Grubtunes

INTRODUCING: GOLD SOUNDZ/THE END OF GRUBTUNES

2010-11-22T11:35:00.001-08:00

**What appears below this asterix'd little message is the introductory promo bit for Gold Soundz. This, however, is the eulogy for Grubtunes. It's been a fun four years on this blog, but we're growing up, getting our own web-spaces, trying to make our way in the world. All the old posts are up on goldsoundzblog.com already, nothing has been lost, and posting will continue as usual, just with a bit of a different layout, and a different URL. And so I hereby declare this...the last Grubtunes post...ever...**

The music blog Grubtunes and the concert promotion 'company'/group Groovetastic have merged to become GOLD SOUNDZ! A brand new blog//company//team of crazy person out to hit you up with cool music and put on kick ass concerts.

The blog will be business as usual//Tiger Bar Groove shows will continue as usual, every Thursday at Tiger Bar//BUT!

EVERYONE IS INVITED TO COME CELEBRATE OUR LAUNCH AT TWIST GALLERY ON DECEMBER 16 FOR WINTERGAZE FESTIVAL!

Check out the Facebook event page, it's gonna be a mad party with all the best shoegaze bands in Ontario. You want to be like all the cool kidz, right? Well, I'm just saying, if you're not there, you might not be cool, and if you are cool and you don't come, you might be stripped of your 'coolness'. Just saying :)

It's also going to serve as Memoryhouse's "Caregiver" 7" release party...so that's another reason to come check it out.

Jonquil

2010-11-21T10:39:00.000-08:00

My budd over at Indie Music Filter posted this song by Oxford afro-popsters Jonquil and I fell for it hard. The One Hundred Suns EP it's off is great, you can dl it from iTunes if you feel so inclined...

Jonquil - Get Up

Awesome Album Covers

2010-11-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

(insert inappropriate pedofilia joke here)

Tearjerker

2010-11-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

Toronto-based shoegazers Tearjerker released their new Strangers LP yesterday. If you've been waiting since Pygmalion for the spiritual heirs to Slowdive to come along, you might want to check them out. Head over to their Bandcamp page to download the album for a price of your choice (including $0).

On Volcano

2010-11-16T22:16:00.000-08:00

Finnish rockers On Volcano caught my post about their buds Delay Trees and hit me up with some of their own pretty, indie rockness. You can dl the excellent New Blood EP off their website.

Grounders

2010-11-14T14:36:00.001-08:00

Phenomenal Toronto-based dream pop band Grounders just sent over a couple demos. And you do want to hear 'em. Seriously. They might be playing a killer show at Tiger Bar this Thursday. You didn't hear it from me...

The Gregory Brothers

2010-11-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

This week's band of the week is a bit of an unusual case, but their music is brilliant, the impact their videos have had is astounding, and I'm looking forward to what they'll accomplish in the future. The band of the week is...

THE GREGORY BROTHERS!!!

The brothers are best-known for "Bed Intruder Song", the song they made with the news footage of Antoine Dodson reacting to the attempted rape of his sister. The song was so popular it made it to number three on the iTunes charts, earning enough money (possibly when combined with T-shirt sales) for the Dodsons to allow them to move out of the projects and into a new house. So not only is the video a musical accomplishment, but now it's a real mitzvah, as it has allowed the Dodson family to live a better life. As Antoine himself said in an interview, what happened to them ended up being "a blessing in disguise."

Now, the footage was cool to begin with, but the reason the song became such a huge hit is because it legitimately is a great song. The dramatic, piano-laden backing track is simple but solid, the beat's strong; admittedly it's not quite at the level of the real pro producers - my first impression was "Dre-lite" - but still, it's good. And combined with Dodson's instant-classics like "run an tell dat" and...pretty much the rest of his 'testimony', it struck a chord with people. Which is why it currently has over 40 million hits on YouTube. That's amazing. One of the brothers and Dodson even performed the song at the BET Awards - though the performance wasn't all that great, considering Dodson isn't all that great of an auto-tune singer...

But these guys are far from one hit wonders. They've got a host of other amazing videos under their belt, each with millions of hits, and they come out new ones all the time. My favorites: "Mommy and Daddy Song" and "The Rent Is Too Damn High Song". Just saying.

The brothers clearly have a great ear for lyrical hooks. They know their way around song structure and are masters of genre-specific songwriting. Whether it's soul, or rap, or some Danny Elfman shit, they got it down pat. And some of the footage they use is hilarious, like the gospel singing in the "Mommy and Daddy Song" video, or Jimmy McMillan punching Chuck Norris and Darth Vader to demonstrate his karate skillz. Genius. And that's why they're the band of the week.

http://www.youtube.com/user/schmoyoho

Secret Mountains

2010-11-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

A badass stoner rock band with Hebrew shtick going on? Count me in! May I present to you, Secret Mountains... (via Pitchfork)

Pregnant

2010-11-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

Banter Media is awesome. Seriously. You guys don't know how many promo/management/etc. companies send me bands every day and make me think, "These guys just don't get it." Banter does. Everything they send me sounds fresh, inventive, interesting, and real.

Anyway...they sent me over some stuff by this dude going by the pseudonym Pregnant. They described him as a "hillbilly savant" which at first made me a little wary but then they said he uses all kinds of pedals and loops and cool stuff so I was sold. It's folktronic; pretty experimental, at times really beautiful.

Pregnant - Wiff Of Father

Interpol

2010-11-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

This week’s band of the week is an old favourite that’s fallen out of favour with most of their fans. After two highly acclaimed albums, their third (and first for Capitol Records) was generally regarded as a disappointment by fans and critics. Their new one arrived with barely any fanfare…and though it isn’t an album that invites fanfare, it does have something going for it. The band of the week is…

INTERPOL!!!

The New York post-punkers who pretty much (along with Franz Ferdinand) were responsible for the big post-punk revival that went down around 2004-2005 will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the biggest, most important bands of the aughts. Turn On The Bright Lights was so unlike anything else (except for Joy Division) when it came out that most people didn’t even how to react to it. It was cool. It was dark. I remember being 13 and feeling like I could and couldn’t listen to it because the hooks were good but I hated the vocals. Now this sounds stupid to me – what’s wrong with the vocals? For some reason when Antics came along, the vocals were totally alright, though they had barely changed. Admittedly, the entire package was a lot easier to swallow this time around, and I still think Antics is far superior to TOTBL.

In 2006, everyone was shitting themselves waiting for Our Love To Admire. I remember my philosophy teacher, who was like in his 40s, married with kids, telling me to check out the new song, “The Heinrich Maneuver”. And it was a cool song, but the rest of the album was meandering. When they played live at V-Fest ’07, I wasn’t even excited to see this band I used to love, and when they did perform, the OLTA songs bogged down the set.

Their recent self-titled album came out and most people I know either didn’t care about it or still don’t even know it exists. Reviews were mixed, and the most important review – Pitchfork’s of course – slammed the thing big time.

The first time I listened to it, I also thought it was pretty lame. It sounded soulless, boring, totally lacking the vitality that made Antics so thrilling to listen to. The lyrics also didn’t really connect. There’s no, “We spies/We slowhands/Put the weights all around yourself” or “If time is a vessel then learning to love may be my way back to you“. But I find myself coming back to it, drawn in by the dark void that the album is. And there’s something there, something cool, and desolate. There’s something thrilling about looking into the void…

It is a soulless album, but it’s a substantial emptiness. You have to give it some time and patience, but there’s definitely something to it. And it doesn’t hurt that the arrangements are still as sharp and creative as ever, even if the rhythm section doesn’t pack the punch of the old days.

The last two songs are the highlights, almost as if Interpol wants to reward the listener for sticking around this long through all the gloom. Actually, the first couple lines of “All The Ways” are probably the best on the album, and when you first hear them, it’s like waking up from a dream of the underworld only to find the grim reaper at the foot of your bed bemoaning a lost love.

“Tell me you’re mine

Baby, tell me you’re mine to break the ice

Does he make you smile?

Does he fully embrace the way?

Does he mean to you to the fight that you like?

Who is this guy?”

And then there’s those great, beautiful, almost Beatle-esque changes later in the song during the sort-of-chorus. Oooooh, it’s cool.

“The Undoing” also has some strangely-poppy changes and melodies that only make the song creepier. I wish it was Latin and not Spanish he starts singing in later in the song, but it’s still really creepy, with Banks’ vocals are all over the soundscape, sometimes muffled, sometimes clear. It’s like he’s losing his identity and fading into black as the album comes to a close…

http://www.myspace.com/interpol

Dinosaur Bones

2010-11-06T11:26:00.001-07:00

It felt like Dinosaur Bones were stars from the moment they arrived on the Toronto scene, but of course, only a handful of us knew it at the beginning. Now with a debut album on Dine Alone Records dropping in early 2011, the word is really starting to get around about these stylish, broody rockers. If the teaser Birthright EP is any indication, the full-length is going to be fucking awesome. Check out the title track.

Francois Peglau

2010-11-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Self-described 'Peruvian/Argentinian/French lo-fi pop artist in London', Francois Peglau recently hit me up with his pessimisticly-titled album The Imminent Failure Of Francois Peglau. The wap-wap-wap-wap synth line and clever hooks of "We Won't Make It" made it easy to decide which song to post. Check it.

Suuns

2010-10-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

This week, I saw an album review on Pitchfork, and before I'd even heard the music, I got a feeling from the writeup that I was really going to like this album. The band of the week is...

SUUNS!!!

A young band from Montreal, these prog-rockers recently recorded an album, Zeroes QC, with Besnard Lakes frontman/uberproducer/my idol Jace Lasek. The combination of the two forces couldn't have been more perfect. Lasek gives the record an understated, spacious sound that allows the every little nuance to shine from a distance - like a glint of silver shining from deep under the sea.

So why are Suuns so great, other than because Lasek produced their album? Because the music has depth, it feels thoughtful, studied, measured, meticulous, dark, secretive, seductive, powerful, ponderous, and purposeful. "Arena" rides along a spacey arppegiated synth. As the song expands, it becomes more inviting, more exciting, slowly growing larger, more eerily beautiful, more haunting, until it reveals itself as a sleek pop song, though never too stylish for it's own good, just maintaining itself on the right side of the line be poseur and artful perfection. "Up Past The Nursery" balances between an almost cutesy bassline and Ben Shemie's whispered vocals, all backed up by that persistent, minimalist bloop-y beat.

