I suspect that Mystery & Misery and Labrador Records are in cahoots to make me broke. Earlier this year, Jason turned me onto The Radio Dept (Aside – Dear Radio Dept: Please come to Canada. I will make you waffles. Love, Frank), and now with this post, I’ve discovered the joys of Douglas Heart (note – no one in the band is named “Douglas Heart”. It’s either a reference to the original JAMC bassist or the pulmonary system of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland).

I like Jason’s comment that they sound like a loud Sundays. That’s a good starting point, but Malin Dahlberg’s voice is more melancholy and wearied than Harriet Wheeler’s. It’s probably too obvious a comparison, and maybe it’s just the Swedish accent that I’m hearing, but her voice reminds me far more of Nina Persson on the later-era Cardigans records. Musically, Douglas Heart are a wonderful collision of 60s and 90s, with huge church organs and psychedelic guitars and trippy effects, but with a distinctly modern mid-fi/indie production sensibility. Their 2002 self-titled debut album was a little hesitant and stayed on the slower, sadder side while their 2004 EP I Could See The Smallest Things offered a more upbeat, edgier sound though only relatively speaking. Everything that made the first record great was still very much intact, but with a more self-assured presentation.

I’m a little worried that my growing addiction to all things Swedish will be hard on the pocketbook – there doesn’t appear to be as entensive a distribution system in North America for these releases as there is for, say, UK artists. Thankfully, there’s sites like Pop Polar – based right here in Toronto – that boast a fine catalog of hard-to-find records. Thanks to them, I got both the Douglas Heart album and EP for very good prices (and dropped off the same day in my mailbox, though I don’t think this is a service they can offer everyone). If you’re looking for pop imports of the more esoteric variety, I highly recommended looking through their catalog. End plug.

The only downside I see to discovering all these wonderful Swedish pop bands is that the odds of them finding their way over this way to tour is probably pretty damn slim. Though if it makes a difference, my waffle offer is open to all Swedes. But until they visit, check out this track from the EP, and if you like what you hear, there’s more excellent audio samples on the Labrador website:

MP3: Douglas Heart – “Komplex”

And for others getting bitten by the Swede-pop bug, Craig from Songs: Illinois also runs Swedes Please, a site dedicated to showcasing Swedish talent. And I’ve mentioned Hello! Surprise!, the guide to Swedish pop music before, but will do so again just because.

JAM! finds out why head Weakerthan John K Samson is so happy lately.

Check out this Quicktime clip of BBC4’s interview/profile of Doves, including a live performance of “Snowden”. The hostess has freakish cheekbones.

Poptones poses Questions of Doom to Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein. SubPop has also made available to download “Entertain”, the first single from The Woods.

Eisley are finally coming back to Toronto to play a headlining show of their own. Hooray for not having to open for bigger, more expensive bands I have no interest in seeing! The Texans will be at Lee’s Palace on June 22.

The Journal News talks to Ivy about the necessary evils of licensing their music for movies and commercials. Tickets for their June 12 show at Lee’s Palace are on sale now, $12.50.

I am sitting at home, waiting for moving boxes to be delivered. Whee.

Update: 10:54AM – still waiting. GODDAMN.

np – The Decemberists / Picaresque

Anticipation is growing for next Tuesday’s Wedding Present show at Lee’s Palace. There’s a complete concert from earlier this month in Amsterdam available to stream at FabChannel – it takes a little while to get going and the sound isn’t awesome, but it does whet the appetite (and it seems to run nicer in IE than Mozilla). Though I am concerned that Simon Cleave appears to be playing a Tom DeLonge (Blink 182) signature Strat… WTF? But there’s a whole lot of classic material in the setlist, which obviously augers well, and from Take Fountain which has become one of my favourite albums of the year so far. The band will also be performing live on The Current on Minnesota NPR this afternoon at around 3:30-4:00 EST, if you’re really keen.

Also on topic, eye has a Q&A with the band, there’s an interview at The East Bay Express and The Seattle Times finds out how Gedge’s residency in their fair town influenced Take Fountain. There’s also Something And Nothing – a pretty comprehensive fansite devoted to the works of David Lewis Gedge.

