Sixeyes has been running with a John Vanderslice theme for the last little while, centred around a four-part interview with the producer/artist. Well, it was supposed to be – the first two parts ran on Sixeyes, but the whole thing is now available to grok at Better Propaganda.

Vanderslice releases his new album, the wonderfully-titled Pixel Revolt on August 23. You can see track notes from the recording sessions here, and I do believe have been corrected that “Farewell Transmission” is indeed NOT a Songs: Ohia cover – nice. The ‘Slice will be touring this Fall in support or the album – no Toronto dates as yet, though. I’ve seen him twice, opening for Spoon and Beulah (photos/review), and though I missed his last appearance in town last Summer opening for Pedro The Lion, I can testify that he’s always a good show.

Anyway, the good people at Barsuk have made a track from Pixel Revolt available for your downloading pleasure:

MP3: John Vanderslice – “Trance Manual”

Also courtesy of Barsuk – some clips from the Death Cab tour documentary, Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, out tomorrow. I got a copy of this last week but haven’t had a chance to get to it yet – I will report back when I do.

Instead, I’ve been watching season 3 of Sealab 2021. Man, what a mixed bag. The first half contains some stone-cold classics (“I Robot, Really”!!) but the episodes made after the unfortunate death of Harry Goz (AKA Captain Murphy), quite frankly, suck major ass. I was listening to the commentary track from Karl Olson of Toon Zone for the first post-Murphy episode, “Tornado Shanks”, and at first thought he was being ironic in his hate for the ep, but as it went on I realized that his vitriol was genuine and more disturbingly, justified. It was bad. Really bad. And didn’t get better as the season went on (Yes, I know there is a pop culture term for this very event, but I hate it and refuse to use it…) There were still occasional funny scenes but they were the exception, not the norm. Even more disturbing is that even though the producers HAD to have known that the heart and soul of the show was gutted, there was a season four. It won’t be out on DVD for a while, but I gotta know – is there ANYTHING redeeming about it?

Ahem.

Oh look, a Sufjan piece, this one from CMJ as they ask about the inspiration behind the cover art, but no mention of Supes. Hmm.

Word is the big bad in Spider-Man 3 will be Thomas Hayden Church as… The Chameleon? Well that’s a character who lends himself to a special effects extravaganza. Using him as a relative scale of menace, perhaps we can look forward to seeing Topher Grace as a guy who cuts ahead of Peter Parker in line. Update: Comic Book Resources has another theory on what Toper Grace’s role will be… and it’s even more terrifying than you could imagine.

Teenage Fanclub tonight!

np – The National / Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers

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