There was a time not too long ago that if you asked me what my favourite bands were, Death Cab For Cutie would have been on the short list. Introduced to me by my friend Dave in Virginia sometime around the summer of 2000, I was fairly enthralled by We Have The Facts And Are Voting Yes and the follow-up The Photo Album. However, in retrospect, from that point on my interest in the band seemed to wane in inverse proportion to the rest of the world. Understand – this wasn’t any sort of knee-jerk backlash against their increased popularity, just a gradual growing apart. As they moved from the more lyrically obtuse, musically anxious sound of the first two or three records to the more heart-on-sleeve, earnest and widescreen pop of the last few albums, I guess it just spoke to me less as my own tastes had been drifting into less straight pop territory. I still play their records now and again but I fear that the enjoyment I get out of them is more nostalgic than genuine excitement. And while critical reaction to Plans (out todaY) seems to be mixed, I’m sure I’ll pick up a copy sooner or later. Oh, and anyone playing Gorilla Vs Bear’s Pitchfork/Plans review pool – who had 6.5?

What with this being the week of Death Cab, I decided it was as good a time as any to watch the copy of their tour documentary Drive Well, Sleep Carefully which had been sitting on my bookshelf for some time now. The feature-length doc follows the band around the US over the course of their Spring 2004 tour (the same tour that yielded their recent John Byrd EP live set), intersplicing band interviews with live performances and thoughtful shots of highways and countryside moving at high speed. The musical components are quite good – honestly, better than any of the three times I’ve seen them live (they’re pretty good live but not awe-inspiring). It’s pleasant enough watching and certainly reinforces the band’s reputation as being nice, grounded guys, but isn’t especially revelatory – not that many tour docs really are. Anyone hoping to see Ben Gibbard throw a TV out of a hotel window will be sorely disappointed.

Naturally, the Death Cab PR machine (now funded by major label dollars) is in full swing. The New York Times has a profile, as do The Houston Chronicle and Reuters. The Seattle Times talked to band friends and family about their impressions of the new album, which MTVu has streaming in its entirety. MTV found out about the making of the video for first single “Soul Meets Body” and Under The Radar has a load of extra interview material online that didn’t make the cover story on the band in their latest issue.

You know, I bet Ben Gibbard gets some seriously weird/creepy fan mail.

Also taking up major space in the latest UTR is their 10-year anniversary feature on Britpop. It’s actually quite a good piece with honest reflections and reminisences from a lot of the principals and bit players in the whole Britpop movement. They’ve got extras from the interviews online here, but if you find the material at all compelling you should pick up the magazine.

And though not Britpop, it’s the best segue I can find. Bradley’s Almanac has a complete Ride show from 1993 available to download right now. Some of the tracks appeared on the Live Light semi-official bootleg, while others are all new (at least to me). A cover of “The Kids Are Alright”? Fuck yes.

The Detroit Free Press talks to Rilo Kiley bassist Pierre de Reeder about making the jump from playing mid-size clubs to arenas opening for Coldplay.

Architecture In Helsinki’s October 1 Toronto show has a venue – Rancho Relaxo. Yeah, that’s right. Considering that the band’s personnel alone will probably exceed the club’s capacity (and the fact that they’ll have to set up single file to all fit on the long, narrow stage) this could be… interesting. And sold out very quickly, so if you’re going to go, get em fast when they go on sale later this week for $12.50. Dr Dog support.

Goths rejoice! Halloweek sees The Dresden Dolls at the Mod Club on October 25 with Devotchka and Faun Fables and cello-weilding Rasputina are there two days later.

This year’s Toronto International Film Fest schedule goes online this morning at 10AM. Hopefully their servers are better equipped to deal with the traffic this year than they were last year. I’ve only got two-and-a-half days in which to partake in the festival, so I hope something good is playing in that narrow window, or I’m going to have some TIFF tickets to sell.

np – Ride / Going Blank Again

Who doesn’t love Bruce Campbell? No one, that’s who. Me, I had a full-size theatrical Army Of Darkness on my wall for much of high school and university (instant campus cred, dontcha know). If he’s not your favourite chainsaw-handed S-Mart employee, he’s your favourite geriatric Elvis or your favourite futuristic Old West bounty hunter. But if he’s your favourite author, well, you should probably read more.

Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way is Campbell’s second book, and the follow-up to his surprise bestselling autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions Of A B-Movie Actor. As you can probably tell, Campbell is perfectly happy with his place in the Hollywood firmament – a cult and pop culture hero who occasionally gets a taste of respectability via cameo roles and guest appearances. That duality is the launching point of his new book, wherein he takes a sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm fictional real world approach. In it, he gets the opportunity to leap from b-movie stardom to the a-list by getting cast in a Mike Nichols film with Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger, but for reasons both his fault and not, it begins sliding into b-movie-ness and general chaos.

