Just a little reminder...

... only 5 days until the new release from Phoenix drops.

Do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. 

Phoenix - 1901

Mother mother

Rocking the fuck out of Vancouver, British Columbia - as are many bands after my own heart these days - comes Mother Mother. This five piece ensemble does some magical things to the auditory sensory area of my brain. Their second release, O My Heart, is a whirlwind tour of dark, layered pop that's at once creepy and accessible: not a bad combination to master on a sophomore attempt! So like, Kudos. I just can't get enough of the falsetto-ish girl/boy harmonies and crisp annunciation (yeah, sounds like a weird thing to love... but it really makes some of the tracks).

The title track - O My Heart - starts off with a bass line that gives the initial impression that this is going to be a pretty pop song. That lasts for about ten seconds before the ringing lead guitar picks up the melody in a minor. From this point forward, there's no mistaking the heart-wrenching (pun fully intended) intention of the track. Which I leave for you to discover, dear reader. Despite it all... I could really still dance to this. It's a perfectly-crafted pop song, after all. Just with some seriously dark undertones. And overtones. Mmmm.

The next masterpiece to stumble gracefully off the album is the track Hayloft. The sound is a hybrid of pure Canadian indie-rock and Japanese pop-punk. I absolutely love the aggressive sound and the innocently kinky lyrics, not to mention the drums that sound like tripping iambs. Talk about getting a wave of the horns. There's a really neat fan-made video on YouTube if you've got a few minutes that need killing.

Arms Tonight has a pretty standard love-song construction from the instrumental side of things. Coupled with some mushy lyrics [that eventually turn literal], it gives me warm-fuzzies everytime it comes on. Shit... I haven't said warm-fuzzies since Kindergarten. Whatever, I still love this track and crank it often.

There's a ton of other gems on this album, so the best advice I can give at this point is to get your hands on a copy. This is for sure the kind of album I had to listen to a few times over besides more than a song or two stood out, but it was worth the investment.

If you're in the Ottawa area this summer, they'll be playing the Blues Festival on July 12th!

Pretty, pretty please come do a show in Edmonton soon. :)

Update: Playing at Capital Ex in Edmonton on July 23rd!

An intimate evening with Emily Haines

Metric frontwoman Emily Haines and her partner in [almost] crime[s] Jimmy Shaw, have taken it to the road. And it is so good to hear it. To promote the new Fantasies album, the pair gave a special acoustic performance for Edmontonians who had either pre-ordered the new album, or had been lucky enough to win tickets. My album wasn't pre-ordered, nor am I a lucky person: good thing a friend of mine always wins shit.

The venue was a little theatre on the north end with all the seating removed to accommodate the 300+ hardcores that had run all over the city trying to grab tickets being given away by a local radio station. I loved the anticipation: you knew these were, for the most part, the fans that would know every word to every song on the new album.

Listening to the pair do their hard-rockin' tracks from Fantasies as acoustic numbers was really interesting. It certainly added new dimensions to tracks like Gold Guns Girls and Gimmie Sympathy and the rendition of Front Row was like hearing it whispered from Emily's lips to my ears. It's amazing how personal it got in that space.

Gems of the night, for sure, included the impromptu break-out of Anthem for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl and the cover of Pink Floyd's Nobody's Home, with vocals by Shaw.

On the same stroke, previous Metric shows had me geared up for some really high energy; not only from Emily, but from the crowd as well. It was a little disappointing to look around and see one or two people swaying along to the music. It was calm enough to hear camera flashes going off. I got shushed when I started singing along to the first song. What the Fuck? At least the crowd was singing along by the end of the 10-song set (with some serious urging from Ms. Haines), but still... did all the old Metric fans get married and buy a house and start having babies or something? What happened here?!

Let's move on to the new album. It is Metric through and through: Rock! Guitars! Dancing! Beats! Electronica! Everything we've come to expect... but pared down a little. More simplistic. Live It Out (don't get me wrong, I love that album) got a little heavy at some points, like the band was focusing so hard on making a point that it starting dragging on the music. Fantasies simply doesn't make that mistake. It comes back to the listener playful and [light]-hearted. Not to say that the album ooozes cheery pop licks and pollyanna lyrics; but rather that they took a hard look at themselves and were satisfied with what they saw.

This third (or fourth... depending on how die-hard you are) album really showcases a band comfortable with their trademark sound. Is this a good thing, though? Only the next album will tell. Let's hope this contentment doesn't lead to stagnation.

You can buy the album HERE

Metric - Gimme Sympathy (can I get a "Fuck-Yeah"? My rock-out track of the year so far!)

Quick Fix Friday - Because Alliteration is Fun.

Okay, everyone is in love with Passion Pit right now and eagerly awaiting the drop of the new album, Manners (If you're not, here's your first head's up).

Sleepyhead has been on my iPod for almost 6 months. It was love at first listen.

However, my love for Sleepyhead has been surpassed by the track Moth's Wings. Have a little listen for yourselves. And another one. And maybe one more.

Pick up your Manners, here.

Happy Friday!

Bare Feet on Wet Griptape; or how I stopped worrying and learned to love my flavour of the week. (Over-used? Absolutely!)

At the behest of a good friend, two weekend's ago I picked up Calgary artist Chad VanGaalen's third release, Soft Airplane. It hasn't left my CD player since. Sure, I feel bad that I will play this album until I can't stand it anymore, put it away for two months and then do it all over again, but it's well-deserving of such obsession.

