Jim HerringtonSteve Earle has announced details on his next album, and now that he’s done so the real question is why he hadn’t done this sooner? The new record is called Townes, and is a tribute album to his friend, mentor and the man he once declared the “best songwriter in the whole world,” Townes Van Zandt. Van Zandt passed in 1997 and was paid tribute by Earle in the song, “Fort Worth Blues”, but this record should be a much larger love letter to the late singer-songwriter.

Earle has been in political firebrand mode for his past few records so it’s good to see him return to his more introspective works, though I don’t know if this counts as the “chick songs” record he’s promised for a while. I can’t decide if I’d prefer it he play this one straight and reverential and avoid the sonic tomfoolery that permeated Washington Square Serenade or try to push the envelope a little, knowing he’s got such solid songs to work with. From the details at Blurt, it sounds like he’s doing both, enlisting a bluegrass band for some numbers and getting Serenade producer John King to produce and Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello to play on another. A couple of new songs – including the aforementioned track with Morello – are streaming at Earle’s MySpace, and I must say – his reading of “Pancho & Lefty” does it for me. Yes it does.

Update: There’s a short interview with Steve at the SteveEarle.com forums about the record.

Townes will be available as a single or double-CD set and will be out May 12.

Video: Steve Earle – “Fort Worth Blues” (live)
MySpace: Steve Earle

Rolling Stone reports that Bob Dylan is almost done work on a new album, set for a late April release.

There’s a new video from Neil Young’s Fork In The Road, out April 7. Are you stoked? ARE YOU STOKED? No? Can’t imagine why not.

Video: Neil Young – “Johnny Magic”

JamBase talks to Mark Olson & Gary Louris.

MP3: Mark Olson & Gary Louris – “Turn Your Pretty Name Around”

JAM and The AV Club talk to Neko Case. She’s got two sold-out shows at Trinity-St Paul’s on April 17 and 18.

JamBase profiles Jason Isbell.

MPR has a session with The Submarines. They’ve released a couple of digital remix EPs creatively titled Honeysuckle Weeks Remixes EP 1 and Honeysuckle Weeks Remixes EP 2, the second of which is available this week.

MP3: The Submarines – “You, Me & The Bourgeoisie” (Tonetiger remix)
MP3: The Submarines – “Submarine Symphonika” (Ra Ra Riot remix)

This Is Fake DIY interviews Ra Ra Riot, who will play the Sound Academy in support of Death Cab on April 7.

One For The Good Days has an interview with Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear. Their new record Veckatimest is out May 26 and they play The Phoenix on June 5.

CMJ talks to Matt Johnson of Matt & Kim. They’re at Circa on March 20 in support of Cut Copy.

Bishop Allen have a new video from Grr…, now out. You Ain’t No Picasso has an interview with his site’s namesake.

Video: Bishop Allen – “Dimmer”

Time Out Chicago and Paste talk Warhol with Dean Wareham of Dean & Britta.

Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton gives Anika In London a guide to Calgary.

They may not feature Mark Ronson production or Owen Pallet arrangements, but this Daytrotter session offers the first taste I’ve seen/heard of the new material from The Rumble Strips.

NME reports that Maximo Park are offering a free download of a track from album number three, Quicken The Heart. It’s not an especially remarkable track, but it’s just a taste, not a single. The record is out in May 11 and the offer is only good for a fortnight.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are streaming their new album It’s Blitz! on their MySpace in advance of its March 31 release, and goodness this is a sleek and shiny record. Those who loved the band for their unhinged, spiky guitar freak-outs may be disappointed but for those who always thought that they should indulge their potent inner disco-pop band, your ship has come in. And by you, I mean me. They’ve also got a new video. And Karen O gives an interview to Pitchfork about the internets.

Stream: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs / It’s Blitz!
Video: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”

Good news – Sky Larkin are coming to town! Bad news – it’s in support of Los Campesinos!. This isn’t an indictment of the Welsh kiddies – I’m not a big fan but they’ve got an energetic, entertaining show. It’s a complaint because that April 1 show at the Opera House would be my third gig in a row when I expect to still be recovering from SxSW, and I don’t realistically think I can swing that, and I’m planning on seeing them in Austin anyways. But to anyone who is going – get there early and see them! – and to anyone on the fence about attending – do so! BrooklynVegan has full Los Camp dates including which ones feature Sky Larkin support.

The National have made their contribution to the Dark Was The Night AIDS benefit album available to download, and it’s a gem. A sparkly, shiny gem. You can also watch them perform it at PitchforkTV. They – along with Feist, Sharon Jones and other contributors to the album will be playing a special show in New York City at Radio City Music Hall on May 3 that will surely be something to remember. We will have to settle for seeing them at the Kool Haus on May 21.

