BlurSo it seems the holidays are officially upon us. I know this because I skipped out of work early yesterday, and the streetcar was packed with people doing exactly the same thing. And as things everywhere wind down, so too will things around here. I’ll still post as long as there’s stuff to post about, but I intend to utilize the downtime to catch up on some reading, movie watching, shopping… real world stuff.

But I’ll wind out the week with this really interesting piece from The Guardian, wherein they talk to the people who served as inspiration for famous songs throughout the years. Like the guy who owned Blur’s “Country House”, the girl whom The Beatles said was “Leaving Home”, she whose name is “Geraldine” and is Glasvegas’ social worker and Patti Boyd, who both had something in the way she moved and also went by “Layla”. Worth a read, perhaps this afternoon between glances at the clock every few minutes, waiting for 5:00.

And if that’s not enough, there’s a variety of sessions that’ve gone online in the last couple days that are worth your while.

NPR gets Mercury Rev to record a session with legendary producer Steve Lillywhite. The Montreal Mirror and Chicago Reader have interviews.

Daytrotter has a Crooked Fingers set available to download.

Bandstand Busking gets Asobi Seksu to play a few songs, busker-style. Their new album Hush is out February 17. And digging through the archives also reveals similar sessions with The Acorn (session) and Frightened Rabbit (session). Nice.

MPR has Longwave over to play a few. They’ve got a new vid from new album Secrets Are Sinister and The Columbian has an interview with frontman Steve Schlitz.

Video: Longwave – “Shining Hours”

Stereogum’s Decomposed puts on The Uglysuit.

NPR talks to School Of Seven Bells.

The Age profiles Fleet Foxes.

I’d mentioned in my favourites of 2008 post that the Woodpigeon record which made the list was a limited release and currently unavailable, but that it’d re-released soon – as Exclaim reports, “soon” means February 3. On that day, Treasury Library Canada will be available again in regular retail outlets and come with a ten-track bonus disc entitled Houndstooth Europa. And if that’s not enough Woodpigeon for you, their next album Die Stadt Muzikanten will be released in the Fall.

Von Bondies have a date at the Horseshoe on February 13, full tour dates at Plug In Music. Their new album Love, Hate And Then There’s You is out February 3.

Part of Drowned In Sound’s year-end coverage has involved soliciting “best of year” picks from various artists including Sky Larkin, Shearwater, Frightened Rabbit and School Of Seven Bells, the results of which are available in three parts. Filter has also been collecting Top 10 lists from a slew of acts and compiling them at eRockstar.

Photo by Frank Yang

Some people spend Thanksgiving with their families. I spend mine with rock’n’roll bands. Two years ago at Pop Montreal, last year at The Phoneix with The National and this year again at the Phoneix with Okkervil River and Crooked Fingers. It’s okay – my parents have a habit of being out of the country on Thanksgiving so it’s not like I’m a total no-account son. Just mostly. Anyways.

It’s not like I was the only one – the Phoenix was pretty much full of people skipping out on turkey day to welcome what was pretty much one of the best touring bills you’d be likely to see. And while I was, as always, excited to see Okkervil River, this would be the fourth time in less than a year that I’d be seeing them – Crooked Fingers, on the other hand, had been ages. Eric Bachmann had come through as a solo artist (with band) two years ago and as a solo act under the Crooked Fingers name (opening for The Delgados back in 2004 but the last time Crooked Fingers came to Toronto as a proper band was March 2005 and while I went to that show I wasn’t a fan at the time and… you know what? Never mind. It’d been a while.

One consequence of Bachmann’s constantly shifting musical identities is that you’ll rarely get the same band from one tour to the next. This time out, Crooked Fingers was the four-piece who recorded their new record Forfeit/Fortune but in addition to the new material, they were tasked with covering songs from throughout Bachmann’s varied career and results were a bit mixed. For starters, they had to fight through a mix that just didn’t sound quite right – the balance between Bachmann’s powerful rasp and the softer vocals of bassist Miranda Brown and violinist Elin Palmer never managed to find the sweet spot – and while airing out Archers Of Loaf classic “Web In Front” brought many cheers, the arrangement didn’t have the necessary muscle to do it justice. On the plus side, the new songs sounded mostly excellent stripped of the album’s heavier production and the older Crooked Fingers repertoire sounded terrific, no qualifiers. Though they could have played more from Dignity & Shame.

Okkervil also came in with their own share of lineup shuffling – while keyboardist Justin Sherburn had been Jonathan Meiburg’s official replacement since March, guitarist Charles Bissell, who’d stepped in for new father Brian Cassidy at the same time had done his tour of duty and returned to the Wrens and his replacement was Austinite Lauren Gurgiolo, tasked with handling guitar, mandolin and steel duties. But such fluidity is in the nature of every river, even the Okkervil. Yes, I went there. Let’s move on.

Every time I’ve seen Okkveril River live – and I think this was time six or seven – they’ve put on an even better show and considering their last couple visits set the bar pretty high, that’s an accomplishment. This time out, they had the advantage of touring behind their most out and out rocking record in The Stand-Ins, sequel to last year’s The Stage Names. Kicking off with “Plus Ones”, Okkervil barreled through an over ninety-minute set that focused on their last two opuses, Stage Names/Stand Ins and Black Sheep Boy, only reaching back to their debut Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See for the rousing encore-closing double shot of “Okkervil River Song” and “Westfall”, the latter featuring a boisterous audience sing-along. And while I’d hoped to hear the lyrically-updated version of “The President’s Dead” that’s been making appearances this tour, it wasn’t to be this night. Did they not know we also have an election tomorrow?

