MyspaceI don’t really participate in Twitter memes, but if I were to ride the one currently trending for #why90srocked, one of my contributions might be Boston’s Buffalo Tom. One of my favourite bands of that decade, their Let Me Come Over and Big Red Letter Day were two of the gateways that led me to the world of college rock (what the kids now mostly call indie) – jangly guitars, raspy vocals, big hooks all around, what’s not to like? Unfortunately they, like many of the acts of that era, didn’t find the underground to be especially profitable and eventually called it a day at the end of the 20th century when the responsibilities of real life came calling (frontman Bill Janovitz became and continues to be a realtor).

But like many of their peers, Buffalo Tom found a second act years later when they discovered their fans from back in the day were still there and so was their appetite for their music. I for one was thrilled to finally see them live not once but twice in 2007, both terrifically high energy performances with just the right amount of slop, and their comeback album Three Easy Pieces also stood tall alongside their past works. There were no disappointments here.

And I don’t expect any on their second post-reunion album, Skins. The Buffalo Tom formula isn’t necessarily a broad one, but it is deep enough to expect the veteran songwriters to be able to pull a dozen or so good tunes out of it every few years. Stereogum has the first MP3 from the album available to download, and though it starts out favouring the band’s more pensive side it builds quickly to a big rock breakdown, and Janovitz’s voice is unmistakeable. Consider the appetite whetted. Skins is out on February 15 of next year and The Alternate Side has an interview with Janovitz.

Grab the title track from their last record for a taste of their more pop-oriented side. Update: The new track is now available for anyone to disseminate. Yay!

MP3: Buffalo Tom – “Arise, Watch”
MP3: Buffalo Tom – “Three Easy Pieces”

Chunklet interviews Andy Earles, biographer of Husker Du and author of Husker Du: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock.

Creative Loafing talks to Jon Wurster and City Pages to Mac McCaughan of Superchunk. They’re playing an in-store at Sonic Boom on December 9 at 3PM before hitting up the Sound Academy that evening opening up for Broken Social Scene.

The Vine interviews Doug Martsch of Built To Spill.

Rolling Stone reports that in addition to the reissues of Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass on January 18, the same day that a short tour kicks off at The Phoenix in Toronto, The Jayhawks will be releasing a new album under their proper name – previously a stumbling point – in the Spring of next year.

Magnet has gone archive-digging and come up with their 2002 feature piece on Wilco circa Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, arguably the most interesting period of their career.

Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller talks to Spinner about his love of hockey while bassist Murry Hammond chats with Metromix.

Conor Oberst will return to Bright Eyes for the first time since 2007 for The People’s Key, due February 15. Details at American Songwriter.

Interpol heads to Europe and does the press circuit with Metro, The Guardian and Drowned In Sound.

Spoon has collected the demos and alternate takes of songs that were posted to their website over the past couple years and are offering it for sale as the digital compilation Bonus Songs 2008-2009.

Yours Truly has a video session with S. Carey, in town at The Horseshoe on December 19.

The Fly has an acoustic session with Local Natives.

Spinner talks to Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg while the band talks about and performs the song “Warpaint” in session for The Guardian.

The Besnard Lakes have set a date at Lee’s Palace for January 29, tickets $15 in advance.

MP3: The Besnard Lakes – “Albatross”

Scots Biffy Clyro will bring their Mercury-shortlisted Only Revolutions to The Garrison on February 16, tickets $15 in advance.

Video: Biffy Clyro – “God and Satan”

Asobi Seksu will hit the road following the the February 11 release of their new record Fluorescence and stop in at The Horseshoe on February 27.

MP3: Asobi Seksu – “Trails”

Cold War Kids will be at Lee’s Palace on March 18 in support of their new record Mine Is Yours, out January 25. Tickets $20 in advance. The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Spinner and The Hook have features on the band.

The Whig and Edmonton Journal interview Dan Mangan, who just recorded a World Cafe session for NPR.

San Francisco Weekly and Exclaim chat with The Sadies, who will be holding their annual New Year’s Eve throwdown at The Horseshoe on December 31.

Wolf Parade discuss their decision to take an indefinite hiatus with aux.tv.

Exclaim declares Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs as their pop/rock album of the year and talk to Win Butler about it.

