Sanctuary Records continues to corner the market as the official archivists of anything Creation. After releasing compilations for Slowdive and Hurricane #1 (?!?), the next Creation acts to have their respective vaults raided are Liverpool’s Boo Radleys and Oxford’s Swervedriver. The Boos’ Anthology and Swervies’ Juggernaut Rides will both be out on February 28 in the UK, and presumably follow the pattern of including both singles and rarities.

If you were to draw out their respective styles Venn diagram-like, they’d both intersect the shoegaze circle, but the Boos would also have a foot in the Britpop grouping while Swerverdriver had a fair bit of rock in their recipe. Even their common ground was pretty different, the Boo Radleys trading in melodic pop wrapped in walls of fuzz, Swervedriver in a leaner, more driving psychedelic sound. Both had brief windows of success (Giant Steps and Wake Up! were critical and commercial hits, respectively, and Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head is fairly essential), but never quite managed to establish themselves as much more than also-rans in the annals of music history. Which is a shame, cause they both had some great tunes – mayhap the compilations will earn them some critical reappraisals. I may look to pick up the Swervies one if they become available over here – I’ve only got Mezcal Head and their other albums are somewhat difficult to find. The Boos, I’ve got loads of their stuff already, don’t really need any more to be honest.

Neither act is currently active, the Boos officially disbanded and Swerverdriver on indefinite hiatus. Since the Boos split, guitarist and songwriter Martin Carr has been plugging away under the name of Brave Captain while Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin now operates as Toshack Highway. Oh, and if you wanted some Swervedriver stuff, they’ve got live versions of all their albums available to download, gratis, on their website.

The New York Times tries to figure out just who Nellie McKay is. Via Pop (All Love).

TTIKTDA offers up an aural history of Colin Meloy. And for everyone who’s been trading leaked copies of Picaresque, Colin is very very disappointed in you.

Moving Units will be supporting The Secret Machines at the Mod Club February 2, and Autolux should also be on that tour but I haven’t seen them listed for the Toronto show yet. Also, Hood from Leeds, England are at the Drake on March 15, tickets $10. Either of these shows worth my attention?

NME lists off some of the confirmed acts for SXSW this year. Getting tingly!

According to this Chicago Sun-Times piece on the massive tastemaking influence of Pitchfork (read in as much sarcasm as you see fit), Arcade Fire – the darlings of the indie rock world and the most hyped act since, um, The Beatles, have sold a whopping 28,000 units in the USA. I don’t really have a perspective on what is and isn’t a lot of units sold, but that seems awful low to me. Like, Britney Spears probably sells that many from a single Wal-Mart store.

Nominations for the 2005 Bloggies are open. You’ll note they’ve folded several categories, including “Best Music”, into a new single category, “Best Entertainment”. I’m not gonna be all disingenuous here and pretend I wouldn’t like to be nominated again – I’m itching for a rematch with Moby. However, with the broader category definition, I imagine there’ll be tougher competition for nominations let alone prizes. Oh well, we do what we can do. You know, looking over the nomination form, I realize just how few different blogs I actually read. Sad, really.

np – Interpol / Antics

Welcome back from holidays, everyone. Unless you’re still on holidays, in which case a pox on your house.

Poptones poses their always entertaining Questions Of Doom to “indie-chanteuse” (their words, not mine) Rachel Goswell. She talks about the recent Catch The Breeze anthology, the transition from Slowdive to Mojave 3 and what’s been spinning on her stereo lately (Jesse Sykes and Drive-By Truckers!). There’s also this slightly older but much longer and in-depth interview with Penny Black Music that covers almost the entire history of Slowdive and M3, including the admission that “A lot of Slowdive’s lyrics were rubbish. Why do you think we never printed the lyrics on the sleeves?”

I have to admit, when her long-awaited solo album Waves Are Universal came out last June, I was a little disappointed. The weight of expectation was pretty heavy, what with her vocal contributions on Spoon & Rafter being pretty minimal and her one lead vocal on Excuses For Travellers’ “Bringing Me Home” being so sublime. Hell, even the lead-in EP The Sleep Shelter was pretty good. Yet Waves somehow left me feeling disappointed – it was so delicate and so fey. I guess I was looking for something with the haunting power of the best Slowdive tracks or Ask Me Tomorrow, not the mainly acoustic, pastoral record that I got. However, with time, I’ve been able to appreciate Waves for what it is – a very pretty, if still somewhat slight folk record. I guess there’s something to realizing that her singing Neil Halstead’s songs are something quite different from her singing her own songs. Still, I hope that we’ll be hearing more of her on the new Mojave 3 record due out sometime this year.

