Cliptip is a new blogger who’s got a different spin on the mp3 blog – instead of mp3s, he’s posting videos. A laudable calling considering that online is pretty much the only place you’ll see most interesting videos these days and finding them can be a real pain in the ass.

In the latest update he links Metric’s “Dead Disco” but you can check out all five of the vids from Old World Underground here. Interesting how the band stays in uniform for all five of them, no? It’d be nice if I could report some new Metric news, like the making of a new album but they are continuing to tour Old World Underground into the underground through the Summer. Perhaps they’ll get around to hitting the studio in the Fall? But I digress – back to videos.

Here’s a vid that I found meself – The New Pornographers contributed a cover of “Your Daddy Don’t Know”, a song originally by early 80s cheese-metal band Toronto, for the soundtrack of the cheese-metal-celebrating movie Fubar. I didn’t know that they made a wonderfully 80s cheeseball video. So good. And you can download an mp3 of the track from the band’s website. If you need further reason to see/listen, the incomparable Neko Case has lead vocals on this one. She’s also the subject of this interview with The River Cities Reader (via For The Records)… And again, I am off topic. This post is like a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel – it just keeps falling off the tracks.

If you want more videos, Sputnik 7 remains a favourite site for clip cruising and I also rounded up some good sites in this post. And finally, the lineup for the second set of Director’s Label DVDs is out, and it’s pretty sweet. Next up are Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn and Stéphane Sednaoui. I still mean to pick up the first set though I think the Chris Cunningham one would give me nightmares. Series two is out September 13.

Fredericksburg.com makes the unprecedented move of talking to someone who is not Jenny Lewis about Rilo Kiley – drummer Jason Boesel speaks!

The Mountain Goats’ Peter Hughes has updated his tour diary. The Toronto show is now represented in both words and images. Though I personally think my photos from the show are a little more on-topic, though with less fancy washroom content. Via Largehearted Boy.

Don’t forget that this weekend is the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, taking place over at Mirvish Village (Bloor and Bathurst) near The Beguiling. Jeff Smith, creator of Bone will be in attendance tomorrow between 2 and 5. I’d like to get my one-volume collection signed, but I expect lineups will be pretty massive. Either way, I will try to swing by at some point this weekend and take in the comic book love.

np – The New Year / The End Is Near

So Bob Mould’s new album Body Of Song has leaked a couple months before its July 26 release date and he’s not happy about it. Over the past week he’s fielded letters of support and puts a pox on the downloader’s houses.

The Metafilter peanut gallery chimes in with the predictable rhetoric and Mystery & Misery, who first directed me to the hubbub, also states his position. For my part, I said my peace a few months ago when it was Sleater-Kinney voicing their displeasure at the leaking of their new record and my feelings on the matter haven’t changed. In fact, nothing’s changed. People will still leak records, other people will still download them and rationalize it however they want. And God willing, the artists will still get paid, somehow, and get by.

But in a strange way, it is good to see that there is still interest in Bob’s work – I wasn’t sure how much of his fanbase he’d have alienated with his electronic experiments as Loudbomb (still the best anagram name ever) and the last Modulate record, which even a completist as myself decided to give a pass. Body Of Song is heralded as a return to the classic Mould guitar template of raging electrics alongside shimmering acoustics – some are even going so far as to say it’s the second coming of Sugar. I don’t know about that – from what I’ve heard from the album (all perfectly legally, thanks – see below), it does rock again but it doesn’t have the sheer sonic density that Copper Blue had nor the screaming rage of Beaster. That’s okay though, I don’t really wish anyone into the mental headspace that would be required to create another record like Beaster – that’s still one of the angriest records I’ve ever heard. Instead, Body Of Song sounds like the more upbeat moments of his two post-Sugar self-titled albums. Either way, it’s good to have Bob back and amplified again. I had feared that he’d make good on his promise to give up the rock after The Last Dog And Pony Show.

