Tomorrow sees the release of albums from both of Rilo Kiley’s principals – Jenny Lewis with her Watson Twins-powered Rabbit Fur Coat and Blake Sennett with Sun Sun Sun, the sophomore effort from his side-project, The Elected. While RK’s earlier albums featured a more even split in vocal duties, the balance has been shifting towards Lewis – their breakthrough More Adventurous featured just one Sennett lead vocal, and that track was generally acknowledged to be the low point of the album. It’s not that Sennett is a poor singer, he’s not – though his whispery Elliott Smith-ish tunes were rather generic and when you’ve got a voice like Lewis’ at your disposal, you’d be a damn fool to not utilize it as much as possible.

So accepting that reality, Sennett has The Elected as a vehicle for his vocal excursions, and it sounds pretty much like you’d expect. His voice is rather stronger than his Rilo Kiley work would have suggested but the songwriting is the same lightly twangy, classic pop style that brings home the bacon in his day job. It’s the sort of thing that would have worked fine on a Rilo Kiley disc (almost everything here is better than “Ripchord”) but left to stand on its own, it all feels a bit insubstantial. Devout RK fans will surely find enough here to make it worth adding to their collection and casual ones might be interested to know that Ms Lewis contributes backing vocals on a one song and lyrics on a couple others but this is all Sennett’s show.

On her first attempt at flying solo, Lewis pursues a distinctly country vibe, but rather than the sassy belting of More Adventurous’ “I Never”, Rabbit is more old-school country-gospel in flavour. While Lewis has a ways to go before she has the depth of life experiences to stand alongside Emmylou or Loretta, she still has a sharp lyrical pen and growing up as a child actor is good for some compelling songwriting inspiration, most notably on the (presumably) autobiographical title track which documents a strained mother-child star daughter relationship. The topic of Lewis’ childhood is a thread that runs through the whole album, which in spite of the lovely vocal work from Lewis and the Watsons and with the exception of the indie-star studded Traveling Wilbury’s cover “Handle With Care”, has a distinctly downbeat tone. It’s interesting to compare Sun Sun Sun to Rabbit Fur Coat, as while the former is hooky but slight, the latter is considerably weightier in subject matter and much less generous with instant gratification. One can’t help but wonder what sort of record might have emerged if the songwriting sessions for both had intertwined?

The Watson Twins are also taking full advantage of their association with Lewis’ album, releasing their debut EP Southern Manners this week as well. They will be touring with Lewis through the Spring, including a stop in Toronto at the Opera House on March 16. Might the Watson Twins sieze the opportunity to be their own opening act? Someone else will have to report on that, since I’m out of town that week. And anyone attending the show who hopes to hear some RK stuff will probably be disappointed, Lewis has already stated that she’s putting that stuff to bed for a while and is concentrating on road-testing the solo material.

There’s been plenty of Lewis-related press (and some Elected stuff, but not nearly as much), some of which I’ve linked already and some more I’ll link now – Between Thought & Expression has transcribed an interview between Lewis and American Way, The Independent, Los Angeles Times and Chart have pieces and The San Francisco Chronicle engages in some playful banter. Meanwhile, Seattle Weekly talks to Sennett.

All three acts have MySpace pages – Lewis, The Elected and The Watson Twins all have tracks up for preview, as well as the following officially sanctioned downloads – note that the Watson Twins ones are in M4A format.

MP3: Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins – “Rise Up With Fists!”
MP3: Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins – “Melt Your Heart”
MP3: The Elected – “Not Going Home”
M4A: The Watson Twins – “Friend And Foe”
M4A: The Watson Twins – “Darlin’ Song”

A few more shows announcements – The Violent Femmes are still around and apparently can still fill Massey Hall – or at least think they can. They’ll be in town on March 8 while The Gris Gris are at the considerably cozier and grungier Comfort Zone on April 8.

Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin worries aloud to JAM! that the Can-rock love-in bubble might burst soon. I wouldn’t expect that to be the case here at home, at least, if the enthusism over their two sold-out shows at the Kool Haus is any indication.

I finally got myself a Canon Digital Rebel XT last week and have spent the weekend learning how to use it – I’m very excited about this thing, the quality of photos coming out of it hurts my head. There’s a couple shots from it up in my Flickr photoblog, but I won’t get to really see what it can do until the Low show at Lee’s next week. Say it with me – “Clean ISO 400!” Ahhhh.

It’s official – The West Wing will be coming to an end on May 14. It’s for the best, and will be going out on a high note though anyone who believes the producers when they say that they haven’t decided whether Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda will win the election is smoking something. Alda hasn’t gotten one fraction of the screen time that Smits has, and hasn’t been portrayed very positively when he has. Unless they’re planning to handle John Spencer’s death by having Smits strangle him on national television, there’s no way they’re going with Hawkeye.

But even though I’d personally rather vote for Frank Burns’ corpse than any of our candidates, I’d like to remind and encourage Canadians out there to go out and vote today. Hold your nose if you have to.

