Danny NorthI had spent the last few days getting contradictory answers as to whether the December 15 Fanfarlo show at the El Mocambo I’d been so looking forward to and the Montreal date the following night were cancelled or not, but yesterday afternoon the band settled the matter – frontman Simon Balthazar’s passport was stolen in Portland and there was no getting a replacement in time to make the Canadian dates. They’ll surely visit us another time, but not next week.

But goodness knows I’m nothing if not someone who always sees the bright side of things (stop laughing) so if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the evening is freed up to head down to the Drake Underground to see the Canadian debut of Blue Roses. Both the stage name of Ms Laura Groves of England as well as the title of her debut album, the thing that will strike you first about Blue Roses is her voice; Groves possesses a soprano that will stop you in your tracks, then watch in amazement as it soars and swoops around you. The paths it traces are more than a little reminiscent of Kate Bush or, using a more contemporary reference point, Joanna Newsom albeit less boundary-pushing than the former or potentially polarizing than the latter.

Whether accompanied by elegantly fingerpicked guitar or dramatic piano, the music of Blue Roses maintains a light, airy feel, even when the lyrical matter gets weighty or melancholic. And putting aside the arrangements and their delicate balance of traditional and modern tones, the sense of wide-eyed optimism remains – it’s just inherent in Groves’ 21-year old voice. It’s the sound of youth and hopefulness, though not necessarily naivete – these songs have been lived in. Just as Bush or Newsom sound like their songs belong to some dark and mysterious, fairy-inhabited woods, Groves’ songs inhabit a simpler, more pastoral place – one of open fields and meadows, where the skies might be overcast but are worth celebrating nonetheless.

Groves digitally released a new EP yesterday entitled Does Anyone Love Me Now and is currently on her debut tour of North America supporting Marcus Foster and, as previously mentioned, will be at the Drake Underground on December 15. Stereogum collected a series of live performance videos recorded in assorted idyllic locales while Off The Beaten Tracks captured a couple of songs on tape at this Summer’s Edinburgh Festival before the rains came. The Quietus talked to Groves about her hometown of Shipley, Yorkshire.

MP3: Blue Roses – “Doubtful Comforts”
MP3: Blue Roses – “I Am Leaving”
Video: Blue Roses – “I Am Leaving”
MySpace: Blue Roses

The Drake will also be hosting another young and talented English singer-songwriter in the coming months, though I would think that Laura Marling could easily fill a much larger room than the Underground. Perhaps the February 9 engagement is intended to be a deliberately undersized and intimate show to mark the release of her second album, which currently has no name or street date but February is as reasonable a guess as any. Either way, expect the $13.50 tickets, which go on sale Friday, to go fast.

MP3: Laura Marling – “Ghosts”

Marling will also be heading to India this month to do some shows accompanied by Mumford & Sons, with whom she made her Toronto debut last October. Spinner talks to Marcus Mumford about how that tour came about. Mumford & Sons play the decidedly less exotic but much more easily accessible El Mocambo on February 15, their debut Sigh No More will get a North American release on March 2 and you can download a free stripped-down version of their “White Blank Page” over at The Times.

The February 16 release of Lightspeed Champion’s next proper album Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You may still be a couple months off, but those looking for a more immediate fix need look no further than Dev Hynes’ own website where he’s begun posting what he calls a series of bootlegs, which are essentially off-the-cuff albums of Hynes messing about. The first to be made available is House-Sitting Songs, which as the title implies, was “recorded mid May 2009 within a week whilst house-sitting for a friend of mine in Manhattan”. Hynes talks to Spinner about his reasons for releasing the record and what else is yet to come.

ZIP: Lightspeed Champion / House-Sitting Songs

Guy Garvey of Elbow gives Teletext an update on how things are progressing with their next album, likely not due out until 2011.

The Music Magazine and Blurt talk to Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutichison about their new album The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, due out March 16 in North America.

