

MP3: The Church – “Unified Field”
Video: The Church – “Under The Milky Way” (YouTube)
MySpace: The Church

Oklahoma’s Evangelicals tells Chart about the importance of always looking on the bright side of life. They are in town opening for Serena Maneesh and Film School on September 13 at Lee’s Palace.

Richard Edwards of Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s explains to Harp the appeal of Wes Anderson, from whose work the band drew inspiration for their horribly unwieldy name.

Oakley Hall’s Patrick Sullivan talks about the band’s influences to Harp. Oakley Hall are at the Mod Club September 11 with M Ward.

Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio tells The Independent how David Bowie came to appear on their new album, Return To Cookie Mountain, out in North America September 12. Via Largehearted Boy.

Camera Obscura frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell talks to Rolling Stone about the success of their new album Let’s Get Out Of This Country.

Tapes’N’Tapes tells NOW and The Toronto Star that they thank blogs for the success of their album The Loon. They play the Phoenix with The Futureheads next Wednesday.

And also in town next Wednesday – Mission Of Burma at the Horseshoe. eye talks to Clint Conley.

Not feeling especially inspired to write today. If you couldn’t tell.

np – Billy Bragg / Talking To The Taxman About Poetry

Having seen Los Angeles’ Monsters Are Waiting in March at SxSW, I figured I knew what to expect from their debut album Fascination, released yesterday. Slightly spastic new wave revivalist pop which I would find fun in smallish doses but perhaps tiring over the long haul. Well to my pleasant surprise, there’s more going on here than I expected.

The record opens with “Last Goodbye”, which is an unexpected dose of pure pop. Perfectly balancing melancholy and jubilation, Annalee Fery’s voice the epitome of sweetness, backed by chiming, overdriven guitars and lightly squelching synths. This is one of those songs you could put on repeat for hours on end. Well, maybe a couple hours. From there, the band steps out of the sunshine a bit. The guitars get stabbier and sharper and Fery becomes a little more unhinged and the further along you go, the more you realize that maybe someone’s not taking that “last goodbye” all that well. “Don’t Go” is more than a little delightfully demented with Fery’s panicky little girl squealing over the bridge, and a marked contrast to her dead-eyed monotone over “Firefly”. Second-to-last song “Monsters” brings some bounce back to the proceedings and closer “Time” is a lovely, glistening coda to what I’m sure was never meant to be a concept record, but there it is.

Boasting more than a little LA cool and a sexy, magnetic frontwoman, Monsters Are Waiting could have big things in store for them – New York Press attributes much of that potential to Fery’s hair. Spin also dubbed the Band Of The Day last month. You could easily use Metric as a point of comparison but Monsters have that “just a little crazy” edge that I find quite appealing. And I prefer brunettes…

MP3: Monsters Are Waiting – “Nobody”
MP3: Monsters Are Waiting – “Christine”
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Last Goodbye” (MySpace)
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Fascination” (MySpace)
MySpace: Monsters Are Waiting

Tilly & The Wall’s new video for “Bad Education” – just a little Almodovar-influenced? Yeah, just a bit.

Video: Tilly & The Wall – “Bad Education” (MOV)

The Hold Steady will release their new album Boys And Girls In America on October 3 (via Clicky Click). Pitchfork has some deets. Expect to hear them preview the new material when they play Lee’s Palace on August 31.

The first song and video from the new Pernice Brothers album is up for grabs. Go here and sign up for the mailing list to see/hear “Somerville” from Live A Little, which has no release date as of yet. I’d link them directly but I don’t want Catbirdseat to think I’m a dick. And anyway, the mailing list updates are generally informative and fun.

Pop (All Love) despairs for Richard Ashcroft.

Andy Partridge talks to Paste about the nervous breakdown that took XTC off the road for good. Since they’re not touring and not on strike from their label, are they ever going to release something that’s not a) archival or b) a milking of the Apple Venus sessions? That was seven years ago. C’mon.

As noted in the comments yesterday, The Cardigans have a show tenatively scheduled for September 20 at the Opera House. The operative word here is “tenative”, as Magnus Sveningsson notes nothing has been confirmed. So hold off on buying from Ticketmaster come Thursday, just in case.

And speaking of forthcoming Fall tours, the first dates for Mojave 3’s North American jaunt are up – expect the Toronto show somewhere between October 11 (Chicago) and October 19 (Boston).

Goldenfiddle directs us to this animated poster for Spider-Man 3. Sinister spider-logos are the new evil Spock goatees.

