In hindsight, the pressure must have been unbearable. Saturday Looks Good To Me’s 2004 release Every Night was one of my favourite albums of the last however many years and I can only imagine this knowledge must have have been an enormous burden on bandleader Fred Thomas as he worked on a follow-up. Normally prolific to Pollard-ian degrees, Thomas’ output diminished to a trickle over the last three years with only limited-edition singles and a compilation of demos and unreleased tracks to break the studio silence.

Updates from SLGTM-land were sporadic – at one point Thomas said the new record was going to be a double-album split between “he said” and “she said” songs. He also mentioned he was wary of being pigeonholed by the band’s Motown/retro-pop aesthetic, a move that was backed up by the live band’s pared-down lineup and rougher, more rock-heavy sound. These shows also reinforced his intention to sing all the songs on the new record himself – and for all of his strengths as a songwriter and producer, Thomas isn’t a great singer. So needless to say, anticipation for the new record was tempered by no small amount of trepidation.

Which brings us to Fill Up The Room – the fruits of Thomas’ long-gestated, deconstructed and rebuilt Saturday Looks Good To Me and… it sounds like Saturday Looks Good To Me. Somehow, the new record maintains much of what made the previous records special – the time capsule production, the razor-sharp pop sensibility – and yet there’s something definitely different about it. It’s as though all the musical experimentation and exploration that Thomas did over the past few years led him to the Confucian/Banzai-ian epiphany that no matter where he went, there he was and no matter what he did, it was going to sound like himself. So fuck it.

True to his word, he handles vocals on ten of the eleven tracks (the other is sung by Betty Marie Barnes, who made Every Night such a delight) and while he strains to hit a note or five, he sounds better than I’d have expected over the course of the whole record. Having one singer throughout does bring a greater sense of consistency and continuity to the affair and helps Fill Up The Room come off more like a proper album rather than a kick-ass mix tape. There are fewer horns, less obvious Motown nods and the arrangements zig into sprawl where once they’d have zagged into compactness but there’s no mistaking this for anything but a Saturday Looks Good To Me record, and not only that, a great one. Fears allayed. Joy commencing.

AllMusic asked Thomas five questions, including whether this was deliberately a more “mature” record and why he opted to sing everything on this one (with a surprisingly pragmatic answer).

MP3: Make A Plan
MySpace: Saturday Looks Good To Me

Okkervil River stops in at Daytrotter and turns in a session with three covers and a Stage Names song. All sound glorious. Daytrotter and Okkervil River – two great tastes that taste great together.

Pitchfork gets Bradley’s Almanac has audio from a show they did in a tiny bar last month and Pitchfork has a video of them playing a b-side in the back of a cab.

And The National’s tourmate in Europe right now, Hayden, has announced details of his new record – In Field & Town is out January 15 and he’ll be touring Canada in support thereafter, including a February 19 date at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. Chart has full tour dates and album deets.

The Asbury Park Press checks in with proud Jersey girl Nicole Atkins, who explains why the release of Neptune City was delayed three months – Rick Rubin said so. Atkins is at Lee’s Palace next Sunday night and be sure to check out her latest MySpace blog, which recounts her week from playing Letterman the day of the album’s release to starting off the current tour with The Pipettes (who talk to The Boston Globe). Hilarious stuff.

Paste has posted their recent cover feature on Ryan Adams online.

Part two of the My Bloody Valentine interview now up, covering music theory and production techniques.

The AV Club lists off “21 Good Albums That Could Have Been Great EPs”. I beg to differ on New Adventures In Hi-Fi and Urban Hymns – maybe a couple songs could have been excised but by no means were there only five our six worthy songs on either record. Most of the others, though, I have no argument.

I don’t know why, but I’m always a little bit surprised when I see local bands fill larger venues whose bread and butter is usually touring bands with a national/international profile. Maybe it’s because I often see said locals in either much cozier environs or, if it is at a larger club, it’s in a support capacity for one of the aforementioned touring bands. Anyway, the point of it is, it was kind of exciting to see Lee’s Palace so chock full of people wanting to spend their Friday night with Ohbijou.

Touted as their last show for a while, presumably to work on the follow up to last year’s Swift Feet For Troubling Times, it was as much a gathering of friends celebrating a terrific year for the band as it was a concert. Of course, when you combine friends, Friday nights and alcohol you get chattiness and the constant din of the crowd was a point of frustration throughout the night but hey – that’s Toronto for you.

First up was Bruce Peninsula and after seeing them at Dog Day Afternoon in the Summer, it was strange to see them indoors rather than under the late afternoon, country sky. Once underway, though, the eleven-piece outfit – more congregation than band – somehow managed to recreate that sense of elemental urgency, not unlike an impending thunderstorm. There’s a rawness to their foreboding country gospel aesthetic that connects on a very primal level and as they continue to work on their debut album, I wonder how it’ll be possible to capture that energy to tape. Maybe it’d be better to simply pile into a covered wagon and travel the country spreading the good word in person. Check them out on November 24 at the Horseshoe with The Acorn and be saved. Or damned. Or both.

