American SongwriterWhen Jeff Mangum, prodigal godhead of that which is largely called indie, gave a rare performance in a Brooklyn loft last December, people freaked out. And reasonably so – the Neutral Milk Hotel-ier had been basically been retired and out of sight for nigh on twelve years, his band having dissolved post-In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and in the intervening years, his legend only grew. So the idea of him suddenly surfacing to play a show probably seemed like a once in a lifetime occurrence.

Except that it wasn’t. My theory at the time was that this was far from a one-off but the start of a return to music for Mangum, who was probably tired of the mythology that had grown around him and wanted to begin the process of deconstructing it, of saying “hey – I’m a guy with a guitar who wrote some songs” and maybe pave the way to being able to write, release and perform some more. And so it really wasn’t a surprise that 2011 started with a trickle of additional live show announcements – first as a special guest at the Portishead-curated I’ll Be Your Mirror at Asbury Park, New Jersey in September, then as curator of the All Tomorrow’s Parties in Somerset, UK in December, and now additional non-festival dates have begun trickling out, and at the moment they begin in Toronto.

Though The Horseshoe played host to a legendary, almost-never-was Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998, Mangum’s return will be in the suitably reverent environs of Trinity-St. Paul’s on August 12 and 13. Tickets are $32.50 and will go on sale as follows: a limited pre-sale of paperless tickets will begin at 10AM on Friday, February 25 with the presale password being made public at the Collective Concerts website on Wednesday, February 23 at 3PM. Presale customers will be allowed to purchase four tickets per order, per customer, per show. Public on sale begins on Saturday, February 26 at noon via usual outlets – Ticketmaster, The Horseshoe, Rotate this and Soundscapes – and purchases will be limited to two per customer.

Exciting news, to be sure, though one wonders what this does to the chances of Mangum showing up with the upcoming Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour which hits The Horseshoe on March 18 – it had been a pretty safe bet that Mangum would show up on at least some of those dates, and he might still. But if you’re not the gambling sort and the guarantee of a night of great tunes from his Elephant 6 compatriots isn’t enough to convince you, then these Trinity shows should be just the ticket. Not that you had much choice since the Holiday Surprise show is sold out anyways.

The Wall Street Journal welcomes Jeff Mangum back from the wilderness with a timeline of his “lost years”.

MP3: Neutral Milk Hotel – “Holland 1945”

From lost legends to exciting newcomers, Australia’s Tame Impala and London’s Yuck are teaming up for a North American tour that includes a stop at The Phoenix in Toronto on May 1, tickets $20. I’m not that familiar with Tame Impala but Yuck, whose wonderfully grungy ’90s power-pop-laden self-titled debut just came out this week and has been on heavy rotation in my ears. Spin thinks Tame Impala will be the next big thing while Spinner has an interview with Yuck.

MP3: Yuck – “Rubber”
MP3: Tame Impala – “Runaway, Houses, City, Clouds”

John Vanderslice will take his orchestrally-powered latest White Wilderness on the road this Spring, though it’s unlikely he’ll have an actual orchestra with him – you couldn’t fit one in the Drake Underground, where he’ll be on May 10. You will, however, be able to fit his tourmate Damien Jurado, and Jurado isn’t a small guy.

MP3: John Vanderslice – “The Piano Lesson”
MP3: Damien Jurado – “Gillian Was A Horse”

The Independent talks to Dean Wareham.

Pixies drummer Dave Lovering tells Billboard that the band are contemplating what to do after their run of Doolittle shows – including April 18 and 19 at Massey Hall – are done. Either do the full-album show treatment for another of the records or – horror of horrors – write and record new material.

Buffalo Tom is streaming the whole of their just-released new record Skins, out March 8.

Stream: Buffalo Tom / Skins

I haven’t been keeping track of whether The Flaming Lips have made good on their song-a-month promise, but they have uploaded a 12-part simul-song to YouTube, so that sort of counts I guess.

NPR has got a World Cafe session with Liz Phair.

Also stopping in at NPR’s World Cafe for a coffee and session are Superchunk.

Spinner talks to The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr about their new record Angles, out March 22.

The Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star have feature pieces on Interpol.

Pitchfork reports that the new Death Cab For Cutie album Codes & Keys will be released on May 31.

NPR has a World Cafe session and Pitchfork and Crave interview features with The Decemberists.

