In the two and a half odd years I’ve been writing this blog, I don’t think that it’s really come across how much I like Yo La Tengo. It’s mostly a matter of timing – they’ve been fairly quiet since 2002, only releasing one proper album in that time (it in itself fairly quiet) and that was before I was really writing much at all. As such, I haven’t had opportunity to pen any love letters to Hoboken’s finest.

But now is as good a time as any, what with the band celebrating twenty years of making wonderful music and releasing their Prisoners Of Love compilation album. Although I’ve got all their albums, I wanted this one as well since it came with a bonus disc of rarities and YLT are so wildly eclectic as a band that a portable edition of their catalog would be quite handy (although I probably could have made my own. Whatever). Happily, there’s enough tracks on the main double-disc set that I don’t have (“Shaker”, “Nuclear War”) that it’s still an interesting listen, and not just a walk down memory lane. To call it a “greatest hits” disc is a little silly since bands like Yo La Tengo don’t really have hits… The obvious poppier favourites like “Tom Courtenay” and “Sugarcube” rub elbows with free-form noise skronks and beautifully quiet folkier numbers. You’ll not find a band more difficult to pigeonhole, yet possessing such an unimstakable sonic personality.

The bonus disc (which I paid a premium for, yes) doesn’t contain anything revelatory. It’s a mix of unreleased and rare stuff, done up in the same eclectic mix of styles as the main compilation. The highlights so far are the Georgia-sung reworkings of “Tom Courtenay” and the acoustic “Decora”, though that might just be because the songs are already familiar favourites. Ask me again in a month or so, I might have completely different favourites.

I’ve seen Yo La Tengo live a couple times, and have to confess I wasn’t blown away either time. With so large a catalog at their disposal, set lists can obviously be a complete crapshoot. I enjoyed the first show I saw back in 2001 a fair bit, but was rather bored in April 2003 when they were touring Summer Sun as they were in a particularly jammy mood and it just didn’t grab me. I skipped their last time through town, but think I’ll catch them again the next time through, whenever that is. They’re doing some sporadic touring around the world over the Summer and probably won’t have a new record out till next year at the very earliest. The last couple albums have been quite snoozy – lovely in their own way, but one does yearn for a good old fashioned sonic freak out once in a while.

Links – NJ.com covers Yo La Tengo’s annual covers benefit for WFMU wherein the band plays cover song requests in exchange for a pledge, often with hilarious results. Paste takes a look at the 20-year history of the band while Radio Free Yo La Tengo celebrates their anniversary with an online radio show. Fansite Sunquashed recently crashed and is still rebuilding, but when it’s online it’s a great resource of stuff. And longtime home Matador has a variety of audio clips and videos, including this pinnacle of awesomeness:

Video: Yo La Tengo – “Sugarcube” (RealVideo)

As promised, Ivy will be at Lee’s Palace on June 12. Astaire support.

It does me proud to be associated with Torontoist, who conducted this in-depth and revealing interview with Amy Millan of Stars. For my part, I have a slightly less profound review of Doves’ Some Cities.

Pitchfork investigates the phenomenon of musicians as bloggers and how it reflects (or distorts) their mystique as artists. In summary – John Darnielle and Momus: Good, Moby: Bad. So very bad. WHAT HAVE I BEEN SAYING FOR THE PAST YEAR?!? Gawd. Moby.

Rolling Stone talks to Death Cab For Cutie the making of their new album, Plans (due out in September), and about life in the major leagues.

Comic Book Resources reports that X-Men 3 will begin shooting in Toronto and Vancouver around July 15. The first film was shot in the GTA, the second out west. Mutants back in the Big Smoke! Woot!

24: First off… Mike Novick? How does he get another job in government? Did the new administation think, “hey, here’s a guy who betrayed a lifelong friend and was a high ranking official in the other party’s administration. I want HIM on my payroll!” Not sure if there’s really time for him to be evil, though he’s doing as good a job at being slimy as the new President is at being spineless. Now to the main story – a nice, wholly contained, tense episode. I approve. I’ll ignore the great stretch in believability that the terrorists planned to only damage Air Force One, thus dislodging the football and having it land somewhere retrievable. Because that’s a scenario that it obviously makes loads of sense to base an entire master plan on. But I digress. The endgame this season has a definite air of familiarity about it – invoking the 25th Ammendment again? More rogue nuclear warheads? Mark my words – by 7:00 AM, Jack is sawing someone’s hand off.

It’s not a nomination, but I have been deemed Webby Worthy as part of this year’s Webby Awards. What does this mean? I do not know, I guess it’s like a nice pat on the back, or one of those “participant” ribbons they gave out at science fairs. “Way to come out and not embarrass yourself! Have a cheeseburger!” Thanks. Can’t help but notice MOBY isn’t Webby Worthy…

np – Eisley / Room Noises

I’m afraid I don’t have much more to say about Mississauga’s The Empires since I saw them last back in February, at least not in terms of descriptives. Believe me, I tried to come up with something besides, “Swervedriver having a really intense conversation with Catherine Wheel in a dark room in Brooklyn at 3AM”, but I really can’t. However, I think that’s pretty complimentary so I’ll leave it at that.

