Jesse DylanI promised you I was done with Iceland updates, and really you don’t get more un-Icelandic than Tom Waits. Of course, the only thing Tom Waits is really like is, well, Tom Waits and even then one era of Waits can be wildly different from the next. I say this as someone who’s only very recently begun exploring his expansive catalog and still has a long ways to go – but at least now I find his work intriguing rather than off-putting, as I once did. That’s progress.

I’m definitely glad to be coming around in time for the release of Bad As Me next Tuesday, his first album of all-new material in seven years. It’s available to stream right now at badasme.com if you’ve got an invite code and at first listen it sounds like a pretty good balance of out-there stompers and barstool laments. It’ll take some time but I can see myself getting into this. And if Waits elects to tour for this record and come to Toronto for the first time in what, at least a decade? Double bonus. I hear his performances are incomparable.

There’s interviews with Waits about the new record at Pitchfork, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and if you want to give Bad Like Me an advance listen, I’ve got five invite codes to hand out. They’re meant for friends but hey – you guys are my friends. Whoever you are. And if none of these codes work for you, I guess you’re too late… or you’re not my friend. Either way.

3vb-rhuym | 3cb-w6v03 | 6ob-gd8lz | l4b-6340m | ozb-p31m4

Stream: Tom Waits – “Back In The Crowd”
Stream: Tom Waits – “Bad As Me”
Stream: Tom Waits / Bad As Me

Rolling Stone is streaming the final R.E.M. single, taken from their forthcoming career-ending best-of Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage 1982-2011, out November 15. For their part, Spin has dug up some video footage of the band playing Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit in 1998.

Stream: R.E.M. – “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”

NPR and CMT talk reunions with The Jayhawks.

NPR solicits a Tiny Desk Concert from Wilco.

JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, who caught some ears last year with a swinging soul cover of Wilco’s “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, will be in Toronto on November 29 for a free show at The Horseshoe – that’s the same night as Kathryn Calder, so that’s double the reason to not stay home that night. Their new album Want More is out Tuesday but available to stream now at Paste.

MP3: JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound – “Everything Will Be Fine”
Video: JC Brooks Uptown Sound – “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”
Stream: JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound / Want More

Stuff talks Galaxie 500 with Dean Wareham.

The AV Club and Edmonton Journal interview Ryan Adams, in town at the Winter Garden Theatre on December 10.

Blurt talks to Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers while The AV Club has one more rooftop performance video to share. They play The Drake Underground on November 8.

Dead Meadow will warm up for their show at Lee’s Palace later that evening with an acoustic in-store at the Annex location of Sonic Boom on October 24 at 4PM. The Pitch has an interview.

MP3: Dead Meadow – “Good Moanin”

Spinner, North County Times and Willamette Week talk to Stephen Malkmus, who has released a new video from Mirror Traffic.

Video: Stephen Malkmus – “Senator”

Matt Berninger of The National puts together a playlist of sad songs for dirty lovers for Rolling Stone.

The Alternate Side has an interview and session with Beirut.

The Georgia Straight profiles The Head & The Heart.

Pitchfork reports that Mazzy Star, after many years of saying they were back together, finally have something to show for it in the form of two new songs entitled “Common Burn” and “Lay Myself Down”, due to be released digitally on October 31.

The Washingtonian and DCist talks to Mary Timony PopMatters to Carrie Brownstein of Wild Flag while NPR has got a stream of last night’s show in Washington DC.

Ume have released a new video from their recently-released album Phantoms.

Video: Ume – “Captive”

CBS gets to know Savoir Adore, who are releasing a new 7″ single. Details can be found at Neon Gold and the A-side can be downloaded below.

MP3: Savoir Adore – “Dreamers”

Frank YangThey don’t call it Rocktober for nothing. Only March, with its legions of bands crossing the continent en route to SXSW offers nearly as many live music options as October and with such a plethora of shows to choose from, conflicts are inevitable.