Since I know no reader of mine would be so gauche as to still go hunt down the leaked album after Bob has expressed his displeasure with such deeds, I will direct you to some above-board previews of Body Of Song. YepRoc has one of the more uptempo tracks, “Paralyzed”, available to stream off their site and Fluxblog has got a Bob-sanctioned MP3 of “(Shine Your) Light Love Hope” up for grabs.

Also exciting is the fact that Mould is planning a full North American tour to promote the record for the Fall wherein he’ll play songs from all eras of his career – that’s right, ALL. We’re talking Bob Mould, Sugar and Husker Du. Awesomeness indeed. It’s been eleven years since I’ve seen Bob Mould live – far too long.

Drowned In Sound is next up on the Sleater-Kinney press merry-go-round.

Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake tells Rolling Stone where the name of their new album, Man-Made, came from, and how Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy helped with the making of the record, out June 7.

Jenny Lewis tells Philly.com (Bugmenot) the story of Rilo Kiley (via LHB).

And as for this blurb in eye… Slow news week, fellas? I prefer to think of it as me taking money AWAY from donations to Bush. I wonder what a cursory investigation as to the political leanings of eye‘s advertisers would reveal, hmm? But they also say I’m “beloved”, so all is forgiven.

np – Jay Farrar / Stone, Steel & Bright Lights

A quick check-in with Austin’s American Analog Set points us to fansite AmAnSetNews, which the band rightfully points out puts their own website to shame. There’s up-to-date news, video, audio, photos (including mine from their Horseshoe show a couple years back), guitar tabs, etc. Every band should be so fortunate to have such loyal fans.

During one of their many sets at SxSW this year, the band said they hoped the new record would be out by the Fall. The album is done but they’re label shopping, as their last home Tiger Style folded last year. Promise Of Love was one of my favourite records of 2003, so I hope someone has the good sense to release it and give it the push it deserves. A new collection of AmAnSet’s gently lush music is always welcome.

Not to be outdone on the downloads front, the official AmAnSet site has a couple of live tracks for you to grab. The first is a Magnetic Fields cover recorded at a 2001 show at the Horseshoe in Toronto, the second is a Her Space Holiday cover recorded in Dublin in 2002.

MP3: The American Analog Set – “Dreaming Moon”

MP3: The American Analog Set – “Keystrokes”

Paste catches up with Stephen Malkmus who released his third solo disc Face The Truth yesterday.

Also out yesterday – Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods. CMJ and Aversion have interviews with Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein, respectively, about their new album (Aversion link from For The Records). If you haven’t already, check out the SK blog, wherein Weiss promises they’ll “lie like crazy”. Pitchfork gives the new record a 9.0 – in fact, (almost) all reviews have been glowing. Gary points out that first single “Entertain” is a free download from the iTunes Canada store right now – it’s also available free from SubPop so you don’t have to deal with that nasty Apple aftertaste.

The Globe & Mail looks at the giant shadow that New Order casts across the current pop music landscape. Via Largehearted Boy. And always one to offer advice to the next generation, Bernard Sumner tells Paste five telltale signs that your studio is haunted.

Aqualung will be at the Mod Club July 4, tickets $13.50.

All that this says to me is that John Squire needs to make rent. Truly, I pray it doesn’t happen – my spider-sense says this would be a farce. Enough with the cash-in reunions, already! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take out a small loan for my Dinosaur Jr tickets.

So I abandoned my poking stick idea for a stereo remote control and just went out and bought a new stereo instead. In keeping with my love of all things butt ugly and NAD, I went with an NAD C320BEE integrated. The reviews for this sucker have been excellent all around and interestingly, the salespeople at both stores I went to dissuaded me from going for it’s bigger brother, the NAD C352. Since I don’t really even need the 50W per channel the 320BEE offers, the 80W per channel C352 would have been overkill.

