Blogiversary is kind of a dumb word, but hey – there it is. Four years ago today, the inaugural post was made at 12:44 PM and the rest, as they say, is a whole crapload of drivel. The image here isn’t actually of the original site – I think this was my third or fourth redesign in two or three months and comes courtesy of The Wayback Machine. It didn’t preserve all of my interface images or any of my stylesheets – I’m pretty sure my original design wasn’t THAT ugly. Anyways, I went through a lot of iterations, starting out from a blogspot account which sadly no longer seems to exist and eventually migrating to my own URL within a few months.

It’s truly been a long, strange trip – blogosphere wasn’t even a word when I started, and the online landscape is very, very, VERY different now. If you’d told me back in Fall 2002 that my little exercise in boredom would have grown into this time-devouring, sleep-depriving monkey on my back, I’d have surely thought you mad. MAD. And yet, here we are. I’ve blogged trips to far corners of the world (not sure which is further – St Petersburg or Kyoto), reviewed god knows how many CDs, photographed countless concerts and probably posted twice as many Sufjan Stevens interview links. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve blogged and I’ve discovered so much great music and you’ve been along for the ride and for that, I say thanks.

While I can’t necessarily picture myself still doing this in four years, I can’t see myself stopping either. So at some point Mr Unstoppable Force will meet Mr Immovable Object and something will give… I had actually completely forgotten about the significance of today’s date because my mind has been a little more focused on another anniversary that’ll be rolling around in about a month and a half. If you don’t know what that is, well I’ll tell you when it happens. But until then, thanks for coming ’round. And enough with the back-patting, let’s get some linkage.

Centro-Matic are also celebrating an anniversary – 10 years of crafting awesome roots-rock. The Mercury News celebrates with the band.

Okkervil River continues to make the press circuit in Australia in advance of their tour down under, kicking off tomorrow. dB Magazine talks to Will Sheff about homelessness, The Sydney Morning Herald about Okkervil: The Early Years, Time Off tackles the poetry of his lyrics and Beat gets the lowdown on the knife incident.

RBally has posted a complete Wilco show from this July (featuring four new songs) and decided that Canadians are rude to Wilco. I corrected him by stating that Canadians are rude to everyone. We don’t discriminate.

The AP, via The Buffalo News, talks to Golden Smoggers Gary Louris and Dan Murphy while Blogcritics.org chats with Kraig Johnson.

Something Old, Something New declares The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando a thief and offers audio evidence to back it up. Lemonheads are at Lee’s Palace on December 12 and their new album The Lemonheads is out September 26.

Chart talks to Television’s Richard Lloyd.

Yo La Tengo confess to Harp that despite their extreme sports image, none of them are really jocks. I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass – a jocktacular sentiment if ever there was one – is out September 12 and the band will be at the Phoenix October 2. And check out iamnotafraidofyouandiwillbeatyourass.com (can’t believe that URL wasn’t taken) to see video clips of people saying, “I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass”. This is why the internet was invented.

And you may note that there’s another “Virgin Festival Contest” banner up there on the right. Didn’t I just run one of those? Well this one is for the US edition of the Virgin Festival. Go here for more details and to enter if you are around Baltimore or intend to be on the 23rd of September. And my winners for the Canadian V-Fest have been selected – I am sorting out logistics with the organizers right now but if you are a winner, you’ll be notified ASAP. Also note that the final schedule for next weekend is now available in PDF form. I’m rather surprised that each night will go till 11PM – the Toronto Island residents will LOVE that.

np – Yo La Tengo / Electr-O-Pura

Offshore, the new album from Bloomington, Indiana’s Early Day Miners, clocks in at a respectable 38 minutes but feels much, much shorter than that. Opener “Land Of Pale Saints” rides an insistent drum pattern for over nine minutes while guitars and feedback dance overtop it. It’s utterly hypnotic in the way its repetition, but subtly warps and mutates so as to never actually be the same thing from one moment to the next.

