Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
Poptones poses their always entertaining “Questions Of Doom” to Belle & Sebastian mastermind on their website. As reported last week, Belle & Sebastian’s new album The Life Pursuit will be out February 6 in the UK and be preceded by a single on January 16. And in the meantime, Revolution In The Head has another batch of B&S covers for your listening pleasure. The “Billie Jean” cover reminds of how sublimely they covered The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” two years ago at Massey Hall, and how I’ve never found a recording of either that show or any show where they tackle that gem. Anyone got it?
Spoon tells the Freep it’s good to be back home after touring abroad this Summer. Technically, they’re abroad again tonight, in Toronto for a show at the Phoenix. They just flew in from Vegoose in Vegas late last night/early this morning, hope they get some rest!
Jeff Tweedy continues to talk to Billboard, this time about the new Loose Fur album due in the Spring and upcoming recording sessions for a new Golden Smog record due, well, whenever.
The BBC is offering the video for the title track of the new Elbow album, Leaders Of The Free World. I hope you’ve all noticed the little contest banner up in the corner? It took me nearly 10 minutes to put together, so I do hope you appreciate it. The Elbow haikus are coming in, I’m looking forward to picking the best two and posting them for all to see. And scoff. Video link via Torr.
Want to hear a stream of one of the songs members of Pulp and Radiohead are contributing to the soundtrack for Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire? Click here. They also appear as the Wyrd Sisters in the film, which is out Friday November 18.
Sufjan-mania has spread across the Atlantic. It’s like the bird flu. The Guardian profiles the 50-statesman. Via Largehearted Boy.
Exclaim! speaks briefly with Rogue Wave but makes up for the brevity of the article with one big honking picture.
Choose-your-own-adventure Homestar Halloween!
np – Drive-By Truckers / The Dirty South
Monday, October 31st, 2005
For a band that had originally said they were going to keep a low profile in 2005, Explosions In The Sky are certainly keeping busy. Just this month, they released not one but two records – a reissue of their long sought-after and out-of-print debut How Strange, Innocence and the contribution to Travels In Constants mail-order series, a mini-album entitled The Rescue.
It’s interesting to compare and contrast the two releases, seeing as how they’re documents of the band at the very start of their careers and in the right now, yet were recorded in somewhat similar fashions. As the liner notes for How Strange, Innocence state (they’re printed directly on the face of the CD), the band had been together for just seven months before it holed up and produced this album in just four days from recording to mastering. Their green-ness is definitely evident in listening to the album, especially if you’ve heard their later works. The compositions aren’t nearly as focused and while there are moments that foreshadow where they’re going, it sounds mostly like a what it is – a new band feeling out their new surroundings and exploring.
The Rescue, on the other hand, oozes confidence. Even under the limitations put on the recording sessions (apparently wrote and recorded one song a day for eight days), there’s a unity and commonness of purpose within the band that’s tangible. The musical chemistry hinted at in the first record is in full effect here. In addition to their core guitar/bass/drum sound, there are also some ambient vocals and piano flourishes which, while seemingly minor, do add a new dimension to the EITS sound. If The Rescue is any indication of where EITS are heading, they’re following the natural evolution of the post-rock instrumental band wherein they discover there’s much more interesting territory to be explored in beauty than aggression. Whenever the new album comes out next year (someone said Fall?), expect it to be a scorcher.
In the meantime, check out a track from How Strange, Innocence:
MP3: Explosions In The Sky – “Look Into The Air”
And while legit mail-order pressings of The Rescue are all sold out, thanks to the magic of the internet, it’s still available to those who want a copy… and the band is fine with it. Quoth EITS:
“We can only assume that it will be available on various file sharing sites soon, so please feel free to download it. We don’t mind.”
And there you go. They will have copies with them on tour this Fall, but their schedule is limited to the UK, a couple European shows and a pair of shows in NY and LA… not much use for most of us (or me, anyway). That’s why I have no qualms about posting the YouSendIt link from which I downloaded my copy. I don’t know how long these things last, but if it goes dead anytime soon, let me know – I still have the .rar file on my desktop.
Bob Mould likes Swervedriver. Bob is taking a short break, having just finished his full-band rock tour, but will be back on the road the second week of November doing the solo acoustic thing.
MusicTAP has details on next year’s Richard Thompson box set. Cleverly titled RT: The Life And Music Of Richard Thompson, the set offers five discs of completely rare and unreleased recordings from throughout his career as well as a 160-page (!) book. Those are some mighty liner notes. The collection is out February 6 – check out the full press release here.
A cryptic message has appeared on the Wheat website… “everyday i said a prayer for kathy and made a one inch square – 2006”. Can you say hiatus over? Sweet. Oh, and does anyone have the complete Nude version of Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second? I’ve only got three or four of the tracks and would like to track down the whole thing. I know it’s out there.
Rogue Wave talks to The Daily Vanguard about recording Descended Like Vultures.
np – Yo La Tengo / Prisoners Of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985-2003
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco takes some time out to tell Billboard how recording sessions for the band’s sixth album are progressing. They’ve begun sorting through material with an eye towards a release sometime next year, and excepting the live album out November 15, this will be the first record to feature the full six-piece lineup. One of the songs Tweedy mentions, “I’m Talking to Myself About You”, has already been road tested and live versions are circulating the interweb under the name of “Walken”. You can grab a couple live mp3s of the track here. There’s also a piece on the band in The Chicago Reader (WARNING – PDF with live links! May cause browser wackiness) where Tweedy talks about the timing of Kicking Television, why there’s no DVD of the shows and various other bits of scuttlebutt and gossip.
