Frank YangInitial buzz around Florence & The Machine was largely built on a handful of singles, live recordings and performances that positioned Florence Welch as a big-voiced musical eccentric (or as I put it last November, “batshit crazy”) surely set for a career of creative left turns and cul-de-sacs that would delight as often as it confounded. But the surprise – in these quarters, at least – came when it was announced that Florence had signed with major label Island for her debut, majors never really being the most adept entities at marketing “crazy”.

But they are better at marketing “glitz” and there’s far more of that in evidence than psychosis on Florence’s first long-player Lungs, a bright and shiny showcase for Welch’s pipes. Stylistically, it’s hard to pin down as it veers from garage rock to gospel/soul wailers through big pop productions, the only common denominators being Welch and her flair for the dramatic, not to mention an apparent determination to include as much harp as possible, everywhere. Credited to a brace of different producers, there’s definitely a whiff of “by committee” about the proceedings, some numbers are more show than song and are sometimes delivered with more bombast than necessary, but when the combination of Welch’s primal voice and pop hooks connect – and that’s still far more often than not – the results are remarkable. While some/many have their knives out for Welch for whatever reason – the amount of hype that buoyed her rise to fame, her admittedly over-played and over-calculated kooky public persona, whatever, they’ll find no traction in criticizing her talent – the packaging may be debatable, but the goods are for real.

And those goods were well on display on Monday night before a completely sold-out Mod Club, the final night of a North American tour that included four shows in addition to her CMJ appearances. Hardly a grueling itinerary, but that was perhaps to our advantage as Welch still had plenty of energy and nothing to conserve it for. Though starting small with “Between Two Lungs”, the show quickly picked up in scale and volume, thanks to a five-piece backing band – including harp – that was a far cry from the raw duo format she first turned heads with at SxSW – and hit an early peak a few songs in with a vigorous “Kiss With A Fist” before stepping away from Lungs briefly for a b-side and Cold War Kids cover, all delivered with that huge voice that was as powerful live as one would have imagined and hoped. Throughout the show, Welch managed to maintain her theatrical bearing, all arm gestures and flourishes, while connecting with her audience, genuinely and appreciatively. I fully expect that she organized the mass leaping for “Dog Days Are Over” at every show, but that doesn’t make her obvious glee at watching some 500 people bouncing up in down in unison any less real – it was a thing to see and my obvious high point of the night. Judging from the collective swoon that met the encore, for many others it was her reading of “You’ve Got the Love” that was the singular, crystalline moment of the night. I think all could agree, however, that “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” was a superb finale, pretty much encapsulating everything that is great and grand about Florence & The Machine – the voice, the drama, the songs and yes, of course, the harp.

eye has an interview with Welch while The Toronto Sun, Panic Manual and The Globe & Mail offer reviews of the Mod Club show.

Photos: Florence & The Machine @ The Mod Club – November 2, 2009
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “I’m Not Calling You A Liar”
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Kiss With A Fist”
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Postcards From Italy”
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Girl With 1 Eye” (live)
MP3: Florence & The Machine – “Hospital Beds” (live)
Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love” (The xx remix)
Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love”
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Drumming Song”
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Kiss With A Fist”
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Dog Days Are Over”
MySpace: Florence & The Machine

Rolling Stone declares La Roux a “breaking” artist.

The Music Magazine has an interview with Charlotte Hatherley, whose new record New Worlds should be available everywhere but is sadly available almost nowhere (at least in physical form). But is worth seeking out.

IFC has an interview with The Clientele frontman Alisdair MacLean while WFMU has a studio session available to stream.

Good news from Drowned In Sound – Lightspeed Champion will release his second record Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You on February 1 in the UK and February 16 in North America – The Quietus has an interview with Dev Hynes about what to expect off of album number two. He’s also the guest vocalist on the new single from Basement Jaxx.

Video: Basement Jaxx featuring Lightspeed Champion – “My Turn”

Eastscene caught an interview with Sky Larkin during their visit to Toronto last week.

Noah & The Whale have just released a second video from First Days Of Spring.

Video: Noah & The Whale – “Love Of An Orchestra”

The Tripwire converses with The Horrors.

The Line Of Best Fit talks to Editors bassist Russell Leetch about this, that and the other thing.

State interviews White Lies.

The Herald and The Independent catch up with former Suede frontman Brett Anderson, who’s just released his second third solo record in Slow Attack.