MP3: The National – “So Far Around The Bend”
Video: The National – “So Far Around The Bend” (live)

Olly HearseyThe announcement that London trio Micachu & The Shapes had been signed to Rough Trade came with a short video for the song “Lips”, and curious as to who this latest labelmate to faves like British Sea Power and Basia Bulat was, I gave it a spin. And after viewing the 90-second clip, the only response I could come up with was, “uh, what?”. It depicted a scruffy-looking trio with an androgynous-looking frontperson creating a racket that seemed willfully primitive, and yet you couldn’t deny how meticulously and precisely it was all assembled – a method to the madness indeed. My initial reaction was that I never wanted to hear this again. My second reaction was to hit the repeat button.

And Jewellery, the trio’s debut – out today in UK out April 7 in North America – follows much the same pattern, simultaneously repelling and addicting with a dozen tracks of no-fi, hip-hop, anti-pop seemingly built from found sounds, circuit-bent electronics, willfully abused junk shop instruments and the hollered vocals of Mica Levi. It sounds dementedly otherworldly at first, but with repeated listens it becomes clear that it’s very much of this world – just gleefully turned inside-out and upside-down but never straying too too far into abstractionism. It’s like it knows it can only be anti-pop if there’s still some pop in there, so for every obtuse sound collage like “Ship”, there’s an only slightly bizarro melodic gem like “Golden Phone”. And while it’s nice to be able to metaphorically come up for air with tunes like that, I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m actually eager to dive back down into the depths of musical confoundment. Don’t take this as a Damascene moment that finds me abandoning good, old-fashioned pop for a life in the musical outer fringes, but I think my horizons just got a little bit wider. Just a bit.

MBV Music is currently streaming the whole of the album for today only and it’s officially unofficial Micachu day there – keep checking in for thoughts and commentary on the record from the other contributors. Drowned In Sound has an interview with Levi conducted by Emmy The Great, I Like Music offers an annoyingly paginated feature and The Telegraph profiles the band and confirms that Levi really does know exactly what she’s doing, whether it sounds like it or not.

MP3: Micachu & The Shapes – “Lips”
Video: Micachu & The Shapes – “Lips”
Stream: Micachu & The Shapes / Jewellery

The Sun has a feature on Polly Scattergood, whose debut self-titled album is out in the UK today. The bad news is that the North American release date is still a couple months off – May 19 – but the good news is that it’s even getting a North American release, which hopefully implies some touring/promo on this side of the pond. I got a promo of the album last week and my initial enthusiasm has proven not to be misplaced in the least.

Scotland On Sunday sits down with Charlie Fink of Noah & The Whale about their new album The First Days Of Spring, set for release sometime around the last days of Spring, in June. They play the Mod Club on April 27 and support for that tour has been announced as Ferraby Lionheart and Anni Rossi.

MP3: Anni Rossi – “Ecology”
MP3: Anni Rossi – “Wheelpusher”

St Vincent has released the first MP3 from her new album Actor, out May 5.

MP3: St Vincent – “The Strangers”

And St Vincent’s will be teaming up with The National on a cover of Crooked Fingers’ “Sleep All Summer” for SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a cryptically-named compilation celebrating Merge Records’ 20th anniversary by means of cover songs. Details at Pitchfork. And while there’s no shortage of mouth-watering contributions on the album, this particular one jumped out at me because Dignity & Shame is by far my favourite Crooked Fingers record (and I love them all quite a bit) and Annie Clark and Matt Berninger are about as perfectly cast to step into Lara Meyerratken and Eric Bachmann’s shoes on this song as anyone on the planet. You can hear the original on the Crooked Fingers MySpace. The National are at the Kool Haus May 21, Crooked Fingers at Trinity-St Paul’s April 17 and 18.

PitchforkTV and NPR are offering video and audio, respectively, from Antony & The Johnsons’ recent concert in Washington DC. The Advocate has an interview.

Yes, they were here just last week but Asobi Seksu will be back on April 19 at the Mod Club as support for French composer Yann Tiersen, perhaps best known for his work scoring Amelie. Is it a pairing that makes any sense? I have no idea. But there it is. Tickets are $20 in advance.

Also in the “back so soon?” category, The Von Bondies – here in February at the Horseshoe – are back on May 29 for a gig at Lee’s Palace. Tickets for that will be $13.50.

MP3: The Von Bondies – “This Is Our Perfect Crime”
MP3: The Von Bondies – “Pale Bride”

Brooklyn’s Kevin Devine has a date at the El Mocambo on June 3. Tickets $11.

