Mia KirbyI somehow managed to see Los Angeles’ Warpaint no less than four times this year before hearing their debut album The Fool, so you could say that their live shows have coloured my impressions of their music just a touch. And that’s a good thing because as a cursory scan of past write-ups will attest, I find their performances to be swirling, mesmerising affairs anchored by the pulsing, organic rhythm section and lifted by the airy vocals and shimmering guitar lines. More often than not, it seems that the band is willing to simply surrender themselves to the musical chemistry that occurs between the four of them and let it take them where it may.

That sense of spontaneity is successfully captured on The Fool, wherein Warpaint allow the nine songs here to grow into themselves in real time. Sometimes it sounds like they’re jamming them out, other times that they’re following a meticulous blueprint, but they always come across as though they’re following their collective muse like it was magnetic north. Songs often start from a single musical element and bloom and/or sprawl through time signature shifts and clouds of reverb and delay into their sometimes amorphous but always fascinating and emotive final forms. They clearly bear the influence of ’80s 4AD dream-pop and that era’s post-punk/goth forebears, but those are evident as reflections, echoes and shadows of Warpaint’s own, distinctive creations.

The Fool is more opaque and requires more work to absorb than I’d have expected, and the relative pop conciseness of their debut EP Exquisite Corpse is missed a little. One suspects that every outtake ended up in a significantly different place than the version of the song that was selected for the album, and while it’s hard to not want to hear some of those to compare and contrast, that way lies madness. What matters is that The Fool succeeds as more than just a solid album; it also confirms Warpaint as a unique and exciting new act with an immensely deep well of ideas to draw on, hopefully for many albums to come. Maybe the debut of the year not for what it is, but what it augurs.

Check out a behind-the scenes video of their cover shoot for NME, this video interview at Dirty Laundry and a video session at Yours Truly.

MP3: Warpaint – “Undertow”
Video: Warpaint – “Undertow”
MySpace: Warpaint

The Chicago Tribune talks to Sharon Van Etten about her transition from solo artist to bandleader. See her as the latter on Friday night at Lee’s Palace opening up for Junip. hour.ca also has a short chat.

eye talks to Morning Bender Chris Chu in advance of their show at the Mod Club on November 5.

Stereogum checks in with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart on the status of their second album Belong, currently being recorded and due for a March 2011 release.

The Line Of Best Fit interviews The Thermals.

Beatroute talks to Dean Wareham about his decision to revisit Galaxie 500 on his current tour.

Dan Snaith of Caribou talks with Soundproof.

Kathryn Calder has released a second video from her solo debut Are You My Mother?.

Video: Kathryn Calder – “Arrow”

Dan Mangan chats with Beatroute.

Also with a new video are The Wilderness Of Manitoba, taken from their debut When You Left The Fire. They’re at the Horseshoe on November 25.

Video: The Wilderness Of Manitoba – “November”

Murray Lightburn of The Dears talks to aux.tv about their new record Degeneration Street, out on February 15.

Beatroute’s latest issue has a feature piece on Diamond Rings.

Frank YangWho: The Morning Benders
What: Bay Area power-poppers who are enjoying a pretty good year on the strength of their breakout record Big Echo.
Why: Not believing in such a thing as market saturation, they’re returning to Toronto for their sixth show of 2010 which included opening stints for Broken Bells and The Black Keys (a two-fer) and an in-store at an ice cream parlour sandwiched between headlining gigs.
When: Friday, November 5, 2010
Where: The Mod Club in Toronto (19+)
Who else: Twin Sister and Oberhofer will open things up
How: Tickets are $15 in advance, but courtesy of Collective Concerts, I’ve got two pairs of passes to the show to give away. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want my Morning Bent” in the subject line and your full name in the body. The contest will close at midnight, November 2.
What else: The band talks to The San Jose Mercury News about their name and to eater.com about the joys of eating on the road.