I had thought that Asobi Seksu’s last visit in October might be an acoustic set, given their quieter tourmates in Loney Dear and Anna Ternheim and the impending release of their new acoustic record Rewolf but no – it was as big and loud a performance as ever. They will, however, be busting out the acoustics – and presumably leaving the strobe lights at home – for their February 1 show at the Drake. Tickets for that will be $10 in advance. Flavorwire talks to Yuki Chikudate about the decision to make an acoustic record.

MP3: Asobi Seksu – “Thursday” (acoustic)

French duo Air has announced a Spring 2010 tour in support of their latest record Love 2 – look for them on March 23 at the Phoenix.

Though they were just here, The Big Pink have announced another tour for next Spring where they’ll be accompanied by fellow strobe junkies A Place To Bury Strangers. Deafness and blindness guaranteed. The Toronto date is March 24 at the Mod Club.

MP3: The Big Pink – “Dominos”
MP3: The Big Pink – “Too Young To Love”
MP3: A Place To Bury Strangers – “In Your Heart”

Cymbals Eat Guitars have set an April 6 date at the El Mocambo as part of a Spring tour, tickets $10. They recently released sessions at both Laundromatinee and Daytrotter.

MergeLast week, I was complaining that with the US holiday season, there wasn’t nearly enough blog fodder trickling out of the interwebs. This week, it’s like a deluge.

We begin wading through it all in Scandinavia, particularly Stockholm, Sweden, home of the Shout Out Louds. The quintet turned in one of the indie-pop highlights of 2007 with Our Ill Wills and are set to follow it up with the release of Work. For this outing, they’ve opted to not work with Bjorn Yttling, who manned the boards for Our Ill Wills and have instead enlisted producer Phil Ek, best known for his work with The Shins and Built To Spill, amongst many others. And if the band’s idea of adding an American accent to things means going for a drier, less shiny sonic approach without giving up any of the hooks, then judging from the just-released first MP3 and video they’ve succeeded.

Work is out on February 23 of next year and they promise to spend most of the year touring to support. They posted up a short video clip of the recording sessions back in September.

MP3: Shout Out Louds – “Walls”
Video: Shout Out Louds – “Walls”

PopMatters interviews Anna Ternheim, who will be supporting El Perro Del Mar on her Winter 2010 tour including the February 21 date at the Mod Club. After her too-short set opening for Loney Dear at the Horseshoe in October, I had hoped she’d be back soon for a longer performance – wish granted.

MP3: Anna Ternheim – “What Have I Done”

Serena Maneesh are offering a taste of their new record, still untitled and due out in March 2010, by way of a Norwegian television session.

Clash gets a guided tour of Reykjavik from Mum.

DCist interviews Jonas Bjerre of Mew, who will be at the Mod Club in Toronto on December 6.

Chart talks to The Raveonettes.

The National Post profiles Jonas Bonnetta of Evening Hymns, who are playing an in-store at 7PM at Soundscapes tonight and a full show at the Tranzac on Friday night.

Resonancity interviews Matt Cully of Bruce Peninsula.

One of the great mythical unicorn-griffin-dragon hybrids of the indie rock world, the solo debut from Beulah frontman Miles Kurosky, should become a reality on March 9 under the title of The Desert Of Shallow Effects… unless it doesn’t. Details at AntiMusic.

There’s still no North American release date set for Sigh No More, the debut album from Mumford & Sons, but considering they’re cobbling together a North American tour for February, including a February 15 date at the El Mocambo (tickets $12), mid-February seems like a reasonable guess.

Video: Mumford & Sons – “Winter Winds”
Video: Mumford & Sons – “Little Lion Man”

Johnny Flynn, with whom Mumford & Sons made their Toronto debut last October, has put out a new EP entitled Sweet William, from which you can download a track, courtesy of Drowned In Sound.

MP3: Johnny Flynn – “Drum”

The third member of that bill, Laura Marling, is still targeting a Winter 2010 release for her sophomore effort and will release the first single from album number two in “Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)” as a Christmas single on December 14.

Magnet and Filter Q&A Ray Davies.

Daytrotter has offered up a session with The Swell Season.

Frank YangQ: Without a new record to promote – Mr. Love & Justice has been out for close to two years – what reason did Billy Bragg have for staging an ambitious cross-Canada tour?