Zeroes QC as an album holds together wonderfully, its experimental, instrumental passages never distracting one from the fact that Suuns are at heart a pop band. For lovers of albums like Dark Side of the Moon this is...fucking awesome, because, again, there's that *balance* so crucial to the experience, not allowing the experimentalism of the work to ever distract from it's enjoyability.

http://www.myspace.com/suuns_

Laurel Halo

2010-10-31T08:56:00.000-07:00

Chicks into sci-fi are cool. Not always hot. But always cool. Laurel Halo's VALIS-inspired King Felix EP, kicks ass. Therefore she is both hot and cool. Great success! (via Altered Zones)

http://www.myspace.com/laurelhalo

Awesome Album Covers

2010-10-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

"So, the X-Rays are back, and you're not gonna like 'em..."

Blonde Summer

2010-10-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Smooth L.A. indie-rockers bring the pretty hooks home to the mess.

Blonde Summer - Silver Jesus

http://www.myspace.com/blondesummer

Sufjan Stevens

2010-10-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

This week's artist of the week is probably one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. His music has matured to such an extent in recent years, that not only can he dazzle critics with his spectacular production, poignant lyrics, and gorgeous melodies, but he's been able court commercial success as well, and just recently he played one of Toronto's most respectable venues, Massey Hall. The artist of the week is...

SUFJAN STEVENS!!!

Truth is, Illinoise was brilliant, but the kind of album I would rarely come back to. Though it managed to delve into some great humanitarian questions while being entirely about the state of Illinoise - its culture and its history - that novelty proved a buffer between the listener and the artist, at least for me, which is my one and only problem with it. (Otherwise, it's pretty perfect). One of the things I really, really like about Age of Adz is that we're finally getting some serious, emotional face time with the Detroit-born maestro.

Age of Adz is a masterpiece. I like it more than Illinoise for a number of reasons:

1) It's tighter at a concise 11 tracks vs. Illinoise's 20, even if one of those tracks is 25 minutes long.

2) It feels freer, more experimental, and (somehow) more ambitious. Sufjan's arrangements astoundingly manage to incorporate glitchy electronics, swooping brass and orchestral flourishes, and impeccable choral embellishments into a seamless and coherent musical vision. In the grand finale of "Impossible Soul" Stevens seems to throw everything he can at the listener, including auto-tune, vocoder, guitar solos and choral climax upon choral climax. Though it is a bit of a mess, it's a perfect mess, and maddeningly engrossing.

I've only heard one other artist attempt (and succeed brilliantly) with similar electronic-orchestral synthesis, and that would be Owen Pallet on his own incredible Heartland.

3) Like I said before, Age of Adz is exploding with boundless emotional sentiment which makes for ridiculously gorgeous music. There's way too much to go into right now + I still need to spend more time with the album, but I will say that near the end of "Impossible Soul", after the chorus proclaims "Boy, we can do much more together" over and over, the song closes with Stevens and a couple acoustic guitars as he intones, "Boy, we made such a mess together..." as the music fades out. The optimism and grandiosity of the previous segment and its proclamation as it moves to this one mirrors the plight of failed human relationships, filled at first with such hope and lustre, they fade out in quiet, solitary disappointment at their end.

2010 has been one of the best year's in recent memory for music. Amidst great albums from Broken Social Scene, The Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Owen Pallet, Beach House, Deerhunter, No Age, The Besnard Lakes, The Morning Benders, and a host of others, Sufjan Steven's Age of Adz is a serious contender for the best of the year. For relz.

http://www.myspace.com/sufjanstevens

Dora Alexander

2010-10-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

One of the many rising Toronto bands I've had the pleasure to work with, Dora Alexander had their official debut EP release party last night for Travellers. Sharing the stage with Volcano Playground and Bravestation, the three bands packed the place to the, uh, curtain that separates the Piston's back room from its main bar area. Though I didn't enjoy having chicks' hair in my mouth (really not my thing), the music was awesome.

So, yeah. Check out this kick-ass cut off the EP, "Marlboro Friday".

Dora Alexander - Marlboro Friday

http://www.myspace.com/doraalexander

WIN TWO TICKETS TO PHOENIX!!!

2010-10-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

Phoenix is playing Toronto's Ricoh Coliseum this Friday, October 22nd, with Tokyo Police Club and Wavves, and Grubtunes and Live Nation are giving away two tickets to whoever answers this knowledge-testing question first, either by writing it in the comments, or emailing the answer to me at landsawy@hotmail.com with the subject "Phoenix".

Question: Who coined the term "Lisztomania"?

Click here to buy tickets to the show, which is sure to be amazing.

Fanzine

2010-10-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

London band makes pretty music.

Fanzine - Tough

http://www.myspace.com/fanzinetheband

The Twelves

2010-10-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

This is a first. This week's band of the week is actually a DJ duo who've recently impressed me with some of the greatest remixes I've ever heard. In the past, I've actually taken pot shots at DJ culture for just kind of tinkering with actual art and passing themselves off as legit, but this duo - along with some long-beloved others like Daft Punk, Justice - are definitely making me reconsider my views. The band of the week is...

THE TWELVES!!!

Hailing from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, I stumbled onto the duo's work while listening to a mix put together by French chillwaver/DJ Anoraak. I was enjoy everything well enough, and then I hear this banging remix of Metric's "Help, I'm Alive", and I'm like, "wait...this remix is fucking amazing."

I didn't see a tracklist for the Anoraak mix so I hopped on hypemachine, searched 'Metric remix', and very quickly found the track. Googled 'Metric remix mediafire', found The Twelves' version, downloaded it, and I've been listening to it fairly often since then.

Then, just yesterday, I'm in H&M to return some underwear I bought there because I hastily bought the wrong size while shopping there earlier that week. I notice that Black Kids' kick-ass song, "I'm Not Gonna Teach Him How To Dance With You" is playing, but it's some cool remix version. I was so taken with it, that I even told my neighbor's cousin, who I've never met before, about it at a party that night. Today, I hop on hype machine, search for it, and sure enough, it's The Twelves again. I instantly go to their myspace and download the two mixes that are up there.

So far I haven't heard anything on them that's impressed me as much as those two aforementioned remixes, but the duo's skippity, high-pitched synths, lush washes, and clever beats have won me over in a big way. Maybe there's something to this remix stuff...

http://www.myspace.com/thetwelves

In Defense of Hipsters

2010-10-16T09:52:00.001-07:00

Everyone loves to make fun of hipsters. It’s easy. It’s fun. And nobody ever gets offended because noone actually admits to being a hipster. In fact, the most hipstertastic of hipsters profess to hate hipsters with the utmost volatility, even as they sit there in their women’s skinny jeans, cow sweatshirt and Super Mario mustache. It’s kind of ridiculous.

But as great as it is to diss and makes jokes at the expense of hipsters and their ironic ways, it’s rare that you’ll actually hear anyone defend hipster culture. The closest I ever came was a phenomenal definition on UrbanDictionary.com. But that one thing isn’t enough, so I’m adding my voice to the (near nonexistent) chorus.

The first thing I like about hipsters is that they tend to like good music. The music hipster culture has embraced and/or spawned is, in my opinion, the best music being made today, which is pretty much almost all indie rock. Bands like Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, Wolf Parade, Deerhunter, etc. would fit this bill. And they rock, don’t compromise their values, and have still found mainstream-encroaching success. Every day, bands are rising from the webpages of unbiased, agenda-less hipster-authored blogs and becoming culturally significant and commercially successful (whatever that means these days). It’s a beautiful thing, and hipster culture has undoubtedly been a boon to this cultural shift due to its strict valuation of art, integrity, and intelligence, with no regard for popular/mainstream opinion.

The second thing I like about hipsters is the fashion. I choose not to wear ridiculously skinny women’s jeans, but if you do, that’s your choice. Sure, my buddies and I make fun of hipsters who go overboard and dress like old men from the 40’s, but I respect their right to do so. Jack Nicholson’s character in Easy Rider talks about how when Americans see a truly free individual, they fear and hate them. At the end of that movie, the two hippie protagonists get shot by some drive-by-trucker hicks, thus confirming his statement. If hipster culture is the hippie culture of today, do you want to be one of those hicks calling people with long hair ‘queer’? It’s the same deal, really.

But I digress. I not only approve of hipsters wearing what they want, I really do love most hipster fashion (not crazy about jeans THAT skinny). Hipsters just look interesting. They dress in strange colours, wear sizes or styles that accentuate or de-accentuate the human body in new ways, celebrate and reinvent the past to pave the way of the future, and don’t try to impress people via expense but rather by creativity.

And it’s not a crime to care about and want to control the way you are perceived. Clothes are a means of expressing one’s identity. Assuming you reading this are legitimately not a hipster, you probably wouldn’t want to dress like one because people would misinterpret you and think you were something you weren’t. Hipsters simply want people to know that they are the way they are. They’re not ashamed of it, regardless of whether people approve of it or not. If that’s not free thinking, then I don’t know what is. Also, girls in American Apparel turn me on, big time…as long as they’re not wearing geeky glasses (not sexy…at all…).

And now the most vicious attack on hipster culture: the irony of asserting one’s individuality by conforming to the styles and attitudes of a large sect of society. Admittedly, a lot of hipsters do seem to brainlessly be following the trends of the culture: skinny jeans, plastic coloured sunglasses, converse shoes, etc. But is this brainless conformity or simply an expression of shared values? One of the reasons Converse became so popular among hipsters could be that the brand doesn’t attempt to connect itself with athleticism or what hipsters may perceive as unintellectual, misogynistic macho culture, the way that Nike or Addidas does. They’re also among the only kinds of shoes made without leather: the reason I started wearing Converse in the first place. Skinny jeans also apparently became a hipster trend due to their anti-machismoness, and the plastic sunglasses can be seen as a parody on traditional or mainstream ideas of cool.

And really, no one is wholly individual, just like no music wholly original, but will always have influences and derivatives. Even if you walk around in a bag covered in dirt, you’d just be conforming to a popular look among the homeless crowd. To conform to hipster culture is to affirm not so much your individuality as your identity within a sphere by identifying with the values of one sect of society while rejecting those of another.