The Independent Weekly, Paste, Blurt, Prefix, The Wall Street Journal, NBC and Spinner profile Drive-By Truckers, whose new record Go-Go Boots is out next week but streaming now in whole at Spinner.

Stream: Drive-By Truckers – “Go Go Boots”

The Alternate Side has a video session and interview with Iron & Wine.

Will Sheff of Okkervil River blogs about his experience at the Grammy Awards (he was nominated for best liner notes) for Billboard. Their new record I Am Very Far is out May 10. A video of one of the new songs, recorded last month when they played Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, has just been posted online – check it out at Prefix.

Bright Eyes have released a new video from their new record The People’s Key. The Quietus also has an interview with Conor Oberst, who plays The Sound Academy (with his band) on March 13.

Video: Bright Eyes – “Shell Games”

The new DeVotchKa record 100 Lovers is up to stream at NPR in advance of its March 1 release.

Stream: DeVotchKa / 100 Lovers

The San Francisco Examiner and Spinner have interviews with and NYC Taper a live recording from last week of Nicole Atkins; she’s at The Horseshoe on February 26.

Asobi Seksu released their lastest Fluorescence this week and released a new video from it. They also have a chat with Spinner and will be at The Horseshoe on February 27.

Video: Asobi Seksu – “Trails”

NYC Taper has a live recording and Spinner an interview with Wye Oak, whose Civilian is out March 8 and who play The El Mocambo on April 9.

Paste and So Much Silence chat with Michael Benjamin Lerner of Telekinesis. They play The Horseshoe on March 6 and have an in-store at Sonic Boom earlier that afternoon.

Stereogum checks in with Fleet Foxes on the status of their new record Helplessness Blues, out May 3.

Rolling Stone is holding a competition to choose who will grace an upcoming cover – vote Ume.

Autumn de WildeIt’s odd to think that a band’s most direct and tuneful album might turn out to be its most divisive, but were you to survey a cross-section of Decemberists fans, it’s unlikely that “convention” would come up as what they love most about the Portland band. After all, this is a band who made their name with sea shanties, drama club videos, multi-part prog-rock epics and full-blown rock operas – hardly the standard template for pop music success, and yet it’s served the band well as they’ve built progressively their eccentricities up, using their folk roots and pop smarts as mortar, culminating in 2009’s grandiose The Hazards Of Love.

So with nowhere further to go on that trip, it was inevitable that they’d dial it back some for their next effort but the degree to which The King Is Dead retreats is pretty remarkable. You’d have to go back as far as their 2001 debut EP 5 Songs to find a collection of songs as countrified, direct and simply adorned as these, and even then Colin Meloy’s penchant for period-costume characters and storytelling sets the two bookends of their career (thus far) apart. While he remains an erudite and wordy lyricist, his quirkier narrative inclinations take a step back to allow the band’s musicianship and songcraft carry the day. And start to finish, this is probably The Decemberists’ most tasteful and accomplished record to date, given extra weight from vocal contributions by Gillian Welch and notable for the absence of the one or two compositional experiments that seemed mandatory on past efforts.

For most other bands, such a record would be an unqualified high-water mark but for The Decemberists it’s enough of a departure that the portion of their audience who love them for their idiosyncrasies might find it puzzling and/or disappointing – it’s not a perspective I necessarily agree with as the merits of The King Is Dead, irrespective of the rest of their catalog, are myriad, but it’s an understandable one. But for others who might have been turned off by the band’s indulgences in the past, it could be just the record they’ve been waiting for. Assuming that one waits for records from bands they’ve already been turned off of.

NPR, Billboard, The Wall Street Journal and MusicOmh have interviews with the band, whose record is out tomorrow and whose tour for the record commences next week – look for them at The Sound Academy in Toronto on February 1.

MP3: The Decemberists – “Down By The Water”

S. Carey chats with The AV Club and discusses his new video with Spin.

Video: S. Carey – “In The Dirt”

Mark Olson talks to NOW and Gary Louris to Spinner about the The Jayhawks reunion, which kicks off its tour tomorrow night at The Phoenix – the same day their deluxe reissues of Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass come out.

Daytrotter serves up a session with Iron & Wine, whose new record Kiss Each Other Clean is out next week.

NPR is streaming a World Cafe session with Old 97s.

NYC Taper is sharing a recording of the “Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500” at Maxwell’s in New Jersey from last week.

There’s a new video from Buffalo Tom’s forthcoming record Skins, due out February 15.