A: Who cares? Any time you get the opportunity to see Billy Bragg live, you take it, no questions asked.

Of course, I say that having missed his last three appearances in Toronto – the September 2006 show at the Music Hall for not one but two weddings, the June 2008 in-store at HMV because I was working and the show that same night at Harbourfront for no reason I can recall. So Tuesday night’s show at the Phoenix marked the first occasion I’d see him perform since March 2006; in other words, far too long. The fact that this tour was somewhat without context was extra exciting, because the two proper shows of his I’d seen before were great but a little too rich with context – the 2006 show was to promote his Volume 1 box set and as such, only included material from that era and the July 2003 show at the El Mocambo was part of his “Talkin’ Woody” tour and as such, was almost 100% Woody. So it goes without saying that there was a LOT of material I’d been waiting a long, long time to hear live.

Support for the tour was perfectly chosen, with none other than hometowner Ron Hawkins – former frontman for my beloved Lowest Of The Low – kicking things off. It was an eminently logical choice as The Low and Bragg had played together back in the ’90s and Hawkins’ sharp folk-punk songwriting owes Bragg more than a few debts. Performing solo and acoustic, Hawkins showcased material from his new album 10 Kinds Of Lonely amidst some great banter, a tune from his other old outfit The Rusty Nails and a gorgeous and unexpected cover of Ryan Adams’ “Oh My Sweet Carolina”. Damn, Adams had the goods before he lost his mind. And Hawkins, happily, still does. He plays a show at the Dakota Tavern tonight before hitting the road out west with Bragg.

I’ve never seen Billy Bragg play with a band, but having heard live recordings of he with The Blokes, I’m perfectly fine with that. Not that they sound bad – not at all – but when it comes down to it, all Bragg needs is an electric guitar. And a cup of tea. Kicking things off with the oldest of the old school “World Turned Upside Down” before leaping ahead to a sublime pair of those aforementioned never-heard-live tunes from Don’t Try This At Home – “Accident Waiting to Happen” and “Cindy of A Thousand Lives”. Yeah, this was going to be a good night. At first, however, it seemed that Billy might disagree. Though sounding fine, he seemed a bit distracted or even perturbed at first – at least not the gregarious rabble-rouser he usually was.

A few songs in, when he got chattier, he revealed one of the reasons for his mood – just a couple days prior, it was announced that the execrable leader of the ultra-right British National Party, Nick Griffin, was going to be running for Parliament in Bragg’s very own home riding of Barking – the sort of news would drive any sensible person up the wall, let alone one as politically-minded and leftist as Bragg. He quickly got into proper form, however, and that along with myriad other injustices in the world – politicians, bankers, the military, North American football (or “runny runny catchy”, as he called it) – were called out and used as fuel for his performance.

As always, his between-song banter was as essential a part of the show as the songs themselves, and while we didn’t get a Morrissey story this time out, but there were fine tales about Woody Guthrie’s tumescence (with regards to “Ingrid Bergman”), his reaction to the misreported death of Margaret Thatcher, guitar quotes of “Seven Nation Army” and “Smoke On The Water” during the implied trumpet solo in “The Saturday Boy” and a profanity-riddled reading of poet John Cooper Clarke’s “Evidently Chickentown” to name but a few high points.

For all the funning, though, Bragg never travels without a message or two and those were well conveyed through anthems like “NPWA” and “O Freedom”, the latter introduced with a pointed comment about Canada’s handling of the Omar Khdar affair. But rather than accuse and criticize, Bragg was aware that he was largely preaching to the converted with the mostly-packed Phoenix audience and devoted most of his efforts to inspiring and mobilizing, decrying cynicism as the real enemy. To punctuate the point, the main set wrapped with a rousing run of “All You Fascists”, “I Keep Faith” and “There Is Power In A Union”. Heady stuff, indeed.

