Montreal label Secret City Records has had a charmed, if brief, existence. When this year’s Polaris Music Prize nominees were announced, their entire catalog was on the short list and one of them, Patrick Watson’s Close To Paradise, would end up taking the top honours.

So understandably, expectations are high for their third domestic signing, Montreal’s Plants & Animals. I caught them at Hillside back in July and found their psych-country-but-not sound intriguing but now, as I listen to their debut Avec/With EP, I’m trying to reconcile the band that I saw that afternoon with the one on this record and not quite managing to do it.

Though only four tracks deep, Avec/With covers a lot of stylistic ground and ranges so broadly that it’s hard to get a handle on exactly what Plants & Animals actually sound like. On the plus side, opener “Lola Who?” is a sumptuous bit of acoustic pop that builds like a steam train taking aim at the Beatles with the ghost of Jeff Buckley in the engineer’s cabin. On the negative side, their closing cover of the spiritual standard “Sinnerman”, done Latin-style, sounds like being trapped at a particularly heinous hippie jam with Santana’s band. Not a good place to be.

There is a common thread that runs throughout, though, and it leads right back to The Byrds circa Fifth Dimension, and their heady blend of psychedelia, folk and pop. It’s a deep well to draw from and Plants & Animals have certainly got the chops and creativity to take it somewhere interesting though I’d recommend steering clear of jam-land in the future. Their full-length Parc Avenue comes out next year and I’m going to hold back on laying Polaris 2008 odds until I hear it, see if they get their identity a bit more cohesive-like.

Chart has run a couple pieces on the band recently and eye has a feature this week on account of the band being in town to play not one but two shows this weekend. The first at Lee’s Palace tomorrow night as part of the Wood Wires & Whiskey tour with Elliott Brood and the second on Saturday night at the Drake Underground with Forest City Lovers and Great Bloomers.

And courtesy of Secret City and No Shame, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away to the Saturday show. It’s an early show (doors at 7) so if you’ve got a late evening planned (or no evening at all) and want to check this out, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want Plants & Animals” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight tonight.

MP3: Plants & Animals – “Feedback In The Field”
MySpace: Plants & Animals

Neil Young discusses Chrome Dreams II, the Archives project and the ongoing tour which brings him to Massey Hall in a week and a half with USA Today.

Want to help out a worthy local band? Head over to www.superviseandscore.com and vote for The Coast to perform on the Around The World For Free reality show thing. I don’t know what this is, but The Coast are good so go there and make with the clickly. The Coast are just finishing up recording their full-length debut which I’m looking forward to hearing in the new year.

Carl Newman talks to Wireless Bollinger about New Pornography.

A Broken Social roundup: Pitchfork reports on Metric’s forthcoming live DVD – Live At Metropolis out February 12 – and iTunes EP with material from the same show. Gothamist talks to Kevin Drew and Chart finds out how the Stars early digital release strategy for In Our Bedroom After The War worked out.

The fourth and final installment of Soft Focus’ sit down with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is now up. And via Drowned In Sound… TOUR DATES. I hear Glasgow is lovely in July…

In-store news – The Acorn’s set at Soundscapes on November 24 has been moved from 4PM to 5PM and Sonic Boom will host Jose Gonzalez on December 7 at 6:30, before his show at Mod Club that same night.

The bonus EP for Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky is now available. If you already own a copy of the CD, just pop it into your computer and follow the instructions to download the goodies. Easy as falling off a log.

I picked up Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together yesterday… so good. I think more than anything else right now, this comic makes me proud to be a Torontonian though I do wish my life was a fraction as interesting as the Scott Pilgrim’s is. Comic Book Resources has an interview with creator Bryan Lee-O’Malley.

For the last few years, Steve Earle has been pissed. About what, who knows – surely there’s nothing going on south of the border that a fiercely left-wing, politically active, self-declared Communist could possibly take exception to. And yet his last two studio releases – The Revolution Starts… Now and Jerusalem – have bristled with politically charged vitriol towards the powers that be, sometimes to the detriment of the songcraft but never casting any doubt on the strength of Earle’s convictions. He’s apologized for the absence of “chick songs” from his recent repertoire and promised they’d return when things got better in the USA.

