Somehow five years have passed since Canadian indie supergroup Broken Social Scene graced us with their last record. Now, the band is back and ready to roll. Releasing their newest record on their longtime home of Arts & Crafts Records on May 4th. The yet to be titled album is possibly going to blow your socks right off. As we all know BSS has a revolving door of artists that come in and out of the group, six key members are currently holding down the main fort. Kevin Drew, Andrew Whiteman, Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, Charles Spearin and Sam Goldberg.

Who else is on board you may ask? Well, get ready for a mouthful of artists. Leslie Feist, Amy Milan, Evan Cranley, Emily Haines, Jimmy Shaw, Jason Collett, Ohad Benchetrit, John Crossingham, Marty Kinack, Julie Penner, Leon Kingstone, and Lisa Lobsinger are all back in action. The list doesn’t end there. There are several outside contributors making their way onto the album including Sea and Cake’s Sam Prekop, Tortoise’s Doug McCombs, Pavement’s Spiral Stairs, Death From Above 1979 singer-drummer Sebastien Grainger, the Weakerthans’ Jason Tait amongst others. John McEntire of Tortoise and the Sea and Cake produced the new record in Chicago and Toronto with the band last year. Phew. Tour dates are already starting to gain momentum including with one with Pavement…so check them out below!

Broken Social Scene Tour Dates:

05-01 San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
05-03 Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda Theatre
05-07 New York, NY – Webster Hall
05-13 London, England – Brixton Academy *
05-14 Minehead, England – All Tomorrow’s Parties
05-17 London, England – Heaven
05-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg
05-19 Cologne, Germany – Burgerhaus Stollwerck
05-21 Paris, France – La Maroquinerie
06-19 Toronto, Ontario – Toronto Island *#

* with Pavement
# with Band of Horses

Downtown Church sermon from October 11, 2009 by Jimmy Shaw.

This is part of our ongoing series called God’s Relentless Pursuit – A Study of the Minor Prophets.

Download the MP3

What you see before you is Mortimer the Pig, aka our beloved molcajete—a Mexican mortar and pestle made from volcanic rock—that we received as a wedding present. Mortimer was billed as being pre-seasoned, but as of this writing, shamefully I have yet to put that to the test even though we’ve had him for going on two years now.

So picture this scene. On Sunday I run into Carolynn Carreño (a vicious competitor in our upcoming Guac Off), and she’s deep in conversation with my very favorite Mexican chef, Jimmy Shaw (chef/owner of Loteria Grill). What do you think they’re talking about? GUACAMOLE. I’m not even kidding. I had to shut it down right there on the spot. Carolynn later confessed that she was asking Jimmy about seasoning her molcajete. She has one like mine (sans snout) and believed hers was also pre-seasoned, only to make a test batch of guac laden with grit. And so, even though Carolynn is fierce, she is also a friend and was kind enough to share Jimmy’s advice for seasoning. First, rinse your molcajete and tejolote in water and allow to dry. Then put a couple scoops of rice rock salt and grind to a fine powder, using short, downward motions and not continuously around the side. [Note: I misunderstood: Jimmy recommends rock salt, but Carolynn has had several others tell her rice so why not try both?]

Do this every day for an eternity. Apparently it will take years to get this thing glassy smooth, and the oils and acids used in making salsas and guacamole help in the process over time, but in the countdown to Guac Off, we’ll be seasoning Mortimer daily to get him in fighting shape.

BREAKING NEWS: Meanwhile, to find out what Carolynn and her molcajete are up to, click HERE.

