Frank YangI’m not even kidding when I say that a typical Friday night for me usually wraps up sound asleep before midnight. Rock’n’roll lifestyle indeed. But I had been quite looking forward to seeing Brooklyn’s Parts & Labor, what with their latest album Receivers growing on me more with each listen, so instead of being properly crashed out from the week that was last Friday, I was at Sneaky Dee’s taking in a full lineup of local acts before the headliner.

Kicking things off were Radius & Helena, who just released their debut Precious Metals. Their angular, art-rock was in the vein of Sonic Youth or late-era Radiohead, though without the genius of either act. I don’t mean this as a slight – you can be plenty smart without being a genius – but R&H could stand to hone the pop side of their equation. After all, their stylistic forebears are as highly regarded as they are because they were able to take their inventiveness and restlessness and still make it (mostly) wholly listenable. Radius & Helena mostly were, as well, but there were a few points where something especially interesting caught my ear and hinted that there were better things yet to come.

Gears couldn’t have shifted more than they did when Peter Project took the stage next. The one-man act set up behind a bank of television monitors displaying the performance and old TV shows, and armed with a turntable and sampling pad, proceeded to craft a set of jazzy, ’60s-retro hip-hop grooves. Mostly instrumental save for a couple of guest raps (pre-recorded), it was unexpected and really enjoyable, like a nice respite of lounging in a sea of loud rock.

Rock which returned with Ten Kens, whom I’ve been curious about since hearing they’d signed to Fat Cat and were thus labelmates with the likes of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit. And now, having seen and heard them, all I can say is that the label has much better talent scouts in Scotland than they do in Canada. Recalling ’90s post-grunge alt-rock when heavy guitars and angsty vocals were enough to build a career, they failed to deliver anything remotely engaging. They did apologize at the end of their set for some undetermined technical difficulties, so maybe their self-titled debut is more interesting, but I’ve no real interest in finding that out.

And finally, after long last and on the wrong side of 1AM, came Parts & Labor. And while they played one of the shortest sets of the night – maybe 35 minutes, tops – it was worth the wait. First, I’d like to go back to my review of Receivers and apologize to current drummer Joe Wong for suggesting that he wasn’t fully able to step into the shoes of departed drummer Christopher Weingarten. Wong’s live work was simply devastating. Pulverizing, precise and loud as fuck. It was great. And over top the din, his bandmates managed to recreate the dense sonics of Receivers and its predecessor Mapmaker, maintaining their frantic energy yet with most every detail and melody coming across loud and clear. Intense and awesome, and invigorating enough to get me back home, where I proceeded to sleep for the next nine and a half hours. Yessir.

The New Haven Register talks to Parts & Labor’s B.J. Warshaw about the bands shift towards the melodic over the last couple records.

Photos: Parts & Labor, Ten Kens, Peter Project, Radius & Helena @ Sneaky Dee’s – November 21, 2008
MP3: Parts & Labor – “Nowhere’s Nigh”
MP3: Parts & Labor – “Fractured Skies”
MP3: Parts & Labor – “A Great Divide”
MP3: Ten Kens – “Bearfight”
MP3: Peter Project – “Repetitive Stress Injury”
MP3: Radius & Helena – “What Gets In The Way Of Love”
MP3: Radius & Helena – “Commodore”
MP3: Radius & Helena – “The Thin Man”
Video: Parts & Labor – “The Gold We’re Digging”
Video: Ten Kens – “Bearfight”
Video: Ten Kens – “Y’all Come Back Now”
Video: Radius & Helena – “Commodore”
MySpace: Parts & Labor
MySpace: Ten Kens
MySpace: Radius & Helena

Billboard gets updates from Adam Schlesinger on the statuses of Fountains Of Wayne and Ivy, both of whom are in the midst of assembling new albums.

The Australian profiles Fleet Foxes.

Chart interviews Will Sheff of Okkervil River.

Jonathan Meiburg discusses leaving Okkervil for Shearwater with The Argus.

Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner rides a Black Cab, covers Dylan.