MP3: The Morning Benders – “Promises”
Video: The Morning Benders – “Promises”

Frank YangSufjan Stevens doesn’t make it easy. In the five years since his breakthrough Illinois album, he’s managed to be quite prolific without actually crafting a proper follow-up, instead releasing collections of outtakes, rerecording old records, compiling Christmas gifts and staging multimedia odes on expressways. The only sign he was working on something weightier was a surprise club tour last year that allowed he and his band to jam out new material alongside old favourites, but some of those songs seemed so clearly in the sketch phase that it was impossible to guess when it might see the light of day in finished form.

As it turned out, it wasn’t that much longer at all, relatively speaking. In early August, a massive theatre-scale tour was announced – certainly implying that there’d be some new material to tour behind – and a couple weeks later the 60-minute, EP in semantics only All Delighted People was released digitally and a week after that, it was announced that his next album, The Age Of Adz, would be out in October to coincide with the start of the tour. Between the two releases, Stevens answered the burning question of whether Stevens would be exploring his folk, pop, electronic, orchestral or theatrical fancies this time out with a resounding “yes”. Dense, epic and random, Adz finds Stevens trying to articulate that most fundamental theme of pop music – love – and finding it as incomprehensible and inexpressible a task as trying to illustrate the origins of the universe with silly string, but not for lack of trying. To that end, he pulls together pretty much every trick and tool in his formidable musical repertoire together and constructing a Frankenstein’s monster of song that shouldn’t work – at all – but still somehow moves with an unreal grace.

This, however, didn’t become clear until Wednesday night at Massey Hall in Toronto. The second date of the tour came just one day after the record’s release and even with the extra bit of lead time allowed to the music press, being asked to try and absorb and comprehend well over two hours of new and unprecedented Sufjan Stevens material in such a short amount of time was nigh-impossible. I can’t imagine how it would have been for everyone else in attendance, many of whom had bought their tickets before they even knew that Adz existed let alone the fact that it would be almost exclusively what they’d be hearing. A leap of faith, to be sure, but then if there’s something that Stevens and his followers know about, it’s faith.

DM Stith continued the Sufjan trend of having labelmates and bandmates open up his shows – certainly it makes touring logistics easier. Stith, however, didn’t give himself much of a chance to make a strong impression with just a four-song set. You were able to discern that he traded in looped, rickety folk that built off his rich, raspy voice – it may not have been novel in concept, but was still impressive when executed well.

The spareness of Stith’s set would be a thing of distant memory by the stroke of 9, as Stevens and his band took the stage. Though his songs are often simple things at their core, just as affecting in a solo setting, Stevens has always preferred to have the live experience err on the side of excess and this time out was no exception – he was surrounded by 10 additional musicians including a pair of backup singers/dancer/rhythmic gymnasts, two drummers, two keyboardists and a horn section in addition to guitar and bass. With that sort of setup, you don’t go small and setting the tone for the evening was the ten-minute opus “All Delighted People”, a highlight of even in rough form at the Lee’s Palace show a year earlier and now a fully-formed piece of musical theatre.

Under massive, cosmically-themed projections inspired by the artwork of American artist Royal Robertson, the next two hours would be a feast of overstimulation for the eyes and ears, elaborately and tightly choreographed yet still retaining a homespun charm, with the musicians swapping instruments while trying to navigate the on-stage clutter. Live, the songs from People and Adz felt much more in synch with each other, more obviously interrelated and with the common thematic thread tying them together making a much greater impression than the disparate sounds and styles that sometimes pushed them apart. If Stevens’ intention was to create a sense of journeying into mystery, with all the excitement, anxiety, disorientation and determination that might go along with that, and in the process make the mind-bendingness of his new record make sense, he succeeded in no uncertain terms.

