Here’s one for the ‘Great injustices in music’ files – Nottingham, UK’s Six By Seven. I first came across them during one of my previous “shoegazer phases”, this one in the Fall of 1998. A Beggars/Mantra compilation of new artists featured a track from their debut album The Things We Make that was actually more Charaltans-y than anything, but a little research yielded reviews that indicated their sound was more in the droney/spacey vein. It took me some doing to find a copy of the album, which contained several extended, taut and tense pieces (“European Me”, “88-92-96”) punctuated by shorter, punchier numbers like “Candlelight” and “For You”. The acclaim in their native UK was impressive and they seemed to be well on their way to “next big thing” status. In 1999, they released the surprisingly delicate Two And A Half Days In Love With You EP, which was the result of sessions with legendary producer John Leckie. Leckie would go on to produce several tracks on their follow-up record The Closer You Get.

The sophomore record was quite a departure from the gauze of their debut – what was kept under tension on that record exploded off this one. The screaming vitriol of songs like “Eat Junk Become Junk” and “Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt” set the tone for the record, which still contained a number of more meditative, atmospheric pieces and beautifully grafter their shoegazer roots with righteous punk fury. Even their love songs seethed with gorgeous intensity. An underrated monster of an album, the promotional duties saw them travel to North America for the first time (though I missed their half-attended show at the Horseshoe in Summer 2000 on account of being out of the country, NME reviewed the gig) as well as lose co-founding guitarist Sam Hempton. Undeterred, they carried on and went back into the studio as a four-piece.

2002’s The Way I Feel Today was more stripped-down and straightforward than the previous two albums, but still ferocious. Feeling that their work had been over-produced to this point, they elected to record this album completely live off the floor and with no overdubs. With the absence of Sam Hempton, the band began utilizing more keyboards to fill in the space left behind, resulting in a more textured, haunting feel to much of the new material. Not entirely surprisingly, Mantra dropped the band after The Way I Feel Today failed to set the charts ablaze and to compound the hardship, bassist Paul Douglas quit the band in November of 2002. While the unrelenting string of bad luck would have spelled the end of lesser bands, the three-piece Six By Seven ploughed forward regardless. After releasing almost album-length EP Bochum in 2003 (the title track of which absolutely soars, by the way), the band formed their own label Saturday Night Sunday Morning to release their own music.

After a few singles, they released their fourth full-length, :04, in the Fall or 2004 (Review at Stylus). As a result of both necessity and choice, their sound has gotten less dense, recapturing some of the atmosphere of their debut effort though it makes more use of keyboards and programming to accomplish this rather than dueling guitars. One would never accuse the notoriously grumpy band of lightening up, but the record is decidedly more anthemic and postive-sounding, though that’s a very relative statement with Six By Seven. Moments sound almost Doves-ish, though a lot more abraisive. Though the album isn’t available on these shores yet (my ‘copy’ is an mp3 burn), they just announced that both :04 and it’s companion demos album Left Luggage At The Peveril Hotel will be coming out early next year in North America. Full details to come.

If you couldn’t tell, Six By Seven nearly tops the list of my “Greatly Underappreciated Bands” list. If you want to learn more about Six By Seven, visit your local library – or check out any of these links: Listen to some samples at MP3.com. Watch a live performance by the band at Mantra’s fifth birthday celebrations in 2000, courtesy of VirtueTV. PlayLouder interviews Chris Olley about losing one of their staunchest champions in John Peel. Mantra’s artist page still has loads of videos and audio tracks from the band’s releases on that label. The band’s website has a detailed discography that includes release-by-release discussions of how each record came to be.

Details for The Futureheads’ February 27th show at Lee’s Palace have been announced. Support will be Sweden’s Shout Out Louds and LA’s High Speed Scene. Tickets $15, on sale January 6.

Billboard has some details on Brendan Benson’s forthcoming album The Alternative to Love, due out in March of next year.