Ah, Basia Bulat. A quick Flickr search shows that this was the seventh time in the past year and a bit that I’ve seen her play and every day I wake up without a restraining order in my mailbox is a good one. So as to avoid giving the prosecution any more evidence, I’ll just say that even with a smaller band than usual – they were a five piece this time out – she was terrific as ever. And since it’s likely this was the last time I caught her in 2007, here’s to another half-dozen great shows in ’08.

Ironically, the crowd noise wasn’t especially overbearing for the openers but when Ohbijou took the stage, they turned the chatter up to 11. Respect! Ohbijou brought some extra volume of their own, however, in the form of a four-piece brass section that not only overwhelmed the talkers, but most of the band as well. Ah well. The horns returned a few points through the night but mostly, the night was Ohbijou doing what Ohbijou does so well – sweet, orchestral pop that wasn’t entirely at home in a big room like Lee’s – there were some persistent feedback issues and some of the more delicate touches in the arrangements were lost – but was comfortable visiting for a spell. And that’s how it is with parties, isn’t it? Things don’t always go exactly as you’d planned and sometimes things get messy but as long as everyone has a good time, isn’t that what really matters?

Photos: Ohbijou, Basia Bulat, Bruce Peninsula @ Lee’s Palace – November 9, 2007
MP3: Ohbijou – “St Francis”
MP3: Ohbijou – “Misty Eyes”
MP3: Ohbijou – “Steep”
MP3: Basia Bulat – “Snakes & Ladders”
Video: Ohbijou
MySpace: Basia Bulat
MySpace: Bruce Peninsula

Stars have a new video. Watch it.

Video: Stars – “The Night Starts Here” (MOV)

AOL Music Canada discusses the elusive Canadian national identity with John K Samson of The Weakerthans.

Here it is, the Soft Focus interview with My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields where he spills the beans about the band’s resurrection. Shields, for a man who was once considered batshit crazy, comes off quite well. The host… well, not so much. This is part one – check back throughout the week for the rest. And as a bonus, The Daily Swarm has dug up some older MBV interviews and videos to brighten your day.

And as almost every band that got tagged as shoegazer in the 90s seems to be digging out the pedalboards and finding a pair of sensible shoes worth contemplating, there are some exceptions. Under The Radar tracked down former Lush frontwoman Miki Berenyi and talks to her about the tragic final days of her band, what she’s been doing for the past ten years and what the odds of her ever getting back into music are. While it’s a bit sad to realize that some beloved acts are perfectly happy to let the reunion bandwagon roll on by (even if it’s probably for the best), Berenyi’s dose of reality is both amusing and touching.

Video: Lush – “For Love” (YouTube)

The Guardian profiles once and once again Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft. The band is a week into their highly anticipated reunion gigs and reviews are mostly positive (with a few naysayers). No one’s beaten anyone up yet, at least.

Spinner invites PJ Harvey to their studio to play selections from White Chalk.

The Futureheads have finished work on their third album and are offering a preview.

MP3: The Futureheads – “Broke Up The Time”

Billboard confirms that Radiohead’s In Rainbows will be released in North America, CD-style, on January 2 of next year thus ensuring that it’ll show up on scads of peoples’ year-end lists both this year and next. Clever. And if you’re looking for clips/MP3s/general gushing about the band’s pirate video webcast from this weekend, swing a stick. A short stick.

The AV Club talks to Bryan Lee-O’Malley about the fourth volume of Scott Pilgrim – Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together – in stores on Wednesday.

There’s a great temptation when describing Haligonian Rebekah Higgs to invoke the name of a certain ubiquitous Canadian chanteuse who also has a marvelous voice, a penchant for looped vocals and red hollowbody electric guitars, but I will do my best to resist.

When discussing her self-titled debut, it’s easy – rather than eliciting comparison to she-who-won’t-be-named, Higgs recalls the whole grand genre of female singer-songwriters from around 1994 or so to present day with ten tracks ranging from piano balladry to pure pop built from a folkish baseline that reveals her Maritime origins. What sets Higgs above and apart, beyond a consistently high level of songwriting, are two things. One is the production, which is crisp and clean but also casts a pleasant, Nigel Godrich-like sheen over things. The touches are subtle – some delay pedal glitchery here, some keyboard washes there – but the overall effect is quite effective. It’s takes the slightly fairy tale atmosphere of Higg’s songs and makes the woodland creatures tiny robots… if that makes any sense.

The other factor is Higgs’ voice, or more specifically, her phrasing. When it comes to vocals, I’m a big believer that phrasing is everything – it can make an unremarkable voice interesting and a great voice amazing (or, conversely, the lack of it can make a great voice incredibly dull – see pretty much any “diva” on MuchMusic for evidence). And Higgs has both a great voice and phrasing. Her delivery has a guarded – perhaps wounded – and knowing tone to it that when combined with her sing-songy melodies, intrigues and gives the sense of much more going on under the surface. The more you listen, the more you want to know.