Their set last night they played Wavelength, however, was much more impressive than the Horseshoe gig a month and a half ago. The sound was better, the band had more energy and the song selection seemed stronger (I’m assuming it was a different set – I don’t know their stuff that well and I can’t really A/B the two shows). I left the last show wanting to like the band but not quite being there. This time they put me over the top. Some of the songwriting is still uneven – the good songs are quite head and shoulders above the others – but it certainly bodes well when they grow into more consistency. Some photos from the show here. The projections they use at Wavelength always make for strange pictures. For more info, check out their MySpace page though the audio is the same tracks that are available on their website.

In reading the bio, I noted that their keyboardist/guitarist is Graham Walsh, also of Hamilton space-rock combo Flux AD, whom I’d long assumed to be defunct. This fansite, however, implies otherwise. I should really dust off my copy of Passive Aggressive – I seem to remember liking it a fair bit, though I never did get their second album transatlanticthoughts.

Amazon.co.uk has a good deal of detail on the forthcoming Belle & Sebastian biography This Is Just A Modern Rock Story. You may recall that they had initially said that the release of this book would coincide with the release of the band’s next record… does this mean we can look forward to a new album sometime around August 1?

A whole shitload of music video links. Via Hold My Life.

So there is no Toronto transit strike after all. While this is good for most, I suppose, it’s a little disappointing for me. Since I’m on my bike now and no longer at the mercy of streetcars and subways, the strike would have had minimal impact on my life. However, the cancellation of the strike meant that I was not able to bomb straight down the dedicated streetcar lanes on Spadina this morning as I’d planned. Too bad, it would have taken me, like, 2 minutes to get to work.

np – Archers Of Loaf / Icky Mettle

The Washington Post (bugmenot: notarealaddy@notarealdomainname.net / bugmenot) profiles pop auteur Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne and Ivy, as well as Oscar nominee for the title track of the Tom Hanks film, That Thing You Do. It’s a good long piece that gets into the head of the man who is seemingly content to stay in the shadows. While he defers frontman role in FOW to Chris Collingwood and it’s hard to pay attention to anyone in Ivy besides Dominique Durand – he nonetheless is the songwriting and production engine that powers both acts.

Ivy released their fourth album In The Clear last month and Fountains Of Wayne are releasing a b-sides compilation on June 28. Touring-wise, there’s nothing confirmed but I am hoping to see an Ivy date in Toronto sometime around the second week of June. I will keep you posted, of course.

Achtung Baby! links to some sweet radio session at KEXP. Make with the clicky.

Paste talks to Garth Jennings about the pressures of making Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, opening April 29.

Intersting coincidence yesterday – while I was at the Bloor watching Constantine, The Constantines were playing across the street at Lee’s Palace. How freaky is that? Another intersting (to me) parallel was that last week, I was seeing a completely faithful film adaptation of a comic that should have been unfilmable (Sin City), whereas this week I was seeing a completely unfaithful film adaptation of a comic that should have been perfectly filmable. BUT. While I certainly set myself up to hate it, and even figured I’d regret parting with my hard-earned $4.25 to see it, I was pleasantly surprised.

As I feared/hoped, they gutted the John Constantine mythos so thoroughly that trying to compare it to the comics was pretty much futile and it could be enjoyed for what it was. I still think that a film based on the original stories could be excellent, but that’s moot now. Making Constantine’s primary motivation as seeking entry into Heaven isn’t nearly as interesting as keeping him a self-serving bastard, but I understand it. Los Angeles (which was quite obviously Vancouver) was also a reasonable setting if you were going to move the locale to America. The casting remains odd – Keanu thankfully doesn’t have to do too much in the title role and isn’t offensive, Gavin Rossdale comes off like a weird cross between Jude Law and Steve Carell and Peter Stormare is more mincing than menacing as Satan – but the special effects are quite decent and the film, as a whole, wasn’t awful. It wasn’t even bad. Not great, certainly, but you take what you can get. IMDB has some trivia about the making of the movie. Too bad they cut the character of Ellie out… Succubi are hot.

The Toronto Star (bugmenot: danshack49@yahoo.ca / 123456) has a fun piece about the phenomenon of hipster burnout in the Big Smoke. I would expect the local hipsters to begin condemning the right about now, but they have bigger things to whip them into an indignant frenzy. Today, the natives are buzzing about the sale of Can-indie ground zero, the 20Hz message boards, to new faux-indie, likely-corporate overlords. And this isn’t the good kind of buzz, more like the swarming of killer bees kind of buzz. I am astonished that someone has paid good cash for a basic phpBB message board – do they not realize that the rats will flee the ship at the first sign of corporatization or Hummer banner ad? Do they not realize who their audience is? Someone did NOT do their due diligence on this. It will be fun to see how it plays out.

