DovesI had something really cool ready to post today, but then I couldn’t post it quite yet and so another day, another cobbled-together post. But at least it starts with some good stuff. And cool stuff might yet come before the day is out.

We’e inching nearer and nearer to the April 7 release date of Doves’ new album Kingdom Of Rust, and with new albums comes touring – the band have announced their first North American tour in four years starting in May, and the Toronto date is set for June 1 at the Kool Haus. Now I have kind of mixed feelings about this date – if I’m able to attend, it means that I didn’t go to Primavera Sound. But if I do get to go to Primavera Sound, then I miss seeing Doves. Of course, Barcelona wins this little competition of things I’d rather do by a landslide but it’s kind of nice to know that if it ends up out of reach, there’s a consolation prize.

Video: Doves -“Kingdom Of Rust”

Stop Crying Your Heart Out has an interview with Noel Gallagher of Oasis. Via Information Leafblower.

That Coldplay show with Elbow will be taking place at the Rogers Centre on July 30, and not the Molson Amphitheatre as originally reported. Tickets range from $39.50 to $99.50 and go on sale March 9

Hey, remember when she played the Rivoli? Adele has a date at Massey Hall for April 29. Tickets $39.50, on sale Saturday.

Vivian Girls are hitting the road and will be swinging through Toronto on May 8 accompanied by Crystal Antlers for a show at the Horseshoe. Pitchfork.TV also has a two-part video session with the band.

Le Blogotheque has a Take-Away Show with Ra Ra Riot, and if you missed the announcement yesterday, they’e going to be in town on April 7 opening up for Death Cab For Cutie at the Sound Academy. Cold War Kids round out that bill.

Magnet have enlisted Dean & Britta to play guest-editor on their website – start out with this interview and browse the site at your leisure for more dispatches from the duo.

They’re not, however, responsible for this piece that rates the top five overrated and underrated Wilco songs – that’s all Magnet staff. Wilco’s new album is currently set for a June release.

Billboard has got more details on Neil Young’s forthcoming Fork In The Road, now set for an April 7 release.

The Line Of Best Fit has got another new track from My Latest Novel, whose sophomore album Death And Entrances is out May 18.

The Line Of Best Fit interviews DeVotchKa.

Spin is offering a couple of acoustic performance videos from Metric, whose new album Fantasies is out April 14. They’re streaming a few tracks on their website.

BeatRoute interviews The Hylozoists.

Laundromatinee sessions up with Blitzen Trapper.

Citing an internet leak as the reason, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s have elected to move the release of their next album It’s Blitz! up from the original April 14 date to March 31. Spin has excerpted some of their cover story on the band online.

Tom Henry JonesBy nature, I’m an album guy and prefer to let my impressions of an artist unfold over forty minutes or so. But sometimes I get swept up in the joy of the single – the one individual song – and give the “repeat” button on my CD player a workout that more than makes up for its usual state of neglect. Such was the case of “Nitrogen Pink”, the first single from UK singer-songwriter Polly Scattergood (her real name).

Musically, it unfurls from a simple, unadorned intro to a thing of great sonic grandeur in the span of five minutes, sounding like the finale to a musical set in the distant future. Not a new trick, but when executed properly – as it is here – it’s always impressive. But the centerpiece is Scattergood’s voice, a wonderfully expressive and elastic thing capable of evoking tremendous strength and utter frailty within a single phrase. Like many of her female English singer-songwriters peers do these days, Scattergood owes an immense debt to the influence of Kate Bush but like the best of that group – Bat For Lashes and Florence & The Machine come immediately to mind – she takes that inspiration and interprets it in a way that’s very much her own.

Her self-titled debut album Other Too Endless is set for a March 9 May 19 release and based on the additional samples available on her Myspace, the addictiveness of “Nitrogen Pink” isn’t a fluke – it sounds like the record will carry forward a fine balance between theatricality and vulnerability. It’s probably a tall order to expect the entire record will tickle my ears to the extent that the first taste has, but I’m hopeful.

MP3: Polly Scattergood – “Nitrogen Pink”

Yesterday was – after long last – the release date for Emmy The Great’s debut First Love and as much I’d have liked to be able to mark the occasion with a review, my copy is still somewhere between the UK and here (hopefully). So my gushing praise will have to wait for another day – instead, I’ll link to the slew of press clippings that have accompanied the release, which are worth the read because Emmy is as entertaining an interview as she is a songwriter. There’s features on Ms Moss at For Folk’s Sake, MusicOhm, BBC, Dazed Digital and The Irish Times. And though she did a quick song-by-song annotation of the record forThe Reading Evening Post a few weeks ago, the one she does for Drowned In Sound is considerably more in-depth. And also as part of what Drowned In Sound have declared “Emmy The Great week”, Emmy turns from interviewee to interviewer turning the spotlight on artists she deems worthy of attention. So far she’s talked to a couple of her bandmates about their own projects – with Tom Rogerson about Three Trapped Tigers and with Euan Hinshelwood about Younghusband – as well as with with Shilpa Ray of Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers. And to wrap my own “Emmy The Great day”, her session at Bandstand Busking is now up, with three songs and an interview.