And if you want to vote for something a little less repugnant (though just a little), I’m up for “Best Canadian Weblog” in the 2006 Bloggies for the third year running. I’m flattered for the nomination, but don’t expect the honours to go much beyond that. Getting cynical as the years go by? Maybe a little. That doesn’t mean I won’t still ask for your vote, the prize they’re offering of, oh, NOTHING, is mighty tempthing. And I’ll just say again that it’s absurd there’s no standalone music category – there is nothing in common between sites like those that populate most of my blogroll and the five gossip/T&A sites nominated for “Best Entertainment”. I don’t know what they hoped to accomplish by rolling them into one last year, but if it was to completely marginalize a huge portion of the blog world, well mission accomplished. I miss the good old days of me vs Moby.

np – Saturday Looks Good To Me / Every Night

David Thomas Broughton / The Complete Guide To Insufficiency (Plug Research) So it took a fairly glowing Pitchfork review to a) remind me that I had a copy of this record, and b) that it had been curious enough at first listen to merit a revisit. Stretching five songs out over forty minutes, Insufficiency is not a casual listen – most of the record is just Broughton’s mournful voice and his creaking, grumpy acoustic guitar with bits of drum machine and looping pedal providing accents. The whole record was recorded in one take in an English church, and remarkably, that’s exactly the vibe that the album recreates, except I was thinking it sounded not so much like the church as the mausoleum. Broughton’s voice recall’s Antony (of the Johnsons) in timbre and emotional rawness, but placed in a folk context rather than cabaret, sounds completely different. But they’re similar in another way – I didn’t think I’d ever listen to the Antony & The Johnson’s album nearly as much as I have, and the same may well be said about The Complete Guide To Insufficiency. David Thomas Broughton @ MySpace

Lying In States / Wildfire On The Lake (Flameshovel) And at the other end of the stylistic spectrum is Chicago’s Lying In States. They’re an unabashed rock act, all in-your-face alt.rock aggression and modern punk energy, and quite frankly annoyed me the first time I put it in the CD player – it was like modern rock radio had somehow managed to infiltrate my insular little musical world. Thankfully, over the course of the record the angry young man-ness is mitigated somewhat by some more dynamic numbers and even some nice boy-girl harmonies. Because, y’see, they may be angsty but they’re also sensitive. File under: whatever. MP3: Lying In States – “Turn” MP3: Lying In States – “Hackles” Lying In States @ MySpace

np – Devandra Banhart / Cripple Crow

Elbow released their latest Leaders Of The Free World in Canada and the rest of the world last year, but it’s only getting a US release on February 21. The wait will be worth it, though, because in addition to a top-notch album, there’ll be a limited edition that also comes with an expansive DVD featuring videos, studio footage, etc. The DVD was also part of the package with the UK edition, but this will be the first domestic North American release. I believe the DVD will be available on its own up here in Canuckistan, but don’t have the details handy at the moment. If I can dig up the info, I’ll update this here post. In the meantime, the good folks at V2 have given me a few streams from the DVD for you to check out:

WMV: Elbow – “Station Approach”
WMV: Elbow – “Forget Myself “
WMV: Elbow – “Puncture Repair “

While some are sad about the news of Charlotte Hatherley leaving Ash, I for one welcome the news. Why? Because I like Charlotte’s solo stuff and don’t really like Ash. Simple. Her second album is due out this Fall and she (along with Elbow from up above) are scheduled to appear at SxSW in March. Yay.

And speaking of SxSW, the powers that be have once again updated the attending bands list and AngryRobot has again converted it into an actually readable format. Haven’t gone through it closely to see if there’s anyone I’m really excited about seeing yet, though.

According to this thread at Shoegaze.com, Playboy of all places, has declared shoegazing to be the next big thing in rock, supplanting the way overripe garage rock sound. While I think they may be overstating the case a bit, you can’t deny that the genre has experienced a renaissance in recent years, at least in terms of critical re-appraisal. And surely the new wave/post-punk corpse is picked clean by now? Musical necrophiliacs need to move on to the next exquisite corpse, and delay pedal manufacturers are rubbing their hands in anticipation. And if you need a quick history lesson, I refer you back to Are You Familar’s periodic and ongoing history of shoegaze – parts one, two, three, fourand five.

Chart talks to Metric about their new video for “Poster Of A Girl” and opening for The Rolling Stones.

And finally, best news of the week? The National. At the Horseshoe. March 22. AND I WILL BE IN TOWN, though just barely. Seriously, that’s in the middle of a miniscule five-day-or-so window in which I’ll be in the country. SO BEST. And to get you stoked, So Much Silence has their session for WOXY from last September all MP3-ed up for you to enjoy.

np – Ride / Going Blank Again

It’s been over a year since I last checked in on Scotland’s Dot Allison, but there hasn’t really been much to report in the interim, at least not much concrete. The former One Dove chanteuse has been pretty quiet since putting out 2002’s We Are Science, preferring to collaborate with others and touring with Massive Attack. She was also a member of Babyshambles for a time but maybe the gruelling schedule of scheduling and cancelling shows got to be too much for her…

But thankfully, she’s hasn’t let her own work go by the wayside. In this French interview from last year . she said she was working a third solo album and “the direction is quite alt. country/folk. Not so electronic this time, quite organic with more guitar and traditional intrumentation” and was described by Andy Weatherall as ” Emmylou Harris meets the Velvets” (the full translated excerpt from the interview can be read here). That sounds pretty good to me, but release date info isn’t yet forthcoming. She has completed an EP (Beneath The Ivy) which is yet unreleased and continued to work on the album, which has a title of Agent Provocateur, so that’s something.