I hadn’t really expected the new amp to sound that much better than the old 302 – they’re based off the same basic 3020 circuit design – but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by how much better it sounds. There’s some serious synergy going on between it, my speakers (Paradign Studio Reference 20v3s) and CD player (NAD C521BEE). Music has more depth and detail to the sound and the soundstage and imaging is much improved. The 302 is now doing duty powering my smaller bedroom stereo. The only downside to the C320BEE is that it doesn’t have a phono preamp, which will be a bit of a problem since I intend to liberate my parents’ old record player from home and integrate it into my audio geek system. I hope the thing still works – I suspect the cartridge will need to be replaced. Actually, I should probably find out what it is and if it’s worth liberating, or if I should just keep an eye out for a more worthy used model. But I digress – new amp is lovely, having a remote control is lovely. I can’t believe I went 8 years without one. Now I don’t have to get up EVER.

np – Sparklehorse / Good Morning Spider

Today’s post will consist entirely of carriage returns.

No, not really. It’s the final 24 post for this season, presented in glorious Spoiler-vision! It’s over!

Okay, so THAT was unexpected. But first things first.

Hour one: Not to get all “we love Mandy” again, but seriously – Mia Kirshner is maybe the first person on this show who’s actually ACTING. She’s making all the other “evil” characters look like jokes. That first scene with Michelle? It’s like she’s in a different show. Badass. And so clever. But wait! Jack is also clever. And Tony cleverer still! But Mandy is hot, so Mandy wins. I think Mandy needs a spinoff show. Everybody Loves Mandy. I think it could work. Tony and Michelle could play the wacky neighbours. Also, I’m trying to understand how it makes any sense that the Chinese would respond to an invasion on Chinese soil (the consulate) and the death of the consul with the execution of two CTU agents and the kidnapping of another on American soil? Way to give up the moral high ground, fellas. But there I go thinking logically again. Ain’t no place for that here.

Hour two: I guess they decided early on that taking down the missile would be an anticlimactic, uh, climax. After all, as we saw, all Jack could do was stand on the ground and wait. Not very exciting, but it would have been beyond the realm of plausibility – even for 24 – to have Jack hop into an F-14 and take it down himself. I thought they were in position to set themselves up for a couple really interesting season five scenarios. As I suggested before, having Jack escape from the Chinese prison and try to get to, uh, Tibet or something, or even better, have him actually escape and spend the next day evading the Secret Service, the Chinese, the late fees at his video store… But no, they instead cobble together a fake death scenario involving an awful lot of people in an awful short timeframe. I’ll refrain from commenting on how they got Jack from fake corpse to dead man with a new identity on the lam in under 10 minutes – after all, it’s been a long day. Nice closing shot, though. Wonder what his new name is – David Bruce Banner? I know I wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

So Jack Bauer is dead, long live Jack Bauer. Pretty bold move apparently cutting all ties between him, Palmer, CTU and Kim (presumably) when the show has been renewed for two more seasons. Surely he can’t save the country again from that position? I guess we’ll find out.

JAM! also recaps the season finale. And the Kansas City Star gets thoughts from Carlos Bernard about the season that was.

And that’s it for another season. Overall, I thought this season was pretty good. By keeping civilian involvement at an absolute minimum, the writers kept the focus and all ancillary plot threads centered around the main plot. No ridiculous digressions just to keep up with characters of no consequence (hello Kim vs the mountain lion), etc. I really don’t know what I’ll do with my Monday nights now – in fact, that’s all of my TV programs wrapped up for the season (save Family Guy). Great timing for me to buy a new TV. I’ve been told that Veronica Mars, which is debuting in Canada next week, is worth watching. Perhaps I’ll give that a shot.

Good news – Dinosaur Jr is at the Phoenix July 17. Bad news – tickets $34.50, on sale May 27. Well, at least they never said they WEREN’T doing it for the money. I had expected it to be expensive, but actually seeing the price? Hmm, will have to ponder this one.

Rainer Maria will be at the Kathedral June 15 with Copeland and Denison Whitmer. I like RM, but never have any idea who these other bands they tour with are… There’s supposed to be a new Rainer Maria record due out this Spring, but considering the Spring is almost over, Summer is more likely.

