Jon BergmanThe story surrounding The Submarines’ debut album Declare A New State was the stuff of romantic-comedy writer fantasy – boy musician meets girl musician, boy joins girl’s band, girl joins boy’s band. Boy and girl lose each other. Boy and girl write songs about each other. Boy and girl record songs together. Boy and girl get back together. Brings a tear to the eye, does it not?

The fact that State was also a sublime bit of pop that managed to capture and convey all the emotions surrounding its genesis just made it all that sweeter. But it also raised the question of how John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard (the aforementioned boy and girl, respectively) would follow it up? You certainly couldn’t ask them to go back to the creative wellspring that fueled the first record. There’s a reason rom-coms rarely have sequels. As it happens, The Submarines didn’t have too much trouble with the question, returning last year with Honeysuckle Weeks.

Though the backstory no doubt informed the specialness of State, one musn’t forget that both Dragonetti and Hazard were (and are) also seasoned songsmiths and were cranking out records before coming together as The Submarines and though the forlorn tenor of the debut is appropriately dialed down on Weeks, the pop smarts are certainly not. Beautifully overcast heartbreak has given way to a sprightlier approach, a broader, more colourful sonic palette, though it’d be going to far to say that things have gotten sunny. While The Submarines’ songs may have the spring in their step of those who’ve known love, they also tread with the caution of those who’ve lost it.

The Submarines are on tour alongside The Morning Benders and play the Drake Underground this coming Sunday, February 15 and even though it’s technically the day after Valentine’s Day, expect it to still be a heart-melting affair. And courtesy of Against The Grain, I’ve got a pair of passes to the sold-out show to give away. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want The Submarines to be my Valentine” in the subject line with your full name in the body. Contest closes at midnight, February 12.

The OC Register and The Washington Post have features on the band.

MP3: The Submarines – “You, Me And The Bourgeoisie”
Video: The Submarines – “You, Me And The Bourgeoisie”
MySpace: The Submarines

There’s a new video from Fleet Foxes taken from their Sun Giant EP.

Video: Fleet Foxes – “Mykonos”

Ra Ra Riot have also released a new clip from The Rhumb Line. The Smith College Sophian has an interview with guitarist Milo Bonacci and bassist Matt Santos.

Video: Ra Ra Riot – “Can You Tell?”

The new Sloan video features the band frolicking in the snow with pretty girls. But not in the way you might think. They appear to be playing two nights at the Mod Club on March 11 and 12 as part of CMW.

Video: Sloan – “Witch’s Wand”

Blurt profiles Mercury Rev.

NPR has an interview with Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons. They’re at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on February 17.

Scotland On Sunday talks to Asobi Seksu’s Yuki Cikudate about their forthcoming album Hush, due out next Tuesday. They play the El Mocambo on March 3.

Le Blogotheque discusses inspiration with Zach Condon of Beirut. Billboard also have an interview. Their March Of the Zapotec/Holland double-EP set is out on February 17.

Billboard reports that the forthcoming Wilco live DVD Ashes Of American Flags will get its release on April 18 to coincide with this year’s edition of Record Store Day, but only be available at independent retailers. Corporate outlets won’t get it until two weeks later.

Pitchfork interviews Stephen Malkmus.

MPR welcomes Mark Olson & Gary Louris to their studios for a session. The Boston Globe also has an interview.

Kind of an awful concept for a site, but Rock’N’Roll Dating redeems itself with a good interview with Mark Eitzel of American Music Club, where they talk about everything including his forthcoming solo EP and musical (!) but not dating, rock’n’roll or otherwise.

eMusic, however, has polled a great number of musicians about their first crushes. Extensive, sweet and kind of hilarious.

Photo via Murmur

Those fancy double-disc deluxe edition reissue sets have become fairly commonplace recently as the labels try to take advantage of the type of people willing to buy the same album over and over again while they’re still alive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not – at least sometimes – getting it right. Case in point, the announcement that R.E.M.’s debut album Murmur will be getting said treatment this Fall.

Pitchfork has your specifics, but basically you’re looking at the standard remastered album on disc one – maybe the same remaster job as the last couple times Murmur was re-released? – and for the second disc, a complete live show recorded here in Toronto circa 1983. The gig was held at a no-longer existent dive called Larry’s Hideaway which if memory serves (and by memory I mean Google – I was 8 at the time and wouldn’t have had the experience with Toronto’s live music dives that I do now) was located just a few blocks from here at Carlton and Jarvis. Anyone know if the place still exists in some form and if so, what it is now? I’m curious.