MP3: Kevin Devine & The Goddamn Band – “Brother’s Blood”

And finally, U2 will be at the Rogers Centre on September 16.

Frank YangWhen last week’s The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart show was announced way back in December, I figured it would be a nice little underground thing (literally and figuratively) with myself and the small but loyal posse of Toronto shoegaze devotees in the subterranean environs of Neutral. Sure, their unabashedly retro but still nearly perfect fuzz-pop in theory had mass appeal, but the same could be said for most stuff I like but never manages to catch on – it’s pop music. It’s not difficult.

But as the early February release date of their self-titled debut drew near, a buzz that couldn’t be credited just to the shoegaze loyalists was quickly growing around the band, culminating in a “Best New Music” review from the old Pitchfork and just like that, you knew it wasn’t just going to be a handful of people staring at each others’ sneakers. The fact that the show had already been moved from Neutral to the much larger Lee’s Palace was just a coincidence due to work permit issues rather than demand, but it proved to be a most necessary move – by the time the much-feted band took the stage, Lee’s was nearly packed.

Leading up to that point were a couple of support acts, one local and one tourmate. The former, an outfit called Don Mills, were hopelessly miscast for the audience with their decidedly anonymous-sounding rock. The only remarkable thing about them was their singer’s utter commitment to his performance, with stage moves that seemed laughably ironic until you realized they were totally genuine – and then they were oddly commendable.

The Depreciation Guild were a far more compelling warm-up. I commented favourably on their free-to-download debut In Her Gentle Jaws, with its M83-gone-8-bit charms, but wasn’t fully prepared for the transformation their sound would take in a live setting. Their secret weapon – an old Japanese Famicom game console – was very much on display beside frontman Kurt Feldman and set the table, musically speaking, for their songs but its bleeps and bloops were soon drowned out by the live band’s dual guitars and thundering drums, the synthetic wall of sound ever-present on the record replaced by a decidedly organic one. On one hand, it’s sort of unfortunate that their most distinctive element was lost in the din but the intensity of the attack – while somehow maintaining the dreampop delicacy of the songs – more than made up for it.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, on the other hand, delivered exactly what was expected – twee-pop confections dressed up in big outfits of noise – but they fared less well in the live setting. The band’s inherent feyness wasn’t quite able to overcome their own sonic attack and as a result, some of the little touches that give the album enough variety to transcend its admittedly limited aesthetic, in particular the boy-girl harmonies of Kip Berman and Peggy Wang, were simply buried and the net result was a cheerful but rather monochromatic show. Though they’re not an overly charismatic bunch, it was fun watching them obviously have a blast and in particular Berman’s incredulousness at the sheer number of people in attendance – at one point he said that it was the biggest show they’d ever played. With a barely 45-minute set including encore, it’s impossible to say that they overstayed their welcome but what would have seemed like a too-short show from most bands felt just right for the Pains. I don’t want to use the word “disappointment” as that simply wasn’t the case, but they didn’t manage to make me feel any greater love for the band or the record. But I still love the record a fair bit so that’s okay.

eye also has a review of the show and Express Night Out, Tripwire and The New Gay have interviews with the band.

Photos: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Depreciation Guild, Don Mills @ Lee’s Palace – February 12, 2009
MP3: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Everything With You”
MP3: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Come Saturday”
MP3: The Depreciation Guild – “Darklooming”
MP3: The Depreciation Guild – “Butterfly Kisses”
Video: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Everything With You”
Video: The Depreciation Guild – “Nautilus”
MySpace: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
MySpace: The Depreciation Guild

Clash interviews Asobi Seksu. Hush is out today and they play the El Mocambo on March 3.

Clash talks to Ben Curtis of School Of Seven Bells.

eye, Metro and JAM talk to Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons, who are playing the Queen Elizabeth Theatre tonight.

Details have finally emerged about the new record from Grizzly Bear. It’s called Veckatimest and it’s out May 26 – for more, head over to Pitchfork.

Spinner is featuring Black Kids in an Interface session. They’re at the Phoenix on April 10.

The New York Times, Hartford Courant and The Los Angeles Times talk to M Ward about his new record Hold Time, out today.

San Diego one-man act Wavves – who’s apparently all the buzz with blogs which are not this one – is coming to town for a show at Sneaky Dee’s on March 31.

MP3: Wavves – “So Bored”

TV On The Radio have a date at the Sound Academy on June 2.

Virgin Music interviews Aaron Dessner of The National about his role as curator for the Dark Was The Night AIDS benefit compilation, out today.

