Laine HurleySo after long, long last we’re less than a month out from the release of Emmy The Great’s debut album First Love. Longtime readers (or anyone who’s been here for the past year) know that I’ve been anxiously awaiting this record for what seems like forever, making do with a makeshift compilation of singles, compilation tracks, demos and live recordings.

But the February 2 release is locked in – it’s already available to pre-order via Rough Trade (with bonus live disc!) and the final tracklisting was recently announced – and I’m pleased that I’m only familiar with six of the 13 tracks, so more than half the record will still be new to me. And I’m also pleased that “24” made the cut – it’s one of my favourite Emmy songs, using the television show as a launching point for a poignant and pointed farewell to a dysfunctional relationship. It’s Emmy at her most mesmerizing, an opinion that puts me completely at odds with this otherwise mostly positive Gigwise review of the album. What can I say, besides that I’m right and he’s wrong.

The MP3 is an audio rip of a videotaped performance from the online program Welcome To Our TV Show, which appeared to be just documents of living room concerts from English artists – watch the Emmy clip (starts at around 1:10) but there’s lots of good stuff to enjoy in the archives.

The Daily Growl has also declared this an Emmy day, and is offering audio rips of a recent BBC session to add to the collection. Which will also bring my percentage of the album’s songs heard up a tad.

MP3: Emmy The Great – “24” (live on Welcome To Our Show, January 2008)
Video: Emmy The Great – “24” (live on Welcome To Our Show, January 2008)

As for the show from which the song draws its inspiration, I justifiably washed my hands of the whole thing after the abominable sixth season but was still persuaded to check out the 24: Redemption TV movie that ran a couple months ago… and it wasn’t bad. Stuck with a two-hour timeline, it was lean and focused and actually pretty engrossing, so I’ll be giving it one more chance when the new season starts up this Sunday night – but it’s on a very, very short leash. The fact that this season is set in DC rather than LA gives hope that the useless mooks from CTU won’t show up too much, but there’s plenty of time for things to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Trailer: 24 season seven

NME lists off their top 10 new acts to look out for in 2009, led by Florence & The Machine, who I’ve already told you to look out for. BBC also thinks she’ll do well this year, placing her third in their “Sound of 2009” new music list.

Pre-orders of Sky Larkin’s debut The Golden Spike will get you the album in MP3 form immediately, as well as a live recording of the album to go along with it. It’s out February 9.

Rumour is now fact – Glasvegas will make their Toronto debut on April 3 at the Mod Club. Tickets are $21 and go on sale this Saturday, January 10. There’s interviews with the band at The San Jose Mercury News and Kansas City Star.

Filter has a typically entertaining interview with Oasis’ Noel Gallagher.

XLR8R gets nostalgic about shoegaze, gets in touch with members of Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush and Slowdive amongst others and charts the scene’s rise, fall, and recent resurrection.

The Guardian checks in on former Long Blondes guitarist Dorian Cox, still recovering from the stroke that felled him last Summer and led to the band’s dissolution.

Electroqueer talks to Patrick Wolf about forthcoming album Battle and getting beaten up by security at a Madonna show.

Robyn Hitchcock discusses the new Venus 3 album Goodnight Oslo, due February 17, with Chart.

WilcoJust before everything shut down for the holidays, a dispatch arrived from Wilco HQ detailing some of the band’s plans for the new year. Some of it was already known, in particular that work has begun on album number seven and is targeted for a Spring release.

But they also let out a bit of new news, namely that they’ll be releasing their first official concert DVD in the new year. You may recall that the shows that went into the Kicking Television live set were supposed to be taped for a companion DVD but that was scratched because of dissatisfaction with the quality of things. Well they enlisted the talents of Brendan Canty and Christoph Green of Trixie Films, producers of the Burn To Shine video series and the Sunken Treasure Jeff Tweedy live DVD, to accompany them on their Winter 2008 tour and this time, the fruits of their labours have been deemed fit to release.

