Frank YangOne to file under silver linings: Lissie – or Elisabeth Maurus according to her Illinois driver’s license – was supposed to make her Toronto debut at the El Mocambo back in October in support of her debut album Catching A Tiger, but that show along with a string of others was cancelled just days before on doctor’s orders after she lost her voice. The make-up show, which went off on Monday night, had a new venue to go with the new date – the twice-as-large Opera House which still managed to completely sell out. Okay, maybe that’s not such a silver lining for those who would have preferred to see her in a more intimate setting, but if you were one of the 400 people who wouldn’t have been able to see her if not for the bigger room then you weren’t complaining.

The evening didn’t go off completely without a hitch, though, as tour support Dylan LeBlanc was held up at the border necessitating locals Bahamas to be parachuted in as openers. Not that I would have been there in time to see either of them anyways. Lissie, however, showed up precisely on schedule to the strains of the Twin Peaks theme and roaring applause – this may have been her first time here, but clearly she had an impressive local fanbase already. And though she’s technically still a new artist, she worked the room for the next hour and change like a seasoned veteran with years of performing under her belt.

I’d seen her perform at SxSW 2010 and was impressed with how good she was without having any sort of angle or gimmick – just a great voice and great country-rock songs. Tiger also impressed but introduced a little doubt with regards to the unexpectedly slick production values; the songs were still superb but the delivery seemed like it was trying a bit too hard, and unnecessarily. “Slick” was not an adjective that had any place in this show, however, as it was just Lissie, a lead guitarist and combination bassist/drummer on stage – it’s not physically possible to work any gloss into the proceedings with that configuration, so the evening was a welcome return to basics: Lissie, her songs and her hugely expressive and powerful voice – it was hard to believe just a few months ago she was at risk of losing it.

The hour-long main set didn’t fit as many songs in as you might have expected – there was lots of entertaining banter throughout – but the audience was adoringly rambunctious and demonstrated one of the perks of being an artist without a “hit” song; no one was here to hear the single and then head for the doors, they were here for the duration. Still, it can’t be ignored that for as good as her own stuff is, much of Lissie’s exposure came with her unexpected cover versions and after a moving “Oh Mississippi” to lead off the encore, she finished things out with her version of Kid Cudi’s “The Pursuit Of Happiness”… and not one of the songs I would have actually known (Metallica, Lady Gaga, Zeppelin). But still, a crowd-pleasing finish to a crowd-pleasing and excellent set.

Mountain XPress has an interview with Lissie.

Photos: Lissie @ The Opera House – January 24, 2011
MP3: Lissie – “Little Lovin'”
MP3: Lissie – “Everywhere I Go”
MP3: Lissie – “In Sleep” (live)
Video: Lissie – “When I’m Alone”
Video: Lissie – “Cuckoo”
MySpace: Lissie

Steve Earle will release a new record entitled I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive on April 26 and a novel by the same name on May 12. He talks to Billboard about the two and the themes of mortality that pervade them.

Explosions In The Sky have clearly decided that the sky is not exploding enough of its own accord and will thus release a new record in Take Care, Take Care, Take Care on April 26 to pick up the slack. Pitchfork has specifics.

The Chicago Sun-Times, Baltimore Sun and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have words with Liz Phair.

NPR interviews the reunited The Dismemberment Plan.

The Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer interview the reunited Jayhawks.

NPR is streaming a World Cafe with The Decemberists while Exclaim has made the band their cover feature this month. They play The Sound Academy on February 1 and just took The King Is Dead to number one on the Billboard albums chart.

The Antlers discuss the electronic direction of their next album with Pitchfork.

The Vinyl District goes record shopping with Nicole Atkins. Her new record Mondo Amore is out February 8 and she’s at The Horseshoe on February 26.

PopMatters, The Georgia Straight and Seattle Weekly chat with various members of Ra Ra Riot.

Nada Surf have put out a video from their Depeche Mode cover from their covers record if i had a hi-fi.

Video: Nada Surf – “Enjoy The Silence”

The release of Iron & Wine’s latest Kiss Each Other Clean has brought out the press, with Sam Beam interviews in Pitchfork, Drowned In Sound, Daily Utah Chronicle and The AV Club as well as a Take-Away Show at Le Blogotheque.

Spinner and Paste talk to John Vanderslice, who is marking the release of his new record White Wilderness by giving away a new MP3.

MP3: John Vanderslice – “Piano Lesson”

Pitchfork reports that R.E.M. do not plan to tour behind their new record Collapse Into Now when it comes out on March 8. You can stream yet another new track from the record via one of those lyric video things at Filter.