Whenever any kind of new thought arises in society, it is immediately attacked and ridiculed. This is the way things have always been and the way that human nature is: we’ll only grudgingly accept that which is novel after a gestation period. Think of how geek culture has, within the space of a decade, gone from a ridiculed fringe to simply a bump upon mainstream culture. In 2010, girls play videogames, pop stars play programers without parody, and everyone walks around with a computer in their pocket more powerful than anything we grew up with in 90's. Everyone is at least 30% geek these days.

Though hipster culture may have aspects with which you disagree, it likely has aspects with which you do agree, like its encouragement of creativity, personal freedom, social and environmental responsibility, and intelligence. The main reason we attack hipster culture is because it is alien and our first instinct is to attack it for violating the way we’ve always thought things and people should be. When you say, “I fucking hate hipsters”, you’re no different from those who’ve in the past attacked hippie, goth, geek, and queer culture simply because they were different. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how you react to it, hipster culture isn’t going to fade away just yet, no matter how many hilarious Youtube videos make fun of it. But simply realize why it is you and the rest of society attack hipster culture, rather than being the brainless one just going along with the impulsive sway of the crowd.

Hailer

2010-10-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Sydney band makes very enjoyable tunes.

http://soundcloud.com/hailer

California Wives

2010-10-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

These kids are alright. (via everyone).

California Wives - Blood Red Youth

http://www.myspace.com/californiawives

Awesome Album Covers!

2010-10-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

Fucking samurai aliens have the weirdest smiles...

Plastic Flowers

2010-10-11T13:30:00.001-07:00

Last night I had a surreal dream where Molly Ringwald and I...well...it got...weird...but 'good weird'...

...this was the soundtrack...

Plastic Flowers - She Learned The Best Way

http://www.myspace.com/plasticflowersmusic

Superchunk

2010-10-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week were one of the best indie rock bands of the 90's. They were successful not only with their own music, but the label the band started has gone on to become one of the most important and successful indie labels around. Recently they came back from a long hiatus with the best album of their's I've yet to hear. The band of the week is...

SUPERCHUNK!!!

Yes, the Chapel Hill band has a long, storied, and proud history. Their self-titled debut came out 20 years ago and they've just released the phenomenal Majesty Shredding, the album that has made me a fan of the group. And that record label I was talking about - that'd be Merge records, home to bands like The Arcade Fire, Spoon, Fucked Up, She and Him, Caribou, and many more.

I'd listened to No Pocky For Kitty a while ago - considered by some their best album - and didn't think much of it. It was only the solid 8.0 from Pitchfork (oh, boooo, boooo, you stupid fucking hipsters) that got me to check out their aforementioned latest. And as is often the case, the outlet was quite on the money. Majesty Shredding is an amazing album, bursting with energy, pop hooks, and schooled composition. I've actually not heard the second half of the album much because it's been so hard not to keep listening to the first half again and again, it's so good. "My Gap Feels Weird", "Rosemarie": these are the kinds of songs that make you want to howl along, screeching in a high register to keep up with Mac McCaughan as he unleashes all the teenage frustration of middle-age (he's 43). Aggg, so good.

With this album, their first in nine years, Superchunk have added their hat to the strengthening argument that indie rockers (or just generally good bands, even if on major labels) of the last 20 years don't necessarily have to start sucking now that they're older. Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Wilco, Radiohead (all of whom are in their 40's) and Robert Pollard (who's in his 50's!) have made some of the best work of their careers in the last couple years, but good luck finding an artist or band from the 60's that made some of their best work in the 80's (even if Dylan and Reed made some 'good' work, it definitely wasn't among their best). Could it be that in a musical universe ruled (artistically) by indie labels, artists are somehow allowed to extend their primes? What's the deal?

Anyway, Superchunk have won me over with their latest and now I'm gonna start going through their back catalogue (other than No Pocky For Kitty) t0 see if they've got other stuff as good as this late entry. That's the age we're living in now. Could be worse.

http://www.myspace.com/superchunkmusic

Cloudy Busey

2010-10-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

Insanely great song from co-frontman of Japanese band Ice Cream Shout. This song is better than anything he's made with that band, which isn't to say Ice Cream Shout's not a kick-ass band, this song is just THAT good. Download it off their Bandcamp page.

http://www.myspace.com/icecreamshout

Awesome Album Covers!

2010-10-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Is that a watermelon split in two?

New Order

2010-10-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week is famous not only for being incredibly popular, awesome, and, for my money, the best 80's band (though not necesarrily the best band of the 80s), but also for not letting something stupid like the death of their lead singer and primary lyric writer get in the way of their career. The band of the week is...

NEW ORDER!!!

Sometimes you just get into the mood to hear some New Order: the gratuitous drum machine and synth usage; Bernard Sumner's sharp guitar attacks; Peter Hook's melodic bass work. You know that they started off as Joy Division but then Ian Curtis killed himself, right? I can skip that part? Awesome.

The amazing thing about New Order is how great and lame they are at the same time. I mean, Sumner has a tendency to totally fuck up the lyrics ("Oh, love is found in the East and West/But when love is at home, it's the best/Love is the cure for every evil/Love is the air that supports the eagle"), he's a limpid frontman, they've got a ton of boring-ass repetitive songs, and a lot of cluttered production. I don't even really like any of their legit albums start-to-back.

But at the same time, I fucking love New Order.

When Hook latches onto one of his solid grooves, like the bass lines in "Ceremony" or "Blue Monday", and Sumner smothers it in those glistening waves of synth and sheets of noisy guitar, there's nothing better. And their use of synths and drum machines is so novel and playful-sounding that even like 30 years on it doesn't sound dated, it just sounds like New Order, and I can't say that about ANY other band from the 80's. Most of them sound like they're using drum machines and synths because it's the 80s and that's what you're supposed to use, but New Order just sound like they're having a ton of fun playing around with sounds and stuff.

Of course, the ultimate New Order song is "Bizarre Love Triangle". Lyrically, it's about the difficulty of choosing commitment versus the bachelor life. On one hand, the bachelor life is awesome, it's a life the protagonist "can't leave behind", but the chick is totally falling for him, and he kind of wants to give it a try because he's feeling fine, feeling good, feeling like he never should about the situation and thinks, "If I hurt someone else/I'll never see just what we're meant to be." But it's tough to trust another person with your heart, and he doesn't know if this chick's gonna fuck him over, right? Thus, "I'm not sure what this could mean/I don't think you're what you seem."

In the end, he's not sure if he really can commit. He's holding out as long as he can but she'll "say the words that I can't say." And then what happens, right? He's fucked. Because she's in love with him but he's just too guarded to open up and let this girl in.

Then again, this is the 80s and New Order we're talking about, the real story could be some crazy gay or tranny situation which would explain the "bizarre" part of the title.

Anyway, it's late, New Order rocks, peace.

http://www.myspace.com/neworder

Blue Hawaii

2010-10-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork got 'em first but I'm gonna echo the post. Blue Hawaii is an awesome fucking band, with a nice blend of electro-pop and samplegaze straight out of Montreal. Download their free EP. Totally worth it, though "Blue Gowns" is easily the best song off it.

Blue Hawaii - Blue Gowns

http://www.myspace.com/bluebluehawaii

Sleep Good

2010-10-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

As you should know, I recently fell madly in love with an Austin band called Sunset, which is mainly the project of Bill Baird, ex-Sound Team guy. I got an email the other day from Will Patterson, apparently a member of Sunset, asking if I wanted to check out his own project, Sleep Good, which features two other members of Sunset as well. Obviously I did, so I downloaded their album Skyclimber, which was released recently on Autobus records.

Unsurprisingly, Sleep Good smacks of the same jubilant, psychedelic vibe as Sunset, if a little less ornate, though clearly containing the same wealth of pop hooks and zonky experimentalism. Check out the two tracks below, and you can stream the entire album on their Bandcamp page.

Sleep Good - Water Voices

Sleep Good - Berry Suit

Awesome Album Covers!

2010-09-30T22:47:00.001-07:00

Please, please, please, let Deerhunter only release albums in twos...

Teenage Fanclub

2010-09-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week has been around since the 90's, but they're still great, and they've still got some dedicated fans who love them, and that's all you need to know. But not really. The rest is down below and the band of the week is...

TEENAGE FANCLUB!!!

So, this Scottish, 90's power-pop band will likely go down in the history books for one shitty reason, which is that their 1991 album Bandwagonesque beat out Nirvana's Nevermind, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and REM's Out Of Time for Spin's 1991 album of the year. Talk about pulling a Kwarka (oh, snap!). Yeah, all of those other bands have since gone on to cement their legendary status, while last week Teenage Fanclub played...The Horseshoe.

Alright, I'm being a little harsh. Greatness is clearly not defined by popularity or popular opinion otherwise Lady Gaga would be about ten billion times greater than Big Star, and hopefully, if you're reading this, you know that's not the case. And to TF's credit, a lot of people were psyched about that Horseshoe show, as my twitter wall proved.

Fact is, Bandwagonesque is a very solid album, though it's no Loveless (not by a long shot). And it's not like Teenage Fanclub just made that and one or two other albums then disappeared, lost their frontman due to his committing suicide, or sucked for ten years like some bands. Their 1993 follow-up, Thirteen, is probably just as good if not a little better than Bandwagonesque, and 1997's Songs From Northern Britain is also very legit. Sometimes they're a legit too cozy and cushiony for me to really get into hardcore, but it's never hard to enjoy their songwriting.

Also cool, Teenage Fanclub's post-millenial stuff has the added benefit of not sounding like it was made in the 90's, which is probably also why recent albums by Dinosaur Jr. and Robert Pollard are in many ways their best work; 90's production was just really, really lame. TF's latest album, Shadows, in particular, really does sound like a band continuing to move forward rather than just juicing the past for all it's worth. So yeah, that's really good. Check it out.

http://www.myspace.com/theteenagefanclub

The History Of Apple Pie

2010-09-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

The History of Apple Pie's sound hovers over the line between early 90's shoegaze and mid 90's indie-rock. Check out the song "Mallory" below. It's pretty...

