Every once in a while I get a taste of some new band that’s exactly what I’m hankering for at that point in time, and I get all obsessive-like. Current title-holder, Athens, Georgia’s Pacific UV, whose website is currently down. They’ve been getting some chatter on The Big Takeover mailing list, so I downloaded a copy of their 2003 self-titled album and am very much digging their blend of warm, melodic, spacey, drone rock with just the right amount of electronic flourishes. It’s just the stuff to make me forget it’s not a million degrees below zero outside – hell, even the band name sounds warm. MP3.com has some tantilizingly brief snippets, if you’re curious. The album is out on The Warm Supercomputer but hopefully since it’s distributed by Touch and Go, it won’t be hard to turn up a legit copy. While the album is decidedly on the mellower, prettier side, apparently their live show is considerably more thunderous. Hope I get the chance to verify that sooner or later.

Splendid chats it up with everyone’s favourite hip kids, The Arcade Fire.

John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is asked to compile a year-end list. Instead, he writes an essay.

Pitchfork begins their holiday programming with their top 50 reissues of the year. Still to come – best singles and albums. That’s right boys, milk it. Milk it goooooood.

CBC Radio 3 goes all retrospective with their year-end issue and tallies up the best indie Canadian talent with their “Best of New Music Canada” feature. And speaking of best Canaidan music of the year, The National Post’s Aaron Wherry solicited “Best Canadian albums of 2004” lists from a variety of bloggers and music-writerly folk for the purposes of compiling another list – because god knows we need more lists. Here’s the final tally. I forget what my list was, exactly.

And if you’re not all listed out, The Guardian’s music critics has compiled their own lists. From Pop (All Love).

The Toronto Star (BugMeNot: orkillme@hotmail.com/thestar) takes a look behind the curtain at the two lovable scamps at Penny Arcade. I’m not a gamer but I love this strip – there’s enough universal geek language to appeal. Here’s some recent faves, if you’re unfamiliar with ’em.

What’s going on with all the bit torrent sites dying out? Alas poor Suprnova, we hardly knew ye. Update: A Suprnova RIP FAQ.

np – Mojave 3 / Ask Me Tomorrow

You say you want a revolution? …Okay, not really – that was for Aaron’s benefit. Har. Moving on.

Next time I go to a show, I read the ticket correctly for the doors time, and don’t show up 45 minutes early (which ended up being an hour by the time they did let people in). But at least I was first one in. But, as it turned out, there was no opener at all which meant even more waiting for the show to start. I had pretty much contemplated the meaning of life and was about partway through the universe when Chris Seligman and some techs came onstage just past nine and heaved his Korg Triton keyboard into place and furiously began patching it in.

It turns out that the keyboard had died an icy death shortly beforehand and they needed an old priest and a young priest to get things worked out, hence the delay. Whether this scotched an opener or not – the stage wasn’t really set up for any other act – we’ll never know. It’s a shame that they had to soundcheck the keyboards during the set, essentially ruining the first half of opener “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” – you could see the panic on everyone’s faces when they began as the synths were about two or three times louder than anything else in the mix. The band gamely carried on though, and all was sorted out within a few minutes. For there on, it was all smooth sailing.

Touring with a miniature string and brass section and a second guitarist, the band that shook the Mod Club last night was a far cry from the outfit that I saw play Blow-Up four years ago, or even opening for Broken Social Scene last March. Playing a setlist that pulled together the best moments from Heart and Set Yourself On Fire, Stars put on a far better show than I was honestly expecting. Both Amy and Torq have focused their on-stage charisma considerably and their harmonies are just lovely. I find the polished sound of their studio albums really benefit from the extra edge and muscle of the live performance, it gives it that extra necessary oomph.

I gotta say, watching the show last night I was really struck by how much absurdly good music is coming out of this city and country right now. I don’t usually play flag-waver or anything, but MAN. Oh Canada. Les photos est ici. The Mod Club did me a favour by keeping the light pyrotechnics to a minimum, favouring a really nice blue colour scheme for most of the show. Nice.

And that’s it – my last concert of 2004. Barring something cool showing up unexpectedly, that’s it for a month for me. Want some numbers for the past 12 months? 52 concerts. FIFTY. TWO. That’s one a week, dontcha know (though more often than not, two or three in four days, etc). That’s nuts. N. U. T. Z. I gotta get myself a life, no two ways about it.

Starflyer 59 release yet another new album, Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice, on April 12.

