Run Chico Run / Slow Action (Boompa) British Columbians Run Chico Run became a duo by circumstance when the third leg of their trio bailed right before a tour and the unconventional arrangement has served them well. The sound on their latest album Slow Action is quite a contrast to what I witnessed when I saw them at SxSW in 2004 – while that was a storm of drums, huge fuzzy walls of keyboards and questionable facial hair, their studio effort is a bright slice of classic, clean-shaven and nerdy new-wave pop. The songwriting is quirky but accessible and (thankfully), they do not restrict themselves to two-piece instrumentation on record. The end result is hooky enough to be ear candy but odd and eccentric enough to challenge/confound the grey matter. Recommended, and try to catch them as they cross Canada this August, including a date at the Silver Dollar in Toronto on August 12. Full dates on their MySpace page. MP3: Run Chico Run – “Clockwork Crows” MySpace: Run Chico Run

Cansei De Ser Sexy / Cansei De Ser Sexy (SubPop) An (almost) all-girl Brazilian disco act signed to SubPop – it’s like a music marketer’s dream come true. A sonic pastiche with one foot in the rock and one in electronica, both meeting at one ass that’s shake-shake-shaking. It’s loud, insistent, sexy and catchy as hell. Boasting songs titles like “Meeting Paris Hilton” and “Musik Is My Hot Hot Sex”, there’s no questioning this outfit is about irreverent fun, first and foremost. The album is out on Tuesday and there’s much touring to support – they’re at the Mod Club this Friday, July 14 for a show with Diplo and are back on October 2 at the Docks with Ladytron. People complain that Torontonians don’t dance but I don’t think it’d be physcially possible NOT to if CSS live is nearly as infectious as it is on disc. MP3: Cansei De Ser Sexy – “Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above” Video: Cansei De Ser Sexy – “Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above” (MOV) MySpace: Cansei De Ser Sexy

Mellowdrone / Box (Red Ink) On paper, Los Angeles’ Mellowdrone seemed like a band that I should like. The brainchild of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Bates, they offer up a space/glam rock hybrid that’s as much strutting as shuffling, but Box is so overly synthetic that I just can’t get behind it at all. So over-produced and passionless, it could be a demo for ProTools. It’s like a faked moon landing. I blame LA. Mellowdrone are at the Horseshoe July 14 for a show with A Northern Chorus – here’s hoping their live show has a little more life to it. MP3: Mellowdrone – “Fashionably Uninvited” MySpace: Mellowdrone

np – Say Hi To Your Mom / Impeccable Blahs

Three months after its release, it’s probably safe to say that reaction to Calexico’s latest Garden Ruin has been somewhat muted compared to their usualy lofty standards. I, for the record, am not severly disappointed nor especially overwhelmed by it. But considering that in the past, part of the magic of their legendarily excellent live shows has been how effectively the band recreates the sun-bleached desert vistas of their recorded works, I did wonder how their more pop/singer-songwriter studio turn would translate on stage.

In short, same but different. If you were to draw a line down the stylistic halfway point between Garden Ruin and Feast Of Wire, you’d have an idea of what Calexico live, 2006 is like. The older material seemed leaner and more compact while the newer material got an infusion of the mariachi soul via horns and slide guitar that was kept on the back burner on Garden Ruin. I wonder, if the recorded arrangements had been more like the live ones, if the critical response to the album would have been more positive? But that’s neither here nor there – Calexico on this night were tight and taut with their typically excellent musicianship and striking a perfect balance between fire and restraint. They used the encore to cut extra-loose, inviting openers Oakley Hall as well as local talent Dallas Good of The Sadies and Jason Collett, who had originally been slated to open, to come out and join them for a couple numbers including a rousing cover of Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody”.

It’s lucky that Calexico were so good on this night, because Oakley Hall set the bar pretty damn high with their opening set. I wrote them up earlier this week but wasn’t prepared for the sheer ass-kickingness of their set. Merging old-time country raucousness with mind-bending psychedelia and somehow coming out of it sounding timeless, Oakley Hall impressed not just me, but a goodly portion of the audience as well. If you’re going to see M Ward at the Mod Club on September 11, do yourself a favour and show up early enough to catch Oakley Hall – you won’t regret it.