The novel is a thoroughly lightweight tome and includes no shortage of not-terribly-proficient photoshopped illustrations of Campbell in various costumes and disguises to ostensibly enhance the reading experience. It doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t really detract either – it just reinforces the irreverent tone of the book. Overall, it’s pretty funny if patchy. The first third of the book is most satiric as Campbell tries to land the role in the film, the middle third consists of barely-related episodes wherein Campbell tries to research various facets of his character and the final act is all-out silliness, not unlike something you’d find in one of his films. I actually preferred the Hollywood insider stuff the best – it seems pretty ridiculous, but I suspect there’s more truth in there than anyone would care to admit. I will have to get a copy of his autobiography – I bet that’s even more fun than Make Love! was.

And while on the subject of books meeting movies, Comic Book Resources has a review of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask, which isn’t due for theatrical release until September 30. Sony is doing their bit to build anticipation for the film by offering up a few clips from the film as well as a few video interviews with Gaiman and McKean and a making-of scene that we can expect to see on the DVD whenever that’s released. And whilst on the topic of Mr Gaiman, there’s a preview of his next novel Anansi Boys on his website. The book is out September 20 and he’s in town doing the promotional/signing thing on October 8, location to be announced. Update: The Gaiman reading/signing will take place at the Bloor St United Church. Tickets are $15 and are available from The Learning Annex. There’s a limited number of tickets available for people who want to get stuff signed, so if you have to get your Death: The High Cost Of Living trade paperback autographed, get your ticket now.

The New Yorker goes record shopping with Richard Thompson. RT endorses Cyndi Lauper, recommends New Age music as a genre ripe for commercial exploitation and muses about meeting the Queen. Sadly, I’ve had to remove Thompson’s October 20 show at Trinity-St Paul’s from my calendar. Just way too much going on that month and it’s costing me way too much money.

Zoilus ponders the question of why pop music is treated as worthy of consideration by critics but pop literature is not? What makes The Beatles important but not Danielle Steel? Interesting debate ensues.

In addition to playing the Ear To the Ground fest on September 18, singer/violinist/whistler extraordinaire Andrew Bird will be back in town for a show at Revival on November 11 with Chicago’s Head Of Femur.

Toronto Life talks to Metric’s Emily Haines about life in Toronto, where her band has one sold-out and one-soon-to-be-sold-out show at the Phoenix on September 28 and 29. Their new album Live It Out is out on September 27 and Haines has a couple of solo albums in the pipe for next year. Link from Soaring With Eagles.

I’m looking at the list of winners from last night’s MTV Video Awards, and there’s what – five videos total collectively sweeping 20 or so categories? That’s pretty much MTV’s entire video rotation, isn’t it?

More vinyl purchased this weekend – really nice condition copies of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Springsteen’s The River. I think I’ll be hunting down all of Bowie’s essential 70s stuff on LP – I just hope I’m able to find as clean copies of everything else as I did for Ziggy. Oh, and is it true he’s going to be touring this Fall?

I am so stealing that idea.

Dear New Orleans – good fucking luck.

np – Suede / Dog Man Star

Frank Black / Honeycomb (Back Porch) Frank Black is one canny fellow. By giving in to demands for a Pixies reunion last year, he a) guaranteed some serious income, b) raised his media profile exponentially and c) got the creative license to break away from his former band’s sound completely. Anyone who wants to accuse him of living off past glories would do well to give Honeycomb a listen first, as it’s light years away from anything he’d have ever done with the Pixies. With it, Black makes good on his promise to make a country-soul album manned by Nashville session players and he pulls it off pretty damn successfully. Favouring a low-key, almost conversational singing style, Honeycomb is Black’s Dylan album – not that anyone ever would have thought he’d have a Dylan album in him. The tone of the record has echoes of Nashville Skyline and Blood On The Tracks (particularly “Strange Goodbye”, a duet with Black’s soon-to-be ex-wife), and Black himself had joked about calling the record Black On Blonde in tribute to Dylan. So anyone who wants to hear Black as a creatively vibrant artist would do well to investigate his solo albums like Honeycomb. And anyone who wants to hear “Planet Of Sound” again, go buy a concert ticket.

Soft I got an email from one of the guys in Soft last October… so yeah, this is potentially how long it could take me to get around to writing stuff up. You’ve been warned. Anyway, there’s not much I can say about these guys because I actually have almost no information about them – nothing in the email, precious little on the website. I remember initially being a little dismissive of them based on the sort of Billsberg chic photo gracing the top of their webpage but am glad I took the time to actually listen to their music. They could be just as easily be from Brooklyn or London, with a distinctively early 90s British sound that’s got too much swagger to be shoegaze but too much texture for Britpop. They’ve also got a more upbeat, joyous sound that’s a refreshing change from the dourness of many of their fellows (think New Order at the Hacienda rather than Joy Division at Rafters) and they contemporize their influences so as not to sound too retro, not unlike Ambulance LTD. There don’t appear to be any albums yet, just singles. I definitely like what I hear – just wish I could find out ANYTHING else about them. I suppose I could ask, but that’s, like, work.

