In the late days of February, I was walking the streets of Seattle with the object of my affection. A three-step program had been established for the final night of our stateside sojourn. First, we'd retreated to The Nite Lite Lounge and indulged in $4 pitchers of PBR. Next, we'd pound...
For Panda Bear, known in the human kingdom as Noah Lennox, moving to Lisbon changed everything. Widely recognised as the drumming and harmonising quarter of Animal Collective, Lennox relocated to Portugal to begin anew. "I moved here for a girl," he says, "and it's worked out pretty good."
Definitive Jux kingpin El-P builds a gotham wasteland in I'll Sleep When You're Dead. Living up to his name, El-Producto graces his second solo album with dense, cerebral production that paints a swampy, blood-thick marsh of sound fit for the dystopian subjects of his rhymes. Songs of speed, soldiers and drinking...
While watching Jon-Rae and the River hold court at The Plaza recently, I allowed nostalgia to get the better of me. In contrast to the righteous frenzy the River has evolved into, Fletcher's first two EPs - Now Then and Then Again - were decidedly sparse affairs. Featuring four-track recordings of his Bible-bred ...
Vancouver's Quinn Omori, editor of the online music magazine Streethawk, is modest about how his adventures in publishing began: over beer one night on the patio of the Cambie.
Get enough writers in a room, and eventually someone will start complaining about editors. The three founders of the magazine we...
Late last January, I found myself suffering a not uncommon bout of insomnia. As usual, I addressed it by navigating through MP3 blogs in the hope that the persistent buzz would lull me to sleep. It was around 3am that I darkened the doorstep of You Ain’t No Picasso. Front and centre on the website was “Corazon” – a song slated for inclusion on the first of a series of monthly EPs to be self-recorded and released by indie combo Bishop Allen. Never one to let a novel concept (or conceptual novel, for that matter) leave me unmoved, I exclaimed, “An EP a month for an entire year? This I gotta hear.” and magicked payment details to an apartment in Brooklyn.
If “a thousand shades of grey” is a given, it follows that musical darkness would also come in countless variations. Amber Webber and Joshua Wells have already traipsed through rock’s shadows with the likes of Black Mountain, Blood Meridian, Dream on Dreary and a score of other projects. With their sombre new endeavour, Lightning Dust, set to be officially unveiled, one wonders: What permutations of darkness are left for them to plunder?
Listening to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They feels a little like that day your parents left you alone at the carnival during an apocalyptic parade of clowns. There’s a vaguely happy-sounding tuba bouncing in the distance, but you can’t help feeling a little anxious.
If the name of the eight-piece Vancouver art rock band sounds familiar, it’s because the group’s moniker shares the title of a book, a Sydney Pollack movie, and an Apostle of Hustle song.
“I’ve been constantly in love since I was about 12,” says Patrick Wolf, now 24. “It’s my big obsession: to be in love with people and the world.” Followers of his first two wintry albums, however, saw little of this precious reverie. Instead, the prodigious British songwriter cloaked himself—and his albums—in the raven-black regalia of melancholy. Yet, with the release of his third full-length, The Magic Position, the world is about to gain a sunnier impression of Patrick Wolf.
What exactly is The Magic Position? For Wolf, it was the sensation of finally being unlocked by a true love. “It opened my eyes and my heart to everything,” he explains. “I pulled the anchor up and was in a very creative mode.” The position allowed him, among other things, to feel comfortable singing in a major key. “I attempted to achieve a sort of high-fidelity gloss,” he says, leading to an album charged with previously unseen pop-oriented enthusiasm.
A lot of time and effort went into not writing this column. For instance: I now know that The Golden Compass website believes my daemon to be Onthia the fox. Which is beside the point. (Which is totally my point.)
During another bout of procrastination, I found my way to Last.fm. For the uninitiated: Last.fm simply asks that you enter the name of one of your favourite music artists. It then dredges up a slew of recommendations based upon other listeners’ tendencies. Alas, the very same, overly familiar suggestions presented themselves regardless of which of “my” bands I entered. As Chuck Palahniuk once suggested: I was not a beautiful and unique snowflake. “The Social Music Revolution” had rendered me into Ouroboros, rabidly devouring my own musical tail.
It started as a one-night stand, but nature took its course. Now, 13 lucky years after its lusty beginnings, Music Waste is still going strong. Like all healthy romances, the festival started as a passionate “fuck you.”
“I’ve been constantly in love since I was about 12,” says Patrick Wolf, now 24. “It’s my big obsession: to be in love with people and the world.” Followers of his first two wintry albums, however, saw little of this precious reverie. Instead, the prodigious British songwriter cloaked himself—and his albums—in the raven-black regalia of melancholy. Yet, with the release of his third full-length, The Magic Position, the world is about to gain a sunnier impression of Patrick Wolf.
What exactly is The Magic Position? For Wolf, it was the sensation of finally being unlocked by a true love. “It opened my eyes and my heart to everything,” he explains. “I pulled the anchor up and was in a very creative mode.” The position allowed him, among other things, to feel comfortable singing in a major key. “I attempted to achieve a sort of high-fidelity gloss,” he says, leading to an album charged with previously unseen pop-oriented enthusiasm.
A lot of time and effort went into not writing this column. For instance: I now know that The Golden Compass website believes my daemon to be Onthia the fox. Which is beside the point. (Which is totally my point.)
