Three weeks into Okkervil River’s first North American tour and they’ve surely already got more than enough stories to tide them over for a good long time. First Will Sheff got strep throat at the start of the tour, then last week Prefix pointed out this review which implied there was some drama on the home front was leaking into the show and to top it off, drummer Travis Nelsen fractured his hand last week and while soldiering through it, it was surely affecting his ability to play. But still, they (barely) made it to Toronto and I was still hoping to witness something momentous.

Support on this tour was labelmates Minus Story, who hail from the rock metropolis of Boonville, Missouri. But if history has proven anything, it’s that sometimes isolation can be an excellent impetus for art. Like their fellow heartlanders-turned-indie rockers The Flaming Lips, Minus Story trade in off-kilter, psychedelic pop but eschew the Lips’ sense of whimsy for a more tense, emotional tone. The one song Jagjaguar has posted for sampling purposes, “Little Wet Head” was a definite standout, and they definitely had an interesting sound – I might have been persuaded to buy a CD if Okkervil hadn’t taken all my spending money for the evening… If you’re curious, Cokemachineglow has an interview with the band.

In keeping with the concentrated chaos that seemed to have been following the band around, Okkervil arrived at Lee’s a little while after I did having been held up at the border. Thankfully, they all got through and with all their gear (and merch) so except for a bit of a delayed start, no harm no foul. A quick soundcheck segued straight into their set and for the next hour and a half, it was some serious magic going on up there. I’d gotten myself pretty worked up about this show in the last little while, but I can honestly say that the reality of it was no letdown whatsoever. Led by Will Sheff’s wonderfully hoarse and ragged holler, the six-piece band ran through selections from across their entire repetoire and wonderfully so. High points included a beautiful “The War Criminal Stands And Speaks”, a rousing “Black” and a version of “For Real” that could go down as one of the best live performances I’ve seen of anything, anywhere.

Sheff seemed genuinely thrilled about the turnout for his band’s Toronto debut, and there was a surprisingly large turnout for a Monday night – good to see (I hope that the free ticket I left at the door for someone, anyone, actually got put to use). He was a riveting frontman, attacking his guitar one minute, gently caressing the next, all while singing his wonderfully emotive lyrics and bounding around the stage like his life depended on it. The rest of the band was also superb, pulling out keyboards, pedal steel, guitars or trumpets whenever called for, and for not having had a proper soundcheck, the mix really sounded terrific. And a special shout out to Nelsen – you’d never guess from his playing that he was nursing a broken wrist. Injuries or no, the man came to play. Hell, they all did, and they delivered one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.

I mentioned that I left the merch table with my wallet a good deal lighter – I got Black Sheep Boy and Black Sheep Boy Appendix on LP, the first Okkervil CD and a t-shirt. And a pin. Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve bought any band merch at all, Okkervil just happens to be the recipient of my largesse. And of course, les photos.

Hey, Thomas Haden Church on the set of Spider-Man 3 – nice shirt. As the item says, that pretty much nails down which villain Lowell is playing in the new flick. Now all we need is a pic of Topher Grace covered in black ectoplasm and we’re all set.

So I was asked what I thought about The West Wing‘s live debate episode on Sunday night. In a nutshell, I enjoyed it but wasn’t really riveted – maybe NBC did their job a little too well in creating a debate-like atmosphere, because my attention began to drift about 3/4 of the way through the way it does during real debates. While the producers have tried not to play favourites between the candidates thus far in the season, it seemed pretty obvious to me that the debate was playing Smits up as the more likeable, knowledgable candidate. Alda came off as grumpy, argumentative and flustered (sound familiar?) – not the same Vinick he’s been presenting in the show. I definitely liked Smits’ little speech about the word “liberal”, though that’s probably because I was being pandered to by the writers. I give everyone involved credit with pulling off a live show, it was interesting to watch and I admit, I kept hoping something amazingly unpredictable would happen like a lighting rig falling and crushing the audience or a wild boar breaking into the studio. No suck luck.

Media response – The Mercury News is on the fence about what to think (though it doesn’t sound like I need to bother downloading the west coast episode – no wild boars there, either), CBS is not impressed that NBC ran an “NBC News” logo overtop the whole thing and The Chicago Sun-Times just thought it stunk. And as an interesting sidebar – Aaron Sorkin is returning to network TV. And on NBC, no less.

np – Okkervil River / Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See

On Saturday night, the none-more-rock-named Stone Distillery Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District played host to the Ukula Bright Lights festival. It pulled together an interesting bill of domestic and international talent for the purpose of, well, I’m not entirely sure. But more on that later. The Fermenting Cellar isn’t actually a cellar, but a large warehouse dealie with a nice, turn-of-the-century vibe and unforgiving concrete floors. For the event, the organizers had erected a low stage at one end, indicating it was going to be a cozy, intimate sort of evening rather than a big high-faluting rock show. Nice.