October 11, in particular, offers a tough choice for Toronto concert-goers: on one hand, you’ve got Sleater-Kinney/Helium/Minders supergroup Wild Flag making their Toronto debut at Lee’s Palace on the back of their excellent self-titled debut, and on the other you’ve got hometown hardcore heroes Fucked Up playing their first local non-festival/non-opening show at The Mod Club in support of their latest opus David Comes To Life. I can’t even tell you which I’d choose. Wild Flag put on a fantastic rock show, all dueling guitars and Carrie Brownstein scissor kicks, while Fucked Up’s anarchic live shows are legendary and frequently bloody. As sad as I am to be missing both of these what with being in Iceland, I’m glad I don’t have to make a tough decision. I’d probably just end up sitting at home watching television.

But to help you resolve the dilemma, I’m at least taking the financial factor out of the equation. Courtesy of the good folks at Collective Concerts and Embrace, I’ve got two pairs of passes to give away to each show (the Wild Flag tix are $20 in advance, Fucked Up $17). To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to spend Rocktober with…” in the subject line and in the body, put your full name and which show you want to see. If you refuse to get off the fence or just want to hedge, you can put both but rank them in order of preference. And if you’re underage, just put Fucked Up – Wild Flag is 19+. Contest closes at midnight, October 9.

NOW interviews Wild Flag’s Carrie Brownstein, Cleveland Scene Rebecca Cole.

MP3: Wild Flag – “Romance”
MP3: Wild Flag – “Glass Tambourine”
MP3: Fucked Up – “The Other Shoe”
MP3: Fucked Up – “Ship Of Fools”
MP3: Fucked Up – “A Little Death”
MP3: Fucked Up – “Queen Of Hearts”
Video: Wild Flag – “Romance”
Video: Fucked Up – “The Other Shoe”
Video: Fucked Up – “Queen Of Hearts”

But wait! There’s more! Embrace and LiveNation have been extra-generous with a pile of shows next week that they want to let people into; some are very much within my usual wheelhouse of coverage, some not so much, so it’s a free-for-all-for-free. Basically, if you want a shot at passes to any of the following then email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see (insert name of band)” in the subject line – and you actually put that verbatim I may well delete your entry – and your full name in the body. Winners will be drawn and notified on October 10; feel free to enter as many as you like but if you win multiple shows on the same night, I reserve the right to send you to whatever one will allow me to spread the prizes around the most – but you can note in your entries which you’d prefer and that will be taken into account. ANYWAYS. I have two pairs of passes to give away for each of the following:

Swedish electro-pop outfit Little Dragon @ The Hoxton, October 12 (19+)
MP3: Little Dragon – “Feather”

Brit-pop/Bro-pop revivalists Viva Brother @ The Horseshoe, October 13 (19+)
Video: Viva Brother – “Darling Buds Of May”

Toronto space-pop up-and-comers Volcano Playground @ The Garrison, October 13 (19+)
MP3: Volcano Playground – “Waiting”

Mercury-nominated Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan @ The Mod Club, October 15 (19+)
Stream: Lisa Hannigan – “A Sail”

PJ Harvey fans and Southwest Airlines non-fans Uh Huh Her @ The Phoenix, October 15 (19+)
Video: Uh Huh Her – “Black & Blue”

Black Crowe gone solo Rich Robinson @ The El Mocambo, October 15 (19+)
MP3: Rich Robinson – “Lost & Found”

Victoria, BC-based electro-pop duo Data Romance @ Wrongbar, October 15 (19+)
Stream: Data Romance – “Spark”

And in other news.

PS I Love You has made their cover of Rush’s classic “Subdivisions”, which appears on their just-released Figure It Out compilation, available to download. Paul Sauliner talks to Rolling Stone about his appreciation for the Canadian standard.

MP3: PS I Love You – “Subdivisions”

The Besnard Lakes will warm up for their October 13 show at Lee’s Palace with an in-store at Sonic Boom’s Annex location that afternoon, starting at 4PM. Madison.com talks to Jace Lasek of the band.

