Frank YangPeople traditionally go to great lengths to avoid getting a lump of coal for Christmas but there’s something to be said for getting a big pile of rock for the holidays. And it was rock – and lots of it – on offer Saturday night at the Horseshoe for Jingle Bell Rock, an evening presented by promotions company Audio Blood Media and media partners aux.tv and Exclaim. The lineup featured four bands from the Audio Blood roster – Oh No Forest Fires, Make Your Exit, Clothes Make The Man and The Balconies. The opener and closer were personal live favourites so even though I didn’t know the middle acts at all, odds were pretty good that it’d be a great show.

I’d seen The Balconies a couple times since they moved to Toronto from Ottawa and began gigging their asses off, and they’ve yet to deliver anything but a cracking good set. As always, the power pop of their self-titled debut was lean and lethal and the trio had energy and charisma to spare, rewarding those who’d had the foresight to show up early with a terrific set. I was recently asked in a sort-of poll for a UK website what my Canuck tip for 2010 was – I went with The Balconies, calling them “an inevitability” (do I need quotes to quote myself?). This show was a reminder of why. Their next local gig is January 6 at Supermarket.

From there it was into the, “…and you are?” portion of the night. Clothes Make The Man were certainly keeping in the rock theme of the night, perhaps moreso than any of the others. You had to feel for frontman Ryan McLennan’s vocal cords, so throat-shredding and raw was his delivery but even so, was still able to carry a melody and even convey some gentleness when called for. Which, honestly, wasn’t that often – the quartet was here to be loud and heavy and just tuneful enough. Mission accomplished.

Make Your Exit had a decidedly different mandate, playing the role of sensitive, jam-friendly collective for the evening. Their set was all grand arrangements, emotive melodies and layered harmonies – enough to put most of those around me into a collective swoon but leaving me largely umoved. Certainly I was able to appreciate the musical ability on display, objectively, but any grab for the heartstrings missed the target. Hey, win some, lose some.

Oh No Forest Fires were, as the kids say, made of win and provided just the jolt of energy I needed to make it through the remainder of the night. Led by frontman and human superball Rajiv Thavanathan, their gleeful, ADD-addled prog-punk had the band bouncing around the stage as the blew through material from their debut mini-album The War On Geometry which, in the spirit of the season, they were offering for free to anyone who asked for a copy. Also festive was their set’s finale, which saw the Horseshoe stage being swarmed by most/all the other bands and those who put on the show for a madcap Christmas medley of “Silent Night” and “Feliz Navidad” that would have made Jose Feliciano proud… assuming he’s secretly a musical anarchist. A fitting cap to a holiday celebration the way they all ought to be – sweaty and ear-bleeding.

Photos: Oh No Forest Fires, Make Your Exit, Clothes Make The Man, The Balconies @ The Horseshoe – December 12, 2009
MP3: Oh No Forest Fires – “Robin The Boy Wonders”
MP3: Oh No Forest Fires – “It’s Not Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye”
MP3: Make Your Exit – “Through The Winter”
MP3: Clothes Make The Man – “Telescopes”
MP3: The Balconies – “Serious Bedtime”
MP3: The Balconies – “300 Pages”
MP3: The Balconies – “Smells Like Secrets”
Video: Clothes Make The Man – “Privy”
Video: Clothes Make The Man – “Singles Only”
MySpace: Clothes Make The Man

Since this has started out as a sort of holiday post, now’s as good a time as any to round up some of the many, many, many seasonal musical giveaways that seems to be popular right now. Lucky Soul have gathered all the artists on their own Ruffa Lane label to give away a Christmas tune. They’ve themselves done a cover of Mud’s “Lonely This Christmas”, Montt Mardié has discoed up Wham!’s “Last Christmas” while Swedish glammers Napoleon and London folkies Grantura offer original compositions. Lucky Soul’s second album A Coming Of Age is currently on target for a March 2010 release.