IGN takes you on a 3D Quicktime tour of the new Batcave from Batman Begins. It looks… like a cave.

np – Spacemen 3 / Playing With Fire

I was a big fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy books when I was younger, but as I was watching the movie yesterday, it occurred to me that a) I haven’t read the books in upwards of 10 to 15 years and b) most of my memories of the plotline came from the Infocom text-based adventure game based on the books based on the radio show.

I haven’t checked out what the concensus on this film is, but I suspect that the purists are not pleased. That’s okay, purists are never pleased about anything. I wager they’re among the most consistently miserable people on the face of the earth. When it comes to film adaptations of geek grail material (almost all of which I’ve read), I figure it’s more important that a) the film be entertaining and b) stay true to the spirit of the source material. The word is less important – after all, what works in one medium won’t necessarily work in another and changes will inevitably have to be made. For example, I for one am thankful that I didn’t have to see the original gaudy 70s-era costume designs in the X-Men films. Would it have been faithful? Yes. Would it have been embaressing to see onscreen? God, yes. But I digress.

But back to Hitchhiker’s. Detractors will first have to get around the fact that the script wasn’t written by some hack, but by the original creator – the late Douglas Adams. Yes, it had to be massaged somewhat into final form after his death, but as I understand it, the plot – including changes and new sequences – were all his. It’s also worth noting that the books that people hold near and dear were themselves adaptations of the radio play, and revisions were made in those translations as well. A radio show is not a book is not a film, after all.

Anyway, the one liner is that I rather enjoyed the film. The casting was marvelous, I honestly couldn’t have thought of anyone better for each of the main roles (And I am in love with Zooey Deschanel. Or maybe just her name. No, it’s her too). Mos Def as Ford Prefect was a masterstroke – he captures the character’s attitude perfectly, and that goes double for Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox. Some might find the novel implementation of his second head blasphemous, but I found it less distracting than the birdcage on the shoulder that they used in the TV adaptation.

Narratively, the film sticks fairly closely to the video game for the first half or so, though in somewhat fast-forward. You don’t see Martin Freeman root through his robe pocket for the analgesic or figure out the exact combination of commands for his conversation with Mr Prosser that allows him to make it down to the pub without being killed by a flying brick, but it does stay moderately faithful. The middle section of the film is where it deviates the most from the original tale and not surprisingly, that’s where it drags the most. The jokes become quite thin and the film feels like it’s trying to rush through those sequences and get to the parts that are more comfortable.

It also doesn’t help that the editing is quite heavy-handed and it frequently feels like the film has been pared down from a longer (and possibly more cohesive) version of the film. The finale is also somewhat patchy, though it’s understandable that they needed to offer more closure than the book did in that there’s no guarantee there’ll be any sequels to the film. Overall, it starts out strong but steadily loses steam and only staggers to the finish line. Still, it’s a goodly bit of fun, remains true to the spirit of the original story and the animated Hitchhiker’s Guide bits are pretty damn clever and well executed.

And if you’ve never played the Infocom game I’m talking about, The BBC has a Flash-based online version for you to play. It’s not strictly text-based anymore, but is definitely a trip down memory lane. It’s still as hard as I remember – I had a hell of a time finishing it 20 years ago, and I’m still waiting for the next one…

Some of the schdules for NXNE are now up. You have to browse by venue (fellas – ever heard of a GRID?) but there’s enough information to start planning if you’re planning on attending. At first glance, I am annoyed that the handful of bands that were of interest to me are scattered all over space and time, meaning either a) I get a wristband and club hop, b) pick one showcase and hope the other acts on the bill don’t suck, or c) stay home and watch M*A*S*H* reruns. My money’s on Hawkeye.

House Of Love are expected to sing a worldwide deal with V2 in the near future. While this doesn’t mean that they’ll be touring globally to support Days Run Away, the probability of it happening just went up about a million-fold. A million times zero still being zero.

np – Eisley / Room Noises