For a band whose lead singer, Emily Haines, was ready to stop writing when she sojourned to Argentina last year, Toronto based Metric (Haines, Jimmy Shaw, Joshua Winstead, and Joules Scott-Key) has never sounded better, and with Fantasies, they make yet another huge leap forward. Whereas previous albums had their highs and lows, Fantasies is one continuous, feverish high. The songs are anxious, troubled, troubling and possessed of a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet, as on tracks like “Sick Muse,” “Twilight Galaxy,” “Gold Guns Girls” and the closer “Stadium Love”) ferocity not seen in this measure or with this level of intensity previously in their work. Is this their masterwork? I certainly hope not, as I fully expect they’ll just continue to get better, but for now, Fantasies is a stunningly good, absolutely satisfying mix of electropop with some hard edged rock. The experience of listening to the album from end to end is fairly exhilarating, and when it’s all over, there’s a genuine feeling of having been transported somewhere unique and compelling. The very best material is weighted towards the first half, but this is a pretty great record all around, and without a doubt Metric’s finest album yet. Standout cuts: “Help I’m Alive,” “Sick Muse,” “Twilight Galaxy” and “Gimme Sympathy.”

http://www.ilovemetric.com/

Photo Credit — Phillyist.com

Metric released its new album Fantasies on March 14th after four years of hiatus since their successful Live It Out. According to PrefixMag.com, vocalist Emily Haines opted for more “genuine” and “simple” lyrics, while guitarist Jimmy Shaw described the album as having “very big” and “very dreamy” sounds. Although the album has its down, the overall quality stays true to the artists’ descriptions, deviating from the zesty and childlike spunk from Live It Out while staying loyal to the band’s hypnotic style.

Particularly mind-blowing  are Satellite Mind, Help I’m Alive, and Gold Gun Girls–although somewhat disturbing (If I stumble, they’re gonna eat me alive//can you hear my heart beating like a hammer//hard to be soft, tough to be tender), their lyrics are catchy yet mesmerizing as they merge into a repetition like a haunting echo from a euphony of chaotic sounds. The mellow guitar riffs escalade into tragic crescendos, which later fall back again to nonchalant beats that leave the listener in a trance. Less efficacious are Sick Muse and Collect Call, which both lack a magical hook evident in the other songs, thus easily deteriorating into a bog of flatness.

Nevertheless, the album overall is more than satisfying. It is colorful and mature, deep and resounding.

On Friday night after our knifing class, we stopped by the Kogi truck on Cloverdale and Wilshire in Miracle Mile for a quick bite on our way home. Who should we bump into, but the reigning king of tacos himself, Jimmy Shaw and a friend. (Jimmy is the chef/owner of Loteria, which is hands down the best Mexican food in Los Angeles.) So given all the crazy amounts of national and even international press the Kogi truck has been getting—Newsweek, NPR, FT, you name it—we were all curious to if these Korean-style tacos could possibly live up to the hype. Jimmy ordered one of each taco (Korean short ribs, spicy pork, BBQ chicken, tofu), while we loaded up on Korean short rib tacos, one tofu taco, and then a kimchi quesadilla, which the four of us shared. 

The Korean short ribs are hands down the way to go. They’re topped with sesame-chile salsa roja, cabbage in a very vinegary chile soy sauce, cilantro and sea salt. The tofu is a complete waste of time. I was most excited to taste the kimchi quesadilla, which is why it was what was most disappointing. It’s made with what tastes like Velveeta. I’m guessing on that because I’ve never had Velveeta, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. But I like the direction it was going and I LOVE kimchi, so I might try to replicate at home with better cheese.

It was interesting to note the crowd – a lot of Louis Vuitton and logo-ed Coach bags and multiple sightings of Tory Burch ballet flats (the kiss of death to any hipster credibility this gig is trying to hold onto). In the meantime, yes, you should by all means to try to intercept one of the Koji trucks via Twitter while it’s hot, or go check them out at the Alibi after 6pm. Or, do what we will be doing next time, and head straight to Loteria.

What’s your preference?

Nightmares? Thrash metal band, Slayer, will be teaming up with hard rocker, Marilyn Manson, to headline this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival tour. Okay, maybe that won’t give you nightmares, but I guarantee you’ll get bruises in the crowd if you attend. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Sweet Dreams? Canadian Indie rockers, Metric, are releasing their long awaited album, Fantasies, on April 14. Jimmy Shaw described the new album as “really big and really dreamy.” My little indie heart’s all-a-flutter.