Video: Buffalo Tom – “Down”

Peter Buck tells NME he thinks quite highly of R.E.M.’s new record Collapse Into Now; the world will judge when it comes out on March 8 (or a couple weeks earlier when it leaks).

The Denver Post and Denver Westword have interviews with Liz Phair.

Parts & Labor are sharing the MP3 for the title track from their new record Constant Future, due out March 8.

MP3: Parts & Labor – “Constant Future”

Undercover discovers the statute of limitations on talking smack about former bandmates is up, as evidenced by this interview with Paul Banks of Interpol. They’re at The Sound Academy on February 15.

Washington City Paper recalls the heyday of The Dismemberment Plan.

Dave Gedge of The Wedding Present takes to The Guardian to offer The Flaming Lips some advice on how to successfully release a single a month for a year – after all, they did just that back in 1992 and included a b-side for each, no less. Of course, they didn’t write a song meant to be played on four iPhones simultaneously… The Lips have them beat there.

And oh yeah, Archers Of Loaf got back together for the first time in over a decade in Carrboro, North Carolina on Saturday night and it doesn’t feel like a one-off. If this is why we shouldn’t expect a new Crooked Fingers record before the end of the year, well, that’s okay then.

Michael LavineI had thought that their Condo Fucks excursion earlier this year would represent Yo La Tengo’s recorded output for 2009 – after all, crafting a recording of such depth and intricacy has to be exhausting for a band, mentally, emotionally and physically. But as it turns out, that was just a warm-up and Hoboken’s finest will release a proper new collection of tunes this Fall in the form of Popular Songs.

From the write-up in the official bio, it sounds like the band are continuing on with the “everything goes” aesthetic that made 2006’s I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass such a welcome return to form, after a couple of pretty but overly snoozy albums to open the century. Expect sharp pop songs, extended jammed-out excursions and tender balladry, expect them to make preorders worth your while, expect touring this Fall and expect the record to be out September 8.

And expect the first MP3 released to sound exactly like this.

MP3: Yo La Tengo – “Periodically Double Or Triple”

Yo La labelmates Sonic Youth will release their new album The Eternal next week, and are currently streaming it all on iLike. And be forewarned, PitchforkTV is marking the occasion by declaring next week to be Sonic Youth Week – there’ll be video content galore. Canada.com talks to Lee Ranaldo, The Guardian to the whole band and you can look for Sonic Youth at Massey Hall on June 30.

Stream: Sonic Youth / The Eternal

Currently on PitchforkTV is the entirety of Jarvis Cocker’s set at last year’s Pitchfork Festival, and there’s not much to say to that besides, “JARVIS COME TO TORONTO”. The Age has an interview.

Incidentally, the lineup to Virgin Festival BC was announced yesterday, and both Jarvis Cocker and Sonic Youth are part of it. But before you think that the festival’s good name has recovered from the Montreal fiasco, note that the BC headliners are Ben Harper and Our Lady Peace. So feel free to continue to despair, and no, I won’t be buying a plane ticket to Vancouver for that weekend. And they still have to announce Calgary before they get to Ontario, so it’ll probably be a couple weeks before we know what they’ve got in store for us come the end of August.

Dean Wareham talks to the Live Arts & Fringe Festival blog, Decider, QRO and Philadelphia Weekly about memoirs and Warhol, amongst other things. And via A Head Full Of Wishes, check out this video of Dean reading maybe the greatest Luna fan letter ever.

Dinosaur Jr and their stunt doubles unwind a bit (and fall down) while on tour in the new video from Farm, out June 23.

Video: Dinosaur Jr – “Over It”

NOW, The Times, Rolling Stone, The Montreal Mirror and hour.ca talk to Grizzly Bear, playing a sold-out show at the Phoenix tonight.

Interview interviews Bjork.

Maximo Park’s Paul Smith tells NME about needing strategically reinforced suits for live performance. See him not split his crotch while doing a jump at Lee’s Palace on September 18.

Austin’s Ume have plotted a tour up and down American en route to Toronto for NxNE in a couple weeks, where they’ll play Neutral on Thursday, June 18 at 10PM. They’ve also made available another MP3 from their Sunshower EP available to download.

MP3: Ume – “Pendulum”

Gemma Hayes recently released a new digital EP and made a video for the title track.

Video: Gemma Hayes – “Oliver”

Singing Lamb talks to Lucas Jensen of Venice Is Sinking.

