The back-from-the-dead Family Guy will make it’s much-belated third-season premiere on May 1 at 9pm. WRITE IT DOWN.

Donewaiting’s SXSW blog has more info on acts performing at this year’s festival. One big name is Elvis Costello playing SXSW for the first time ever – I highly doubt I’ll get in to see that one. Part of me wants to start making a list of the acts I want to see and researching others, and the other part of me is saying why even bother. I’ll just walk around Austin and follow the smell of BBQ.

Arcade Fire did a session yesterday for KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, in which they performed a number of songs including a cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “Born On A Train”, which was also a staple of Lake Holiday’s set for, um, one show or so. But we did also do a nice recording of it which I don’t have online at the moment. Perhaps Five Seventeen will get around to uploading our second EP to his My Mean Magpie online label sometime in the near future? Update: Stereogum has an mp3 of their “Born On A Train” cover. Update 2: Bradley’s Almanac one-ups the Stereogum with the whole MBE set mp3-ed for your non-streaming enjoyment. Tip from Syntax Of Things. Coolfer weeps.

The Times is confounded by Feist. From Pop (All Love), who has also posted a column on the singer from the end of last year.

New Order spills the beans to NME about their new album Waiting For The Siren’s Call, out March 29. NME insists they clean them up.

Talk about ridiculous – Metric have added a fourth show at the Mod Club for January 24 – this one licensed – and I will bet you it is the same people who have bought tickets for the first three sold-out shows. It’s a vicious cycle, folks, and it won’t stop till someone is dead. Or broke. Or dead broke.

Hirsute Southern gentlemen The Kings Of Leon will be at the Opera House on March 2, with The Features as support.

Wavelength celebrates its fifth anniversary as ground zero for the Toronto indie-rock scene this year! To celebrate, they’re holding a weekend of eclectic shows from February 10 to 13 at a variety of venues. The lineups are too expansive for me to retype, so check out the post on 20Hz for the lowdown.

24 – I have to give credit to the producers this season – they’ve mastered the art of milking a dramatic moment just long enough but without crossing the line into incredulity. Jack and the cops? They got a cliffhanger out of it for last week’s episode, wrap it up, move on. The pacing this year is excellent – once again, this episode was taut start to finish. Giving Jack 10 minutes to get in and out and avoid a missile strike? Sure, why not. And I’ll admit it – when Beruz’s mom handed him the gun, I was almost yelling at the screen, “SHOOT HER! SHOOT HER! AND SHOOT YOUR DAD TOO!” Now how many television shows can drive a reasonable person to condoning patricide? Not nearly enough. Sooo good. And oh yeah… BYE CHLOE!!! End spoilers.

The Guardian looks at the science of determing what will and will not be a hit song. There is something fundamentally sinister about this technology. I picture it looking like a single giant red light embedded in a wall. Open the pod bay doors, HMI.

It was -23 this morning, -33 with the wind chill. THAT’S KELVIN, PEOPLE. My boogers will never unfreeze.

np – Trespassers William / Different Stars

First concert of the year! After my record-breaking 2004 calendar, I took almost exactly one month off, but it’s time to get back on the horse. Yee-haw.

It’s an odd thing to go see a show that’s promoting an album that you were present for the recording of. What was Neko Case going to do at the Toronto stop of her tour to support The Tigers Have Spoken, play the same songs she did last Spring at Lee’s Palace when she was making the record? Short answer, yes. The set list drew heavily from Tigers, with only a few older selections and one new track from the still-being-recorded new record thrown in. What this meant was that the show was cover-heavy, like the album, but light on originals. Not getting to hear favourites from Furnace Room Lullabye and Blacklisted was one of my only complaints about the Tigers making-of shows last year, though I understood why. This time, I was a little more disappointed by their omission – I mean, I’d already seen this show last year… But anyway, that’s the extent of my griping for last night. That and the relative brevity of the set. While they played for about an hour and fifteen total, that included a lot of chatter and tuning time. They actually ended the main set after 45 minutes!

But on to the good, and any time you get Neko Case and The Sadies (AKA on this night, Her Boyfriends) on the same stage, there’s gonna be lots of good. Neko’s voice was in marvelous form, helped along by Kelly Hogan on backing vocals. It’s worth noting that Neko was considerably more relaxed at this show than she was last time, where the pressures of making a live record were pretty obvious. This time, she was extremely jovial and chatty, bantering with Hogan (who was celebrating a birthday) like they were a veteran comedy team. The Sadies were a little more restrained supporting Neko than they usually are at their own shows, but they still tore it up on a few occasions and got to slip in their signature reading of the Benny Hill theme song. It was obvious everyone was having a good time playing this show – it’s just a shame it couldn’t have gone on longer. But if there’s one thing that can be accurately said, it’s that the live show sounded just like the album.