Initial schedules indicated that sets were going to run from mid-afternoon all the way into the wee hours of the morning, so in the name of practicality, I planned to arrive early evening and just catch the bigger names perform. I also thought I’d be able to miss Stirling, whom I’d seen before and had no great affection for, but my carefully-laid plans were sabotaged by some last-minute schedule juggling and I arrived just in time to catch their whole set. For the record, I still found them overwrought, melodically deficient and just overall dull. I’d have rather seen any of the acts I’d missed – The Call Up, The Coast or The Empires, though it’s still not clear to me if they actually played or not.

Next up were Toronto/Missisauga’s own Meligrove Band. I saw them last year opening for Ted Leo, and they’ve had a pretty big year in the interim – most notably, signing a worldwide deal with V2 as the label’s first-ever Canadian signing. And while they were still had the super-high energy live show and hooks galore, I think I detected an extra level of sophistication in the new material that’s hard to put a finger on. Something about the vocals, either the melodies or the range that Jason Nunes is singing in… it was intriguing – like there could be more to these guys than just the power pop. We’ll have to see when their new album Planets Conspire comes out next January (or you can listen to a good chunk of the album on their website right now).

I was never really able to get into The Unicorns, so the reincarnation of 2/3 of that band in Islands wasn’t getting me as excited as some. Still, where there’s smoke, there’s either fire or a smoke machine so I was pretty curious to see what Islands had to offer. For starters, numbers. In the fashion of all things Canadian right now, Islands numbered seven on this evning, including ex-Unicorns Nick Diamonds and J’aime Tambeur, local hero Jim Guthrie on guitar, two violinists and a rhythm section. Musically, there was still a definite goofy vibe (sample song title – “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby”) but the arrangements and musicianship was a lot tighter and refined than what I remembered of The Unicorns and there was a definite and surprising delicacy to a lot of the material. It’s hard to offer more insight than that on a band you’ve never seen or heard before and based only on a short live set, but I’m definitely interested to hear more. This was Islands’ first Toronto show, but they’ll be back on December 1 for a show at the Drake Hotel and their debut album Return To The Sea is out in January. And as a sidenote, like Toronto’s Ladies & Gentlemen, Islands appear to have adopted an all-white stage uniform. I predict a sartorial throwdown in the near future. There can only be one.

London’s Duke Spirit have been getting some buzz in their native UK, which in and of itself isn’t all that remarkable since everything in the UK gets some buzz, but it says something that someone was willing to fly them across the Atlantic to play just two Canadian shows, this one and another in Montreal. The Duke Spirit made the most of their Canadian debut as frontwoman Liela Moss, possesing no shortage of Debbie Harry-ish sassy stage presence, led her band through a set of aggressive, abraisive, thundering rock’n’roll from their album Cuts Across The Land that by the end, made believers of most of the initially reticent crowd. Think PJ Harvey, White Light White Heat-era Velvets and old-time soul music. I don’t know if the energy of the live show translates on record, but these Brits definitely know how to work a stage.

Like The Duke Spirit, this show was just one of a pair that Manchester’s Elbow were playing in North America in support of their latest, Leaders Of The Free World. Frontman Guy Garvey was nursing a wounded foot/ankle/lower extremity, thus limiting him mostly to sitting on a stool, all rumpled-like, with occasional bouts of hobbling around stage while waving his cane around, grumpy old man-style. But for the most part he seemed to have accepted his limited mobility with good grace, opting to chat with the audience about this and that between songs. Their set covered what I assume was all points of their discography – I only recognized the Leaders material, so naturally I thought it came off best. While everything featured Garvey’s rich, dramatic vocals and lush musical backing, I felt the new stuff had the most energy and dynamics. The other material came off kind of same-y. I suspect I was in the minority in that opinion, as most of the audience appeared to be devout Elbow fans, rapt at seeing the band live for the first time in three years. Still, I enjoyed it though with Garvey hobbled, the band didn’t offer up much of a show to look at, especially following the energy of The Duke Spirit.