The record is remarkably unified and cohesive start to finish, which makes sense since it’s based on the the song of the same name from their 2002 album Let Us Garlands Bring – the band calls it, “a director’s cut” of that one composition. This ongoing theme allows one song – or movement, really – to blend seamlessly into the next in creating a warm, dark space-time wormhole that not only eliminates the notion of time elapsing, but does so while passing through the UK music scene circa 1992. There’s an unmistakable shoegazing element to this album – think the ambience of Slowdive with some of the darkness and menace of Catherine Wheel – but funnelled through the lonesome, midwestern soundscapes of Songs: Ohia, in particular the Magnolia Electric Co album.

It’s interesting – even though the ingredients that make up Offshore are all fairly easily identifiable, there’s something quite distinctive and unique about this record. There’s a solidarity of vision, courtesy of bandleader Daniel Burton, that lifts it up into something far greater than the sum of its parts and while that’s evident from the first listen, it’s only with more successive listens that the weight and enormity of what that actually means becomes evident. They are playing September 13 at the Tranzac and I’m actually thinking about passing up Serena Maneesh that night aroudn the corner at Lee’s Palace to see them perform Offshore – presumably in its entirety and ideally without stopping. As deafeningly glam-tacular as the Norwegians are sure to be, something is telling me that the EDM show will be even more special in its way. Hrmmm, I say. Hrmmm.

MP3: Early Day Miners – “Return Of The Native”
MySpace: Early Day Miners

Working in favour of Serena Maneesh is the fact that Evangelicals are opening – Pitchfork has an interview with the Oklahoman trio.

A band the Evangelicals are often compared to, both because of their state of origin and psychedelic tendancies, is The Flaming Lips. PopMatters, Hour.ca, St Louis Today, Columbus Dispatch and The Montreal Gazette all have interviews with the band, who will be in town to headline day one of the Virgin Festival. The contest for passes to said fest closed last night – I will be drawing winners this weekend. Thanks for entering, if you did so.

The Independent talks to Emma Anderson of Lush about the old shoegazing days, 15 years ago. Via Largehearted Boy.

Billy Bragg’s new hobby? Taking on social networking sites’ intellectual property policies. Having successfully gotten MySpace to back off of laying claim to music hosted on its pages, The Guardian reports he’s accomplished the same thing with Bebo, which is apparently quite big for the pouty webcam demographic in the UK. Bragg plays the Danforth Music Hall September 24.

John Darnielle of Mountain Goats stands up and testifies about the influence of Souled American to Harp. Parking Lot Cities has a recent KEXP session available to download. Mountain Goats are at Lee’s Palace September 19.

And finally, otherworldy Danish outfit Under Byen (wrote about them a couple weeks ago) will be embarking on a short North American tour in October which will include just one US date to four Canadian ones. The perks of signing to a Canadian label! The US date is Oct 4 in New York City, and from there it’s two Pop Montreal shows, one it Ottawa on the 8th and finally a stop at the Horseshoe on October 9 opening for Giant Sand, with whom they’ve worked before. I’d normally be all over that but I will have just stumbled off a train from Montreal that afternoon so will probably not be in any state for a concert. But I intend to catch at least one of the Montreal shows so all’s good on that front.

And things seem to be running incredibly slowly today, which is annoying but not as bad as the chronically offline as it’s been in the past couple weeks. I’m looking into it.

np – Early Day Miners / Let Us Garlands Bring

Hailing from Connecticuit via New York, singer-songwriter Jennifer O’Connor released her third album and first for Matador. Over The Mountain, Across The Valley And Back To The Stars last Tuesday. I haven’t heard the whole record but from what I have sampled, her stuff has a definite, mid-90s college rock vibe to it whether it’s an strummy acoustic folk song or an electrified full-band rocker. Whichever way she goes it’s consistently rather spare and downbeat, though with just cause as this New York Press interview reveals. That sorrow and heartbreak from her personal life definitely informs her work but in more of a “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” way than a morose, “woe is me” sort of way. Both hearbreaking and heartening at the same time.

