…how awesome is the subheadline on this?

Update: And while I would normally wouldn’t post any more on this, I have to link to this Torontoist piece – Federline was in Toronto promoting his record on MuchMusic, and was caught on camera as he got the news of his dumpage via Blackberry. Watch the YouTube clip and watch his face around 1:40… classic.

Not sure how or why, but my Wheat posts – which seem to be an annual happening – tend to be expansive. Which is interesting considering that the band hasn’t really done much of anything in the past couple years. But that is changing – they will be releasing their fourth full-length Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square in Spring of next year but will be preceding that release with a new mini album, That’s Exactly What I Wanted… Exactly That, which will be out December 15. It will include one track from the new album and four others and being acquainted with the creative space that the band is in now, I can say that old-school Wheat fans will probably be pleased with what the boys from Taunton, MA have been up to.

I say “acquainted with” because I’ve had an unmastered copy of Prayer For Kathy for a few months now and can say that it sounds exactly like what you’d expect a band that recorded a charming lo-fi debut, an amazing mid-fi sophomore effort and an excellent third album shelved in favour of an over-glossed major label failure (Billboard says it sold only 29,000 copies) would sound after losing a guitarist/songwriter and spending a couple years regrouping. Seriously. Now down to the duo of Brendan Harney and Scott Levesque, Wheat sound like they’ve taken a conscious step back from all the factors that nearly destroyed them a couple years ago. The production is rougher and the songs less overtly pop and more experimental – it’s like they’ve happily shed the ill-fitting suits that they were wearing during their Columbia tenure and are getting re-familiarized with their frayed jeans and dirty Cons. I’m not feeling the songs as much as I did with Hope & Adams or even the Nude Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second but there’s definitely a sense of energy and creativity throughout that bodes well for the future.

But if you’re not familiar with their past, I direct you to This Wheat – a fansite that acts as an expansive audio repository. Fully sanctioned by the band, they have available to download the entirety of Wheat’s debut Medeiros, their magnificent Hope & Adams (both sadly out of print), the long-lost Nude version of Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second and a slew of b-sides, live recordings, demos and anything else you could think to shake a stick at. It’s your one-stop, Wheat-indoctrination stop. Go to it.

MP3: Wheat – “Death Car” (from Medeiros)
MP3: Wheat – “Don’t I Hold You” (from Hope & Adams)
MP3: Wheat – “World United Already” (from Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second Nude)
Mp3: Wheat – “What Everyone Keeps Telling Me” (from Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square)
Video: Wheat – “Don’t I Hold You” (YouTube)
Video: Wheat – “I Met A Girl” (YouTube)
MySpace: Wheat

Pitchfork talks to Alan Sparhawk about Low’s new album, The Violet Path, due out early next year.

And some bad news from Pitchfork – Rainer Maria are calling it quits. Alas.

Harmonium asks Spoon-man Britt Daniel if he likes to score. With Will Ferrell. Hey, who doesn’t? Stranger Than Fiction opens this Friday and you can hear both the soundtrack and new Spoon single from said soundtrack below:

Stream: Spoon – “The Book I Write” (Quicktime)
Stream: Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack (Flash)

Being There wants to introduce you to Sloan – Sloooooo-aaaaan to their friends. They’re at the Kool Haus November 30.

Exclaim offers up an entertaining interview with the eminently quotable Noel Gallagher, who apparently shops for his own groceries.

Anyone who thought Todd Haynes was crazy for casting Cate Blanchett (amongst others) as Bob Dylan in his upcoming biopic I’m Not There, check these out – kinda works, doesn’t it? This will certainly be interesting. The man himself (and not one of his doppelgangers) is at the Air Canada Centre tonight.

np – Ohbijou / Swift Feet For Troubling Times

With the abrupt cancellation of the Favourite Sons/ Drones/ Devastations show on Saturday, it freed me up to hit another show that was almost certainly a polar opposite experience from the one I would have had. Instead of being aurally assaulted at the El Mocambo, I was sitting in a comfy armchair beside a roaring fire in a small room at the Tranzac. Seriously. Cozy doesn’t begin to describe it.