Posted by Garvey

Somehow, this tree growing from a rock in the highlands of Scotland, reminds me of my son-in-law – determined, alive and flourishing.

Driving a car forms us. Attending a strategy session shapes us. Watching TV or listening to talk radio shapes us. Going to church forms us. Reading Scripture, practicing sabbath, giving to the poor … all these things are a kind of spiritual formation. Each of them tugging on us and molding us in a different way — some more in the way of Jesus, some less.

So how are we formed by The Big Sunday Assembly? Or to put it differently, what kind of Christians are we creating? Answer: Church Attenders.

Our systems are designed to create reliable attenders of religious services, faithful givers to church coffers, and diligent students of ‘bible study.’ And we succeed.

ABOVE from a new post by Jimmy Shaw at  Fluid Faith.  Always a  must read. 

Somehow this post from Jimmy Shaw reminds me of my previous post of an e-mail from Edward Fudge (See Below)

Sally Morganthaler has a post (which is actually an excerpt from this book) at the Leadership Journal blog in which she assails the transformation of church leadership over the past thirty years. As a result of our having embraced more mechanistic organizational models, she opines — rightly, I think — that the dominant model of leadership has moved from shepherding to the management of CEOs.

Any pastor, elder, preacher or church leader who has been to most any leadership conference in the past ten years can see that the speakers and leaders who are held up as models for “growing churches” are almost universally the CEO-type. We’ve been shown this model so often and reminded of the success of these men so convincingly that we are left with few ways to imagine leadership outside the dominant model.

They have been told repeatedly that this is the only leadership model that will ensure success. (And make no mistake: in new millennium America, success equals the greatest number of seats filled on Sunday morning.) Theirs is a mono-vocal, mono-vision world—one that affords the most uniformity and thus the most control. It is a world of hyperpragmatics where the ends (church growth) can justify the most dehumanizing of processes.

Pity the member who questions the machine and develops any significant influence. Sooner or later, that member will be disposed of—shunned, silenced, and quietly removed from any position of authority on staff, boards, worship teams, or within the most lowly of programs. Unwittingly, this member has run headlong into an industrial age anachronism: “the great man with the plan” methodology. And he or she has lost.

LONG RANGE PLANNING (from Edward Fudge)

An acquaintance of mine was recently asked to lead a committee charged with producing a five-year plan for his Lutheran church. He searched the New Testament but found nothing about long-range planning. My own investigation yielded the same results. Throughout the Gospels, for example, Jesus simply goes about doing the Father’s will. Jesus’ miracles and parables, his encounters and teachings, occur almost incidentally. “As he was going along,” the Gospel writers will say, “a certain woman came to Jesus” — and the next thing we know something happens about which we still read and talk 2,000 years later.The same is true in Acts. Luke does not record one single planning session regarding evangelism. The early disciples are praying and waiting when Pentecost happens. Peter and John are walking to the Temple for regular prayer when they meet — and heal — a lame man. They are called into account, so they tell their questioners about Jesus. Persecution scatters the believers, and some go to Samaria. Phillip preaches there until the Spirit sends him into the desert where he meets the Ethiopian. Peter is praying when the Holy Spirit sends him to Cornelius’ house. The Antioch leadership team are in prayer when the Holy Spirit tells them to “separate Barnabas and Saul” for a special assignment which we now call the First Missionary Journey. And so the story goes.

So when the car starts we do not specifically praise God or think that he has intervened. Nor, when it fails do we (most of us, anyway) curse God or blame some petroleum-covered demon sent by Satan to torment us.

Because we are constantly living upon and in this material world, we have come to depend on the physical laws that govern our existence. We depend on them so fully that we are mostly not conscious of this scientific orientation that guides our behavior.