Nowhere was that clearer than the centerpiece of the show – and of Age Of Adz – the beyond-grandiose song suite dubbed “Impossible Soul”. Shifting through various styles and documenting, in a sense, the various facets of love, it ran a full 26 minutes including, spastic atonal guitar solos, autotuned vocal passages and a hipster dance party crescendo (with Stevens busting some moves – one girl in the front row tried to join in but was told to sit back down by security) before closing with a heart-breaking acoustic denouement that left you breathless, bewildered and agape. It’s a lot to take on record but live, it was overwhelming in the very best sense and encapsulated the contrast of confidence and self-consciousness, the earnestness dusted with irony that Stevens does so well. And truly, it could have ended there – though the audience had just sat through over 100 minutes of mostly unfamiliar songs, many of which were officially only about 24 hours old, they had done so without a second of complaint, content simply to be taken wherever Stevens would lead them. But perhaps by way of thanks, Stevens was able to shift his headspace sufficiently to offer some selections from Illinois – “Chicago” to close the main set and then, for the solo encore, “Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois” on piano and chillingly gorgeous “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” that had Stevens’ angelic voice echoing through every corner of Massey Hall and sent the sold out house out into the streets in a sweet, heady daze.

Do I need to mention how lucky I feel to have been able to see two amazing shows in the same amazing venue over the course of…. what, 27 hours? Amazing. Music, you are wonderful.

eye, Exclaim, The Toronto Star, Panic Manual and The Globe & Mail also have reviews of the show and eye, The Irish Times, Drowned In Sound, The Chicago Tribune and The Quietus all have interviews with Sufjan.

Photos: Sufjan Stevens, DM Stith @ Massey Hall – October 13, 2010
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “I Walked”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Movement VI—Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “The Henney Buggy Band”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Casimir Pulaski Day”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Sister”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Holland”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Year Of The Dog”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Year Of The Tiger”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “Demetrius”
MP3: Sufjan Stevens – “A Winner Needs A Wand”
MP3: DM Stith – “I Heart Wig”
MP3: DM Stith – “Pigs”
MP3: DM Stith – “BMB” (alternate version)
MP3: DM Stith – “Pity Dance”
MP3: DM Stith – “Just Once”
MP3: DM Stith – “Thanksgiving Moon” (demo)
MP3: DM Stith – “BMB” (demo)
Video: DM Stith – “Pity Dance”
Video: DM Stith – “BMB”
Video: DM Stith – “Isaac’s Song”
MySpace: Sufjan Stevens
MySpace: DM Stith

MusicOmh interviews Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons.

The Vine interviews Alan Sparhawk of Low, whose new record – tentatively called C’mon – is due out next year.

NOW talks to Lissie, who is now in no condition to talk to anyone. Under doctor’s orders, she has had to postone at least a week’s worth of dates – including next Tuesday’s show at the El Mocambo. Make-up dates for the new year will be announced shortly. This makes four shows that have been cancelled on me in the last month – not quite an epidemic but still some kind of record.

NYC Taper is sharing a recording of a recent Sharon Van Etten show in New York. She’ll be at Lee’s Palace on November 5 opening up for Junip.

Interview interviews Warpaint; their debut album The Fool is out October 26.

Le Blogotheque has a Soirées De Poche session with The Morning Benders, while The San Jose Mercury News and examiner.com have interviews.

Daytrotter has posted a session with Foals.

Drowned In Sound has a three-song acoustic video session with The Twilight Sad.

The Line Of Best Fit has an interview with Lisa Milberg of The Concretes. Their new record WYWH is out November 8.

Valerie PhillipsWhen Why You Runnin’, the debut EP from Rock Island, Illinois native Elisabeth Maurus – aka Lissie – was released late last year, she was heralded as a bright new voice of the alt.country scene and indeed, her emotive voice and songwriting had the right balance of twang and rasp that she could well have become the next big crossover act for the genre. The problem with this was that in many ways, alt.country has become as rigid and codified a style as the Nashville scene that it was initially a reaction to in the late ’80s, and for an ambitious new artist, may not be a pigeonhole they want to get stuck in before they’ve even gotten their careers started.

That’s my speculation about why Lissie’s debut album Catching A Tiger is what it is, and that’s a big, genre-hopping record that pops and rocks as much as it twangs. It might have caught some off-guard, but really shouldn’t have – after all, its release was preceded by a series of viral videos that featured Lissie covering decidedly non-country acts like Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi and Metallica. There was definitely an aspect of calculated marketing to these selections, but that took a back seat to the fact that Lissie did a great job of making them her own, and that sentiment largely covers Catching A Tiger as well.