The History Of Apple Pie - Mallory

http://www.myspace.com/thehistoryofapplepie

Sun Hotel

2010-09-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

New Orleans "post-gospel" band Sun Hotel recently sent me their album Coast and it's pretty awesome stuff. Don't let the weird genre label scare you off, this really just sounds like 90's leaning, good, old scrappy indie rock. But done well.

Sun Hotel - Suburb

http://sunhotel.bandcamp.com/

Awesome Album Covers!

2010-09-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

I don't care how hot you are, stop wasting paper, biatch

Porcelain Raft

2010-09-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

I stumbled onto this incredible shoegaze artist a couple weeks ago and have since decided he's a keeper.

Lately I've been obsessed with this new song, "Strange Feeling". It's just him with electric guitar and maybe a little synth or sample padding in the background and it's gorgeous, and then there's the lyrics, which are so simple and innocent that they send shivers down my spine: "I knew a man/who was shaking some hands/I tell everybody, oh what a man/I met tonight/He was smart and very kind."

You can stream all his songs off his website. That wasn't good enough for me so I bought Collection of Porcelain. The song below, however, is available as a free download.

Porcelain Raft - Strange Feeling

Blackbird Blackbird

2010-09-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

This San-Fran Chillwave-y shoegazer's been getting some good blog hype lately. Grubtunes approves. Check out his album Summer Heart, available as a free download off his Bandcamp page.

Blackbird Blackbird - Summer Heart

http://www.myspace.com/byeblackbird

Sunset

2010-09-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you find out about a band and you're like, "uh, why aren't these guys super fucking famous?" This week's band of the week is like that. They just made an album that's a total fucking masterpiece and it rocks and you should hear it NOW! The band of the week is...

SUNSET!!!

I blogged about these guys recently but since I haven't received a million emails telling me, "Omg, you were totally right, these guys are amazing!" I'm going to make 'em a band of the week.

So, basically Sunset is the ornate, psych-rock project of Bill Biard, one time member of one time buzz band Sound Team. As happens sometimes, the buzz died down, the artist kept making music, and the music got better while nobody watched. But seriously, now it's time to pay attention.

Though Sunset has a bunch of great albums in the can, their latest, Loveshines But The Moon Is Shining Too, is a borderline masterpiece, and if it's just a little too long and indulgent to be one, it's got enough amazing songs to make the point debatable. It may very well be one of the best album I've heard this year.

Carrying on in the tradition of walking the thin line between classical music and psychedelic rock (see: The Moody Blues' Days of Future Past or The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request), the album is a swirling haze of baroque pianos and violins, but they'll put a bitchin' stuttering beat behind it or something and it'll be just perfect, like in the song "Late Night Dawning". Unlike the two albums referenced above though, there's nothing heavy handed about Loveshines..., rather it feels like a very intimate, even fun album, and there are moments of chaos, discordance and random instrumental forays that distinguish it is as such.

You need to listen to this album now. If there is justice in the world, this album will find it's audience and they will rise from the underground. No work of art as great as Loveshines... should go unappreciated to the extent it deserves, so buy it, dl it, stream it off bandcamp, just hear this fucking thing, please.

http://www.sunsetswebsite.com/

BIGCOLOUR

2010-09-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

BIGCOLOUR is the shoegaze project of one Brian Brissart of Chicago. As far as bedroom-gazers go - and it's getting to be a pretty common occupation - BIGCOLOUR's stuff is definitely some of the most inventive I've heard, with effervescent samples lighting up the soundscape like fireflies in the night...Check out the two free EPs on his Bandcamp page. Gooooood stuff.

It's also interesting that he uses the Canadian spelling of "colour" rather than the American...

BIGCOLOUR - Made Of Phlegm

Cloud Nothings Release Split Album

2010-09-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite lo-fi bands, previous band of the week Cloud Nothings, are releasing a split album with noise-rocker/Bridgetown Records owner Kevin Greenspon, with each party contributing five songs. Check out one of Cloud Nothings' contributions, the manic "You're Not Good At Anything".

Cloud Nothings - You're Not Good At Anything

http://www.myspace.com/cloudnothings

Awesome Album Covers

2010-09-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

I feel like I would very literally shit my pants if I saw shit like this while tripping on acid

The Killers

2010-09-12T09:21:00.001-07:00

This week's band of the week is definitely an odd choice for an indie-rock blog and might ruffle up some feathers, but one of my favorite things to read other writers write about is why they really like bands that aren't necessarily the bands most music critics like. This week's band of the week came out of Las Vegas a couple years ago and quickly exploded from catchy dance-rockers known by a select few cool people to one of the biggest contemporary rock bands in the world. Along the way they TOTALLY sold out, but really, they never had all that much cred to begin with. But they did have great songs, which is why this week's band of the week is...

THE KILLERS!!!

The phrase most of you are probably waiting for right now is "guilty pleasure", but I never really feel guilty listening to The Killers because when Hot Fuss came out everybody liked it. I didn't know anyone who didn't dig that album, especially songs like "Somebody Told Me" and "Mr. Brightside". Come on, those were and still are amazing songs. Of course, it soon became unfashionable to like The Killers when they got insanely popular and Brandon Flowers started touting Sam's Town as one of the greatest albums of the last twenty years when really it was just an overproduced wannabe-Springsteen dud with a couple solid tracks. However, even then, those couple solid tracks on it ("Read My Mind", "Bones", even "When You Were Young") were incredibly well-written tracks. I'll re-iterate what I've always said when talking about The Killers - Brandon Flowers may be a douche, but the man knows how to write kick-ass songs.

Not just good songs, seriously, Flowers is an exceptionally talented songwriter, and his best songs to this day are the kind of jump-right-at-you super accessible rock singles that you don't hear that much anymore now that radio's been taken over by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and shmucks with auto-tune. Indie rock may be exploding with incredible bands artists left, right and center (not that anyone not tuned in would know it), but like James Murphy said - "so you wanted a hit/Well we don't really do hits." And that's cool, but hey, a great pop song is a great pop songs.

So anyway, after Sam's Town came Day and Age, which may have been even worse as a whole than Sam's Town, since it lacked the vision and ambition of its misguided predecessor. Still though, Flowers gave us a couple great, great, great songs in "Losing Touch", "Human", and "Spaceman". Even "Joyride" isn't all that bad. It was also nice to hear Flowers going back to dance-rock and get off his Springsteen trip which never worked at all, but instead just made him seem really lame.

Recently he released his first solo album, the Vegas-honouring Flamingo, and unfortunately he's kind of gotten back into Springsteen and, even more strangely, country. As usual, it's got some solid songs ("Crossfire", "Hard Enough", "Magdalena") but as a whole it feels too long, disjointed, stylistically inconsistent and yeah, the whole country+Springsteen stuff for the most part never works, though it is kind of interesting in a weird way. Some band make great albums, bands write great songs but can't write 12 of them at a time. The Killers falls into the latter category. However, the great songs they do write are worth your time.

http://www.myspace.com/thekillers

Galapaghost

2010-09-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

This Austin-based folk-rock project's main man Casey Chandler hit me up with his new Neptune EP recently and the title track caught my ear. There's a bit more synth and dirty guitars than you might expect from a folk-y, but such embellishements - along with the song's ethereal female vocals - push the track into something like folk-gaze territory, and that's pretty cool.

Galapaghost - Neptune

http://www.myspace.com/galapaghostcasey

Awesome Album Covers

2010-09-08T10:22:00.001-07:00

One small step for kitty...One great pounce for kittykind...

The Polyamorous Affair

2010-09-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to say I really like the shit Banter Media sends me. It's never boring. They alerted me to sexy, electronic L.A. duo The Polyamorous Affair and now I'm letting you know about them. Check out the song "Strange" below, which sounds like The XX if someone gave them a little nudge to wake them up. It's off their appropriately titled album Strange Bedfellows, out now on Winter Palace Records.

The Polyamorous Affair - Strange

http://www.myspace.com/thepolyamorousaffair

Les Savy Fav

2010-09-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week has been around since the 90s and they're just awesome. They recently released their fifth album and it's also pretty awesome. They supposedly started as a hardcore band, but these days they're almost more like math rock or art-punk. And no matter what they do, they're awesome and the lead guy has an awesome beard. The band of the week is...

LES SAVY FAV!!!

Led by the Beardo himself, Tim Harrington, Les Savy Fav are just the kind of band in which everyone is a total pro and the arrangements are always inventive and interesting. Harrington is a great, characteristic frontman and their lyrics are great, thoughtful.

Their last album, Let's Stay Friends, is regarding by many as their best, but I think their new one, Root for Ruin, might actually better, packing a little more wit and better hooks than its predecessor. Then again, I should probably listen to both a little more before coming up with my ultimate consensus.

Anyway, another thing I like about Les Savy Fav is that they started the label Frenchkiss Records in order to release their second album and now Frenchkiss is home to The Home Steady, The Dodos and Passion Pit. Those are all sick bands.

Anyway, yeah, Les Savy Fav, very le awesome.

http://www.myspace.com/lessavyfav

Sunset

2010-09-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

Saw these psych-poppers up on GVB and was totally blown away by what I heard. Their new album hits the internets tomorrow and will get a physical release in October. I may very well pay money for it.

RYAT

2010-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

RYAT is a Philadelphia-based experimental, electronic duo comprised of a chick going by the moniker Ryat + guitarist/composer Tim Conley. They sent over their album Avant Gold (out Sept. 10th on their self-run label, Obvious Bandits) and it was a whole bunch of fractured awesomeness with Ryat's Bjork-y vocals overscoring everything. Check out the crazy cut "Not For This Life Time" below.

RYAT - Not For This Life Time

http://www.myspace.com/RYAT

Summer Camp

2010-09-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

We've all heard this song by now, right? Summer Camp are a bunch of brits who make really cute, kind of twee-ish pop. They've also apparently got a thing for nostalgia. Their Young EP is out on Sept. 6th so, you should look into that. Reeeealllyyyy good stuff.

Summer Camp - Ghost Train

http://www.myspace.com/summercampmusic

THIS VIDEO IS AWESOME!

2010-09-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

There also happens to be music.