And if we discovered that these Laws of Nature were suddenly altered or suspended by Divine Whim, we would be very upset. Our world would quite literally be unworkable. When we go to the cardiologist for a procedure, when we add a column of numbers, when we filter sewage into drinking water, when we construct a ten-story building, when we fly cross-country, we want to know that the laws which make these thing possible aren’t going to suddendly be suspended for some ‘higher reason.’

We love the laws of nature, until they turn against us

We actually believe these laws are fairly well immutable, right up until we ask for them to be “muted.” We live every moment as though God will not suspend the laws we depend on, then ask him to suspend them when we need it.

Which forces us to face a difficult question: if God can very well suspend the laws of nature whenever He wants, in what way are these really laws to begin with?

Read all this post at Fluidfaith.

Before reading the next paragraph, please answer the following three-part question.

 What is the single most significant thing you could begin doing regularly that would: (1) enrich your spiritual life? (2) create a better atmosphere for your family? (3) make you more effective at your work?

Now that you have named this vital and specific thing that would make your life better, defend your choice to omit that thing from your schedule today.

I can hear some of the replies now: “But I’m just too busy for that today.” “A crisis has already thrown my day into a tailspin.” “This is our busy season.” “The baby is sick.” “If you only knew the pressure I am under!”

All of us have urgent things that will have to be attended to today– phone calls, homework, appointments, deadlines, meals to prepare, interruptions, etc. But some of us will also do the things you named in answering the questions earlier — like reading Scripture, praying, telling someone “I love you,” helping children with schoolwork or parents with chores, planning next week’s big presentation, or making three extra calls.

One difference in people who tend to life’s really important things and those who simply react to events and live the scripts others write is discernment. Some look ahead to a desirable goal and take steps to get there. Others simply “get by” and “roll with the flow.”

In contemporary American society, it is absurdly easy to fall into the activity trap. We can think that being busy is being productive. We equate having done huge amounts of unimportant things with having done something important.

Moving quickly and efficiently is important only if your movement is in the direction of a praiseworthy goal. Since you took the time at the start of this piece to name specific steps toward noble ends, why not take the time now to figure out how to perform them today?

You’ll probably have to cut out some waste and cancel some foolishness, but you will feel better for it. You will have started practicing discernment between things that really matter in life and second-rate distractions.

As I pulled up to a traffic light recently, I noticed the car in front of me had an encouraging bumper sticker which said, “What is more frightening than nuclear war? Eternity Without God.” A good thought. A nice point. And yet, this car’s bumper troubled me. On the other end of this same bumper were two profane, slightly obscene stickers that bore absolutely no resemblance to the God-honoring statement above. And wedged in between the sticker that deified the Holy One and the ones that defied Him was a singular word in bold capital letters: WHATEVER!

I wondered, How often do our lives reflect this kind of conflict? Do we have statements on one end of our lives that honor God and actions on the other end that dishonor the One we worship? Are there tongues that will praise God and curse men?

Are we like that bottle of vanilla extract, which presents a delightfully pleasing aroma to our nostrils but leaves a bitter taste when placed on our tongues? Are we able to say the right words when being overheard among Christians, but still let that tongue fly when we are angry or frustrated?

Consider how the things we say can be in conflict with the way we live. Or how we may say two things out of one mouth, both honoring and defiling God, being led first by our flesh and then by the Spirit of God:

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praising and cursing. My brothers, this should not be! Can both fresh and salt-water flow from the same springsIf any man is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check…. The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires…. If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. (Quotes from James 3:9-11; 3:2,6; 1:19-20, 26).Religion is often made worthless by the contradictions in our lives. We can live in such an inconsistent way, that our life makes no more sense than a bumper that is both obscene and praiseworthy. In the end, a tongue which praises and curses: a life without control over anger or speech, is a life which shouts loudly at God and the world: WHATEVER!

Jimmy Shaw  in “The Anchor” – February 16, 1997

Recently I posted a couple of articles written by my son-in-law in 1997 for “The Anchor” (more to come), the bulletin for the congregation in Wilmington, NC where he was preaching.