MP3: Lucky Soul – “Lonely This Christmas”
MP3: Montt Mardié featuring Le Sport & Mr Suitcase – “Last Christmas”
MP3: Napoleon featuring Ali Howard – “Midnight Train to Arhus”
MP3: Grantura – “Holly”

Dean & Britta are giving away both sides of their 2008 Christmas single, a cover of Roger Miller’s “Old Toy Trains” and “(S)He’s Coming Home” by The Wailers. And as an early Christmas gift to longtime fans, The Line Of Best Fit reports that all three Galaxie 500 albums will be reissued on March 22 of next year by Domino Records in deluxe CD format, each album featuring a bonus disc previously released by Rykodisc on its own, and on heavy 180-gram vinyl. More immediately gratifying these interviews with Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips at Ladygunn.

Anni Rossi is offering a special gift to those who sign up to her mailing list; Future Sounds reports said gift is an EP of Christmas tunes, one of which is “Silver Bells”.

MP3: Anni Rossi – “Silver Bells”

Jason Lytle is celebrating the holidays by giving away a free EP at his Bandcamp site.

Ear Farm has curated a terrific album of holiday tunes featuring artists such as Asobi Seksu, Sharon Van Etten and Julie Doiron, and is selling it for a paltry $5 with all proceeds going to benefit the Association to Benefit Children.

Looking past Christmas – as in the day after – the Drake Hotel has released the lineup for their annual “What’s In The Box?” Boxing Week concert series. As always, cover is $5 and some of the performers helping make sure those of us still working through the last week of December are bleary-eyed and unproductive are The D’Urbervilles, By Divine Right, Pick A Piper and many more.

Also hosting a series of shows that week with a food drive angle is The Garrison – specifics are still forthcoming but a list of some of the bands participating has gone up over at Stille Post.

Toronto label Out Of This Spark will make the end of the holidays and return to the humdrum of the working week a little more bearable on January 22 when they hold their third anniversary bash at the Garrison. The bill will feature The D’Urbervilles, Forest City Lovers, Evening Hymns and Jenny Omnichord – a lot like this year’s lineup.

Looking a little further ahead, New York synth-pop duo Phantogram will be at the Drake on February 20, tickets $10. Their debut full-length Eyelid Movies will be out on February 9 of next year.

MP3: Phantogram – “When I’m Small”

The Morning Benders will return to the Drake Underground, where they played in February, on April 14 as part of a North American tour in support of their new album Big Echo, out March 9. Tickets for the show are $11.50.

MP3: The Morning Benders – “Waiting For A War”

Yeasayer, who are directing all their website traffic to the one specially set up for their new single “Ambling Alp”, will be at Lee’s Palace on May 1 in support of their new album Odd Blood, out February 9. Tickets $18. There’s an interview with singer Chris Keating at BBC Radio 1.

MP3: Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp”
Video: Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp”

MySpaceOpening up with the sound of bird noises might be a bit of an over-sell, but forgiveness comes easily when the multi-layered harmonies of Toronto’s The Wilderness Of Manitoba arrive and usher in their debut EP, Hymns Of Love And Spirits. Sharing members with Provincial Parks and Key Witness, The Wilderness of Manitoba come with a very clear and direct mandate – to craft gentle, intricate folk songs of the sort that no one seems to make anymore. Of course, that’s a mandate that many have taken on in recent years and so, ironically, there’s a good number of artists presently making those sorts of songs.

The Wilderness Of Manitoba still manage to stand tall amongst their peers, however, and stand out. Obviously drawing inspiration from both the English and American folk revivals of the 1960s, they place an emphasis on choral vocals that give the mini-album a certain dreamy quality that splits the difference between spiritual and ghostly. The musical arrangements are similarly kept ethereal, all gentle acoustic guitar, spare percussion with an occasional guest appearance from a banjo, cello or keys and carried aloft on a plush cloud of reverb. It’s a record that drifts by prettily, seemingly untethered from earthly concerns yet tangible enough to still carry a very real emotional heft. It haunts, like a fond but faded memory.

