A reminder that the bonus EP for Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born is supposed to be made available for free on their website today. I’m not sure of the specifics on how you’re supposed to access them, but it’ll either be a link from the CD-ROM material on the physical copy of youre Ghost CD (you do own the CD, don’t you?) or, if it works the same way that the More Like The Moon downloads worked a couple years ago, you’ll follow a link off the website to a protected page that you’ll have to enter the catalog number off the CD case or something to enter. Either way, today’s the day.

Update: Go here for the downloads. You need your Ghost CD to access. Thanks to Between Thought & Expression for the legwork.

The vinyl edition of the album is also out today, and it sports new artwork that looks a little something like the piccy here.

Also new – the video for Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies)”. A real one this time. How do I know it’s real? MTV has it, and who know more about videos than them? From Arcadefire.net, your one stop shop for Arcade Fire news and kosher groceries.

PopMatters conducts separate interviews with Low’s Zak Sally and Alan Sparkhawk. Maybe they were hoping one would start dishing dirt on the other… “Zak hasn’t bathed in three months. Swear to God”. “Alan keeps his toenail clippings in a little TicTac container. It’s disgusting. I think he talks to them”.

Pitchfork claims exclusive on the details to Sufjan Stevens’ next album, which is out July 5 and takes him back to his ambitious 50 albums about 50 states project. Next up, Illinois.

The New York Times (Bugmenot: kmhybutt / homer) looks at a couple of international-flavoured acts on the New York scene, Brazilian Girls and Ivy. Don’t know anything about the former, but I got the new Ivy album this weekend and initial impressions are that is sounds a lot like Dominique and Andy’s more “rock” sideproject Paco, but still very smooth and polished. Maybe a little bit too much so, but still pleasant listening.

Need an excuse to stay in town Canada Day weekend this year? Feist will be playing at Harbourfront Centre on July 1. No other details yet.

Stream Matt Pond PA’s OC-approved cover of “Champagne Supernova” (Windows Media or Quicktime), taken from the fourth volume of Music From The OC. Matt Pond PA are at Sneaky Dee’s on May 5, the OC album is out April 5.

Take one part hate-on for the NME’s choice of coverage and one part basic HTML skills, combine for amusing results.

There’s a new Sin City trailer… check it out here. April 1 cannot come soon enough…

24: Oh look, the terrorists have yet another endgame in the works. I’m shocked. So this is what Tony’s thinking: Man, when I woke up this morning, I was an unemployed, soccer-watching skid bedding down with a skeezy waitress. Now I’m head of CTU again. This is what we call a good day… Oh look, my ex-wife. HA. Also worthy of filing under “HA”: Oh no, telephone lines and cellular service around the McLennan-Forester building is unstable because of the power being drawn by the EMP! Thank God we still have MSN Messenger!

np – Saturday Looks Good To Me / All Our Summer Songs

Something of an inspired double-bill last night at the Horseshoe – A Girl Called Eddy and Keren Ann don’t have a whole lot in common, but they went together quite nicely. Compare and contrast New Jersey’s A Girl Called Eddy’s lush, lovelorn Bacharachian pop and Keren Ann’s delicate Gallic chamber folk. Wide-eyed innocence versus world-weary heartache. From that thematic point of view, it would have made more sense to have Keren Ann open things up, but I guess she rates as the bigger name so she got the closing timeslot.

I got a sneak preview of the night’s entertainment yesterday afternoon at Soundscapes where A Girl Called Eddy played a brief but excellent in-store set. Playing as a three-piece, her band had a whole lot of equipment for just three songs, but I’m not complaining – even in the stripped-down format, they shined. I got a few pics, but sadly, my camera technique appears better suited to dark clubs than record stores… Anyway, it certainly whetted my appetite for the evening’s performance.

They got a decent 50-minute set in last night, drawing mainly from her self-titled album but with a few new numbers thrown into the mix. Erin Moran has an amazingly emotive voice that tells as much of the story as her lyrics do, it’s really something to behold. Dusty Springfield is the obvious reference point (and Moran knows it, just look at her stage name), but from my frame of reference, there was more than a little Aimee Mann in her delivery. It’s a shame they couldn’t afford to tour with a drummer, as while the trio did an admirable job of filling out the arrangements on most of the material, the more dramatic numbers like “Tears All Over Town” and “Golden” really could have been put over the top with a real drummer instead of programmed beats. Ah well, perhaps next time.

Keren Ann, on the other hand, was touring as a two-piece – just herself on acoustic guitar and a keyboardist behind a wall of equipment. That was more than enough to recreate the lovely sparseness of her first English-language album, Not Going Anywhere, and some material from her forthcoming record Nolita, due out next week. While the roadhouse environs of the Horseshoe were a bit at odds with the hushed folk music being performed, the audience was impressively quiet and appreciative throughout the show that you didn’t really notice you weren’t in a small European jazz club with those little candles on the tables.