And it wasn’t done. Coming back out for the encore almost as soon as he stepped off stage, Bragg would do his own version of the “Don’t Look Back” movement of playing complete albums live, running through his debut mini-album Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy almost in sequence, saving “A New England” for the grand, singalong finale to two glorious hours of Bragg. The absence of “St. Swithin’s Day” or anything from Worker’s Playtime was a bit disappointing, but for someone with a catalog as deep as Bragg’s there’s just no way to satisfy everyone. The only answer, I suppose, is for him to keep coming back – no excuse needed.

JAM and Panic Manual were also in attendance at the show. The Scope, Vue, FFWD, Canada.com, See, JAM and The Coast have all been conducting interviews with Bragg as he travels the country. Ron Hawkins gets some attention from Vue and Buffalo News.

Photos: Billy Bragg, Ron Hawkins @ The Phoenix – November 17, 2009
MP3: Billy Bragg – “I Keep Faith”
MP3: Billy Bragg – “Take Down The Union Jack”
MP3: Billy Bragg – “Must I Paint You A Picture?”
MP3: Billy Bragg – “Valentine’s Day Is Over” (live)
Video: Billy Bragg – “NPWA”
Video: Billy Bragg – “The Boy Done Good”
Video: Billy Bragg – “Sexuality”
Video: Billy Bragg – “Waiting For The Great Leap Forward”
Video: Billy Bragg – “You Woke Up My Neighbourhood”
Video: Billy Bragg – “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”
MySpace: Billy Bragg
MySpace: Ron Hawkins

The Telegraph and The Sheaf talk to Dan Mangan.

Rolling Stone talks to Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard about their Jack Kerouac project One Fast Move or I’m Gone.

Drowned In Sound meets We Were Promised Jetpacks.

Matablog has a video teaser trailer for Shearwater’s new album The Golden Archipelago, due out February 23 in North America, a week later than the rest of the world.

Rogue Wave have set a March 2 release date for their new record Permalight.

Mumford & Sons have released a new video from Sigh No More, which will be getting a North American release in the early part of 2010.

Video: Mumford & Sons – “Winter Winds”

Bandstand Busking has session with Micachu & The Shapes.

Self-Titled talks about Bonfires On The Heath’s non-musical inspirations with The Clientele’s Alasdair MacLean.

Frank YangThe second half of last week was one of those stretches where it seemed like there were a half-dozen things going on at the same time, each of which would under normal circumstances be a no-brainer as far as attendance was concerned but instead, would require some painful sacrifices. And so it was that after shooting the first three songs of Wilco’s set at Massey Hall, I bolted for Lee’s Palace to catch The Horrors. Some/most would call this madness, but I had Wilco tickets for the following night (which itself called for passing on the School Of Seven Bells Show – ouch) and I had already missed seeing The Horrors back in May and grown fonder of their latest record Primary Colours in the interim.

Also filed under the incentive column was the rather poorly-disguised fact that one of the openers was going to be reigning Polaris Music Prize winners Fucked Up. They’d already announced they’d be playing a secret show that week and the listing of a band called “Polaris Pricks” that otherwise didn’t exist pretty much sealed the deal. Seeing them play the Polaris Prize gala was my first exposure to the Fucked Up live experience and while it was as entertaining and chaotic as their reputation promised, it was still only one song so I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, they seemed to be consciously on their best behaviour and shenanigans were kept to a minimum. Fortunately, they were still loud and fast and there were some even minimum shenanigans equals some shenanigans. Singer Damian Abraham clambored around on the Lee’s Palace railings and speaker cabs, shed his shirt (of course) and frolicked in the crowd in the way that rather large, shirtless men frolic. I’ve listened to The Chemistry Of Common Life a few more times since the Polaris win but still have trouble distinguishing one song from the next, but that’s alright – it was still entertaining to witness. I expect they’ll more than compensate for the lack of carnage on this night when they host their annual Fucked Up Fest at various venues around the city at the end of the month.