The Wilderness Of Manitoba are playing The Garrison tomorrow night with Olenka & The Autumn Lovers and Slow Down Molasses. BlogTO interviewed the band at the end of the Summer while The Line Of Best Fit had a more recent conversation.

MP3: The Wilderness Of Manitoba – “Bluebirds”

Timber Timbre has made his self-titled debut available as a free download through the end of Saturday, October 31. He plays a free show at the North York Central Library on November 7. It’s all about the free.

MP3: Timber Timbre – “Demon Host”
Video: Timber Timbre – “Demon Host”
Video: Timber Timbre – “We’ll Find Out”
ZIP: Timber Timbre / Timber Timbre

Examiner.com talks to Liz Powell of Land Of Talk.

Blurt reports that Midlake will finally release their new record The Courage of Others on February 2.

Fazer has got an interview with Logan Kroeber of The Dodos.

Tiny Mix Tapes talks to Thao. Aaah, that’s some good alliteration right there. Thao plays the El Mocambo on November 1.

The Quietus asks Alison Mosshart what’s up with each of her bands, The Kills and The Dead Weather – new records from both in 2010. There you go.

PitchforkTV has added a video interview segment with Yo La Tengo to go with their Don’t Look Down session performances. The Skinny, San Diego News Network, The San Francisco Examiner and Vail Daily also have interviews.

Magnet picks their five most overrated and underrated Galaxie 500 songs. Is it really possible for a band that’s chronically underrated to have overrated songs?

Sweden’s Shout Out Louds have completed their new album and named it Work – look for it February 23 of next year.

Mid to late December is usually a real dead zone for tours coming through town, so what are the odds that two shows I’d want to see would arrive on the same night? Apparently pretty good. There’s no way I’m not going to be seeing Fanfarlo at the El Mocambo that night, but am sad that it means missing seeing Blue Roses – aka English singer-songwriter Laura Groves who released a lovely self-titled debut back in the Spring – at the Drake Underground, opening up for Marcus Foster, whom I don’t know at all. There’s no reason I can think of not to be at Fanfarlo, but if you can come up with one it better be because you’re at this show instead.

MP3: Blue Roses – “Doubtful Comforts”
MP3: Blue Roses – “I Am Leaving”

It’s not new album news, per se, but NME’s reporting that Lightspeed Champion will have a new single out entitled “Marlene” on January 25 is certainly a good omen that record number two is coming.

Exclaim talks to The xx. They’re at the Phoenix on December 2.

Autumn de WildeIt’s appropriate that I’m putting this up whilst in the Big Apple because more than any other band, Luna represents what I think of when I try to frame New York in musical terms – weird and wonderful and lightly hallucinogenic. And full of awesome guitar solos.

One of Dean Wareham’s first post-Luna projects was the writing of his memoirs, Black Postcards, which was released in hardcover form last year and in softcover last week. I reviewed it last year, remarking how candid and forthcoming Wareham was in its pages about his career and personal life and how at odds that was from the decidedly cryptic persona he’d cultivated over the years. It was an engrossing read and I recommended it wholeheartedly to anyone who is or was ever a Luna fan, or just found the life (and death) of bands that never quite break through fascinating. Maybe you took my advice and grabbed a copy, maybe you didn’t.

But if you didn’t, your procrastination has been rewarded. Courtesy of Penguin Books, I’ve got five – 5 – paperback copies of Black Postcards to give away. To enter, leave me a comment noting your favourite song from any of Wareham’s projects – Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta – and why. Essays not required, just a little thought. Be sure to include your email address so I can contact you. And because I’m feeling generous, this contest is open to residents of anywhere. But it will close in a week at midnight, May 23.

Wareham talked to Daily Finance about some of the economic realities of rock’n'roll and creates a playlist to soundtrack his book for Largehearted Boy.