Calexico favoured a very dark, projection-heavy stage show so good photos were a bit tougher to get. But hey, all in the name of ambience, right? Also, The Montreal Mirror talks to native son Joey Burns about Garden Ruin and some audio/video that I’ve linked many times before. Complain to someone else.

MP3: Calexico – “Cruel”
MP3: Oakley Hall – “Lazy Susan”
Video: Calexico – “Cruel” (MOV)
MySpace: Calexico
MySpace: Oakley Hall

Billboard reports that after more touring through the Summer and Fall, Broken Social Scene will be going away for a while.

Punknews reports that Ted Leo is calling out Elton John as a racist – check out the July 5 entry. Soccer really brings out the worst in everyone, doesn’t it? Via Clicky Click.

Will Sheff of Okkervil River posted a terrific essay to his band’s message board about his deep ambievalence about file-sharing and why you won’t hear much new material during their Fall tour. I thought it was a wonderful piece, especially the parts about the internet being like the library of Babel. There are many (many) days when I long for the time when every new album purchase was treated like a sacred event. That said, you’ll have to pry my iPod out of my cold, dead hands.

My Morning Jacket’s Patrick Hallahan talks to Billboard about covering The Band at Levon Helm’s studio.

Prefix reports that the debut full-length from Chicago power-soul trio Catfish Haven, Tell Me, will be out September 12.

PopMatters offers some tips on how to educate those people who say they love every kind of music except country. You know, savages.

np – Early Day Miners / Offshore

I will admit, right off, that I teared up during the opening of Tell Me Do You Miss Me, the documentary film of Luna’s farewell tour over the end of 2004 and early part of 2005. In the sequence in question, the band has just finished playing “Fuzzy Wuzzy” to finish the main set of their last-ever show on February 28, 2005 at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom (at least according to the setlist) and are bidding farewell to the audience and to themselves.

Tell Me Do You Miss Me is full of these wistful, bittersweet moments – watching the band going about the shows knowing full well that the end was nigh is a strange perspective. The interviews with each of the band members are also quite revealing, particularly when it addresses the dynamic between Dean Wareham and Sean Eden, which is logical since they’re the longest-serving remaining band members. It’s not hostile or Some Kind Of Monster dyfunctional, but is interesting to watch. I haven’t listened to the commentary track with all the band members yet, but I can’t wait to hear what, if anything, Wareham and Eden have to say about the scenes where they talk about one another. I am actually holding off on watching it a second time through with the commentary because, well, this DVD is probably the last new Luna release of any kind there’ll ever be and I’m loathe to finish it for good. Stupid? Yes. It’s also worth mentioning that the film itself is beautifully shot and assembled, perfectly balancing the live, backstage and interview footage.

But mainly, watching this film really brought home just how much I loved this band. Certainly enough to get me, who is loathe to hoof it to a venue more than 20 minutes away, to fly to Chicago not one week after seeing their farewell Toronto show to say goodbye one more time. Though I arrived a little late to the party (I only discovered them after taking a complete flyer on Bewitched in Summer 1999, note unheard) they’re easily one of my top two or three favourite bands ever. Cryptic, playful, laid back and musically perfect, there will probably never be another band that will be for me what Luna was. Read over some of the rememberances in the farewell tour fan blog and you’ll see I’m not alone.

Obviously, the DVD is a must-have for any Luna fan, if only to see this photo in the booklet and to see me get a liner note credit. There are some murmurs that the soundtrack to the film, which was comprised of instrumental pieces contributed by all members of the band, may be released at some point. Now’s a good time to repoint you to the interviews Head Full of Wishes, who has been on a tear posting old Luna audio and video, did with all the principals of the film – Britta, Lee, Sean and Dean as well as director Matthew Buzzell.

Rhino, who released the DVD as well as the Best Of Luna and Lunafied comps, has got the trailer of the film online as well as a complete performance of “Bewitched” that doesn’t appear in the film. There’s also some live downloads available from Luna’s own website.