NYC UFOs

2010-09-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

Sentimental shoegaze hits me straight in the heart. These Northamptoners (people from Northampton, Mass., in case that isn't clear) score 10 points with this simple song.

NYC UFOs - I Want To Fall In Love

http://nycufos.bandcamp.com/

Awesome Album Covers

2010-09-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

Really? Because old Asian dude two heads up from the second "D" in the title looks more like "All Confused and Dismayed People".

Ruby Coast

2010-09-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

My thoughts upon first hearing Toronto indie-rockers Ruby Coast were, "oh, it's Tokyo Police Club Jr." Though Ruby Coast have hardly undergone a sound makeover since their eponymous debut EP, they went up to Montreal for a bit this summer, worked with some killer producers, and the new stuff sounds phenomenal so far. Better than anything from Tokyo Police Club Sr.'s last album actually, and I wouldn't make such a bullheaded statement if I didn't back it 100%.

Check out the video below for their latest single, "Whatever This Is", which manages to evoke the kind of emotion TPC themselves should've looked into a while ago.

http://www.myspace.com/rubycoast

Gun Club

2010-08-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week is one of the most underappreciated psychobilly punk bands ever. Or fuck that, they're one of the most underappreciated bands ever, period. They had a badass frontman who persevered with his vision, despite constant, numerous setbacks. Today, they may not command an incredibly large cult following - not even Big Star or MC5 calliber - but those who know them know where it's at. The band of the week is...

GUN CLUB!!!

I first heard about Gun Club via Jack White, who is apparently a huge fan and covered songs of theirs like "She's Like Heroin To Me" in concert with The White Stripes. Being a huge White Stripes fan, I instantly needed to know what the deal was with this band Gun Club as soon as I heard that Jack White was influenced by them.

The deal with Gun Club is they were based in L.A. and they were basically the vehicle for frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Their first album Fire Of Love is a punk classic, and has what are probably their best known songs on it, such as "She's Like Heroin To Me" and "For The Love Of Ivy". Their second, the Chris Stein (of Blondie fame)-produced Miami is alright if you put aside the botched mix. The Las Vegas Story is pretty good but their fourth album, Mother Juno (produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins), is the other classic in their discography.

Though it's an effects-loaded and somewhat dreamy sounding album (as you would expect with a Cocteau Twin at the helm), Guthrie doesn't rob the band of it's power to rock and tracks like "Bill Bailey" and "Yellow Eyes" end up standing out as among the best in the band's canon.

In 1996 frontman Pierce died at the age of 37 of a brain haemorrhage. Photos from later in Pierce's life as kind of sad, as the guy who once looked the epitome of rock star cool had devolved into a bloated, drugged out old bugger. To add to that, Gun Club's post Mother Juno albums have little to recommend. Even so, any band that could release such wild, possessed music as is contained on Gun Club's first four album's is deserving of legendary status.

http://www.myspace.com/thegunclub

Dominant Legs

2010-08-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

This San Fran band sounds like it should be from Sweden. In the track below pretty melodies mingle above a bongo beat and for some reason I now feel the urge to hippie-dance around a campfire. Considering the song is called "Clawing Out At The Walls", you wouldn't think it would sound so incredibly pleasant.

http://www.myspace.com/dominantlegsmusic

Rich Aucoin

2010-08-27T13:27:00.001-07:00

I've known Rich Aucoin for years now after hearing his stuff on a friend's blog and meeting him at Over the Top Fest in 2007. Not only is the Halifax maestro super friendly, but he's super awesome and getting pretty popular these days. At a packed Tiger Bar show this week I finally got a chance to see (and witness!) some of his new material in action and it is amazing. You can stream his recently-released Public Publication EP below. Also check out some footage of the man in action cuz he's got one of the best live shows anyone anywhere's ever seen.

You can also buy a dl of the EP off his website.

Awesome Album Covers

2010-08-27T13:21:00.001-07:00

Pictured: Philip Selway as a baby w/ his parents.

Finally one of the members of Radiohead steps forward to reveal that the band has been a bunch of alien creatures all along. Psh, yeah, like humans could create Kid A.

Kids Of 88

2010-08-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

New Zealand dance-rockers bring it big time on their album Sugarpills. It's way better as a whole than what's on their myspace, and sure, the singles are solid, but the album tracks are better. Check out this bangin' cut.

Kids Of 88 - Everybody Knows

http://www.myspace.com/kidsof88

Philip James

2010-08-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine from poetry class turned me onto his friend, Philip James, who happens to be a kick-ass Toronto sample-gazer. James passed me his little Nights CD-R EP the other day and it was awesome. Check out this cut from it.

Philip James - Screen Dreams

http://www.myspace.com/lovephilipjames

ABBA

2010-08-22T10:12:00.001-07:00

This week's band of the week was the most commercially successful group of the 70s. Unlike most commercial pop groups though, they were often critically revered in their time, and their music's popularity hasn't diminished, but perhaps even grown, in the years since their dissolution. Hailing from Sweden, the group comprised of two couples who would later both divorce before the band broke up entirely. The band of the week is of course...

ABBA!!!

So, everybody knows ABBA. "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" are classics that you can't not have heard. Personally, I always thought of ABBA as this kind of weird, european group that wrote sort of lame-ish music. I always thought of it as just so friendly, super clean and totally safe. Basically not what I was ever really into except maybe when I was like 10 and listened to the Backstreet Boys and stuff because I didn't know that good music existed (and in the late 90s, it barely did).

Last year, my mom got me this book called Rock and Roll Cage Match and there was a chapter in it that was ABBA vs. The Bee Gees. It was written as a fictional story in which the two groups were always competing with eachother, copying and trying to outdo eachother for the love of one of the chicks in ABBA (I forget which one, but probably the blonde one, who's the hotter of the two).

The piece actually aroused my interest in both ABBA and The Bee Gees and I downloaded big best-ofs by both bands. Once I actually started listening attentively to both, I realized that both of these bands were (or contained one) absolute genius. Their songs are brilliantly composed, lyrically complex, melodically explosive; the technical proficiency on display is absolute incredible, but not without soul; the production inventive and inspired. Sure, they were both crazy commercial, and these days that almost automatically means bland, manufactured, soulless, and dumbed down for the masses, but apparently in the 70s they hadn't realized that commercial music had to be shitty yet.

This last week I've been OBSESSED with ABBA. I couldn't give you a solid reason why exactly, but I've been listening to it almost exclusively. Now I think I'm starting to come down and get a little tired of it, but I had to write about what I found after I dived into their music.

I want to focus on two amazing aspects of ABBA's music: the lyrics and the production.

Lyrics: yesterday at work, they were playing Rihanna over the P.A. and I couldn't help but listen to the lyrics. I can't remember what song it was or exactly what she was singing, but it was just the same old shit: "I love you, you make me feel so good, blah blah blah." PUKE!

Not the case with ABBA.

Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of "Dancing Queen"? It's not just about a chick who likes to dance, but rather it's a paean to youth and the power of imagination.

"Friday night and the lights are low

Looking out for a place to go

Where they play the right music, getting in the swing

You come in to look for a king

Anybody could be that guy

Night is young and the music's high"

Though these lyrics seem straightforward, they're not exactly by commercial music standards. In a Britney Spears song or whatever, the girl would come in and see a hot guy she likes and then grind with him and fall in love or some bullshit. In "Dancing Queen", the guy doesn't really matter, what matters is what the protagonist imagines.

Check it out.

The song starts with her going out dancing, looking for "a king" and "anybody could be that guy." The mystery is what's exciting, not the guy himself. She's not concerned with talking or getting with any of them, she just likes imagining what the guy she's with is like, but she doesn't actually care what he's really like.

"You're a teaser, you turn 'em on

Leave 'em burning and then you're gone

Looking out for another, any one will do."

It doesn't matter who these guys actually are, she just needs them there to be objects upon which she will project her idea of her ideal guy, her "king". She's creating this fantasy for herself in which she is a dancing queen and the guy she's going to dance with is her king. She's reaching back into her childhood for images and notions of romance and the beauty of the song is that she's still young enough ("only 17") to still have these notions, reality hasn't stomped in and crushed them yet.

Another way I like to interpret the song is as a kind of dream or fantasy. Here's the giveaway: if you're out at a club, even in the 70s, would the beat be coming from the tambourine? Wouldn't the beat be coming from the bass speakers? Or if there's a band playing, the drums? However, a tambouring is something you can beat by yourself at home...Thus, it's possible that the entire thing is the fantasy of an older woman stuck in a rut, as she fantasizes about being young again and going out dancing. All the guys want her, but being older and embittered by the male race, all she's going to do is tease them and "leave 'em burning". The reality though, is that she's just at home, shaking an old tambourine...

Pretty crazy, eh?

Another great song is the song, "Dum Dum Diddle".

"I can hear how you work, practicing hard

Playing night and day, woah-oh

And you sound better now

Yes, you improve every time you play, woah-wo

But it's bad

You're so sad

And you're only smiling

When you play your violin

Dum dum diddle, to be your fiddle

To be so near you and not just hear you

Dum dum diddle, to be your fiddle

I think then maybe you'd see me, baby"

The story is great in so many ways. The girl falls in love with this violinist, it seems, more because she admires how relentlessly he practices than because of the music he makes, though she does admit that he sounds pretty good. But she also seems to be drawn in by this desire to make him happy, as she describes him as always being so sad except for when he plays violin.

Again, the fantasy ABBA construct is a really poignant one, with the girl dreaming of being his fiddle, "to be so near you and not just hear you." It can also be kind of sexual, if you think about how she wants him to play her like an instrument...with his hands...

So yeah, I just loved that little story in there, another example of why ABBA lyrics are great.

And also, somebody alert me next time Miley Cyrus releases a song that compares falling in love to Napolean's defeat in the battle of Waterloo.

Production: Abba is famous for their massive overdubbing work, which is how they achieved their own version of the wall-of-sound. However, people don't often talk about how inventive the production of ABBA is. For example, let's look at "Mamma Mia", which is not only one of their biggest hits, but a great example of ABBA's production genius.

The two defining sounds on "Mamma Mia" are its xylophone and its harmonic electric guitars. These are also the first two sounds you hear in the song. The xylophone plays that kind of minor chord (it's not actually a chord since the notes aren't hit at the same time) and it creates this great suspense, it's almost like some kind of horror movie thing for a second. Then those harmonic guitars come in and kind of release the tension with a sugary, but still kind of dark, melody. Once the verse kicks in though, everything alright again...