As I mentioned before, the title sponsor for this event was Ukula, which I think is a magazine. I say I think because for a title sponsor, they had absolutely no presence at the vent. No posters, no sample issues, no information… and I really would have liked to find out a little bit more about the good folks who put on this event. But maybe the low-profile thing is part of their modus operendi, because the show itself – for all the big and buzzy names on the bill – was surprisingly and kind of disappointingly poorly attended. By my estimation, the hall – which is specced at a 700 person capacity – wasn’t even half full during Elbow’s set. You could have put the whole festival in Lee’s Palace and had room left over. That did give the night a nice private party sort of vibe, but for something billed as a festival, I don’t know if that’s what the organizers were going for. In hindsight, I don’t remember seeing a helluva lot in the way of promotion for this event, which is odd because it could not have been cheap to bring the UK acts over here to play. But hey, didn’t come out of my pocket. I just wonder whose pocket it was, and were they happy with the outcome?

Photos? Oh my golly, yes. For a temporary stage setup, the lighting was excellent and thanks to the, er, modest crowds, getting up front was dead easy.

Oh, and I’ve selected the winners of my Elbow Haiku contest. Congratulations to Judson for his cosmic truths haiku:

Masturbation and

Pasta would never be the

Same without Elbow

and to John for his shameless pandering to the judges haiku:

Bobo*! Join me, and

As leaders of the free world,

Elbow them aside.

*Bobo being your

helper monkey. Sorry for

the subversive lines.

We were also very impressed for the two-haiku-for-the-price-of-one footnote. I thank everyone for their submissions. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Think limerick. Dirty limerick.

Yeah, today is all Ukula. It was a lot to absorb and try to report back on. I’m tired. Regularly scheduled programming returns tomorrow.

np – The Earlies / These Were The Earlies

A brief edition this week – only two records, and short ones at that.

Kelley Stoltz / The Sun Comes Through (SubPop) This EP from Detroit-via-San Francisco-er Kelley Stoltz is meant mainly as a teaser for his next full-length due out early next year. Written and executed (almost) completely by Stoltz on his Tascam 8-track, The Sun Comes Through offers five quick, tasty bits of lo-fi pop symphonies that ten years ago might have had an Elephant 6 logo on the back rather than the SubPop brand. With its warm analog haze, it’s all pleasant enough listening, but there’s nothing in these 17 minutes and 40 seconds to really set Stoltz apart from the rest of the current pack of indie-folk-poppers. I probably would have been more impressed in hearing his Crockodials record, in which he re-records Echo & The Bunnymen’s Crocodiles on his own, in its entirety. Kelley Stoltz – “The Sun Comes Through” Kelley Stoltz @ MySpace

Luke Tan / Untitled (Lu-Ke-Tan Records) There’s something charminingly and resolutely DIY about this mini-album from Luke Tan. Comprised mainly of voice and acoustic guitar (with some tasteful violin on a few track), on the whole it’s a decent mix of folk and country styles. Perhaps conscious of the sonic limitations of the dude with an acoustic genre, Tan tries to mix things up by introducing some effects pedals into the mix on a few songs. Unfortunately, he forgets to adjust the “subtlety” knob and the flanger, pitch-shifter, delay or whatever is overly distracting and the heavily processed tunes end up standing out from the rest of the record for the wrong reasons. Hey, I understand the temptation – whenever I get a new pedal I turn everything up to 10 to see how weird it can get. But I don’t leave it there. MP3: Luke Tan – “Deliverance”

np – Broken Social Scene / Broken Social Scene

I’ve mentioned before that I was approaching MirrorMask with some degree of trepidation – having been a longtime fan of both Messrs Gaiman and McKean, I had a pretty good idea of the ways in which it could either be a triumph or a failure… and let’s just say they didn’t disappoint. On either count.

Even if it didn’t have his name on it, the story is immediately recognizable as quintissential Gaiman. Many of his favourite plot devices appear – circuses, dreams, cuckoos, young heroines, queens, etc etc. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that Gaiman could knock off in his sleep, which is in itself a bit of a letdown. There’s some inspired moments of dialogue and ideas, but they’re too few and far between – it’s mostly Gaiman cribbing from his own (and others’) work. I’d have hoped that for his proper debut as feature film screenwriter, he’d have come up with something more original, but considering that he took the same sort of play-it-safe route when he moved from comics to novels, I’m not really surprised. But considering that his novels have gotten progressively better with each try, if that trend holds for his film work it bodes well for the future.

But really, MirrorMask isn’t about the narrative. That’s just the vehicle upon which Dave McKean loads the film’s real appeal – the visuals. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that there’s never been a film that looks like MirrorMask. The mix of live-action and CGI is

presented through a gauzey, fantasy filter that works quite well at forcing you to suspend all disbelief in what you’re seeing. Any fan of McKean’s work will find much to appreciate in the almost two hours of eye candy that MirrorMask offers – the amount of detail and unbridled creativity on display is something to behold. His achievements as a first-time director are less remarkable, as the pacing of the film drags at points and there’s no real sense of dramatic escalation as the story progresses. It just kind of meanders from setting to setting with vague quest points being accomplished along the way. So while I can’t really say MirrorMask is a very good movie, on the whole, it is still something to behold and should remain a must-see on those merits for Gaiman and McKean fans alike.

