Anticipation is growing for next Tuesday’s Wedding Present show at Lee’s Palace. There’s a complete concert from earlier this month in Amsterdam available to stream at FabChannel – it takes a little while to get going and the sound isn’t awesome, but it does whet the appetite (and it seems to run nicer in IE than Mozilla). Though I am concerned that Simon Cleave appears to be playing a Tom DeLonge (Blink 182) signature Strat… WTF? But there’s a whole lot of classic material in the setlist, which obviously augers well, and from Take Fountain which has become one of my favourite albums of the year so far. The band will also be performing live on The Current on Minnesota NPR this afternoon at around 3:30-4:00 EST, if you’re really keen.

Also on topic, eye has a Q&A with the band, there’s an interview at The East Bay Express and The Seattle Times finds out how Gedge’s residency in their fair town influenced Take Fountain. There’s also Something And Nothing – a pretty comprehensive fansite devoted to the works of David Lewis Gedge.

And because Manifesto was so good to make it available, here’s the first single from Take Fountain. Not new or anything, but it’s a good tune.

MP3: The Wedding Present – “Interstate 5”

Spin ran a interview with Torq Campbell of Stars last month, but I’m only finding it now. Hey, I don’t go poking around the Spin website unless I absolutely have to. There’s also a piece on the band in the new Magnet where Campbell confesses that in the band’s salad days when they were broke, he secretly took out a $10,000 loan to fly the band to England to play a couple of small shows in hopes of convincing new recruits Amy Millan and Evan Cranley that there was label interest in the band. It’s a cute story. And while you’re feeling the Stars love, check out this radio session they did for KEXP a couple weeks ago.

Stars will be taking part in the “Canadian Wet” shows in Japan next month, alongside fellow Canucks Broken Social Scene, Dears, DFA1979 and Metric. JAM! has the story of how the tour came together. This would be something to see, indeed.

And tangentially – You Ain’t No Picasso continues his string of excellent shows for download with Broken Social Scene’s 2003 radio session at KVRX. Y’ahrr, thar appear to be new songs in the setlist. Y’ahrr. And yeah, I’ve linked this before, but it’s worth reposting. Interesting that on this version of “7/4”, it’s definitely Feist taking the female vocals, whereas on another version I’ve got from a Canadian radio session, the identity of the singer isn’t nearly as obvious. I’ll have to give it another listen to see if it’s her there as well.

Jason Molina and The Magnolia Electric Co. return to Toronto August 8 for a show at a venue to be determined. What Comes After The Blues, the first proper studio album under the Magnolia Electric Co monicker was released a couple weeks ago.

Zoilus looks at the impending 20Hz message boards revolt and how the new owners, well-intentioned as they may be, totally fucked this up. eye also chips in, via blog. I’ve been watching the drama from the sidelines with great amusement – I had wanted to avoid any sort of righteously indignant knee-jerk reaction to the new ownership, but the way they’ve handled themselves has been so comically bad, it’s been a textbook example of how enrage your audience. Alls I can say is I hope they didn’t pay too much for the domain name, because in a very short while it’s going to be worthless. In the meantime, the kids begin their migration today to their new home at Stille Post.

Manic Street Preachers have released a free online EP, God Save The Manics, for anyone and everyone to enjoy. Well, anyone with Windows Media Player 9 and who isn’t running on a Mac. Very proletarian, fellas.

Check out the trailer for the new Studio Ghibli film, Howl’s Moving Castle, here. Looks like classic Miyazaki. Apparently it will be released in North America in both dubbed and subtitled versions. A nice move, but I wonder how theatres will decide which one to screen? I suspect that they’ll err on the side of caution and go with dubbed for the most part – after all, how can you pass up the collective voice talents of Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall and Billy Crystal? The North American release of the film will be June 10. Link via Popdrivel

np – Sonic Youth / Murray Street

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