The Murmur deluxe edition is out November 25. Update: Blurt has some thoughts on what they view as a flawed reissue (thanks to Eugene for the link).

Video: R.E.M. – “Radio Free Europe”

Though guitarist Damian Cox has recovered from his stroke well enough to blog, he’s not sure if or when he’ll be able to play guitar again so as a result, The Long Blondes have called it a day. Details at NME. Singles, the compilation of their early singles, is out in the UK today.

MP3: The Long Blondes – “Once And Never Again”
MP3: The Long Blondes – “Here Comes The Serious Bit”
MP3: The Long Blondes – “Guilt”

Relix has specifics on M Ward’s new record Hold Time, due out February 17.

Pitchfork has an interview with a surprisingly lucid and non-crazy pills Kevin Barnes. Of Montreal’s new one Skeletal Lamping is out tomorrow and they’re at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 28.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune talks to Lucinda Williams.

Pop Reckoning and Paste interview Rachael Yamagata.

Sloan’s Chris Murphy talks to The Halifax Chronicle-Herald. They’re at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday night.

So while I usually try and actually get a substantive post up for Mondays, this week will instead kick off only the slim bits above and a weak-ass apology. Rather than actually do any listening or writing this weekend, I was instead coding, trying to get a fairly significant upgrade to this here site working and while it’s tantalizingly close, it’s not there yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after. Hopefully before I leave for New York, at the very least.

Photo by Frank Yang

Dear every other touring band in the world: we appreciate your interest, but your services are no longer required. We have Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

My ticket to their show at the Kool Haus had been sitting on my corkboard for something like six months, and with every listen to Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, to say nothing of my ongoing explorations of his back catalog, I couldn’t wait for Wednesday night to come fast enough. Cave’s live show has long been regarded as legendary and as a recent convert, I was most anxious to see the spectacle for myself.

The openers were Black Mountain, who were making the most of their visit to the 416 with two shows – three if you include their Polaris gala performance – in five days. As they took the stage, one helpful audience member called out, “please don’t suck!” – no worries there. Despite myriad opportunities, I’d never seen the Vancouver quintet live before and was quite handily impressed. Despite their sludgy, stoner-rock reputation they weren’t unnecessarily loud and displayed considerable musical nimbleness in delivering tracks from In The Future, highlighted by Stephen McBean’s guitar heroics and Amber Webber’s unearthly vocals. And it’s quite an endorsement that the full house of Cave devotees seemed to quite enjoy their set, sending them off with an enthusiastic “you guys were pretty good!”. Which they certainly were.

But on this night, the bar for performance would be set considerably higher than “pretty good”. With the Bad Seeds taking up every square foot of the expanded Kool Haus stage – and if I can make a comic geek joke, Warren Ellis looks an awful lot like Alan Moore – Cave bounded on stage and turned “Night Of The Lotus Eaters” from a relatively low-key, mood piece on album into a searing and sleazy opening salvo that would set the tone for the show. Cave, natty in a purple pinstripe suit, prowled and pounced around the stage looking like the mad preacher offspring of Mephisto and Elvis here to welcome the apocalypse and convince the audience that they should as well. By rights, the persona that Cave inhabits in song and on stage should come off as theatre but he inhabits it so bloody well that there is no questioning it.

Not all was fire and brimstone, though. If his demon-possessed orator wasn’t able to convince you to join his merry voyage of the damned, then with jacket doffed and extra shirt button undone, his seductive balladeer would surely seal the deal. Not that he needed to try that hard to get the crowd to follow him anywhere or even at all – judging from the many declarations of love from the audience, all returned by Cave of course, they were his from note one. Credit must also go to the Bad Seeds, an absolutely crack musical outfit capable of moving from anarchic skronk to elegiac beauty at the drop of the hat, but at the end of the day it’s about Cave, who is definitely one of the most charismatic performers I’ve ever seen.