You know what Keren Ann’s music reminds me of? Disney soundtracks. Not the awful Elton John/Phil Collins tripe that they win Oscars with nowadays, but the old school, simple classic songs from the original cartoon features. If I close my eyes while listening to her stuff, I can picture the animated woodland creatures peeking out from behind the trees. And she almost looks like a dewey-eyed Disney ingenue. Of course, I mean this all in the most flattering sense.

So quite a good show of different but wholly complimentary singer-songwriters last night. I think I would have preferred a longer set from A Girl Called Eddy (and a drummer), but I won’t complain – I feel quite lucky to have gotten to see both these artists on the same bill. Here are some pics from right up front. It’s a shame the microphone was right in front of Keren Ann’s face, I had no angle on that whatsoever. And for the record, I was not the dude with the camera flashes that pissed off the keyboardist.

If you haven’t gotten your fill of smoky female vocals, head down to Lee’s Palace on April 10 to catch Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter. They were pretty good last time through at the Rivoli, so this could be one to see, though I wonder if they’re playing with someone else? Their free show at the Rivoli in September wasn’t really packed, so moving to a venue three-and-a-half times the size might be a little ambitious?

And speaking of the Rivoli, M Doughty will be there on May 10. The bastard never emailed me back about a guitar he was selling.

Splendid talks to Jens Lekman about his first North American tour which will bring him to town to play Wavelength next Sunday and a Soundscapes in-store that afternoon at 4.

Maybe they should have called it Moving Target… New Order’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call has had it’s North American release pushed back a couple weeks to April 26… which I think is where it was originally scheduled. Make up your minds, people. But! It will contain an exclusive mix of “Guilt Is A Useless Emotion”. If that matters to you.

And also on the calendar, albeit a long ways off, the new Idlewild album, Warnings/Promises, appears to have been given an August 16 North American release. If you can’t wait, you can get the UK edition from CDWow for 8.75 GBP, postpaid. Me, I can probably wait. Who knows – maybe the domestic edition will have an exclusive mix! I guess that means no North American tour till probably the Fall…

I am going to have some soup.

np – Ivy / In The Clear

Sick today. I’ve got most of today’s post already written, and will finish it up later after I’ve gotten some more sleep. Do not adjust your set. Thank you.

– The Management

Check out the wealth of goodies now posted at the V For Vendetta website. They held a press conference last week in advance of the start of filming tomorrow with producers Joel Silver and Grant Hill, director James McTeigue, lead actor James Purefoy and my secret girlfriend Natalie Portman wherein they discuss their plans to adapt the legendary Alan Moore/David Lloyd graphic novel to film. There’s a transcript of the whole thing and if you don’t like to read – and come on, who does? – there are also select video clips. Perhaps the most revelatory thing to come out of the to-do is the fact that Natalie will be shaving her head for the role. My goodness, I wonder how much those locks would go for on eBay…?

A bit surprised at the director on this one – I had thought the Wachowski brothers were going to be behind the camera, but they’re just given producer credits. Instead they’ve got McTeigue, whose credits to date amount to first- and second-director credits on the Matrix and Star Wars prequel films, but who appears to be a rookie when it comes to being the main guy. Hrmmm. So he’s got a lot of experience making big, loud, empty films. That doesn’t bode well.

And related – Newsarama has an essay from British comics columnist Rich Johnson about “Why V For Vendetta Matters – Especially Now”, wherein he considers the post-9/11 world, how it relates to the fascist London portrayed in the comic and the question of whether America is ready to accept a terrorist as hero. It predictably sets off a shitstorm of responses. I remember reading a discussion sometime in late 2001 of whether or not V would ever be made into a film because of the touchiness of that very idea. I was in the camp of those who thought it would not – remember, this was a time when radio stations were pulling John Lennon’s “Imagine” from playlists for fear of offending someone. The likelihood of anyone making a film about an individual trying to take down the government seemed remote at best. Guess not. Maybe it’s okay since it’s the British government in the crosshairs and not the American…? Anyway, I need to re-read V For Vendetta. And if you haven’t read it yet, you really should.

As I reported earlier, the good news is that Six By Seven’s last album, :04 (and it’s companion album Left Luggage At The Peveril Hotel), will finally be getting a North American release on May 2. The better news is that the band has just announced they will have ANOTHER studio album ready for release in the UK on May 23. I’m all for more music from great bands, but geez – apparently keeping the colonies months behind on releases isn’t good enough, we actually have to be albums behind.

There’s finally some firm info on the new Pernice Brothers record. It’s called Discover A Lovelier You and it’ll be in stores June 14. Expect Joe to preview songs from it when he plays the Horseshoe on May 4.

People have been asking me what I’m doing for my 30th birthday. Well, I now have an answer – I will be at Lee’s Palace seeing The Mountain Goats! Yay. That’s May 11, for those of you who don’t already have my birthday on your calendars. Their new album, The Sunset Tree, is out April 26. See 517? All these years without, you move away and they finally come to town. YOU KEPT THEM AWAY.