The Dears are giving away a track from their forthcoming Degeneration Street over at Dangerbird. The record is out February 15.

Devonté HynesWhen it comes to his art, Dev Hynes is no stranger to abruptly shifting gears. His first band, the sophomoric dance-punk band Test Icicles called it quits in early 2006 just when they were starting to achieve some success, and Hynes would resurface a year later as a solo act operating as Lightspeed Champion. It’s that project that brought Hynes to the attention of most, thanks to the wonderful country-tinged debut, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge. This year’s follow-up Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You didn’t quite measure up, feeling overburdened by its more orchestral aspirations, but was hardly a failure. And surely album number three would be better?

Except there apparently won’t be an album three. Even before Life Is Sweet came out, Hynes began writing, recording and gigging under the guise of Blood Orange – it didn’t sound worlds removed from Lightspeed, but the one-man home recordings certainly pointed at it being an outlet for his funkier, more groove-oriented side. And according to this new interview at Interview, Hynes is putting Lightspeed Champion out to pasture and making Blood Orange his main creative outlet – a debut single will be out in January and a full-length will follow in the early part of next year, and that means the Van Dyke Parks-enhanced Bye Bye EP coming out on December 13 will be prophetically-titled.

I will miss Lightspeed – Lavender Bridge remains a favourite from the past few years – and am especially sorry I wasn’t able to see him at the Horseshoe this past Summer, but if Blood Orange is what it – and he – is going to be, then I’ll be there.

MP3: Blood Orange – “S’Cooled” (demo)
Video: Blood Orange – “S’Cooled”
Video: Blood Orange – “I’m Sorry We Lied”
Myspace: Blood Orange

Oxford Student talk to Stornoway, who will be a the El Mocambo tonight and have just released another MP3 from their lovely Beachcomber’s Windowsill by way of enticement.

MP3: Stornoway – “Fuel Up”

BBC reports that Portishead are making plans for album number four and there are also rumours swirling that they’re intending to stage their first North American tour in forever next Fall. Fingers crossed.

The Yorkshire Post talks to David Gedge of The Wedding Present, who apparently lost bassist Terry de Castro as a member sometime in the Summer.

British Sea Power have released the first video from their forthcoming Valhalla Dancehall – out January 11 – and I can’t figure out if it’s playful, creepy, romantic or just plain weird. I am going to go with weird.

Video: British Sea Power – “Living Is So Easy”

NME reports that Editors think three studio albums are enough to justify releasing a box set, and will do just that in February of next year – Editors: The Complete Collection will consist of seven 12″ records (album-length or single is unclear) and seven CDs of b-sides, rarities and other Editors ephemera.

Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch’s diaries circa The Life Pursuit and Dear Catastrophe Waitress have been collected in book form – The Celestial Cafe will be released in early 2011.

MusicOmh talks to Duffy. Her new record Endlessly arrives December 7.

The Vaccines, who are apparently set to be the next big thing out of the UK, will be riding the buzz through a free show at the Horseshoe on January 18. The Guardian and Von Pip Musical Express have profiles of the band, which should give you all the background you need to make like you’ve been a fan, like, forever when you’re jammed into the ‘Shoe with all the other Anglophiles in the city.

MP3: The Vaccines – “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)”

Spinner chats with Kate Nash.

Dean ChalkeyMost bands with longevity – if they’re lucky – have a career arc that starts with a good to great debut and trends upwards towards a critical and hopefully commercial peak – simultaneously, if fortune wills it – before entering a decline that’s hopefully gradual enough so as to not really be noticed at the time. Cap it off with a late-career bounce and/or best-of comp and maybe quit while you’re still ahead, overall. Until the reunion, anyways.

Manic Street Preachers threw that out the window before even their first album, declaring their intention to sell 20 million copies of their debut and then break up at the height of their powers. And while this didn’t happen, their narrative did end up considerably twistier than most – release successful debut, endure mandatory difficult second record, rebound with critically acclaimed effort, lose chief songwriter to mysterious circumstances, regroup for their biggest commercial and critical success, release follow-ups of diminishing quality before respectively levelling out and then surprise everyone by deliberately trying to recreate the spirit of album three using lyrics left behind by the departed songwriter and have the results, rather than exploitative, be phenomenal.

