The LA Times has begun been running a periodic feature called the “Songwriters Series” where they sit down with an artist of note and discuss his or her creative process. And who better to inaugurate this feature than one Bob Dylan? The notoriously reclusive Mr Zimmerman continues to surprise with his newfound openness with the press by speaking openly about how he wrote classics such as “Like A Rolling Stone” (“I’m not thinking about what I want to say, I’m just thinking ‘Is this OK for the meter?'”), “Just Like A Woman (“It’s a city song. It’s like looking at something extremely powerful, say the shadow of a church or something like that.”) and “Blowin’ In The Wind” (“I wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in 10 minutes, just put words to an old spiritual, probably something I learned from Carter Family records”). I love how even when he tries to explain himself, he manages to be just as cryptic as ever, if not moreso.

With the release of Martin Scorcese’s Dylan doc No Direction Home imminent (it airs on PBS on September 26 and 27 and is available on DVD on September 20. The soundtrack to the film, which is also volume 7 in Dylan’s Bootleg Series, is out August 30), The Independent takes a look at another long-lost Dylan film that rarely sees the light of day, Eat The Document, which was helmed by DA Pennebaker (director of another classic Dylan pic, Don’t Look Back) and Dylan himself.

Billboard reports that the upcoming Elvis Costello DVD collecting all his video clips along with a slew of TV performances will feature artist commentary for each video from Declan himself. One of the sharpest and wittiest figures in rock, Costello’s reminiscences will make The Right Spectacle: The Very Best of Elvis Costello – The Videos a must-own for fans. It’s due out September 6 in the UK with North American release details still to be sorted out.

The Boston Herald profiles Joe Pernice and reveals that work has begun on a film adaptation of his semi-autobiographical contribution to the 33 1/3 series of books, Meat Is Murder. Given that nothing much actually happens in the novella, I can only assume that the film will either a) be a low-budget, shot-on-DV arthouse indie flick or b) have many gratuitous car chases inserted for mainstream appeal. And I secretly hope for the latter. Via Largehearted Boy.

New York Daily News recaps Death Cab’s growth into the major leagues, and Ben Gibbard insists they’re not “Emo”.

American Music Club will be going on tour with Spoon in November – they call it a “North American tour”, which I can only hope includes a Toronto date. I went to Chicago last November to see them, it’s only fair they return the favour now. Related – Mark Eitzel’s newest solo release Candy Ass is out October 2 and his demos for AMC’s Love Songs For Patriots, recorded with Jay Bennett, have been collected as Demos Before Love Songs and will be released August 22. It’s available through their website.

np – Okkervil River / Black Sheep Boy

The Juan Maclean / Less Than Human (Astralwerks) I did a review of the LCD Soundsystem album a while back, basically summing it up as “this is the sort of thing that will surely appeal to people who are not me. Not offensive, but not my bag”. When I got a copy of The Juan Maclean’s debut album, I figured I could make with the CTRL-C/CTRL-V action and be done with it, what with the same DFA/Six Finger Satellite points of reference. I’m glad I didn’t, however, as this record is a considerably different ball of wax. It’s still a ball of wax, but it’s different. Far less vocal-oriented, The Juan Maclean offers up more interesting beats and general sonic goodies than LCD. While still perfectly danceable, it would also function quite well as a chill-out lounge soundtrack. While still not necessarily something that’s going to work its way into heavy rotation around these parts, I’d take it over LCD in a heartbeat.

The Charade / The Best Is Yet To Come (Skipping Stones) Hailing from Sweden, The Charade play jaunty, upbeat indie pop of exactly the style you’d expect from a Swedish band called The Charade. Strummy acoustic guitars, plinky pianos, jangly electric guitars, twee-friendly boy-girl vocals, it’s all here. The Charade are a little longer in the tooth than you might expect for an act in this style, with guitarist Magnus Karlsson having kicked around as a professional musician since 1988, but age ain’t nothing but a number when you’ve got sunshiney pop music in your heart. If there’s any downside, it’s that if you’re a fan of this style of music, chances are you’ve already got shitloads of records that sound like this one.