Frank YangWhen Noah & The Whale made their debut Toronto appearance back in September of last year, I noted how effectively they were able to offset the inherent twee-ness of their debut Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down in a live setting simply by turning up the rock – not only did those songs survive being run through a distortion pedal, they actually benefited from it. That being said, the gig still only rated about an “all right” – they were a band who wrote some good pop songs and delivered them well, but I didn’t sense that certain something that implied they could be more than that.

Their second record First Days Of Spring certainly went a long way to changing that opinion. Both the emotional rawness of the subject matter and the spare, orchestral dressings were unexpected and certainly earned the band a re-think in these parts, so Saturday was dedicated to seeing them perform not once, but twice in Toronto. The first opportunity came courtesy an in-store performance at Criminal Records bright and early at noon – convenient for those with Hallowe’en plans that night but a bit of an ordeal for those unaccustomed to having to be doing anything, anywhere at that time on a Saturday. This apparently included the band, who looked a bit bleary-eyed as they got up to play in front of a fairly packed store of fans, including no shortage of under-agers who wouldn’t be able to attend the show later that night. Their set was short – four songs, I think – but sweet and highlighted by Spring‘s “Love Of An Orchestra”, which one would have expected to be the most difficult to translate live with just a five-piece band but which they managed to do quite well. This boded well for the full show.

A show for which I missed most of opener Robert Francis’ set, thanks to a mix-up regarding set times. The couple of songs I did catch from the Los Angeles native, who’s just released his second album Nightfall, sounded alright in the earnest, rock-radio singer-songwriter sense, but didn’t make me especially wish I’d arrived earlier. And it meant a shorter wait for Noah & The Whale and an earlier finish time, both of which were alright with me. In the spirit of the season, the band had invited fans to come dressed as their favourite dead celebrity and for their part, they took the stage in simple but suitably corpse-like whiteface makeup and perhaps intended to satisfy the dead celebrity part of the theme with the covers that opened their set. Certainly Buddy Holly (“Everyday”) and Jackson C Frank (“Blues Run The Game”) no longer walk amongst us, but it’s not clear how “You Are Always On My Mind” was supposed to fit the meme – Brenda Lee, Willie Nelson and Pet Shop Boys are all decidedly alive. Maybe they were going for Elvis? Hard to say.

Following that opening trick-or-treat, it was all Noah & The Whale. They began with “Give A Little Love” from Peaceful but the bulk of the show would be devoted to First Days Of Spring, and Noah & The Whale are obviously believers in the adage of every problem looking like a nail when all you have is a hammer. In this case, the nail being the question of how to recreate their songs effectively on stage and the hammer being, well, volume. Just as they were able to beef up the older material and avoid having their lunch money stolen with a heavier approach last time, they were able to recreate the sense of scale of the new material, if not the delicacy, by turning up. This is not to say they bludgeoned the songs, far from it. Instead they showed just how effective a guitar, piano, bass, fiddle and drums could be when properly and dynamically arranged. And just as the depth of emotion underpinning the songs helped First Days Of Spring transcend some of Charlie Fink’s barer, more awkward lyricism, it also made the noisier interludes of the show feel more cathartic than indulgent. So while the show had a quotient of angst, it was still primarily a fun affair – there was no “Five Years Time” but it’s saying something that even without playing their biggest song, Noah & The Whale didn’t leave anyone wanting.

Mix talks to Fink about the recording of the record, there’s a video acoustic session with the band at They Shoot Music and Spinner reports back from a screening of the film portion of The First Days of Spring in New York.

Photos: Noah & The Whale @ Criminal Records – October 31, 2009
Photos: Noah & The Whale, Robert Francis @ The Horseshoe – October 31, 2009
MP3: Noah & The Whale – “The First Days Of Spring”
MP3: Noah & The Whale – “Blue Skies” (Twelves remix)
MP3: Noah & The Whale – “Blue Skies” (Yacht remix)
MP3: Noah & The Whale – “2 Bodies 1 Heart”
Video: Noah & The Whale – “Love Of An Orchestra”
Video: Noah & The Whale – “Blue Skies”
Video: Noah & The Whale – “Five Years Time”
Video: Noah & The Whale – “2 Bodies 1 Heart”
Video: Noah & The Whale – “Shape Of My Heart”
Video: Robert Francis – “Nightfall”
MySpace: Noah & The Whale
MySpace: Robert Francis

Laundromatinee welcomes The Twilight Sad to their studios for an acoustic session. Acoustic Twilight Sad. Yes.

