Tom BeardIf I had more time or inclination, I might try to dig up some biographical info on Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell, the duo who make up the London-based outfit that goes by The Big Pink. But seeing as how they pretty much came out of nowhere from where I stand, I won’t try to pretend I know any more about them than you could glean from reading this piece on them from The Guardian from last November. And instead of talking about who they are, I’ll focus on what they do – which is make a fuzzy, clattering racket that sounds like various shoegazey portions of my CD collection got to copulating when I wasn’t looking.

Their debut A Brief History Of Love is due out on 4AD on September 22 and is currently streaming on the band’s website through the start of next week. It’s louder, funkier and more anthemically inclined than your typical dreampop-inspired sounds, decidedly fond of the square wave, unafraid of digital textures and respectful of the drone. It doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table but it does take some familiar sounds and moves from the last 20 years or so of British space-rock, dusts them off and gives them a good shine before pushing them out onto the dance floor. I approve.

The duo, hopefully bolstered with a live band rather than a laptop, will be touring relentlessly through Europe, the UK and then North America this Fall and that will include a November 29 date at Lee’s Palace. Check them out, but leave the fruit baskets at home.

MP3: The Big Pink – “Dominos”
MP3: The Big Pink – “Velvet”
Video: The Big Pink – “Velvet”
Video: The Big Pink – “Too Young To Love”
MySpace: The Big Pink

Consequence Of Sound has details on the forthcoming reissue of Spiritualized’s seminal Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, which will include new artwork (blasphemy!) to go with two bonus discs of outtakes and general bonus material.

Video: Spiritualized – “Electricity”
Video: Spiritualized – “Come Together”

Interview talks to Guy Garvey of Elbow. Locals may have noticed that the Letterman appearance they canceled last week’s Toronto show for never actually aired – according to this Facebook note, the show ran long and the performance had to be cut from the broadcast. Figures. But they’ve been invited back for another go in September so hopefully they’ll take advantage of being back on this continent and also reschedule that Phoenix show. Fingers crossed.

What We See Is What You Get is a site that has taken the Takeaway Show aesthetic of impromptu live performances to the streets of Toronto, and are slowly building a nice collection of videos including this one with Frightened Rabbit.

Maximo Park checks in from Japan with a tour diary dispatch for Spinner. They’ll be at Lee’s Palace on September 18.

The Quietus trades emails with The Twilight Sad’s. Their new album Forget The Night Ahead is out out September 22 and they’ll be at the El Mocambo on October 10.

They’re accompanied on that tour with We Were Promised Jetpacks – The Wickerman Festival have an interview with the band.

Exclaim reveals that Echo & The Bunnymen have finally set a release date for their new album The Fountain – look for it October 12, but don’t look for them to play it when they’re at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 20 – that evening is dedicated to Ocean Rain.

Billboard reports that Jarvis Cocker is writing songs for the Russell Brand-powered “sequel” to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him To The Greek.

Stereogum gets a progress report on album four from The Futureheads.

Kate Nash reveals to NME that Bernard Butler will be producing her second album. I like the sounds of that, yes I do.

NME also has an update from Glasvegas on their plans for recording album number two.

Bloc Party tells NME they have no definite plans for a new album or really anything at all once the current round of touring is over.

Already out in the UK, Noah & The Whale’s sophomore effort The First Days Of Spring will get a North American release on October 6 with touring on this side of the Atlantic to follow later that month.

NPR is streaming a session with Robyn Hitchcock.

Chart talks to Anthony Gonzalez of M83.

Both NOW, eye and The Montreal Mirror welcome St Vincent to Canada. St Vincent plays the Horseshoe on Saturday night.

Interview chats briefly with Lykke Li, in town at the Sound Academy on Sunday evening.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs review and photos coming Monday. There’s a lot to go through!

Ingram BarssWhen it comes to rock music, there’s few things that can be said to be asking to fail more than the double album and the concept album. To the former, most artists have trouble coming up with enough quality material to pad out a conventional 10-song set and to the latter… well, I don’t think there’s any explanation needed there. And let’s not even get started on the double- concept album. So the fact that Joel Plaskett’s latest is a triple-album with a running theme should be a recipe for glorious catastrophe… and yet it’s not. Far from it, actually.