MP3: Rachel Goswell – “Sleepless & Tooting”

Filter is streaming the new Doves single, “Black and White Town”, taken from the new album Some Cities out March 1.

The Secret Machines play the Mod Club on February 2, and I’m not just telling you that because Warner Bros. asked me to.

I said I wasn’t going to link any more 2004 posts, but when they’re as great as Brooklynvegan’s best shows of 2004 (complete with photos and live mp3s), I have to make an exception. Just another reminder of why I would probably die of exhaustion in under a month if I lived in New York City.

I went rock climbing last night for the first time, and while I don’t necessarily hurt as much as I’d expected, I am concerned about the fact that my hands are fucked up. There’s little gripping strength in either this morning, which is fine, I expected that, but my left middle finger has no strength in it whatsoever and I can’t even bend it all the way in. There’s no pain or anything when I try, it just won’t do it. Typing is a little hit or miss this morning, but considering I also call my left hand my fretting hand, I’m a little panicked. Someone tell me this will get better in a day or two. Seriously.

This is what I get for trying something new.

Update: I have slowly been getting mobility in my finger back over the course of the morning. Thank GOD.

np – Swervedriver / Mezcal Head

Newsarama talks to Grant Morrison about his upcoming All-Star Superman with Frank Quitely, which will feature the big blue banana in stories outside the continuity of his regular title. The All-Star imprint is DC’s response to Marvel’s wildly successful “Ultimate” universe (which, in brief, was a ground-zero reboot of their classic characters, sans the decades of continuity baggage that hangs around the necks of the regular titles like so much albatrosses). Other titles in the line will include All-Star Batman & Robin by Jim Lee and a writer TBA (Frank Miller is probably too much to hope for) and there are rumours of Adam Hughes turning his pencils to All-Star Wonder Woman.

The Incredible Hulk makes some new year’s resolutions.

Some good mojo from Neil Gaiman for the coming year:

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

Dead Meadow are in town March 30 at a venue to be determined in support of their new album Feathers, out February 22 on Matador. Italy’s Jennifer Gentle support.

If I hadn’t declared a moratorium on 2004 year-in-reviews, I would direct you to Zoilus’ piece from this weekend’s Globe & Mail. But I did, so I won’t. Sorry Carl.

np – Pacific UV / Pacific UV

Happy New Year. You’ve just awoken to a world without Guided By Voices. Think about that for a moment. Then continue.

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions since I never keep New Year’s resolutions, but since this has been on my mind a bit of late and it’s timely, I’ll call this one a New Year’s resolution. I hereby resolve, in 2005, to seek out and support more new and up-and-coming bands/artists, both local and non-local. You see, it seems that all my favourite bands are breaking up and/or dying (see lead item), and this is not a trend I find agreeable.

Okay, this is a gross overstatement, but there is a fundamental kernel of truth in there. I look at my shopping list, and sometimes there’s more archival releases and reissues than new records, or albums from artists who are, honestly speaking, past their best before date and I’m buying their stuff out of some sense of obligation or completist-itis. Sometimes it seems my concert calendar consists of more big-ticket reunion tours or bands I’ve already seen numerous times rather than something new. I don’t want to be that classic rock guy who thinks everything’s been crap since 1992 (though that was a watershed year for music… okay, stay on message here). I’ve seen that guy. His hygiene is bad. I don’t want to be that guy. Mind you, I don’t want to be a trend-chaser either, and look back at my CD collection in a year or two and see it filled with flash-in-the-pans and overhyped buzz bands with no substance.

So what does this mean, practically speaking? I don’t know, really. I guess it means paying attention to stuff I haven’t heard of, to move out of my comfort zone, so to speak. Taking the time to not only sample new stuff but give it a proper chance to worm its way into my consciousness. Not taking local acts for granted. Not be so damned cynical about trying new stuff sometimes. Ah, this probably all sounds really vague to you, but I know what it means. Will I be able to do it? We’ll see.

I also resolve to stop kicking cats. This one will be a little tougher.

Junkmedia interviews Win Butler of Arcade Fire. Geez, don’t you know that Arcade Fire is soooo 2004? Get with the program.