Opening things up was Johnny Dowd, who is seriously old-school. He seems like the kind of guy you’d feel compelled to call “sir”, even if you don’t call anyone “sir”. He and his band played a tight, half-hour set of swampy, grooving blues-country soul and brought Neko out to take vocals on a couple songs. Good, toe-tapping stuff.

With a month off between shows, I almost forgot how to use my camera. Thankfully, the Phoenix was well-lit last night, so getting back into the swing of things was fairly easy. Results here.

The Houston Chronicle talks to Tift Merritt. From LHB.

At long last, there’s news from the land of Longwave (also known as New York) – they’ve finally finished recording their third album There’s A Fire and are looking at a late April release, mad touring to follow.

Heavy Black Frames gets all hellfire and brimstone-like in reviewing Low’s The Great Destroyer, out next Tuesday. Repent!

Some shows: Out Hud is at the Horseshoe April 10. Xiu Xiu are at the Gladstone on June 25. Kids these days and their crazy band names. In my day, bands had proper names – like Screaming Trees, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins.

np – Six By Seven / :04

I read Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar in university, some seven or eight years ago, I think. Why? I don’t know – I do remember that it was the first piece of fiction I’d read in some time and that I got it from the university library, of all places. I honestly don’t remember too much of it, save that it was really kind of bleak and with a streak of black humour so subtle that if you weren’t looking for it, it was easy to miss. In a nutshell, the titular character is a Scottish girl who works in a supermarket. One day, she discovers her boyfriend has just completed his first novel and committed suicide. He leaves her instructions to hold his funeral and submit his book to a list of publishers. Instead, she disposes of the body, uses the funeral money to take a friend on holiday in Spain and submits the book as her own. Got it? Good, because that’s really about all there is to it. I don’t remember particularly liking it, but just thinking, “what an odd book”. I was more impressed that I’d chosen to spend the time on a piece of fiction rather than studying, but that’s another matter entirely.

So I was moderately surprised when I saw they’d made a film based on the book a couple years ago. I didn’t think there was nearly enough narrative in the novel to spin a film out of, and having now seen the film, I think I was correct. Director Lynne Ramsay pads the film with some nice shots of the Spanish countryside and some sequences perhaps intended to illustrate Callar’s state of mind, but when that state of mind is either utterly inscrutable or utterly vacant, that will only get you so far. Samantha Morton gives a good performance in the lead role, though I’m not sure how difficult “catatonic” is to pull off for 90 minutes. It’s an interesting directorial decision to do away any sort of score for the film – the only music to be heard is either environmental (ie- in a club) or heard via Morvern’s headphones. In the book, the mix tape and walkman left for her by her dead boyfriend plays a fairly large role in things – this prominence is maintained in the film, though I think they messed with the playlist some. On the whole, I didn’t dislike this movie – it didn’t make me angry or anything – it was just kind of pointless. There’s some plot at the beginning and the end, but the middle portion is left to the viewer to decide if anything is actually happening. Me, I’m not sure. I have theories as to what the themes and intent of the movie (and book) were, but they’re so subtle, it’s entirely possible I’m just up excuses for the author and director.

So yeah. This is what I get when all the copies of Anchorman are out.

Nothing else for today.

np – Sigur Ros / Agaetis Byrjun

An act new to me but starting to make a little noise in blog circles is Shivaree. Their decidedly two-edged claim to fame is having their song “Goodnight Moon” played over the closing scenes of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Volume 2. I don’t think there’s been a director in recent memory responsible for creating more one-hit wonders than Mr Tarantino… but I digress. With the release of their third record Who’s Got Trouble this past Tuesday, they’re hoping to earn some cred on their own.

Fronted by the absurdly good-looking and wonderfully named Ambrosia Parsley, Shivaree produce an eclectic and peculiar mix of country, soul, cabaret and pop styles that hinges on Parsley’s strangely innocent/sultry vocals. I find her voice oddly compelling, and the same actually goes for Shivaree’s music in general. I personally find it fascinating, but I don’t love it yet. Howerver, I want to – perhaps with time. I think I’ve seen many copies of their 1999 debut I Oughtta Give You A Shot In The Head For Making Me Live In This Dump (the title right there should give you an idea about the band’s aesthetic) in used bins, so maybe I’ll take a flyer on that. There’s not much chance of finding 2002’s Rough Dreams as it never got a North American release.