But let’s be clear – Three may be ambitious, but it doesn’t overreach. The only real “concept” at work is the number three, which applies to the number of CDs in the set, manifests itself in a number of song titles (“Pine, Pine, Pine”, “Run, Run, Run” for example) and crops up in the lyrics from time to time – hardly a rock opera. And all 27 songs could have easily fit on two compact discs, but that would have spoiled the fun. And besides the numeral three, fun is the prevailing theme of this set – proceedings are dominated by an easy, laid-back vibe that finds Plaskett knocking off the sort of genial, unpretentious roots-pop/rock that has earned him the mantle of one of this country’s most reliable songsmiths.

And that reliability applies across the entire set. By sticking to what he does best and keeping the delivery simple and straightforward, Plaskett manages the remarkable feat of not including a single standout clunker. They’re certainly not all classics – many drift by with just an amiable nod – but anything that does catch jump out and grab the ear does so because it’s exceptional, and there’s no shortage of those, particularly on disc two. Generally, these are the quieter, more thoughtful compositions – a fact that may mark Plaskett’s transition from rocker to balladeer complete, but one that should be celebrated. Unless you still light a candle nightly in hopes of a Thrush Hermit reunion, in which case I cannot help you.

Plaskett has just begun a cross-Canada tour that will place him at Massey Hall on May 23, and courtesy of Maple Music I have a pair of tickets to give away to the show, along with an autographed copy of Three. To get in on this, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Joel Plaskett” in the subject line and your full name and mailing address in the body, and get that to me by midnight, May 19.

There’s interviews with Plaskett about his reasonings behind crafting a triple-album at The Edmonton Journal, The Gateway, Vue, FFWD and The Vancouver Courier.

MySpace: Joel Plaskett

PopMatters and The Sun talk to Steve Earle about his new album Townes, which you can stream in its entirety right now at Spinner.

Stream: Steve Earle – “Townes”

The Arkansas Times checks in with Richard Buckner. He’s beginning work on his next album which will be out next year.

There’s a new MP3 available from Iron & Wine’s forthcoming rarities collection Around The Well, out next week. You can also stream the whole double-disc collection at their MySpace.

MP3: Iron and Wine – “Belated Promise Ring”
Stream: Iron & Wine / Around The Well

Blurt talks to Andrew Kenny of The Wooden Birds, whose debut Magnolia is out now. Imagine American Analog Set unplugged, sans vibraphone and Farfisa and you’re pretty much there. Check out a track from the album and also their WOXY Lounge Act session from SxSW in March. Muzzle Of Bees and Black Book have interviews.

MP3: The Wooden Birds – “False Alarm”
MP3: The Wooden Birds – “Sugar” (live at WOXY)
MP3: The Wooden Birds – “The Other One” (live at WOXY)
MP3: The Wooden Birds – “Believe In Love” (live at WOXY)

Bowerbirds have released the first MP3 from their new album Upper Air. It’s out July 7 and they’re at Sneaky Dee’s on July 14.

MP3: Bowerbirds – “Northern Lights”

NPR has a session with Vetiver, who will be at the Horseshoe on May 15.

Bob Dylan has a new video.

Video: Bob Dylan – “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”

Beatroute and Canadian Press interview Grizzly Bear. Veckatimest is out May 26, they’re at the Phoenix June 5.

Wayne Coyne tells Billboard that the next Flaming Lips album, due out later this year and still untitled but possibly to be called Embryonic, is looking like it’ll be a double-album.

Metromix interviews Thao, whom I won’t be seeing in New York tomorrow night because I will instead be hoofing it to Connecticut to see Leonard Cohen. I’d like to think Thao would understand.

Drowned In Sound, Express Night Out and Charleston City Paper interview The Thermals’ Kathy Foster.

KEXP has a session with Telekinesis, in town at the Horseshoe on June 10.

The Bygone Bureau talks to John Vanderslice about Romanian Names, out next week. He plays the Horseshoe July 10.

Ohbijou, who are currently gallivanting around Europe, have set a CD release show for Beacons when it comes out on June 2. The party will be on June 25 at the Opera House, tickets $13.

MP3: Ohbijou – “Black Ice”

The Veils and Foreign Born will be at the Horseshoe on July 27, both with new albums to promote – Sun Gang for the former and Person To Person, out June 23, for the latter. Tickets for that are $13.50.

MP3: The Veils – “The Letter”
MP3: The Veils – “Killed By The Boom”
MP3: Foreign Born – “Vacationing People”

Lykke Li is coming back to town yet again on August 9, and this time she’s playing the Sound Academy. Tickets are $26.50.