And they must have improved because on Washington Square Serenade, Earle is positively mellow. And it’s not from resignation to the fact that his country is doomed, but more a sense of peace from realizing that for all that’s wrong, there’s still a lot right. The impetus for this change of heart was brought on by two big life events for Earle – moving to New York City and marrying Allison Moorer. New York infuses every inch of the record from the title on down while Moorer duets on a couple songs and is the subject of more. Politics still permeate, but they’re less pointed and balanced by love.

Sonically, it’s a change of pace as well. Though the songs are primarily acoustic, it’s not as stripped down and bare as Train A-Comin’ – there’s still a full band at work and the production by John King of The Dust Brothers casts most everything in a deep groove that might sound a bit unnatural to some, myself included. It’s not necessarily obtrusive or even detrimental, but it is a very noticeable element and I’m not sure that the production should ever be that evident. Interestingly, it’s not on one of Earle’s compositions that it seems most odd but on his cover of Tom Waits’ “Down In A Hole”. Perhaps it was given the more urban treatment since it’ll also be the theme for the upcoming season of The Wire, but I have to think it’d have been more powerful with just Earle, his guitar and a mic.

Washington Square Serenade won’t go down as one of Earle’s best records – for my money, Train, I Feel Alright, El Corazon and Transcendental Blues are untouchable – but it is a worthy addition to a pretty fearsome discography. I can appreciate the need to take a breather from raging against the machine for so long but Earle may have turned the fire down just a bit too much on this outing. I’ll chalk it up to newlywed lightheadedness – I mean, c’mon, Allison Moorer – but maybe by the next time out Earle will have remembered that there’s still plenty out there to be pissed off about.

And while Steve’s heart is in the Big Apple, don’t be too surprised if you see him around Toronto on Thursday, maybe composing a Dundas Square Serenade. There’s no North American touring plans confirmed as of yet but he’s going to be in town to record an episode of Live At The Rehearsal Hall for Bravo and thanks to Fontana North, who handle Earle’s label New West in Canada, you can be there.

I’ve got ten spots to give away for the taping, which is happening on Thursday evening (November 15) at 6PM at the ChumCity Building at 299 Queen St W (you know the one) and if you want one, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Steve Earle” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Also, VERY IMPORTANT, tell me if you’d need a plus one or if it’d be just you. I want to make sure all of the seats get used so only enter if you can actually be at Queen and John at 6PM on Thursday (if you finish work at 5 and need to commute in from Thornhill, that doesn’t mean you) and if your date/companion/whomever can also be there for then. I will draw winners randomly from all entrants and assign spots, depending on how many said person wants, until all are gone. So if everyone flies solo, that’s ten winners. If everyone has a friend (and come on, what are the odds of THAT), five winners. All entries must be in my 5PM today Update: Contest closed! Thanks to all who entered, I’ll be in touch with the winners this evening with instructions. To everyone else… check out Steve on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic as a consolation prize. And he’s on CBC’s The Hour Thursday night at 11.

And for a taste of what the session might be like, check out the one he did for the World Cafe last week via NPR.

eCard: Steve Earle / Washington Square Serenade
Video: Washington Square Serenade electronic press kit
MySpace: Steve Earle

Speaking of Steve Earle and The Wire, Paste reports that coinciding with the start of the show’s final season, we will finally see a soundtrack album for the show. This is interesting because The Wire has no conventional musical score, no proper soundtrack. Any music that appears in the show generated within the scene, from a car stereo or boombox or what have you, with the obvious exception of the theme song – a different version of “Down In A Hole” for each season – and a song overtop the clip montage that closes each season. The soundtrack will contain three of the five theme songs, excepting Waits’ original from season two and Earle’s from season five, and a selection of Baltimore-centric hip-hop alongside tracks from The Pogues and Paul Weller. Earle, who portrays recovering addict Waylon on the show, is represented by “I Feel Alright”, which closed out season two. An eclectic record? Yeah. The final season begins on January 8 and the soundtrack is out January 10. City Paper ran a feature a couple years ago about the use of music in The Wire, and there’s a behind the scenes preview of the new season below.