She’s also maintaining her own MySpace page and a journal on her message boards. There’s also some choice downloads available on her site, though oddly in M4A and MP4 formats – best download them straight to your desktop and play them from there, rather than in the browser. Two of the tracks are demos (presumably) from her new album, one is a collaboration with everybody’s favourite tabloid fodder Pete Doherty and the last is a track done with Massive Attack that appeared in the Jet Li film Unleashed, aka Danny The Dog.

M4A: Dot Allison – “Paper Rose” (demo)
MP4: Dot Allison – “Quicksand” (demo)
MP4: Dot Allison & Pete Doherty – “I Wanna Break Your Heart” (demo)
MP4: Massive Attack with Dot Allison – “Aftersun”

Drowned In Sound gets a few minutes to talk to Stuart Murdoch about Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, out February 7.

Broken Social Scene kick off their sold out, two-night stand at the Kool Haus tonight, and The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun talk to Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, respectively, about the pressures of making Broken Social Scene and the hometown shows. Hey – Stars and Suns. HA!

Nellie McKay talks to The Village Voice about leaving Columbia, her childhood and animal rights work. The Washington Post also has an interview while The Washington Times chastises her for what it sees as immature behaviour and throwing hissy-fits. I’m inclined to agree, to an extent. Or more like, the days of major labels indulging artists who haven’t sold craploads of records are long, long gone. Unless getting dropped is exactly what Nellie hoped to accomplish, I don’t know what else she could have expected.

When Mocking Music compiles what they call “The Top Ten Most Interesting Indie Covers & Remixes . . . Ever!”, it seems their definition of “ever” is about a year and a half. But still, they offer downloads and commentary so it’s worth a look. Via For The Records.

np – The New Pornographers / Electric Version

Los Angeles’ Cerulean isn’t a band that’s gotten a lot of profile in any of the internet circles I travel in, but they have gotten a lot of love amongst devotees of The Big Takeover mailing list, where I first heard of them, thanks in no small part to their sonic similarity to BTO faves Catherine Wheel. Singer/guitarist Rick Bolander’s pipes are definitely reminiscent of Rob Dickinson’s, though with less of that uniquely British sense of drama. There’s parallels to be drawn musically, as well – they deftly combine gentler, atmospheric moments with driving, anthemic rock action and while it’s not the most fashionable sound right now, but it’s not that far removed. And I know there are those for whom this sound is like manna from heaven (do you have original LP pressings of Heaven Up Here and Script Of The Bridge?) and am pretty sure some of them read this site, so for them – check it out. They released their third full-length album No Sense In Waiting last year, and have generously posted a couple tracks from it online to check out. They’ve also got the requisite MySpace page if you want to be friends.

MP3: Cerulean – “Quiet Release”
MP3: Cerulean – “Here Is Hoping”

IndieInterviews has a podcast interview with Chris Hrasky of Explosions In The Sky – I don’t usually listen to podcasts (for reasons dull and uninteresting), but this is one I will probably have to take the time out for.

Fountains Of Wayne tell Billboard they’re going back into the studio to record the follow-up to Welcome Interstate Managers. Adam Schlesinger will also be teaming up with fellow Scratchie Records cohort James Iha to try and make America cool. Good luck, guys. And it’s interesting how Iha isn’t mentioned in this report about a Smashing Pumpkins reunion… Oversight? Or conspiracy?

The Stranger talks literature and music with Colin Meloy on the eve of his solo tour. And if he’s not coming near your town, You Ain’t No Picasso has his in-studio performance at KEXP yesterday all ripped and zipped for you to download.

Coming to town – Howe Gelb at the Horseshoe on March 5 and Liars at Lee’s on June 21.

I was asked to contribute to this/last year’s eye music critics poll. the final results of which are now up here, with commentary here and here. I don’t think a whole lot of my picks really made it in there, but that’s okay. I got my name in the big list and that’s what really matters. And if you’d like to be a music journalist and have your opinion polled, PopMatters has a quick test to see if you have what it takes. Hey, Tommy LaSorda did it – maybe you can too!

Newsarama talks to the brain trust behind Justice League Unlimited, which is still frustratingly in limbo. However Comic Book Resources reports that new episodes will begin airing on YTV up here in Canada starting February 1. And don’t forget that the complete first season will be out on DVD on March 21.

I don’t care what the zookeepers say, this will all end in tears. I bet they’ve got a pool going.

np – Bedhead / Transaction De Novo