And because Manifesto was so good to make it available, here’s the first single from Take Fountain. Not new or anything, but it’s a good tune.

MP3: The Wedding Present – “Interstate 5”

Spin ran a interview with Torq Campbell of Stars last month, but I’m only finding it now. Hey, I don’t go poking around the Spin website unless I absolutely have to. There’s also a piece on the band in the new Magnet where Campbell confesses that in the band’s salad days when they were broke, he secretly took out a $10,000 loan to fly the band to England to play a couple of small shows in hopes of convincing new recruits Amy Millan and Evan Cranley that there was label interest in the band. It’s a cute story. And while you’re feeling the Stars love, check out this radio session they did for KEXP a couple weeks ago.

Stars will be taking part in the “Canadian Wet” shows in Japan next month, alongside fellow Canucks Broken Social Scene, Dears, DFA1979 and Metric. JAM! has the story of how the tour came together. This would be something to see, indeed.

And tangentially – You Ain’t No Picasso continues his string of excellent shows for download with Broken Social Scene’s 2003 radio session at KVRX. Y’ahrr, thar appear to be new songs in the setlist. Y’ahrr. And yeah, I’ve linked this before, but it’s worth reposting. Interesting that on this version of “7/4”, it’s definitely Feist taking the female vocals, whereas on another version I’ve got from a Canadian radio session, the identity of the singer isn’t nearly as obvious. I’ll have to give it another listen to see if it’s her there as well.

Jason Molina and The Magnolia Electric Co. return to Toronto August 8 for a show at a venue to be determined. What Comes After The Blues, the first proper studio album under the Magnolia Electric Co monicker was released a couple weeks ago.

Zoilus looks at the impending 20Hz message boards revolt and how the new owners, well-intentioned as they may be, totally fucked this up. eye also chips in, via blog. I’ve been watching the drama from the sidelines with great amusement – I had wanted to avoid any sort of righteously indignant knee-jerk reaction to the new ownership, but the way they’ve handled themselves has been so comically bad, it’s been a textbook example of how enrage your audience. Alls I can say is I hope they didn’t pay too much for the domain name, because in a very short while it’s going to be worthless. In the meantime, the kids begin their migration today to their new home at Stille Post.

Manic Street Preachers have released a free online EP, God Save The Manics, for anyone and everyone to enjoy. Well, anyone with Windows Media Player 9 and who isn’t running on a Mac. Very proletarian, fellas.

Check out the trailer for the new Studio Ghibli film, Howl’s Moving Castle, here. Looks like classic Miyazaki. Apparently it will be released in North America in both dubbed and subtitled versions. A nice move, but I wonder how theatres will decide which one to screen? I suspect that they’ll err on the side of caution and go with dubbed for the most part – after all, how can you pass up the collective voice talents of Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall and Billy Crystal? The North American release of the film will be June 10. Link via Popdrivel

np – Sonic Youth / Murray Street

My ticket for last night’s M83 show was printed on December 21, 2004. My goodness I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. I was attending this one more out of curiosity than fandom – I have the first M83 record and like it alright, but it hasn’t managed to really enrapture me. In fact, it seems to cause blackouts – I know what the first three songs sound like, and the last one or two, but that middle section? It could be 30 minutes of goats bleating for all I can remember, though I suppose that’s a testament to the album’s effectiveness as aural wallpaper. But livestock notwithstanding, I’d heard some good things about the live show and I really did want to be convinced.

I’ve mentioned before how unimpressed I was with Ulrich Schnauss at SxSW – what I’ve heard of his recorded output is quite nice but live, it seemed rather pointless. But I was totally willing to give him another shot, and it’s and good thing, too. You see, I’ve figured out the secret to enjoying Ulrich Schnauss live: Close your eyes. If you have them open, you’re fixated on this guy at his laptop, having a beer and banging away on a keyboard and wondering just what the hell it is you’re looking at. Close them, and the sonic experience creates outworldish images in your head of windswept plains, impossibly high mountaintops, churning oceans… Open them again and you’re wondering what is up with this guy’s hair. I spent most of the set with them closed, obvs. Hey, it’s not his fault – laptop music is hard to make (visually) interesting in a live context. It was funny – he finished his set and walked offstage to great applause, and came back out a minute later. The audience thought he was going to do an encore, but he actually just wanted to shut down his laptop.