And it’s interesting/amusing that a running theme through the interviews is Emmy’s disavowal of the whole “UK anti-folk” scene, particularly between her band and Noah & The Whale, because that’s one of the threads running through this piece in The Independent about, well, the so-called UK anti-folk scene.

And speaking of Noah & The Whale, they’re finally making up that December show which was cancelled when they decided they’d rather work on album number two – entitled First Days of Spring and due out sometime in the Spring – rather than drive around North America in Winter. They’ll be at The Mod Club on April 27, tickets $12.50. The Times checked in with the band while they were in the studio.

MP3: Noah & The Whale – “2 Bodies 1 Heart”

Camera Obscura have released details of their next album and first for new home, 4AD. My Maudlin Career will be out April 21 and they’ve made the title track available to sample.

MP3: Camera Obscura – “My Maudlin Career”

Frightened Rabbit have a new video from The Midnight Organ Fight.

Video: Frightened Rabbit – “Bright Pink Bookmark”

Duffy documents a day in the life of Duffy for The Times.

The Quietus talks to PJ Harvey and John Parish about their forthcoming collaboration A Woman A Man Walked By, out March 30.

Exclaim reports that Beth Orton’s debut album Trailer Park will be getting the deluxe double-CD reissue treatment – look for it March 10.

Sky Larkin, whose debut The Golden Spike was released yesterday, have been keeping a tour diary for Clash and Tourdates.co.uk has an interview with singer Katie Harkin. Said album will be getting a proper North American release this year as their label Wichita Recordings is setting up shop Stateside. They’ve made available a sampler of the first batch of artists they’ll be looking to introduce to folks on this side of the Atlantic.

ZIP: Wichita Recordings sampler

Some additional updates and clarifications on a few recently announced shows. Firstly, the Neil Halstead show at the Drake Underground on March 21 is open to everyone, tickets $20. The invite-only anniversary thing is something else entirely.

MP3: Neil Halstead – “Paint A Face”

Would it have killed Ladytron to have released their new video alongside the announcement of their Spring tour so that I could have rolled it all into one post? Apparently so. Tickets for their April 6 show at the Phoenix go on sale this Friday and will cost your $28.50.

Video: Ladytron – “Tomorrow”

Lily Allen’s April 22 show at the Phoenix has been moved to the Sound Academy, on account of selling out in no time flat. Additional tickets now on sale. Chart has an interview.

Good news – Elbow are coming to town. Bad news – it’s as opener for Coldplay. They’ll be at the Molson Amphitheatre on July 29. Is seeing them play a half-hour set worth buying Coldplay tickets for? That is a question only you can answer.

And last but not least… Le Blogotheque has a Take-Away Show with Tom Jones.

Kenneth CapelloThough Midnight Boom came out almost a year ago, The Kills aren’t done with it yet – not even close. The sultry “Black Balloon” will be released as the lead track on an EP due out March 23 in most of the world but April 14 in North America, and be backed up with a selection of acoustic tracks.

They’ve also cut a video for the song, the fifth from the album – that’s almost half the songs on the record with their own promo clips, if you’re counting. Sure, their cheap and cheerful aesthetic makes knocking them out easier than it’d be for acts beholden to higher production values, but it’s still a testament to the top-to-bottom excellence of the album. And the scary part is, almost all the remaining tracks could realistically be worked as singles as well.

And with a new release, of course there needs to be touring. The duo will be taking their ridiculously potent live show right across North America this Spring including a May 7 stop at The Phoenix. Support will be The Horrors and Magic Wands, neither of whom I know but who can’t possibly be worse than the band they brought with them last time, Telepathe. They simply cant. Music Snobbery, however, suggests The Horrors might be just as awful for other reasons and doesn’t give good odds on them even making it far enough along in the tour to visit Toronto.

And anyone worrying about rumours that he-Kill Jamie Hince’s fiancee Kate Moss was going to start recording with the band, fear not. She-Kill Alison Mosshart told The Daily Mail that was simply not going to happen.