Caribou are returning to live action this year and have something special planned for their September 10 show at the Opera House. They’ll be performing as The Caribou Vibration Ensemble and according to Exclaim, that means “Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, Koushik, John Schmersal, Kathryn Bint and Ahmed Gallab, along with a choir, a horn section and a quartet of drummers”. Um, okay. Bring it.

MP3: Caribou – “Melody Day”

BeggarsSooo this will be a brief – super-brief – one on account of me actually writing it up more than a week in advance while my head tries to process everything I need to get done before decamping for Austin.

UK indie-dance outfit Friendly Fires seem to have a Forrest Gump-like knack for getting on tours with some of the buzziest acts of the day. They’re here next week – March 31 – for a sold-out show at Lee’s Palace alongside White Lies and The Soft Pack and last year, they rolled in as support for Lykke Li, who you could understatedly say had a good 2008.

To mark their good fortune, the band decided to record a cover of one of Ms Zachrisson’s songs and did a pretty decent job of maintaining its slinkiness, which is no mean feat considering that they don’t have her innate qualities – which is to say being Swedish and sexy.

And I know that Friendly Fires are a trio – but I couldn’t make them all fit in the image crop. My apologies to unnamed, excised Friendly Fire dude.

MP3: Friendly Fires – “I’m Good I’m Gone”
Video: Lykke Li – “I’m Good I’m Gone”

MySpaceThe first A Camp album came at an interesting time, with The Cardigans having proven themselves not just a one-hit wonder but a two-hit one (“My Favourite Game” to go along with “Lovefool”) but also rather burning out in the process. Nina Persson used the downtime to explore country music and Americana with the assistance of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous and not only crafted an excellent record in their self-titled debut, but carried the influences back to The Cardigans to inform my personal favourite of their repertoire, Long Gone Before Daylight. That stylistic uniformity went out the window with their next record, the eclectic but still very solid Super Extra Gravity and with the Cardies again on a break, Persson has taken that grab-bag aesthetic back to A Camp.

Colonia, released in Europe last week but not out in North America until April 28, collects 11 songs that could have been Cardigans tunes in another life but could never be mistaken as such in the forms that they’ve been recorded in here. With the formal addition of Persson’s husband Nathan Larson (of Shudder To Think) and Niclas Frisk as members of A Camp, it’s now more of an official band than before but rather than imprint that band with a particular sonic identity, they instead reinvent themselves in whatever way necessary to compliment the songs. Persson’s vocals are unmistakable but the sounds that surround it incorporate elements of show tunes, electronica, glam and country to name just a very few – there’s enough of everything to make it sound familiar but never to the point of being able to place a song in a tidy pigeonhole.

If there’s a common thread, it’s the sonic richness and elegance each song is imbued with. No matter what they put in it, it sounds marvelous, even if some songs are less memorable than others. But the keepers are worth cherishing – “My America” is buoyed by jaunty horns, the languidness of “Chinatown” beautifully channels Television in its guitar lines and lead single “Stronger Than Jesus” boasts a melody that’s as indelible as anything Persson’s ever come up with. Though I wish as much as any fan that the Cardies break will be a short one – apparently Persson’s bandmates are all using the time to tend to fatherly duties – if it continues to yield more A Camp records then there’ll be no word of complaint from me.

Persson is engaged in conversation by The Sunday Mail, The Telegraph and The Independent. And perhaps as a way of making up for the fact that the album isn’t out domestically for another three months, Nettwerk have made available a live session MP3 of “Stronger Than Jesus”. Update: Stereogum is streaming another song from the record and talk to Nina about it.

MP3: A Camp – “Stronger Than Jesus” (Harlem Session)
Video: A Camp – “Stronger Than Jesus”
MySpace: A Camp

The Toronto Sun, The Province, Montreal Mirror and CityPages interview Lykke Li.

Spin gets a sneak preview of the new album from Mew, currently untitled but targeted for a June release.

There’s new videos from both bands playing The Phoenix on April 25 – Peter Bjorn & John, whose Living Thing is out March 25, and Chairlift.

Video: Peter Bjorn & John – “Nothing To Worry About”
Video: Chairlift – “Evident Utensil”

Also with a new video – School Of Seven Bells.

Video: School Of Seven Bells – “Half Asleep”

Check out the title track of The Thermals’ new album Now We Can See, set for release on April 7.

MP3: The Thermals – “Now We Can See”

Some in-stores of note to tell you about. The Von Bondies will hit up Criminal Records this Friday, February 13, at 5PM before heading down the street for their show at the Horseshoe. And next weekend,Alela Diane, whose To Be Still is coming out next Tuesday, will be at Soundscapes on February 21 at 6:30PM in advance of her show at the Horseshoe that evening opening for Blitzen Trapper and the next day (February 22) at 3PM, Sonic Boom will host Ben Kweller leading up to his show at the Mod Club that evening.