I also had the opportunity to catch a her play a showcase set on Thursday night before her proper gig at the Tiger Bar and came away with more of a work in progress impression. Playing with just a bassist and drummer, she did her best to recreate the textures of the record with processed mics and a tickle trunk of various loopers and effector devices but in juggling all the technology and trying to get everything in its right place the songs fell out of focus. A little digging shows that her live band sometimes has more manpower to it so perhaps this was a make-do configuration and not reflective of what she can really do live. But either way, full marks for effort if not execution and I look forward to seeing her make it up in the future.

Photos: Rebekah Higgs @ The Drake Underground – November 8, 2007
MP3: Rebekah Higgs – “Parables”
Video: Rebekah Higgs – “Parables” (YouTube)
MySpace: Rebekah Higgs

Lightning round! The good folks at Merge just got in touch and said that they had a few pairs of passes to see Caribou at the Opera House tomorrow night – November 10 – and asked if I could help get rid of them for them. I said yes. This is where you come in.

If you want to go see Mr Snaith along with Born Ruffians tomorrow evening, shoot me an email at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Caribou” in the subject line and your full name in the body. FIRST THREE RESPONDENTS WIN… starting NOW. BETTING ENDS. Cognrats to Cailey, Andrew and Jessica. Instructions forthcoming.

NOW and eye both preview the show this week.

MP3: Caribou – “Melody Day”
Video: Caribou – “Melody Day” (YouTube)
MySpace: Caribou

So I caught a preview screening of Juno Wednesday night, the new film from Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) and starring rising Canadian stars Ellen Page (X-Men 3) and Michael Cera (Superbad). A big hit at the Toronto International Film Festival back in September, it’s a totally charming little comedy about a teen who gets pregnant and opts to give the baby up for adoption to an uber-yuppie couple played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner (and no, before you ask, Bateman and Cera don’t have any scenes together but the phrase “pop-pop” is used, so that’s something).

While hilarity doesn’t really ensue, slapstick this ain’t, the film is quite hilarious thanks to Page’s performance as the terrifically sharp and sassy title character – people are already talking Oscar nod. Though second-billed in a remarkably strong cast, Cera doesn’t really get a lot to do besides… well, be Michael Cera. Someone cast this kid in an action flick or something. The language and dialogue in the film is absolutely golden, with plenty of intelligence, quirkiness and quotability but deftly avoiding sounding too precious or unnatural. The same goes for the direction, which has touches of Wes Anderson-ish surrealness but, again, Reitman doesn’t allow those flights of fancy to overpower things and the film’s feet stay firmly planted in reality or as much reality as Hollywood allows. While the story is a little thin at points and particularly towards the final acts – I wish I was able to get from confusion to clarity that easily when I was 16 – the warmth and overall likability of the whole thing more than compensates. One of the most straight-up enjoyable films I’ve seen in ages.

It gets a limited release on December 14 but there’s advance screenings all over Canada and the US before then, which you can see for free by RSVP-ing here. There had originally been a couple more Toronto screenings listed but they no longer appear to be on the list. Alas. I totally would have gone again (and maybe gotten another Dancing Elk Condors t-shirt).

Trailer: Juno

Wireless Bollinger talks to Kevin Drew about the solo life and the future of the Broken Social Scene brand. Drew and the Scene are at the Kool Haus on December 8.

The Arizona Wildcat and Inside Bay Area get all mooney over Stars. They’re at the Phoenix November 26 through 29.

John Vanderslice explains the inspiration behind the title of his new album Emerald City to Harp.

Asobi Seksu talks to Drowned In Sound about their creative process.

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips talks to The Star-Telegram on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of their magnum opus, Zaireeka.

So you thought that the 2007 concert calendar was all done? Not quite. The Fiery Furnaces have decided that week-long road trip in December sounds like a good idea and will be stopping in at the Phoenix on December 12. The new album is Widow City and Event Guide and The Washington Square News talk to Matt Friedberger about the record.

More interesting to me is what will almost certainly be the final show of the year on December 29 at the Drake Underground featuring the self-proclaimed “loudest band in New York”, A Place To Bury Strangers. I’ve heard more about them (Best New Music-ed, make their own guitar pedals, were shut down by the NYPD) than from them but the stuff on their MySpace sounds kind of like the Automatic-era Jesus & Mary Chain mashed up with the less pop side of New Order, maybe some Depeche Mode thrown in for flavour (“needs more dour”). I don’t doubt that they have intent to injure when it comes to volume so if you’re planning on checking this one out, ask Santa for earplugs.

MP3: A Place To Bury Strangers – “To Fix The Gash In Your Head”

And finally, The Dreseden Dolls are at the Phoenix on January 4.