MySpaceThe first A Camp album came at an interesting time, with The Cardigans having proven themselves not just a one-hit wonder but a two-hit one (“My Favourite Game” to go along with “Lovefool”) but also rather burning out in the process. Nina Persson used the downtime to explore country music and Americana with the assistance of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous and not only crafted an excellent record in their self-titled debut, but carried the influences back to The Cardigans to inform my personal favourite of their repertoire, Long Gone Before Daylight. That stylistic uniformity went out the window with their next record, the eclectic but still very solid Super Extra Gravity and with the Cardies again on a break, Persson has taken that grab-bag aesthetic back to A Camp.

Colonia, released in Europe last week but not out in North America until April 28, collects 11 songs that could have been Cardigans tunes in another life but could never be mistaken as such in the forms that they’ve been recorded in here. With the formal addition of Persson’s husband Nathan Larson (of Shudder To Think) and Niclas Frisk as members of A Camp, it’s now more of an official band than before but rather than imprint that band with a particular sonic identity, they instead reinvent themselves in whatever way necessary to compliment the songs. Persson’s vocals are unmistakable but the sounds that surround it incorporate elements of show tunes, electronica, glam and country to name just a very few – there’s enough of everything to make it sound familiar but never to the point of being able to place a song in a tidy pigeonhole.

If there’s a common thread, it’s the sonic richness and elegance each song is imbued with. No matter what they put in it, it sounds marvelous, even if some songs are less memorable than others. But the keepers are worth cherishing – “My America” is buoyed by jaunty horns, the languidness of “Chinatown” beautifully channels Television in its guitar lines and lead single “Stronger Than Jesus” boasts a melody that’s as indelible as anything Persson’s ever come up with. Though I wish as much as any fan that the Cardies break will be a short one – apparently Persson’s bandmates are all using the time to tend to fatherly duties – if it continues to yield more A Camp records then there’ll be no word of complaint from me.

Persson is engaged in conversation by The Sunday Mail, The Telegraph and The Independent. And perhaps as a way of making up for the fact that the album isn’t out domestically for another three months, Nettwerk have made available a live session MP3 of “Stronger Than Jesus”. Update: Stereogum is streaming another song from the record and talk to Nina about it.

MP3: A Camp – “Stronger Than Jesus” (Harlem Session)
Video: A Camp – “Stronger Than Jesus”
MySpace: A Camp

The Toronto Sun, The Province, Montreal Mirror and CityPages interview Lykke Li.

Spin gets a sneak preview of the new album from Mew, currently untitled but targeted for a June release.

There’s new videos from both bands playing The Phoenix on April 25 – Peter Bjorn & John, whose Living Thing is out March 25, and Chairlift.

Video: Peter Bjorn & John – “Nothing To Worry About”
Video: Chairlift – “Evident Utensil”

Also with a new video – School Of Seven Bells.

Video: School Of Seven Bells – “Half Asleep”

Check out the title track of The Thermals’ new album Now We Can See, set for release on April 7.

MP3: The Thermals – “Now We Can See”

Some in-stores of note to tell you about. The Von Bondies will hit up Criminal Records this Friday, February 13, at 5PM before heading down the street for their show at the Horseshoe. And next weekend,Alela Diane, whose To Be Still is coming out next Tuesday, will be at Soundscapes on February 21 at 6:30PM in advance of her show at the Horseshoe that evening opening for Blitzen Trapper and the next day (February 22) at 3PM, Sonic Boom will host Ben Kweller leading up to his show at the Mod Club that evening.

MP3: Alela Diane – “White As Diamonds”
Video: Alela Diane – “White As Diamonds”
Video: Ben Kweller – “Fight”

The National are returning. They’re at the Kool Haus on May 21, tickets $24.50.

And finally, The Chicago Sun-Times weighs in on what could be the most disturbing bit of music industry news in a sea of disturbing music industry news, the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. No good can come of this, none at all. But my question is – how does this affect the Canadian divisions of those respective companies? I ask because I remember way back in the ’90s when Pearl Jam were boycotting all US TicketMaster venues, they still played TM-serviced venues up here and said that was because TicketMaster Canada was a separate entity from the US one they were protesting. Though it could/should have been pointed out that even if that were true from a corporate POV, they were still as asshat-acular as their Stateside counterparts when it came to price gouging and exorbitant service charges. And do you have to have bought tickets for a specific show to take part in the class action suit or can you just be generally irritated?