Video: The Wire season five – Invitation To The Set

Josh Ritter talks to The Independent about the rather awkward experience of running into his tribute band in a Dublin bar.

Robyn Hitchcock explains his need to go backwards to The AV Club. He just released the I Wanna Go Backwards box set yesterday, which you can stream in its entirety and grab the title track MP3 below, and he’s also performing at the Mod Club tonight.

MP3: Robyn Hitchcock – “I Wanna Go Backwards”
Stream: Robyn Hitchcock / I Wanna Go Backwards

What does arm-wrestling have to do with Ted Leo’s “Colleen”? Nothing. And everything.

Video: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – “Colleen” (MySpace)

Rhett Miller of Old 97s will be doing his solo thing at the Horseshoe on December 19, tickets $15.

Part three of the Soft Focus interview with My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields is now streaming. And tangentially via Tiny Mix Tapes, Athens instrumental/orchestral outfit Japancakes yesterday released a cover album of Loveless… and based on the couple of samples streaming on their MySpace, damn if it isn’t pretty. Now whether pretty and not bludgeoning volume was the point of Loveless is up to you. If you like pretty, I suspect you’ll like this. If not, you’ll think this is elevator music. But hearing “Only Shallow” done with strings and pedal steel certainly works for me. eMusic has it too, if you’re curious and have downloads to burn.

Pitchfork talks to Sigur Ros’ Jonsi Birgisson about their Heima documentary, which is out on DVD November 20 and is screening at the Royal Cinema on November 24.

The Tripwire catches up with British Sea Power. Do You Like Rock Music? is out February 12.

In hindsight, the pressure must have been unbearable. Saturday Looks Good To Me’s 2004 release Every Night was one of my favourite albums of the last however many years and I can only imagine this knowledge must have have been an enormous burden on bandleader Fred Thomas as he worked on a follow-up. Normally prolific to Pollard-ian degrees, Thomas’ output diminished to a trickle over the last three years with only limited-edition singles and a compilation of demos and unreleased tracks to break the studio silence.

Updates from SLGTM-land were sporadic – at one point Thomas said the new record was going to be a double-album split between “he said” and “she said” songs. He also mentioned he was wary of being pigeonholed by the band’s Motown/retro-pop aesthetic, a move that was backed up by the live band’s pared-down lineup and rougher, more rock-heavy sound. These shows also reinforced his intention to sing all the songs on the new record himself – and for all of his strengths as a songwriter and producer, Thomas isn’t a great singer. So needless to say, anticipation for the new record was tempered by no small amount of trepidation.

Which brings us to Fill Up The Room – the fruits of Thomas’ long-gestated, deconstructed and rebuilt Saturday Looks Good To Me and… it sounds like Saturday Looks Good To Me. Somehow, the new record maintains much of what made the previous records special – the time capsule production, the razor-sharp pop sensibility – and yet there’s something definitely different about it. It’s as though all the musical experimentation and exploration that Thomas did over the past few years led him to the Confucian/Banzai-ian epiphany that no matter where he went, there he was and no matter what he did, it was going to sound like himself. So fuck it.

True to his word, he handles vocals on ten of the eleven tracks (the other is sung by Betty Marie Barnes, who made Every Night such a delight) and while he strains to hit a note or five, he sounds better than I’d have expected over the course of the whole record. Having one singer throughout does bring a greater sense of consistency and continuity to the affair and helps Fill Up The Room come off more like a proper album rather than a kick-ass mix tape. There are fewer horns, less obvious Motown nods and the arrangements zig into sprawl where once they’d have zagged into compactness but there’s no mistaking this for anything but a Saturday Looks Good To Me record, and not only that, a great one. Fears allayed. Joy commencing.

AllMusic asked Thomas five questions, including whether this was deliberately a more “mature” record and why he opted to sing everything on this one (with a surprisingly pragmatic answer).

MP3: Make A Plan
MySpace: Saturday Looks Good To Me

Okkervil River stops in at Daytrotter and turns in a session with three covers and a Stage Names song. All sound glorious. Daytrotter and Okkervil River – two great tastes that taste great together.