And so a DVD release entitled Ashes Of American Flags will hit stores sometime in February or March of next year. More details and previews coming in the new year, and it’s worth noting that the shows recorded for this set came immediately after the band’s five-night stand at the Riviera in Chicago where they explored every nook and cranny of the Wilco catalog – check out the set lists of a couple of the shows that will be part of the DVD, and get excited.

And Jeff’s son Spencer has a blog and, well, it’s more interesting than this one.

MP3: Wilco – “Ashes Of American Flags” (live on Austin City Limits)

Spin declares Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold as their “voice of the year”.

Wireless Bollinger interviews Death Cab For Cutie.

Sterogum is offering the first download from Malajube’s new album Labyrinthes, out February 10.

WOXY is offering a double-CD’s worth of free downloads comprising the best of their Lounge Act studio sessions, featuring acts such as Ra Ra Riot, The Kills, Okkervil River and Lightspeed Champion.

The Washington Post talks to Thao Nguyen, whom they declare one of their “best of 2008”.

Nickel Eye, aka Nikolai Fraiture, aka the bassist from The Strokes, brings his solo project to the El Mocambo on January 20. Low Vs Diamond accompany. Fraiture discusses the project with Billboard.

Dig For Fire has a video feature/interview with Florence Welch of Florence & The Machine.

Though The Long Blondes called it a day back in October, they still had a final farewell gift for their fans in the form of a Christmas song.

MP3: The Long Blondes – “Christmas Is Cancelled”

Frightened Rabbit contemplate various contemporary Christmas songs for The Guardian.

Dustin Rabin/Epitaph.comBack in the Spring of 2005, two of the finest rock bands Canada had to offer came up with a great idea and a great name for that great idea. The bands were Constantines and The Weakerthans, the idea was a tour that would traverse all of Canada, not just the obvious markets, and the name they gave it was “Rolling Tundra”. And it was good.

Since then, both the Cons and Weakerthans have grown in audience and profile have released highly-acclaimed records in Kensington Heights and Reunion Tour respectively, but a good idea remains a good idea so next Spring, they’re totally going to do it again. As Chart reports, the 2009 edition of The Rolling Tundra Revue will kick off on March 19 in St John’s, Newfoundland and wind its way across our home and native land before wrapping up May 4 in Whitehorse in the Yukon.

As far as local dates go, they’ll be at the Phoenix on March 31 for an all-ages show – tickets are $25 and go on sale Thursday Friday – but looking at the itinerary, it’s notable that there’s two off days on either side of the scheduled date. Keeping in mind that the 2005 edition had three Toronto shows, one an all-ages matinee, do you think they’ve got a second date ready to go, at least? Yeah, me too.

MP3: Constantines – “Hard Feelings”
MP3: The Weakerthans – “Sun In An Empty Room”
MP3: The Weakerthans – “Night Windows”
Video: Constantines – “Credit River”
Video: Constantines – “Our Age”
Video: Constantines – “Hard Feelings”
Video: The Weakerthans – “Civil Twilight”
Video: The Weakerthans – “Tournament Of Hearts”
MySpace: Constantines
MySpace: The Weakerthans

Solo Pornographer AC Newman will hit the road in support of his new album Get Guilty!, due January 20, and roll into Lee’s Palace on March 11. Tickets $15. And cheers to Matablog for pointing the way to this New Pornogaphers show in Australia, available to watch in its entirety at Moshcam. Update: New MP3 and full tour dates now available!

MP3: AC Newman – “Submarines Of Stockholm”

The Toronto Sun talks to Stars frontlady Amy Millan. Stars are doing three nights at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre starting Thursday night.

Malajube will finally follow up their Polaris-nominated release Trompe-L’oeil with Labyrinthes, out February 10.

eye profiles Oh No Forest Fires. They’ll play Wavelength at Sneaky Dee’s on January 25.

It seems the rehearsals went well, because Blur are back – the first officially announced reunion gig will take place at Hyde Park in London on July 3, though more gigs around that date both before and after are likely to come. Details at NME. Hey V Fest, I think I’ve found your 2009 headliner. Make it happen.