VanGaalen's amazingly creative DIY sound is a mix of indie [folk-]rock, glitchy electronica and abrasive distortion. The one-man band recorded the tracks in the basement of his Calgary home on an old tape machine and the conversation he starts with listeners covers topics from death and murder to griptape. Not since I listened to Murder Ballads have I heard songs about death that are so pleasing to the ears.

While I usually pick a few tracks to highlight my favourite creations on an album, it's been difficult to refrain from just putting up the entire package: I am absolutely smitten from start to finish. So I'll do my best to keep it down to a couple without starting them all off "My favourite track..."

The opening track, Willow Tree, is a mellow folky piece essentially about the disposal of a body post-mortem. Chad's vocal work on this track is definitely in the higher octaves of his range, which translates into a slightly trembling sound that really emphasizes the emotion a person would feel when taking stock of their mortality. I keep waiting for his voice to crack, but it never does: the difficult subject is approached with enough resolution to keep his vocals relatively stable. The interesting contrast here is the upbeat melody of the track: the cheerful sound mixed with the talk of freedom through death seems contradictory but meshes in an amazing way. Who ever thought a song about death could be so damn pretty? Lesson learned: death can be a beautiful thing.

Bare Feet on Wet Griptape is rock to it's core and easily one of the more dancable tracks of the album. Compared to the rest of the songs, this one is traditionally constructed: rad (yes, rad) guitar riffs, tambourine, drums, et al. But you still have to keep in mind that's relative to the rest of the album; samplers, wavering guitar melodies and Chad's achingly emotive voice keep his indie-cred in check.

So the first day I brought this album to work, one of the women in my department picked it up and was reading the track list on the back. TMNT Mask jumped right out at her, because her kids do ever so much love the Ninja Turtles (a reference that had entirely blown over my head until that point. How embarrassing). This piece is ranked up there in my awesome register because it is so glitchy. The intro sounds like one of the standard beats that came with the early-nineties casio keyboards that my girlfriend's and I used to pretend to play. Combined with the TMNT reference, the track plays like a relic of my childhood. Except, a lot more introspective. And a lot darker too (and time, it aligned, is swirling and swimming/clouds rolling over themselves/twisting and boiling and growing out of nothing).

Then a word about my absolute stand-out love: Molten Light (YouTube). Just a heads up, this video might be considered NSFW, depending on the variying stodginess of your workplace. It's drawn entirely by our protagonist and is creepy as fuck. Therefore, I love it. I won't tell you any more. Just go listen to it!

I cannot wait to catch VanGaalen live at the Flemish Eye Ball in Calgary on May 16th - you can grab some tickets Here. The show is a party celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Flemish Eye record label, and Chad will be performing alongside his label-mates. From what I've seen of the snippets of live shows on Youtube, it looks like it'll be an amazing night. After that, he's embarking on a Europen Tour, so if you happen to be in the area, go out and show some support! You can pick up Soft Airplanes from Flemish Eye (Canada Only) SubPop Records and various other fine music establishments.

Technical difficulties

Not having any luck with the site I was hosting mp3s on, so that should be fixed by tonight New host, seems to be working just fine, so listen to your heart's content! Well, not really. Don't eat all my bandwidth. 

New post up shortly!

Bet you can't wait.

Caprice en Couleurs/Begone Dull Care

Hailing from Hamilton Ontario, Junior Boys have been slowly gaining momentum since their 2003 release of Last Exit. Considering the growing love for Canadian electro-pop (read: Crystal Castles, Caribou, and MSTRKRFT to name a few), they’ve found their sound at just the right time.

No doubt, people have heard the ubiquitous In the Morning from their second album So This Is Goodbye, as it has made appearances on So You Think You Can Dance and Picture This from Mack Dawg Productions. The sound meshed oddly with the overall tone of the album, but hinted at the maturation of their sound. The release of third full-length Begone Dull Care suggests that the boys are not content resting on their laurels: the sound of their new album takes the step that “In the Morning” hinted at three years prior. The result is raw, unadulterated, electro-pop fusion that stimulates every part of your body (source: my friend Reanne who texted me upon her first spin of the new disc). These rave reviews were echoed at the show I caught recently at the Starlite in Edmonton. Random repeat concert goers assured me that of all the shows they’ve seen, this most recent was the best. Their sound is more polished and put-together and their stage-presence has improved.

While I have no prior shows to compare to, I’d have to agree. The show featured a hybrid of live instruments and talented spinning that had the crowd writhing. Accompanied by a bass-line that made my throat tingle and accidental brushes against sweaty, entranced dancers on all sides, the Boys made for a powerfully brag-worthy show and I will assuredly be at their next one to do it all over again.

Most stand-out track on the album for me so far has been Bit and Pieces, maybe because it takes me back to my nerdy, 16-bit video game days... Either way, the sexy lyrics crooned by lead singer Jeremy Greenspan, combined with a swoon-worthy saxophone bridge and pulsing rhythms means this song certainly lives up to the high expectations I had post-text from Reanne. Plus recollections of Jeremy purring out this track sets me all a-twitter.

You should probably also check out Animator, simply because it is an epic piece of music. Like any good mod 70's disco, Animator encourages you to try on bad suits and dance even worse. And if you ask anyone who was at the show last week, I did that last part with finesse!

The Boys are on tour for the next couple of months in Canada, the US and Europe, so do what you can to catch a show. Also, wear something that you can dance in. You can pick up a copy of Begone Dull Care from their label, Domino, or your local HMV.