Bedroom Walls (MySpace) Los Angeles’ Bedroom Walls were brought to my attention by Gary, who took it upon himself to audit the audio samples of every band who attended SxSW this past March. A daunting feat by any standard – hell, I WENT and I couldn’t even be bothered to investigate everyone. Anyway, Bedroom Walls were one of his recommendations coming out of the exercise and after all that work, the least I could do was give a listen. Trading in a style the band has dubbed “romanticore”, they’ve got touches of glam, folk, chamber, pop and indie. Overall laid back and richly melodic, they manage to sound familiar and fresh at the same time. Nice stuff. They’ve got one full-length – I Saw You Coming Back To Me – an EP and a second album, All Good Dreamers Pass This Way, en route. There’s scads of downloads from on their website and MySpace page.

np – Echo & The Bunnymen / Songs To Learn And Sing

A Very Long Engagement is French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s follow-up to his international hit Amelie and also stars the actress whom that film made a star, Audrey Tautou. The story of a young French woman who sets out to find her fiancee who went missing in World War I, it deftly combines romance, mystery, humour and war into a beautifully shot, mostly sweet but sometimes graphically violent film. The large cast of characters is somewhat difficult to keep track of, not helped along by the fact that moustaches make lots of men look the same, but even with all the plot twists and turns it’s not too difficult to hang onto the main narrative thread.

Tautou is excellent, alternating between determined and despairing as she seeks out the fate of her beloved. There’s also a completely unexpected appearance by Jodie Foster who seems completely at home in a French film. Impressive. While there isn’t the overtly fantastical element that characterized much of Jeunet’s earlier films, there’s still a sense of whimsy and surrealness in the direction that makes the film distinctively his. The (over)use of coloured camera filters probably helped give it some of that character… this may have been the yellowist film I’ve ever seen. But yeah, good. Long, but worthwhile.

Interesting developments in the land of Love (the band). Despite critical raves for their Forever Changes concerts in recent years, Billboard reports that the band that backed original Love frontman Arthur Lee has decided to sack Arthur Lee for a continuing decline in his “mental and physical health”, and will continue to play Love material as The Love Band. Love had been scheduled to play a show in Toronto a few years ago but it got scotched due to immigration issues – something about Canada not liking Lee’s criminal record (he served jail time on weapons charges before resurrecting the band). I had hoped that they’d find a way back up here before their inevitable disintegration, but it looks like it’s not to be. A shame.

It’s great to see that Alejandro Escovedo is now recovered enough from his hepatitis to be able to tour again, including an October 4 show at the El Mocambo here in Toronto. Also coming to town – Echo & The Bunnymen at the Carlu November 23. Anyone seen them recently? Worthwhile or no? I confess I’ve heard almost nothing of their post-reunion material, hell – I’m still catching up on the original albums.

Graham Coxon, Justine Frischmann and Alan McGee – among others – reflect on the the legacy of Britpop for The Guardian. Via Largehearted Boy, who also offers up an alphabet’s worth of recommended music download sites.

PopMatters caught up with Ambulance LTD at this year’s Siren Festival. The band hopes to have an EP out this Fall and a full-length follow-up to LP around March of next year.

My brother is getting married today. I should probably be there. Have a good day.

np – The National / Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers

I have just finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself To Live, which has had the unfortunate effect of making me think that the horribly insignificant minutae of my life and mundanity in general are not only profound and probably overflowing with great cosmic significance, but that it’s worth writing about at length. Don’t worry, it will pass. Though billed as a document of his road trip to the death-sites of famous rockers, it’s really a document of the state of his love life with occasion music-related musings or analogies thrown in for relevance. Though it’s self-absorbed and narcissistic (As he’s the first to admit, thus pre-emptively diffusing that path of criticism), it’s still a reasonably amusing and a quick read, if not especially of great consequence.

According to the listings in NOW, there’s some sort of release party for the book taking place at the Horseshoe on August 31 at 6pm – I don’t know what that means, though I doubt Klosterman will be in attendance. Maybe everyone there will get to stand up and talk about their exes and how their past relationships relate to the lyrics of Def Leppard’s Hysteria. And finally, I am befuddled that New Line has optioned the book for a film. Does the world need what would essentially be a Klosterman biopic? No. No it does not.

