Frank YangWhen it first got out that guitar-god-who-walks-amongst-us Johnny Marr had joined English sibling-trio The Cribs, the initial reaction was skepticism. After all, if run through the NME de-hyperbolizer, the truth was probably more like he crossed paths with a Jarman or three on the street and said “hello” – and anyways, wasn’t Marr already occupied as a full-fledged member of Modest Mouse? Well, yes, but it seems that Marr is almost as good at time management as he is at guitar because as the band’s fourth record Ignore The Ignorant showed, his role in the band is much more than stunt casting.

I can’t say I’d paid much attention to The Cribs prior to their latest, ranking them as a decent if not especially distinctive post-Libertines Brit-rock outfit – high on energy and attitude if not personality – so I’m not necessarily in a position to articulate what difference Marr makes to the band. That said, you can hear his distinctive fretwork all over the record in a manner that’s omnipresent yet unobtrusive, adding a melodicism and shimmer to the Cribs’ songs without blunting their more visceral qualities. This, combined with simply better songwriting and production, have made The Cribs an outfit worthy of note beyond simply the simply Anglo-inclined.

That said, I don’t that I’d have been as keen to hit up their show Friday night at The Phoenix had Johnny Marr not also been confirmed as participating in the North American tour. Technically, I’d seen him a couple Summers ago with Modest Mouse opening up for R.E.M., but that view was from the lawns of the Molson Amphitheatre and the soundtrack for the experience wasn’t especially agreeable (not a Modest Mouse fan here, Marr or no). The opportunity to watch Marr do his thing from 10 feet away would not be missed. But just as with the album, it turned out to be a case of “come for the Smith, stay for The Cribs”.

I may have been relatively new to the band but the heart of the 700-plus in attendance were clearly die-hards, and as soon as the quartet took the stage, a mosh pit manifested and I was thankful I’d gotten there just late enough to be up close, but off to the side. And The Cribs would give them plenty to slam dance about, tearing through a 70-minute or so, encore-less set of loud, raucous, anthemic rock. Be it familiarity or just the fact that their better tunes, I found the Ignorant material to be the standouts of the set, allowing Marr – looking almost unsettlingly ageless at 46 alongside his twenty-something bandmates – to really show his stuff. But he also looked quite at home on the older, more bludgeony material, bashing out power chords and providing backing vox while the Jarmans bounded around the stage and incited acts of stage diving and crowd surfing from their fans. Though the set wrapped relatively early for a Friday evening – not even midnight – there would be no complaining about any lack of rock action on the night.

It’s Not The Band I Hate It’s Their Fans was also in attendance with a review. Dose.ca and Metro have interviews with Ross Jarman while The Boston Herald draws the Gary Jarman straw. aux.tv talks to them both.

Photos: The Cribs @ The Phoenix – January 15, 2010
MP3: The Cribs – “We Were Aborted”
Video: The Cribs – “We Share The Same Skies”
Video: The Cribs – “Cheat On Me”
Video: The Cribs – “I’m A Realist”
Video: The Cribs – “Don’t You Wanna Be Relevant”
Video: The Cribs – “Our Bovine Public”
Video: The Cribs – “Men’s Needs”
Video: The Cribs – “You’re Gonna Lose Us”
Video: The Cribs – “Martell”
Video: The Cribs – “Mirror Kissers”
Video: The Cribs – “Hey Scenesters”
Video: The Cribs – “What About Me”
Video: The Cribs – “You Were Always The One”
MySpace: The Cribs

Elbow drummer Richard Jupp talks to Clash about his contributions to the Sudan365 charitable project and also tells NME that, contrary to Guy Garvey’s comments that their new album wouldn’t be ready until 2011, he hopes they’ll release the record this year.

Though there’s been no official word on a follow-up to Do You Like Rock Music?, Spinner reports that British Sea Power are planning a release party for the new record at Britain’s highest bar for “May-ish”. Guitarist Martin Noble provided an update on the new record via their blog a couple weeks ago.

Beyond Race has a feature piece and Sasha Frere-Jones an essay-length The New Yorker review on The xx, in town twice in April – on the 4th at the Phoenix and the 20th at the Kool Haus.

Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard talks to Billboard about the Susan Boyle influence on One Life Stand, due out February 9. They’re at the Kool Haus on April 20.

Horrors frontman Faris Badwan compiles a list of best/worst/most/least for Clash.

NYC Taper is sharing a pretty terrific recording of one of The Joy Formidable’s show in New York City last weekend. Simultaneously makes me feel like I was there while feeling worse for not having actually been there.

Bandstand Busking is sharing a video session with Peggy Sue, whose debut
Fossils And Other Phantoms is due out in April.