Todd McFarlane Productions files for bankruptcy. IT’S CALLED KARMA, TODD. Ha ha ha.

So some readers mentioned to me that I had gotten a mention in Mac-centric music mag Playlist this month, so while finishing up my Christmas shopping yesterday I stopped into a Chapters to check it out. Sure enough, there was an article on mp3 blogs and yours truly was in the sidebar, number three with a tracer bullet. Neat. I considered picking up a copy for my archives, but it really wasn’t worth the $8 to me – I mean, it’s published by Mac. The article on “Best mp3 Players” probably read something like, “iPod! iPod Mini! iPod Photo! You love Steve Jobs!” Blah blah blah.

It’s -15 out? What the hell is that? What the hell what the hell? And I have to go outside today? What the hell what the hell? God, this is gonna suck.

np – Mogwai / Come On Die Young

Last night was the Rainbow Quartz Christmas party at the 360, and even though they’re technically based out of Detroit, they have enough (read: two) Torontonian acts on their roseter to justify an out-of-town bash. Entertaining the folks on this eve were RQ veterans The High Dials, rookies The Frontier Index and non-roster invitees Showroom.

Showroom, whom I should say nice things about since I share a rehearsal space with them and they could put, like, raw meat in the back of my amp if they wanted, kicked things off. Subscribing to the sharply-dressed, mod/new-wave school of rock, they played a decent set of Brit-popish tunes with just enough current retro influence to be fashionable (yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say). I think they need to find another gear or two in their transmission to really impress, though. To “take it up a notch”, as the kids say. I thought the hooks need to be sharper, the energy more crackling, but the response they got from the power-pop friendly audience was good and perhaps being asked to play a label showcase like this augers well for their future.

The Frontier Index have been one of the under-heralded local acts who have caught my ear regardless. The one-line description on them is cosmic-country-soul, and that’s pretty apt though they’ve been turning down the cosmic and turning up the rock as of late. Trotting out songs from their debut album coming out next year on the RQ roots imprint Turquoise Mountain, they played an entertaining, high-energy set replete with rock star moves, particularly when the drummer took over vocals (very capably, I might add), freeing up the guitars to duel. They put on a great show but I find myself hoping that the album showcases a little more of their ‘cosmic’ side, as that’s a large part of what hooked me in the first place. Their next show is opening for The Sadies at the Horseshoe on New Year’s Eve. There will be much torch and twang that night, let me tell you.

Seeing as how I was still pretty wiped from the drunken hijinks of the previous night, I wasn’t up to sticking around for The High Dials – sorry – but there was fairly impressive crowd there by the time I left, so I doubt anyone noticed. Some pics from the show.

Pity The Futureheads – as much as I’d like to go see them, hell, they’ve already been here twice in the past few months and it’ll be thrice on February 27 at Lee’s Palace, I will once again have to give them a pass… why? Because the mighty M Ward is at the El Mocambo that same night. Sometimes a decision’s gotta be made. His new one Transistor Radio is out February 22.

Billboard reports that Elvis Costello will have a couple DVDs coming out in the new year. The most interesting is The Right Spectacle, a career-spanning collection of all his videos plus television appearances and commentary. Sounds delish. It’s out January 17 in the UK with worldwide release details to be finalized. Somewhat less exciting is Club Date: Live in Memphis, which documents a show in a tiny Memphis club from this past Summer. Declan is also releasing some vinyl-only EPs from The Delivery Man, but since I don’t have a record player those are of little interest.

So yes, Vince Carter is a big sucky baby, but I’m still somewhat sad to see him go. I’d said before that if Vince went, that would potentially be a fatal blow for the Raptors not just for his loss, but for him being no less than the fourth star/superstar talent to leave Toronto in their decade or so of existance. I’m talking Stoudamire, Camby, McGrady and now Carter, if you’re keeping track – three of the rookie-of-the-years, I do believe. This is how it felt to be a Montreal Expo fan, I guess. I don’t follow basketball that closely so I can’t comment on what we got in return, save that even I know Alonzo Mourning needs to play with a hospital drip in his arm and we have more Williams’ on the team than I can wrap my head around. The two first-round draft picks could be good but the cynic in me just thinks that it’s just a couple more potential star players who’ll flee Hogtown at the first opportunity. Sigh.

np – The Jesus & Mary Chain / Automatic

I actually wasn’t going to post today – we had our company Christmas party last night and I was expecting (hoping?) to be so completely out of commission this morning that writing anything beyond, “Hungover. Come back tomorrow” would have been a Herculean feat. But, as it turns out, when you’re out cold by 10:40PM, you tend to wake up extra early the next morning (not especially hungover, amazingly) and with a lot of time on your hands. And so here we are.

