While the Metric machine is slowly revving back up with work on their third album (or fourth, now that Grow Up And Blow Away has gotten a proper release) as well as a smattering of touring through the Summer and Fall, but frontwoman Emily Haines isn’t quite ready to give up the solo thing yet. In addition to a few more gigs around southern Ontario in the next few weeks, she’s releasing a companion EP to last year’s Knives Don’t Have Your Back.

What Is Free To A Good Home is being released on July 24 in conjunction with Secret Carnival Workers, a collection of poems from Emily’s father, poet Paul Haines. The timing of these releases also coincides with her show at Harbourfront Centre on the 25th, a double-header at London’s Aeolian Hall on the 27th and then an appearance at Hillside in Guelph on July 28.

Courtesy of Last Gang Records, I’ve got two prize packs to give away consisting of a copy of the EP and the book. The CD comes wrapped in shiny cellophane and the book is printed on some lovely textured paper stock. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want the Emily Haines stuff” in the subject line and your full mailing address in the body. This contest will run until midnight, July 23 so you’ll know beforehand if you need to swing by the record/book store to pick up a copy or not. If you preordered, then I can’t help you.

Contest now closed. Congrats to Brian and Chris on winning the prizes.

MP3: Emily Haines – “Rowboat”
MySpace: Emily Haines

Anyone who saw St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, open up for fellow Texans Midlake back in February saw a young woman of immense musical talent as a guitarist, songwriter and performer, albeit put together in an unconventional and intriguing package. Performing solo with just a guitar, a couple of microphones and a wooden block at her feet for percussion (Stompin’ Tom-style) she was equally dazzling and fearsome with a tightly-wound tension running through her songs that would strike out when you’d least expect it and leave a mark or two.

With that in mind, her debut album Marry Me wasn’t what I was expecting. It starts out with the idiosyncrasies that the live show showcased, “Now Now” all layered, choral vocals and ringing, pitch-bent guitar harmonics devolving into frantic guitar skronk, but as the record progresses, it becomes straighter, simpler and positively pretty. With a few exceptions, Clark’s formidable guitar chops are downplayed with the focus instead falling on her vocals and its facility with jazz and cabaret stylings. I think that having already seen her eccentric side live, I was surprised not only that she’d written songs so classic in style but that she was so good at it – some of the songs sound like standards performed in countless smoky lounges rather than originals written by a 24-year old.

Just as she impressed five months ago, St Vincent has done so again with this record yet on a completely different level. But a warning to those who’ve only heard the record and are planning on seeing her at The Horseshoe this coming Friday night (July 20) or any of her forthcoming tour dates – she might sound all sweet on the album but live, this one’s more than ready and willing to make some noise, maybe do some damage. Keep an eye out.

Clark talks to The Dallas Observer and Paste about getting started in songwriting at the age of 5, Express about paying tribute to Iron Maiden in junior high and to The AV Club about playing whirlyball on tour with Arcade Fire. And she also blogs.

MP3: St Vincent – “Now Now”
MySpace: St Vincent

Reveille, a new webmag making its debut this week, talks to Wheat’s Scott Levesque about their new album Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square which, while it’s no Hope & Adams or even Medeiros, is far better than Metacritic would imply.

Entertainment Weekly and The Philadelphia Inquirer talk to The Decemberists.

SubPop has made a couple of MP3s from forthcoming albums available – Iron & Wine release The Shepherd’s Dog on September 25 and The Brunettes’ debut for the label – Structure & Cosmetics – is out August 7.

MP3: Iron & Wine – “Boy With A Coin”
MP3: The Brunettes – “Small Town Crew”

NME talks to Rilo Kiley about bringing sexy back with their new record Under The Blacklight, out August 21. I don’t know if I’d want to see the set of the first video from the record for “The Moneymaker” under a black light…

Video: Rilo Kiley – “The Moneymaker” (long version)
Video: Rilo Kiley – “The Moneymaker” (short version)

Perhaps to make up for delaying the release of Neptune City from next week till who knows when, Nicole Atkins has updated her MySpace page with three new songs from the record showcasing her more pop/rock side. If the gesture is meant to make me less anxious to hear the whole album, IT’S NOT WORKING.