Only a couple of reviews this week. Time has been at a wee bit of a premium, y’understand. Hopefully back to a troika next week.

np – Slowdive / I Am The Elephant, You R The Mouse Original Soundtrack

The Brothers Grimm is not one of Terry Gilliam’s best films. Not even close – and I’m a Gilliam fan, willing to extend him a longer rope than I would some directors. I loved Baron Munchausen, so even when he goes completely off his nut, I’m right on board. On paper, it should have been great – the Brothers Grimm as 19th century ghostbuster con men in French-occupied Germany who find themselves faced with a genuine supernatural situation – but something went awry between concept and completion and the end results are disappointing.

It’s easy to put a finger on exactly why it doesn’t work – the script is confusing and doesn’t manage to pull the many many plot threads together into anything cohesive. The film definitely bears the scars of it’s difficult birthing process (check out the links below). But Matt Damon and Heath Ledger are just fine in the title roles and seem to be enjoying themselves immensely – most of the cast does, actually. The effects and visuals are considerably less over-the-top than you’d expect from Gilliam in this context, and maybe that’s where it fails to even be a spectacular failure, just a failure. The film spends too much time in the drab real world of Will Grimm and not enough in the fantastical fairy-tale world of brother Jake. There are high points, including probably the creepiest gingerbread man ever, but they’re more like exclamation marks at the end of plain, unexclamatory-worthy sentences. It’s certainly not a wasted two hours, even with all it’s shortcomings I found it a fun, enjoyable film, but it could have – should have – been so much more. Alas.

IGN has an extensive interview with Gilliam about the making of the Grimm, as does the official website. The LA Daily News has some background on the studio politics and general production nightmares that kept The Brothers Grimm on the shelf for so long since it wrapped production way back in Fall 2003. AZ Central also has a talk with Gilliam abou the film. Meanwhile, Zap2It finds out that Gilliam’s dream project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, still isn’t dead. If you’ve seen Lost In La Mancha, you’ll understand why I hope against hope that Gilliam somehow, someday gets to make this film and that it’s as amazing as the doc showed it could have been.

Yahoo! Music interviews Carl Newman, head New Pornographer (via For The Records).

Durham, NC’s Independent Weekly welcomes home John Darneille, on the road with his Mountain Goats.

Sigur Ros begins what’s sure to be a huge and neverending press circus surrounding the release of Takk on September 13 by talking to The Guardian about Tommy Lee. Last two links via Largehearted Boy.

Check out the trailer for Bob Dylan biopic No Direction Home. This is one of the films playing at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. Via Golden Fiddle.

BlogTO features yours truly in this week’s “Blogerati Files” feature.

The Onion AV Club submits a list of critically reviled films that may yet be worth watching (though not necessarily because they’re not as bad as most think).

What do you get when you put five of the top voiceover artists in America in the back of a limo? The funny. Video gone! Alas. Video returned! Huzzah.

np – My Morning Jacket / Z

Penny Black Music (almost) completes their set of Slowdive interviews by catching up with guitarist Christian Saville and bassist Nick Chaplin some ten years since that band’s final album, Pygmalion, which neither really contributed to in any meaningful sense (link via Bradley’s Almanac). Nick sums up the Slowdive mystique as “A good looking guy, a good looking girl and three ugly looking blokes behind them”. This piece goes nicely with Penny Music Black’s past interviews with Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead. Drummers Adrian Sell and Simon Scott should be expecting a call from PBM any day now.

These days, Christian plays in Monster Movie, which is actually quite good – definitely in keeping with the spirit of his old band. I wish there was some Mojave 3 news to update you on, but since they said work was continuing on their fifth album back in the Spring, there’s been no word on anything. I think Ed, who runs the M3 website, checks in here every once in a while – any news?

Another old Creation alumnus shoegaze-era band getting a second look is The Boo Radleys, who just put out their Find The Way Out double disc anthology. The BBC talked to Boos songwriter Martin Carr about suriving the Britpop era (everyone’s about the Britpop reminiscing these days) and getting the best-of treatment. Link via Information Leafblower.

The Guardian recounts the secret history of the Pixies. How secret? Kim Deal reveals she still lives with her parents. Via One Louder.

Rob Dickinson is now my MySpace friend. Won’t you make him yours as well?

NOW talks to Neil Young about his new album Prairie Wind from the floor of the Ryman, where he performed his first post-aneurysm shows last week.

Thanks to Prefix for pointing out this video of Calexico performing their marvelous cover of Love’s “Alone Again Or” at last year’s Austin City Limits festival, culled from their DVD document of the whole festival.

PopMatters finally gets around to publishing an interview with Joe Pernice conducted waaaay back in April.

Ryan Adams tells Billboard that anyone spreading rumours the Cardinals have split up “can go fuck themselves”. The swearing means he’s really emphatic about this – passionate, even. His next album September (née Jacksonville City Nights – the article doesn’t even manage to keep it straight) is out September 27.

It’s a Bay Area Golden State invasion when The Warlocks and The Gris Gris hit Lee’s Palace on October 18.

np – Okkervil River / Down The River Of Golden Dreams