Clash Q&As Death Cab For Cutie.

I didn’t really count their gig opening up for Broken Social Scene this Thursday as a proper make-up for the cancelled show at the end of September, so I’m glad to see that Land Of Talk have scheduled a show at the Horseshoe for January 15, tickets $10. Also on the bill, Zeroes and Little Scream.

I missed The Submarines the last time they came to town in May on account of my being in Europe at the time. And while I can’t totally predict what I’ll be doing in three months time, being at the Drake Underground on February 15 to see their return engagement seems like a fairly safe bet. Tickets for that show are $10.50.

MP3: The Submarines – “You, Me And The Bourgeoisie”
Video: The Submarines – “You, Me And The Bourgeoisie”

Aquarium Drunkard has a release date for volume one of Neil Young’s Archives. If the information is accurate and doesn’t change (as it has countless times already), the ten-disc set (DVD or Blu-Ray) will be available on January 27 of next year and run you in the ballpark of $350 or $450, depending on which format you prefer. Yeah. Neil is at the Air Canada Centre next Thursday and Friday, December 4 and 5.

FacebookI’ve given away a lot of tickets and passes and whatever over the years, but I think these may well be the most Wonka-riffic, sought-after ducats I’ve ever actually had to dispense.

Franz Ferdinand’s December 4 show at Lee’s Palace, one of a handful of club-scale, North American shows the band is playing in advance of the release of Tonight: Franz Ferdinand on January 27, sold out in half a heartbeat. So I imagine that the fact that, courtesy of Sony BMG Canada, I have a pair of tickets to said show to give away, will be of great interest to those who didn’t get lucky in that first 30 seconds or so after the tickets went on sale. So if you want to throw your hat in the ring for these, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want Franz Ferdinand to take me out” in the subject line and your full name and mailing address in the body. Contest closes at midnight, November 27 (Thursday night).

And these are physical tickets… so if you win and even think for one single second about scalping them, I will call down a cosmic-scale karmic tornado to descend upon you and wreak untold miseries. I’ll do it. I swear.

“Ulysses”, the first single from Tonight is streaming at their MySpace. Alex Kapranos talks to ABC Australia, Reuters and Exclaim! about the direction of the new record.

MySpace: Franz Ferdinand

Frank YangIt’s amazing what a little tracklist editing can do. Though it goes against much of what I believe (album is sacred, blah blah), I’ve found that simply hitting the skip button on M83’s last album Before The Dawn Heals Us when a certain spoken word track starts improves the overall experience immeasurably. This revelation, combined with the fact that their latest effort Saturday=Youth has been growing on me much more since I reviewed it in brief, should have been enough to get me to the Opera House last Thursday night to see them live for the first time in some three and a half years. But it took the addition of School Of Seven Bells, whose debut Alpinisms has proven to be a real delight, to get me to commit.

I had been curious as to how School Of Seven Bells would recreate the decidedly studio-esque sounds of Alpinisms live, especially considering the fact that the three principals didn’t equate to a full conventional live band. In other words, I was wondering if they’d have a drummer. Answer – no. The band was guitarist Ben Curtis flanked by the Deheza sisters, Claudia on keyboards and Alley on guitar and samples handling rhythm duties. And while I’m of the school of thought that live drummers are always better than samples, their live performance didn’t suffer much for it. Though their set was briefer than I’d have liked – just seven songs in 35 minutes – they still covered all the high points of Alpinisms, though they opted for straight reproduction of the record rather than reinterpretation. The Dehezas’ harmonies were tight and note-perfect, though a bit low in the mix, and Curtis’ non-stop guitar-riffing kept things from feeling too mechanical. And if 17-year old me may step in for just a moment and say to Curtis – dude, standing on stage and soloing whilst surrounded by beautiful girls? You are living the dream. And adult me is hoping that School Of Seven Bells strike out on their own tour in the new year, play a longer set and maybe mess around with the structure of things a bit.