There were four acts on the bill but only a total of six musicians. Strange math. The first two were local solo performers with a similar configuration but different vibes. Toronto’s This Is Picture played accompanied by classical guitar (and for one number a capella) and offered up a set of clipped-structred, chorus-less emo songwriting. Not particularly my thing but his pitch, projection and musicianship was quite impressive.

Mississauguan Ghost Hands also did the solo singer-songwriter thing (though on steel-string rather than nylon) and his take was a little more conventional but I also found it more enjoyable. He comes from a more folk direction and coupled some evocative, stream-of-consciousness songwriting with a wide-eyed, jaunty delivery.

Over The Atlantic hail from New Zealand which raised the question in my mind – if they were actually intending to travel over the Atlantic, which would be the most logical direction to do it from? I guess going east over South America would get you there quicker but you’d be a lot farther from everything. But I digress. The Kiwi two-piece create dreamy, guitar-led lap-pop that recalls early +/- though they have some shoegazer aspirations as well, as indicated by the periodic walls of noise they’d unleash and the fact that they had a song called “Kevin Shields” (though that particular number sounded more like it should be called “Jason Pierce”). I have to admit that though I was enjoying what they were doing, I’m pretty sure I nodded off a couple times during their set. See above about comfy chair and roaring fire – a recipe for nap time if ever there was one.

But somehow I stayed awake while watching Baltimore’s Beach House spend a good half hour trying to sort out the technical gremlins that delayed their set. For whatever reason, I found the sight of an ever-increasing number of people huddled around a mixer fascinating. The two-piece were traveling with a pretty sizable setup for performing the minimalist music from their their self-titled debut but whatever the problem was they eventually worked around it and got started. If they were at all out of sorts from the experience, they didn’t really sound it. Backed by static-y drum loops played off a discman (old school!), their haunting, baroque, transistor radio-down-a-well dream-pop sounded marvelous and enveloping in the small room. Accompanying herself perfectly on wheezing organ and with Alex Scally on spare, spidery guitar and keys, Victoria Legrand’s voice was emotionally distant (as being drenched in reverb is wont to do) but capable of heart-rending soulfulness and emotion where needed. They sounded sad and stark and almost perfectly captured the sound of the dying days of Autumn. Remind me to send a note to the dude from Favourite Sons thanking him for getting sick.

Photos: Beach House, Over The Atlantic, Ghost Hands, This Is Picture @ Tranzac – November 4, 2006
MP3: Beach House – “Apple Orchard”
MP3: Beach House – “Master Of None”
MP3: Over The Atlantic – “Starsign”
MP3: Ghost Hands – “Goodbye Cool World”
Video: Over The Atlantic – “35 Black And White” (YouTube)
MySpace: Beach House

New York dreampop combo Daylight’s For The Birds released their debut album Trouble Everywhere last week and it’s really quite good, like waking from a daydream in a Summer meadow (though I’m unsure if it’s actually possible to wake from a daydream since, by definition, you’re already awake but again – I digress). And if you don’t want to take my word for it, you can stream the whole thing here.

Mogwai’s Stuart Brathwaite talks to Daily Yomiuri about scoring a film about soccer star Zinedine Zidane. Via Largehearted Boy.

Red & Black talks to Drive-By Trucker Patterson Hood.

CMJ talks politics and activism (and even a little music) with Steve Earle. His next album is due out in the first half of next year.

Stylus pits U2 vs REM, Mortal Kombat-style. Stipey’s finishing move is awesome (and Murmur > Boy every day of the week, thank you very much).

np – Wheat / Hope & Adams

Ole Tarantula is the new album from the legendary Robyn Hitchcock and the first featuring the Venus 3 – aka Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin. It’s a return to the effervescently demented pop that Hitchcock perfected with The Soft Boys (fellow Soft Boy Kimberley Rew guests on a few tracks) and serves as a great reminder of how singular and weird an artist Hitchcock is as well as how consistent he’s been over the past 30 years.