My favourite track off M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is the live recording of “Gone”, found on the bonus disc that came with some pressings. The full band arrangement gives it a much-needed kick and gives the inherently synthetic nature of the composition an organic dimension that pushes it from like to love. So the fact that M83 tour as a four-piece rock band gave me high hopes for the show. High hopes, but I honestly didn’t expect anything on the scale of what went down at Lee’s last night. I think that performance may now be the benchmark by which I judge all other concerts – if a show doesn’t have the visceral impact of a thousand kidney punches or a 70-minute IMAX best-of Bruckheimer video compilation, I’m just not interested. No, I’m not serious, but M83 did put on a show of ridiculous drama, intensity and just all-out over-the-topness. Surprisingly guitar-heavy and featuring an absurdly precise drummer – in fact, the entire band was dead-on and the mix was amazingly clear – this was a performance worthy of the “next My Bloody Valentine” tag that they (or he, M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez) often gets saddled with. Based on the albums, I would argue the point. Based on the show, not so much.

Let me try and articulate just how epic the show was. Imagine the final battle scene from Lord Of The Rings, except all the combatants are wielding lightsabres, there are volcanoes erupting all around them, and oh yeah – it’s in space. And oh yeah, it’s all happening in space (The rings of Saturn, to be precise) and the really dramatic bits are all in slow motion. Natch. Well that’s how it looks in MY head. Okay, that’s a little much, but seriously – the sound was so cinematic and massive, it’s hard not to get caught up in trying to describe it. If any act deserved to be named after a galaxy, it’s M83. I may have been unconvinced about them (him?) before last night, but I’m not anymore. In fact, I’m afraid the studio albums (I still need to pick up Before The Dawn Heals Us) will be a disappointment by comparison. This is one band that deserves a properly-recorded live document. Whoo.

Not the best batch of photos I’ve ever taken, the lighting was pretty tough to work with, but there’s some decent shots in there even if the don’t quite capture the grandeur of it all. And I’m sorry if this review is a little silly, I wrote it fairly late last night. You should see the first draft. There were midget Valkyries with laser beams shooting from their eyes in there.

Sleater-Kinney tour their new album The Woods (out May 24) through Toronto on June 18 at the Phoenix. Dead Meadow support.

If you weren’t at Sunday’s Shins show or that wasn’t enough for you, head over to You Ain’t No Picasso. He’s got the entirety of the band’s recent Austin City Limits performance available to download.

Wilco are playing four nights in May at the Vic in Chicago for a live DVD to be released, um, later. Sam Jones, director of the I Am Trying To Break Your Heart documentary, will be in charge of putting it all together.

Nobody cares that you’re a DJ – it’s funny ’cause it’s true. Of course, no one cares that I’m a hack musician either, so I guess we’re even. From Miss Modernage.

I wonder if it’s a conscious decision on the part of DC to have similar “govermnet versus heroes” storylines running in both their regular DCU comic titles and the animated Justice League Unlimited series. They’re finally back with new episodes (check out bit torrent, yo) and the latest one has Project Cadmus sending in the Suicide Squad to infiltrate JL headquarters. Granted, no one executes any Justice Leaguers like in Countdown (that can’t possibly qualify as a spoiler anymore), but it’s still fairly grim, thematically, and has some surprisingly knock-down, vicious hand-to-hand fight scenes (Atom Smasher! Shining Knight! Gotta love the obscure cameos). This second season of JLU is shaping up real nice.