MP3: Alela Diane – “White As Diamonds”
Video: Alela Diane – “White As Diamonds”
Video: Ben Kweller – “Fight”

The National are returning. They’re at the Kool Haus on May 21, tickets $24.50.

And finally, The Chicago Sun-Times weighs in on what could be the most disturbing bit of music industry news in a sea of disturbing music industry news, the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. No good can come of this, none at all. But my question is – how does this affect the Canadian divisions of those respective companies? I ask because I remember way back in the ’90s when Pearl Jam were boycotting all US TicketMaster venues, they still played TM-serviced venues up here and said that was because TicketMaster Canada was a separate entity from the US one they were protesting. Though it could/should have been pointed out that even if that were true from a corporate POV, they were still as asshat-acular as their Stateside counterparts when it came to price gouging and exorbitant service charges. And do you have to have bought tickets for a specific show to take part in the class action suit or can you just be generally irritated?

KnotanWith her 2005 (2006 in North America) debut Until Death Comes, Swedish songstress Frida Hyvonen established herself as a distinctive new voice, capable of veering from stark confessionals to demented whimsy at the drop of a hat. I base this as much on my recollections of her deliciously entertaining March 2007 performance at the Mod Club as I do from whatever impression the album itself made because, well, I no longer seem to have a copy of the album around to refer to.

But I do have the follow-up, Silence Is Wild, and it does reaffirm those impressions. This time out, she chooses to frame her compositions in richer and at points, more theatrical trappings which suit her quite well – better, in my estimation, than the simpler presentation of the debut. The focal point is still her voice – huge yet fragile – and piano, but the grander arrangements lift everything up and offer a broader emotional and musical range that Death simply didn’t have.

Considering my favourite tracks from the album – “Dirty Dancing” and “London” – are also the biggest, I obviously like this change in tact for Hyvonen. The vivid imagery of her lyrics combined with the exuberance of their delivery strike just the right chord in me, and offer a stronger contrast to the smaller, more intimate moments of the album. But even with what some may consider to be a more conventional musical approach, Hyvonen’s innate eccentricity still shines through and sets her apart.

Ms Hyvonen did some solo dates on the east coast in October, so I don’t know if there’s any further North American touring in the cards. But if so I do hope there’s a band involved, even though it’s probably cost-prohibitive. As charming and engaging as she was in the solo context last time, I couldn’t imagine a lot of the new material being done proper justice without all the proper sonic accouterments.

Hyvonen picks her favourite song of the year for Line Of Best fit, gives Aquarium Drunkard a guided tour of her hometown of Flarken and subjects to herself to an interview at RCRDLBL, where you can also download an MP3 of “Birds” from the new album. And check out a live performance of “Dirty Dancing” at PSL.

MP3: Frida Hyvonen – “The Enemy Within”
MySpace: Frida Hyvonen

Clash talks to Lykke Li about her really big 2008. She’s at the Phoenix on February 6.

The video for the first single from A Camp’s forthcoming Colonia is now up. The album is out February 2.

Video: A Camp – “Stronger Than Jesus”

If you were one of those bummed about the cancellation of Noah & The Whale’s North American tour, maybe this Basement Tapes session with the band, recorded their last time through the continent and featuring downloadable live tracks, will ease the pain a bit.

MP3: Noah & The Whale – “5 Years Time” (Basement Tapes session)

The Courier-Mail discusses the art of songwriting with Mountain Goat John Darnielle.

LAist interviews John Dragonetti of The Submarines. They’re at the Drake Underground on February 15 and The Morning Benders have been added as co-headliners on the whole tour.

New York City’s Virgins have a date at the El Mocambo on February 5, tickets $12.50.

MP3: The Virgins – “Rich Girls”
Video: The Virgins – “Rich Girls”

Dose.ca, The Montreal Gazette and The McGill Tribune spend time with Stars, gearing up for a three-night stand at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre December 11 through 13.

Gentleman Reg, who is opening up the middle of those Stars shows (the 12th) as well as playing his own gig at the Drake Underground tonight, will release his new album Jet Black on February 24.

Le Blogotheque takes away a show with Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s.

Prefix talks to Mark Lanegan about working with Isobel Campbell.

JAM interviews Richard Thompson.