Or is it?

Two lines later, we're back in a minor chord and the xylophone tic-toc is back to suggest not all is well. But then they resolve it again, only to shock the listener with these two big banging chords after which everything but piano, xylophone and string section drops out for that great chorus. Then there's like a happy, fully-charged chorus (this is songwriting perfection here, btw) and the opening xylophone/harmonic guitars come back to separate the first half of the song from the second.

The alternation between sections and the sounds of xylophone, harmonic electric guitars, piano and strings is absolutely brilliant, and they help divide song between its polar emotions: one second everything seems really happy, the next everything is really dark, then happy, then dark and sad again, etc. People say that arousing emotional polarities in another person is what creates attraction: it's not absurd to think that in music it creates similar feelings of adoration, which is perhaps why rock stars are so sexually desirable.

ABBA is also great at using counter-melodies, of which the chorus of "Dum Dum Diddle" is also a great example, as what I think is a synth line runs concurrent with the vocals and supercharges the entire thing.

Anyone still reading? No? Well, if you've made it down here, good for you. Hopefully you'll give ABBA a closer listen from now on. Just download everything they've ever done, most of it's pretty great. "The Visitors" in particular is an interesting album, being ABBA's final effort together and kind of their divorce album. There are almost no hits ("One Of Us" is on there, but just one hit on an ABBA album is actually really rare) and it sounds very dark and classically influenced.

So yeah, go listen.

http://www.abbasite.com/

Colleen Green

2010-08-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork caught this cool California chick first but I just wanted to spread the word. Colleen Green is a fuzz rocker and she's awesome. Check out the song "Worship You" below. It's off an 8-song cassette called Milo Goes to Compton. I wanted to buy one but they sold out...making me very sad...

Colleen Green - Worship You

http://www.myspace.com/c0lleen1

The Band In Heaven

2010-08-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

Imagine you were swimming, and at some point you duck your head underwater, and when you stick it back out of the water, what do you see but a HUGE FUCKING TIDAL WAVE ABOUT TO HIT YOU SMACK IN THE FACE! Oh, and there's a band playing instruments on surfboards on that tidal wave. And then you notice that the wave isn't made of water, but VHS fuzz, cool colours, and noise made manifest as physical matter.

That's what The Band In Heaven sound like. And they've got a kick-ass split cassette with Weird Wives coming out soon, but you can dl it now here.

The Band In Heaven - Summer Bummer

http://www.myspace.com/thebandinheaven

Freedom Or Death

2010-08-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

I like my music like I like my women: moody, dark, and synthetic.

Freedom Or Death - Lost In Dances

http://www.myspace.com/freedomordeathmusic

DOM

2010-08-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week 'gets it'. They write short, awesome pop songs with an array of synths and day-glo hooks. So yeah, band of the week is...

DOM!!!

Based in Massachusetts, DOM released their Sun Bronzed Greek Godz 10" this year on a small label, posted some songs online, and quickly became a bit of a 'big deal' after Pitchfork decided they were worthy of their love. Now DOM's touring, opening for Ratatat, and hopefully sleeping with models...if not, give it time...Anyway...

The reason why DOM's taken off so quickly is because they write amazingly awesome pop songs like "Living In America" and "Jesus". Bumpin' with dance-y rhythms and lines like, "It's so sexy/To be living in America," their tunes contain the fuzzy, gorgeous textures of chillwave but keep it's pulse afloat.

Their best song might actually be the simple, melancholic "I Wonder". It's this kind of 'life's fucked, but beautiful' track, with their eponymous frontman singing, "Girl I know/That there's something wrong/I can see it when I look in your eyes/And I know that it couldn't be far/It's the story of our lives/And when I look over my shoulder/I know who will be on the other side/And things will get trashy till we get to my place," over sighing chords. You know when you stay out all night and pass out on some foreign couch, and then at 5:30 am you're trekking back to the subway? This is the song you should be listening to then.

http://www.myspace.com/imfur

Scott Pilgrim and I: A Love Story

2010-08-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, I'm going to try to stay away from spoilers, so if you haven't read Scott Pilgrim and are thinking about reading it or seeing the movie, don't be afraid to read this.

Three months ago I didn't know who or what Scott Pilgrim was. I was cozily living my life, when I started seeing people posting the trailer of Facebook with comments like, "This is gonna be the best thing eva!" After seeing the words, "Scott Pilgrim" too many times to ignore, I had to click on one of the trailers.

...And I watched it...

...And it looked really, really awesome...

It had video game references, dudes in rock bands, kung-foo fights, a love story with a chick with cool hair and it looked like a comic book. So basically it was everything I loved rolled up into one package. Whatever this was, I wanted it right now, and then more of it.

I wikipedia'd Scott Pilgrim and found out that it was this graphic novel series written by this guy Bryan Lee O'Malley and the entire thing is set in my hometown of Toronto. A week later a had time to go and sit down in the big Chapters/Indigo by the Scotiabank Theatre and I read through the first Scott Pilgrim. It was good, cute. I wasn't in love with it yet but I definitely wanted to find out what happened next.

They didn't have the second one at that store so a couple days later, I went over to the huge Chapters/Indigo by Yonge and Dundas and sat down and read through the second book. And the more I read, the more I fell in love with the story.

I had a huge stroke of luck and my pal/TdotComics prez Alice Quinn lent me books 3-5. And yeah, I just got more and more obsessed.

Not only are the books witty and an awesome hodgepodge of geek culture, but the love story around which everything revolves is amazingly sweet and one of the most realistic I've ever seen. We're surrounded by so many two-dimensional or simply ridiculously unrealistic romances that when anything kind of gets it right, it's a small miracle.

The chemistry between the Scott and Ramona makes sense. Ramona is this very emotional, complicated girl. She's not 100% sure who she is. She's always trying to find herself, and with every new boyfriend, she tries to enter and be a part of their world, find some place to belong. That's why her ex-boyfriends are of a good variety, and her resume includes emo kid, skater/tough guy, vegan band guy, stylish older guy, etc. This is also reflected in her changing her hair every one and a half weeks.

Now, Scott Pilgrim, as a character, is not someone I would like in real life. The casting of Michael in this case was appropriate, because Scott Pilgrim is this shallow, uninteresting, lazy, unmotivated character. He's almost like a non-character, and if I had to pick any actor in Hollywood to play a young guy totally devoid of character, I would probably pick Michael Cera.

So back to what I was saying before about why Ramona really likes Scott Pilgrim.

I've seen many an awesome, deep, emotional girl fall for a guy who looks about as interesting as a dixie cup. Why? Well, in this case, these blank guys, I think, act as blank canvases for these girls. These girls have so much emotional shit to figure out in their own world, that these blank canvas guys kind of just allow them to do that, reflecting these girls back to themselves without interjecting any of their own reality. I could be wrong, but that's just a theory I have and I know I'm not the only person who thinks this might be the case.

As you've probably figured out, it's Ramona's character that made me fall in love with the Scott Pilgrim series. However, despite my contempt for Scott Pilgrim himself, I do admire and relate to the way he feels about Ramona and how persistently (though clumsily) he pursues her. He's like really in love and it's cute. I know I'm like a cynical blogger and shit, but everyone's got their soft side...

So yeah, that was what really hooked me on the comics. And then of course there's all the video game references and band stuff. I don't know if I can go into that cuz it's just like way too much, but I'll just say if you haven't played The Legend of Zelda (preferably Ocarina of Time), there's a lot of stuff you're not going to get. That game in particular gets a lot of nods and if you ask me it's the greatest game of all time so, yeah, you should play it. If you've got a Wii you can get a Gamecube version and play that. If you have never played this game, your life is missing something.

Now, the movie: it's awesome. Shot as though it was made for an audience with ADD, director Edgar Wright still makes sure to give us time to get to know the characters, and the fact that they're played by such phenomenal actors and actresses as Anna Kendricks (Twilight, Up In The Air), Aubrey Plaza (Funny People, Parks and Recreation) and Kieran Culkin makes a big, big deal. Alison Pill (Milk) also stood out as Kim Pine, the pissy, deadpan drummer in Scott's band Sex Bob-omb. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers was a perfect choice, and her definitive, relatively deep voice imparts her intelligence immediately, something crucial to the character. Shout outs as well to Ellen Wong for going all out as ridiculous high school chick Knives Chau.

The first three fourths of the movie are very true to the comic while the last bit changes things significantly. It works but it's a little shakier than the rest of the movie. Jason Shwartzman gives Gideon Graves a bit more character than he has in the graphic novel, which is good, but the entire subspace aspect of the graphic novels, which is crucial to understanding exactly how Gideon controls Ramona, is almost entirely glossed over.

That being said, if you've read the graphic novels and understand some of the things they only kind of briefly mention or allude to in the film, everything will make more sense and work better. And really, the few flaws the film has don't compare with how many things it gets right. Video game culture is portrayed amazingly well, and between the visual references, 8-bit music, the way a lot of text is displayed on screen, and the way the aspect ratio changes during certain scenes, a lot gamers may very well come in their pants with excitement at what they're watching.

Then there's the music which is awesome. Not a big surprise when Nigel Godrich is your composer and the songs in the movie are written by Beck, Broken Social Scene and Metric. The song "Ramona" (which I just wrote about in my Beck Band of the Week thing) is definitely the best, though the Metric song (played in the movie by Clash at Demonhead) is also pretty good.

If you haven't read the graphic novels, seen the movie, or don't really know anything about Scott Pilgrim, I highly urge you to fix this. The poignancy at the center of the story is what I think has made this little book by a Korean dude from Ontario such a phenomenon and I highly recommend it to everyone who's ever played video games, played in a band, read comic books, or liked a girl.

Beck

2010-08-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

This week's artist of the week is one of the most versatile and interesting artists of the last 20 years. He's known for hopping genres at a whim, working within noone's parameters other than his own, and for his "record club". The artist of the week is...

BECK!!!

Yes, Beck Hanson, the baritone voiced rapper/rocker/balladeer/producer/all around cool dude is on my mind of late because of his involvement with SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD! A movie I am crazy anxious to see. But first, a little more on Beck...