The Onion AV Club rounds up their best albums of the year.

np – New Order / Brotherhood

Is Neko Case coming to Toronto to promote a live album recorded in Toronto, or is it to preview her next studio album due out later this Spring? I don’t know, but maybe she’ll tell us when she plays the Phoenix on January 16, backed once again by the wonderful Sadies. As much as I enjoyed the Tigers Have Spoken making-of shows, I’d love to see a proper full show with her and the Sadies. Tickets on sale today, $17.50. Consider me there. Oh yeah, I reviewed the live record for Torontoist last week.

Heraclitus Sayz interviews Richard Parry of the Arcade Fire. From LHB.

Tiny Mix Tapes talks to Saturday Looks Good To Me mastermind Fred Thomas. Their latest, Every Night, may hold the record for traversing the greatest distance between disappointment to beloved this year. I had trouble getting into it at first, but after seeing the live show, it just hit me like a sack of hammers. So good.

24 creator Robert Cochran gives The New York Times (bugmenot: bugmenot02/bugmenot) a sneak preview at season four of the show… He has no idea what’s going to happen! Honestly! They’re making it up as they go, even more so than before. That doesn’t necessarily bode well, considering the trainwreck pastiche that was season three. Season four premieres Sunday January 9 before settling into it’s new regular timeslot on Monday nights. The mid-season premiere means that there will be no repeats and no skipped weeks… it’s twenty-four straight weeks of Keifer looking angry from January through May. Or twenty-three, if the premiere is two hours long. I don’t know if I’ll do the week-by-week episode commentary like I did last year. Maybe I’ll do it… MINUTE-BY-MINUTE. Oh God, that’d suck.

I re-watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind last night, confirming that this was indeed my favourite movie of 2004, a fact that will be formally announced when I put up my year-end movie list (yes, there’ll be one of those – hey, end of year is slow news time, I have to fill in the days somehow). Since I’d already seen it, I was able to concentrate more on details like Jon Brion’s wonderful score and Jim Carrey’s terrific performance by instead of trying to follow the twisty plot. It was also interesting to find that the messed up audio effects I noticed in the theatre were in fact part of the film, but the film melting on the projector halfway through was not.

SHOT rings up his best of 2004.

Okay, check out these choice words from American right-wing talking heads Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson about the Great White North recently, spurred by Bush’s visit to Ottawa. And I thought my head hurt before. Bonus points for maybe the first intelligent words I’ve ever heard out of Carolyn Parrish’s mouth, though she let Canada take way more crap than she should have. From Torontoist.

I have no idea who Kanye West is.

np – Yo La Tengo / I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

The Fiery Furnaces release an album-length EP collecting b-sides and radio session on January 11 via Sanctuary. Fluxblog has one mp3 and Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again has a couple more. The Friedberger siblings’ sophomore effort Blueberry Boat seems to have been one of the most polarizing albums of the year, with folks either loving it or hating it. Me, I’m sort of in the middle (and directly contradicting the polarizing comment, yes). I’m very impressed with the artistic achievement of the record – it’s ambition is pretty damn remarkable in this day and age. That said, I can’t listen to it very often. It exhausts me. I am into it for the first half or so but then my attention begins to drift… That said, I’d like to see one of their live shows – they’re supposed to be quite the spectacles with the band playing the entire set all the way through without stopping.

Support materials: Both Pitchfork and Splendid both interviewed the band a little while back and CBC Radio 3 ran one of their lovely audio/photo features on the band a couple weeks ago. Blueberry Boat is a content-rich fansite for the band.

Following up on the success of their “Moonshot Manny (Pega Luna)” charity single ($1600 raised for Boston’s First Night so far), the Pernice Brothers have opened up the Bargain Centre on their website, where they’ll continue to release downloadable singles in return for charitable donations. The next track is “The Flu”, and it’s inspired in part by the dearth of flu vaccines in the US this season. It’s yours for a small donation ($1 minimum) which will go to DotWell, “a health services partnership of the Codman Square Health Center and Dorchester Multi-Service Center”. On a larger scale, their live DVD/CD Nobody’s Watching/Nobody’s Listening should start shipping this week to lucky pre-orderes like myself, and the new album is still eyeing a March or April release.