I got my tax return! I’m buying a pony.

np – Mum / Finally We Are No One

Sad news – Scotland’s best cycling-obsessed band The Delgados are calling it quits. Bassist Stewart Henderson told the band at the start of 2005 that he did not want to make another album and rather than continue on without a founding member, they are amicably disbanding.

In his diary entry addressing the split, Henderson cites a familiar complaint – the lack of success proportional to the amount of work put into it. As much as it sometimes seems it’s a golden age for the indie artist, what with blogs, mp3s, zines, online communities and whatnot making it easier than ever to spread the word and occasionally creating a big breakout success, we need to be reminded that it’s still a fucking hard slog for 99% of the bands out there and we should appreciate and support them (morally, financially, however) whenever we can.

In tribute, a track from The Delgados’ The Great Eastern. If the band ever releases a compilation (or even better, a b-sides comp – hint hint), this is a shoo-in (sorry about the brief login, but Epitonic is your friend).

MP3: The Delgados – “American Trilogy”

Also, pics from a couple Toronto shows over the last couple years. I was a little on the fence about going to their last T.O. appearance in October, but am now really glad I did (October 2004, April 2003).

In the meantime, The BBC says “fuck amicable” – it yearns for the good old days where band break ups had the nastiness of a street fight.

The Decemberists May 21 show at Lee’s Palace has been moved to the Phoenix. It remains 19+, however. But in some good news, the band has recovered some of the instruments that were stolen from them last month. Not all of it, but apparently it was part of a larger criminal organization – their gear was found in the same house as a meth lab. Check out this photo of some of the happy band members with dudes from the hazmat team. Wackiness.

Jeff Tweedy has apparently become the go-to guy for spreading good vibes about file-sharing. He gives good quote to The BBC on the topic (via LHB) and Kottke.org has a conversation with Tweedy about copyrights in this day and age. Wilcoworld has the audio of the talk, entitled “Who Owns Culture?” available to stream, but do not reproduce, distribute, perform or display the materials without first obtaining the written permission of Major League Baseball.

Death Cab For Cutie’s major-label debut will be coming out in September. The band appeared on will appear on The O.C. last night April 21. That is all.

The 33 1/3 series of books has a blog. Neato.

I think I finally heard some Bravery at Miasma last night. Holy moley, I hope they’re sending their royalty cheques plus a written apology to New Order every month.

np – The Radio Dept / Pulling Our Weight

Good news from the land of Seattle’s Posies. Their new album – the first of new material since 1998’s Success and the subsequent breakup of the band – will be coming out on June 28 on Rykodisc, with extensive touring to follow.

Despite being technically defunct for the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, the band was just as prolific split up as they were together. Principals Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer played a series of acoustic shows in 2000 as The Posies to promote a box set and best-of compilation and which in itself yielded a live album and led to another studio EP. Auer and Stringfellow also released the Private Sides split EP in 2003, almost but not quite a proper reunion as the three songs each contributed was recorded independently. They’ve also both been part of the reconstituted Big Star since 1993 and are part of that band’s first new album since 1978, due out in late August/early Septermber (though I’ve not heard great things about it).

And in addition to the collaborative work, both Auer and Stringfellow are prolific solo artists – well, Stringfellow more than Auer but he’s more prolific than most mortals. In addition to the Posies, Big Star and his solo work, he’s also an almost-permenant member of REM (Who apparently turned 25 a couple days back? Happy birthday. Start making good music again, if you please). Auer, however, has been sitting on his Songs From The Year Of Our Demise for God knows how long now and with the upcoming Posies responsibilities, it has been pushed back till January 2006 at the earliest. Pity.

I admit I’m a johnny-come-lately to the Posies, starting with their Dream All Day compilation and working my way back to all of the albums (except Failure). Their songcraft is impeccable but I’ve always felt they suffered from the production and haven’t necessarily aged well sonically. But when you’re looking for pure pop goodness, you’ll not find many better. This live track, from indeterminate time and place, comes courtesy of the first decent band resource ever, www.theposies.net.

MP3: The Posies – “When Mute Tongues Can Speak”

And while I’m milking the mid-90s power-pop kick, Buffalo Tom are out of mothballs and working on new material. Bill Janovitz has been passing time doing the solo thing, writing a volume for the 33-1/3 series of books about Exile On Main Street and selling real estate.

Popmatters has a brief Q&A with Mr Iron & Wine, Sam Beam.

The Empires are playing Wavelength this Sunday night. I was fairly impressed when I saw them a couple months ago, I will try to make it out again this weekend to check them out again. Click the WL link for an interview. Check out their MySpace page.

This bands on MySpace thing fascinates me. Do they really administer their pages themselves or do they get someone to do it for them? Like, if I saw that The Wedding Present was online, could I instant message them and talk to Dave Gedge? Or would I get some Scopitones underling? I am too shy to find out.

Miasma tonight at SpaHa. Go, enjoy the music, but get loaded at home first – drinks there be expensive.

np – Yo La Tengo / A Smattering Of Outtakes And Rarities 1986-2000