It seems fitting that The Decemberists should visit the Commonwealth on Victoria Day weekend – after all, the reign of that particular monarch has provided much grist for Colin Meloy and his merry band’s creative mill. As much as I enjoy their recorded output, it’s the Decemberists’ live shows that really make their music for me. I was only a casual fan before I saw them make their Toronto debut at the Horseshoe last March. After that, I was one of the converted. Last night was their third time through town – I missed the last show at Lee’s Palace, which is where this one was supposed to be held before demand outstripped supply and it got moved to the larger Phoenix.

Another change in plans was the opening act. Originally scheduled opener Willy Mason had to withdraw from the tour a few weeks ago due to health issues, so he was replaced by Rebecca Gates, ex of the Spinanes. I never listened to the Spinanes back in the 90s – I was aware of their presence on the musical landscape, but I never heard note one of them till recently, and even then only in passing. Last night was essentially my first exposure to her work. Performing solo on electric guitar (though she did later bring a number of Decemberists out to back her on a couple of songs), Gates offered up a set of mainly low-key, bluesy/soulful numbers interspersed with chatting with the crowd. Her talkativeness, she said, was a consequence of driving from date to date on this tour alone in her car and being generally starved for interaction. I was standing right up front so her soft, smoky vocals were hard to hear over the guitar, but what I did catch sounded quite good. My retroactive musical education will probably reach The Spinanes sooner or later, I’m sure.

The Decemberists were once again splendid. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a band that’s as much fun to see perform. Sporting temporary Canadian flag tattoos (they do love Canada), all six of them played with such joyous abandon, you couldn’t help but be caught up in it. Of course, when you’re performing songs with as unusual lyrical content as they do, irony really isn’t an option. It’s hard to pick highlights but besides the set and encore closers (more on those in a bit), “July! July!”, “The Bagman’s Gambit” and “Sixteen Military Wives” were real standouts for me. Meloy opened the encore in solo acoustic mode and actually acquiesed to an audience request for Morrissey’s “Every Day Is Like Sunday”. I’m a little curious about what he’d originally intended to play, but I can’t imagine it’d have gotten a better response than the Moz cover.

You wouldn’t expect a band as verbose as the Decemberists to inspire many singalongs at their shows, but everyone in attendance – or at least around me – seemed intent on doing so and keeping up with Meloy, word for word. Or at least try. But that was actually fine as audience participation seemed to be the watchword for the evening. During main set closer “The Chimbley Sweep” (which also featured a “Hava Nagila” accordian breakdown and duelling guitars between Meloy and drummer John Moen), the entire audience found themselves crouched right down on the floor at Meloy’s urging. Why? I do not know, but he seemed to take great delight in it. Then during the encore, guitarist Chris Funk was in charge of making everyone scream as though they were being swallowed by a giant whale at the appropriate moment in “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”. Extraordinarily silly? Yes, but when show feels more like the final night at drama camp than a rock concert, it seems perfectly normal.

Now while I would never say that former drummer Rachel Blumberg’s leaving the band was a positive thing, that saying about doors and windows is true. New drummer Moen adds some real muscle to the rhythm section and is more than an able replacement behind the kit. Most impressive, however, is the addition of Petra Haden on vocals and violin. A much stronger singer than Blumberg (though sometimes Blumberg’s creepy voice would more fitting to the songs), her backing/harmony vocals really compliment Meloy’s nasal bleating (meant in the most positive sense). Her taking lead vocals on the cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” was another highlight of the show for me and the violin is a great addition to the band’s already eclectic instrumentation. While she’s just a touring member for the time being, I say she’s a keeper and would be an invaluable permanent member.

And I have a special note for whoever was in charge of the lighting last night – Mr Lighting Guy, your crazy backlighting technique was most unusual in that it felt at times like the audience was getting lit up more than the band, but it was incredibly effective for photos. Thank you very much. Next time you are in town I will buy you all-you-can-eat breakfast at The Golden Griddle.

