With just over two weeks left in Guided By Voices’ illustrious career, Hold My Life compiles some choice Bob Pollard trash-talking stage banter. Some favourites:

“I think Bob Dylan sucks. Bob Dylan never wrote a good song”.

“If the guy next to you ever bought a Counting Crows album, punch him in the face!”

“Yoshimi Versus the Pink Robots? My fourth graders could have come up with a better album title.”

Ah Bob, we’ll miss you. And so will Budweiser.

JAM! looks back at the year in Feist and reveals that her inevitable domination of America begins next March, when Let It Die gets a State-side release.

InSite Atlanta talks to Drive By Trucker Patterson Hood about Southern accents. From Golden Fiddle.

Productshop NYC assembles a very comprehensive year-end post.

Stereogum has another track from the new Mercury Rev album, The Secret Migration. I dunno, I’ve heard two tracks now and they’re not doing too much for me. Perhaps the album as a whole is more impressive.

You know all the hassle I went through trying to find a used widescreen copy of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind this Fall? Well they’re putting out a double-disc collector’s edition on January 4. I swear, sometimes I hate the world.

Stylus ranks the top indie labels of 2004 all scientific-like, based on the quality of their releases this year. Merge rules the school.

Of Montreal help kick off Over The Top Fest 2005 with a show at Rockit on April 23, tickets $10 in advance.

It’s one of those table scrap days, and I wager there’ll be more of these than less before the year is out. I may very well have to start making shit up to fill out a post… news flash! Interpol’s Carlos D has herpes! What? You mean someone’s already done that one? Sheesh (the blog in mention, carlosdhasherpes.blogspot.com, is no longer in existance, but it was funny while it lasted). Note: Chromewaves in no way, shape or form condones the spreading of baseless rumours about nattily-dressed young musicians from New York City spreading venereal diseases amongst the general populace.

np – Matt Pond PA / Emblems

Alexander Payne’s Sideways is turning out to be one of the most highly-praised films of the year, picking up glowing reviews and awards nominations left right and centre. So, always a slave to critical adulation, I headed out in the bitter cold last night to see what the hubbub was about. That, and I had a movie pass that expired today.

Ostensibly a buddy movie about two guys out on a road trip the week before one’s wedding, Sideways is a really rare bird – an genuinely adult comedy. Not adult in the “ooh we get to see some naughty bits”, though there’s some of that (more male than female, actually), but adult in the “this is about grown-ups dealing with grown-up topics, like mid-life crises and drinking wine”. There’s a lot of wine in this film, seeing as how it’s set in California wine country. I only knew a little bit about wine going in, and now I know more. See? It’s educational too!

But seriously, it’s a remarkably good film. The four principal actors are all excellent, particularly Thomas Haden Church (Lowell!!!) and Paul Giamatti – neither is particularly playing against type, Church being the loudmouth womanizer and Giamatti the neurotic sad-sack, but they manage to invest their characters with a lot of depth and complexity. Virigina Madsen (what happened to her all these past few years?) is also good as Giamatti’s love interest but local girl Sandra Oh doesn’t get to do too much as Church’s last bachelor fling, besides beat his face in. Oh don’t cluck your tongue at me, if you saw the trailer you know it happens.

While there are a few laugh-out-loud moments, it’s more of a sit and smile film rather than a knee-slapper. Payne is more interested in letting the actors do their thing and have them carry the film, and it works quite well. Is it 92% on Metacritic good? Hell, I don’t know. All I can say is that I think it’s good – anything beyond that is strictly subjective. It may not be for everyone, but for those for whom it’s for (okay, that was a grammatical nightmare), it’s a treat. And oh yeah, not one, but TWO Luna songs appear in the soundtrack. Thumbs up.

And on a related note, Stylus picks their ten best films of the year.

Thanks to Eugene for pointing out these clips from The Wedding Present’s Take Fountain, out February 15. I must say, first single “Interstate 5” sounds much more RAWK than I’d expected. I wouldn’t have even recognized it as Weddoes… until Gedge shows up, of course. Interesting.

Billboard offers up some details of the next Ivy album, In The Clear, out March 1.

My Mean Magpie rattles off his top albums of nil-four.