And for more Wilco goodness, come back here around, oh, midnight…
NME brings word that Belle & Sebastian’s new album will be called The Life Pursuit and be out in the UK on February 6 (and presumably North America on February 7). I guess the previous working title was just a smokescreen – the goalkeeper will have to seek revenge elsewhere. Via The Rock Snob.
Chart has a long piece on Metric. The Straight has a short piece.
Harp reports that the Billy Bragg box set which was announced for this release this Fall and then cruelly retracted just days later, will be coming out on February 21. We’re talking about the seven-disc box set, in case you weren’t keeping up.
New York Magazine plays Q&A with Matt Pond. From For The Records.
The Daily Texan talks to Mac McCaughan of Portastatic.
Neko Case speaks very very briefly to Billboard about co-self-producing her new record, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, which is out on March 7.
Pulse Of The Twin Cities talks to My Morning Jacket’s new guitar slinger, Carl Broemel. From Largehearted Boy.
Rainer Maria’s new album remains the only one on my release calendar that is supposed to come out in 2005, but has no set release date. Maybe someone can ask them WTF when they tour through town on November 17 for a show at Lee’s Palace.
It’s good to see that even amidst all the chaos and uncertainty, the White House is managing to focus on issues that really matter to Americans.
My iPod is here. It’s pretty. I’ve gone with 256 AAC for ripping, so my hard drive and iPod are filling up a little faster than I anticipated, but it should be okay. Still much ripping and organizing to do. Damn, I’ve got a lot of CDs.
np – Explosions In The Sky / How Strange, Innocence
Friday, October 28th, 2005
It’s quite nice to see The National get some press that talks about the greatness of the band itself and not whether or not half the audience left after the opening act played… Check out features and interviews with frontman Matt Berninger at Pitch, Pittsburgh Live and The Tallahassee Democrat. I also can’t help noticing these tour dates with Bell Orchestre… They’re playing with them on November 10 in Montreal and November 12 in Burlington, Vermont, but are skipping the Toronto show on November 11. WTF? You’re already on the good side of the border, why not make the trek down the 401? Is an extra day in maple syrup country really that important? Le sigh.
Oh, I got a copy of Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (the album before Alligator) on vinyl via eBay last week. A wonderful HEAVY pressing. So pretty. And on the topic of vinyl, I got my copy of Ride’s Going Blank Again back from the record store after having it cleaned. HOLY SMOKE. If anyone ever has a piece of vinyl that needs to be cleaned, find someone with the Nitty Gritty record cleaning system and have them do it. You cannot believe the amount of crap they got off of these records. Seriously. Compared to how it was before, the noise floor now is almost non-existant. I mean, there’s still a little noise, but relatively speaking it’s negligable. And it just cost me $2 a record to get done! Around Again on Baldwin rules.
So following up on Lucas’ comment yesterday that Low were planning on playing a New Year’s Eve show at the Underground in Hamilton – this Stille Post thread certainly makes it sound like a done deal, but if that were the case, why has there been no further updates on the matter since October 6? I personally hope that it’s not happening, because I’d really like to see Low but I don’t want to have to haul my ass to Hamilton on New Year’s Eve to do so. ‘Cause even if it weren’t a logistical hassle, Low isn’t really what I’d call “ring in the new year music”… “This one’s called ‘Whore’. Happy New Year, everyone!” Update: Show not happening. Thanks to Sean for the update.
The AV Club ran an interview with now-departed Low bassist Zak Sally last month, talking about his cartooning and acting projects which he is now presumably going to be concentrating more time on.
There’s some live Okkervil River material available for download here – unfortunately, neither of the two TT The Bears shows are of very good quality, but the Emo’s show in their hometown of Austin is, and of course the KEXP session sounds great as well. Okkervil’s “No Plan, No Key” tour is off to a bit of a rough start as they’ve had to cancel a couple west coast shows on account of singer Will Sheff coming down with strep throat and being unable to sing. Best wishes for a quick recovery.
The Washington Post profiles Death Cab For Cutie (via Coolfer) and I Heart Music has an interview with drummer Jason McGerr.
Mirrormask is finally getting a release in Toronto today! It’s playing at Canada Square up at Yonge and Eglinton, and Canada Square only. Despite the middling reviews, I am going to endeavour to see it this weekend.
So get this – I installed iTunes last night in anticipation of my iPod’s arrival today (hopefully, anyway. It’s in Missisauga!). I allow it to “organize” my My Music folder, and it does a fine job of it – too fine. I had a special folder of covers for the blog set aside, containing all past and pending covers of the week in one convenient location. Note the use of the past tense. iTunes has taken every one of those files and moved them into the folders for each respective artist. This, of course, is a disaster. Well, not really, but a real pain in the ass. I’ve begun the arduous process of moving them all back into their special folder… I have my posting schedule pretty much set for the rest of the year, however, so it’s no big deal to go find the needed tracks, but still. Stupid iTunes, thinks it’s so smart. I also have to go and tag a LOT of random MP3s so as to display in the browser properly. I bet I end up deleting most of them rather than try to figure out exactly what the hell song it is.
np – My Bloody Valentine / Isn’t Anything
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