If you’re curious, the newly-redesigned Womenfolk ran a piece on Shivaree yesterday, complete with four mp3s. There’s also some not-great-quality streaming audio from their European label and this old performance at KCRW.

This Shivaree talk is topical not only because it let me post a picture of Ms Parsley, but because they’re playing two shows at the Lula Lounge on February 15 and 17, tickets $12. I may go to the Tuesday show as it’s an early one, and Lula Lounge is so far out in the middle of nowhere, it’ll take me hours to flag down a dogsled to get home.

The Toronto Star (bugmenot: wow@mail.com/sowhat) considers Feist’s chances for success in the US. Let It Die comes out on Interscope’s Cherry Hill imprint in American on April 5 and if the label has its way, there’ll be tours opening for Norah Jones, new album artwork, dance remixes, soundtrack carpet bombing, television appearances – but no McDonalds commercials. A line must be drawn. But I can’t help feeling a bit of trepidation here…

Related – Pop (All Love) points us to this piece on The O.C. effect for indie artists. The first salvo of the Feist invasion of America was an appearance of “Let It Die” on an episode of The O.C. last year. No, I didn’t see it.

More Neko Case love – The Chicago Sun-Time and Cleveland.com preview her tour for The Tigers Have Spoken. Links from LHB.

SXSW Baby! is a new group blog dedicated to getting folks primed and educated to get the most out of SXSW this year. The excellent music festival guide comes courtesy of Kathryn Yu. A good resource, I’ll be visiting often.

For anyone laying bets on what I ended up doing last night, the smart money should have been on d) falling asleep on the couch listening to Lush at 9PM. I am a party animal, oh yes I am.

np – Sufjan Stevens / Seven Swans

Thanks to More Cowbell for directing me to this edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, which previews a number of albums due to come out in 2005, complete with commentary. There’s short clips linked directly from the page or you can listen to the whole show which has longer clips in many cases. The most noteworthy inclusion in their playlist is the new Son Volt album, which is still untitled but has an August release date.

As far as I know, this is the first look (listen) at the new Son Volt’s output anywhere, unless you were watching the in-studio webcam and reading lips (the one time I tuned in, Jay was sitting on a couch. Woo!). The two songs they feature, “Afterglow 61” and “Bandages and Scars”, sound good. It’s nice to hear Jay rocking again. On a related note, The San Diego Union-Tribune talks to Farrar about the reunion that never was and the new band that was. From Syntax Of Things.

That pic of the new Son Volt lineup is, like, the first one this week I’ve used that’s not either black and white or featuring people holding guns.

Some upheavals in Decemberists land – drummer Rachel Blumberg has left the band on the eve of the release of third album Picaresque to concentrate on her other band, Norfolk and Western. While this is unfortunate – one of the highlights of their show at the Horseshoe last year was Rachel running out from behind the kit to cover her vocal parts on “The Tain” before running back to pick up the sticks again – the void she’s leaving is being filled by a couple of very capable replacements. John Moen, who also plays with Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks, and Petra Haden, of That Dog and countless other bands, are the newest additions to the Decemberists lineup. Tour dates for Picaresque have been announced for the west coast and midwest – nothing for us Easterners yet. We will, however, get to see Norfolk and Western as they’re going on tour with M Ward and also doubling as his backing band. I assume this includes his February 27 show at the El Mocambo.

Neko Case tells JAM! why the Virginian feels like a Canadian.

If I can be so inclined to go out tonight – and I may – there’s a couple local shows that have my interest, both of the dream-pop variety. Down at the Drake, Hamilton’s A Northern Chorus are holding a video fundraiser to support their new album Bitter Hands Resign, which is out April 12. They’re playing with Alive and Living and Mayor McCa. In the other corner, we have blueScreen, who also gaze at shoes but whose sound is a little more old-school. They’re playing with sludge rockers Nice Cat at Sneaky Dee’s.

ANC builds their wall of sound through orchestration, blueScreen through old 4AD records and chorus pedals. You can check out their respective New Music Canada pages (with song samples) here and here. I’ll let you know tomorrow what I decide on, or if I just stay home and read a book.

np – Ambulance Ltd / LP