That official Belle & Sebastian biography is now out. As much of a long-time fan I am, I wonder how interesting a read it would actually be? The band used to be legendarily reculsive, but since Dear Catastrophe Waitress, they’ve been positively chatty with the press (their interview with The Big Takeover a couple years ago is essential reading for fans). Either way, Largehearted Boy seems to have enjoyed it.

Some more shows – The Bauhaus reunion tour comes to the Kool Haus November 17 and Doves make good on their promise to return with a show at The Docks on September 30. I’ve said my peace about the Docks. Whoever does go, have fun.

Glide brings us the story of how Calexico and Iron & Wine’s sordid musical tryst came to be and how it birthed a bastard EP named In The Reins, out September 20.

Despite releasing new albums with The Posies and Big Star, Jon Auer tells Billboard he’s still very excited about the release of his solo debut Songs From The Year Of Our Demise, which has been shelved for an eternity now but will finally be seeing release early next year. Or so they’d like us to believe.

Laura Cantrell tells Paste about her great-aunt Ethel.

Sloan talk to Chart about tennis.

TVgasm comes up with a point-by-point argument why you, or anyone you know, should be watching Veronica Mars. They forget the best reason – Kristen Bell is the hotness. Via Soaring With Eagles.

You have to love what turns up on the internet… screenplays for Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and the Warchowski brothers. Via Rich Johnston at CBR. And somewhat surprisingly, contrary to all previous reports, Katie Holmes will apparently be returning in the Batman Begins sequel. Hopefully as cannon fodder.

np – The American Analog Set / Promise Of Love

My Morning Jacket are the latest band to make my October that much more intense, announcing a show at the Guvernment on October 19 in support of their new album Z, out October 4 (This is what you’ll be looking for on store shelves that day, FYI). Kathleen Edwards is opening all dates on the tour EXCEPT for Toronto. Figures.

The only track I’ve heard off of Z so far is the reggae-ish “Off The Record”, but word is a) that the album is very good and b) quite different. There’s apparently less of the hair-whipping Southern rock stylee that characterized It Still Moves, which is just as well since Jim James and company have cut their hair and it ain’t all that suited to whipping around anymore. Maybe the band got their Southern rocks jones out channelling Skynyrd for their appearance in the new Cameron Crowe film, Elizabethtown, where they play a cover band in a bar playing “Freebird”. I’ve always like Cameron Crowe’s films – they’re clever but not snotty and always have genuine heart to them, something that’s all too rare in Hollywood. The film opens October 14, and you can check out the trailer here – it’s weird seeing Orlando Bloom in a non-fantasy/period setting. I kept expecting him to pull out a longsword and behead Kirsten Dunst or something.

But back to MMJ – if you want to hear some of the new stuff (and some old stuff), Glide has the whole of their Bonnarroo set from June available to download in MP3 format.

Thanks to Bradley’s Almanac for pointing out this Rotoscope-y video for The American Analog Set’s “Come Home Baby Julie, Come Home”, off of their last album Promise Of Love. I was listening to a few more tracks off of the upcoming Set Free and they were excellent. This will be a good one.

And on the topic of Arts & Crafts artists, the official word on the new Broken Social Scene album is out – it will be eponymous, in stores October 4 and early pressings will come with a bonus 7-song EP entitled EP To Be You And Me. They’ve also offering a free download of the much bootlegged and distributed song “7/4 (Shoreline)” for a week. You can also grok the artwork for the new album via the same link.

The details of the Three Gut fifth anniversary (and farewell) parties are out. It’ll be a doubleheader of sorts, firstly with an all-ages show on the afternoon of August 20 at the Tranzac, with performances by Jim Guthrie and Gentleman Reg and solo sets from members of Royal City, The Constantines, Oakley Hall and others. Then the nite cap will happen just down the street at Lee’s Palace with The Constantines, Oakley Hall, Oneida and Kinski.

Village Voice. Sufjan Stevens. You thought I was kidding when I said I was doing one of these a day, didn’t you?

The upcoming week in shows for Torontoist.

np – My Morning Jacket / Bonnaroo 2005