Trivia: The Thermals’ new video from Personal Life was shot on the now-unprocessable Kodachrome film. I did not know they made a Kodachrome movie film. Now I do. For all the good it does me.

Video: The Thermals – “Never Listen To Me”

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.

Cameron WittingIt doesn’t seem like much of a selling point to be the drummer in the band that’s generally held to be a pseudonym for the songwriter and frontman. But for Sean Carey, who works under the name of S. Carey, the Bon Iver connection is much more than a marketing angle.

While Carey’s debut solo effort All We Grow wasn’t recorded in solitude, ensconced in a rural Wisconsin cabin – it was assembled piecemeal over time between tours – it taps into a similar emotional wellspring as For Emma, Forever Ago. Built on layers of Carey’s gentle vocals and wrapped in gently insistent piano motifs, stark yet complex percussion and raw guitar work, All We Grow is hypnotic, meditative and suffused with a serene sort of longing. It’s the sort of record that could simultaneously lull you to sleep while reminding you of an unshakeable ache in your heart.

Many found For Emma an unbearably beautiful record – I wasn’t one of them. I liked it and certainly understood what people found so emotionally resonant about it, but it didn’t strike that chord in me like it did others. All We Grow, on the other hand, hits much closer to the mark. If Justin Vernon makes the next Bon Iver record into more of a band-crafted affair and Carey can contribute some of the depth that he’s infused his own work with, the results could be devastating.

The Daily Iowan talks to Sean Carey, who is currently on tour and will be at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto this Sunday, December 19. Tickets for the show are $11.50 in advance but courtesy of Collective Concerts, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see S Carey” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight, December 16.

MP3: S. Carey – “In The Dirt”
MP3: S. Carey – “In The Stream”
Myspace: S.Carey

Mark Kozelek finally returns to Toronto – he cancelled his last scheduled visit in June of 2008. This time, he’s scheduled to play Lee’s Palace on March 22 as part of a solo tour supporting Sun Kil Moon’s latest Admiral Fell Promises.

Le Tigre spinoff MEN have assembled a North American tour in support of their next record Talk About Body, due out February 1. Look for them at Wrongbar in Toronto on March 21.

The Los Angeles Times finds out just how close Warpaint came to calling it quits before breaking out with their debut The Fool.

The Daily Yomiuri chats with Owen Pallett and eye gets some insight into the scoring of the New York Times’ “14 Actors Acting” videos that made the rounds last week.

Prefix talks to drummer Arlen Thompson of Wolf Parade.

OMG Blog has an interview with Liz Phair.

Stereogum gets a status report on the next Death Cab For Cutie record, which will carry the name Codes And Keys and be due out in the Spring of next year.

Not content to be known for records, rock operas and possibly plays, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists talks to Spinner about his literary ambitions – his novel Wildwood is currently in the editing stage. The new Decemberists record The King Is Dead is out on January 18 and they’ll be at The Sound Academy on February 1.

Pitchfork talks to Belle & Sebastian leader Stuart Murdoch about his upcoming book/memoir The Celestial Cafe, due out in early 2011.

James Allan of Glasvegas talks to NME about their old drummer’s departure, their new drummer’s arrival and their second album, which is targeted for a late 2011 release.

There was some disappointment when it was revealed that The Radio Dept.’s forthcoming Passive Aggressive compilation wouldn’t be a total rarity treasure trove as originally hoped, but a mix of singles and b-sides that would be of limited value to people who’d collected the band’s one-offs over the years. That disappointment has been allayed some with the announcement that the collection will be released on double vinyl in an edition limited to 2000 pieces and available for pre-order exclusively from Insound. I will leave you all to claim the other 1999 yourselves. The set is out January 25 and they play Lee’s Palace on February 7. And they have a new video.

Video: The Radio Dept. – “Never Follow Suit”

The Dø have put out a video from their new EP Dust It Off.

Video: The Dø – “Slippery Slope”

Spin hangs out with Grinderman during their North American tour.

Steven CohenIt didn’t take a lot of digging to find this San Francisco Chronicle interview circa 2006 wherein Gary Louris definitively closed the book on Minneapolis alt.country heroes The Jayhawks, the band he’d fronted for over 20 years, the first decade with Mark Olson and after his departure, on his own. Of course, by the time he declared The Jayhawks done, he and Olson were again performing together not as The Jayhawks but as those guys from The Jayhawks. So even though the band’s principal creative forces were playing together again for the first time in nearly 10 years, the band itself was being put on the shelf.

