Movie news: I guess Universal publicists put in an update at IMDB. Now it says the title is SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, which I must tell you is the accurate current title of the film. It may change in the future, but I'm pretty sure every draft I've seen has had that title on it.

I think it's an appropriate title for a done-in-one version of the story, don't you?

Anime: I watched that first episode of Macross Frontier, which I guess debuted in December (the full series begins in Japan later this week). It was awesome. Really. I was impressed. It got me unexpectedly excited. I've always liked Macross/Robotech... stories about huge numbers of people drifting in space do something for me, I guess. (I got it here.)

Video games: I started playing Etrian Odyssey (for DS), which I had been hyped about back when it was announced, but then I forgot about it! Anyway, it's pretty cool so far, in a curiously Eye of the Beholder-kinda way, but with adorable character art.

Music: I am rediscovering Daft Punk's Human After All, which most of us dismissed back in '05. Somehow it has improved with age (and with the release of Alive 2007, not to mention the Justice album). Good inking music, maybe.

Books: We are listening to Into the Wild in audiobook format, speaking of inking music. I haven't seen the movie, although I agree that Emile Hirsch is handsome. The book is pretty good. Somehow we keep listening to books about Man's Folly.

You should buy the new Spoon album this week, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. A friend at Merge was nice enough to give me a sneak peek but I'll be buying it ASAP. Spoon is one of my favourite bands right now. The New York Times says of Britt Daniel: "He sounds like a British guy with a Southern accent and a cold, which means he sounds like a rock star, only more so."

As to another S-band that is releasing an album this week, I'm torn between actually buying it or just stealing it, because in a lot of ways I could care less about the current exploits of Mr Corgan. I know I kind of semi-named a book after them and stuff, but seriously. I am dreading the rest of this summer in which all the teenyboppers at the mall are listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. It's like Weezer in 2001 all over again. The single is not bad but I anticipate the album with quiet dread.

We saw the Fiery Furnaces last night (opening: Dios Malos) and that was weird. I kind of wish sometimes they would just play a song like normal people, but I guess that is not to be. I like them, but they're frustrating. Matt F was manning the merch table like an indie cartoonist at the types of things I go to. Eleanor's confident strut makes the band work even when they're playing completely atonal deconstructions of songs that were pretty obtuse to start with.

Anyway, I guess I'm back for a bit. I will post occasionally over the remainder of the summer.

My 5 Favourite Songs of 2006

These are in no particular order, except an order that sounds good if you listen to them in a row, like a little mini-mix-album. Note: I don't pretend to be like an arbiter of taste or anything. I just listen to music and I feel like talking about music.

Neko Case - Star Witness: (from the album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood) This is the first 2006 song that made me think wow, what a great song. I also think it's my favourite Neko Case song. She can be a little unwieldy sometimes, but this heart-broke epic "my baby done got himself killed" type of song is weird and ambiguous in a good way.

The Minus 5 - With A Gun: (from the album The Minus 5, AKA the Gun Album)Hope said this is her favourite song of the year. Apparently Wilco plays the backing music for it. The Minus 5 put out an untitled album earlier this year about guns, drinking, being sad, and other stuff. It's a really good album. This song is about... I don't know. But I like it.

The Fiery Furnaces - Benton Harbour Blues (Single Edit): (from the album Bitter Tea) There were a few really amazing songs on this album, but this is the one that grabbed me right from the start. A sort of sweet sad nostalgic song about biking in the snow and things. It has a great keyboard loop thing and a nice little beat and everything about it feels right. (The album version is long and chopped up - still good, but not such easy-listenin').

The Divine Comedy - Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont: (from the album Victory For the Comic Muse) Here is a strange, lovely, otherwordly and ethereal song about, uh, hot-air ballooning, I think. Neil Hannon and the Divine Comedy are two of my favourite things. I listened to this song over and over this past summer. What a weird song! Where does it come from? Who is Count Grassi??

Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix): You may have heard the original version of this song, which is one of the best songs this year (the album, Writer's Block, is pretty good too), but you may not have heard this ridiculous, silly, shivery-wicked-cool Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve remix. Takes the original thing and pushes it just a smidge, into a new dimension you could never have imagined! You can find it on iTunes.