MP3: The Besnard Lakes – “Albatross”

One of the best acts I saw at NXNE this year was Vancouver garage-soul outfit Chains of Love. Do yourself a favour and see them when they play The Horseshoe on November 8, and you don’t have being broke as an excuse because it’s free, yo. FREE.

MP3: Chains Of Love – “You Got It”

Bruce Peninsula have released a video from their just-released Open Flames. They’ll be at Lee’s Palace on October 27 to play it live.

Video: Bruce Peninsula – “As Long As I Live”

Canadian Interviews interviews Canadian Nils Edenloff of The Rural Alberta Advantage. They play The Phoenix on November 17.

Paste and NOW profile Feist, who has a date at Massey Hall on December 1.

Already scheduled to be there on October 25 supporting Still Corners, California’s Ganglians will headline their own show at the Drake Underground on November 25. Friends – as in the band from Brooklyn, not as in “Dionne Warwick and” – will open up.

MP3: Ganglians – “Jungle”
Video: Friends – “Friend Crush”

Just in time for their show at Lee’s Palace tonight, Ra Ra Riot have a new video from The Orchard.

Video: Ra Ra Riot – “Shadowcasting”

Phantogram will release a new mini-album on November 1 entitled Nightlife; the first MP3 from it is now available to download.

MP3: Phantogram – “Don’t Move”

Paste has The Hold Steady by for a video session.

Billboard chats with Wilco’s Pat Sansone about how they almost released The Whole Love as a two-part album, Deathly Hallows-style.

NYC Taper is sharing a recording of Explosions In The Sky’s NYC show from earlier this week. They’re at The Sound Academy tomorrow night. The Detroit News, Toro, The Des Moines Register, The Tulane Hullabaloo, and The Pitch all have features on the band.

Justin EvansAfter a prolific career of twenty years, an artist can be forgiven for choosing to settle into some manner of creative comfort zone or perhaps repeating themselves. And while Eric Bachmann isn’t necessarily continuing to break new artistic ground, he’s covered enough terrain over the years that even revisiting past efforts remains a wonderfully unpredictable exercise.

Reach back to Archers Of Loaf for some ragged and jagged proto-indie rock, early Crooked Fingers or his solo work for stark yet rich folk-rooted singer-songwriter fare, later Crooked Fingers for gorgeous Spanish-inflected rock or polarizing studio experimentation. He hasn’t revisited the instrumental sound-sculpting of the Barry Black project but give him time. But not right now as he’s got more balls in the air now than perhaps he ever has, simultaneously looking back with a much-heralded Archers reunion and album reissue series and forwards with a new Crooked Fingers album – Breaks In The Armor – out next Tuesday.

Toronto was treated to a preview of the latest incarnation of Crooked Fingers when Bachmann stopped by while shepherding Archers gear between cities in July and, given that they were just a two-piece consisting of himself and Liz Durrett, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect that Armor would be a stripped-down affair and a hard turn from the unfairly panned Forfeit/Fortune. And if that were the case, it’d have been fine – few do stripped down as affectingly as Bachmann – but Armor is a surprisingly fleshed-out record that sounds less like it’s revisiting past records than pulling inspiration from all of them simultaneously.

If you had to choose one reference point in the Bachmann oeuvre, Armor would be most reminiscent of Red Devil Dawn, which marked the transition of Crooked Fingers as pseudonym for a mostly-solo act to a full band project but rather than sounding at all transitional, it sounds arguably like the most representative Crooked Fingers record yet. Drum machines keep time on the simpler numbers, as on opener “Typhoon”, but when live rhythm is needed to allow a song like “The Counterfeiter” to really soar, the drums are there. And that little atonal guitar skronk that opens “Bad Blood”? Little bit of Archers right there, I’d say.

Bachmann has consistently flown under the radar of popular acclaim and finally seems to be receiving his critical (and commercial) due thanks to the Archers Of Loaf reunion, but one hopes that it doesn’t overshadow the fact that he’s still putting out excellent new music. Someday, Eric Bachmann will be properly recognized as being one of the great American songwriters of the last twenty years and Breaks In The Armor will be another strong argument why. I won’t go so far as to say that’s the best Crooked Fingers record to date – there is a place in my heart from which Dignity & Shame will never be dislodged – but it’s certainly one of the strongest and most consistently satisfying.