Daytrotter has an interview and exclusive session available for download and Matador has made a couple tracks from the record available to download. She’s scored some choice opening slots in the past for the likes of The Silver Jews and Jeff Tweedy, but her latest tour takes her on the road with Mason Jennings, including a stop at the Drake Underground on September 12, before heading back out on the road with Portastatic in October. It’s kind of a shame about the timing as I’m already booked for that night, otherwise I’d probably have liked to check this show out, but that’s the Fall calendar for you.

MP3: Jennifer O’Connor – “Today”
MP3: Jennifer O’Connor – “Exeter, Rhode Island”
MySpace: Jennifer O’Connor

Bradley’s Alamanc has an almost complete live Ted Leo show available to download. “Almost” because Brad has courteously excised new material that Ted prefers not to be passed around the internet before he’s ready for them to be.

Everyone’s all agog about Sufjan Stevens’ new moustache, but Pause & Play is listing a new release from him on November 21 – the Songs For Christmas set which has become a holiday staple for the blogger crowd. Will this be a three-disc set as the uploaders generally (and unnecessarily from a space efficiency viewpoint) divvy it up into or a single disc stocking stuffer?

Cat Power tells NOW she loves Tricky. Note that there is no opener for her shows at Lee’s Palace on Monday, so when they say “show at 7:00/10:30”, they mean it. Be punctual.

Gothamist reports that some lowlife ripped off Dinosaur Jr’s gear the other night, including J’s vintage Jazzmasters. That just makes me sick. The Ottawa Sun talked to Lou Barlow about the Dino Jr reunion in happier, better-equipped times.

The Lemonheads “reunion” tour will include a stop at Lee’s Palace on December 12.

TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone tells Chart he was, “sick to my stomach” when an early, incomplete version of Return To Cookie Mountain leaked to the internet while Tunde Adebimpe discusses the album’s political undertones with Harp. MTV has the scoop on what to expect from the band’s first video from the album for “Wolf Like Me” – werewolves and supermodels. The album is out in North America September 12.

Misha4Music has made some very early Galaxie 500 demos available to download, more than half of which do not appear on the Uncollected Galaxie 500 comp. Full Of Wishes also points out that Rhino has some limited edition prints of the Best Of Luna artwork available for sale. I’m not much of a fan of Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve stuff, but I do like his album art for the disc. Not $175 US worth of like, though.

Brookville, aka Andy Chase of Ivy, and Tahiti 80, whose records Chase has produced, are on tour together and will stop at the Horseshoe on November 18.

I’ve been trying to make my picks for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which you’d think would be easier considering I’ve only got to choose two films and only have four evenings and one day available to try and see something. The immediate temptation is to want to see the films I’d likely see in regular release, which sort of defeats the purpose of the festival, so reading through the descriptions of the other available films – primarily foreign – is an interesting adventure unto itself. So far the most interesting pick would be Jade Warrior – a Finnish/Chinese kung-fu flick. Kind of cliche, I know, but they might just do something interesting with the genre this time.

And not a TIFF film but one I’m really looking forward to anyways is The Science Of Sleep, the new film from Michel Gondry. It opens in limited release September 22 but until then, you can read this interview with the director at Filter, listen to another at Salon or just watch the trailer.

np – The Mountain Goats / All Hail West Texas

M Ward released his new album Post-War yesterday, showing no hesitation in following up a masterpiece like 2005’s Transistor Radio. That record was one of my favourites of 2005 so you can be sure I was anxious to hear what he’d do next.

But for some reason, Post-War hasn’t captivated me the way I’d hoped it would. I can’t quantify why, but it definitely hasn’t worked its way into heavy rotation the way its predecessor did. It’s not the fact that Ward has opted to go largely with full band arrangements on the new disc for a more rollicking and uptempo experience. There’s still a goodly number of solo moments that centre around his otherworldly fingerpicking abilities and even when the band is on, it’s all very tastefully arranged and maintains Ward’s signature, timeless atmosphere. I think mainly, I find that it doesn’t flow as seamlessly as Ward’s past works have. Each song stands alone quite nicely on its own but the whole lacks the cohesiveness of Transistor Radio. But not qiote measuring up to an amazing album is hardly anything to be ashamed of and most likely, with time, I’ll be appreciating Post-War on its own merits. Not quite there yet, though.