The production is pretty slick – overly so in parts – and the attempts to make songs in certain styles sound authentic, like the ’50s AM radio-filtered “Stranger”, try too hard, but Lissie’s voice and songwriting are strong and versatile enough to transcend any excess studio tinkering. She has a gift for inserting a big chorus where you’re not expecting a big chorus and thus making tracks like “Loosen The Knot” and “Cuckoo” indelible from the very first listen. Her folkier side isn’t neglected either, though it’s largely represented with the three tracks carried over from Why You Runnin’. Their placement alongside the more stylistically rangy selections of the record makes them more impactful, however, and by the time the gospelly “Oh Mississippi” closes things out, it’s clear that the decision to bust out of the pigeonhole before even being put in it was the right one – she’d have busted out of it sooner rather than later anyways.

The Dallas Observer and Spinner have interviews with Lissie, who is currently on tour in support of Catching A Tiger – she’ll be at the El Mocambo in Toronto on October 19.

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

American Songwriter, Washington City Paper and The Cornell Sun talk to Sharon Van Etten, who’ll be at Lee’s Palace on November 5.

The lead single from Nicole Atkins’ sophomore effort Mondo Amore is now available to download, widget-free. The record is out January 25.

MP3: Nicole Atkins – “Vultures”

Anyone who missed seeing S. Carey open up for The Tallest Man On Earth last month, take heart – he will be returning on his own tour, supported by White Hinterland, for a show at the Horseshoe on December 19. And honestly, I can’t think of a better bill to welcome Winter and close out (probably) the 2010 touring calendar – Carey’s All We Grow is a beaut.

MP3: S. Carey – “In The Dirt”
MP3: S. Carey – “In The Stream”
MP3: White Hinterland – “No Logic”
MP3: White Hinterland – “Dreaming Of The Plum Trees”

Spinner talks to Chris Chu of The Morning Benders about their high-profile support slots this year. They headline their own show at the Mod Club on November 5 and some of footage of their/his ice cream-powered in-store/out-store show in August has been posted as a video session over at the newly-minted TapeDek.

Offbeat interviews Local Natives; they’ve got a sold out show at Mod Club on October 19.

Pitchfork gets a musical history from Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus.

My Morning Jacket bassist Tom Blankenship tells Spin that their next album, currently in production, will be a return to the reverb-drenched atmospheric rock of their early records.

The Chicago Tribune talks to Guided By Voices’ Tobin Sprout about how the current reunion came together and where it might go from here.

Pitchfork takes the recent GQ interview with Steve Albini as a launching pad for contemplating the long-term effects of Sonic Youth’s major label tenure on the indie world.

CMJ reports that when Iron & Wine’s new record Kiss Yourself Clean comes out next January, it will be on a major label – they’ve signed to Warner Bros in North America. Their indie cred remains intact in the rest of the world, where they’ll be handled by 4AD.

Spinner interviews Warpaint, who have a new video for the first single from The Fool, out October 26.

Video: Warpaint – “Undertow”

Black Book interviews both Bjork and Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons, the latter of whom has a new record out in Swanlights. A video from said record was just released.

Video: Antony & The Johnsons – “The Spirit Is Gone”

Claudia Dehaza has left School Of Seven Bells for “personal reasons”. Ben Curtis and Alley Dehaza intend to carry on with the band, though without those sisterly harmonies it can’t help but be a wholly different beast.

With Jim Bryson acting as a touring member of The Weakerthans for some time now, it’s only fair that the Winnipeggers help out on the Ottawa-based artists’ next solo record, and so it is that the Weakerthans are functioning as Bryson’s backing band on his new record The Falcon Lake Incident. The record is due out next Tuesday, October 19, and they’re marking the occasion (sort-of/not really) halfway between their respective homes with some free shows – one on Tuesday night at the Horseshoe at 10PM and another by way of in-store at Sonic Boom on Wednesday at 6PM. And on top of that, John K Samson will play a solo set as part of the screening of their tour documentary We’re The Weakerthans, We’re From Winnipeg at the Royal on Monday night, October 18. If you need more Weakerthan action than that in a week, then I can’t help you. No one can.