PopMatters interviews The Twilight Sad.

Note that Laura Marling’s February 9 show at the Drake Underground has been moved to Lee’s Palace. Consequently, it is probably not sold out anymore. At least not right now.

Leading up to the February 16 release of Life Is Sweet! Pleased To Meet You, Lightspeed Champion is giving away a free MP3 a week via Domino Records. You have to make with the clicky on the widget and eventually you’ll find a download link. I got to it by accident, don’t ask me what I did. And yes, it’s a bit maddening.

Paste talks to La Roux’s Elly Jackson.

Clash gets an update on the new record from The Futureheads, who are targeting a late February/early March release.

Muse have released a video for the title track of their latest, The Resistance. They are at the Air Canada Centre on March 8.

Video: Muse – “The Resistance”

Tourdates.co.uk talks to Tim Crompton of The High Wire about their new record The Sleep Tape, set to come out in March.

NME reports that Fat Richard-era Suede are set to reunite for a one-off charity gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Note that I mock Oakes not so much for his weight, but for his not being Bernard Butler. And also being fat.

Members of Blur talk to BBC 6Music about the experience of making the new documentary on the band, No Distance Left To Run. The one-day Canadian screenings are set for this Thursday but for those unable to attend, like me, Pitchfork reports that the film will be released on DVD come February 15 with a second DVD of the band’s Hyde Park reunion show last year. Which is great if you have a region-free, PAL DVD player. Or live in the UK, which some of you might.

Marshall AngusChristmas may be a distant memory now – it was a whole WEEK ago – but the giving continues thanks to Can-indie supergroup Novels. The outfit, comprised of Tokyo Police Club keyboardist Graham Wright, Born Ruffians guitarist/singer Luke Lalonde, Will Currie of The Country French, Ex-Po’s Dean Marino and Jay Sad, have completed their self-titled debut – though at five songs and not even 12 minutes in length, perhaps novella (or short story, or paragraph) would be a better name – and are looking to get the word out by not only giving it away as a free download off their website, but encouraging people to burn CDs, hand them out, leave them in conspicuous places…

And if you’re the sort who takes anonymous discs you find in a phone booth or jammed under your front door and were to pop it into your CD player, you’d hear a short and snappy collection of tunes, made familiar and distinctive by Lalonde’s yodel, Currie’s fancy piano work and everyone involved’s cumulative pop savvy. It doesn’t manage to be more than the sum of its parts but it’s friendly and fun – that all involved are having a blast is clear – and should tide fans over as they await the new, as-yet untitled TPC record and Born Ruffians’ Say It, both due out in the early part of next year.

The Toronto Star talks to Wright about the one-day recording session which yielded Novels, videos of which you can watch here.

MP3: Novels – “Mr. Foster’s Teenage Daughter”
MP3: Novels – “This Wouldn’t Be The Last Time”
ZIP: Novels / Novels

Woodpigeon have posted up a live and demo versions of Bjork’s “Aurora”. Their new album Die Stadt Muzikanten is out January 12 and they play the Drake Underground on February 11. New Canadian Modern has an interview with Woodpigeon violinist Foon Yap.

MP3: Woodpigeon – “Aurora” (live)
MP3: Woodpigeon – “Aurora” (demo)

JAM interviews Malajube bassist Mathieu Cournoyer.

Clash puts Los Campesinos! guitarist Tom Campesinos! and Broken Social Scene leader Kevin Drew on the phone with one another. The new Los Campesinos! record Romance Is Boring is out February 1.

The Scotsman talks to Adam Thompson, frontman of We Were Promised Jetpacks.

The Guest Apartment has a video session and interview with Peggy Sue, whose debut album Fossils And Other Phantoms is set for an April 2010 release.

The AV Club goes digging through Clientele frontman Alisdair Maclean’s music collection. The Clientele have a date at the Horseshoe on March 19.

The Line Of Best Fit polled a variety of Canadian artists and at least one blogger (ahem) for their thoughts on the year that was and the one that might be in Canadian music.

Anorak LondonLondon trio The High Wire first got onto my radar over a year ago, as we were both headed to New York City for CMJ and while our paths would not cross – I believe their showcases were done before I even arrived – the samples I heard made a truly indelible impression. More than anything, they reminded me of my beloved Mojave 3 in the way they stitched together rootsy song structures with a threads of shimmering dream-pop, and also in the way that Tim Crompton and Canadian ex-pat Alexia Hagen’s voices intertwined overtop – the interplay was Halstead-Goswell-like, and you should know that’s not a compliment I hand out lightly. Add in touchstones like Mercury Rev and Spiritualized and there was really no way I wasn’t going to be entranced by this band.