The Horrors were largely an unknown quantity to me prior to their current record, but I was aware that most of the critical praise heaped at Primary Colours came with a healthy amount of incredulity that such an album could have come from a band that was previously not taken very seriously, to say the least. But the past is the past and all that was really relevant was that the new record is good and they no longer dress ridiculously. I’d also been told that they liked to play in total darkness and really didn’t move at all – both thankfully incorrect, though the latter far moreso than the former. No, their show was actually pretty animated and intense, feeding and feeding off an enthusiastic audience I didn’t know they had. Sonically, they did a fine job of reproducing the haze of metal shavings abrasiveness of Geoff Barrow’s production job, giving the brooding some extra juice for the stage, and while it could be argued that they overplayed the rock theatrics a bit, particularly frontman Faris Badwan’s lurching and grimacing (though being as tall and gangly as he is, the lurching may have been perfectly natural), it suited the dramatics of the material and the overall tone of the show. The encore pulled the energy levels up higher and felt looser and more naturally unhinged – seeing as how it was made up of (presumably) all older material, it whipped their already frothy fans into an even greater frenzy. Obviously they’ve accepted the band’s newer shoegaze-inspired sound but still love them some goth-punk. Yeah I know I missed a great Wilco show for this, but I think I came out alright in the end as well.

The Horrors are releasing a non-album single entitled “Whole New Way” on 7″ on November 3 and have just released a video for it and The National Post has an Q&A with Faris Badwan. Hearty has an interview with Fucked Up bassist Sandy Miranda.

Photos: The Horrors, Fucked Up @ Lee’s Palace – October 14, 2009
MP3: The Horrors – “Sea Within A Sea”
MP3: Fucked Up – “No Epiphany”
Video: The Horrors – “Whole New Way”
Video: The Horrors – “Mirror’s Image”
Video: The Horrors – “Who Can Say”
Video: The Horrors – “Sea Within A Sea”
Video: The Horrors – “She Is The New Thing”
Video: The Horrors – “Gloves”
Video: The Horrors – “Count In Fives”
Video: The Horrors – “Sheena Is A Parasite”
Video: Fucked Up – “Crooked Head”
Video: Fucked Up – “Black Albino Bones”
MySpace: The Horrors
MySpace: Fucked Up

State and The Independent have interviews and Uncensored a video chat with The xx. NPR is also streaming a World Cafe session with the band, who make their Toronto debut at the Phoenix on December 2 alongside Friendly Fires.

Under The Radar has an interview and Dirty Laundry a video session with The Twilight Sad.

Drowned In Sound meets The Big Pink. You can do likewise at Lee’s Palace on November 29.

PitchforkTV is streaming for this week only the Bat For Lashes documentary short film Two Plus Two, which documented the making of her new record Two Suns. The deluxe edition of the record, which includes said doc on DVD and a second disc containing eight bonus tracks, will be out on November 3.

Video: Bat For Lashes: Two Plus Two

Florence & The Machine have released a new video. She’s at the Mod Club on November 2.

Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love”

Lily Allen also has a new vid.

Video: Lily Allen – “Who’d Have Known”

Spinner’s Interface has a session with Little Boots, who also has a new video out.

Video: Little Boots – “Earthquake”

My Old Kentucky Blog and Pitchfork talk to The Clientele.

Mumford & Sons have unveiled video number two from album number one Sigh No More.

Video: Mumford & Sons – “Gentlemen Of The Road”

The Yorker has an interview with Noah & The Whale, whose in-store at Criminal Records on October 31 has been moved up – way up – to a noon hour start. And that evening’s show at the Horseshoe has been dubbed “Night Of The Living Dead”, with attendees invited to come dressed as their favourite dead celebrity. I look forward to spending the evening surrounded by bad Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett lookalikes.

Drowned In Sound has a the third part of Fanfarlo’s tour diaries, which Black Cab Session features a session recorded way back at SxSW in March and Clash solicits a list of “Top Ten Tracks to stalk around a Norwegian Forest”. Fall North American dates are still trickling in, but the fact that they’ll be in Minneapolis in mid-November and Boston in mid-December implies a long stay, hopefully with a Toronto date in there somewhere.

Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit tells The Popcop that their breakout record The Midnight Organ Fight wasn’t the one he wanted to make and he likes the new one, due out in the new year, much better. Give the first single and video a listen and judge for yourself, if you can disregard the shabby audio quality.