It’s hard to believe that of the four shows I’ve seen this past week, not one has been subpar. Each has been outstanding in its own way, and the Decemberists were a great finish to what’s been a really exhausting week of showgoing. But now I’m happy to have nothing really on my sched for a couple weeks. Look at the sidebar! It is so very short. I may have to take up a new hobby to occupy my time.

24/40 talks to another band championing the Kate Bush cover, The Futureheads.

Britpop survivors Embrace will be at Lee’s Palace on July 26. Their latest, Out Of Nothing, came out in North America at the start of May.

Royal City guitarist and Three Gut Records namesake Jim Guthrie finally has a website to call his own.

And finally, these robot cats are goddamn creepy.

np – House Of Love / Days Run Away

It’s a Merge kinda day.

The label has confirmed that Teenage Fanclub will be coming over to North America in mid-July to tour in support of their new album Man-Made, which gets a North American release on June 7. No confirmed dates yet, but those should be announced very soon. The Fannies haven’t to Toronto since 2001 when they played a fantastic “greatest hits”-type show at the Opera House, so this is definitely one to get excited about. Raleigh husband-and-wife popsters The Rosebuds will support throughout the tour.

Head over to Elefant to grok all of Camera Obscura’s videos, including the new one for “I Love My Jean”. The wee band of Scots are set to record their third album this June with Richard Hawley producing – an interesting choice, I wonder if he’ll be moving them into duskier musical teritory?

20/40 gets into it with J Mascis about Dinosaur Jr, guitars and the band’s notorious (and hilarious) chapter in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life. Remember when I commented about the conspicuous four-day gap in the Dino Jr tour dates between Boston and Cleveland? Well the scuttlebutt is that J, Lou and Murph will indeed be taking a jaunt north of the border that third week of July. Still nothing official, but fingers are crossed.

The new Portatstatic album Bright Ideas has a release date of August 23. Whole lot of guest players on this one, including members of Superchunk (duh) and American Music Club.

Pitchfork reports that The Wrens will finally be reissuing their Abbott 1135 EP, originally released in 1997, along with bonus materials later this year. It’s great that they’re revisiting their past, but I’d rather hear some NEW material rather than stuff over eight years old.

And as a footnote to Thursday’s Rogue Wave post, My photos from Thursday’s Rilo Kiley show are now up. As I said, not my best work by a long shot, but not awful, considering the distance and lighting conditions.

Jack Bauer is a sell-out! What happened Keifer? It used to be about the torture, not the snack foods – though it does answer the question about when the hell does he find the time to eat. The two-hour season finale of 24 goes this Monday at 8pm. If it doesn’t end with Jack doing a Slim Pickens on the missile, I will be very disappointed.

As predicted, the past week has really wiped me out. I don’t even remember going to the Doves show, and that was just Monday! One more show tonight, The Decemberists at the Phoenix, but it’s an early show and anyway, this is a long weekend so I’ve got lots of time to recharge.

np – The Meeting Places / Find Yourself Along The Way

It’s been an eventful eight months for Rilo Kiley since they were last in town at the Horseshoe in October. Their profile and fanbase has grown immensely, More Adventurous has shown up on plentiful best-of lists for 2004, they’ve signed to a major label (Warner Bros) and will be playing the biggest venues of their careers later this Summer when they open for Coldplay across North America. In fact, I fully expect this to be perhaps the last time I see them – if they continue this trajectory, they’ll be playing far larger venues at far higher prices than I’ll probably be inclined to pay. Having gone to a number of bigger shows in the last few months, I know for a fact that I really prefer the smaller ones. I was fairly disappointed in Rilo Kiley’s Horseshoe show – the performance was decent (more on that in a bit) but the sound was awful (at least from where I was) and I had some pretty high expectations of that one that were not met. I was certainly hoping to bring some more positive gig memories away with me last night.