During another bout of procrastination, I found my way to Last.fm. For the uninitiated: Last.fm simply asks that you enter the name of one of your favourite music artists. It then dredges up a slew of recommendations based upon other listeners’ tendencies. Alas, the very same, overly familiar suggestions presented themselves regardless of which of “my” bands I entered. As Chuck Palahniuk once suggested: I was not a beautiful and unique snowflake. “The Social Music Revolution” had rendered me into Ouroboros, rabidly devouring my own musical tail.
It started as a one-night stand, but nature took its course. Now, 13 lucky years after its lusty beginnings, Music Waste is still going strong. Like all healthy romances, the festival started as a passionate “fuck you.”
Hyperbole tends to run rampant in record labels’ artist biographies. Such is the case with Monster Bobby, whose “one-sheet” identifies him as a “musical activist” in Brighton, England. The man himself sees things a little more humbly. “I’ve been putting on gigs in Brighton and playing in bands and doing zines and things for about ten years now,” he clarifies. “So, I suppose that constitutes some sort of ‘activity.’”
One of the “things” Bobby busied himself with was a club night christened Totally Bored. Seeing the reaction that just playing classic girl group hits incited, a grander concept began to take shape for the impresario. He shares, “The Pipettes, or some version of that idea, had been a sort of pipe dream knocking around in my head for several years.” Ultimately, collaborator Julia Clark-Lowes convinced Bobby to act on the impulse. After a few permutations, The Pipettes became a reality.
I’m an autumnal soul at heart. There’s little choice, really. Spring makes me sneeze, summer makes me sweat and winter just makes me more awful. While declaring my allegiance is all well and good, it still leaves me with three unsatisfactory seasons to contend with. It occurred to me recently that perhaps appointing an uplifting soundtrack for summer might offset the onset of pit stains and “Hot enough for you?” refrains.
What are your names and your instruments? braad:drums Maasa:bass daan:guitar/vocals jaames:guitar/vocals
A while back, I was boarding a bus en route to band practice. Spying the guitar case in my hand, a fellow passenger inquired, “Aren’t you a little old to be playing guitar?” While her abuse was uncalled for and undoubtedly attributed to the liquor souring her breath, I nevertheless saw fit to respond, “You probably have a good point.”
A while back, I was boarding a bus en route to band practice. Spying the guitar case in my hand, a fellow passenger inquired, “Aren’t you a little old to be playing guitar?” While her abuse was uncalled for and undoubtedly attributed to the liquor souring her breath, I nevertheless saw fit to respond, “You probably have a good point.”
Equipped with a killer moniker, Graham Van Pelt made a name for himself in Montreal with the danceable riot act Think About Life. When it’s suggested that the sunshine-dappled pop of his Miracle Fortress project is a marked departure from his other band, Van Pelt readily concurs. “I’m all depart...
This column catches me in a time of transition. Having moved house at the beginning of August, my recent leisure hours have been dedicated to rearranging furniture and maximizing shelf space rather than indulging in the likes of Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or St. Vincent’s Marry Me. Furthermore, hunting down new tracks has been severely impacted by the towering ineptitude of a party that will henceforth be referred to as “those motherfuckers at Telus.” But that’s neither here nor there. (Much like my internet access was neither here nor there for two weeks.)
It’s becoming an all too familiar narrative for Vancouverites. Last year, the Mesa Luna, one of Vancouver’s only all-ages venues, closed up shop over night. The immediacy of the shutdown left bands and promoters scrambling to find new homes for shows that were already booked, and almost a year later, underage fans can still feel the hole that the band-friendly restaurant left in the local scene.
The New Pornographers latest album, Challengers, will officially be out on August 21st. Of course, such release dates have become rather inconsequential. As early as late May, the Pornographers’ newly-branded “power folk” had appeared online in the form of “My Rights Versus Yours.” At present, most of the album’s dozen tracks can already be found scattered amongst various MP3 blogs. More diligent internet excavators can unearth the album in its entirety.
This, in itself, doesn’t bother me. Yes, even a curmudgeony traditionalist like me has come to accept that albums – like condos, cauldrons and abstractions – will leak. Here’s what really gets on my tits: People are laying their grimy paws on this stuff before me. It seems I’m constantly cast as the wallflower left to wonder: “How come everyone’s had a go with Okkervil River’s The Stage Names except for me?” When I’m finally afforded the opportunity to pass judgement on such material, it’s already been debated and assessed to tatters.
When I was younger and spent a large amount of time reading juvenile fiction from the public library, ghost houses held a prominent place in my psyche. A ghost house was a mysterious place where you never knew who lurked around the corner, and youth roamed unbridled by authority. I was jealous of the kids in books who had ghost houses to explore. I lived in a rural neighbourhood and the best we could do was play in the creek. Thankfully, Ghost House the band fulfills some of these long lost youthful desires.
Ghost House is a group of local kids who take their gang out to the abandoned backyard at the edge of Vancouver’s music scene.
A couple of months back, I was commissioned to supply recommendations on Vancouver venues and bands for a UK publication of some repute. This is the third time in my less-than-illustrious career that I’ve been called upon to tell the British what to do and, I’ll readily admit, it’s damn gratifying ...
I had a ticket in my coat pocket to see Final Fantasy that night, but I wanted to close my eyes, keep still, and travel back in time to the summer in Montreal, when I first discovered Owen Pallett and his lovely music. We lived in a rundown house and spent the first few weeks of July crammed into the small, hot s...
The U.K.’s ever-expanding No Music Day movement comes courtesy of Bill Drummond, the Scottish conceptual artist/musician partially responsible for late-80s/early-90s chart-toppers, The KLF (a.k.a. The Timelords). Now, this might be your cue to ask, “Why the hell should I pay ...