The recently departed Six By Seven haven’t quite had the last word yet. They’re assembling a double-disc set of rarities and whatsits for release early next year on their old label, Beggars Banquet. Drowned In Sound interviewed Chris Olley back in September about the dissolution of the band and plans for the future.

Chart talks to Elbow in advance of their show at the Distillery tonight as part of the Ukula Bright Lights Festival. And don’t forget – this is the last day to enter the Elbow Haiku contest to win an autographed copy of Leaders Of The Free World! Click ye olde banner up above for deets.

The Independent declares The National are “the band who may just have made the year’s best album”. You know I’m not going to disagree.

Jeff Tweedy explains to Ann Arbor Live the reasoning for doing a solo tour on the eve of the release of Wilco’s live album, Kicking Television, on November 15. Via Largehearted Boy.

The best part of the latest Ashlee Simpson flameout is that it happened just blocks away from where I live. I can’t help but feel touched by greatness, somehow.

np – The Morning After Girls / Prelude: EP’s 1 & 2

Catbirdseat make me happy with news that Saturday Looks Good To Me’s All Your Summer Songs will be reissued in vinyl form this December. I actually just tried to buy a copy and was denied by non-up-to-date dealer inventory listings – I should have known that it’d be too good to be true, since the original pressing was a limited edition of 1000 pieces. I can’t find any other info about this reissue, but I have faith in the Catbirdseat and his sources.

SLGTM are good about making their vinyl must-haves in addition to the CD issues. Summer Songs contains two bonus tracks while the LP edition of last year’s Every Night featured several different mixes of songs from the digital version. This album pre-dates the Betty Marie Barnes hotness of the current lineup, but it’s still a great record. If you’ve never heard it, check out “Underwater Heartbeat”, and then go out and buy it. Because you know you’ll want to.

MP3: Saturday Looks Good To Me – “Underwater Heartbeat”

Not too much news in SLGTM land, otherwise. I think this Home Recording Series compilation featuring three SLGTM songs is pretty new, and hopefully plans for a new double-album next year are still on. I dug up this interview with How Does It Feel To Be Loved? where Fred Thomas talks about indiepop, but besides that? Not much. But any excuse to post a pic of Ms Barnes is, to me, a good one.

Beth Orton slipped off my radar some time ago with the lacklustre Daybreaker, and her case wasn’t helped that her next two releases were compilations (of Daybreaker b-sides and a best-of). So I wasn’t really initially interested when I saw this Billboard piece about her new album Comfort Of Strangers, out February 7, but when I reached the bit about the record being produced by Jim O’Rourke, then I paid attention. Loved by many, hated by many, I count myself as one who definitely likes the angles he can bring to a project, like the last two Wilco records. Orton is at her best when she’s not just being a folkie (her electronic-inflected debut Trailer Park, for example), and O’Rourke could be just the guy to get her out of her rut. I won’t out Comfort Of Strangers on my “to buy” list just yet, but I will definitely be paying attention when it comes out. And I’m going to put Trailer Park on my iPod.

Glide talks to My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan about the long and winding road from It Still Moves to Z.

Each Note Secure has got an interview with Grandaddy’s Jason Lyttle/ They talk about the new EP Excerpts From The Diary Of Toddzilla, and a bit about what to expect from the next full-length, which could be due around April of next year.

Rob Dickimson says “thanks” to everyone who came out to see him on his recent mini-tour via MySpace blog. Via Bradley’s Almanac. If you missed them the first time around, here’s my pics and review of Rob’s show in Toronto last month.

So iPod question of the day – I’ve already loaded scads of albums onto mine, but not album art. Is there a way to get the artwork onto the iPod without having to re-up the whole record again (after downloading the artwork and associating it locally via iTunes)? I tried dragging the art directly onto the album on the iPod when it was hooked up, but while it seemed to be doing someting, it doesn’t seem to have worked. This thing looks like it could be helpful locally, but not with the iPod tracks. And, uh, I have no idea how to install it. It’s a widget? What’s a widget?

And I’ve come to the conclusion that my inbox is a frickin’ mess. If I owe you a reply, I apologize, it’s been one of those “barely keeping head above water” sort of weeks. I’ll try to get to them, um, soon. Ish.

np – Okkervil River / Down The River Of Golden Dreams