Here is a quote from his new post:

“ If it is unseemly for Edwards to pontificate from a 28,000 sqft pulpit, what does that imply for the American church? Isn’t it also terribly unseemly for the American churches to continue in their advancement and accumulation — buying up large acreages, building bigger facilities, spending more money on ourselves — while the needs of the world’s poorest go unmet? Churches continue to abandon the city centers of America for the relative safety and cheap land of the suburbs, while the residents of urban communities like Memphis and Houston and Newark live and die conveniently outside the view of  most church members.”

Read his new post that is not to be missed!!!!!

http://www.fluidfaith.org/thinking/2007/02/01/housing-disparity/

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been riding around in a car with no functioning radio. That means no music, no news, no Rush (no loss!), and no sports. Basically, no noise. Just a whole lot of quiet time (i.e. boredom).As I reflect on this experience it occurs to me that it hasn’t been all that bad. What I’ve discovered (again) is that one of the most pressing desires of our FLESH–that sinful part of us–is distraction. Satan has an amazingly crafty way of drawing me away. It’s not that he tempts me with the most disgusting of life’s evils. Rather, he seeks only to distract me from the things I should be doing, thinking, or longing for. If our sinful nature can be satisfied with a brief and mindless distraction, our spirit cannot be led by the Holy Spirit into deeper communion with the Father.As I thought more about this, I discovered a brief list of these effective distractions:

Pleasure — this principle is one of the most powerful, especially to the truly carnal, worldly-minded Christian. The longing for the sins of the flesh, for sexual or sensual pleasures can very effectively distract from the pursuit of Christ-likeness in us.

Television / Radio — this part of our world is the most pervasive form of distraction. It has proven effective for almost all of us at one time or another. Whether it’s a movie, or a TV program, or a soothing CD, (even non-offensive things) very often our mind wants nothing more than to be occupied for a few hours with some bit of noise or entertainment, yet no time is spent in the valuable pursuit of holy things. Leisure — you know, a good game, a visit to the beach, a trip to the amusement park. What could be wrong with that? Nothing. But we live in a leisure-saturated society. We long to be at rest, enjoying a comfortable moment of passive enjoyment. For many of us, we either are at work or at play. But even these things do not bring the true rest our spirits need.

Religion — okay, you’ve got to be kidding now!! Really, I’m not. Remember, our Enemy is a crafty one. He is capable of using your weekly attendance at the worship assembly to give you just enough taste of the ‘disease’ of spirituality to keep you from catching a truly Spirit-led lifestyle. In medical terms it’s called a vaccination. In this sense, Satan can actually use your noble desires against you, as a distraction from a deep pursuit of God.

Without a radio around to distract me I found that I was called into conversation with God. Driving became a time of communion, a time of reflection on spiritual truths. If you find that you are not sensing a call to a walk in the garden with Jesus while you are watching TV don’t be surprised. However, if you don’t hear that call while everything is quiet, perhaps it is because the ears of your mind are being called to some comfortable distraction, mindless leisure. Listen to the quiet call of the Father: “Whatever is, noble …right…pure… lovely… think about such things’ (Phil 4:8).

Jimmy Shaw in “The Anchor” – February 23, 1997

A man is caught gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Within moments he is brought before Moses and Aaron who wait for God to make clear what should be done. The Lord responds that the man must be killed–stoned by the entire community. So, the man is put to death for picking up sticks.David orders that the ark of the covenant be transported to Jerusalem on a cart pulled by a team of oxen. When the oxen stumble, Uzzah reaches out to steady the ark of the covenant …. BAM!! No more Uzzah (I Chronicles 13:9-10).And then there are Nadab and Abihu. Those faithless sons of Aaron who violated God’s worship by offering strange fire in the house of the Lord. After nearly thirty years in the church I can no longer even count the number of times I have heard these men used as examples of what happens to those who violate God’s law, who disregard his pattern for acceptable worship.