MP3: The Kills – “U.R.A. Fever”
MP3: The Kills – “Cheap & Cheerful”
Video: The Kills – “Black Balloon”
Video: The Kills – “Tape Song”
Video: The Kills – “The Last Day Of Magic”
Video: The Kills – “Cheap & Cheerful”
Video: The Kills – “U.R.A. Fever”
MySpace: The Kills

Exclaim talks to Bishop Allen about new album Grr…, which will be out March 10 but which has two tracks available to enjoy now.

MP3: Bishop Allen – “Dimmer”
MP3: Bishop Allen – “The Ancient Commonsense Of Things”

A Place To Bury Strangers have a new video.

Video: A Place To Bury Strangers – “My Weakness”

With Christmas On Mars finally done with, CMJ asks Wayne Coyne what’s next for The Flaming Lips – back in the studio this Spring, hoping to have an album out by Summer. XFM are also running a video interview/documentary series on the band.

SFist talks to Dean Wareham about the 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests project for which Dean & Britta are doing live scores for at screenings across the US. The film will be coming out on DVD on March 24. And no, Dean and Britta will not come to your house to play for you while you watch it.

For those of you in the UK, BBC is streaming the video of Elbow’s performance of The Seldom Seen Kid alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra from last December. For the rest of us, well, we’ll have to wait for the CD/DVD package. Though the DVD will almost certainly be region 2 and PAL. Which means those of us in North America will never see it. Hrmm…?

MusoGuide finds out what’s up with The Twilight Sad, currently at work at album number two. And did you know their limited-edition Killed My Parents and Hit the Road tour album of odds, sods and covers was now available on eMusic? Me neither, until now. Depressed Scots make me happy.

Another new video, this one from Oasis.

Video: Oasis – “Falling Down”

Pitchfork has got an MP3 from Bruce Peninsula’s A Mountain Is A Mouth, finally out in physical form. Don’t forget their in-store at Soundscapes this evening starting at 7PM, though if you want to get in and/or see, I recommend being there considerably earlier. The band alone will take up half the store.

MP3: Bruce Peninsula – “Crabapples”

Spinner talks to Gary Louris about Ready For The Flood, the album that brings he and Mark Olson to the Mod Club tonight. He also reveals that an extensive Jayhawks reissue project is underway.

DovesJoyous news to start the day yesterday when it was announced that Doves had not only assigned a release date to their fourth album and first in over four years – Kingdom Of Rust will be available on April 7 in North America – but they were also offering the lead track from the record, “Jetstream”, available as a free download on their website for a fortnight in exchange for signing up to their mailing list. Curiously, said offer seems to have disappeared for the moment but I expect that’s due to technical difficulties and it’ll be back soon.

And though the breathless press release verbiage that accompanied the news heralded the new record as their “most sonically adventurous, intimate, cerebral, propulsive to date”, I suspect it’ll be much like the previous three Doves records. Take two parts soaring anthemicism, two parts atmospheric melancholy, season with equal portions of dance and dreampop influences and serve. Guaranteed to be mostly brilliant. Doves arrived almost fully-formed with their 2001 debut Lost Souls and have basically been refining their sound ever since, oblivious to musical trends. Never quite fashionable, but still successful – it won’t surprise me one whit to see Kingdom hit #1 on the UK charts as its predecessor Some Cities did – and basically forging a… what’s it called? Oh yes, a career.

Though it’s amusing to think back to a couple of their first gigs in Toronto, where they displayed a knack for picking support acts who would manage to break quite big. Their first visit in March 2001 was in the company of a scruffy band of New Yorkers called The Strokes and their third in September of 2002 introduced the city to a band of beards who called themselves My Morning Jacket. So if the music thing hadn’t taken off as well as it did, they’d have quite possibly had a promising career in A&R.

Doves expect to tour North America sometime in the Spring. Pitchfork has a tracklist for Kingdom Of Dust.

MySpace: Doves

Spin is streaming Elbow’s contribution to the War Child: Heroes compilation coming out on February 24 – a cover of U2’s “Running To Stand Still”.

The Toronto Sun, The Globe & Mail, Stuff NZ and Out converse with Franz Ferdinand.

NPR welcomes Laura Marling for a World Cafe session.

The Shield Gazette interviews Emmy The Great about the darkness of her debut album First Love, out February 9.

Patrick Wolf discusses his battle to release Battle independently with The Quietus.

That March 31 Friendly Fires show of indeterminate locale I pointed out a couple weeks ago has come into much sharper focus – it will be happening at Lee’s Palace and also feature White Lies, currently holders of the #1 record in the UK, and The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims. That, kids, is a ridiculously buzzy tour. Full dates at the Windish Agency. The Telegraph and The Shields Gazette have features on who is probably the headliner of that little troupe, White Lies.