Ink 19 offers a cartoon farewell to Luna. It’s even better if you imagine it being read by Christopher Walken. “Schooch closer, children…”

The Beat has an extensive look at 2004 as it pertained to the comic book industry. A good read, and that’s it for the 2004 retrospectives, honest.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched the extended version of The Return Of The King , seeing as how I had four hours or so to kill. MAN that’s a long movie. Then in the evening, I went to a humdinger of a shin-dig at Casa Del T-Bone of 10:51AM fame. Oh yeah, that’s another of my New Year’s resolutions – to talk like a 70-year old man whenever possible. Ya damn whippersnappers.

So who came by today hoping to see my shiny new redesign? HAHAHAHAHAHA… oh that’s rich. Someday, my pets. Someday.

np – Spiritualized / The Complete Works Volume One

Okay, just who is Bright Eyes’ PR guy? Cause he’s certainly earning his gruel this month. Conor Oberst’s watery eyes are inescapable on the newsstands now – check out cover stories in Harp, Filter, Under The Radar, Seventeen, Tiger Beat, Non-Threatening Boys… and now I’ve put him as the lead item in my final post of the year! Very crafty Mr PR Man, very crafty. You win this round, you magnificent bastard. Well, since ’05 is looking like it’s going to be the year of Bright Eyes, I may as well get on the bandwagon now.

You know, when I look at the sort of dreck that Rolling Stone has been covering all year, and then look at their writers’ year-end lists, I almost feel sorry for them. I don’t doubt that these guys have good to great musical taste, but are stuck reporting on Lindsay Lohan’s nip slips and Paris Hilton’s abortion of a singing career (take THAT Google spiders!).

Metacritic presents their top-scoring albums of 2004 along with a bit of a site facelift.

So another year has come and gone… I shrugged off doing any sort of wrap-up last year, but am feeling in the mood this time around – you know, like those form letters you get from relatives around the holidays talking about how little Bobby had his first tooth, Amanda got the lead in the school play and Uncle Leroy might make bail this time? Let’s do it categorically, shall we?

Musically (and that’s relative to me, musically, not music in general), it was a bit of a disappointment. My band kind of staggered from the start of the year and finally crashed and burned in October. Okay, that’s a bit melodramatic, but it was still sad to see it all end after almost three years. It’s not quite over yet, as the album we recorded is still due out next year sometime, but for me it’s a final document. Ironically, being band-less has been the most creatively liberating thing to happen to me in a long time – it’s now just a matter of finding a proper outlet. Finding a new band has been a mildly frustrating experience but things are looking up for 2005. More on that as it develops. And music in general? In numbers – 167 CDs purchased this year, 52 concerts attended. Madness.

Personally – a bit of an up and down year. I had a wonderful flood in January, turning my apartment into a serene reflecting pool. Amazingly, there was no permenant damage to anything – just an unbelievably stressful day. That whole mortality thing also smacked me right in the face when barely a week after that, one of my close friends from home was in an auto accident and left in a coma for almost two months. He’s doing really well now – just went out with him on Wednesday – but it was touch and go for a while and truly one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. After years of being teased for never leaving the downtown Toronto core let alone the 416, I finally got some travelling done venturing to Las Vegas, Vancouver/Victoria/Seattle and Chicago in three separate trips. Hardly world travel, but still quite an achievement for me. What else… not too much. Work is good. My brother got engaged. I grow weary of basement life but will be addressing that in the Spring one way or another. I’m turning 30 next year and planning a good old fashioned freak-out of biblical proportions. It’ll be grand.

Oh, and I got my wisdom teeth out. Ouchie.

And the blog. Up until about mid-January, I just plugged along, doing my thing, when all of a sudden my traffic spiked on January 19 when I was nominated for two Bloggie awards. As I said at the time, that was the first time it really dawned on me that people actually read this thing and while I won’t necessarily changed the way I went about this thing, I will admit that I appreciated the attention and began taking it that much more seriously. Since then, my average traffic has more than tripled, the amount of time I spend on this blasted thing has also gone up not insignificantly, and it’s really now a second full-time job. But you know what? I don’t mind one bit – this thing has introduced me to all sorts of great music and people and the days that it seems more like work than fun are few and far between. I think I missed posting all of two days this year, which really speaks more to my obsessive-compulsive disorder rather than any sense of dedication. Regardless, I trundle on and fully expect to do so through 2005 unless I, like, get a life or a girlfriend or a puppy or something. But until that day, my pathos is your gain! Dig in!

But seriously, I love you guys. Thanks for making this fun and worthwhile and I’ll see you in 2005. Cheers.

np – Spiritualized / The Complete Works Volume Two