Pitchfork gets Bradley’s Almanac has audio from a show they did in a tiny bar last month and Pitchfork has a video of them playing a b-side in the back of a cab.

And The National’s tourmate in Europe right now, Hayden, has announced details of his new record – In Field & Town is out January 15 and he’ll be touring Canada in support thereafter, including a February 19 date at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. Chart has full tour dates and album deets.

The Asbury Park Press checks in with proud Jersey girl Nicole Atkins, who explains why the release of Neptune City was delayed three months – Rick Rubin said so. Atkins is at Lee’s Palace next Sunday night and be sure to check out her latest MySpace blog, which recounts her week from playing Letterman the day of the album’s release to starting off the current tour with The Pipettes (who talk to The Boston Globe). Hilarious stuff.

Paste has posted their recent cover feature on Ryan Adams online.

Part two of the My Bloody Valentine interview now up, covering music theory and production techniques.

The AV Club lists off “21 Good Albums That Could Have Been Great EPs”. I beg to differ on New Adventures In Hi-Fi and Urban Hymns – maybe a couple songs could have been excised but by no means were there only five our six worthy songs on either record. Most of the others, though, I have no argument.

I don’t know why, but I’m always a little bit surprised when I see local bands fill larger venues whose bread and butter is usually touring bands with a national/international profile. Maybe it’s because I often see said locals in either much cozier environs or, if it is at a larger club, it’s in a support capacity for one of the aforementioned touring bands. Anyway, the point of it is, it was kind of exciting to see Lee’s Palace so chock full of people wanting to spend their Friday night with Ohbijou.

Touted as their last show for a while, presumably to work on the follow up to last year’s Swift Feet For Troubling Times, it was as much a gathering of friends celebrating a terrific year for the band as it was a concert. Of course, when you combine friends, Friday nights and alcohol you get chattiness and the constant din of the crowd was a point of frustration throughout the night but hey – that’s Toronto for you.

First up was Bruce Peninsula and after seeing them at Dog Day Afternoon in the Summer, it was strange to see them indoors rather than under the late afternoon, country sky. Once underway, though, the eleven-piece outfit – more congregation than band – somehow managed to recreate that sense of elemental urgency, not unlike an impending thunderstorm. There’s a rawness to their foreboding country gospel aesthetic that connects on a very primal level and as they continue to work on their debut album, I wonder how it’ll be possible to capture that energy to tape. Maybe it’d be better to simply pile into a covered wagon and travel the country spreading the good word in person. Check them out on November 24 at the Horseshoe with The Acorn and be saved. Or damned. Or both.

Ah, Basia Bulat. A quick Flickr search shows that this was the seventh time in the past year and a bit that I’ve seen her play and every day I wake up without a restraining order in my mailbox is a good one. So as to avoid giving the prosecution any more evidence, I’ll just say that even with a smaller band than usual – they were a five piece this time out – she was terrific as ever. And since it’s likely this was the last time I caught her in 2007, here’s to another half-dozen great shows in ’08.

Ironically, the crowd noise wasn’t especially overbearing for the openers but when Ohbijou took the stage, they turned the chatter up to 11. Respect! Ohbijou brought some extra volume of their own, however, in the form of a four-piece brass section that not only overwhelmed the talkers, but most of the band as well. Ah well. The horns returned a few points through the night but mostly, the night was Ohbijou doing what Ohbijou does so well – sweet, orchestral pop that wasn’t entirely at home in a big room like Lee’s – there were some persistent feedback issues and some of the more delicate touches in the arrangements were lost – but was comfortable visiting for a spell. And that’s how it is with parties, isn’t it? Things don’t always go exactly as you’d planned and sometimes things get messy but as long as everyone has a good time, isn’t that what really matters?

Photos: Ohbijou, Basia Bulat, Bruce Peninsula @ Lee’s Palace – November 9, 2007
MP3: Ohbijou – “St Francis”
MP3: Ohbijou – “Misty Eyes”
MP3: Ohbijou – “Steep”
MP3: Basia Bulat – “Snakes & Ladders”
Video: Ohbijou
MySpace: Basia Bulat
MySpace: Bruce Peninsula

Stars have a new video. Watch it.

