Many thanks to Brad of Bradley’s Almanac for shanghai-ing Mark Gardener at his show in Boston on Sunday (of which Drive Blind also has a review) and getting him to pose with this “You’re Reading Chromewaves.net (And I Wrote Chrome Waves!)” sign – I swear I did not put him up to it. For those unfamiliar with my about page, the name of this blog was taken from the song “Chrome Waves” on Ride’s Going Blank Again album – which Mr Gardener wrote.

He recently released his first proper solo album These Beautiful Ghosts, which I only just got a copy of. Credited to Gardener and Goldrush, initial impressions are that it’s much better than I expected, though with all due respect to Mr Gardener, I didn’t really expect much. That’s not meant as a personal slight on Mark, but just past experience has shown that for some reason, the whole of British bands tend to be so much more than just the sum of their parts. I can’t count the number of lacklustre solo efforts that have come from members of great British bands, and I would count Mark’s Animalhouse project among those. These Beautiful Ghosts has a nice, laid back vibe that’s similar in parts to the jangly classicism of Carnival Of Light, with just enough production and full band backing from Goldrush to avoid sounding like a strummy singer-songwriter record, though at the core that’s what it is, albeit a pleasant one. I don’t know how heavy rotation it’ll really get, but it’ll still surely be more than Tarantula… Check out some of the songs at Mark’s MySpace page.

Gardener is in town at Lee’s Palace tonight backed by Goldrush and supported by Hopewell. I’m probably not going to be able to make it, but can at least enjoy the recording Brad made of his Boston show. And here’s a scan of a brief interview Gardener gave to Under The Radar for their Fall issue.

Goldrush’s country flavour have elicited a number of Mojave 3 comparisons for These Beautiful Ghosts – and coincidences, Pitchfork has a brief interview with Neil Halstead about the new M3 album, wherein he reveals the album title (Puzzles Like You) and release date (March 7). YAY.

JAM! talks to Calexico’s John Convertino about working with Iron & Wine on In The Reins, as well as their new album Garden Ruin which is out on April 11. The Boston Herald, meanwhile, talked to Sam Beam about the same. Calexico and Iron & Wine are at the Docks in Toronto this Friday.

Check out some live footage of Wilco playing “Kicking Television” (WMV), via Prefix. I’ve compared the audio with the track that appears on Kicking Television, and I believe they are the same. Yay, the aborted DVD is leaking to the internet! Update: One reader has reported that the video link is loaded down with spyware and other nastiness. Bizarre, but I am disabling the link just in case. If you want to risk it, cut and paste : http://mfile.akamai.com/9139/asf/stream.wmg.com/
wmi/uk/wilco/KickingTelevision_Hi.asx

Said The Gramophone wraps up their 22 favourite singles of 2005, all with downloads and wonderfully-written annotations.

Thanks to Lora for following up on the NME year-end list-fixing scandal I mentioned last week. While Londonist were persuaded by NME‘s lawyers to remove their post, a copy lives on here and The Guardian reported on the story with a little more info (including confirming Londonist’s story about the interim list looking quite different from the final one). Innnnteresting.

And no, still no sign of Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister – Live at iTunes… but Matador promises it’s coming.

np – Saturday Looks Good To Me / All Your Summer Songs