Video: Frightened Rabbit – “Swim Until You Can’t See The Land”

Glasvegas talks to Spinner about their plans to track album number two in Los Angeles

Arctic Monkeys have released a new video from Humbug.

Video: Arctic Monkeys – “Cornerstone”

BBC reports the future of Bloc Party appears in doubt, with the band canceling dates on their current tour so drummer Matt Tong can get medical attention and a lack of interest in his part on returning when it’s all sorted. Sad news if it’s true, because Intimacy is not the note any band wants to go out on.

James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers talks to Under The Radar about their decision to use Richey Edwards’ lyrics for Journal For Plague Lovers.

Spinner talks to Bad Lieutenant principal Bernard Sumner. Their debut Never Cry Another Tear is out November 10.

Interview and The San Francisco Examiner have interviews with Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch. They’re at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre tomorrow night for an orchestrally-enhanced performance of Ocean Rain.

Pitchfork discusses bands that are not The Smiths with Johnny Marr.

Frank YangFashion has never been the Manic Street Preachers’ strong suit, and that’s not just with regards to Nicky Wire’s penchant for heavy eye makeup and dresses. From their early glam-punk days through the bleakness of The Holy Bible and guitarist/songwriter Richey Edwards’ subsequent disappearance through their rise as one of the UK’s biggest arena acts in the mid-’90s, the Manics always seemed set apart from their contemporaries, many or most of whom would dissolve, reform and dissolve again while the Manics steadfastly carried on. Overtly political, unabashedly intellectual, unashamed of grandstanding guitar solos and not at all above slagging off other bands, the Manics would remain a cult band at heart, no matter how big they got.

And nowhere was that truer than in the US, a land that seemed to simultaneously enamor and repel the band. They were infatuated with the American mythology of rock’n’roll, in the life- and world-altering power of music, but their socialist values were fundamentally at odds with the States’ capitalist ideology – America inspired their dreams, drew their scorn and has always permeated their work. So the fact that they hadn’t crossed the Atlantic in over a decade – their last visit to North America was in 2001 when they performed in Cuba in front of an audience that included Fidel Castro – was curious, to say the least. No, they never achieved the sort of commercial success that some of their peers did, but they had a few singles gain traction in the wider consciousness and had the sort of devoted fanbase that some bands who had toured over here could only dream of. But whatever the reason – recent interviews indicated the band couldn’t even fully explain it – the Manics were finally, unexpectedly but fantastically, coming over for a modest tour of a dozen dates around the continent, including this past Sunday night at the Phoenix in Toronto.

The Manics continue to play arenas and massive festivals in the UK, but in North America they were undertaking a club tour, playing rooms many, many times smaller than to which they were accustomed. The Phoenix was full though not sold out, and by most reports boasted the largest crowd of the tour. But even if the audience could be generously counted at a thousand, the energy and anticipation in the crowd felt much greater. Though the tour was ostensibly in support of their ninth and newest album Journal For Plague Lovers, a stunning return to form featuring lyrics left behind by Edwards days before he vanished, all the shows had been much more career retrospectives, a reward to their fans for their patience and a reminder of why they still cared.

And from the moment James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore took the stage to huge roars and returned the favour with the equally huge roar of “Motorcycle Emptiness”, for the next 90 minutes there was no other band in the world. Playing with an energy and vigor that would have been impressive coming from musicians half their age, the Manics tore through a career-spanning set list that offered something from almost everything, but at the same time seemed to not feature enough from anything. Only two songs from The Holy Bible? Just a pair from Everything Must Go? Not one selection from Lifeblood? But going down the “why didn’t they play such and such” can only lead to tears, and this show was the furthest thing from that. It was a steady stream of someone’s favourite song followed by someone else’s favourite song, a celebration of the Manic Street Preachers, of their lost brother Richey Edwards and a life dedicated to making anthemic, intelligent and above all ass-kicking rock music.