Trailer: Tell Me Do You Miss Me
Video: Luna – “Bewitched” (MOV)
MP3: Luna – “Friendly Advice” (live)
MP3: Luna – “The Slow Song” (live in Toronto)

And where are they now? Dean and Britta carry on as Dean & Britta and will release their second album early next year. Sean is working on solo material and also occasionally plays in Elk City – you can hear his distinctive guitar touches in the MP3 below. And according to the film, Lee is riding a bike around Los Angeles while also providing music for the television show South Of Nowhere.

MP3: Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham – “Ginger Snaps”
MP3: Elk City – “Silver Lawyers”

ArtVoice talks to Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan about the forthcoming I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, out September 12. Via LHB.

Losing Today talks to Asobi Seksu’s Yuki about sophomore album Citrus.

And to finish off with the New York theme, here are my New York City photos as well as sets from The Met and MoMA.

Finally, completely un-NYC-related, The Toronto Sun and London Free Press talk to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy while Halifax’s The Coast chat with John Stirratt. Massey Hall tonight! My extra ticket was snatched up quickly, thankfully.

np – Oakley Hall / Gypsum Strings

UK bands kicking off a month-long North American tour could do far worse than to do so in Toronto, as I doubt there are many more cities on the continent more favourably inclined to all things British. Scotland’s Camera Obscura did just that this past Tuesday night to a sold-out, sweltering Horseshoe in support of their excellent new album, Let’s Get Out Of This Country.

Toronto’s Diableros got the nod to open both the Toronto and Montreal shows on the tour – a bit of an odd choice, stylistically, but I wasn’t going to complain as I’ve missed numerous opportunities to see them play in the past half-year and was thankful for the gimme. Many have complained about the fuzzy production of their debut album You Can’t Break The Strings In Our Olympic Hearts but after seeing them live, I gotta say – that’s what they sound like. The guitars may jangle a little cleaner but everything else, from the organs doing battle with the distorto-bass for sonic space to Phoebe Lee’s propulsive drums and Pete Carmichael’s howl sound remarkably similar live to how they do on record – or maybe that should be the other way around. Either way, their set was intense and impassioned and actually got the front of the club packed with both the converted and the curious, no mean feat for an opening band – even a hotly-tipped local one.

Much of what makes Let’s Get Out Of This Country such a leap forwards from the aptly-titled Underachievers Please Try Harder is the extra vim in songs like “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken”, “If Looks Could Kill” and the title track that bust the band out of any twee-pop pigeonhole one might have been tempted to place them in. But in a set that drew heavily from both those records, it was unavoidable that the energy levels would drift back towards the more delicate mid-tempo numbers. Luckily, the band has gotten quite good at those over the years. There were a few flubs that could be chalked up to first-show jitters, but maybe because they accepted that there were going to be a few hiccups in the performance (right before starting the show, they realized that the soundman had all their set lists) and that the audience wasn’t going to hold it against them, they were quite relaxed onstage. Tracyanne Campbell, carrying the frontperson mantle entirely on her own after the departure of John Henderson at the start of last year, was surprisingly chipper and chatty and certainly set a good tone for the night though it’s a shame she got the coughs during the outro of “Lloyd” and couldn’t sing it properly. Alas. But a thoroughly enjoyable show if maybe not as intoxicating as the album it was in support of.

I look at my photos from Tuesday and my photos from two years ago and I laugh. Ha ha. Tracyanne also talks to The Independent Weekly about Lloyd Cole.

MP3: Camera Obscura – “Let’s Get Out Of This Country
MP3: The Diableros – “Push It To Monday”
Video: Camera Obscura – “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken” (MOV)
Video: The Diableros – “Sugar Laced Soul” (MOV)
MySpace: Camera Obscura
MySpace: The Diableros

The Airfields, a band which at last check counted two Diableros amongst their roster, have a new video from their Laneways EP. It’s a charming little retro film montage set to one of the saddest and prettiest songs on the record.