I don’t know how I feel about the Jays signing Corey Koskie. I mean, yeah, nice to have a Canadian on the team again, but $17 million over three years is pretty steep – and his numbers aren’t THAT good. And what about poor ol’ Eric Hinske? No, he hasn’t had a year as good as his Rookie Of The Year season in 2002, but it’s far too early to give up on him. I like the guy, come on. I’m hoping they do move him to 1st rather than deal him. I used to buy into Ricciardi’s master plan, but the constant turnover in personnel (dealing Miguel Batista already?) seems more like panic than long-term planning to me now. Come on! How are we supposed to re-take third place in the AL East without a plan?!? Here’s an idea, how about instead of getting free agents, we throw buckets of money at the league until they move us to ANY division besides the one the Yankees and Red Sox play in?

np – Slowdive / Live Bootleg

There’s just something about puppets that’s inherently funny (and creepy). Things that you would give a second thought to if a human was doing it, like cursing a blue streak or getting cut in half by a samurai sword, are exponentially funnier when its done by puppets. It’s just true. Team America: World Police being a perfect example of this phenomenon.

Considering it’s from the creators of South Park and the amount of controversy that surrounded its release, one might have expected Team America to be far more scathing than it actually is. Right-wingers expecting to be attacked by Hollywood may have been surprised to find that it’s actually the Hollywood activist liberal types that get satirized the most here – that is of course, if they could have bothered to see it before setting up picket lines outside the theatres. No, instead of ripping social commentary, you get a pretty damned funny gross-out film. With puppets.

And the puppetry is quite remarkable, only looking clumsy when it suits the filmmaker’s purpose. The puppets themselves are pretty creepily lifelike, at least as much as a marionette can look lifelike. It’s mostly the use of soft latex of some sort for the skin that conveys this impression, making it just that much more creepy when the puppet is blown up, disemboweled or otherwise terminated. Oh, and the puppet sex. Oh the puppet sex. Certainly not deserving of the X-rating they were threatened with, but pretty damn graphic.

Another day, another year-end list. This time, the NME’s. Note that their “Acts to build up in 2004” list is interchangable with their “Acts to tear down in 2005” list.

Feist fans should check out this electronic press kit video for the European market. It’s artfully done and contains clips of live perfomances and interviews with Leslie Feist and Chili Gonzales about the making of Let It Die. Very nice.

I picked up a shiny new LCD monitor for myself yesterday. Not so much an early Christmas present to myself as a necessity – I’ve been having mild to splitting headaches on an almost daily basis for about a month or so, mostly from (or so it seemed) eye strain due to my old CRT monitor. Whether it was a glare thing or a refresh rate thing or what, I dunno, but it certainly seemed to be aggravating whatever was going on. The LCD certainly seems to help (though I had to crank the contrast and brightness way down to keep it from buring a hole through my skull – these things are bright!) though I think the root of the problems now is some sort of sinus thing. Maybe an infection, maybe a family of voles has taken up lodging in there, I don’t know.

np – Yo La Tengo / Summer Sun

Bob Dylan has always been an enigma to me. I only recently really got into his work, and what with his notorious reticence with the media, his work has been the only insight I’ve had into the man. In fact, last weekend’s 60 Minutes interview was the first time I’d ever heard his speaking voice. That’s why reading his Chronicles was such a revelation – it was pretty much my first look at the man behind the music, if I may use such a hackneyed phrase.

Split into five sections, the first two chapters of the memoirs start off in New York City, circa 1961. Dylan has just arrived from Minnesota and is starting to make a name for himself in the folk clubs around Greenwich Village. It then jumps ahead to the late 60s as he tries to escape his fame by moving out to Woodstock, and details his attempts to alienate his followers by making as many self-destructive career moves as possible – to almost no avail. The fourth part recounts the troubled and often frustrating first steps of his late-era creative rebirth, starting with the making of Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois. He admits he was spent as an artist and was considering hanging it up but eventually realized he still had more left in him, though the process of extracting it and rekindling his creative spark took its toll. Finally, he comes full circle in recalling his discovery of folk hero Woody Guthrie as a young man in Minnesota in the late 1950s, ultimately leading him to New York and to sign with Columbia Records.

Dylan possesses remarkable powers of recall – he paints scenes from forty years past with such detail that you feel like you’re in the room with him. His writing style is unmistakably him – this is no dry, ghost-written piece, it’s pure Dylan in tone, phrasing and style. The only thing that’s not typical is its openness – the memoirs are amazingly frank. He seems perfectly willing, maybe even eager, to de-mythologize himself and his work and he does it without being self-deprecating or diminishing the importance of his work. He claims he was always aware of his destiny, but doesn’t get caught up in hubris or false modesty. Until this point, he’d seemed almost a mythical figure to me – someone upon whose shoulder giants stood. Chronicles reveals him to be much more than just that – somehow, little details like his taste in John Wayne movies or the fact that he played ice hockey as a child do a lot to fill in my impression of the man and put me even more in awe.

I was amused watching the 60 Minutes interview, as Ed Bradley tried mostly in vain to get Dylan to open up. Mostly, he repeated portions of the book and got Dylan to reiterate what he’d said. And the editing of the segment made me believe that there were a whole lot of long pauses cut out of the original footage. His attitude seems mostly to be, “You read the damn book, you already know the answer”.