The bill last night was oddly similar to the one that came through last Fall. Two openers – the first one a saccharine-sweet co-ed pop collective (The Brunettes instead of Tilly & The Wall) and the second a mildly brooding but sensitive indie-rock outfit fronted by a really skinny guy (Nada Surf instead of Now It’s Overhead). Deliberate? Coincidence? I do not know.

The Brunettes were such an unexpected treat when they opened for The Shins last month that I did wonder if they’d be as beguiling the second time around. One thing was certain, anyway – they were smaller. Last time, they were touring as a 7-piece – this time, there were only five. Maybe two of them got confiscated at the border? Their set was an abbreviated and somewhat stripped down version of the one they played with The Shins and it went over wonderfully. I suspect much of the crowd had already been converted at that Shins show (same audience demographic) – the response had the zeal of the converted. They were much fun and knowing some of the songs this time around made it that much more enjoyable. Yay, Brunettes.

The last time I saw Nada Surf was the last time I was at the Opera House – a year and a half ago opening for Death Cab. I thought it a little odd that they were touring without a new record to push and almost two years since Let Go came out, but hey – you gotta pay the rent, I guess. I’m not a huge fan of the band. I like them alright on record – Let Go was a pretty good pop album – but live, they scored pretty low on the charismo-meter and pretty high on the bland-o-tron. Well after having a couple years to work out the kinks and refine their live show… they’re still rolling threes. Their overly-long set drew mostly from Let Go and also included a couple of new numbers from their next album, out in September. I didn’t really mind them, per se, but when you’re standing on the most painful floor in Toronto, you don’t want to spend any more time waiting around than is absolutely necessary. I’m sending the bill for my Robaxacet to Nada Surf.

While my next-day review of the last Rilo Kiley show wasn’t especially harsh, my long-term memories are a little less kind. Besides the craptacular sound at that show, I recall that the band seemed a little grumpy. Not a lot of smiling or good vibes, and the performance, while polished, seemed more perfunctory than passionate (oh, the alliteration!). So as I said, I was hoping this one would make up for it. And that it did – in spades. It’s rare that I end up prefering the large venue gig to the small club one, but this show simply stomped all over the Horseshoe show from last October. The band has gotten much tighter and more confident – there was a swagger in their performance that certainly wasn’t there before and they took full advantage of the additional onstage real estate. That they seemed to really be enjoying themselves this time around probably helped the mood of the show as well. The set list was an almost perfectly-paced mix of numbers from More Adventurous and Execution Of All Things (as well as one new song). It took them a couple songs to get the mix sorted out but when they did, it sounded fantastic. At long last I was able to hear Jenny Lewis’ voice loud and clear and it really is a marvelous thing. I’m a little sad that Rilo Kiley’s star is rising so fast and so high. They’re moving onto bigger and better things but I had selfishly hoped that they could stay underground not forever, but just a little bit longer. But if they have to go – and go they do, stardom beckons – then last night’s show was one hell of a farewell gift.

I didn’t make it up to the front for this show – whole lotta tall folks in line ahead of me – so I was shooting from the front of the mezzanine, maybe 15 metres back. The pictures turned out somewhat better than I expected, but not great. Noisy, a lot of crowd in the shots (the stage at the Opera House is low!) and not especially dynamic in composition. Not terrible, but certainly not worth staying up later than I already did to go through them. Check back tomorrow if you wanna see.

Oh yeah, note to the Opera House – bathroom attendants? What the fuck?

And on the topic of the band getting bigger, Jenny Lewis talks to Boston.com about the indie/major tightrope they’re trying to walk (via LHB). Update: The National Post’s Adam Radwanski also covers the topic with Ms Lewis.

Pop (All Love) calls me the Canadian indie blogosphere’s “own Bill O’Reilly. Only less evil”. Thanks, man! I’ll work on those sexual harrassment suits as soon as I can. It is now my mission to have someone register www.sweetjesusihatechromewavesdotnet.com. Oh, and there is a context for his comments, thanks.