Not content to bury just alt.country (see yesterday), The New York Times writes an obituary for CD stores. Sadly, I can’t rebut this one as well – Flash’N’Crash gave up the ghost last week and the Annex is poorer for it.

np – The Mountain Goats / The Sunset Tree

The New York Times (Bugmenot) tries to stir things up a bit with a piece on the demise of “alt.country”, using the career of The Jayhawks as a reference point. It’s fine as a Jayhawks piece but is a helluva lot more tenuous as an obituary for a sound. Yes, the term came into fashion at around the same time the ‘Hawks and Uncle Tupelo were in their heyday and yes, most of the bands that were part of that specific scene have either disbanded or grown out of the sound but term outgrew the scene long before the scene outgrew it.

To my mind, it now encompasses anything from Gram and Neil (or even further back) through to anyone today who has an appreciation for good old-fashioned songcraft, storytelling, pedal steel and fuzzboxes or anything rootsy that doesn’t come from the Nashville/CMT machine. Like any other musical descriptor, it’s as meaningful as it is meaningless and as long as people keep making music that can be described as such, it’s not going anywhere.

But on a personal level my interest in alt.country as they define it does pretty much coincide with the arc as described in the NYT piece. I liked the Jayhawks’ post-Olson pop phase just as I liked Wilco’s growth beyond the A.M. sound and while I can certainly appreciate a band that trades in rootsy twang, I get a little frustrated now if that’s all they have to offer. It’s kind of odd to say, but it seems the only way a genre can continue to be fresh and interesting is if the bands that get pigeonholed in it keep trying to shake it off. Stylistic labels are like challenges to the artist – you don’t like it? Prove it doesn’t fit.

But if nothing else, the piece is good for one thing – they’ve also got five – FIVE – tracks from the new Golden Smog album Another Fine Day available to download as part of their Gary Louris segue. I linked “5-22-02” last week – here’s another one courtesy of The New York Times and you can stream the whole record at AOL. It’s in stores today but don’t expect much touring to support. As Louris and Dan Murphy tell Harp, they don’t see much point in touring without Jeff Tweedy. Which I don’t agree with but can understand them not wanting to deal with the drunken lout who shows up to loudly request “Casino Queen” through the whole show.

MP3: Golden Smog – “Another Fine Day”
Stream: Golden Smog – Another Fine Day

In addition to the Smog, Gary Louris is also producing the new Sadies album and appeared on their soon-to-be-released (August 8) In Concert Volume 1. I just got a copy of the double-disc set yesterday and it’s really spectacular. The 110-minute set is a twang feast and does a pretty damn good job of capturing the energy and excitement of being at the shows it’s drawn from. Like the show, the discs are broken up into a Good family affair and a special guest-laden racucous barnburner and it’s a feather in Steve Albini’s cap that he was able to capture the show with the perfect balance of rawness and clarity without sacrificing any of the vibe. I should know, I was there.

Also nice is that the liner notes tell you exactly who each of the songs was written by and what album they originally appeared on – very handy considering the cover-heavy set list and the revolving door that was the stage those nights. The Sadies play a two-night CD release show for In Concert at the Horseshoe on September 8 and 9. How they intend to do this record justice without flying all the participants back into town, I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll be something else to see them try. YepRoc has a half-dozen tracks of the 41 total tracks available to stream, including the Jayhawks’ “Tailspin”. You can also download of one of The Sadies’ own songs.

MP3: The Sadies – “Why Be So Curious? (live)”
Stream: The Sadies with Gary Louris – “Tailspin” (SWF)

Wilco’s Toronto show from July 7 has now been torrented thanks to Toronto taper extraordinaire David Klein. They opened with what I believe is the first ever performance of a new song, “There’s A Light”. There were two more new songs in the set – I posted a link to “Impossible Germany” from the Milwaukee show last week.

MP3: Wilco – “There’s A Light” (live in Toronto 2006-07-07)

Billy Bragg will release his second box set of the year, Volume Two, on October 17. It will cover the second half of his career including the essential Worker’s Playtime and Don’t Try This At Home as well as the somewhat less essential William Bloke and England, Half English (though I am guessing that the Mermaid Avenue sessions will be unrepresented). Each album will have a bonus disc of goodies and the ninth disc in the set will be a DVD containing two live shows, one from 1991 and one from this year. As with Volume One, each album will be available individually as well as in the fancy box and Bill will again be touring Canada to promote it so everyone who was disappointed to not hear “She’s Got A New Spell” last time will have to be in attendance. Of course, the Toronto show, which goes down at the Danforth Music Hall on September 24, just happens to be the same day as Lambchop which also just happens to be the same day as something else I sort of have to attend…. so Five Seventeen – just how long is this wedding thing of yours going to take?

And to bring things full circle, NPR has a feature on Jayhawks drummer gone solo Tim O’Reagan and Center Times Daily talks to him about his self-titled CD which came out June 27. O’Reagan will be at the Horseshoe on August 15 with Greg Laswell.