Spin talks to Bachmann about making the new record following a sabbatical from music to teach English in Taiwan and is also offering a stream of the whole thing while The AV Club has a video performance of “Your Apocalypse” filmed on a Chicago rooftop. Their Fall tour in support of the record kicks off later this month and hits The Drake Underground in Toronto on November 8.

MP3: Crooked Fingers – “Typhoon”
Stream: Crooked Fingers / Breaks In The Armor

Filter makes an argument for Bachmann’s greatness via his Archers Of Loaf work. And did anyone see Archer last week? “Archers Of Loaf-crosse”? Eh? EH? What do you mean you don’t watch Archer what the hell is wrong with you.

California’s High Places have announced a date at The Garrison on November 14 in support of their new record Original Colors, out Tuesday. Tickets are $11.50 in advance. Eater has an interview with the duo about, well, eating.

MP3: High Places – “On Giving Up”
Video: High Places – “Altos Lugares”

Brooklyners White Rabbits have been pretty quiet since the success of 2009’s It’s Frightening. But there are signs they’re getting ready to release something new – such as their scheduling a date at The Horseshoe for November 30, tickets $15.

MP3: White Rabbits – “Percussion Gun”

I’m not sure what is more confounding – the people getting worked up about Lana del Rey or the people getting worked up about the people getting worked up about her. But she of the enormous hype, controversial backstory, contentious lips and just-okay-but-hardly-spectacular two songs is bringing her show to Toronto’s Mod Club on November 30, tickets $12.50 and on sale at 10AM Friday. For a taste of the buzz, check out the interviews with her at The Quietus, The State, GQ, New York Magazine and Pitchfork (who also have a think piece about her divisiveness) and to let the music (and visuals) speak for themselves, her entire recorded output in video form.

Video: Lana del Rey – “Video Games”
Video: Lana del Rey – “Blue Jeans”

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – who know a thing or two about both edges of the hype machine – are hoping you call their third album Hysterical a comeback and go see them when they play The Opera House on December 9. That one will cost you $20.50 in advance.

MP3: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – “Same Mistake”

The director of the video for St. Vincent’s “Cruel” talks to Pitchfork about the making of the clip.

The AV Club chats with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco.

The Sun has an extensive interview and Exclaim a short one with Ryan Adams, whose new record Ashes & Fire is out on Tuesday. The Alternate Side also has an interview as well as a session. Adams is at The Winter Garden Theatre on December 10.

eMusic has posted the results of their Twitter-powered interview with Mates Of State, The Baltimore Sun publishes the results of a stock questionnaire and The Charlotte Observer settles for a simple conversation.

NYC Taper has posted a recording of Nicole Atkins’ recent set at Webster Hall in New York, and if you stop by her website on October 6, she tweets that there’ll be a free live EP to be had.

NPR has posted a WFUV session with Beirut.

And finally, rest in peace, Bert Jansch.

Frank YangIt’s right here, in these very pages, the fact that I didn’t dig on Wild Beasts’ last record Two Dancers and only after some persistence was able to reach a point of understanding it if not appreciating it. But mayhap that exercise softened me up enough that even though it wasn’t as acclaimed as its predecessor, I took to this year’s Smother almost immediately and also put Two Dancers back into rotation. All of which is to say that while I had no problem skipping the band’s visit to the Mod Club last Summer, I was not going to be missing this year’s go-around last Thursday.

The quartet intended to make a dramatic entrance onto the stage but a technical hiccup a few bars into “Lion’s Share” sabotaged that, forcing them to sheepishly say, “hello” rather than just get into it but the net effect was endearing rather than embarrassing and it would basically be the only misstep the entire evening. Why did no one tell me how good of a live band they were? And while we’re at it, why did no one tell me that the swooping and swooning vocals on their recordings were not just courtesy of Hayden Thorpe, but also of Tom Fleming? Here I was thinking that it was Thorpe alone with the inhumanly multi-octave range, when in fact it’s both of them. Which is ridiculous. That they should both be equally adept at playing guitar, bass and keyboards whilst utilizing those voices is even more ridiculous. And that Katie Harkness of Sky Larkin was on board as touring keyboardist was just a nice surprise.