Steve GullickWhen I first wrote up Scotland’s Glasvegas, I went so far as to declare “there’s definitely something there” – a summation that would prove to be a bit of an understatement. Their debut self-title would turn out to be a massive hit in the UK, charting as high as #2 and going gold, making them easily one of the breakthrough acts of 2008 on that side of the pond.

Having acquired a copy of the album on import, it’s not hard to see why. They’ve learned their lessons from the Phil Spector school of pop but unlike many of their cohort, who’ve chosen to take things in a primitivist direction, they’ve taken that wall of sound and built a stadium out of it. Glasvegas is an utterly massive-sounding record, with sky-high sheets of guitar and cavernously echoing drums, but most of all singer James Allan’s huge and mournful bellow. Truly, this is stuff tailor-made to be sung-along with by tens of thousands.

And as they sing along, one would hope they’re too caught up in the moment to realize just how awful the words they’re singing are. Actually that’s overly harsh. Only some of the lyrics on Glasvegas are truly awful. In an effort to make the songs as broad and earnest as possible, Allan has eschewed any sort of lyrical finesse and instead relates things in the simplest, most literal and direct means available. Now sometimes this works – his delivery, all anguish and brogue, is a blunt instrument and when it hits, it’s a gut-wrenching body blow. But when it doesn’t – and I don’t think there’s any good way to present a line like “You don’t want to stab me/You don’t know my family/Or our capabilities” (taken from the Beethoven-backed song about someone about to be stabbed entitled, creatively, “Stabbed”) – it just sits there in all its awkward glory.

So it’s saying something when an avowed fan of clever and wordy songsmithery such as myself is still able to be won over by something as decidedly not as Glasvegas. Despite all its flaws, it’s undeniably rousing in the way that the very best anthems are, and Allan sings it with such earnestness and conviction that it’s hard to remain that critical. Some of the words may be graceless, but when it’s turned up loud and you’re singing them at the top of your lungs with everyone else, you don’t notice so much.

Even so, Glasvegas’ appeal has a distinctly British accent – I can envision them playing soccer stadiums, but not football, and the streets of America are littered with the bodies of acts who tried to recreate UK successes on this side of the pond. But they’re still going to try. Glasvegas will release their debut Stateside on January 6, bolstered with two bonus tracks, and coincide it with a short North American tour and some choice late-night television appearances. Their first US release, however, will technically be the A Snowflake Fell Christmas EP which is being made available via certain US independent retailers to anyone who pre-orders the album – full details and a live download of “Daddy’s Gone” available here. No idea if this deal is available in Canada, however.

The Belfast Telegraph, The Independent and The Telegraph have features on the band and their rise to stardom, The Daily Star talks to the band about their Christmas EP and Deadline Scotland gets a timeline for album number two.

Video: Glasvegas – “Please Come Back Home”
Video: Glasvegas – “Daddy’s Gone”
Video: Glasvegas – “Geraldine”
MySpace: Glasvegas

Drowned In Sound checks in with some other Scots who’ve had a big year – Frightened Rabbit. And even though they just released a live acoustic album in Liver! Lung! FR!, DiS also report that another one will be coming next year on March 30 in the form of Quietly Now! – Midnight Organ Fight Live and Acoustic at the Captain’s Rest, which comprises a live and acoustic reading of The Midnight Organ Fight.

Having just released her first post-Pipettes single in “Another Version Of Pop Song”, Rose Elinor Dougall is offering a sample of her forthcoming solo album, which is set to finish recording in January and hopefully come out come Summer. I daresay that the solo material sounds quite classy – there is indeed life after polka dots.

MP3: Rose Elinor Dougall – “May Holiday”

BBC gets a new album update from Noah & The Whale. BrooklynVegan notes that the band have a late February date in New York City, which may mean that a make-up for their cancelled December jaunt to North America is being rescheduled. Or they just want to visit New York.

I’ve just made a new year’s resolution – to take the time to properly investigate Tindersticks. They’ve been recommended to me from more than a few quarters and it’s not like I have any excuse – I have a number of their albums on hand, including their latest The Hungry Saw, as well as a solo Stuart Staples album, and hey – they’re coming to town for a March 10 show at the Opera House. It’d be a crying shame if I finally got into them AFTER that, wouldn’t it? Full North American dates at BrooklynVegan, interviews at Prague Post and The Irish Independent.

MP3: Tindersticks – “The Hungry Saw”

The Quietus talks to Warren Ellis about goings-on with The Bad Seeds and Grinderman.

Billboard talks to Aaron Dessner of The National about the follow-up to Boxer and the Dark Was the Night AIDS benefit album due out February 17.

Heroes, the War Child benefit album originally slated to come out in November, has now been given a release dae of February 16. Details at NME.