Ward talks to Harp about the road from learning to play guitar to creating Post-War and the Merge Blog has a video of Ward’s performance on Letterman the other night. And here’s the usual linkage:

MP3: M Ward – “To Go Home”
Video: M Ward – “Chinese Translation” (YouTube)
Stream: M Ward / Post-War
MySpace: M Ward

Norfolk & Western will be part of Ward’s band on his Fall tour, including the September 11 show at the Mod Club. N&W will also be releasing a new album, The Unsung Colony, on October 24. If it’s anywhere near as good as their A Gilded Age EP from earlier this year, it will be excellent.

Harp converses with another musician who exists in his own unique corner of the musical space-time continuum, Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse.

Check out the trailer for the film companion to Okonokos, live double-CD from My Morning Jacket due out on September 26. The film will screen in select US cities before seeing release on DVD October 31.

Australia’s FasterLouder talks to Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff about their upcoming Australian tour, for which they’ve released the down under-only Overboard And Down EP. Their Australian label is streaming one of the new songs from it on their MySpace. Urban Pollution also reports that the band recorded a tiny show in Austin last week for the purpose of releasing a live DVD sometime in the future.

Cat Power talks to The Phoenix and The Straight about her new state of sobriety and why we can (probably/hopefully) look forward to a couple of good performances from her at Lee’s Palace next Monday.

The Independent talks to Calexico.

Rolling Stone has excerpted a portion of their cover story on Bob Dylan, whose universally-praised Modern Times was released yesterday. You can stream the whole thing courtesy of AOL.

Stream: Bob Dylan / Modern Times

+/- are at Sneaky Dee’s on November 29. Been a long time since I’ve seen them, I think I should rectify that. Their new album Let’s Build A Fire is out October 24.

Found this link in my referer log the other day. Noted the disclaimer at the top. Became paranoid.

np – Oakley Hall / Gypsum Strings

This month’s issue of Exclaim! has an interesting feature on something it calls “Torontopia”, or the fiercely grassroots and DIY indie aesthetic that has been a large part of this city’s culture for the past half-decade or so. Citing current and past institutions like Wavelength, Three Gut Records and the Blocks Recording Club, it documents the rise – and alleged fall – of the scene and it got me thinking. I’ve been running this blog for four years now, less a couple days, and like to think I’ve done a reasonable job of writing about music from a native Torontonian’s perspective. So why was it that I couldn’t relate to the piece at all? Or to the bustling, creative community that it documented?

I guess it ties back to the point I’ve raised occasionally in the past about feeling some guilt about not covering more local music. Yeah, I’ve spilled lots of digi-ink on the local bands that have broken out on the (inter)national stage – Broken Social Scene, Hidden Cameras, etc – but what of the acts who haven’t reached that level of profile? Am I guilty of that infamous Canadian inferiority complex that craves validation from abroad before acknowledging homegrown talent? Or is it a simple matter of efficiency? I have x amount of time in a day to spend with music regardless of origin – should I apply some sort of CanCon guidelines to my time and in essence treat domestic acts like special needs children or should I leave the playing field level and if the new Born Ruffians record, for all the love it will get locally, doesn’t affect me the way that Austin’s Okkervil River does, then tough noogies? That’s sort of the approach I’ve been taking, but then things like the Polaris Music Prize come along and the guilt returns.

Other Canadian sites have done bang-up jobs of covering smaller Canadian bands – I Heart Music and From Blown Speakers, for example, have their ears pressed far closer to the ground than I. But it’s not entirely for lack of trying – I’ve gone out and caught lots of local bands, some intentionally, some incidentally, but the fact is that statistically speaking, I don’t like many of them. Lots of bands beloved by the Stille Post crowd leave me scratching my head or worse, plugging my ears. I find that part of what could be considered the “Torontopia aesthetic”, or that of its descendents, is an over-intellectualization of music and art. That’s sort of evident from the Exclaim! piece. It’s like people don’t start bands, they start cerebral art projects based on creating a new hyper-hyphenated ironic genre for the amusement of themselves or their friends, and not necessarily for the purpose of just getting together and creating good (by my definitions) music. Not that the two goals have to be mutually exclusive, but to my ears the more important of the two – the music – ends up taking a back seat.