Friendly Fires tell BBC they’re working on album number two and are targeting a May release date. Expect to hear some of the new material when they play the Phoenix on December 2.

JAM, The Toronto Star and The Boston Herald interview The Swell Season, who’ve just released a new video and are at Massey Hall tonight.

Video: The Swell Season – “Low Rising”

Paste talks to Sufjan Stevens, whom they credit with creating the best album of the decade. Oh I’m sorry, did I ruin the list for you? NPR also has a short feature.

Pitchfork has details on the next Spoon record, entitled Transference and out January 26. Britt Daniel talked to Spinner about what to expect from the new album.

The Antlers are featured in a downloadable Daytrotter session.

Loft Life gets a tour of the fabled Wilco loft.

A gentle reminder that Austin’s Ume, interviewed recently by The Brock Press, are in town tonight for a free show at the Horseshoe. They’re on at 10:50PM – be there and have your face rocked off.

Austin City Limits (the television show) is streaming videos of performances from their shows online – check out this one featuring M Ward and Okkervil River or this one with Andrew Bird and St. Vincent to get started. And yes indeed, those archives do go back.

A note to Canadians that the Beautiful Noise concerts that were recorded at the Berkeley Church in Toronto last Spring are now airing on SunTV on Saturday nights. Almost makes me wish I had cable so I could watch them.

last.fmUsually when you assemble a “supergroup”, you assemble top-notch artists for each conventional band position – kick-ass drummer from group A, shredmaster guitarist from group B, supreme bass-slapper from group C and a lead singer (assuming they’re not already one of A, B or C) whose usual bandmates are probably more than happy to get a break from and voila – a can’t-miss recipe that usually misses as often as it hits, if not more. Rarely, however, do you find multiple frontmen working together, with even the notion of managing egos and personalities enough to scare any right-thinking people away. The one notable exception being The Traveling Wilburys and the names involved there were so huge that it’s hard to imagine any of them really feeling insecure. Okay, maybe Jeff Lynne got tired of always being the last one to be named, but whatever.

While the principals of Monsters Of Folk – My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, M Ward and She & Him’s Matt Ward, Bright Eyes and The Mystic Valley Band’s Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes sideman and producer extraordinaire Mike Mogis – aren’t household names on the scale of the Wilburys, they are essentially superstars in the circles they run in. And while the first three’s getting together to tour as solo artists in 2004 made perfect sense, heading into the studio to craft a record of original material was less of a sure thing. After all – getting onstage to harmonize or tackle a cover is one thing, creating all new material together is quite another.

So the fact that the Monsters Of Folk self-titled debut, five years or so in the making, is pretty good on a universal scale can probably be interpreted as being terrific once the supergroup curve is applied. It achieves this largely by not trying to be much more than exactly what it advertises – James, Ward and Oberst contributing songs while Mogis ensures that while each composer’s tunes sound very much like they could have appeared on one of their own records, they still hang together seamlessly. James continues with the soulful excursions that marked the last couple of MMJ records, Ward’s pieces are rollicking AM radio revivals and Oberst still plays the moody, angsty card though he thankfully keeps his love-or-hate vibrato largely in check and doesn’t bring down the prevailing sense of fun that runs through the record as everyone romps in their common ground of classic rock, country, and yes – folk. No one would accuse them of saving A-grade material from their day jobs for this project, but nothing’s a throwaway, either. It’s a solid collection of songs from some top talent – nothing more, nothing less.

And it gives them an excuse to tour, as they currently are, and they’ll be in Toronto on Monday night, November 2, for a show at Massey Hall. Tickets are $36.50 to $49.50 with $1 from each going to Food Share, but courtesy of Against The Grain, I’ve got two pairs of tickets to the show to give away. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to be a Monster Of Folk for Hallowe’en” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight, October 31. Update: Special four-packs of tickets for the show are now available – buy four and they’re $25.50 each (plus $1 charity fee).

The Vancouver Sun, The Chicago Tribune and Victoria Advocate have interviews with the Monsters Of Folk.

MP3: Monsters Of Folk – “Say Please”
Video: Monsters Of Folk – “The Right Place”
MySpace: Monsters Of Folk

Express Night Out and The Vermont Cynic chat with Annie Clark of St. Vincent.

Austinist talks to Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater about their forthcoming album The Golden Archipelago, tentatively set for a February 9 release.