Video: Stars – “The Night Starts Here” (MOV)

AOL Music Canada discusses the elusive Canadian national identity with John K Samson of The Weakerthans.

Here it is, the Soft Focus interview with My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields where he spills the beans about the band’s resurrection. Shields, for a man who was once considered batshit crazy, comes off quite well. The host… well, not so much. This is part one – check back throughout the week for the rest. And as a bonus, The Daily Swarm has dug up some older MBV interviews and videos to brighten your day.

And as almost every band that got tagged as shoegazer in the 90s seems to be digging out the pedalboards and finding a pair of sensible shoes worth contemplating, there are some exceptions. Under The Radar tracked down former Lush frontwoman Miki Berenyi and talks to her about the tragic final days of her band, what she’s been doing for the past ten years and what the odds of her ever getting back into music are. While it’s a bit sad to realize that some beloved acts are perfectly happy to let the reunion bandwagon roll on by (even if it’s probably for the best), Berenyi’s dose of reality is both amusing and touching.

Video: Lush – “For Love” (YouTube)

The Guardian profiles once and once again Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft. The band is a week into their highly anticipated reunion gigs and reviews are mostly positive (with a few naysayers). No one’s beaten anyone up yet, at least.

Spinner invites PJ Harvey to their studio to play selections from White Chalk.

The Futureheads have finished work on their third album and are offering a preview.

MP3: The Futureheads – “Broke Up The Time”

Billboard confirms that Radiohead’s In Rainbows will be released in North America, CD-style, on January 2 of next year thus ensuring that it’ll show up on scads of peoples’ year-end lists both this year and next. Clever. And if you’re looking for clips/MP3s/general gushing about the band’s pirate video webcast from this weekend, swing a stick. A short stick.

The AV Club talks to Bryan Lee-O’Malley about the fourth volume of Scott Pilgrim – Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together – in stores on Wednesday.

There’s a great temptation when describing Haligonian Rebekah Higgs to invoke the name of a certain ubiquitous Canadian chanteuse who also has a marvelous voice, a penchant for looped vocals and red hollowbody electric guitars, but I will do my best to resist.

When discussing her self-titled debut, it’s easy – rather than eliciting comparison to she-who-won’t-be-named, Higgs recalls the whole grand genre of female singer-songwriters from around 1994 or so to present day with ten tracks ranging from piano balladry to pure pop built from a folkish baseline that reveals her Maritime origins. What sets Higgs above and apart, beyond a consistently high level of songwriting, are two things. One is the production, which is crisp and clean but also casts a pleasant, Nigel Godrich-like sheen over things. The touches are subtle – some delay pedal glitchery here, some keyboard washes there – but the overall effect is quite effective. It’s takes the slightly fairy tale atmosphere of Higg’s songs and makes the woodland creatures tiny robots… if that makes any sense.

The other factor is Higgs’ voice, or more specifically, her phrasing. When it comes to vocals, I’m a big believer that phrasing is everything – it can make an unremarkable voice interesting and a great voice amazing (or, conversely, the lack of it can make a great voice incredibly dull – see pretty much any “diva” on MuchMusic for evidence). And Higgs has both a great voice and phrasing. Her delivery has a guarded – perhaps wounded – and knowing tone to it that when combined with her sing-songy melodies, intrigues and gives the sense of much more going on under the surface. The more you listen, the more you want to know.

I also had the opportunity to catch a her play a showcase set on Thursday night before her proper gig at the Tiger Bar and came away with more of a work in progress impression. Playing with just a bassist and drummer, she did her best to recreate the textures of the record with processed mics and a tickle trunk of various loopers and effector devices but in juggling all the technology and trying to get everything in its right place the songs fell out of focus. A little digging shows that her live band sometimes has more manpower to it so perhaps this was a make-do configuration and not reflective of what she can really do live. But either way, full marks for effort if not execution and I look forward to seeing her make it up in the future.

Photos: Rebekah Higgs @ The Drake Underground – November 8, 2007
MP3: Rebekah Higgs – “Parables”
Video: Rebekah Higgs – “Parables” (YouTube)
MySpace: Rebekah Higgs