Frank YangAdele has been a big deal for a while, her 2008 debut 19 having picked up all kinds of accolades and awards. And that’s kind of a shame because with that level of acclaim as a floor, it’s difficult to express just how much better the follow-up 21 is. I appreciated the debut as a showcase for Ms Adkin’s talents as a singer and songwriter, but the follow up bests it in pretty much every way.

Her voice is still as formidable a presence as ever, with so much inherent strength and character that the acrobatics and oversinging that those who would aspire to be her peers inevitably resort to are wholly unnecessary. But 21‘s songs themselves are more sophisticated, melodic and dynamic and so effortlessly cross genres like soul, gospel, folk, pop and even a couple commendable forays into rock that they make the idea of genres kind of pointless. Whereas on 19 some of the songs were there to serve the voice, on 21 everything is in service to the songs. In other words, it’s a hell of a record.

And in support of it, Adele was in town last night for a taping of MTV Live which included an intimate mini-concert at the Masonic Temple. Having not seen her perform before – I think her Toronto appearances took her directly from The Rivoli to Massey Hall – I felt fortunate that I was invited to attend this show. Following a sort-of late-night talk show format segment that wasn’t as terrible as a feared and certainly featured more on-camera raunch and swearing than I’d expected, Adele came out delivered a set that was brief but also would have convinced anyone that she was the real deal.

Backed by a full six-piece band, she opened with “Rolling In The Deep” and then stripped (and sat) down with just a pianist and cup of tea for the ballady portion of the show, delivering “Someone Like You”, “Turning Tables” and 19 Dylan cover “Feel My Love” with astonishing presence despite not having much in the way of stage moves. Between songs, she took the time to banter and joke with the adoring audience – there was certainly no sign of the stage fright that she’s said to suffer from – and after inviting her band back, closed with “Chasing Pavements”. A short but completely stirring set that proved that having the lungs and the voice is only meaningful if they’re connected directly to the heart.

Adele plays a sold-out show at The Kool Haus on May 18. The Daily Record has an interview.

Video: Adele – “Rolling In The Deep”
Video: Adele – “Make You Feel My Love”
Video: Adele – “Chasing Pavements”
Video: Adele – “Cold Shoulder”

Spinner, BBC and The Guardian talk to Noah & The Whale, whose new record Last Night On Earth is available to stream at NME in advance of its March 15 release date. If their goal with this record was to no longer be lumped in with the English anti-folk movement… well I think they’ve done it. Noah & The Whale and their synths will be at The Mod Club on March 24.

Stream: Noah & The Whale / Last Night On Earth

The “director’s cut” for one of Mumford & Sons’ videos from Sigh No More is now online, though curiously it’s about 9 seconds shorter than the official version.

Video: Mumford & Sons – “Winter Winds” (director’s cut)
Video: Mumford & Sons – “Winter Winds”

Spinner talks to Esben & The Witch, in town at Wrongbar next Friday night for Canadian Musicfest.

Vanity Fair and University Observer Q&A Anna Calvi, who was also supposed to be on that Wrongbar CMF bill but who has cancelled all dates prior to that one and the one after due to an arm/hand injury. So while I await the official word, it’s safe to say that the Toronto show is off as well.

The Quietus interviews Liam Gallagher of Beady Eye.

Drowned In Sound meets Gruff Rhys, who follows up the May 3 release of Hotel Shampoo with a date at The Horseshoe on June 11.

Ladytron have released a video for one of the new tracks that will appear on the Best of Ladytron: 00-10 compilation, due out March 29.

Video: Ladytron – “Age Of Hz”

Digital Spy talks to Patrick Wolf about his forthcoming new record Lupercalia, out May 31, while Spinner grabs an interview video-style.

A new Loney Dear video has surfaced. Let’s hope this means the new full-length Hall Music isn’t far behind.

Video: Loney Dear – “Young Hearts”

The Line Of Best Fit, Pitchfork, Blurt and Exclaim all have interviews with Lykke Li about her spanking new record Wounded Rhymes. She is at The Phoenix on May 22.

The Line Of Best Fit points out a new video from The Concretes and a complete live show from Paris available to stream at Grand Crew.

Video: The Concretes – “Crack In The Paint”

Blurt reports that the third salvo of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds reissues will arrive on May 17 and cover his ’90s output with bonus-loaded editions of Let Love In, Murder Ballads, The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part.

R.E.M.’s new record Collapse Into Now is available to stream all over the place leading up to its release next week. Check it out at Exclaim

Stream: R.E.M. / Collapse Into Now

And here are some of the new(ish) concert announcements for this week; Joe Pug and Strand Of Oaks have a date at The Horseshoe on April 20, tickets $10.