And yeah, the site was down for about six hours last night. THAT was fun.

np – The Sadies / In Concert Volume One

As promised last Thursday, this past Saturday night was another live music double-header with a bunch of bands in a “family” meme. First was an early show at the Drake with Toronto’s Your Volunteer and Brooklynites Say Hi To Your Mom and then up to Lee’s Palace for Ottawans My Dad Vs Yours and new local outfit Kids. We’ll just go in order, noting that though it was amusing that three of the bands had similarly-themed names, that they’re still all pretty bad band names. Sorry.

I wasn’t impressed with Your Volunteer at first, writing them off as another broody, angsty alt.rock combo that probably aspired for radio play on CFNY but as their set went on, I developed some respect for what they were doing. While I still didn’t think much of the songwriting, they were musically proficient and seemed to have more sonic vision than I’d expected, breaking out ebows, keyboards, melodicas, bongos and even a musical saw in attempts to broaden the aural palette of their songs. Not all of it worked, much of it didn’t actually contribute much to the songs and were ther for the sake of being there, but I will give credit for thinking outside the box. With luck their writing will grow to the point where they can do something more cohesive and interesting with their ideas.

For a three-piece, Say Hi To Your Mom sound massive – far moreso than you’d expect from just hearing the records. Jeff Sheinkopf’s old-school synths are a wall unto themselves and bolstered by Chris Egan’s drums and Eric Elgoben’s guitars, the end result is a pretty impressive slab of hooky indie rock. I was reminded a bit of Starflyer 59 in the laid back, almost narcoleptic vocals cresting a sea of fuzz. It’s funny – Elgoben’s droll, deadpan lyrics (the new album Impeccable Blahs has a lot of songs about vampires) seem like they should completely at odds with the musical approach and yet it works perfectly. The band seemed to get stuck with a shortish set on account of having to clear out for a Prince fan convention (seriously) but expect to be back later in the Fall for what would be their fourth Toronto show of 2006. Yes, they are here a lot.

I wrote up My Dad Vs Yours in May and they were one of my Polaris Prize nominees for their new album After Winter Must Come Spring, but this was my first time seeing them live. Instrumental post-rock bands like Explosions In The Sky and Mogwai have developed reputations for stellar live shows because their music lends itself to huge dynamic shifts, allowing for a real visceral (and physical) audience response. My Dad Vs Yours’ post-pop sound relies more on strong melodicism and tightly arranged instrumentation so there weren’t any sonic kidney punches to be had, just incredibly pretty songs. There was something of a deficit in stage presence, though, and the pacing could have been better. Still, minor complaints when they pulled off “Kids On Psych Drugs” (aka “Bellicose” on the album) as sublimely as they did.

Together only since January, Kids were a complete unknown to me, but their promise of Mojave 3 and Belle & Sebastian-esque pop was enough to get me to stick around. The five-piece band certainly displayed an eclectic range of influences including the aforementioned, though I’d most liken them to a more countrified Stars. With four strong singers, presumably almost as many songwriters and solid musical chops, they’ve got a loaded hand to play but will need to work on a more cohesive sound – as they went from one lead singer to another, they came off a bit more like a mix tape than a single band. But I was impressed enough to be sure to keep an eye on them in the coming months and the forgive them some more rookie mistakes, like not tuning any of their guitars before taking the stage or having a conversation with their buddies in the audience over the PA.

All in all, not a bad night of music. Photos from the My Dad Vs Yours show here and photos from the Say Hi To Your Mom show here. And some audio below. The My Dad Vs Yours track is one of my favourite things I’ve heard this year – the combined guitar/keyboard riff in the chorus is awesome.

MP3: Your Volunteer – “Nobody Has To Cry”
MP3: Say Hi To Your Mom – “Snowcones and Puppies”
MP3: My Dad Vs Yours – “Bellicose / Kids On Psych Drugs”
MySpace: Say Hi To Your Mom
MySpace: My Dad Vs Yours

And speaking of Explosions In The Sky (which I was), the band has posted some news on their website stating that their new album is written and will be recorded in Minneapolis next month with an eye towards releasing it in February of 2007. In the meantime, however, they’ve made the whole of The Rescue, an album they released in a limited edition last year, available to download. Because they’re swell. You can download it all here, read about it here and hear one of the songs here:

MP3: Explosions In The Sky – “Day One”

And not post-rock in the least, but still exciting – the first tracks from Eric Bachmann’s To The Races are available to grab courtesy of Saddle Creek. The album is out August 22 and his Fall tour will hit the Horseshoe on September 16.

MP3: Eric Bachmann – “Carrboro Woman”
MP3: Eric Bachmann – “Lonesome Warrior”

And have I mentioned lately how much I love Bedhead and The New Year? No? Well I do.

np – Bedhead / Beheaded