5 Hon. Mentions

Belle And Sebastian - Dress Up In You: Hope's other favourite song. This is from The Life Pursuit, the first Belle & Sebastian album that I ever liked. I like many of the songs on it quite a bit, but this is the best one because it's the saddest. Apparently we like sad songs.

The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then): (from The Crane Wife) I vacillate between enjoying the Decemberists and being super-annoyed and hating them. This is probably my favourite song of theirs. It's a duet with Laura Veirs, who seems to help make Mr. Decemberist less annoying. It's also a great ballad about the South during the Civil War and that's nice. Plus it sounds great.

The Blow - Pile of Gold: (from Paper Television) I'm still undecided whether I really like the Blow, but when I first heard this song I felt my mind getting messed up in a special way. It's like this chilly little indie dance thing and I can't resist it.

Phoenix - Long Distance Call: (from It's Never Been Like That) We listened to this album a lot in the past few months and this is my favourite track off it. It's kind of like the Strokes meets a wall of synth pads, which I'm sure has been said a million times. They are also French, and the dude says "huh!" a lot in that rock-star way.

Cracker - Something You Ain't Got: (from Greenland) I also want to put this here because we've been listening to a ton of Cracker lately. They put out great album this year, their best one in years or possibly ever, and one of the best alt-countryish things I've heard in a while. It has a few duds (mostly when they rock out), and it could have been trimmed a bit, but overall it's a gorgeous, tired, rambling thing and I enjoy it very much. I know they're probably seen as a cheesy 90s band now but they're sooooooooooo not!

PS the quote in the header is from Cracker, the song "Darling We're Out Of Time".

We're going to see Wilco tonight. If I had a list of "bands i would most like to see play", then Wilco would probably be at the top. They're pretty good, and their current lineup plays a mean show, and I know pretty much all their songs, and I've never seen them, and I kind of doubted I ever would, but here they are, playing in Dartmouth!

Anyway, yeah, I have to go.

This is the cover. Click on it to go to flickr where you can see it a bit bigger. That's all you get until it's out, though. Tentative street date: May 24.

The Fiery Furnaces album: I have been listening to it for about a month now. At first I hated it, but then I grew to like it, as has been the case with most of their other stuff. But one of the big things I liked about them was their lyrics, which have previously been weird, obtuse narratives about a million different things. On this album they are mostly either (a) repetitive nursery-rhyme type things, or (b) played backwards so you can't understand them.

My other problem with this album is that he chops up the songs all weirdly, and THEN presents the nice sweet straightforward edits of them at the end of the album! What's with that? So willfully difficult! The straightforward version of "Benton Harbor Blues" is such a great song. Sticks in my head all the live-long day. I'm sure I would have liked the long, cut-up, "difficult" version better if they hadn't SHOWN me the wonderful breezy pop version. Whatever that means.

Anyway, I still like it, and I plan to buy it or whatever. I like the cover.

have you guys seen this cover yet? oh man.



comes out tomorrow, i think. i really like it and, one day, i will buy it. but probably not tomorrow. we're going to england so i'll be a bit busy.

here's a little poster for the nottingham event I posted about last time. Not 100% done yet, but you get the idea. Feel free to take it and post it around wherever the English will be looking.

(edit...)
I found this little French blog-up of Scott Pilgrim, just a line or two, and found it amusing. Way more amusing than it actually is, I'm sure.

"Scott Pilgrim est amoureux de Ramona, mais pour la garder, il doit combattre ses 7 ex maléfiques tout en gerant les interventions malveillantes de ses propres ex à lui, de sa soeur, et de son co-locataire gay (il doit y avoir une loi qui oblige tous les co-locs a etre gays!)."

I like the phrases "ses 7 ex maléfiques" (her 7 evil exes) and "son co-locataire gay" (his gay roommate, also "co-loc" for short, which I love!). Ha ha ha ha sigh. At the end he says (paraphrase) "there must be a law saying all roommates must be gay!". I guess I just like French colloquialisms. Reading NANA in French made it vastly more amusing to me than it would have been in English.