Trying to describe Wild Beasts live requires a lot of adjectives that are typically more suited to blue movies than live music, but that’s just how it is – it’s the sound of sex, however you like it, and quite the contrast from the sentiments of love that Elbow brought to town the night before.. Seductive and dangerous, romantic and rough, primal and sophisticated, they build off a deep, swaying groove heavy on toms and accented with exotic percussion and alternately powered by keys or guitars, their songs are lifted by the intertwined vocals of Thorpe and Fleming in a way that just induces shivers. They split the set about evenly between Two Dancers and Smother and threw long-time fans a bone with “The Devli’s Crayon” from their debut Limbo, Panto and apologizing for never touring their that album. So rhythmically hypnotic was their hour-long main set that when it ended with “Hooting & Howling”, you didn’t even notice the finale coming until it was done – you might say the “End Come Too Soon” but the band saved that one to wrap the encoure, which thankfully ran a good three songs and allowed you the time to mentally prepare to extricate yourself from the music’s embrace and ready yourself to go back out into the cold world.

Prefix, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal and The Daily Texan have interviews with members of Wild Beasts.

Photos: Wild Beasts @ The Mod Club – September 29, 2011
MP3: Wild Beasts – “Thankless Thing”
MP3: Wild Beasts – “Albatross”
MP3: Wild Beasts – “Loop The Loop”
MP3: Wild Beasts – “All The King’s Men”
Video: Wild Beasts – “Bed Of Nails”
Video: Wild Beasts – “Albatross”
Video: Wild Beasts – “We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues”
Video: Wild Beasts – “Hooting & Howling”
Video: Wild Beasts – “All The King’s Men”
Video: Wild Beasts – “The Devil’s Crayon”
Video: Wild Beasts – “Treacle Tin”
Video: Wild Beasts – “Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants”

Billboard has posted their upcoming cover story on Florence & The Machine, whose much-anticipated Ceremonials is out on November 1.

Wears The Trousers points to a video session by EMA in Vienna wherein they reinvent “Butterfly Knife”; worth watching.

Exclaim and The Chicago Tribune have interviews and NPR a World Cafe session with St. Vincent.

Spinner, The Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News and Paste talk to Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls. They’re at Lee’s Palace on October 16.

Asobi Seksu recorded a session for Daytrotter, gave interviews to OC Music Magazine and The Vindicator and also posted up a Walkmen cover, well, just because. They’re at Lee’s Palace on October 23 opening for Boris.

The Von Pop Musical Express interviews Juanita Stein of Howling Bells.

NPR welcomes Ryan Adams for a World Cafe session. Toronto’s Winter Garden Theatre welcomes him for a show on December 10.

Gary Louris and Karen Grotberg take The Boston Globe down the long and winding road to the Jayhawks reunion.

The Illinois Entertainer talks to Craig Finn of The Hold Steady.

Men’s Health and The Sydney Morning Herald< talk with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco while The National Post gets some of Pat Sansone and John Stirratt’s time.

The Decemberists are still promising to take an extended break after they’re done working The King Is Dead, but that won’t be until after they’ve released the Long Live The King EP on November 1 – Exclaim has specifics.

Crystal Stilts are in town for a show at the Horseshoe on December 1.

MP3: Crystal Stilts – “Through The Floor”
Video: Crystal Stilts – “Through The Floor”

Okkervil River have released a new video from I Am Very Far, starring a very young Will Sheff.

Video: Okkervil River – “Your Past Life As A Blast”

Pitchfork takes Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks onto a New York City rooftop to play some songs. Or else.

The Quietus talks to Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields.

NPR has a KCRW session with Fleet Foxes.

Salon investigates why, in a time when record labels are supposed to be dying, Merge Records are thriving.