Pitchfork recommends some 2007 releases that may have undeservedly slipped under your radar. Yes on Lucky Soul, who are now selling The Great Unwanted off their website for a reasonable 8 quid (plus 3 for shipping to North America). For my part, I may need one of those “Ain’t Never Been Cool” t-shirts. To wear ironically, of course.

American Music Club have lost some members – bassist Danny Pearce and drummer Tim Mooney left the band last month due to geographic issues. The band, with new rhythm section, is working on a new album tentatively titled MacArthur Park with an eye towards a release in early 2008.

NME has the finalists for this year’s Mercury Music Prize. My money is on… actually, I don’t think I’ve heard any of these records.

The Baltimore Sun looks at both the blogosphere’s backlash against Voxtrot and Voxtrot’s backlash against the blogosphere. Chart, meanwhile, gets Ramesh Srivastava to hold their debut album up to the same benchmark that all the fans and critics have – their EPs. Such drama. The band are at the Mod Club on October 9.

More Autumn show news – Land Of Talk will share the bill with Cloud Cult at the El Mocambo on September 4, Liars have what’s almost certainly an undersized show at the Horseshoe on September 21 and Malajube return to town for a show at Lee’s Palace on November 3.

Sometimes I think I’m not only out of step with UK music, but living in a mirror universe. For example, Bloc Party’s first album was met with hosannas from everyone but only mild appreciation from me, but the follow-up was widely considered a big disappointment by most but not me – I love it. Similarly, Maximo Park’s sophomore effort Our Earthly Pleasures is doing middlingly at best, critically-speaking after their debut A Certain Trigger and even the b-sides companion volume Missing Songs were met with much more effusive praise. Needless to say, I like the new record much more than the first one.

I like how Paul Smith’s manic, cocksure attitude on the first record has been tempered a bit and maybe made a bit more desperately romantic. Musically things aren’t as constantly breakneck as they were but Maximo is just as adept at the slower numbers as the fast and for them, slow is a relative term – there are no piano ballads. For my money, everything that made Trigger appealing is present on Pleasures along with so much more. To everyone grousing that the new record isn’t as good as the first, it’s called growth – put on “Our Velocity” and tell me it’s not a good thing. But just in case anyone was afraid that this maturity thing would dampen their live show, fear not. I’d never seen Maximo live before but I don’t think it’d have been physically possible for them to have been more energetic in the past for Smith would surely have spontaneously combusted long ago.

Support for this tour were Los Angeles’ Monsters Are Waiting, who I’d seen at the past two SxSWs. While this was the best setting of the three, previous experiences being early afternoon sets to near-empty bars, I still felt a bit bad for the band, always having to win over an audience from scratch. And it’s not that they don’t have the goods to do so – I quite like their theatrically bipolar new wave synth-pop and Annalee Fery is a sexy and charismatic frontwoman – but I’ll bet that in front of a hometown crowd or even one with a decent number of proper fans, they’re excellent live. In Toronto they were merely pretty good, never quite getting into high gear, but still got a warm response from the audience. The couple of new songs showcased sounded really good as well, leaning more towards the power pop end of their debut Fascination rather than the twitchy.

Due to curfew – the Mod Club had to get the dance club contingent in by 10PM – Maximo Park was given just over an hour to work their magic to the sold out club but they made the most of it, cramming 16 songs into their set as well as a good number Paul Smith leaps off the drum riser and a few scissor kicks for good measure. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a frontman with as much energy as Smith – the man was a non-stop dynamo, bounding around the stage and alternately treating the mic stand like a forbidden lover, mortal enemy or lightsabre, whipping the crowd into a frenzy but (thankfully) never preening or coming off as attention-needy. He was simply there with a bowler hat full of rock to dole out and by god, he was going to dole it.