Post-Jayhawks, Olson worked with with wife Victoria Williams in The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers and began releasing solo works in 2007 while Louris finally put out a record under his own name in 2008 with Vagabonds. They kept playing together, though, and in 2008 gathered the 1995-era Jayhawks lineup for a show in Spain, followed by a couple more last year and left the door wide open for more. At the same time, they began digging through the vaults and put out a career-spanning best-of in 2009 and this year, reissued their long out-of-print self-titled debut as The Bunkhouse Album. But when Olson and Louris inevitably went back into the studio together, the fruits of those sessions – Ready For The Flood – came out under the name Mark Olson & Gary Louris, because as it stands – or at least as it did in 2008 – the name “The Jayhawks” was still under contract to American Recordings.

So while lawyers will keep any new recordings from coming out under The Jayhawks moniker for the time being – and you know that the urge to bring the whole band back into the studio has to be there – they’re still able to perform as The Jayhawks. And surely as a precursor to more consistent touring in 2011, eye reports that it’s as The Jayhawks that Olson, Louris and company will be returning to Toronto for the first time with any lineup since January 2004. We got the Louris and Olson sit-down acoustic show at the Mod Club last year, but The Jayhawks are country-rockers and you really do need the rock in there to go along with those unmistakable harmonies. This will be happening on January 18 at The Phoenix and the occasion is the release of deluxe edition reissues of their most seminal records, Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass, that same day and I’ll tell you, I’ve spent the evening revisiting both of those albums on disc, and its been grand. I can’t imagine doing the same live could be anything less.

PopMatters has reviews of the reissues and tallies up some of the bonus material included therein.

Video: The Jayhawks – “Blue”

Almost a year to the day since they were there this year, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven will roll into Lee’s Palace on January 15 of next year, tickets $24.50.

Video: Cracker – “Low”
Video: Camper Van Beethoven – “Pictures Of Matchstick Men”

Frankie Rose & The Outs, whose namesake served time behind the kit in Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls before going solo, have set a date at Parts & Labour on January 21 behind their self-titled debut.

MP3: Frankie Rose & The Outs – “Candy”

Rolling Stone has a brief chat with Colin Meloy of The Decemberists about their new record The King Is Dead, out January 18 and according to the aforementioned eye piece, will be followed almost immediately by a tour which includes a February 1 date in Toronto at a venue to be announced. You’d think they’d be ready to graduate to Massey Hall with this record, but a little digging reveals that Wynton Marsalis is booked into the hallowed hall that night. Maybe back to the less-hallowed Kool Haus one more time?

MP3: The Decemberists – “Down By The Water”

Iron & Wine have assigned a release date to their new record Kiss Each Other Clean and further confirmed January 25 as the first big new album day of 2011.

January 25 has also been set as the release date for The Radio Dept.’s 2-CD Passive Aggressive compilation while the Never Follow Suit EP is out now. They’re at Lee’s Palace on February 7, tickets just $12.50, on sale tomorrow.

MP3: The Radio Dept. – “Never Follow Suit”

Exclaim has details on Asobi Seksu’s new record Fluorescence, which sees them over their acoustic phase and back into the glorious noise. A first MP3 from the album, due February 15, is available at Polyvinyl.

Pitchfork reports that J Mascis will be stepping away from Dinosaur Jr for a bit to release a solo acoustic record entitled Several Shades Of Why on March 15.

The 4AD Sessions with Blonde Redhead are now up.

While I commend MTV for helping create interesting videos as they did for LCD Soundsystem, geoblocking them so as to only be viewable in the US is a pure bullshit move – took me a while but I finally found a ripped version that those of us outside Fortress America can enjoy. MusicOMH has an interview with James Murphy and Pitchfork has details on their live-in-studio album The London Sessions which was made available on iTunes as of today and hopefully through other outlets eventually.

Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Pow Pow”

PitchforkTV has video of the acoustic performance Mac McCaughan and Jim Wilbur of Superchunk did at the Toronto screening of Passenger Side at The Royal back in April. Mac and Jim will be back with Laura and Jon on December 9 at Sound Academy with Broken Social Scene – rest assured, it will be plugged in, loud and awesome.

San Diego City Beat and The San Francisco Chronicle talk to Dean Wareham.

Interview interviews Local Natives.

Aquarium Drunkard sessions up with Lissie. She’s at The Opera House on January 24.

Spinner has an Interface session with Deerhunter.