MP3: Strand Of Oaks – “Bonfire”

Joan As Police Woman, whom I don’t think has been to Toronto in the past four years if ever – a Summer 2007 show was cancelled – will be at The Drake on April 21 as part of a tour in support of her new record The Deep Field, which comes out on April 11, tickets $12. After Ellen has a feature.

MP3: Joan As Police Woman – “The Magic”
MP3: Joan As Police Woman – “To Be Loved”

Guitar Wolf have a date at Lee’s Palace for May 17, extending their previously-announced North American tour, tickets $18.50. They released Uchusenkan Love last Fall.

MP3: Guitar Wolf – “After School Thunder”

Anti reports that Man Man are almost done work on their new record and are setting out on tour, presumably to promote. They’re in Toronto on May 26 at Lee’s Palace, tickets $17.50.

MP3: Man Man – “Top Drawer”

Sondre Lerche gives New York Magazine the scoop on his new self-titled record, due out June 7. He’ll be playing songs from it – presumably – when he hits The Mod Club on May 31, tickets $18.50.

Here’s a tour filled with more win than Charlie Sheen – Okkervil River, Titus Andronicus and Future Islands stopping in at The Phoenix on June 10, tickets $18.50 in advance. Okkervil will release their new record I Am Very Far on May 10, Titus are still working last year’s glorious The Monitor (and will still be at The Horseshoe for their own headlining show April 1) and Future Islands released In Evening Air last year.

MP3: Okkervil River – “Wake And Be Fine” (live on Jimmy Fallon)
MP3: Titus Andronicus – “A More Perfect Union”
MP3: Future Islands – “Tin Man”

That same night but costing $18.50 less than the Okkervil show – that’s free, if you don’t feel like doing the math – is The Joel Plaskett Emergency performing at Metro Hall as part of this year’s Luminato arts festival. Their set time is 9:20PM.

MP3: The Joel Plaskett Emergency – “Deny Deny Deny”

And finally, some fellow with Britpop love in his heart and too much time on his hands has begun digitizing archives of Select Magazine. I bought so many mediocre records based on their boundless enthusiasm, but also some awesome ones. Ah, nostalgia.

MergeJust a short one today as I’m still recovering from a) replacing all the carpet in my apartment with hardwood (well, laminate) in a single day and b) trying to clean up the enormous mess generated by a). Exhausting stuff, that.

So I’ll let Dan Bejar take it away. Now a couple years removed from Trouble In Dreams and with Pornographer duties largely done with for a while, Dan is getting Destroyer back into gear. Following up last year’s epic-length “Bay Of Pigs” 12″, Bejar released a second limited edition 12″ for the song “Archer On The Beach” earlier this month, but if you haven’t already got your copy secured, then you’re out of luck – all 1000 copies are spoken for. But you can stream the song, and its spoken-word b-side “Grief Point”, courtesy of Merge.

There’s still plenty of time to reserve a copy of the new Destroyer LP Kaputt, though – it’s not out for another two months, on January 25. The first MP3 is now up and while it’s not a cover of the Luna song (how great would that be?), it’s a pretty sweet if chilled out tune that incorporates some of the electronic and atmospheric touches of the aforementioned 12″ releases and some wonderfully questionable saxophone. I’ve been in the mood for a new Destroyer record for a while now – looking forward to hearing the rest of this.

MP3: Destroyer – “Chinatown”
Stream: Destroyer – “Archer On The Beach”/”Grief Point”

Montreal represents on March 5 when Lee’s Palace welcomes 2008 Polaris Prize shortlisters Plants & Animals and 2010 Polaris Prize winners Karkwa. Tickets for the show are $15 in advance.

MP3: Plants & Animals – “Tom Cruz”
MP3: Karkwa – “Dors Dans Mon Sang”

Exclaim has details on a Nick Drake tribute/benefit concert taking place at Trinity-St. Paul’s in Toronto on November 28.

BBC talks to Mark Hamilton of Woodpigeon on the topic of concert taping. Mark has been posting various sundry MP3s to the Woodpigeon site all Fall, including this live solo one from Montreal’s CJLO.

MP3: Woodpigeon – “…And as the Ship Went Down, You’d Never Looked Finer (Live on CJLO)”

S. Carey, in town at the Horseshoe on December 19, is featured in a Daytrotter session.

School Of Seven Bells have released a new video from Disconnect From Desire and have been tapped to open up for Interpol on their North American tour next year – including the February 15 stop at the Sound Academy in Toronto.

Video: School Of Seven Bells – “I L U”

Also with a new video is Sufjan Stevens, who’s taken the song title to heart with regards to the clip’s art direction. Tribute will be paid to a simpler Sufjan by means of a tribute album to his Seven Swans record featuring Bonnie Prince Billy and a number of Asthmatic Kitty artists. Seven Swans Reimagined will be out on March 22.

Video: Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”

The Radio Dept.’s Martin Carlberg discusses the band’s modest career ambitions with Spinner. Their singles and b-sides compilation Passive Aggressive is out on January 25 and they make their Toronto debut at Lee’s Palace on February 7.