Yet anothor Questionable Content follow-up – I direct you to Indietits, another project from the creator of QC. It’s not what you think… Unless you think it’s comic strips of small birds making jokes about indie bands/culture, then it’s exactly what you think.

np – Mum / Finally We Are No One

Looking for video of Dinosaur Jr’s performance on The Late Late Show Friday? Go here to download a video clips of the reunited band play “The Lung” on national television. Yeah, you have to register, but think about it – if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today, you’re doing alright. The band sounded so good and had just the right amount of slop – now I really want them to announce a Toronto date. But I wonder, will they only play Lou-era material, or will they play stuff from the Warner albums? ‘Cause I do love me some Green Mind and Where You Been… Thanks to Jeremy for passing on the link.

Pitchfork gets some more details about the new Broken Social Scene record and deflates the idea that there might be a triptych of new albums released over the next year. Kevin Drew calls it, “Raw fucking puke and love” – the boy has a way with words, does he not?

Junkmedia chit-chats with Will Johnson in the context of frontman for South San Gabriel. Their new album The Carlton Chronicles: Not Until The Operation’s Through came out last month. Coincidentally, Pitchfork has a lukewarm review of the record today.

Mean Street talks to Andy Williams, drummer for Doves, about working with an outside producer for the first time on Some Cities. The band will release the Live In Eden EP next week, but you won’t find it on Amazon or in HMV. Like Death Cab’s recent The John Byrd EP, it’s only available through select indie record stores in the US (like this one). I don’t know how much of an effort I’ll make to get this – I have the Where We’re Calling From DVD and this is just an audio document of the same show featured therein. A CD version would be nice but probably not worth the effort it’d take to get a copy.

Following up from yesterday, I am currently addicted to Questionable Content. Or I was, now that I’ve read all 341 comic strips in one day, I have to be content with the one new one a day. Taking aim at indie kids, emo kids, goth kids, geeks and the lovelorn in general, it’s painfully obvious that I am a target market with this strip, but I don’t care – it’s great. Even though it’s by a guest artist, this one would have made me snort milk up my nose had I been drinking milk. So good. I simply have to get one of these Sad Guitar t-shirts. It looks like my Jazzmaster! But mine red, not yellow, and it is happy, not sad. It does crave new strings, however, and I must oblige.

24: The day is 3/4 done! This Marwan fellow – word on the street is that he’s the man responsible for today’s events. There needs to be a 24 drinking game where you have a shot anytime someone says that. Okay, here’s my theory on how Palmer gets back in the picture – since they’re making Logan a ridiculous charicature of an incompotent president (the buggy eyes are a nice touch), Mike is gonna take a page out of Jack’s playbook and taser him in the washroom, then sneak his old boss into the bunker through the catering entrance. And it was good to see the return of Badass Jack – not a man I would want waiting for me at the jungle gym at recess, no way no how. I think he somehow managed to break more than five of that dude’s fingers. Maybe he broke some of the broken ones even moreso? I don’t know my US geography so well, what’s within an hour or two of Jefferson City, Iowa that’d be worth blowing up?

np – M Ward / Transistor Radio

I went into last night’s Shins show with equal parts anticipation and trepidation – actually, it was mostly trepidation. Call me a snob if you want, but I don’t like the Kool Haus (big concrete room, pain in the ass to get to), I don’t like all-ages shows (all you kids who love all-ages shows will understand the minute you turn 19) and I don’t like shows whose audience crosses too far into the mainstream (I’ve worked hard in my life to ensure minimal interaction with jocks and frat boys). This show could potentially be a perfect storm of all three – after all, this wasn’t so much the Chutes Too Narrow tour as it was the Garden State tour. Well I’m pleased to say my main misgivings were mostly unfounded. Yeah, the Kool Haus is still a crap venue but there’s not much to be done about that, but there were thankfully none of the unbridled shrieking or “whoo!”-ing that I had expected with the kids and the jocks. Everyone was just there to enjoy the show and have a good time, a-yup.