Video: The Airfields – “Red Fox” (YouTube)

The New Pollution talked to The Concretes when they kicked off their own North American tour at the Horseshoe back in May. Hopefully Camera Obscura’s turns out better than their Swedish compatriots’ did.

Aversion has some info on the new Sparklehorse record. Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain will be out September 26 and is described as being “in the style of VivaDixie/Good Morning Spider“. While I’m personally of the belief that It’s A Wonderful Life is the best Sparklehorse record, when Mark Linkous releases a new record after a half-decade, you take it whatever it sounds like. Either way, NME has the tracklisting.

NOW talks to The M’s about working with Jonathan Demme on the video for “Future Women”. The M’s open up for Wilco at Massey Hall tomorrow night.

Bradley’s Almanac has a recording of Buffalo Tom’s recent hometown show in Boston.

Update: Anyone need a single ticket for Wilco tomorrow night? 6th row floor, centre-right. I paid around $58 so best offer thereabouts. Email me. Thanks.

np – Luna / Rendezvous

So the ten finalists for the inaugural Polaris Music Prize were announced yesterday and to no one’s surprise, the list is heavily indie rock-centric and Toronto/Ontario-centric, to say nothing of Toronto indie rock-centric.

Of my nominations, the only one I’m a little surprised about not making the list is Destroyer. I thought Destroyer’s Rubies would have been a critic’s pick shoo-in – guess not. What I am surprised about are the presence of Sarah Harmer and Metric, as I didn’t feel their latest efforts measured up the the benchmarks set by their earlier works. But, as I noticed when I was trying to make my picks, the pool of eligible acts was pretty slim this year.

But without further delay – the final 10:

Broken Social Scene / Broken Social Scene (Arts & Crafts/EMI)
Cadence Weapon / Breaking Kayfabe (Upper Class/EMI)
The Deadly Snakes / Porcella (Paper Bag/Universal)
Final Fantasy / He Poos Clouds (Blocks Recording Club/Sonic Unyon)
Sarah Harmer / I’m A Mountain (Cold Snap/Universal)
K’naan / The Dusty Foot Philosopher (Track & Field/Sony BMG)
Malajube / Trompe L’oeil (Dare to Care/Outside)
Metric / Live It Out (Last Gang/Universal)
The New Pornographers / Twin Cinema (Mint/Outside)
Wolf Parade / Apologies To The Queen Mary (Sub Pop/Outside)

Anyway, each of the nominated bands will contribute a track to a compilation CD to be released on August 22 and the winner of the $20,000 grand prize will be selected on September 18 from a final jury of 11 of the 120 original jurors. And for those looking for an angle by which to condemn this event, the main sponsors of the prize are evil conglomorate Rogers and Yahoo!. Boo, hiss! Chart talks to Polaris exec Steve Jordan about the short list while The Globe & Mail contemplates the list.

But for the record, I’m pulling for the New Pornograpers, which means I will have to fight Zoilus.

Exclaim!’s review of Mojave 3’s Puzzles Of You includes a brief interview with Neil Halstead.

The Los Angeles Times talks to members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Belle & Sebastian’s Mick Cooke about their collaboration/performance at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow night.

The New Pollution asks Stuart Brathwaite of Mogwai if they’ve mellowed.

Glide counts off the buzz bands of 2006 so far and essentially wraps up the entire indie rock blogosphere in one tidy list.

The Sadies are holding a CD release party for In Concert Vol. 1 (out August 8) at the Horseshoe September 8 and 9. You know what they should do? They should record it and release it as Volume 2, then record the release party for THAT and put it out as Volume 3, and so forth and so forth. That’d be awesome. Elsewhere, Early Day Miners are at Club Tranzac on September 13, Lambchop and The Tosca String Quartet are at Mod Club September 24 ($20), Be Your Own Pet are at the Horseshoe September 25, blogger beloveds Beirut (see above) are at the ‘Shoe October 4 ($10), Hot Chip at Mod Club October November 6 ($15) and from the Britpop graveyard – The Bluetones – BLUETONES – are at Lee’s Palace on Oct 6. Seriously.

np – Gemma Hayes / The Roads Don’t Love You