This is where the Manics found themselves with last year’s Journal For Plague Lovers, a deliberate revisit to The Holy Bible built around the words of their lost member Richey Edwards. And just as that record deliberately paralleled their third record, its follow-up Postcards From A Young Man looks to album four, the massive in every sense Everything Must Go as a reference. The dry, Albini production values of Journal are traded in for grandiose anthems laden with strings and choirs that offer no apologies for reaching for the stars. It’s a reminder that as good as the Manics were at being emphatically, viciously angry, they were arguably better at being starry-eyed romantics, and it’s that side of them that is on display with this effort. But unlike Everything, which for its widescreen staging was still downcast in tone, what with dealing with Edwards’ disappearance, Postcards casts far fewer shadows. Granted, this also gives it less emotional heft, but it’s far from empty calories. There’s still plenty of dense lyricism, huge choruses, fiery guitar solos, a guest spot/croak from Ian McCulloch and an affirmation that while the Manics took a mid-career breather, they’re once again at the top of their game.

Even though the release of Journal and accompanying tour were supposed to mark the Manics’ return to the North American marketplace, Postcards has yet to receive a domestic release. Until that happens, any hope that the further Stateside shows the band promised last year will materialize remain just wishful thinking. Or maybe they’ll wait for the next record – for all the hubbub surrounding the “last attempt at mass communication” rhetoric that accompanied Postcards and whether it meant it would be the Manics’ final record, according to this interview with Nicky Wire at NME, the band are already writing their next record, have given it a working title of 70 Songs Of Hatred And Failure and are calling it an exercise in “pure indulgence”. So it’s a revisit to Know Your Enemy, then? Bring it on.

Note that the below MP3 does not appear on Postcards, but is a period-correct and was given away in conjunction with the promotion of Postcards.

MP3: Manic Street Preachers – “I’m Leaving You For Solitude”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Some Kind Of Nothingness”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “(It’s Not War) It’s Just The End Of Love”

Digging A Hole, The Bangkok Post and CNNgo check in with Tim Burgess of The Charlatans.

The long wait for a new record from PJ Harvey is almost over – NME reports that Polly Jean’s next record Let England Shake will be out on February 14.

Trip-hop survivors Morcheeba, with original vocalist Sky Edwards back in the fold, will be touring North America next year in support of their latest Blood Like Lemonade and will be at The Phoenix on February 20. Tickets $32.50 in advance.

Video: Morcheeba – “Blood Like Lemonade”

VBS has a video interview with Emmy The Great and producer Gareth Jones, who is working with her on album number two. It’s targeted for a February 2011 release.

Laura Marling has released a video for her Neil Young cover, taken from her recent 7″ release.

Video: Laura Marling – “The Needle & The Damage Done”

NME reports that Noah & The Whale have given their third album a name – Last Night On Earth – and that it’ll be out in March of next year. Presumably before they roll into town for a show at the Mod Club on March 24, tickets $17.50 in advance.

Richard Thompson lists off his favourite covers of his own songs for Spinner and otherwise chats with The Los Angeles Times and The Kansas City Star

Mogwai are offering a free download of “Pano Rano”, the first single from their forthcoming Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. The album is out February 15 and they play The Phoenix on April 26.

Exclaim reports on the super-fancy and then some 20th anniversary edition of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, due out on March 7 of next year. For those who want to be free to do what they want to do, who want to be free to ride, and want to be free to ride their machines without being hassled by The Man, and who want to get loaded, and who want to have a good time. And that’s what they’re gonna do. They’re gonna have a good time. They’re gonna have a party!

The Arts Desk and The Quietus converse with Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain.

State welcomes ex-pat Gemma Hayes back to Ireland; she’s due for a new album sometime in 2011.

MergeJust a short one today as I’m still recovering from a) replacing all the carpet in my apartment with hardwood (well, laminate) in a single day and b) trying to clean up the enormous mess generated by a). Exhausting stuff, that.

So I’ll let Dan Bejar take it away. Now a couple years removed from Trouble In Dreams and with Pornographer duties largely done with for a while, Dan is getting Destroyer back into gear. Following up last year’s epic-length “Bay Of Pigs” 12″, Bejar released a second limited edition 12″ for the song “Archer On The Beach” earlier this month, but if you haven’t already got your copy secured, then you’re out of luck – all 1000 copies are spoken for. But you can stream the song, and its spoken-word b-side “Grief Point”, courtesy of Merge.