Jonathan TaggartAs one of the most social media-savvy musicians in the country, it’s not unreasonable to say that Dan Mangan reads his own press and so he’s probably seen the phrases “everyman”, “coffee shop”, “roots-rock” and variants thereof in regards to his breakout 2009 record Nice, Nice, Very Nice many, many times. And while these descriptors were usually meant in most complimentary ways – one does’t make the Polaris shortlist on the back of negative press – his just-released follow-up Oh Fortune gives you the impression that he didn’t take those writeups as incentive to stay the course.

From the very first heavily-reverbed piano chords which open leadoff track “About As Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All” before giving way to strings, it’s clear that this record is built on a different game plan than its predecessor. Throughout, there’s plenty of elegantly orchestrated horns and woodwinds, but also feedbacking, layered, wall-of-noise guitars – often all side-by-side or on top of one another – and if that sounds like the complete opposite of what you’d have expected a Dan Mangan record to sound like, well I suspect that’s the point. This is not a record that can be pigeonholed as the work of a singer-songwriter or folkie; it’s brimming with full-on pop ambition and if Mangan had kept such lofty musical aspirations in check before, he’s certainly enjoying the artistic freedom that success engenders now.

But for all of that, as soon as the vocals come in it’s unmistakably a Dan Mangan record. Not having the most elastic voice becomes an pro rather than a con as it remains warm and comforting like a woollen blanket, delivering poignant and poetic lyrics that; another Mangan trademark still intact, if perhaps darker in tone this time out. And it’s Mangan’s voice and the words it carries that act as a sturdy, reliable centre amidst the swirling sonic proceedings; it’s as if between Very Nice and Fortune, Mangan was transplanted from the setting of a comfortable stool in his local into… well, it’s hard to say, exactly. The atmosphere of Fortune is consistent but difficult to pin down, also certainly part of the overarching strategy to head off preconceptions and expectations and forces the listener to consider the record on its own merits rather than what they figured a new Dan Mangan record would sound like.

It’s no small thing to shift gears or change lanes immediately after a breakthrough record; the temptation to stick to what worked – at least for the follow-up – must be immense, particularly when what worked was a time-tested, meat-and-potatoes sort of approach. So Mangan should be praised for going as conceptually far afield as he has on Oh Fortune without abandoning his core strengths and lauded for making it work so well. If it wasn’t clear from any of the above, Oh Fortune is an excellent record, expansive in scope yet efficiently delivered and both musically and lyrically rich. No, there’s nothing as immediate as “Robots” but in lieu of that degree of immediacy, you get songs that continue to reveal themselves over repeated listens. Oh Fortune confirms Mangan as one of this country’s best new songwriters and, as a bonus, forces those who’d seek to dismiss him as too conventional to find a new line of criticism. Maybe that he’s too tall. Because he’s pretty tall.

Southern Souls, The Vancouver Sun, The Winnipeg Free Press and Exclaim have interviews with Mangan and he chats with Rolling Stone about his just-released new video; there’s also three four videos from a full-album performance Mangan gave at the CBC presently online, with more to come. His Fall tour brings him to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 28.

MP3: Dan Mangan – “Oh Fortune”
Video: Dan Mangan – “Rows Of Houses”
Video: Dan Mangan – “About as Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All” (live at CBC)
Video: Dan Mangan – “Rows Of Houses” (live at CBC)
Video: Dan Mangan – “Post-War Blues” (live at CBC)
Video: Dan Mangan – “Oh Fortune” (live at CBC)
Stream: Dan Mangan / Oh Fortune

Also out this week is Ohbijou’s Metal Meets. Exclaim and Toro talk to bandleader Casey Mecija about making the new record. They play a release show at Trinity-St. Paul’s on September 30.

Boasting a similar album title and gracing this month’s Exclaim cover is Feist; Pitchfork also has an interview. Metals is out October 4 and she plays Massey Hall on December 1. Update: And now the album is available to stream if you sign up for her mailing list. Preview the album AND get emails from Leslie!