Maybe I’m just as guilty of over-intellectualizing this whole thing – maybe I just don’t like Nintendo cover bands or looped Slavic poetry accompanied by fuzz-pedal sleigh bells. I could simply, at the heart of it all, be a meat-and-potatos rock and roll guy, not an avant-garde-ist, and what the community creates isn’t up my alley. There’s no shame in that. And I could also be projecting outsider baggage from high school, bitter at not being in the know, in the cool kid clique. Probably both. But as long as I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to expose myself to more Canadian music, to try and use this soapbox to get the word out on new acts that I can honestly and wholeheartedly champion. I do think I’ve gotten better at it, but it can be tough to balance that out with judging the music strictly on its merits and not its postal code, with trying simply to cover music I like wherever it originates. Believe me, it’s harder than it sounds.

I recommend reading this conversation with Carl Wilson of Zoilus at Indiepolitik as a very interesting and informative companion piece to the Exclaim article. But Carl, a superb local scene booster, has a very soothing tone to his writing. Like Morgan Freeman doing books on tape. Except without the talking. But rationalize it however you want, and maybe this wraps up this whole train of thought in a nutshell, but I still cannot listen to Ninja High School.

And apologies to the artist, whom you may remember from this, for cropping her illustration to fit my specifications. Please check out the whole piece in all its widescreen glory here.

The Guardian has an extended profile on Broken Social Scene, the extended family and their deep ties to their hometown while Wired holds the band up as an example of the tastemaking power of Pitchfork. The Globe & Mail talks to Brendan Canning about the score to the film Half Nelson, which the band didn’t actually score. And Captain’s Dead has a live acoustic radio session available to download. Via Claude Pate.

Harp talks to Emily Haines about her forthcoming solo record Knives Don’t Have Your Back. She’s streaming a song from it on her MySpace and another here. Also note that a third late show has been added to her two sold-out gigs at the Gladstone on September 12, the same day the album is released (it’s out a fortnight later in the US).

Harp also has a piece on another BSS lady gone solo, Ms Amy Millan.

PopMatters and Harp talk to the Good Brothers about The Sadies’ In Concert Volume 1.

Expanding our scope geographically, Exclaim! talks to Chad Van Gaalen about his new album Skelliconnection, which isn’t getting a whole lot of love from critics. And Stylus takes the wayback machine to mid-90s Can-Rock radio for their list of “Top Ten Canadian Rock Not-Quite-Smashes”. You know, I really liked Slowburn back in the day. “Whatever” was a great song.

And to anyone who feels cheated from the post title that there’s not actually any Superchunk content – accept this mea culpa of a couple live tracks circa 2001, recorded right here in Toronto (meme victory!). Much more free ‘Chunk audio here.

MP3: Superchunk – “Seed Toss” (live in Toronto)
MP3: Superchunk – “What Do You Look Forward To?” (live in Toronto)

One to file under self-promotion – the New Music segment on yours truly that was shot last month will be airing next week – it’ll be on MuchMusic on September 4 at 9:30PM and 1:30AM ET and repeat a week later on September 11 at 12:30PM ET. For those of you, like me, who don’t get MuchMusic, it’ll also air on CityTV on September 9 at 1:30PM ET and repeat on September 12 at 11:30AM ET. Naturally, I am not going to be around for, oh, ANY of these airings so I’ll be relying on the old VCR to capture what will amount to 20% of my 15 minutes of fame. It’ll be available online in the near future as well.

HAve you seen the new Flickr mapping functionality? It’s beyond awesome. Thanks to Duarte for pointing it out to me – alas their foreign maps are far less detailed than I’d like, but I am able to place my Toronto pics down to the intersection. Which is what I spent much of last night doing (but not done yet).

And finally, “Toronto Is Great” may have been a Torontopia slogan, but The Toronto Star says that Travel + Leisure magazine disagrees. They think we’re just good.

np – The Diableros / You Can’t Break The Strings In Our Olympic Hearts