Rolling Stone declares The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart to be a “breaking band”. Way to stay ahead of the curve, Rolling Stone.

The Aquarian interviews Charlie Fink, frontman for Noah & The Whale. A reminder that their double-header performance in Toronto this Saturday comes with a 12-hour gap – the in-store at Criminal Records starts at noon while their headlining set at the Horseshoe begins at midnight.

The xx’s remix/cover of Florence & The Machine’s cover of Candi Staton has been given an official video, which is itself a remix of sorts of the official video of Florence’s version. Good luck sorting out the royalties on that. Florence is at the Mod Club on November 2, The XX are at the Phoenix on December 2 – if they don’t burn out first.

Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love” (The xx remix)
Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love”

Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen talks to Exclaim.

Radio Free Canuckistan has a fascinating conversation with to Stuart Berman about his Broken Social biography
This Book Is Broken, and the past ten years in Canadian independent music in general. Berman is being interviewed about the book in front of a live audience this Friday night at Harbourfront Centre as part of the International Festival of Authors – congratulations go to Janet for winning the passes to the event.

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 YangThere’s no shortage of terrific records that have been released with the Fat Cat marque, but many of those have been Europe-only territory deals, those same artists having different representation in North America and thus keeping the label’s profile over here largely on the down low. That’s begun changing in recent years, however, as they’ve assembled an impressive roster of talent on worldwide deals and thus been able to assemble tours like the one that rolled through the El Mocambo on Saturday night, featuring The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks and Brakes.

Brakes (or BrakesBrakesBrakes as they’re forced to call themselves in the US) technically had seniority over their tourmates (their latest album Touchdown is their third), presumably profile (they’ve toured North America numerous times already), and a notable pedigree (they’re fronted Eamon Hamilton, formerly of British Sea Power, and feature the White brothers of The Electric Soft Parade on guitar and drums) but despite all this, they were tapped to open things up. This may not be so much a slight on the band, however, as a sensible decision to keep the angst-vs-time graph of the evening on a steady incline because unlike the other two bands on the bill, Brakes don’t come with a lot of anguish – just good, goofy rock’n’roll. That I can say this is notable because their 2005 debut Give Blood didn’t impress me at all, feeling like a jokey country-rock pastiche as the principals took a break from their main gigs. But since then, the break has largely become the main gig and their subsequent records have done a good job of bringing proper songcraft to the table without giving up their sense of reckless whimsy. Their set was a fine example of this, Tom White obviously having a grand time abusing his Telecaster as Hamilton brayed intently while being equally hard on his acoustic. I had thought Hamilton mad when he gave up his gig as keyboardist/drum-banger/rabble-rouser for British Sea Power but it’s pretty clear now he knew what he was doing.

We Were Promised Jetpacks (WWPJ to their Twitter friends) came into 2009 on a modest amount of hype based less on who they were than who they followed. Fat Cat had hit home runs the past two years in breaking Scottish bands worldwide – The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit – so there was a lot of expectation put on the Edinburgh quartet simply by virtue of their accents. Their debut These Four Walls doesn’t go in for the grand sonic tumult of the former or the bruised folk romanticism of the latter, instead favouring a drier, no frills and borderline-frantic approach that’s largely reliant on frontman Adam Thompson’s raw bellow for impact. It’s been well-received but has hardly set the world ablaze, so the band was as surprised as anyone about how enthusiastically they were welcomed at this show. A modest but immensely vocal contingent had evidently decided Walls was their favourite record of the year and were out to cheer and sing along loudly and generally egg the band on to putting on a pretty impressive performance, far better than the one I’d seen them give at SxSW in March. I don’t necessarily know that they have the inspiration to equal, never mind best, their labelmates and countrymen to whom they’re constantly compared but they’ve definitely got more upside than they’ve yet shown.

For The Twilight Sad, coming back to the El Mocambo was a return to the scene of the crime – that crime being the April 2007 assault and battery on unsuspecting eardrums in their Toronto debut. That show stuck in the mind for the intensity of the sonic assault and the strength of the songs off Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters in a live setting, but not so much for the band’s showmanship. Their set opening for Mogwai back in May demonstrated a somewhat more animated and engaging stage presence, but nothing compared to what they brought on Saturday night. Mind you, these are relative statements – they haven’t taken scissor-kick lessons or invested in onstage pyrotechnics, but in the same way that my review of their new record Forget The Night Ahead mentioned their music being more nimble than on the debut, so too was their live show much more animated. Singer James Graham, anyways.