PopMatters starts to talk to Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers about The Holy Bible‘s 10th anniversary, and then… digresses.

np – Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Yanqui U.X.O.

Oakland’s Rogue Wave will be in town June 14 at the El Mocambo along with Portland’s Helio Sequence. Rogue Wave’s debut album Out Of The Shadow was much a much heralded 2004 release, often with The Shins’ brand of indie folk-pop as a touchstone. I can see how one would draw that parallel, but Out Of The Shadow never managed to quite click with me. I appreciated it on an objective level and still spin it on occasion, but any sort of deeper connection with the music eluded me.

I also wasn’t overwhelmed with their live show (they were here last August supporting AC Newman) which went for the rock a little too hard and at the expense of the delicate flourishes which were the real high points of the record. I haven’t added this show to my calendar yet, but I’ll probably revisit the album in the next little while. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally get it. I’ve also noticed from their website that Sonya Westcott is no longer playing bass for the band, having been replaced by some hairy dude named Evan. Boo.

Curious about the band? SubPop wants to help you learn more:

MP3: Rogue Wave – “Every Moment”

MP3: Rogue Wave – “Endless Shovel”

I don’t know The Helio Sequence.

NOW investigates The Decemberists’ literary bent. They’re at the Phoenix this Saturday.

Loose Record talks to New York anti-scenesters Dirty On Purpose on the occasion of the re-release of their debut EP, Sleep Late For A Better Tomorrow. The band are working on their first full-length and have promised to try and get up to Toronto for a show this Summer… right guys?

NorthJersey.com gets Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo to preview one of their “The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science” shows. This is the instrumental soundtrack to a marine documentary they released a couple years ago – sometimes they play it live. Via One Louder.

The Riverfront Times is happy that Built To Spill is out of mothballs and so am I. From Largehearted Boy.

Paste examines the ongoing fetishization of all things ’80s. The nostalgia trip is one I refuse to participate in. I lived through the ’80s once, and it was an awful decade. I don’t need to go through that again, not even for a Huey Lewis revival.

Joe Pernice films a hilarious pilot for Cribs, indie rock style and gives us a tour of his opulant Toronto digs. I confess to being excessively excited to see the city of Toronto composting bin under his sink. I used to have one of those. I miss composting.

np – Six By Seven / Luggage Left At The Peveril Hotel

As I mentioned before, I’m a bit of a johnny-come-lately to British Sea Power. I was won over by their newest album, Open Season, but having gotten their debut effort The Decline Of… last week, I can understand where the people who are disappointed in it are coming from. Where Open Season is warm, wide-open and relatively laid back, Decline is tense and explosive in parts. I think I originally checked out BSP a few years ago but only heard “Apologies To Insect Life” and wasn’t interested. If I’d only started with “Fear Of Drowning”, it may have been a very different story. Ah well. At least I got on board soon enough to catch them at Lee’s Palace last night.

I’d been previously warned about the eccentric nature of BSP’s live performances I had fairly high expectations for the show. The crowd cheered when the roadies began bringing out the foliage and branches that were used to decorate the stage. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen vegetation get applause. The band got a better response, yes, but the foliage was definitely appreciated. Opening with “It Ended On An Oily Stage”, British Sea Power tore through material from both records with a tone somewhere in the middle of both. Songs from Decline seemed softened up a little and songs from Open Season rocked a little harder. I felt things could have leaned a little further to the Decline end of the spectrum, but that’s nitpicking. I’ve often said no one does anthems like the British, and after last night (and with the previous night’s Doves show as exhibit B), I will continue to stand by that. It’s hard to imagine anyone from anywhere but England write something as rousing as “Please Stand Up” or grandly romantic as “Oh Larsen B”, even if the latter is about a breakaway Antarctic ice shelf.