The rest of the band was quite content to lay back and let Smith take the spotlight, opting to concentrate on churning out the super-tight and tightly-wound jangle rock that kept Smith hopping through a set that was heavily weighted towards Pleasures (nine of fifteen songs total). Keyboardist Lukas Wooller physically got into it a little more than his bandmates but for all intents and purposes, the show belonged to Smith and so did the crowd. Particularly the ladies, judging from the shrieking, and I can’t say as I blame them – when that British mojo gets working, it’s something to behold. Throw in the bowler hat and it’s game over.

The band talked to The National Post about getting pelted onstage with beer, shoes and soccer jerseys. Lovingly, of course. The tour, of which Toronto was the fourth show, continues through the end of the month. See them.

Photos: Maximo Park, Monsters Are Waiting @ The Mod Club – July 14, 2007
MP3: Monsters Are Waiting – “Nobody”
MP3: Monsters Are Waiting – “Christine”
Video: Maximo Park – “Our Velocity” (YouTube)
Video: Maximo Park – “Books From Boxes” (YouTube)
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Ha Ha” (YouTube)
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Nobody” (YouTube)
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Last Goodbye” (YouTube)
Video: Monsters Are Waiting – “Fascination” (YouTube)
MySpace: Maximo Park
MySpace: Monsters Are Waiting

Backtracking to Bloc Party (was talking about them earlier, wot), they recorded an acoustic session for Spinner’s Interface which you can watch and download while Vice also has some acoustic tracks available to grab from a session for Boston’s FNX back in May. There’s also a new video available for “The Prayer”. Bloc Party are in town September 28 at Ricoh Coliseum.

MP3: Bloc Party – “I Still Remember” (acoustic)
MP3: Bloc Party – “Sunday” (acoustic)
Video: Bloc Party – “The Prayer” (YouTube)

In exchange for the cover of their new issue, Interpol gives Chart a song-by-song breakdown of Our Love To Admire.

Concert news – The Noisettes have a date at Lee’s Palace September 19, Voxtrot are back in town on the 9th of October for a show at the Mod Club, French electronic duo Justice are at the Republik in the heart of clubland on October 18 and Pitchfork has the The New Pornographers at the Phoenix on October 21 rather than the 20th, thus clearing up the conflict with Do Make Say Think. They also have Benjy Ferree opening up along with Emma Pollock.

The Daily Show‘s Rob Corddry annotates his life in music for Filter.

Looking for something to do tonight? Try hitting up the El Mocambo where The Wildbirds, hailing from the rock and roll hotbed of Wisconsin, will be raising a racket. Their stock in trade is straightahead, no frills rock of the sort you probably don’t even realize you dig until you’re there and you realize that, yes, that is your hair whipping around. Even if you’re bald. Spin named them their band of the day last Friday.

Courtesy of Emerge, I’ve got three pairs of passes to this show to give away. Since it’s kind of time-sensitive, I’ll take the first three people who email me at frank AT chromewaves DOT net with “I want to see The Wildbirds” in the subject line and their full names in the body. Toronto’s Barons & Lengthy support, contest closes when I’ve got three names.

MP3: The Wildbirds – “421”
Video: The Wildbirds – “421” (YouTube)

Toronto singer-songwriter Megan Hamilton released the follow-up to her 2006 debut Feudal Ladies Club this week in the form of the How We Think About Light EP. It picks up where the full-length left off, with its woozily playful countryisms and heads off to a more high, lonesome and autumnal place with some new production tricks (My Morning Jacket called – they want their reverb back) and even some rock attitude in tow. The benefits of playing with a full band, The Volunteer Canola, between the first record and this one are evident and make for a fine follow-up.

Hamilton will be celebrating the release of the record this coming Thursday evening at the El Mocambo with compatriots Emilie Mover and The Northwest Division and is offering a prize pack to one lucky winner consisting of a pair of passes to the show, copies of both CDs, a t-shirt and some pins. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want the Megan Hamilton stuff” in the subject line and your full name in the body before midnight, July 17.

BlogTO and Pulp Magazine talked to Megan about the creation of her new record.

MP3: Megan Hamilton – “Detroit”
MP3: Megan Hamilton – “Prophecy”
Video: Megan Hamilton – “Are The Birds Caught In The Trees?” (YouTube)
MySpace: Megan Hamilton