M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez talks to Pitchfork about his plans for his next record.

Nick Cave tells Spinner that a new Nick Cave record should be out next year – just as soon as he writes it. In the meantime, Grinderman remains on the front burner – The AV Club talks to Warren Ellis about making Grinderman 2.

PulpwikiThe points at which Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Pulp intersect aren’t plentiful. The former’s blackly humourous murder balladry is some distance from the latter’s droll yet incisive social commentary, but they both have tall, gangly and unconventionally charismatic frontmen, a preternatural ability to tell a vivid tale in song, and a general undeniable awesomeness. And on Pulp’s 2001 “Bad Cover Version” single, they shared a song.

In keeping with the theme of the song, which also yielded one of my favourite videos ever, linked below and with a spotters guide here, Pulp commissioned Nick Cave and crew to do not one but two covers of their massive hit, “Disco 2000″. The first, which appeared as the proper b-side and is featured this week, had Cave doing a slower, croony, piano bar-ish version – a far cry from the celebratory tone of the original, but far from a “bad cover version”. The second version was acknowledged to exist but remained unreleased for years until the deluxe reissues of His’N'Hers, Different Class and This Is Hardcore.

Then it appeared on the bonus disc of Different Class, despite not being period-correct since it was a b-side from the band’s 2001 swan song We Love Life. But We Love Life wasn’t getting the deluxe reissue treatment and the second cover, dubbed the “Nick Cave Pub Rock Version” was too good/fun to leave in the vaults. The version note pretty much tells the tale, as Cave and the Seeds bash their way through the tune in finest, loudest, bar rock fashion and considering that style is natural to neither Pulp nor Cave, the finished result can’t help but be fantastic.

Though released in the UK and other places back in 2006, the deluxe editions of Pulp’s holy trinity of albums remained unavailable domestically in the United States until now – all three are being released this coming Tuesday. And I will testify that the extra goods on all three editions make them worth owning, absolutely. Pulp are not planning on reforming for Glastonbury 2010 or any other occasion. Jarvis Cocker continues on with his solo career, appeared (in voice) in Fantastic Mr Fox (which I still have to see) and is interviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Brisbane Times. Nick Cave released his second novel this Fall in The Death Of Bunny Munro and will release a new Grinderman record in the new year.

MP3: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Disco 2000″
Video: Pulp – “Disco 2000″
Video: Pulp – “Bad Cover Version”

Roger SargentIt’s been some time since The Charlatans could be considered “buzzworthy” by any objective measure. Don’t get me wrong, it’s commendable that they’ve endured as long as they have, outliving most of their contemporaries in the baggy/Britpop eras and assembling a respectable oeuvre of singles and albums, but I will wager they’ve never been anyone in the world’s favourite band and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

They did manage to garner more headlines than they have in years last year, though, when they opted to release their tenth album, You Cross My Path, as a free download (physical formats that you had to pay for followed a couple months later). The record was also notable for being surprisingly decent. They’d lost me with 2001′s funk-soul pastiche Wonderland and I’d assumed that the plot remained lost, but Path was very much an example of the Charlatans doing what they’d always done well, melodic, danceable and anthemic and if you listen closely, cribbing shamelessly from pretty much every era of British rock.

And on a more local scale, they made a surprise concert announcement in July, making a date for the the Mod Club in October – a venue that no matter how far removed from their heyday they might be, would still be considered small for them. And, of course, they canceled the date for reasons unknown barely two weeks later. But it seems they’re bound and determined to give their Toronto-area fans an up-close and personal encounter as they’ve again announced a show at the Mod Club, this one for September 23 – that gives them four months to change their minds. They’ve also announced a couple other North American dates, including September 22 in London, Ontario, so it looks like they’re making a proper tour of this. Tickets for the Toronto show are a rather dear $36 before service charges, so you’ll have to stop and think just how badly you want to hear “The Only One I Know”. And yeah, tickets for the canceled show were a slightly more reasonable $30 but hey – the economy’s collapsed. What’re you going to do.

MP3: The Charlatans – “Oh! Vanity”
MP3: The Charlatans – “You Cross My Path”
Video: The Charlatans – “Oh Vanity”
Video: The Charlatans – “You Cross My Path”
Video: The Charlatans – “The Misbegotten”
Video: The Charlatans – “Mis-Takes”
ZIP: The Charlatans / You Cross My Path

Colorado Daily and The Colorado Springs Independent have interviews with Doves, who will be at the Kool Haus next Monday night, June 1.

Dots & Dashes talks to Patrick Wolf about new album The Bachelor, out June 1. He’ll be at the Mod Club on June 15.

White Lies discuss the state of the music industry with BBC. They’re at the Phoenix on September 26.

