My thumbs hurt something fierce and my throat is hoarse from screaming at the TV. Yes, Gran Turismo 4 is out, and I think my neighbours are probably scared after hearing my frustration at the new set of license tests.

Gran Turismo is a Japanese game first and foremost; you can tell because of the proliferation of Nissan Skylines and Honda NSXs versus the relatively pitiful selection of Mustangs and Camaros. While the Japanese and North American releases are very similar, one area where they don’t quite match up is the music selection during the game intro. To pander to American audiences who apparently won’t buy a game unless it’s got a radio hit backing it, Sony of America have taken out the original theme song, “Moon Over The Castle,” out of the intros and have inserted other songs—everything from the Cardigans’ “My Favorite Game” in GT2 to Van Halen’s “Panama” in GT4.

Why anyone thought North American audiences wouldn’t go for “Moon Over The Castle,” though, I don’t know. Especially in later games, when the orchestral and operatic (!) preludes were added to the song, “Moon Over The Castle” evokes a feeling of heightened drama that fits perfectly with the visuals of the intro. And then, of course, there’s the cool instrumental rock behind the rest of it that just sounds like 200 miles per hour. If you’ve got the bandwidth, track down one of the Japanese intro movies to the Gran Turismo series; perhaps then you’ll come to see “Moon Over The Castle” as the rightful heir to the GT throne.

Last year around this time, I was taking pictures of ice formations and remarking on how wonderful it was to be able to go outside with just a fleece on for minutes at a time. It was an especially warm February, and subsequent cold snaps made it obvious it was to be a fairly standard Kingston winter.

Yesterday I biked around the Stanley Park seawall in a light jacket and a t-shirt. The bike rental places were open and people were out on tandems. Kids were running on the beach and people were blading in workout suits. Later I made dinner with the patio door wide open, the sounds of curling and Go Sailor mixing in the background.

Vancouver and the Lower Mainland has things exactly backwards from the rest of Canada; while out east, the transition from winter to summer is two weeks long, out here the only two seasons in existence are autumn and spring. So here’s to spring in February. Wish you were here.

While Propagandhi was still alive and kicking as of two years ago (and may very will still be around today, although I can’t find out for the life of me), far more people are aware of John K. Samson’s other major project, the Weakerthans. That band became a going concern in 1998, the year Fallow was released on G7 Welcoming Committee. For the most part, the Weakerthans took a more melodic approach to punk than the hard-driving, overtly political Propagandhi; even today Propagandhi’s site displays news not of the band’s latest projects, but of the ongoing occupation of Iraq. The Weakerthans, by contrast, have largely avoided pointed political criticism and sloganeering, content to examine the intricacies of human relationships instead.

But even before Samson left Propagandhi, he’d already started going down a different road. A number of songs that eventually ended up on Fallow started out as Propagandhi songs; “Anchorless” first saw light on 1996’s Less Talk, More Rock, and “Letter Of Resignation” first appeared on a split single with FYP. It’s a stripped-down rendition by both Propagandhi and Weakerthans standards, with Samson singing over a lone electric guitar. Consider it a demo, a blueprint of things to come for Samson and company.

This, amazingly, is not your mother’s Donnas (so to speak). While the Sahara Hotnights continue to ply the same faux-balls-to-the-wall pop-punk template from Jennie Bomb (albeit with more polish this time out), the elder statesmen of female-fronted Ramones-esque punk has turned over a new leaf. Apparently content to leave behind the brasher-is-better days behind, the Donnas have hit back with a new formula—drop the “Donna X.” monikers, forget the skintight jeans and try for “respectability,” meaning better songs and a wider palette of guitar riffs.

And on this track at least, the Donnas pull it off. “The Gold Medal” bears practically no resemblance to the candy-coated punk of their early days, and is a far better song than the somewhat-unfortunate cuts on Spend The Night. The rest of Gold Medal veers away from its title track’s template sound, but I think there’s something worth saving here; if this truly is the next step in the Donnas’ evolution, then I wholeheartedly approve. If you really want the old Donnas back, Get Skintight will always be waiting.

Need New Body have a rep for being really weird; practically every review and synopsis of the band’s career mentions the word “spazzcore” or some variant thereof. From my limited exposure to Need New Body, though, the band doesn’t live up to the weirdness hype. The Danielson Famile’s got all the pieces—the lead singer sounds like Carrot Top with a rottweiler chomping down on his testicles; there’s an ever-present chorus of kids (who are actually part of the family); the band members wear nurse uniforms on stage. Bjork’s weird because she occasionally sings in Icelandic and arbitrarily decides on odd artistic directions (Vespertine: “Let’s make music that sounds like womb muzak!” Medulla: “Let’s do what we did last time except replace everything with Mike Patton!”). For the moment, let’s avoid the topic of even crazier bands like, say, Merzbow.

Need New Body, on the other hand, is made up of five normal-looking American guys. They play really cool keyboard-supercharged music for sugar-addled grade-school kids. This is not weird unless you were raised on a steady diet of Jewel albums and thought 0304 was a mind-blowing departure from the standard “pout and strum guitar” formula all music adhered to in your universe. The rest of us should recognize Need New Body for what they really are: a perfectly awesome rock band with a Casio fetish and a weakness for shoutalong choruses.

When I saw Sleater-Kinney on their All Hands On The Bad One tour, there seemed to be an unofficial policy in effect: all the openers had fewer members than Sleater-Kinney. This, of course, doesn’t leave too many options open, but nonetheless S-K managed to field two openers that night: a little band from Detroit called the White Stripes, and another little band from Olympia called COCO.

Where the White Stripes have managed to pump up their sound significantly even on their stripped-down albums, COCO have taken the opposite tack. The duo consists of Olivia Ness’s bass and Chris Sutton’s drums, and on record the band sounds just as minimal as you’d expect. Their job is arguably more difficult than the Stripes; you can do a lot with a guitar, not so much with the bass. Indeed, COCO is limited to laying down some groovy basslines—there aren’t even any chords to be found. The two create a bare-bones indie funk cocktail that satisfies if you’re in the right mood, though, and on both of their albums there’s a definite enthusiasm that comes through.

So if you’re ever looking for a little R&R—we’re talking rhythm revolution, baby—take a look at the kids from Oly City.

From the November 3rd Zane Lowe session. Especially fun because of the massively extended outro where Ninja gives shout-outs to seemingly everyone she knows, introduces the entire band, and just generally shouts into the mic like a giddy schoolgirl. This. is. awesome.

The Go! Team is ready to strike America; U.S. live dates have been announced. Anyone wanna buy me a plane ticket to New York?