There’s still plenty of time to reserve a copy of the new Destroyer LP Kaputt, though – it’s not out for another two months, on January 25. The first MP3 is now up and while it’s not a cover of the Luna song (how great would that be?), it’s a pretty sweet if chilled out tune that incorporates some of the electronic and atmospheric touches of the aforementioned 12″ releases and some wonderfully questionable saxophone. I’ve been in the mood for a new Destroyer record for a while now – looking forward to hearing the rest of this.

MP3: Destroyer – “Chinatown”
Stream: Destroyer – “Archer On The Beach”/”Grief Point”

Montreal represents on March 5 when Lee’s Palace welcomes 2008 Polaris Prize shortlisters Plants & Animals and 2010 Polaris Prize winners Karkwa. Tickets for the show are $15 in advance.

MP3: Plants & Animals – “Tom Cruz”
MP3: Karkwa – “Dors Dans Mon Sang”

Exclaim has details on a Nick Drake tribute/benefit concert taking place at Trinity-St. Paul’s in Toronto on November 28.

BBC talks to Mark Hamilton of Woodpigeon on the topic of concert taping. Mark has been posting various sundry MP3s to the Woodpigeon site all Fall, including this live solo one from Montreal’s CJLO.

MP3: Woodpigeon – “…And as the Ship Went Down, You’d Never Looked Finer (Live on CJLO)”

S. Carey, in town at the Horseshoe on December 19, is featured in a Daytrotter session.

School Of Seven Bells have released a new video from Disconnect From Desire and have been tapped to open up for Interpol on their North American tour next year – including the February 15 stop at the Sound Academy in Toronto.

Video: School Of Seven Bells – “I L U”

Also with a new video is Sufjan Stevens, who’s taken the song title to heart with regards to the clip’s art direction. Tribute will be paid to a simpler Sufjan by means of a tribute album to his Seven Swans record featuring Bonnie Prince Billy and a number of Asthmatic Kitty artists. Seven Swans Reimagined will be out on March 22.

Video: Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”

The Radio Dept.’s Martin Carlberg discusses the band’s modest career ambitions with Spinner. Their singles and b-sides compilation Passive Aggressive is out on January 25 and they make their Toronto debut at Lee’s Palace on February 7.

M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez talks to Pitchfork about his plans for his next record.

Nick Cave tells Spinner that a new Nick Cave record should be out next year – just as soon as he writes it. In the meantime, Grinderman remains on the front burner – The AV Club talks to Warren Ellis about making Grinderman 2.

MyspaceSometime around, oh man, 2001 or 2002, I got a CD-R from a friend of mine in Richmond, Virginia containing a number of 8-track demo recordings circa 1993 by a local outfit called Salt Chunk Mary. They didn’t do too much but their singer-guitarist, a fellow by the name of Mark Linkous would go on to form a new project called Sparklehorse and over the next fifteen years or so, would craft four gorgeous records of otherworldly, fractured Americana before suddenly taking his own life in March of this year.

I had posted the best-sounding of these demos, including an early version of “Someday I Will Treat You Good” from his/their 1995 debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, back in 2006 to mark the release of Sparklehorse’s new record Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, and since then every few months I’ve gotten a request from someone to hear the rest of them. A request I’d have obliged if I hadn’t misplaced the CD-R… or thought I’d misplaced it. Turns out it was in the rest of my CD collection under “S”. In the interim, Linkous passed away so as a way of fulfilling those requests and paying tribute to the man, here’s the demos in their entirety.

As with the ones I posted before, I’ve made up song titles based on the choruses – hopefully no one objects – and this Richmond Times-Dispatch interview remains essentially the only documentation online of Salt Chunk Mary’s existence.

Thanks for the music, Mark. Hope you’ve found some peace.

MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “Won’t Know If You Don’t Try”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “Rest Your Worried Mind”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “instrumental”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “Someday I Will Treat You Good”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “I Take It All Back”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “There Ain’t Nobody But You”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “Break My Mind”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “I”
MP3: Salt Chunk Mary – “Sorry Now”