The Rural Alberta Advantage is conducting an interesting project over at Kickstarter.com wherein they’re soliciting donations to record and press a super-limited edition 7″ single that their backers will be able to take home for their very own. There’s also various tiers of support – for example, chip in a measly $3K and the RAA will come to your home and play you your own show. They’re running this campaign for a couple months, almost exactly until their July 30 show at the Horseshoe to mark the release of Hometowns on Saddle Creek July 7.

Billboard talks to drummer Jody Stephens about the forthcoming Big Star box set Keep An Eye On The Sky, due out September 15.

Beatroute interviews Malajube, who’ll be playing a free show at Lee’s Palace on June 12.

Their June 16 show at Lee’s is already sold out, but if you’re ducat-less, fear not – Passion Pit have already scheduled another show at the Phoenix for August 11, tickets $15. I guess they were really serious about making up each of those canceled shows from earlier this year.

MP3: Passion Pit – “Sleepyhead”
Video: Passion Pit – “Sleepyhead”

Boston’s Drug Rug have a date at the Horseshoe on August 18.

MP3: Drug Rug – “Day I Die”

Words? Mono and Maserati don’t need no stinking words – just volume and grandeur, and they’ll prove it October 2 at Lee’s Palace.

MP3: Mono – “Follow The Map”
MP3: Mono – “Ashes In The Snow”
MP3: Maserati – “The World Outside”
Video: Mono – “Follow The Map”
Video: Maserati – “This Is A Sight We Had One Day From The High Mountain”

And congratulations to Scott Marchi, who won the contest for the National t-shirt.

Paul HammondHalifax’s Dog Day have got the goods to be a terrific pure pop band, capable of crafting sublime melodies and hooks, but their fondness for the noisier virtues of the indie rock canon of the ’90s ensures that they’ll never be quite so easy to pin down. As such, their 2006 effort Night Group was an incongruous yet perfectly natural bit of doom-pop, all spiky and sweet – heavy and foreboding in intent but eminently hummable in execution.

Their recently-released follow-up Concentration takes those same classic college rock ingredients and brews up something familiar, but still new. It’s less immediate than Night Group, yet somehow smoother and more melodic and textured with Seth Smith’s vocals still distinctively monotone but Nancy Urich’s vox much stronger and expressive on this outing. Some may bemoan the absence of Night Group‘s punchier elements but the dream-pop qualities of Concentration reveal themselves with deeper listens and are just as rewarding.

Touring Night Group to death was a successful strategy for the band last time out, so it’s only logical that they pile into the van yet again for Concentration. Their cross-Canada tour already covered the Maritimes earlier this month but they’re covering all points Quebec and west starting next week, including a date at Lee’s Palace in Toronto on the 28th of May. Courtesy of Against The Grain, I’ve got five pairs of passes to give away for this show which will also feature The Burning Hell, Wild Life and Pacific Trash Vortex and on top of that, courtesy of Pigeon Row, I’ve got two copies of Concentration on vinyl available to give away. I’ll run these contests separately, so to enter both, email me twice – contests AT chromewaves.net – either with “I want to see Dog Day” in the subject line and your full name in the body for the passes, or “I want to hear Dog Day” in the subject line and your full mailing address in the body for the vinyl. Contest closes at midnight, May 26th.

There’s an interview with Dog day at The Coast.

Update: Just announced – Dog Day are also doing an in-store at Soundscapes on May 27 at 6PM.

MP3: Dog Day – “Rome”
Video: Dog Day – “Happiness”
MySpace: Dog Day

I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of the new Royal City compilation Royal City, and can tell you it’s a beautiful package – hardcover and bookbound – and oh yeah, the music is pretty terrific too. The limited edition set collects an album’s worth of unreleased material from the departed Guelph outfit and is set for release June 23.

MP3: Royal City – “Can’t You Hear Me Calling”
MP3: Royal City – “A Belly Was Made For Wine”

Royal City guitarist Jim Guthrie’s new project Human Highway was just featured in a session on NPR.

NOW and The Cord talk to Joel Plaskett, who plays Massey Hall tomorrow night.

Metric have rolled out a new video from Fantasies.

Video: Metric – “Sick Muse”

eMusic and The Quietus have typically entertaining interviews with Jarvis Cocker. He also talks to The Guardian about his thespian ambitions in the new Wes Anderson adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox.

It’s like a nostalgia trip back to SxSW 2009 at Bandstand Busking as they present a session with Fanfarlo and another with Theoretical Girl.