Florence & The Machine’s debut Lungs has a UK release date of July 6 but according to Pitchfork, it’s not going to be out in North America until October 13. Yeah, I’ll wait for the domestic release. Sure.

Clash asks Fanfarlo on how they like to pass the time while waiting.

With their North American tour set to kick off tonight in New York, A Camp took some time to talk to NME, New York Magazine, New York Press and Magnet, where Nina Persson and Nathan Larsen are also playing guest editor this week. They’ll be at the Mod Club on June 1.

The Boston Globe talks to Gentleman Reg, who will be opening up many of those A Camp shows.

While in town this week, The National stopped in at the CBC to record a performance of one of their new songs, formerly entitled “Karamazov” but now dubbed “Runaway”. Gorgeous stuff.

Video: The National – “Runaway” (live on QTV)

The San Francisco Chronicle interviews Jenny Lewis.

The Los Angeles Times profiles The Kills.

All week, PitchforkTV is running Do You Love Me Like I Love You, the documentary feature that appear on the recent Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds reissues. The first two segments are up now, more to follow.

Ingrid ZAs much as I’m looking forward to being in New York next week, I can’t help feeling I’m getting there a week too late. For it was this Wednesday night just past that Patrick Wolf played a one-off show at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan, previewing material from this forthcoming album The Bachelor – out in the UK on June 1 and in North America on June 2 and August 11, digitally and physically, respectively. And even though said performance was intended to be a mostly solo and mostly acoustic intimate affair, the live reports and photos from Stereogum, Prefix, The Music Slut, The New York Press and Spin make it sound like it was just as enthralling and magical a show as his more extroverted performances.

I mentioned just a couple days ago that a proper Wolf tour – also featuring The Living Things, The Plastiscines and Jaguar Love – was being assembled in conjunction with his new label NYLON and while a full itinerary is yet to be announced, I’m pleased to be able to announce that in addition to the handful of dates already sussed out, there will be a Toronto show on June 17 at the Mod Club, tickets on sale May 16. It’s fitting that this news come just a couple days before my birthday because Wolf’s May 2007 show at the El Mocambo on my actual date of birth was one of the most fun evenings I’d had in ages, and I have similarly high expectations of this show. With that gig, Phoenix and NxNE all falling in the same week, it’s shaping up to be a pretty crazy June. Crazy awesome.

The Music Slut caught Wolf for a quick interview on his visit to New York wherein he revealed that the sequel to The Bachelor, entitled The Conqueror, will now not see release until next year and the two may still be combined into their originally-intended double-album under the name Battle in the near future. Burton Mail also has an interview.

Video: Patrick Wolf – “Vulture”
MySpace: Patrick Wolf

There’s a video from the forthcoming God Help The Girl album of the same name. The album is out June 23.

MP3: God Help The Girl – “Come Monday Night”
Video: God Help The Girl – “Come Monday Night”

Mail On Sunday talks to Blur’s Graham Coxon about not having such a great time of it in the ’90s.

Doves are giving away a free MP3 of an alternate take of “Birds Flew Backwards” from Kingdom Of Rust. They’re at the Kool Haus on June 1.

Pitchfork has details on the 20th anniversary deluxe reissue of The Stone Roses’ debut, due out August 11.

PJ Harvey and John Parish talk to Filter about their collaboration A Woman A Man Walked By.

La Roux has released a new video. The self-titled debut is due June 29.

Video: La Roux – “Bulletproof”

Extenuating circumstance kept me from the Kills/Horrors show last night but if you need some kind of fix, have an interview with the former’s Alison Mosshart at NOW where they discuss the re-release of Keep On Your Mean Side and an interview with the latter at The Quietus.

Did you miss Bowerbirds’ show at the Drake last weekend? Fear not – they’re back on July 14 for a show at Sneaky Dee’s with Megafaun.

Stereogum gets an update as to where The Flaming Lips are with their next album – the working title is Embryonic and it is targeted for a September release.

VBS’ Soft Focus sits down with Ted Leo for an extensive interview.

Clash, Black Book and Paste talk to Nick Zinner and Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I think I would have paid much much money to see Nick Cave’s script for Gladiator 2 made real. Well, I’d have bought a ticket at least. Maybe two.

Pitchfork has details on Dark Night Of The Soul, the forthcoming multimedia collaboration between Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, Danger Mouse and David Lynch due out this Summer. Too strange to try and recap here, so just go read the article.

Trailer: Dark Night Of The Soul

The Aquarian talks to Hutch Harris of The Thermals while The AV Club gets Kathy Foster to shuffle her music collection.

The Quietus has an interview with Bob Mould.

The Artist’s Den welcomes The Hold Steady to their studios for a couple of video performances – via So Much Silence.

The New York Times profiles St Vincent.

Popmatters asks 20 questions of School Of Seven Bells’ Ben Curtis.