7-piece Kiwi collective The Brunettes were the openers for the whole tour and I couldn’t think of a better choice to warm up for The Shins. Paul has waxed ecstatic about this act for a while now, but it was only after seeing them live that I fully appreciated their charm. They remind me of a group of music Summer camp escapees who made off with the entire stash of instruments. They had an unbelievable number of instruments onstage with them, from keyboards and glockenspiels to triangles, clarinets, trumpets, cello, saxophones, banjos, castanets, to say nothing of their liberal use of finger snaps and hand claps. With every band member contributing on vocals backing the he-said, she-said lead vox of Heather Mansfield and Jonathan Bree, the result was a gloriously giddy, sun-kissed, retro-pop cacaphony.

Sure, you’re not going to find great profundity in the lyrical content but with music like this, what are you going to sing about, forgiving the third-world debt? C’mon. If you want an idea of where they’re coming from, all you need to know is that they dedicated the last song of their set to the Commonwealth and the metric system, and all donned cardboard masks of Full House-era Mary Kate and/or Ashley Olsen. Really, there was no way to not love them. I dashed out to the lobby right after their set to buy a copy of Mars Loves Venus.

The last time I saw the Shins, it was in a 100-capacity venue. Now they were playing to a crowd twenty times that size. Naturally, I had concerns as to how the Shins’ brand of folky indie-pop would translate in a large, unforgiving room such as the Kool Haus. Answer? About as well as could be expected. Their setlist drew heavily from the more upbeat portion of their repetoire, which was ironic as the quieter, acoustic numbers such as “Young Pilgrims” and the ubiquitous “New Slang” actually came across the best, sonically. The more amped up numbers had the soundman struggling with the craptacular acoustics of the room – it’s saying something that the set was even as listenable as it was. Oh, and the fun cover of the night was The Magnetic Fields’ “Strange Powers”. I approve.

I was also pleasantly surprised how comfortable the band seemed to be on such a large stage (I’m talking real estate). I guess I forgot that they’ve been growing as performers with their audience since the last time they came through town and it hasn’t been as much of an overnight explosion in popularity. James was a bit chattier than he had been in the past, though it was still Marty who assumed the majority of the frontman/banter responsibilities. From where I was, I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying but there was a comment about bagels followed by him showing off his midriff to the crowd. Yeah, I dunno. But it was evident the band was having a great time, as was the crowd and hell – even the oppressive venue couldn’t stifle that. Good show all around.

And as a postscript, big thumbs up to the band for keeping merch prices down. I’ve never seen anyone sell t-shirts at the Kool Haus for $20 before. Very nice. And sorry, no photos – I had no interest in trying to smuggle a camera in nor fight my way through the great unwashed to get close enough to get any sort of decent shots. Yeah, them’s the breaks. But did anyone get a digicam in without any sort of hassle from security? Not smuggle, just carry one in. Obviously loads of people in the audience had em, I’m just wondering if the venue actually cared.

PopMatters talks to Britt Daniel about making records the Spoon way. Gimme Fiction is out May 10 and they play Lee’s Palace June 5.

Looks like there’s a payoff for waiting the four months for the North American release of Mercury Rev’s The Secret Migration on May 17. The Amazon listing indicates that it comes with a bonus disc, and not some piddly one or two tracker – this one’s got nine extra tracks. Huzzah.

The Houston Chronicle asks Jeff Tweedy why Wilco holds such appeal for music geeks. Answer? Because he’s one of us. One of us. From Largehearted Boy.

More Cowbell sent me this Questionable Content comic strip which I found amusingly-bang on until the last panel. As if these guys would even KNOW any girls.

JAM! talks to Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman about making films based on comic books in a market where everything and anything from the funny pages is being adapted for celluloid. Gaiman also reveals his plans for the film version of Death: The High Cost Of Living:

“It’s a nice, cheap, low-budget movie about a miserable teen and a girl who thinks she may be death and the day in New York they spend together. The only reason I’m directing is that I don’t want anyone (messing) it up.”

It sounds like he’s dispensing with the whole Endless angle, and I don’t think it’ll suffer for it at all.

And finally, Sin City scribe Frank Miller was profiled on 60 Minutes last week. Via Achtung Baby!.

np – Douglas Heart / I Could See The Smallest Things