Metric are finally playing a proper headlining, all-access show at the Mod Club on January 21. Will this be their first non-radio station listeners only/non-festival/non-surprise/non-supporting crappy band show in Toronto since their Horseshoe gig in September 2003? I think it might. This, of course, conflicts with the Bright Eyes show at the Phoenix the same night, though that one’s an early show so keeners could quite possibly make both. Me, I’m not that keen.

Here are the pics from Sunday night’s Ted Leo cavalcade of stars. I used to love the Mod Club’s lighting, but it’s now starting to annoy me in its persistent over-the-top-ness. It’s impossible to set white balance for and the smoke machines don’t help focusing much either. And as I mentioned yesterday, some artists – like Ted – just don’t fit with big elaborate lightshows.

Daily shoegazing content: Wanna see Slowdive videos? Sure you do.

Donewaiting’s staff of writers have begun compiling their respective year-end lists. Paul from The Rub and Ryan Catbirdseat have put up their lists as well.

Ever wonder what cartoon characters would look like stripped of their skin and organs and hung up on a bio lab hook? Now you can find out… you sick, sick bastards.

I have finally gotten off my ass and started on my site redesign/rebuild. You won’t see anything for now as work is taking place at a remote, undisclosed location. I’m aiming for a January 1 relaunch, but that’s a very very very very soft deadline. Like if you were forced to jump off a building into either a giant pile of down-filled pillows or my self-imposed deadline, you’d go for the deadline without a second thought. But it’s coming.

np – January / I Heard Myself In You

It seems laughable now that when the year began, I was openly concerned that Ted Leo wouldn’t come and tour up here after a poorly-attended show at the Rivoli in the Spring of 2003. Proving that he is a man of great magninamity as well as active sweat glands, last night marked his third visit to our humble burg. His two previous shows at the Horseshoe were barnburning affairs and he’d have a hard time topping them on the third go-around. I had forgotten that it was an all-ages show until I got there and realized that I felt old enough to be a chaperone or something. Apparently Ted Leo appeals to kids of all ages. Literally.

In order to make the event all-ages, they had to hold it at the Mod Club, which is more than double the capacity of the Horseshoe. I had some concerns that this would result in a seemingly sparsely-attended show, but I guess the strategy paid off as while it wasn’t sold out by any means, it still looked like a good crowd and was probably equivalent to a packed ‘Shoe . The early start time allowed for a pretty big freaking bill, with tourmates Matt Pond PA and the Pharmacists sandwiching local acts The Junction and The Meligrove Band. Granted, all the acts – headliner included – had shorter sets, but the collective quality of music was worth the long night.

Matt Pond PA started things off – they’re a band who I’ve been meaning to investigate for a couple of years now, but had never gotten around to it. My loss. I was very impressed, to say the least – the songs, arrangements, very effective and tasteful use of cello, all right up my alley. They reminded me a little of Sea Ray with a little less spaciness, but that may be just because I have very few reference points for indie rock bands with cello. And they get points for seeming to be big fans of Canada, references to our home and native land popping up in at least two albums and the maple leaf adorning the artwork of their latest album Emblems, which I got a copy of at the show. The only thing that didn’t impress me was Matt’s need to retune after every song, and not just a little. Dude, if your guitar – which doesn’t even have a vibrato system – can’t stay in tune for even one song, something’s not right. Anyway, a late addition to the bill, but definitely a good one.

Mississauga’s Meligrove Band were, again, an outfit that had been recommended to me a constantly over the last couple years but who I’d not quite gotten around to hearing. And while I still haven’t heard the records, I can’t imagine they’d be quite the same experience as their live show – couldn’t hear the vocals but the rocking spoke for itself. They’re definitely one of the most animated bands I’ve ever seen, channelling some serious British Invasion mojo. They were a ridiculous amount of fun to watch, leaping all over the stage and distributing take-home tambourines to the audience for a the set closer. A scissor-kicking good time (though I don’t think I actually saw any scissor kicks), I can’t imagine how they’d have had the energy to play any longer than they did, but I suspect they would have.