These days it’s rare that a record of interest is put out without my being bombarded with press releases about it well in advance, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover the existence of Hard To Find – a digital-only collection of American Analog Set rarities which quietly came out in April. Covering the band’s years with Tiger Style and Arts & Crafts, it acts as a companion volume to 2001’s Through The ’90s. Considering that Andrew Kenny is now dedicated to his new project The Wooden Birds, this set could act as the final whirr and click in the quietly lovely story of AmAnSet.

MP3: The American Analog Set – “Stoney Chariots”
MP3: The American Analog Set – “Make It Take It”

Exclaim reports on the copyright clusterfuck that will essentially prevent the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse collaboration Dark Night Of The Soul from seeing any “legal” release.

Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs talks to Billlboard. They’re releasing a remix EP for “Zero” on June 9 on vinyl – it’s available digitally now.

Artrocker interviews School Of Seven Bells. They’ve also got a new video. A trippy new video.

Video: School Of Seven Bells – “My Cabal”

The Line Of Best Fit, The Sun, The Georgia Straight and The Village Voice have features on Grizzly Bear. They’ll release Veckatimest next Tuesday, May 26, and have a show at the Phoenix on June 5. There’s also an in-studio performance at WNYC streaming at NPR.

Decider and Rolling Stone interview St Vincent’s Annie Clark. She will be at Lee’s Palace on August 8, and has just made available another MP3 from Actor.

MP3: St. Vincent – “Actor Out Of Work”

Paste and Decider have interviews with John Vanderslice, while I Pick My Nose has an interview AND a tour of the ‘Slice’s garden. He will be at the Horseshoe on July 10.

Good Times, Metro Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Sentinel talk to Jenny Lewis.

My contest to give away copies of Dean Wareham’s memoirs Black Postcards wraps up tomorrow night, but if you don’t win a copy – and let me just say that the response to the contest has been overwhelmingly good and I wish I could give you all books – take heart, the folks at Ear Farm are also giving copies away AND they’ve got an interview with Wareham to go with it. So head on over and hedge your bets.

Other commitments keep me from partaking in this year’s Over The Top Fest, which began last night, but if you’re around this weekend and are looking to partake in some music and/or film, it’s really your best bet for discovering something new. There’s previews of some of the acts at this week’s NOW and eye.

Ottawa’s I Heart Music has been a tireless promoter of independent Canadian music for some years now, introducing both myself and countless others to great up-and-coming domestic talent via the blog and many, many live showcases. And it appears that no good deed goes unpunished as SOCAN, the national agency tasked to collecting royalties for Canadian songwriters, has gone after Matthew for royalties owed on his live shows, to the tune of a couple thousand dollars. Now if you’re of the inclination to donate to music media types in financial distress, you’ve obviously got a few options these days but Matt is fighting the good fight and deserves some support.

Autumn de WildeIt’s appropriate that I’m putting this up whilst in the Big Apple because more than any other band, Luna represents what I think of when I try to frame New York in musical terms – weird and wonderful and lightly hallucinogenic. And full of awesome guitar solos.

One of Dean Wareham’s first post-Luna projects was the writing of his memoirs, Black Postcards, which was released in hardcover form last year and in softcover last week. I reviewed it last year, remarking how candid and forthcoming Wareham was in its pages about his career and personal life and how at odds that was from the decidedly cryptic persona he’d cultivated over the years. It was an engrossing read and I recommended it wholeheartedly to anyone who is or was ever a Luna fan, or just found the life (and death) of bands that never quite break through fascinating. Maybe you took my advice and grabbed a copy, maybe you didn’t.

But if you didn’t, your procrastination has been rewarded. Courtesy of Penguin Books, I’ve got five – 5 – paperback copies of Black Postcards to give away. To enter, leave me a comment noting your favourite song from any of Wareham’s projects – Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta – and why. Essays not required, just a little thought. Be sure to include your email address so I can contact you. And because I’m feeling generous, this contest is open to residents of anywhere. But it will close in a week at midnight, May 23.

Wareham talked to Daily Finance about some of the economic realities of rock’n’roll and creates a playlist to soundtrack his book for Largehearted Boy.

MP3: Luna – “Friendly Advice” (live)
MP3: Luna – “The Slow Song (live)
MP3: Dean & Britta – “Words You Used To Say”
MP3: Dean & Britta – “Singer Sing”