The band’s steady evolution from a folk to rock band has done wonders for their live set – originally, they had to deliver the slower end of their repertoire with a solid dose of slop and anarchy to generate the energy necessary for a riveting live set. And while it was an exhilarating experience, it wasn’t always pretty. Now, with the relentless touring having tightened them up immeasurably, Okkervil are an amazing live act to behold and there was no need to make excuses for missing notes or being off-key, because it didn’t happen. Though if you were looking for a little of the old chaos, it was there when Will Sheff pulled the mic off the stand and knocked it down, directly on the head of a girl in the front row (she was fine). Accidental assaults notwithstanding, Sheff was a magnetic frontman, starting off besuited and bespectacled and steadily shedding his wardrobe as he became more and more sweat-soaked from bounding around stage and working the crowd, the patron saint of English majors who secretly wish they were rock stars.

The Toronto Star has an interview with Sheff covering topics such as the fertile Austin music scene and Canadian Thanksgiving traditions. Chart talks to Eric Bachmann about Forfeit/Fortune.

Photos: Okkervil River, Crooked Fingers @ The Phoenix – October 12, 2008
MP3: Okkervil River – “Lost Coastlines”
MP3: Okkervil River – “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe”
MP3: Okkervil River – “The President’s Dead”
MP3: Okkervil River – “No Key, No Plan”
MP3: Okkervil River – “Black”
MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Phony Revolutions”
MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Call To Love”
MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Big Darkness”
MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Devil’s Train”
MP3: Crooked Fingers – “New Drink For The Old Drunk”
Video: Okkervil River – “Lost Coastlines”
Video: Okkervil River – “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe”
Video: Okkervil River – “Girl In Port”
Video: Okkervil River – “For Real”
Video: Crooked Fingers – “Let’s Not Pretend (To Be New Men)”
MySpace: Okkervil River
MySpace: Crooked Fingers

Photo by Patrick Marold

Eric Bachmann has worn many hats over the years. He started out as the hard-barking frontman of angular ’90s college rock heroes Archers Of Loaf. He then reinvented himself as the lonely troubadour on the first couple Crooked Fingers records, terrain he revisited on 2006’s gorgeous solo effort To The Races. And with the last couple Crooked Fingers records, in particular 2005’s sublime Dignity & Shame, he proved to be just as capable as a lush pop artisan and bandleader. And now on his latest effort Forfeit/Fortune, which once again finds him operating under the Crooked Fingers banner, he decides to be all of the above – simultaneously.

Perhaps as a reaction to the singular starkness of For The Races, Bachmann has crafted one of his most eclectic and fully-arranged records – one that manages to incorporate aspects of his entire career from gruff-voiced Archer-esque numbers to somber, solo-ish pieces, while still treading some completely new sonic territory. The heavy-handed production might be a point of contention for some, utilizing decidedly un-Bachmann-ish touches like drum machines and synths.

Those more left-field tangents give Forfeit/Fortune a certain, “WTF?” quality and in some cases probably distract and detract from the songs themselves but those instances are thankfully rare. It may be a bit dizzying, but the Forfeit/Fortune experience is a good one. The overall flavour isn’t too far from Dignity & Shame, maintaining that record’s Spanish accents if not its cohesiveness and adding some Balkan influence for good measure. It’s also a bit back-loaded with the best material, culminating in a stellar duet with Neko Case. Bachmann fans might find themselves a bit off-balance listening to this latest record, but there’s still plenty solid to hold on to.

Crooked Fingers are currently on tour with Okkervil River and will play the Phoenix this coming Sunday night, October 12 – to which I’m giving away passes. New City Chicago, The Hartford Advocate and Crawdaddy have interviews with Bachmann about Forfeit/Fortune, which was released yesterday. It’s streaming in its entirety as Spinner and comes in both standard and deluxe CD formats, the latter of which comes with a documentary DVD amongst other goodies. Check out the trailer.

MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Phony Revolutions”
Video: Crooked Fingers – “Let’s Not Pretend (To Be New Men)”
Stream: Crooked Fingers / Forfeit/Fortune
MySpace: Crooked Fingers

In addition to streaming Bob Dylan’s new Bootleg Series – Tell-Tale Signs, out yesterday – Spinner has got a couple of the tracks available to download.

MP3: Bob Dylan – “Mississippi”
MP3: Bob Dylan – “Dreamin’ Of You”
Stream: Bob Dylan / Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8

Neil Young could take a lesson or two from Dylan in archive-digging efficiency. No Depression reports that to no one’s surprise, the release of Archives has been delayed from this Fall until January or February of 2009… sure. Whatever. As a form of compensation, Bad News Beat reports that another Archives live set circa 1968 and entitled Sugar Mountain will be released on November 28. Neil is playing the Air Canada Centre on December 4 and 5.

Pitchfork and The Skinny chat with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop.

Marc Perlman of The Jayhawks and Golden Smog talks to Prefix about the process of assembling the latter’s recent best-of comp Stay Golden.

Paste talks to M Ward about what’s next for both him (new record called Hold Time out in February) and She & Him (Volume Two is “in the works”).

Minneapolis City Pages converses with David Berman of Silver Jews.

Matador has massive plans to entice you to pre-order the next edition in the massive Pavement reissue series, Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed.. It’s out November 18.

Political Affairs talks to Billy Bragg about affairs of a political nature.

Much delight in these parts that Neil Halstead has a date at the Drake Underground on November 8. No, he’s not bringing his surfing BFF Jack Johnson with him but you can’t have everything.

MP3: Neil Halstead – “Paint A Face”
Video: Neil Halstead – “Queen Bee”

Noah & The Whale are coming back to town for a date at the El Mocambo on December 9. The band have been keeping a tour diary from their just-completed North American jaunt at LiveDaily and Seattlest interviews frontman Charlie Fink.

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals have a date at the El Mocambo on December 10. The McGill Tribune has a chat.