A quick reminder that A Girl Called Eddy is doing an instore at Soundscapes this afternoon at 4. I just picked up her self-titled album on Friday, and it’s quite nice. Everyone mentions it when talking about the record, but Richard Hawley’s production really is excellent. I wonder how much of the lushness they’ll be able to reproduce live? I guess I’ll find out tonight at the Horseshoe where she plays a co-headline show with France’s Keren Ann. If you’re going, A Girl Called Eddy is scheduled for 9:45 and Keren Ann for 11.

In anticipation of moving in a couple months, I finally got off my duff yesterday and sold off a huge whack of CDs that had been collecting dust on my shelves for over a year now. With it went many of the last vestiges of my blues and Britpop phases and now I’m left with what I consider to be a pretty respectable music collection that’s still going to herniate me to move. This is one of the very few times I look at my teeming shelves and think maybe the iPod crew has the right idea. But then I come to my senses.

np – Doves / Some Cities

I’d been waiting to see Steve Earle live for quite a while now, so having to stand outside the Palais Royale in the cold for forty minutes wasn’t that bad… but it wasn’t good, either. But eventually the huge lineup worked its way into the venue, to which it was my first time visiting. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all – it was far less… glamorous? than I was expecting. Basically a banquet hall that seemed much smaller than its 1250 capacity would imply.

One upside of having to wait so long to get in was that it made the wait inside for the show to start seem that much shorter. Opening act Allison Moorer took the stage promptly at 9:15 and played a surprisingly short solo acoustic set. It was interesting to see her perform in that format since the last couple times I saw her, it was with a full rock band. I think I actually preferred her solo, it kept the focus on her amazing voice. She wrapped up her set after just a half hour, but it certainly wasn’t her last appearance of the night as she took vocals on a number of Earle’s songs.

Taking the stage to Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, Steve Earle & The Dukes showed up ready to play – and for the next two and a half hours, play they did. Starting out with the title track from his latest The Revolution Starts… Now and segueing right into “Home To Houston”, the Dukes were a finely-tuned rock machine from the word go. The tone of the night was unmistakably political, drawing heavily from the last two albums including Revolution in its entirety, but Earle was careful to play to all parts of his audience with a middle set heavy with “chick songs” (his words, not mine), a bluegrass number, a whack of covers (The Beatles’ “Revolution”, Townes Van Zandt’s “Brand New Companion”, George Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity”, The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today” and The Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia”, the last three of which featured Allison Moorer on vocals) and of course the Skinny Steve Earle (Mark 1) classics like “Copperhead Road”, “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied”, “Guitar Town”, though those were mostly saved for the encore. He was going to give the yahoos what they wanted, but they were gonna have to wait. And as an aside, I was pleased to see Steve has joined the cult of the Jazzmaster, strapping one of those on for much of the night alongside his Epi Casinos and Gretsches. The man has sublime taste in guitars.

But of course, when you see a Steve Earls show, you’re not just getting the music. It was 40 minutes in before he broke out the first of several monologues – I won’t call them banter because they were obviously well prepared in advance – about revolution, politics, praise for Canada, you know – the usual. So while the content was predictable, it was still earnest and inspiring (unless you were a righty who just wanted to hear “Copperhead Road”, then it was probably annoying but that’s your tough beans). He actually didn’t talk as much as I’d expected or wanted, he’s a very entertaining and engaging speaker, but maybe he got a lot of that out of his system at his CMW lecture earlier in the day. I would have liked to hear him go off on Kim Campbell, though.

Thankfully, while the aesthetics of the Palais Royale may have been a little disappointing, the sound wasn’t – everything came through loud and clear and the sightlines were okay though the crowd was unusually tall. Actually, they were just plain unusual. With the banquet hall-ish venue, it was like a redneck wedding. I saw people drinking to excess, smoking up, getting into fights and generally being rowdy and rude. I’ve never been unceremoniously shoved aside at a show so many times in my life. It’s a whooole different sort of concert ettiquite at these shows, lemme tell ya. But I do thank them for making me feel really young for a change. Median age of the crowd must have been around 40-something. But except for the occasional jostle, no one really bugged me excessively. Except for the guy standing beside me who thought he was edifying everyone around him but declaring very loudly, “He’s a troubadour! A hardcore troubadour!”, over and over again. He ran out of material after a little while and settled for being one of the really loud “Whoo!!!!” guys. Dick.

No photos. Though I did smuggle the camera in, I really wasn’t in the mood to fight my way through the crowd up to the front, so I took, as they say, the night off. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and enjoy the music.

The Boston Herald talks to M Ward about the death of radio. From LHB.

It’s a special “goodbye” issue of CBC Radio 3 web magazine this week as they fold up shop after 105 issues. Publicairwaves.ca reports on the official reasoning for folding the publication and Soulshine ponders just what it means. Who knows, maybe the new site, in whatever form it eventually takes, will be just as good or better. But in the meantime, we’ll just be a little sad.

It’s been blogged everywhere already, but it’s good so I’ll join the pile-on. Superman is a dick.

np – A Girl Called Eddy / A Girl Called Eddy