There was a taste of the chaos when keyboardist Eamon pulled on a hard hat early on in the set (he went through a selection of over the course of the night), grabbed a drum and jumped into the crowd, banging away. Besides that, however, the performance was high energy but not especially insane. I was prepared to be disappointed overall but in the second half of “Fear Of Drowning” (they played the first half of the song, went into several more and then came back and picked up where they left off – sort of a medley but not), guitarist Noble put his guitar down and all hell broke loose. There was stage diving, wall climbing, ass kicking (literally), sitting on shoulders while bass playing, lighting rig dangling… This was the anarchy I was promised! With such a ridiculously chaotic finale, there was no way they were coming back for an encore. And that was fine, because I was satisfied.

Opening things up was The Most Serene Republic, who I was uncertain about after seeing them a couple weeks ago. Well after a second go-around, I’ve made up my mind: They don’t do it for me. What was novel the first time seemed more contrived the second time around – they seemed to be trying a little too hard to be zany. There’s not a real good shelf life on the singer guy’s antics… The sound was far better this time around, making it easier to really listen to their ADD-affected prog pop and I simply didn’t find there to be much substance to it. The Can-indie musical collectives to which they’ll inevitably be compared (Broken Social, Arcade Fire) possess an emotional core to their songs that I didn’t detect with Serene Republic. They seemed more about being goofing around and having a good time, which is fine – there’s absolutely a place for just fun music, but class clowns eventually have to decide if they want to be Jim Carrey or Pauly Shore.

Considering that they seem to be getting added to open every show that passes through town over the next couple months, I’m sure there’ll be ample opportunity for me to be won over. I would actually be more interested to see them play in a room not filled with their friends out to support them, in a situation where they have to win the crowd over – I suspect that might be a more interesting environment in which to see them. Similarly, if I’d been introduced to the album before the live show (assuming the album proves me wrong), I might have a different POV but for now? No thanks. But they’re young, there’s certainly time to grow. We shall see.

Photos here. British Sea Power do make for some compelling visuals, that is for certain. Dig Hamilton’s headdress from the first part of the show. And by the way – would anyone happen to have an mp3 of British Sea Power’s cover of Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat” off of that Rough Trade 25th anniversary comp from a couple years ago? Or what I assume is a cover of Mum’s “Green Grass Of Tunnel” from the Oily Stage CD-single?

Paste gets a quick one in with Jason Molina about The Magnolia Electric Company’s What Comes After The Blues.

Coldplay are at the Air Canada Centre August 2 with Rilo Kiley supporting.

The Decemberists are keeping a tour journal! Can’t wait to read the Toronto entry after this Saturday…

The Beat reports that Kelsey Grammar has been cast as The Beast in X-Men 3. Thank goodness for CGI. Also, they’re saying that Lost‘s Maggie Grace is being courted to play Shadowcat. Now a nitpickier man might point out that they already had Kitty Pryde in the first two films, most definitely played by a pre-teen, but if they want to cast someone more… mature, then I certainly won’t second guess the producers.

Arrested Development has officially been renewed for a third season! Yay.

24: Oh Mandy, you came and you killed without caring! Mandy Mandy Mandy Mandy Mandy! You’ve been a baaaad girl. Yes you have. Best lesbian assassin ever. Of course, she was making time with that dude but he swung both ways so I guess it’s all fair… Still, you have to wonder if maybe there’s a dearth of assassins in the greater LA area that she gets all the work? Poor Tony – he reconciles with his ex-wife, decides to leave CTU, has his whole life ahead of him. All he needed to do was buy a boat for his retirement to guarantee he’d be taken hostage. Interesting that they’d introduce another plot thread so close to the end – two hours to stop the missile, rescue Tony and punish Mandy. Oh yes. But you she’s gonna live – 24‘s been renewed for two more seasons! Poor Jack, he will never get any rest.

np – Television / Marquee Moon