Since my tastes always reflect the zeitgeist as a whole, I fully expected them to be one of the more talked-about bands of 2009. CMJ reports were positive and they were then tapped to open up in London for Coldplay at the end of 2008 so it certainly seemed that their ducks were getting in a row. In anticipation, I ordered up a copy of their debut album Ahead Of The Rain, released independently early this year, and waited for the buzz to build. And waited. Long story short (I could have added in a few dozen more “and waited”s), it seemed like the record and the band just disappeared. It certainly wasn’t for lack of quality, as Ahead Of The Rain delivered on much of the promise I had initially heard last year, rich in sun-kissed melodies and hazy yet substantial atmosphere. But with an online presence that was vague at best – I was a bit amazed I had managed to order a copy of the CD – I feared that they had simply gone away as nascent bands are wont to do. I revisited the album periodically throughout the year but The High Wire largely became out of sight, out of mind.

And then, around mid-November, I started to hear it. A faint, but definite buzz. An MP3 from a new album – Ahead Of The Rain‘s time had passed, apparently – followed by glowing profiles in The Guardian and Spinner… it seems like The High Wire’s time has come, if a year or so later than I’d expected. Their new record The Sleep Tape is set for a March 2010 release and based on the lead single “Odds And Evens” and other samples off their MySpace, they’ve fattened up their sound some but lost none of the sweetness that initially beguiled. Am I excited about this record? Yes, I would say that I am.

There’s recent interviews with the band at Subba-Cultcha and Amelia’s Magazine, wherein they reveal to be far less mysterious than I’d originally thought but just as lovely.

MP3: The High Wire – “Leave Me In Love”
MySpace: The High Wire

The Line Of Best Fit reports that UK folk trio Peggy Sue have signed to Wichita Recordings and will release their debut album Fossils And Other Phantoms in April 2010. A new song is available to anyone who signs up to their mailing list. An old song is available to anyone who clicks the link below.

MP3: Peggy Sue – “Lover Gone”

NPR is streaming a World Cafe session with Fanfarlo. So you know how I’d said that the only silver lining to Fanfarlo cancelling their show at the El Mocambo last night on account of a stolen passport was that I’d get to go see Blue Roses at the Drake instead? Well guess who canceled on account of a “massive passport problem”? Yeaaaaah. Maybe they can make up their dates together.

The Daily Growl is streaming “Goodbye England”, the new single from Laura Marling and offering downloads of live versions it and another new song from her next album. She’s at the Drake Underground on February 9.

The Times profiles Mumford & Sons, who will release Sigh No More on March 15 and play the El Mocambo a month earlier on February 15.

Se7en Magazine has an interview with Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit, whose The Winter Of Mixed Drinks will be out on March 16. Only five days before the start of the Spring of Jell-O shooters.

This Is London talks to Lily Allen.

Hot Chip’s Al Doyle talks to Spinner about the making of their next album One Life Stand, out February 9. They’re at the Kool Haus on April 20 with The xx, whose recent instore in Boston was recorded by Bradley’s Almanac and is now available to download.

Rolling Stone gets to know The Big Pink, who will be at the Mod Club on March 24.

Editors-in-chief Tom Smith brags to Spinner about being big in Belgium.

Portishead have released a new single is “Chase The Tear”, all proceeds from which will go to support Amnesty International.

Video: Portishead – “Chase The Tear”

The AV Club interviews Bernard Sumner of Bad Lieutenant.

Billboard reports that Elvis Costello will release another vintage live record to follow up this year’s Live At The El Mocambo. Live at Hollywood High, a recording from Los Angeles circa June 1978, will be out January 12.

Spinner has an Interface session and Filter a feature on The Swell Season.

Frank YangThere are many things to like about Leeds trio Sky Larkin, not least among them their wonderfully sweet and spiky debut album The Golden Spike, but what I think I like most is how much of a good time they’re clearly having. On record, on stage, in their videos, everything Sky Larkin is permeated with a genuine, unaffected sense of fun – no brooding angst or overamped giddiness, just the natural reaction to three friends in their early 20s getting to travel around the world playing rock music without the massive weight of expectation that some of their peers are carrying (ahemxxahem). How could they not be having fun?