The one hour, forty-five minute set was pretty much a perfect blend of old material and new, one third drawn from Lazarus and the rest from the entire breadth of his 25-year career. He even seemed to take requests, delivering an elegant “Ship Song” in response to a placard in the audience, though set lists from the rest of the tour implied that it’d have made an appearance anyways. But gestures like that, as well as designating a girl in the audience as “keeper of the towel” – as in the increasingly sweat-soaked implement that he and she tossed back and forth throughout the show – are what make Cave such an engaging frontman. Well, that and an incredible voice, presence, catalog of songs and mustache.

For the encore, Cave and company delivered the two lead tracks from the double-disc masterpiece Abbatoir Blues and The Lyre Of Orpheus, the former turned into a squall of punk rock anarchy and the latter a lurching bit of audience call-and-response, and as a show finale, a scorched earth “Stagger Lee”. Oh mama. So worth the wait.

With Cave’s entire catalog being remastered and reissued in expanded form, I’m waiting a bit before delving further into his works but having now gotten a taste of what awaits me beyond The Best Of and what I’ve already gotten – I just ordered up the Abbatoir Blues Tour set – I can’t wait. The Globe & Mail has an interview with Cave and there’s more joyous reports from Wednesday night’s congregation at eye, Exclaim!, The Toronto Sun and Chart.

Photos: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Black Mountain @ The Kool Haus – October 1, 2008
MP3: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!”
MP3: Black Mountain – “Tyrants”
Video: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!”
Video: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Night Of The Lotus Eaters”
Video: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “More News From Nowhere”
Video: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Midnight Man”
Video: Black Mountain – “Wucan”
MySpace: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
MySpace: Black Mountain

Oasis’ new record Dig Out Your Soul is currently streaming in its entirety over at the band’s MySpace. It’s out for reals on Tuesday. NME has a piece on Gold And Silver And Sunshine, the making-of doc that’s going to accompany the album in some form, and JAM has some more from Noel Gallagher on the infamous stage attack from last month. Speaking of which, the band have announced a North American tour in December… and curiously, there’s not Toronto date? I wonder why?

Stream: Oasis / Dig Out Your Soul

Radiohead have selected the winner of their “make a video for In Rainbows” contest and made it the official video for “Reckoner”. Which they’re also holding a remix contest.

Video: Radiohead – “Reckoner”

Dave Gedge of The Wedding Present talks about life in California to LiveDaily and reveals to The Georgia Straight that after recording El Rey with Steve Albini, they went back and re-recorded the whole of their debut George Best with him. The Wedding Present are at Lee’s Palace tonight and if you’re going, remember it’s an early show – doors 7:30, Dirty On Purpose at 8:15 and Wedding Present at 9:30 – all over by 11.

Filter discusses matters sartorial with Flight Of The Conchords.

The Secret Machines have offered up the first taste of their new, self-titled album, out October 14. They’re at Lee’s Palace on October 22.

MP3: The Secret Machines – “Atomic Heels”

The Denver Post talks to Oliver Ackerman of A Place To Bury Strangers.

Last seen opening up for The Dandy Warhols, Los Angeles’ Darker My Love are at the Horseshoe for their own show on November 30, tickets $8.50.

QRO interviews The Coast, who are also profiled by The Guardian.

Sloan’s Jay Ferguson chats with The Muse.

The Wilmington Star-News rightly acknowledges both parts of a kick-ass tour crossing the continent, talking to both Okkervil River’s Will Sheff and Crooked Fingers’ Eric Bachmann. The latter’s Fortune/Forfeit is out on Tuesday.

The Tripwire interviews Jose Gonzalez.

The Stranger stops being strangers with Silver Jew David Berman.

After ceasing publication in the real world this past Spring, No Depression is back as a newfangled website, and they’ve got a feature on Basia Bulat. Welcome back.

Earlier this week Pitchfork put together a listing of all the medium and major album releases still due in 2008. I also maintain such a calendar for my own purposes but less interesting than what they noted that I didn’t – a new Wheat album on November 11 and a Cat Power EP on December 9 that shows she’s still in covers girl mode, guess The Sun isn’t coming this year – was what is apparently not showing up this year after all. I don’t necessarily know if these would show up on the ‘Fork radar, but I had been anxiously awaiting First Love from Emmy The Great and Clinging To A Scheme from The Radio Dept, both of which had been originally targeted for a September release. Obviously that’s not happened. My fingers are crossed that at least one will surface before the year’s out, but more than likely their reserved spots in my year-end list will have to carry over to ’09.