Warpaint serves up a World Cafe session for NPR.

Filter has a two-part Q&A Liz Phair.

Pitchfork is posting up video footage – performance and otherwise – from Matador at 21 in Vegas last month. Ah, memories.

Frank YangIs it possible for a band to steal their own show? It is when you’re far more interested in the support act than the headliner, as I was Wednesday night at The Horseshoe. I had already planned to attend even when it was just Brighton, UK’s Blood Red Shoes on the bill – I liked their two albums, including their latest and first North American release Fire Like This, well enough – but when Sky Larkin were announced as support, well it became an absolute must-see.

I had loved the Leeds trio’s 2009 debut The Golden Spike and rate this year’s follow-up Kaleide only slightly behind it, though at only a few months old it’s got lots of time to curry more favour. The difference between the two is really just degrees, as both are packed with wiry, spiky pop whose melodic qualities make them immediate and yet whose quirkiness allows them to continue to grow and unfold with repeated listens. And while these traits are very much in evidence in the live setting, what you notice most about the band on stage is just how much fun they’re having and how effortless they make it all seem.

When they’re playing, you just have to watch frontwoman Katie Harkin and how she seems at one with her guitar whilst dancing, hopping and swaying around the stage without missing a beat or note, or maybe drummer Nestor Matthews as he gives some epic drummer face while punishing his kit for some heinous transgressions. And between songs, their bantering with the audience and each other was just as entertaining – bassist Doug Adams may have been generally more placid on stage than his bandmates, but he did offer some choice words about Toronto’s new mayor-elect (“I’ve been reading about this Rob Ford guy – he’s an asshole!”). Their set didn’t crackle quite and fiercely as their visit to the Cameron Houe down the street a year and a day earlier, but it was still plenty great and Matthews got to celebrate his birthday without bleeding all over his kit.

So even before the headliners even set foot on stage, the night was deemed a success but even if, on paper, you preferred Sky Larkin’s more classically indie guitar-pop, there wasn’t going to be any resisting of Blood Red Shoes’ blunt instrument, ’90s alt rock-saluting attack. With Laura-Mary Carter on guitar, Steven Ansell on drums and both on vocals, their musical approach may have been less nuanced than their openers, but they understood the effectiveness of coming on strong and not letting up for a moment. And so it was that their relentless set focused on the most aggressive moments of Fire Like This and their debut Box Of Secrets and the permutations of their simple musical recipe – thick riffs and spidery lines from Carter’s Telecaster and steady, heavy rhythms from Ansell’s kit. On record, the balance of the vocals seems to favour Ansell, his hollers coming across more forcefully than Carter’s dulcet singing style, but live, it was much more evenly split and it was for the better. There may have only the two of them but they roared like a much larger band and in response, the smallish but enthusiastic audience cheered like a packed stadium. Go for the Sky Larkin, stay for the Blood Red Shoes, leave dazed and satisfied.

The Valley Star, Georgia Straight and San Francisco Examiner have features on Blood Red Shoes.

Photos: Blood Red Shoes, Sky Larkin @ The Horseshoe – October 27, 2010
MP3: Blood Red Shoes – “Light It Up”
MP3: Sky Larkin – “Kaleide”
MP3: Sky Larkin – “Molten”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Heartsink”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Don’t Ask”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Colours Fade”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “This Is Not For You”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Say Something, Say Anything”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “I Wish I Was Someone Better”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “It’s Getting Boring By The Sea”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Still Windmills”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Antibodies”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Beeline”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Fossil, I”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Molten”
Video: Sky Larkin – “One Of Two”
MySpace: Blood Red Shoes
MySpace: Sky Larkin

Interview talks to Elly Jackson of La Roux.

Clash and Dallas Voice have feature interviews with Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons.

Prefix has an interview with The Drums, who’ve just released a new video from their self-titled debut.

Video: The Drums – “Me & The Moon”

The Daily Iowan and Interview discover Phantogram.

The Walrus and Consequence Of Sound catch up with Liz Phair, who tries to explain every song on her mostly awful new record Funstyle to New York Magazine.

The Lissie show originally scheduled for last Tuesday and then cancelled when she lost her voice has now been rescheduled for January 18 of next year, but moved from the relatively cozy confines of the El Mocambo to the more spacious Opera House. Tickets for the new show are $15 and tickets for the old one will still be honoured.

MP3: Lissie – “Everywhere I Go”

New York Magazine gets some choice words from Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. Strange Powers, the documentary on Merritt and his music, opens in Toronto next Thursday.