He seems to have properly embraced the role of frontman, and rather than staying anchored on stage and communing with his microphone as he once did, he now has a repertoire of moves including wandering the stage, mic in hand, and dropping to his knees to sing. It’s not a lot, no, but the extra bit of theatricality it imparted gave the show a drastically different tone than the last time they were on the same stage. Similarly, Graham engaged the crowd in banter and offered up a smile or two, largely dispelling the brooding and melancholic mystique that seemed to envelop them before. Though their songs are still built to deliver that gut punch of despair, the band seems uninterested in cultivating the image of themselves as downcast mopers, press photo shoots in cemeteries notwithstanding.

Matters of stage presentation aside, The Twilight Sad show was pretty much everything I’d been hoping for. The set was split evenly between their two excellent records, the slightly more dynamic and restrained Night material making the unfettered onslaught of the Autumns selections that much more intense in comparison and they remain devastatingly loud – woe to anyone within line of fire of Andy MacFarlane’s Marshall stack without earplugs. Epic and exceptional.

Spinner chats with Brakes’ Eamon Hamilton.

Photos: The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Brakes @ The El Mocambo – October 10, 2009
MP3: The Twilight Sad – “Reflection Of The Television”
MP3: The Twilight Sad – “Cold Days From The Birdhouse”
MP3: The Twilight Sad – “That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy”
MP3: We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Quiet Little Voices”
MP3: We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Ships With Holes Will Sink”
MP3: Brakes – “Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)”
MP3: Brakes – “Hold Me In The River”
MP3: Brakes – “Heard About Your Band”
Video: The Twilight Sad – “I Became A Prostitute”
Video: The Twilight Sad – “And She Would Darken The Memory”
Video: We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Roll Up Your Sleeves”
Video: We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Quiet Little Voices”
Video: Brakes – “Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)”
Video: Brakes – “Hey Hey”
Video: Brakes – “Beatific Visions”
Video: Brakes – “Cease & Desist”
Video: Brakes – “Hold Me In The River”
Video: Brakes – “All Night Disco Party”
MySpace: The Twilight Sad
MySpace: Brakes

The Yorkshire Evening Post and Wales Online talk to Fanfarlo, who kept a tour diary for Drowned In Sound on their recent UK tour. They’re currently stringing together more US dates for November but the dates and routing I’ve heard so far don’t offer much hope for a Toronto date.

Artrocker chats with Sky Larkin, who will be at the Cameron House on October 28. They made a tour documentary their last time through North American back in the Spring and will be making it available on their website starting tomorrow. I’ll link it up here when it’s live, but in the meantime there’s some outtakes up at Vimeo. Entertainingly, the Twitter hookup that they and Narduwar mention? That was me.

Paste declares Noah & The Whale their band of the week. Their new record First Days Of Spring is out tomorrow and they play Toronto on October 31 – an in-store at Criminal Records and a full show at the Horseshoe.

Little Boots clears up some rumours about herself and her music to Spinner. The Tenori-On? All for show. Scandalous! andPop also got an interview with Victoria Hesketh during her recent visit to Toronto.

The Clientele make a mix tape for Magnet. Not a real one, a figurative one.

Camera Obscura have released a new video from My Maudlin Career. They’re at the Phoenix on November 26.

Video: Camera Obscura – “The Sweetest Thing”

Tom Smith of Editors discusses their new album In this Light & On This Evening with Spinner, The Daily Telegraph, This Is Nottingham and The Quietus. The album is out this week.

Fazer interviewed James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers at prior to their show at the Phoenix last week. Bradfield also gave Pitchfork a list of favourite albums from throughout his life. Finally, RCRDLBL is offering a free download of Patrick Wolf’s contribution to the remix version of Journal For Plague Lovers, which I thought was going to be available on CD but I can only find on iTunes.

Billboard reports that deluxe versions of His’N’Hers, Different Class and This Is Hardcore which I’ve gone on about are going to be released in the US on November 17. This is interesting because I assumed they were already available in the US, since they were out in Canada since 2006. But hey, good news for those Stateside who don’t have these yet because the bonus discs on Different Class and Hardcore are wholly worth the price of admission. And I’m intending to pick up the His’N’Hers one soon enough.

Liam Gallagher confirms to The Times that Oasis are, indeed, done.