Stream: Feist / Metals

Canadian Interviews is playing host to a tour diary from Bruce Peninsula. Open Flames is out October 4 but streamable now at Exclaim – they also have an interview and review – and they play an in-store at Soundscapes that evening, then a proper show at Lee’s Palace on October 27.

Stream: Bruce Peninsula / Open Flames

Their record release show for Tosta Mista safely in the books, Hooded Fang have announced they’ll play a free show at the Sanderson Branch of the Toronto Public Library (Bathurst and Dundas West) on October 1 at 2PM. They’ve also put out a new animated video.

MP3: Hooded Fang – “Den Of Love”
Video: Hooded Fang – “Brahma”

Dev Hynes’ Blood Orange has been announced as support on the upcoming tour for CANT, the solo project from Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, as well as being part of his band, all of which means that he’ll be at The Garrison on October 21. And to mark it, a new MP3 from Coastal Grooves is available to grab courtesy of Stereogum.

MP3: Blood Orange – “Champagne Coast”

J Mascis will be in town on November 4 as part of the Sleepwalk Guitar Festival taking place at The Great Hall all that weekend and ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd leads off the Saturday night bill followed by The Sadies. And if you were wondering just how “ex” Lloyd was with respect to Tom Verlaine and Television, this exchange documented at The Daily Swarm seems to indicate that bridges are pretty well burned. Tickets for each evening show are $25, all-day and weekend passes also available.

MP3: J Mascis – “Is It Done”
MP3: The Sadies – “Another Year Again”

English songwriting legend Ray Davies has made a date at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for November 25 in support of last year’s See My Friends though it’s unlikely any of his big-name collaborators will be joining him for these shows. Tickets are $49.50 and $69.50 plus fees.

Video: The Kinks – “Waterloo Sunset” (live)

Young Galaxy have been added to the Austra show at The Phoenix on December 1, as well as the rest that tour. They’ve also released a new video from Shapeshifting, an animated sequel to the clip for “We have Everything”.

MP3: Young Galaxy – “Peripheral Visionaries”
Video: Young Galaxy – “Peripheral Visionaries”

The War On Drugs are coming back to town, making a date for December 9 at The Horseshoe; tickets $13.50 in advance. The Washington Post and DCist have interviews and NPR a World Cafe session.

MP3: The War On Drugs – “Come To The City”

Tokyo Police Club, Born Ruffians and Said The Whale appear to be a winning combination as a second show has been added at The Phoenix for December 9, the one for the night before presumably just about sold out. Tickets are again $25 in advance.

MP3: Tokyo Police Club – “Party In The USA”
MP3: Born Ruffians – “Sole Brother”
MP3: Said The Whale – “Camilo (The Magician)”

Ryan Adams’ first show back in Toronto since Summer 2007 – he’s retired and come back out of retirement in the interim – will take place on December 10 at The Winter Garden Theatre; tickets are $45 plus fees, fan presale goes Thursday at 10AM and general onsale Friday, same time. His new record Ashes & Fire is out October 11; Exclaim takes a look back over his prolific career.

Video: Ryan Adams – “New York, New York”

Putting lie to my post in July when they announced it, The Radio Dept. have cancelled their entire Fall tour, which was to include a November 17 show at The Mod Club, “due to family related matters”. They hope to pick up again in 2012, perhaps even with some new material to share. Yeah, right.

Salon, Spinner, The Atlantic, Billboard, Paste, JAM, and aux.tv talk to Jeff Tweedy of Wilco while The Atlanta Journal-Constitution talks to Nels Cline and The Line Of Best Fit to Glenn Kotche. NYC Taper has a recording of their second of two Central Park shows available to download and CBC’s Q has a video studio session with the band.

Spinner talks to Ben Gibbard about the new Death Cab For Cutie video from Codes And Keys.

Video: Death Cab For Cutie – “Stay Young Go Dancing”

Filter, The National Post and NOW have features on Girls.

Spinner talks to The Drums, in town on October 1 with an in-store at Sonic Boom at 7PM and a show at The Mod Club a little later that evening.