MP3: Luna – “Friendly Advice” (live)
MP3: Luna – “The Slow Song (live)
MP3: Dean & Britta – “Words You Used To Say”
MP3: Dean & Britta – “Singer Sing”

MySpaceSay what you will about Taunton, Massachusetts’ Wheat, but you can’t deny that they refuse to stay down. Once upon a time one of my favourite bands (circa Medeiros and Hope & Adams), they became a cautionary tale against the major label machine with 2003′s ill-fated Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second (which I chronicled back in 2004 and 2005) and essentially disbanded in the aftermath.

They unexpectedly returned in 2007 with Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square, again independent and down a member, but even then they were beset with label problems and delays. And the record itself was free of the excessive gloss of Per Second, it was decent at best – unfocused and only evidencing glimpses of the rough magic that defined their earliest releases. It pretty much came and went and I figured that that was the end of the band, again. They’d returned in order to finish on their own terms.

Or not. There were rumblings of a new record late last year and though there’s no release date as of yet, it has a title – White Ink, Black Ink – and a sample of it has surfaced on the band’s profile for SxSW, where I fully intend to see them play. Obviously not enough to form an opinion on, though it sounds like they’re sticking to the sonic cut-and-paste aesthetic of Kathy. I find I remain curious and still a little excited about the prospect of new music from Wheat – this news prompted me to revisit those magical first two records and they still give me tingles.

And those first two records – Medeiros and Wheat – are being reissued together along with a bonus disc of rarities and whatnots from the era entitled 30 Minute Theatrik (thanks to Mark for the tip). It’s set for a March 10 release but you can pre-order it now and get all three records digitally immediately. If you’ve never heard either one, well, you should. And here’s your chance.

More Wheat info and downloads available at thiswheat.com.

MP3: Wheat – “El Sincero”
MP3: Wheat – “Move = Move”
Mp3: Wheat – “What Everyone Keeps Telling Me”
MP3: Wheat – “World United Already”
Video: Wheat – “Don’t I Hold You”
Video: Wheat – “I Met A Girl”
MySpace: Wheat

Drowned In Sound declared this week just ending “slowcore week” and followed that up with extensive features on personal favourites like Low, Galaxie 500, The New Year and Early Day Miners. They’ll have a new album out sometime this year entitled The Treatment.

The Democrat & Chronicle interviews Blitzen Trapper, playing a sold-out show at the Horseshoe tomorrow night.

CBC Radio 3 talks to Casey Mecija of Ohbijou, who will release their second album Beacons on April 14 and follow that up with a CD release show at the Opera House on April 18.

The Thermals are hitting the road in support of their new album Now We Can See, out April 7. Pitchfork has the full North American itinerary, which includes a May 3 date at the Horseshoe.

MP3: The Thermals – “Now We Can See”

Mogwai have announced a North American tour for this Spring which will make up their cancelled The Hawk Is Howling dates from last Fall when drummer Martin Bulloch’s pacemaker threatened to escape from his chest. The Toronto date will be May 4 at the Phoenix – those who won passes to the cancelled show, I’ll be in touch about the make-up date.

MP3: Mogwai – “The Sun Smells Too Loud”

With their new album What Is?! coming out domestically on April 12, King Khan & The Shrines will be at the Phoenix on May 12 to promote.

Vetiver have a date at the Horseshoe on May 15 in support of last year’s Tight Knit.

MP3: Vetiver – “Everyday”

Leonard Cohen has announced a North American tour – closest local date is May 19 at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. Second closest is May 24 at John Labbat Centre in London. Tickets on sale March 2.

Neil Young’s Fork In The Road has a confirmed release date of March 31. Archives? Don’t ask.

Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, will release her sophomore album in Actor on May 5. Full details on the release at Pitchfork.

Also out May 5 is Outer South, the second solo record from Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band.

Viva Voce will release Rose City on May 26.

The Broken West have turned out a new video from last year’s Now Or Heaven.

Video: The Broken West – “Perfect Games”

CHUD interviews Scott Pligrim creator Bryan Lee-O’Malley.