MP3: Jim Bryson & The Weakerthans – “Wild Folk”
Trailer: We’re The Weakerthans, We’re From Winnipeg

And apparently their perfect sendoff at The Horseshoe in December 2007 wasn’t perfect enough – The Lowest Of The Low are getting back together for two gigs at Lee’s Palace on December 3 and 4. The occasion is the 20th anniversary of their beloved debut Shakespeare… My Butt which is getting a fancy-pants remastered reissue on November 23 and will include a DVD with a 45-minute documentary about the band entitled LowRoads 91-08. I waxed nostalgic about the record and what it meant to me in Summer 2007, but think I might let these shows pass me by. I’ve said thanks and goodbye already.

MP3: The Lowest Of The Low – “Bleed A Little While Tonight”
Trailer: LowRoads 91-08

Frank YangWhen it was announced in June that The xx were not only coming back to Toronto for their fourth show in less than 10 months but doing it in a room far bigger and pricier than anything they’d done before, people thought they were mad. Now it doesn’t seem like madness so much as prescience. For starters, two of those three previous shows were support slots for acts who would have had no trouble selling out even without a buzz band opening and the third was at a room – The Phoenix – that was probably already undersized for them (it too was completely sold out). And really, all three of these shows were before the band REALLY blew up outside of indie circles, never mind the Mercury Prize win for their debut XX a few weeks ago. So was staging last night’s show at Massey Hall ambitious and unthinkable even as recently as a few months ago? Maybe. Was it the right thing to do? Yes, yes it was.

And while it would be presumptuous to suggest that Los Angeles’ Warpaint would find the same level of success as The xx in as short amount of time, they similarly didn’t seem to have any concerns about hitting their market saturation point – this was their third local show in less than four months and fourth in a year, and it’s still not enough as far as I’m concerned. Their debut The Fool, due out October 25, actually remains the last 2010 release that I’m looking forward to and haven’t heard yet and the fact that I won’t even contemplate my year-end lists until I’ve heard it should give you some idea of how much I’m anticipating it.

As to their show, it was interesting seeing how they translated into the much larger environs of a theatre having only experienced them in much more intimate club settings, and while the sound was murkier than ideal, their strengths – namely the thundering and undulating (thund-ulating?) rhythm section of Stella Mozgawa and Jenny Lee Lindberg and serpentine guitars and keening vocals of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman – still came across loud and clear. And while the tempos they operated at made them sound like speed metal relative to The xx, their shared affinity for dark and dreamlike atmospherics should have impressed anyone who showed up in time to catch their 35-minute set; happily, there were quite a few of them but even if Massey had been empty, one suspects the band wouldn’t have noticed – once they started, the quartet were in their own world and seemingly playing just for themselves. We were just fortunate to get to watch.

Any question as to whether The xx could draw enough for a room the size of Massey Hall was moot before the house lights even went down – though not sold out, it was close enough to confirm that The xx were, indeed, huge. Even so, the ongoing complaint from some that their live show was lacking in charisma or stage presence have some basis, although I stand by my standard response of, “well what would you have them do – scissor kicks?” and maintain that their low-key demeanour is fitting to the music they make; they’re a soundtrack to what you get up to in the dark – it’s not about seeing so much as feeling. That said, The xx have improved their live show each time I’ve seen them and this time was the best yet. Perhaps not in terms of actual performance – there were more than a few missed notes and falling out of time with one another, perhaps a consequence of trying to get too loose up there – but for vibe, it was pretty special. For starters, I wager that this was the first time many of the 2500 or so in attendance had seen them play and the excitement in the room was palpable – these folks, who also seemed to have the youngest mean age of any full house I’ve ever seen at Massey Hall – were excited. And though the band were as polite but low-key as ever, when those seated in the floors spontaneously rushed the stage to dance or just get closer to their heroes during “Islands”, they seemed genuinely taken aback by the enthusiasm.