The band were nearing the end of a North American tour when they rolled into the Cameron House in Toronto on Wednesday night, accompanied by fellow Brits Peggy Sue, who had the co-ed trio thing in common with their tourmates but not a lot else. Fronted by the wonderfully pseudonymed (presumably) Katy Klaw and Rosa Rex with Olly Olly Olly on drums, the outfit formerly known as Peggy Sue & The Pirates (perhaps the Pirates were taken by Pete) deal in a strain of folk that’s probably too off-kilter in instrumentation and arrangement for traditionalists yet not nearly weird enough for the 21st century hippie scene. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that both Klaw and Rex have the sorts of voices that you’d normally find in soul music, rich and emotive with the right amount of rasp – they’re not equipped to create conventional folk music, even if they were inclined to do so. Their Lover Gone EP intrigued but was really too brief to get a proper handle on what they were about and while their set went a ways towards filling in the blanks, it also expanded the canvas of what they were doing enough that their net inscrutability remains unchanged. I guess I’ll just have to hear more to figure them out. I’m okay with that.

Sky Larkin don’t require nearly as much contemplation to understand – the nature of their scrappy guitar pop will be familiar to anyone who’s ever heard Sleeper or Sleater-Kinney and satisfies on an immediate and visceral level. I’d gotten to take in their live show at SxSW so I knew that the energy of the record more than translated in the live setting with the extra bonus of the fact that the band were genuinely hilarious on stage in their between-song banter. The between-banter stuff was pretty good too, with the trio turning in an energetic if a bit short set of highlights from The Golden Spike as well as their new (and free) “SMARTS” single. As befit a band that tours as much as they, they were superbly tight with frontwoman Katie Harkin effortlessly tossing off sophisticated guitar riffs and drummer Nestor Matthews literally beating his drum kit to death. A destroyed cymbal got some licks in of its own, though, inflicting a nasty bloody gash on Matthews’ hand which he insisted on playing through, finishing off the set’s last two songs with equal – if not extra – vigor. That is dedication. Sky Larkin will bleed for you.

Photos: Sky Larkin, Peggy Sue @ The Cameron House – October 28, 2009
MP3: Sky Larkin – “Fossil, I”
MP3: Sky Larkin – “Molten”
MP3: Peggy Sue – “Lover Gone”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Antibodies”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Beeline”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Fossil, I”
Video: Sky Larkin – “Molten”
Video: Sky Larkin – “One Of Two”
Video: Peggy Sue – “Lover Gone”
MySpace: Sky Larkin
MySpace: Peggy Sue

Clash has a short interview The xx, whose exhaustion-induced show cancellations haven’t affected this Fall’s North American dates opening up for Friendly Fires… yet.

Frightened Rabbit have given their third album a name – The Winter Of Mixed Drinks – and a target release date of March 2010.

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

ChartAttack talks to Dog Day, who will be at the Horseshoe on November 5.

Great Lake Swimmers have released a new video from Lost Channels. They play a War Child benefit at the Dakota Tavern on November 5 and a show at Trinity-St. Paul’s on February 6 of next year.

Video: Great Lake Swimmers – “Palmistry”

Vue has a cover feature on Dan Mangan.

FFWD reports on exactly what goes on at the mysterious Banff Centre, where both Woodpigeon and Basia Bulat are currently sequestered away being turned into unstoppable cybernetic killing machines honing their musical craft with an impressive team of mentors. CBC Radio 3 has also been checking in from the the Banff Centre and Woodpigeon has posted another song.

MP3: Woodpigeon – “For Norman Luxton”

Molina & Johnson (that’s Jason and Will) have released a second MP3 from Molina & Johnson, out November 3.

MP3: Molina & Johnson – “Almost Let You In”

Gigwise chats with Glenn Kotche of Wilco.

The Loyola Phoenix has an interview with Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes.

eye, The National Post, NPR, The Montreal Gazette, CNN and Spinner have conversations with The Swell Season, who have a date at Massey Hall on November 3.

The Raveonettes talk to The Georgia Straight.

Johnny Marr weights in on the subject of reunions with Spinner.

Matt MartinAm I excited about this coming Wednesday night and the opportunity to see Sky Larkin at the Cameron House? Yes, yes I am. But they’re not the only reason to haul one’s butt down to the back room of the Cameron that evening – the Leeds trio are touring with fellow Brits Peggy Sue (nee Peggy Sue & The Pirates), whose decidedly off-kilter folk is some distance away, stylistically, from Sky Larkin’s barbed sugar guitar pop but their four-song, 10-minute Lover Gone EP is an intriguing tease. I look forward to hearing more of what they have to offer – presumably their set will go longer than 10 minutes.

Admission is $5 at the door but courtesy of Outside Music, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to say hello to Peggy Sue” in the subject line and your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight, October 26. Yes, that’s tomorrow.

MP3: Peggy Sue – “Lover Gone”
Video: Peggy Sue – “Lover Gone”
MySpace: Peggy Sue