Hitchcock was supposed to play Toronto last May with The Sadies as his backing band and while that show was canceled due to, if I recall correctly, a wounded foot. But he’s finally coming back and doing so with an equally stellar set of players and who knows, maybe a Sadie or two will join them anyways? Could happen. And you could be there if it does (or doesn’t).

Courtesy of Against The Grain, I’ve got three pairs of passes to give away for Hitchcock’s upcoming show at the Mod Club this Friday and to enter, all you have to do is email me at contests@chromewaves.net with “I want to see Robyn Hitchcock” in the subject line and your full name in the body. This contest will close at midnight, November 7 (that’s Tuesday) so if you want in, do it now.

MP3: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – “Adventure Rocket Ship”
Video: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – “Adventure Rocket Ship” (WMV)
Video: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – “Adventure Rocket Ship – live” (WMV)
MySpace: Robyn Hitchcock

Going to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on opening night is probably the sort of thing you’d expect a hardened Sascha Baron Cohen/Ali G/Borat fan to do, not someone who would have to confess to never having seen Da Ali G Show and whose only experience with Cohen was Talladega Nights (which I thought he was great in). And yet, there I was last night at a midnight screening no less (as the earlier ones were all sold out).

But with all the press around the film and the almost frighteningly positive reviews, I was pretty well briefed on the schtick and on what to expect. And that was a pretty funny movie. While I’m sure the filmmakers would like you to believe that the film is entirely built on Borat’s interactions with unsuspecting Americans, I find it highly unbelievable that significant portions of the film – in particular the ones that actually drive the narrative along – were not scripted. This doesn’t take much away from the movie and I doubt that total suspension of disbelief is very high on their list of priorities. Instead, they concentrate on the funny and outrageous and there, they succeed. Borat is still uproarious and more than offensive enough to those looking to be offended. And even the offensiveness isn’t that over the top – Borat takes many sideways swipes at things but rarely is there a full-on frontal assault on anyone or anything (unless you’re Kazakh). In fact, many of the funniest scenes have nothing to do with satire, but are instead lowbrow gross-out humour. And that’s okay.

Is Borat, as some are claiming, the funniest movie ever made? No, probably not, but it is damned funny and I cannot believe you could see it and now leave with at least a few stitches in your side. And it’s okay if you feel guilty about it.

And a contest: Courtesy of Atlantic Records, I’ve got three Borat prize packs to give away consisting of a copy of the film’s soundtrack and the promotional poster for said soundtrack. The CD contains much of the actual music from the film as well as some songs that weren’t (“Throw The Jew Down The Well”, “You Be My Wife”) as well as some clips of dialogue and some video clips and unreleased stuff from the film. Whether this is something you’ll actually listen to more than once… well, that’s between you and the people you live with. The poster is either dull or grotesque depending on what side you have facing out, but I’m sure more than a few of you would love to have that second image pinned up in your cubicle at work. Hey, that’s okay. I’m not judging.

Anyway, to win said Borat goodness, leave me a comment with your favourite line of Borat dialogue. That’s it, that’s all. The contest closes at midnight, November 11.

Video: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan soundtrack commercial (MOV)

Radio Free Canuckistan offers the complete version of his interview with Devastations which appeared in this week’s eye. And if you missed the item directly below this one, the show at the El Mocambo for tonight has been canceled.

Exclaim! recounts the long and storied history of REM, timeline-style.

Stylus has completed their countdown of their 50 best live albums of all time. Live At Leeds and Live Rust are both represented, I am satisfied.

Grizzly Bear recently stopped in at AOL’s Interface to record a session. And maul an intern.

What Would Jesus Blog offers some tips on how to make a mix tape to impress Chuck Klosterman. I am currently reading Klosterman’s latest, IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas. It amuses me.

np – Johan / THX JHN