Friday Bullets: You may be cool...

(Sorry, re: the photo, but it had to be done.)

• Plants and Animals (Montreal) have released what I believe is their first full length, Parc Avenue, via Secret City Records (Patrick Watson, Miracle Fortress). Both i(heart)music and Paul at Wolves, Hawks and Kites suggested that the album is good enough that it should be a lock for a Polaris Prize nomination. I tend to agree, for two reasons: 1/the first couple of tracks I've heard, I couldn't really get into (this was the case with Patrick Watson the last Polaris Prize winner); and 2/Secret City Records has yet to release a Canadian album that was not nominated for the prize. Links to both sites above will set you on your way with a few tracks from the album and I suppose you can decide for yourselves.... or can you?

• While we're talking about Secret City Records, Miracle Fortress has done a cover of a Daft Punk song. It's pretty kick-ass. Also, according to their myspace they're playing a couple of US dates with the Most Serene Republic - to which I ask: why not play SW Ontario with them as well... I would be significantly more excited about tonights tMSR show if we could replace the Diableros with MF.
  

[mp3] Miracle Fortress - Digital Love (Daft Punk cover)

• Jeff helped me track down Beirut's black session, since I am functionally retarded. For anyone who's interested you need to go here. Click on the link at the bottom of the page that takes you to some 'MegaUploader Site', and here's where I went wrong... I saw all these find a new adult friend ads and took off. You need to click on the ads... no wait don't do that... you need to enter in the code they give you, and voila you should have your hands on a zip file (in about an hour, its pretty slow, but worth the wait). While you're waiting:

[mp3] Beirut - Postcards From Italy [Black Session]

• Allan, of Allan's World Music, which is a blog that, coincidentally, is not all about world music, writes his thoughts on the label PR guy from MGMT. Suffice to say, he was not real impressed by their aggressive self promotion.
  

• An interesting article via TrueHoop, on whether chemistry was a good enough reason to make the Shaq trade. Henry Abbott interviews Ithaca College's Noah B. Gentner, Assistant Professor of Exercise and Sport Sciences, who makes the distinction between social cohesion, or chemistry, and task cohesion, where the guys on the team fill out defined roles within a system to accomplish a goal. He argues that task cohesion is more important than social cohesion, although, the two concepts are inextricably linked.
  

• If anyone has any new TV shows for me, I'm dying without new episodes of the Office, which I've been told will be back in April.