Also, I am now listening to Kraftwerk, which is not as exciting as I maybe always dreamed it would be. I really liked Roxy Music's "Country Life" though (first time listening to it seriously, although one of my old roommates had played it for me a few years ago).

I had to type these out for an interview, so I'll share them with you.

( tracklistings for the 3 scott pilgrim mixtapes... )

I somehow lost my copy of Something / Anything, disc 1, by Todd Rundgren. I still have disc 2. I realized this with some finality when I reorganized our CDs last week. So, QUESTION: Does anybody have this album on CD? Can somebody burn me a copy of it? radiomaru at gmail dot com!

( Eisu did a Scott Pilgrim fanart... )

You guys should all obviously download this new Of Montreal song over here. It's like, so great and stuff! Chekkitouutttt!!!

OMG, you guys should also sign up on the Secret Friend Society livejournal feed!!!

I put up a bit torrent of my first album "this is intolerable", and it would help me a lot if a bunch of people would hop on that shit and start downloading / seeding so that I'm not the only one with the file!!

OLD 97s : DRAG IT UP
the new Old 97s is probably their best album from every standpoint. I think that ridiculous Rhett Miller solo album was the best thing that could have happened to this band. it's like he got out all the stupidity on there, and saved everything perfect for the band. there are no shitty pop songs! it's better than Satellite Rides which was like 75% pop-rock stuff. this one is very forlorn and desert-feelin' and it's all country ballads and waltzes and good stuff. some of the songs are so totally pretty, which the Old 97s have basically never been before. it doesn't ROCK AS HARD, but i don't mind because they already put out like at least 3 really good ROCK albums, and this is like their great artistic statement. i hope people notice!

OF MONTREAL : SATANIC PANIC IN THE ATTIC
i've never listened to this band before now. "just another elephant 6 band!" their new album is just so insanely catchy and wild and happy and entertaining. it has an equal mix of completely nonsensical songs and fairly direct ones, and they all have this punchy mix and lots of hooks and singalong parts. i get songs from this album stuck in my head all the time. the first track's lyrics consist only of "come disconnect the dots with me poppet, come disconnect the dots. it's so beautiful, our lunacy." and it goes on for four and a half minutes, and never gets boring!

this week i got two CDs:
Frank Black - Teenager of the year (1994)
Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything? (1972)

I remember thinking a few years ago that Frank Black was so obscure and weird and people who listen to Frank Black must be such pretentious weirdos, and here I am listening to Frank Black, and I was actually thinking to myself that I hope nobody sees me buying it or whatever and that it's not only mainstream, but also LAME. But it's not so bad. It's me who is bad. I am so bad and fucked up about music. It's all over for me. Anyway, the first half of this album (originally a double album, but it's just one CD and it's still only like 60 minutes long) is very, very, truly excellent. The first two songs are just this insane quick noisy blast of "HUH?" and then it becomes very poppy and fun and sort of TMBGish (apparently he is a fan of TMBG). There are a lot of really great songs. The second half is not quite as stellar -- it doesn't "zing" quite as much. Maybe that's just because there's too much material on there, but I also think it was a front-loaded album. Still, that front is loaded very well.

I downloaded a bunch of Todd Rundgren because I... okay, I don't want to explain. But anyway, obviously I have been listening to the Sounds of the 70's lately and trying to find stuff that's intelligent and not prog-rock and is still worth listening and has had some kind of impact that has reverberated into the modern day. Stuff that inspires me or whatever. And the first three Todd Rundgren albums are good. I have been getting into piano-based melodies (as I play keyboards more now), and Elton John and Billy Joel don't do anything for me, so I ended up with Todd Rundgren. Something/Anything is his 3rd album. It's a double album too (this one is long enough to actually need two CDs). The first side is pop songs, the second side is "cerebral", the third is "heavy" rock, the last side is supposedly a pop operetta but is really just a farce and was recorded live in the studio with a band. Other than that, he played every instrument by himself, which I think is pretty awesome. And it works well overall. It's catchy and poppy and studio-wizard-y and pretty and brain-tickling. A lot of the second disc is still kind of indistinguishable sludge to me, but I'm still processing it. The very last song is awesome. It is about a slut.

I recommend these two albums, with the reservation that I really only recommend them to myself.