As we all know, Beck got his start when this scrappy little song he recorded with a friend called "Loser" became a hit. Then he followed that up with the Dust Brothers-produced mega-classic, Odelay.

Some say Beck's never released anything as good as that album since. Honestly, I don't even think it's all that amazing and I'm totally in the Sea Change-For-Best-Beck-Album club. Now there's a classic. Beck had his heart broken by his long-term girlfriend Leigh Limon, got totally emo and wrote a bunch of awesome, sad songs, then got Nigel Godrich to produce that shit. The result = one of the best albums ever.

After that Beck just kept making awesome albums, though opinions are divided on their quality or at least their quality in relation to his two masterworks, Odelay and Sea Change. I'm gonna say that Guero's ok with some killer cuts, The Information is great but a little on the long side, and Modern Guilt is one of my favourite Beck albums, though it's not perfect (mainly the second half). IRM, the record he made with Charlotte Gainsbourg on which he wrote and produced nearly all the songs, is also among his greatest accomplishments, without a doubt.

So now he's got some new tunes coming out with the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack. None of them are anything to go nuts about, except maybe the orchestral "Ramona", which is actually quite beautiful and gets a bit of play in the movie's trailer. Interestingly though, the soundtrack has a version of the song "Summertime" with one of the film's actor's vocals, while a version with Beck's vocals is a bonus track on the iTunes version of the soundtrack. It's amazing to hear the difference between the takes. With the actor's, though he competently gets through the song, it's no comparison to Beck's version. Listening to Beck's, you can hear how much personality he brings to his songs with that recognizable voice and style of his. What I'm saying is: you can hear why the man's just a fucking rock star.

http://www.beck.com/

Quiet Lights

2010-08-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn dream-poppers Quiet Lights sent me over some stuff and lo, the stuff was good. I present to you, the stuff...

http://quietlights.bandcamp.com/

LyRiC sHmYrIc: Livin' On A Prayer

2010-08-05T23:10:00.001-07:00

So, I've been meaning to do a segment where I talk about the most inane (or awesome(?)) lyrics. Hopefully at late hours of the night after I've had a bit to drink. Tonight will be the first instalment of said segment, entitled Lyric Shmyric, and the victim will be Bon Jovi's cheeseball classic "Livin' On A Prayer".

Now, how did this song become such a HUGE hit and mega classic?

Well, admittedly it's got some serious hooks. And it zero'd in hardcore on its demographic in every way with its tale of blue collar love, sprinkled judiciously with flashy 80's hair metal guitars. It's actually got some awesome bass work too, if you listen closely. I'd even say that's the best thing the song has going for it. The big problem though is the vocals: they're ridiculously awful. The dude honestly sounds like a fucking self-parody and it's hard to imagine anyone taking the song seriously (though some people do, don't ask me how).

And then there's the lyrics.

The story is basically about this couple, Tommy and Gina. Tommy used to work on the docks, Gina's a waitress. So yeah, they've got no money.

The song is set up to be like this inspirational song about hope and love making life worth struggling through, but it actually portrays this really bad relationship which Gina should book her ass out of. Tommy is a fucking deadbeat. He's unemployed, pawning his shit, and he doesn't want things to change. He says, "It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not." Um, yeah it does, you're living a fucking shitty life man, don't just brush that aside, make your life better, motivate yourself. Your girlfriend dreams of running away, but you just tell her the same old bullshit, "someday", and "we've gotta hold on to what we've got." Maybe Gina could do better, and could be living a decent life with a decent man, but she sticks in there with Tommy. Why?

Well, it sounds like she's got a kind of maternal complex going on with her relationship with Tommy. He's a deadbeat loser, but he needs her, emotionally and financially. And she seems to feed off that, the dependance he has on her, as Mr. Jovi writes, "She brings home her pay for love." She feels needed, and she likes that. Or maybe she's just terrified of the guilt she'd face if she left him, knowing Tommy would be mega-fucked.

The fact is though that this song isn't inspirational or anything, it's fucking depressing. They shouldn't hold on to what they've got because it sucks and it's unhealthy. If Gina left him, Tommy might be forced to go find another job or he'd realize that no chick wants to be with such a loser and he'd clean up his act. Gina, meanwhile, could maybe find a decent guy to take care of her and start a real life with. But no, they just wallow in their shit together and go on that way. You're halfway there? More like halfway dead, maybe you should rethink your life strategy.

Moral of the story is that if you're planning on living on a prayer, you'd better be prepared for a really shitty life.

Neon Canyon

2010-08-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

These Canadian shoegazers just released a second EP that's even better than their freebie first (which was also really good). Check out this solid cut off the new release.

Neon Canyon - Bricoleur

http://www.myspace.com/neonmountains

Beach Fossils

2010-08-03T22:19:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week is a one-man recording project (though he plays live with a little help from his friends) who writes songs primarily around loops. I thought his music was great, first and foremost, but what really intrigued me was the simple but pure effectiveness of the songs he wrote around these basic loops. The band of the week is...

BEACH FOSSILS!!!

Beach Fossils is the baby of one Dustin Payseur, an indie rocker with an obvious love of stoned, reverb-drenched euphoria and sunny, chiming guitars a la the kind Real Estate get so much mileage out of.

What I really liked about Beach Fossils was that it gave me that classic punk feeling of, "Hey, even you could do this shit." All he does is come up with some kind of riff, loops it, makes a hook part (with another guitar line over top) and then a verse part. Then he alternates between the two and ends with a coda or not. It's so simple it's ridiculous, but it's also just really good.

So yeah, that's why Beach Fossils is band of the week. And now I'm gonna pass out from emotional and physical exhaustion. Peace.

http://www.myspace.com/beachfossils

Grubtunes Approves This Video

2010-07-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

You saw it on Pitchfork. And if you didn't, see it now.

Btw, if you haven't heard the leak of the new Of Montreal (the one I got was poor quality, but good enough to give you an idea of what's going on) you should check it out. It's pretty solid. Not as out-of-this-universe visionary as Skeletal Lamping, but a lot of people will probably find that a relief.

Kevin Barnes is writing solid, well-rounded pop songs again, but don't worry, it's still pretty crazy stuff and he's still feeling fucking sexy, sounding more like Prince than ever. The song to hear is "Enemy Gene", a slick, synthestral, romantic sci-fi track with a cheekily euphoric chorus and some epic passages.

Second Impressions Of The Arcade Fire's 'Suburbs'

2010-07-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've been listening to The Suburbs a lot. I knew that it would grow on me the way Neon Bible did and it has. I still don't think it's quite as good as their last two albums: it's a little too long, never quite as epic, and "Month Of May" is kind of a waster. But we've been over all that.

Still, I'm starting to 'get' The Suburbs. You see, it's an album that has to be taken on its own terms. It's long, but I think it's meant to be listened to on vinyl, not straight through on your iPod or whatever. This isn't the straight rush of the first two albums - this is an album more relaxed, with subtler things on its mind, as opposed to the glorious bombastic beauty - lyrical and musical - of Funeral and Neon Bible.

Those two albums were mad cries in the darkness of the modern world, calling for us all to wake up, to rebel against lies, and to keep the car running (metaphorically speaking, I doubt the Arcade Fire support idling). The Suburbs is more like a diary entry written in your bedroom, with the band lamenting the end of letter writing in "We Used To Wait", the distance between people living in the "Sprawl (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", how we can only be ourselves when we're alone in an "Empty Room", and how kids chooser collective illusion over reality for fear of alienation in "Ready to Start".

Once you start listening to the lyrics, the concept of the album becomes illuminated and things start to come together. This is integral to understanding and fully enjoying The Suburbs, the Arcade Fire's most conceptual album, something made clear by an ending reprise of the opening title track, and song titles that show that two subsequent songs are simply exploring different sides of one idea or issue, e.g. "Half Light I", "Half Light II (No Celebration)" and "Sprawl (Flatlands)", "Sprawl (Mountains Beyond Mountains)".

The Suburbs works, but you have to kind of reconcile yourself to the fact that its a very different album from those that came before it. Once you can, you'll enjoy it for what it is and you'll remember why the Arcade Fire are one of the best bands of our generation.

Angel Olsen

2010-07-28T08:30:00.001-07:00

Yeah, pretty much all the internets is freaking out over this song. It's pretty amazing.

Angel Olsen - Creator, Destroyer by batheticrecords

http://www.myspace.com/ghostgrocersings

Awesome Album Covers

2010-07-28T07:21:00.001-07:00

More like The Search For The Holy Key-tar.

Magic Kids

2010-07-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

There'll always be bands making music for young romantics, the emotional 14-year-olds who just don't know what to do with their heart-crushing infatuations. Though I'm 20 now and totally past that (thank G-d), I'll admit I still like listening to that kind of stuff: Stars, The Softies, The Honeydrips. It just has a kind of strange, beautiful effervescence to it. One can't deny that there was something special about being able to feel such overpowering emotions and for them to be so madly out of our control at that age. This weeks band of the week wants to be the band that the 14-year-old mopers of today turn to for gorgeous, melancholic sounds. And so the band of the week is...

MAGIC KIDS!!!

You might've heard of these guys recently because they're touring with Ariel Pink. However, it's likely you haven't heard their music, as all they've released yet is one 7" of their own and a split 7" with the Smith Westerns. But they've got a full-length called Memphis coming out next month and of course it's already leaked and I'm listening to it as I type this.

As I mentioned, this is a bit of a cutesy band, mining pre-teen emotions and bringing them to life in vivid technicolor with the help of an orchestral section. They've also got the boy-girl vocal interplay thing going on, and there's a healthy showing of Beach Boys-worship, particularly in the vocals (though there isn't much use of harmonies).

Even if you're cold and cynical and listen to White Light/White Heat all day long like me, you'll probably admit that there's still some love in your heart for a band like Magic Kids who burst out of your speakers like a ray of sunshine. And if you just happen to be one of those 14-year-old mopers in need of a bit of cheering up, you're welcome, I've just told you about your new favourite band.

http://www.myspace.com/themagickids

Stupid Party

2010-07-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Another band I heard about while in Brooklyn, Stupid Party is a post-hard core band that, although not all that different from other post-hardcore bands, is still just really awesome. If you're looking for a sonic kick in the face, look no further. As usual, I present to you their poppiest tune.