Billboard gets a status update from Doves about album number four. Still untitled, but targeting an April release.

Clash talks to Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith about the making of their third album, which he describes as “Upbeat, upfront, uptight, uppity, uplifting”.

The Quietus talks to ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall about going it solo. Her debut single “Another Version Of Pop Song” was released this week.

Drowned In Sound disassembles and examines the component parts of Florence & The Machine.

The AV Club has an interview with Gareth Campesino of Los Campesinos!.

Clash and Drowned In Sound chat with The Futureheads.

ES Magazine profiles Duffy.

Tom BeardThe first time I heard of London’s Florence & The Machine was this past March at SxSW, when Rob from Donewaiting.com wandered over just before Emmy the Great’s showcase and said something to the effect of, “I just saw the greatest show ever. Florence & The Machine jumped into a fountain in the middle of her set, pulled someone in after her, climbed back out, got back onstage and kept playing”. I’m paraphrasing and thought he was exaggerating, but after seeing the video footage, I saw not.

And it’s fitting that I first heard of Florence (surname Welch) while seeing Emmy, because both are artists who’ve made an impression this year without benefit of a proper album. But while Emmy recordings, live and studio, have been relatively plentiful, the Florence & The Hype Machine pickings have been slimmer – basically just a handful of live tracks and covers to go along with her two officially-released singles thus far, “Kiss With A Fist” back in June and “Dog Days Are Over”, out next Tuesday.

But even based on just that limited sample, a couple things are obvious – one, she’s got some serious talent and two, she’s seriously batshit crazy. To the former point, her voice has both weight and power, equal parts aggressive and plaintive and capable of handling styles ranging from folk to theatre, blues to rock, whatever. To the latter point, most everything about her comes across as eccentric at least, and not just for her spontaneous fountain-jumping ways. Her songwriting showcases a girl who could generously (but affectionately) be described as “loopy”, a trait backed up by her videos. “Kiss” is a raw kitchen-sink stomp with gleefully violent lyrics that sound like they’ve come from the diary of a girl you should be afraid to meet (and yet still do) while “Dog Days” is a strummy, Summer-y bit of folk that builds into a technicolour soul-pop explosion. With those as reference points, there’s really no way to judge what her debut album will bring when its released in May 2009 of next year, but you can be damn sure it’ll be interesting.

The Guardian has an extensive profile on Florence.

MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Kiss With A Fist”
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Postcards From Italy” (Beirut cover)
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Girl With 1 Eye” (Live at London Calling)
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Hospital Beds” (Cold War Kids Cover, live)
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Kiss With A Fist”
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Dog Days Are Over”

NME reports that Blur – including Graham – will be getting together in the new year to rehearse and, as Damon Albarn puts it, “see if we’re into it”. Can you say “Coachella”? No? How about, “bagloads of money”? I knew you could.

The Quietus talks to Bloc Party’s Gordon Moakes about the joys of new fatherhood.

Frightened Rabbit are keeping a tour diary for Drowned In Sound. They’ve also gone to the trouble of making a video for their contribution to the second Guilt By Association covers compilation due out on February 17, a cover of ’90s UK dance outfit N-Trance.

Video: Frightened Rabbit – “Set You Free”

Spin has posted a portion of their interview with Elvis Costello from this month’s issue. His new talk show Spectacle begins airing on December 3.

Chart interviews Nick Cave.

Yeah they were just here, and they were just here before that, but M83 are coming back again – this time on January 23 at the Air Canada Centre, opening for The Killers. Yeah. The sound you hear are hordes of M83 fans not rushing to get tickets. There’s also a new remix of M83’s “We Own The Sky” by Maps available to download.

MP3: M83 – “We Own The Sky” (Maps mix)

Portishead have made a new video from Third.

Video: Portishead – “Magic Doors”

The Scotsman salutes Rough Trade Records on the occasion of their 30th anniversary.