Though more accustomed to playing much larger stages, the Manics relished the more intimate environs and being in closer contact to the zealous audience which Bradfield called, ” the loudest on the tour so far”. In return, they paid tribute to their favourite Torontonians with Bradfield playing the intro to “The Spirit Of Radio” before segueing into “Faster” and Wire later quoting lyrics from said same song. If there was a spot where the show waned a bit, it was when Bradfield took a solo acoustic turn on “This Is Yesterday” and “The Everlasting”, a move which I suspect works better in front of much more massive crowds, but that dip was only relative to the unflagging highs of the rest of the set, which would culminate in a glorious “Motown Junk”, never truer “You Love Us” and anthem of anthems show-closer “A Design For Life”. It was a fitting finale to a show that took my sky-high expectations and showed me that they weren’t nearly high enough.

Long. Live. The Manics.

Panic Manual, Fazer and ChartAttack have weighed in with their reviews of the show while The Denver Post, Metro and Boston Herald have interviews with the band.

And sorry about the massive video list… the Manics just upped high-quality versions of all their videos to YouTube and I got a mite carried away going through it all. But good stuff there. Gooooood stuff. And I forgot I had this remix of “Motorcycle Emptiness” lying around – it was a b-side to the “Australia” single circa Everything Must Go and sounds majestic. Strings!

Photos: Manic Street Preachers @ The Phoenix – October 4, 2009
MP3: Manic Street Preachers – “Motorcycle Emptiness” (Stealth Sonic Orchestra remix)
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Indian Summer”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Autumnsong”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “The Love Of Richard Nixon”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Empty Souls”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “There By The Grace Of God”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Ocean Spray”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Found That Soul”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “So Why So Sad”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Let Robeson Sing”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “The Masses Against The Classes”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “The Everlasting”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Tsunami”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Ready For Drowning”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “A Design For Life”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Everything Must Go”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Kevin Carter”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “She Is Suffering”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Revol”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Faster”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Roses In The Hospital”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “La Tristesse Durera (A Scream To A Sigh)”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Little Baby Nothing”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Stay Beautiful”
Video: Manic Street Preachers – “Motorcycle Emptiness”
MySpace: Manic Street Preachers

Los Campesinos! have released a video from their as-yet untitled third album, due out in the early part of 2010.

Video: Los Campesinos! – “These Are Listed Buildings”

The National Post talks to Muse frontman Matt Bellamy about their new record The Resistance.

Video: Muse – “Uprising”

Mumford & Sons talk to Clash about their just-released debut Sigh No More.

Leeds’ Grammatics, who caught my attention last year before I was, I dunno, distracted by a shiny object, are building interest for a new single out in November and second album to follow in the year year by releasing an MP3 from their self-titled debut from earlier this year. And it’s worked as far as encouraging me to put the album on my iPhone so I can forget to listen to it while at work, not just at home. The track also features vocals from Laura Groves of Blue Roses, whom I’ve also meant to pay more attention to.

MP3: Grammatics – “Inkjet Lakes”

The Quietus and Spinner have interviews with Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch. Their new record The Fountain is out October 12 and they play the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 20.

MP3: Echo & The Bunnymen – “I Think I Need It Too”

The Skinny has a feature piece on Franz Ferdinand.

New York Press talks to The Twilight Sad and also to We Were Promised Jetpacks, both of whom are at the El Mocambo this Saturday night.

Their labelmates and countrymen Frightened Rabbit are releasing a new single entitled “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” on November 16 and which will appear on their next record, due out in early 2010. The two sides are currently streaming at their label website.

Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai tells BBC their next album, due next year, will be self-released. Exclaim also reports that they’ve got a live album and film coming out sooner rather than later.

Though it’s been all the rage digitally and was made available for sale in Canada a few weeks ago, The xx’s debut XX is out in the US today and is streaming at Spinner. They’re at the Phoenix on December 2 in support of Friendy Fires.

Stream: The xx / XX

And Baeble Music is streaming video of a full Friendy Fires show in New York City.

Clash and Spinner have interviews with Massive Attack, whose new Splitting The Atom EP is available to stream.

Stream: Massive Attack / Splitting The Atom

And sorry about the heinous outages/slow load times/general crappiness of the site lately. My hosting has been kind of shit lately. Looking into it.