Obviously, Chronicles is recommended/required reading for Dylan fans. I’m very much looking forward to the two planned follow-up volumes. And while I’m on the topic, does anyone know if the reissue of his remastered back catalog is going to continue, or if they’re done? The sonic improvement on a lot of the albums is quite noticable, and I still need to get The Times They Are A-Changin’, which was inexplicably left out of the lineup. If I’m waiting for a reissue that’s not going to come, I may as well get the regular edition and be done with it.

See the Jonathan Demme-directed video for Steve Earle’s “Rich Man’s War” here. Sorry – RealPlayer only. It’s not a bad video, it actually fits the tone of the song quite well, but I don’t really see how/why a big-name Hollywood director was needed to make it. There should be explosions. And fast, sensationalistic cuts of war footage and mothers crying and politicians lying and — oh wait, sorry, I was thinking of Michael Moore. You can also hear some of Steve’s archived The Revolution Starts Now radio show on Air America here.

Each Note Secure points out that Glide Magazine has a complete Wilco show from DeKalb, IL in May of this year available to download. This was their first Ghost show, and it’s a good one.

Posters, shmosters. Gimme a Batman Begins trailer.

Hold My Life’s best albums of 2004. Quick, concise, to the point.

Goddamn! I’m getting comment spam. I guess I’ve arrived.

np – Neko Case / Blacklisted

Terry Bickers-ified for the first time since their debut release in 1988, The House Of Love will release their first album since 1993’s Audience With The Mind early next year. NME reports that Days Run Away will be out on February 28 in the UK. I expect to have to play the import game for this one.

Though mostly a footnote in the history books, The House Of Love’s jangly, atmospheric rock made them UK indie darlings for a brief period in the late 80s, essentially filling in the space between the end of The Smiths and the rise of The Stone Roses. Constant lineup shuffles and the fact that Guy Chadwick didn’t exactly have a face made for the cover of the NME kept them from becoming much more than cult favourites, though. Everyone goes on about the eopnymous debut record (often referred to as Creation after their label at the time), citing Terry Bickers’ guitarwork as the cornerstone of their sound. While I love Bicker’s playing as much as anyone (check out their John Peel Sessions disc – stripped of the rather dated production, these songs and performances are glorious), I think the songwriting on their eponymous sophomore album (generally referred to as Fontana, again, after their label) is my favourite of their releases. It, plus the Peel Sessions, get the most spins.

Sadly, neither of their last two albums managed to recapture those heights. Babe Rainbow was pretty solid, if lacking that je ne sais quoi, while Audience With the Mind was as good a sign as any that it was time to disband, which they did. Chadwick put out an alright solo record, Lazy, Soft and Slow in 1998, but has been quiet since. While I don’t think House Of Love have ever quite gotten the respect they deserve, they have been getting a much-deserved critical reappraisal over the last few years. With the Peel sessions disc, a best-of, and albums compiling all their Creation-era and Fontana-era material, the vaults have been pretty much cleared. It may be more wishful thinking than anything, but I’m hoping that the new material is respectable if not a complete return to the glory days of 1988-1990. That’s probably a little much to ask for, but I’m anxious to hear the new stuff regardless.

I’m a little surprised to see The Cardigans releasing a DVD from their “Lovefool” heyday with The Cardigans: Live In London, coming out in North America on February 8 (it’s already out in Europe). Taken from two First Band On The Moon-era concerts at the Sheperd’s Bush Empire in Londontown in 1996, it sort of goes against all their efforts to distance themselves from their undeserved ‘one-hit wonder’ status. While their early stuff is far more sophisticated than first impressions might imply, I really like how much they’ve grown since those days and find their current sound just as interesting. At any rate, besides the live show, the DVD features a couple videos – including versions of “Lovefool” and “Been It” rarely ever seen in North America – and a short film about the making of First Band On The Moon.

Click here to watch the video for the Stars’ “Ageless Beauty”, the excellent first single from Set Yourself On Fire (From Pop77). Their December 18 show at the Mod Club is now pretty much sold out (though Soundscapes apparently still has some tickets), but tickets remain for the all-ages show there on the 19th.

You can pre-order the new Magnolia Electric Co. release, the live Trials and Errors, at Secretly Canadian. The formal release date isn’t until January 18 but it appears as though they’ll start shipping pre-orders today.

The Telegraph introduces the UK to Nellie McKay. From LHB.

More year-end lists: Glide Magazine, Kathryn Yu, Insound (sales rankings). Last two links from LHB.

Another Batman Begins poster.

np – The Fiery Furnaces / EP