And for the record? Alberta Springs is some nasty, nasty, nasty, NASTY shit. Vile, even. You’ve been warned.

Two more pieces on Stars – Chart and JAM! both profile the band. A little sleuthing (read: asking) has revealed the opening acts for this weekend’s shows at the Mod Club. Saturday night, I will be seeing The String Section start things up – no, I have no idea who they are and a Google search on “string section” is the very definition of futility – and on Sunday, the underagers get to experience the dulcet tones of Chad Van Gaalen, whom I’ve never heard but have been told is quite good.

More Cowbell has posted his year-end list in two parts – one and two.

The new New Order album is indeed called Sugarcane – thanks Shaunna. Out March 28.

Okay, I totally need to go back to sleep now.

np – Bettie Serveert / Palomine

Some good news from Matador – firstly, they’ve signed New York country/folk chanteuse Laura Cantrell to a worldwide record deal (read the press release here). Cantrell has one of the most lovely, crystalline voices I’ve heard in a long time, and her songwriting and choice of material is top-notch – her albums to date have been a mix of originals and covers, somehow sounding completely traditional and utterly modern at the same time. The late John Peel called her debut record Not The Tremblin’ Kind, “my favorite record from the last ten years, and possibly my life” – high praise, indeed. Her first record for Matador will be out in late Spring, hopefully with touring to follow. In the meantime, the curious should check out her cover of Elvis Costello’s “Indoor Fireworks”, because what is this site about if not providing mp3s of cover songs?

Laura Cantrell – “Indoor Fireworks”

If you like, there’s bucketloads more material available to download here

At the other end of the Matador universe, curmudgeonly Scottish noiseniks Mogwai will finally release their Government Commissions (BBC Sessions 1996-2003), consisting of, well, 10 tracks culled from various BBC Sessions over the course of their career. It’ll be in stores on these shores on February 22.

And finally, longtime Matador flagship band Yo La Tengo will celebrate almost twenty years of wonderous music with Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintilliating Senescent Songs, 1984-2003, a super-sized career retrospective coming out March 22. The ‘best-of’ component will comprise two discs of tracks from all their albums, even the non-Matador ones, and there will be a limited-edition pressing which will include a third disc of rarities, natch. I actually won’t mind shelling out for this – a compact Yo La Tengo would actually be a welcome addition to the collection and there looks to be some good stuff on that bonus disc. Check out the tracklisting here.

New Order’s new album has an official release date of March 28 in the UK, and presumably March 29 in North America though that’s yet to be confirmed. Supposedly their most ‘up’ record since Technique, It is still untitled.

Bettie Serveert’s new album Attagirl will get a North American release (with two bonus tracks!) on February 1 thanks to the good people at Minty Fresh. The band should be touring over here to support soon thereafter, and they even make a point of saying there will be Canadian dates! YAY.

NME gets some info on the new Doves record Some Cities, which drops March 1. There are rumours of a quickie North American tour in late March to coincide with SXSW, but we’ll see about that. From ILB.

Achtung Baby has some audio samples from Texas’ Eisley… I like. Can anyone more familiar with their stuff comment on whether it’s got shelf life? My cynical “band I’ve never heard of debuts on a major label” spider-sense is tingling. It’s unclear to me if their debut long-player, Room Noises, is out or not… their website says it’s out February 8 of next year while Amazon says it was out on Feb 8 of this year (but don’t seem to have much info).

eye and NOW both talk to Stars’ front-fop Torquil Campbell about rock, revolution and Set Yourself On Fire in advance of their 2-night stand at the Mod Club this Saturday and Sunday.

Another member of the Broken Social Scene extended family, Emily Haines of Metric, plays two solo shows – one early, one late – at the Church of the Redeemer at Bloor and Avenue tomorrow night. She’ll be playing songs to accompany projections of films by director Guy Maddin – NOW has more details. Those looking for something a little more conventional from Ms Haines should know Metric plays the Mod Club January 21. Tickets for all shows, solo and band, are $17.50, on sale now.

Comic Book Galaxy takes a round-table look back at the year in comics.

np – Yo La Tengo / Painful