I was a little cynical of The Junction to begin with, with thier fancy 5-string bass and matching bright yellow track jackets (with embroidered names, no less), but was more than happy to change my opinion after just a couple songs. Take the worst hybrid funk-soul-rock band imaginable, and then imagine their complete opposites – that’s the Junction. Very energetic and fun, keyboardist Joel (if his jacket was to be believed) did a fine job as MC working the crowd and generally pushing the party vibe. While I’d never heard of them, they must have had a pretty decent-sized fanbase in attendance, judging from all the singing along. A bit of an odd choice on the bill but a good one.

And finally, Ted Leo. Ssadly, last night’s show was not as good as either of his last two performances. Besides barely clocking in at an hour including encore (though I suspect there was a curfew in effect), the band seemed a little out of sorts at times. While they absolutly hit a few numbers, “Me and Mia” in particular, I don’t think they quite managed to hit their groove. I also blame the fact that he was using a Marshall stack instead of his trusty old Music Man combo, which was relegated to furniture duty… of course, that was the amp that slowly self-destructed all the way through his last show, so maybe using the backup wasn’t a bad idea. Anwyay, the relative poshness of the Mod Club was also an odd fit for Ted, his music seems better suited to bars and clubs than theatres… or maybe it was just the smoke machines and pink spotlights that didn’t seem right. As always, though, Ted was personable and chatty with the crowd, commenting that it had been a really bad November but he was remaining upbeat. As a tribute to the Toronto crowd, the band did a quick cover of the coda to “Spirit Of Radio”, which thrilled me but was probably lost on a good portion of the crowd. “Rush? Who’s Rush?” Sigh, kids these days.

So yeah, while Ted’s set was a little bit of a letdown, though I would never call him disappointing, the show in its entirety was a terrifically good time. Cheers to Eric Warner and Whacked Out Productions for not only assembling the show, but making it work. Photos will be up tomorrow – I got in too late and was too tired to go through them all last night. Four bands = a lot of pics, you know. But if you’re aching to look at Ted’s smiling mug, check out the galleries from either of his last two shows (March and June).

And as the perfect chaser to last night’s show, I found a used copy of Dirty Old Town, the Ted Leo documentary/concert film which intersperses interview footage with their performance at the Siren Festival at Coney Island last Summer. I’ve only gotten through the bonus features so far, but the performance during the blackout of last August (while feeding off a generator from a Starbucks truck) was just awesome. Looking forward to when I get a chance to watch the feature.

For all you disbelievers – Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny Cash and June Carter in Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic coming out next year (if the link doesn’t work, go here). I think they’re looking pretty damn good… From Golden Fiddle. Update: Another pic of Phoenix as Cash.

Anyone have any experience with Hostony.com for webhosting? Too good to be true? Should I be concerned that their contact info puts them in Jersey, UK?

np – Matt Pond, PA / Emblems

The new Big Takeover is out, and it’s like a Christmas present just for me. Besides the Wilco cover story, there’s interviews with American Music Club and Sloan (amongst many many others). While it’s only semi-annual, The Big Takeover is one of my favourite magazines. Spider-whomping thick (this issue is 302 pages long), they cover a hugely eclectic range of artists, the only criteria for which is that they create “music with heart”, as per the magazine’s slogan. Interviews are often huge in length and contain almost the entire transcript of the conversation verbatim – they read more like conversations between friends than interviews between publication and artist. The passion and love that editor Jack Rabid and his crew have for the music they cover is evident in every word – they’re never sycophantic, no matter how legendary their subject, but always respectful and honest and the artists usually respond in kind resulting in more insightful interviews than you might get in other publications. And if you’re into reviews, there’s scads – 125 pages this time around. I think they review pretty much everything and anything submitted… it can be a tough slog, but I’ve found some great stuff buried in there. It’s not a cheap mag ($10 in Toronto), but it’ll keep you busy for a long time.

I’m going through one of those periods where every CD I own seems to be scratched. How this can be, I do not know. Can anyone comment on the effectiveness of any of these remedies?

Traveler’s Diagram has his year-end list up. There’s some pretty heavy Canadian content on there, but justifiably so. In all objectivity, Canadians kicked some musical ass this year.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists tonight! They’ve even corrected the misspelling of “pharmacists” on their website. Bravo, Ted.

np – Interpol / Antics