M83 had just come through town in May so I’d expected that might have affected the turnout, and while the crowd was pretty thin early on it had filled up substantially by show time. I’d seen them back in 2005 at their Toronto debut at Lee’s Palace, and when anyone asks me about it the best word I could come up with the describe it is “ridiculous”. Read my review from that show for specifics. This time out, I was expecting equal levels of sonic grandeur and while I don’t think that those heights were reached, I think the show was actually better than that first one. Like that show, the M83 live experience was again a four-piece but this time the bassist had been traded for a second keyboardist/vocalist in Morgan Kibby, who is such an essential presence on Saturday=Youth. Anthony Gonzalez also spent more time on keys than guitar this time, lessening the need for taped backing tracks (of which there were still plenty, just less) and also mitigating the amount of fromage-ish rock star posing he could engage in.

Essentially, it seemed that they’d opted to sacrifice some spectacle for the benefit of the sound, and it was a wise trade-off. The band seemed much more engaged in the performance, and the extended square-wave instrumental explorations of Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts stood alongside the more pop-friendly confections of the last couple records. Not that those albums are short of instrumental excursions either, and proved that M83 has assembled a broad enough repertoire to shake off the “new My Bloody Valentine” tag that got applied when they first began making waves. Now you could just as accurately/inaccurately call them the “new New Order” or “new Cocteau Twins”. Or you could give up on that approach to lazy descriptors and simply accept that while they may wear their influences on their sleeve, M83 are now creating something that’s distinctly theirs.

Chart and Panic Manual have reviews of the show while The Chicago Tribune offers up an interview with Anthony Gonzalez.

Photos: M83, School Of Seven Bells @ The Opera House – November 20, 2008
MP3: School Of Seven Bells – “Connjur”
MP3: School Of Seven Bells – “Half Asleep”
MP3: School Of Seven Bells – “Chain”
MP3: School Of Seven Bells – “My Cabal” (Robin Guthrie mix)
Video: M83 – “Graveyard Girl”
Video: M83 – “Kim And Jessie”
Video: M83 – “Teen Agnst”
Video: M83 – “Run Into Flowers”
Video: M83 – “Don’t Save Us From The Flames”
Video: M83 – “America”
MySpace: M83
MySpace: School Of Seven Bells

Nick Cave is in the UK – how can you tell? The trail of interviews he leaves in his wake. The Sheffield Telegraph, The Scotsman and The Independent all have features.

The Telegraph reports that thirteen years after he disappeared, Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers has finally been officially declared, “presumed dead”. Edwards’ left-behind lyrics are being used as the basis of the next Manics record, due out some time in the Spring.

The Guardian sits down for an extended chat with Jarvis Cocker and his new beard. Great reading.

And if you don’t want to read, you can listen instead – there’s an audio interview with Chris Geddes and Stevie Jackson about the just-releaed BBC Sessions at BelleAndSebastian.com.

Lists abound at this time of year – hit up Largehearted Boy for the running tally – but Pitchfok has opted to cast a wider net than “best of the year” for their first foray into the world of physical media. They recently released The Pitchfork 500, a 208-page book dedicated to enumerating, as they put it, “the greatest songs from punk to the present”. Which, to them, is 1976 to 2006. Though to make it that much less contentious (how very un-‘Fork), the selections are not ranked or rated.

I’ve only taken a cursory skim through the volume and it looks like a daunting read. I will guarantee you that I’ve not heard the majority of selections here and would be surprised if I’d even heard of many of the acts. Probably the proper way to tackle an endeavour like this would be to sit down with it, one of those encyclopedic streaming/download sites (Pitchfork is using lala.com to assemble a playlist of their selections) and just read and listen. Someday I will sit down and do that. Of course, I also say that someday I will sit down and watch all the commentary tracks in my DVD collection.