With an intimate delivery that was also possibly even slower and more sensual than on record and playing under a grand yet still somehow dark, meticulously synchronized light show, their set encompassed all of XX plus their cover of Womack & Womack’s “Teardrops”. As they’ve maintained there’s no new material ready to be aired or even any guarantee of a second album, the only “fresh” material came via in the instrumental intros, outros and inter-song segues that they used to expand and differentiate the live renditions from the album versions. The set barely clocked in at an hour including encore, but I didn’t get the sense that anyone felt they didn’t get their money’s worth – they heard everything they could have wanted to.

In a way, you almost hope that they don’t ever make a second record, if just to preserve the purity of their narrative arc thus far. Over a year and a half, these teenagers making music in obscurity have skyrocked to global fame, a Mercury Prize and massive tour of some of North America’s most hallowed venues, and their debut could stand as the single definitive statement of The xx, a document of their youth preserved in amber. In reality, this almost certainly won’t be the last we hear from The xx, but if it were? That’d be okay.

The Toronto Sun also has a review of the show. The Seattle Times has an interview with DJ/producer Jamie Smith, whom Spin reports is releasing a solo single next month.

Photos: The xx, Warpaint @ Massey Hall – September 29, 2010
MP3: The xx – “Basic Space”
MP3: Warpaint – “Undertow”
MP3: Warpaint – “Elephants”
MP3: Warpaint – “Billie Holiday”
Video: The xx – “Islands”
Video: The xx – “Basic Space”
Video: The xx – “Crystalised”
Video: Warpaint – “Stars”
Video: Warpaint – “Elephants”
MySpace: The xx
MySpace: Warpaint

PopMatters talks to the reunited Chapterhous, in town at Lee’s Palace on October 6.

Film School and The Depreciation Guild, both of whom will be at the El Mocambo on October 4, have each released new videos from their latest albums Fission and Spirit Youth, respectively. Wired talks to Film School’s Greg Bertens.

Video: Film School – “Sunny Day”
Video: The Depreciation Guild – “My Chariot”

Spoonfed and The Georgia Straight talk to Benjamin Curtis of School Of Seven Bells.

Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead tells Spinner they’re hoping to get a lot of mileage out of their latest album Penny Sparkle. They play The Phoenix on October 17.

Exclaim’s cover story this month is Deerhunter, whose latest Halcyon Digest came out this week. They are at the Opera House on October 19.

Spoonfed and Austinist have interviews with The Morning Benders, who premiered a new song in their Take-Away Show for Le Blogotheque. It may well be in rotation by the time they play The Mod Club on November 5.

Exclaim has details on the inevitable deluxe edition of The National’s High Violet which will be available on November 22. The good news is all the bonus tracks will be available a la carte via the usual digital retailers.

Muzzle Of Bees interviews Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

Exclaim chats with Stephen McBean of Black Mountain, in town at The Phoenix on October 31.

Land Of Talk’s Liz Powell weighs in on the subject of illegal music downloads at Spinner (precis: she doesn’t like it one bit).

Daytrotter has posted a session with Born Ruffians.

Peaches will be celebrating the holiday season this year with her production of Peaches Christ Superstar, the content of which should be self-explanatory (but Spinner explains anyways). The touring production wraps December 21 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto.

And all those Neil Young videos from Le Noise are indeed parts of a larger filmic whole, and it’s available to watch in its entirety over at YouTube starting today. Young discusses the album with The New York Times.

Video: Neil Young / Le Noise – The Film

This is going to be about it for this week; off to Las Vegas tomorrow morning for Matador 21 and I’d normally be reporting all about it but… what happens in Vegas and all that. But you can follow along thanks to the magic of the internet as most of the sets will be streaming at MySpace – details at Matablog. And also check out this oral history of Matador Records at MySpace, with two parts up and the final one tomorrow. ‘Tis good reading.