CONTEST – Love Is All @ The Horseshoe – December 11, 2008

2:30 PublicityI was reading a piece in the latest issue of Exclaim wherein Nicholaus Sparding of Love Is All commented on the band’s inability to get arrested in their native Sweden, perhaps on account of their refusal/inability to adhere to what’s typically thought of when you talk about Swedish indie – that is, elegant pop of the orchestrally twee persuasion.

And perhaps that’s why I ultimately ignored their debut, 2006’s Nine Times That Same Song – I really like that elegant, orchestrally twee pop, particularly delivered in a Swedish accent, and that’s most definitely not what Love Is All are about, except maybe the accent part. From Josephine Olausson’s gleeful caterwaul to James Ausfahrt’s skronking saxophone, Love Is All are resolutely scrappy, abrasive and frantic. The Cardigans, they are not.

But score one for personal growth, as I’ve given the follow-up A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night more of a chance and am pleased to find myself coming around to its charms. Within Hundred‘s ten tracks there reside a handful of lustrous pop jewels that no amount of sonic dirt can dull – manic lead single “Wishing Well” and the Spector-iiffic “When Giants Fall” chief amongst them – and the numbers that don’t reach the same level of inspiration do their best to compensate with loads of anarchic energy. I can’t say that Love Is All are an outfit that I necessarily see myself forming a long and lasting relationship with, but for a good night out, you could do far worse.

And on that note, Love Is All are about to kick off a North American tour which will bring them to the Horseshoe next Thursday night, December 11. Courtesy of Against The Grain, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “Love Is All I need” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight, December 8.

Exclaim has posted up the complete transcript of the interview that seeded the feature mentioned above, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian also has an interview with Josephine Olausson.

MP3: Love Is All – “Wishing Well”
Video: Love Is All – “Wishing Well”
MySpace: Love Is All

One of the nicest things to show up in my inbox lately is from New Yorkers The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, whose ’80s-vintage jangly/fuzzy brand of pop is as twee-friendly as their name. Pretty much what you might expect from a band on the venerable Slumberland marque, and totally scratching an itch I’d forgotten I had. Their self-titled debut will arrive on February 3 and a short Winter tour brings them to Toronto on February 12 for a show at Neutral.

MP3: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Everything With You”
MP3: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Come Saturday”
Video: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Everything With You”
MySpace: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

The Wedding Present, for whom POBPAH are currently opening a string of dates in the UK, have released a download-only, throwaway (my subjective opinion) Christmas single, complete with video. The Gedge is really into this Californian lifestyle thing, from the looks of it.

Video: The Wedding Present – “Holly Jolly Hollywood”

The title track from Los Campesinos’ new record We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is now available to download.

MP3: Los Campesinos! – “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed”

Contact Music interviews Asobi Seksu. Their new album Hush is out February 17.

BBC talks to Noah & The Whale, who are set to release a mini-album under the guise of their A-Sides punk band persona, just in time for Christmas though just barely – it’s out December 22. They also give some hints about the direction album number two – currently in production and the reason for their cancelled North American tour – is taking.

And also cancelled is CSS’s December 15 date at the Opera House. I guess the Brazilians finally discovered that December is COLD in the northern hemisphere (actually they say it’s due to visa issues).

And those of you who didn’t get tickets to Franz Ferdinand’s show at Lee’s tomorrow night – which is most of you – may be heartened to know that they’re doing another tiny show at the Masonic Temple (aka MTV Canada studios) on Friday but the only way to get tickets is to listen to CFNY (aka “The Edge”, to those of you under 30). Whether you’re willing to make that great a sacrifice to try and get tickets is up to you.

March will prove to be a good month for those whose tastes run towards the rootsier end of things. First, March 3 brings the Middle Cyclone (artwork!), the new album from Neko Case (she talks to Paste about making the album and buying a farm – A farm, not THE farm), and on March 31 Great Lake Swimmers will release their latest, Lost Channels.

Frank YangMost company Christmas parties stink. This is a statement of fact. At best, you can hope that you get more than your fair share of drink tickets and that someone, preferably not yourself, gets wasted and makes an ass of themsleves so at least you have something to talk about the following Monday besides how much the Christmas party stank.

So when you get the opportunity to hit up a holiday-themed soiree that’s pretty much guaranteed NOT to stink, you should pay attention. Case in point, the “Jingle Bell Hop” presented by Audio Blood and Two-Way Monologues at Rancho Relaxo this coming Friday night, December 5. It will feature Oh No Forest Fires, well-documented in these pages, pleading acoustic-rock from Hamilton’s Bass Lions and Barrie-based pop-smith Brett Caswell & The Marquee Rose. Certainly a better time than kissing the boss’s ass or placing bets in the layoff pool.

So courtesy of Audio Blood I’ve got a holiday prize pack to give away consisting of a pair of passes to said show and a copy of Oh No Forest Fires’ The War On Geometry and Bass Lions’ More Than Islands on CD. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to Jingle Bell Hop” in the subject line and your full name in the body and get that in to me before midnight, December 3.

MP3: Oh No Forest Fires – “Swing And A Misdemeanor”
MP3: Oh No Forest Fires – “We Fit Our Charm”
MP3: Oh No Forest Fires – “It’s Not Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye”
MP3: Bass Lions – “Ransom The Sunset”
MP3: Bass Lions – “Funeral Shed”
MP3: Bass Lions – “Like Ashes In My Mouth”

Aigin LarkiTransmission is an event held in Vancouver every year whose mandate is, in wonderfully business-y speak, to showcase “export-ready artists and business-ready professionals”. I don’t actually know what that means, but from a fan’s POV, it’s also an opportunity to catch a passel of acts from both Canada and abroad who are on the verge… of being exported, apparently.

This year’s edition takes place on two stages over two nights at the Storyeum in Vancouver’s Gastown next week on December 4 and 5. The lineup for the first night features Woodhands, Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, Final Flash, The Pet Conspiracy, Pacifika, Wendy McNeill, Radio Radio and Winter Gloves. Those attending the second night will be treated to performances from The Hong Kong Blood Opera, Bison B.C., Beast, Elliott Brood, Courtney Wing, Alex Cuba and Wildbirds & Peacedrums.

Courtesy of Atomique Productions, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away for each night. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to go to Transmission (night one or two)” and your full name and mailing address in the body and have these off to me by midnight, November 30. Vancouverites, don’t say I never do anything for you left coasters.

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

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.