But perhaps you’re more interested or industrious than I. Or you’ve got some music geek on your holiday shopping list that you’d prefer to spend $0 on, given the choice. Or you just like free stuff. Whichever, I have one – maybe two, if I decide I’ll never get to reading my copy myself – copies of The Pitchfork 500 to give away, courtesy of Simon & Schuster Canada. But since this is some good stuff and I’ve been giving y’all a free ride of late, I’m going to make you work a bit. To enter, I want you to leave a comment down below (spamproof your email as needed, I need to be able to contact the winner) listing your own 500 50 5 greatest songs from 1976 to 2006. Commentary is not mandatory but obviously encouraged and they don’t have to be the definitive five greatest… just five songs you can heartily endorse. Come on, it’ll be fun! Contest is open to anyone, anywhere, and will close at midnight on December 7.

MySpaceJust yesterday morning I was listening to The Cardigans’ wonderful and underappreciated Long Gone Before Daylight, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard any news about the new record from A Camp, Nina Persson’s solo project, in a while. Cue NME, who yesterday reported that said record – Colonia – will see the light of day on February 2 in the UK and Europe. Not sure if there’s a North American schedule on the books yet, though.

Don’t know if the background music at their website is any indication of the direction of the record, but there’s also a photo gallery of the band in the studio to whet one’s appetite. I had heard that they wouldn’t necessarily be continuing the alt.country vibe that made the now eight-year old (!) A Camp debut so delicious – Mark Linkous isn’t driving things this time – and while that’s sort of a shame, the fact that there’s a new record coming from Persson, Cardies or otherwise, is good news any way you look at it. Core collaborators on the record are Niclas Frisk and Persson’s husband/Shudder To Think guitarist Nathan Larson and there are guest spots from James Iha and Joan Wasser, amongst others. And the album cover looks like this. That’s all I got right now. So until there’s more, here’s a live Neil Young cover I posted a while back and the vids from the first album.

MP3: A Camp – “On The Beach” (live)
Video: A Camp – “I Can Buy You”
Video: A Camp – “Song For The Leftovers”
MySpace: A Camp

State interviews Lykke Li, set for a date at the Phoenix on February 6.

Following up on last year’s Guilt By Association covers compilation featuring the likes of Superchunk, Luna and The Concretes covering songs they deemed to be guilty pleasures, Pitchfork has details on the sequel. Volume two doesn’t have quite the star power of the first and its mandate is shifted slightly to encompass Top 40 pop from the ’80s through today (guilty pleasure or not), and as such you’ve got the likes of Frightened Rabbit, My Brightest Diamond and Matt Pond PA amongst the coverers and Toto, Billy Joel and Katy Perry amongst the coverees. Though the CD isn’t out until February 17 of next year, you can stream it below and it’s already available digitally from the likes of eMusic. A third volume is also already in the works. Check out the My Brightest Diamond contribution to the new comp, as well as the Journey cover by Petra Haden that opened volume one.

MP3: My Brightest Diamond – “Tainted Love”
MP3: Petra Haden – “Don’t Stop Believin'”
Stream: Guilt By Association 2
MySpace: Guilt By Association

Clash Q&As Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison and Pitchfork reveals that the band has contributed a track to a compilation that accompanies Australian zine The Lifted Brow. And since said zine is far from cheap ($40!), don’t feel bad about downloading said track, also from the ‘Fork.

MP3: Frightened Rabbit – “Last Tango In Brooklyn”

Chart discusses Intimacy and mythology with Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke.

Drowned In Sound has posted part two of their interview with Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff.

Beach House have rolled out a new video. Just in time for Winter.

Video: Beach House – “Used To Be”

Prefix interviews The Rosebuds.

Blurt offers a short feature on Wolf Parade.

Creative Loafing talks to Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene. They’re playing two nights at the Sound Academy on November 27 and 28.

Also now doing a two-fer at the former Docks is the Jingle Bell Rock tour featuring Metric, Tokyo Police Club, The Dears and Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains. There’s now a December 12 show to go along with the originally announced December 13 date.

Caribou has revealed what he did with his $20,000 in Polaris Prize winnings – part went to finance the next album and the rest went to charity. Next year, I think the money needs to go to someone seriously decadent. Artistic merit be damned, that money should be spent on hookers and blow.

Matthew Sweet talks pottery with Blurt.