Since it was Hot Press who first informed me last Summer that Irish dreampop outfit Butterfly Explosion had split up, it seems appropriate that it be Hot Press be the ones to inform me that they’re not so finished after all. Granted, with a number of lineup changes including the departure of keyboardist/vocalist Sorcha Brennan, it’s not the same band who impressed in April 2007 but still, it’s good that they’ll have another chance to fulfill the potential I saw in them.

MP3: The Butterfly Explosion – “Sophia”
MP3: The Butterfly Explosion – “Chemistry”

Soundproof interviews Mercury Rev.

Rolling Stone gets to know M83. They’ll be playing a one-off show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in March wherein Anthony Gonzalez will supply each and every member of the orchestra with their own distortion pedals.

Cut Off Your Hands have released a new video, and a local tour date is forthcoming very soon.

Video: Cut Off Your Hands – “Turn Cold”

Magnet finds out what the members of The Smiths are up to these days.

The Guardian seeks the formula to the perfect pop song, consulting at length with Jarvis Cocker, amongst others, on the topic.

elbow.co.ukMy relationship with Elbow has been circuitous to say the least. Their debut Asleep In The Back failed to engage and I didn’t give them another chance until 2005’s Leaders Of The Free World, a record liked well enough, but it wasn’t until last year’s The Seldom Seen Kid that they really finally clicked – partly thanks to them crafting a terrific album but also because of my finally being able to reconcile expectation with reality.

And so it’s kind of ironic that the one album of their four that I skipped in all this, 2004’s Cast Of Thousands, would turn out to maybe be my favourite of their catalog. I grabbed it off of eMusic a while back, probably just burning through some downloads, and it’s slowly but surely worked its way into my brain to the point where I got up one day, decided “I need to own this properly” and ordered up the CD. Then hearing it on a proper hi-fi system rather than just through headphones confirmed that this, indeed, was a stunning record. It has a leanness that isn’t there on the subsequent records – which isn’t to say they’re bloated, they’re just definitely “bigger”, sonically. And well as that approach serves them, Cast has a certain lithe grace and melodicism which I find irresistible, and wouldn’t have expected considering Guy Garvey’s considerable presence. And I might go so far as to say that “Switching Off” is the loveliest song in their repertoire.

All of which is apropos of nothing, save to say that if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of discovering this record and at are all interested in Elbow or the grand tradition of melancholic British rock, then do yourself a favour and seek this out. A little more in the here and now, the band performed their Mercury Prize-winning album The Seldom Seen Kid alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra back in December in the legendary Abbey Road Studios and a recording of the show – both aurally on CD and visually on DVD – will be made available come March. Those interested in pre-ordering the package can sign up to be notified when orders will be taken. I’m a little wary about what the fanciness of the package will cause it to cost, but I’m definitely curious to hear the show.

Elbow will appear on the forthcoming War Child: Heroes compilation, out February 24, covering U2’s “Running To Stand Still”. They’re also setting out on a UK tour next month supported by none other than Ottawa’s The Acorn. I find that terribly exciting for The Acorn. I don’t much expect there to be any North American touring in the near future – a damn shame – but maybe this complete concert from last Summer in Amsterdam at FabChannel will help just a little.

And to wrap up, the videos from Cast Of Thousands.

Video: Elbow – “Ribcage”
Video: Elbow – “Fallen Angel”
Video: Elbow – “Fugitive Motel”
Video: Elbow – “Not A Job”
Video: Elbow – “Not A Job” (other version)
Video: Elbow – “Grace Under Pressure”
Video: Elbow – “Switching Off”

Spinner’s Interface welcomes Glasvegas for a session. They play the Mod Club on April 3.

Magnet‘s “Wrens Watch” begins to yield some real dividends as they’ve got a new song, still untitled but recorded just last week, available to download. And I daresay that even in such a rough form, it sounds GREAT.

Crooked Fingers will be opening up for Neko Case on her upcoming Spring tour, including the two Toronto dates at Trinity-St Paul’s despite what ANTI-blog says (well their MySpace says so, anyways).

Blurt chats with Cut Off Your Hands about working with Bernard Butler on their debut album You And I.

Drowned In Sound interviews Of Montreal.

Denmark’s Efterklang are at the El Mocambo on April 1, tickets $10.

Asobi Seksu have released a video from their new album Hush and will play the El Mocambo on March 3.

Video: Asobi Seksu – “Me & Mary”

Paste catches up with Peter Bjorn & John, releasing Living Thing on March 31 and playing the Phoenix on April 25.