Stupid Party - Baby

http://www.myspace.com/stupidparty

Doldrums

2010-07-25T09:04:00.001-07:00

Everyone from Toronto's beloved Spiral Beach has gone on to new things since the band dissolved last year. Guitarist Airick Woodhead has perhaps pursued the most interesting path with his kaleidoscopic-rock project Doldrums. Not only does the new project sound like a surrealistic collage of warped synths, IDM beats, samples, and found sounds, but Woodhead's been experimenting with a visual component, and his first release is (of all things) a VHS Tape mix called Parrot Talk.

It's not for everyone, but for those who can stomach it, it's wildly exciting stuff.

Check out some of Parrot Talk below.

Download the entire mix at the Doldrums blog.

The Jameses

2010-07-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

This was the other band I heard about in Brooklyn (the first I blogged about was Nude Beach). Based in Florida, The Jameses have a bit of a dark-edge to their poppy sound. Or maybe it's just the theremin they use. Either way, it's awesome, especially love the "ahh ah ah ahs" in the song below. All they've released so far has been the 7" (which I bought) of this song, so I'm really forward to a little more from this great new band.

The Jameses - The Haunted Rider

http://www.myspace.com/3headedlion

First Impressions Of The Arcade Fire's 'Suburbs'

2010-07-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

So, as many of you know, The Arcade Fire's highly anticipated third album, The Suburbs, leaked today. The Arcade Fire are one of my favourite bands so I was totally psyched for this album. Here are my first impressions (which are subject to change).

It's good. It's not a disappointment. The Arcade Fire have not "lost it" or anything along those lines. However, at this point in time, as I write this, I don't think the album is quite as good as either Funeral or Neon Bible.

Here's the thing: firstly, there's far less emphasis on the string section this time around. I mean, do you remember how awesome those violins were on songs like "Laika" or "Neon Bible?" Really awesome! Now they sound so scaled back, lower in the mix. The Arcade Fire was the band that made string sections a big thing in rock! I mean, I can understand wanting to change things up, but those violins were amazing!

The other thing I have a problem with is that Win Butler doesn't sound as engaged. It's like he doesn't have anything to prove anymore. Do you remember listening to "Rebellion (Lies)"? Do you remember the power that was in his voice? I remember an AllMusicGuide reviewer said it was like a lion tamer's whip that got shorter with each strike. Now it just seems like he's doing his thing, but that sense of danger and urgency that made him so exciting isn't there anymore.

That being said, every song on The Suburbs is at least good. Even "Month of May", which I'd say is the worst Arcade Fire song, is still pretty good. "Ready to Start", "We Used To Wait", "Roccoco" and plenty others are great, great songs. Better than most of the music out there these days. Still, they don't stand out the way "Wake Up" or "Intervention" did. They just do their thing, and they're great, but it's not the same.

The Suburbs isn't The Arcade Fire's Forgiveness Rock Record - a highly anticipated album that meets and exceeds expectations; one that sounds like it's been given the laborious effort over and above what's required. What it is is a solid collection of songs by great songwriters that doesn't aim for the heights hit by the two albums that preceded it. However, as I said, this is only my first impression, and it's likely to change, so check back soon for updates.

Awesome Album Covers

2010-07-23T12:56:00.001-07:00

My favourite KFC ad ever

Delay Trees

2010-07-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

These Fins hit the same soft spot in my heart that Band of Horses do when at their best. Ooooooh. It hurts so pretty... (Note: at times it hits the British Sea Power part [of my heart]).

Delay Trees - Casette 2012

http://www.myspace.com/delaytrees

Alvin Zealot

2010-07-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

This Swiss band has some kick ass songs. Big, beautiful, sentimental, swooning. Check it.

Alvin Zealot - Bricks Over Bricks

http://www.myspace.com/alvinthezealot

School Of Seven Bells

2010-07-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog much, you know that I'm really big into shoegaze. If I could pick any genre of music to soundtrack my life, it'd be the 'gaze. I mean, truth is my life is way too farcical to be soundtracked entirely by such gorgeous, sexy music - I think the first Modern Lovers album would be more accurate - but if I had my choice, my life would be a shoegaze song. This week's band of the week is a cool shoegaze band that leans more towards the dream-pop rather than noise-pop side of the shoegaze spectrum, and they are...

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS!!!

As many know, School of Seven Bells was started by Benjamin Curtis, formerly of the indie-space-psych rock band Secret Machines. Now, Secret Machines are a great band, but listening to them, I always felt like there was some kind of nerve or something missing. School of Seven Bells manages to reach that little plateau Curtis' old band was always on the verge of.

In School of Seven Bells, Curtis is accompanied by the Deheza twins on vocals and keys. Together, the three of them make blissful, soaring music that actually sounds a lot like what the cover of their first album, Alpinisms, would in audio form. This is due in large part to the Deheza twins' smooth, ethereal vocals, which kind of sound like what you might imagine sexy angels would. Anyway, their latest album, Disconnect From Desire, is the kind of sophomore album that sounds almost exactly like the first album but with slightly better songwriting. Right now I'm like totally loving it.

I don't really have all that much to rant about with this band so I'll just say that shoegaze makes great sex music. Keep School of Seven Bells in mind.

Also the chicks in the band are really hot.

http://www.myspace.com/schoolofsevenbells

Interview With Brett Caswell

2010-07-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Brett Caswell is a Torontonian singer-songwriter, the old school kind: confessional, classicist, well-bearded. He recently released an album called The New Balance, recorded with his backup band The Marquee Rose and producers Mitch C. Hall and Martin Davis Kinack at a secret recording studio up north frequented by Arts and Crafts folk, and right now he's gearing up for a couple dates on the East coast. In Kensington Market venue Supermarket, where he was having a little album release show, Caswell took the time to tell me about playing in nu-metal bands, falling in love with guitar students, and nearly dying in Nicaragua.

M: Brett Caswell, tell me how it all began.

B: It started when I was 12 and I started playing a guitar an uncle gave me. From then on I played for hours and hours and hours in my room. I got into a band in high school – I used to be a jock but as soon as I started playing rock and roll that was it. It was over. I started smoking cigarettes, starting smoking pot. Then after high school I got into a serious band, then another serious band, then at 25 went solo, and now I’m 30. So it’s been about five years under my own name. Yeah, that’s where it started.

M: Can you elaborate more on why you went solo? The bands you were in before?

B: Sure, yeah, absolutely. Well, in high school I played in a heavy metal band, kind of like nu-metal at the time, kind of like when Korn and the Deftones were big. I played in a band called Porno Fuck and it was like nu-metal.

M: I don’t think my mom would’ve let me listen to that.

B: No, I was a guitar teacher at the time and I had to tell my students we were called PF, just PF. And Porno Fuck was pretty serious, like we had some label interest but we couldn’t keep it together personally. Creatively we got along but personally it didn’t click after a couple years. So I think around 22 I started a band called Fight Like Gentlemen, the drummer’s now in Zeus, and the bass player from Fight Like Gentlemen is now in my band as well. That band broke up when I was 25 and it was heartbreaking, at the time I was going through a rough time besides that. I was like “Fuck that, I’m going solo, I can’t take the heartbreak of another band breaking up.”

You know, you put a lot of energy and a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of creative and personal jiving to make a band go, so, I was kind of fed up with it. Now I’m going solo but I have the Marquee Rose [Caswell’s backing band], I was just doing solo stuff for a couple years. And again, the Marquee Rose has been through a couple member changes as well, but now we’re stronger than we’ve ever been.

M: And you recorded this album, A New Balance, as your solo debut. Tell me about that.

B: It’s my debut full-length record; I have an EP called Still Waiting that I put out two years ago with six songs on it, but this is the debut full-length record under my own name.

M: And what’s the story behind the record?

B: It’s been written over two years. Two years ago my father died and there’s a song about him on the record. And I almost died as well, I had a near death experience in a freak accident in Nicaragua, falling off a porch in the middle of the night, taking a piss. Nobody knows how exactly, it’s a mystery; it’s a long fucking story. Anyway, there’s a song called Nicaragua, it’s the last song on the record, it’s heavy, it’s a rock tune. And there’s a couple other songs on there inspired by life and death.

We recorded the record in the middle of nowhere, a beautiful, beautiful spot called Mono. You know where Alliston is? No? Nobody does. It’s Barrie-ish. It’s North-West of here. And I was lucky to record there, it’s a beautiful spot, they do a lot of great records there, like Broken Social Scene does recording there.

M: Is that the hidden place I’ve heard about? Still Life Still told me about recording at a place like that.

B: Quite possibly.

M: You can neither confirm nor deny this statement?

B: Well, I’m not sure, it probably is that spot. It’s like this hidden gem that…great things happen there. I was lucky to be able to record there.

M: How did manage to get in there.

B: A friend of mine, a bass player, is good friends with one of the engineers. I was scoping out some studios and I actually had my heart set on another place and my friend, the bass player, said, “Don’t, wait, come check out this other spot in Mono, my friend Mitch records there.” And good thing I didn’t make a decision and I decided to go check out this last studio and yeah, I was sold. It was secluded, you know? You’re in the middle of nowhere, like my cell phone didn’t work, there was nothing you could do but record, smoke weed, cigarettes, drink booze, and that was that. It was great, one of the great experiences of my life was making this record actually.

M: And how long did it take you?

B: About a year on and off. I just couldn’t afford to finish it all in one shot because it was independently funded by myself. It started last year in March and we’d do a week here, a week there, a couple days here, a couple days there. It was actually done being mixed in October I think, it’s just taken me this long to get my shit together and money together to have it out for people to buy.

M: And how are you releasing it, how are you getting it out there?

B: Right now digitally, like iTunes and what not. That’s happening on May 25^th. Maybe we’ll get some distribution in the summer or fall. I don’t need it in stores yet because I’m not touring yet, but hopefully we’re gonna tour late summer or fall and then we’ll get it in stores, Sunrise and what not.

M: I definitely heard some love stuff on the album, is that for your father? Or some romance thing going on? Any story there?

B: There’s always romance things going on, whether I’m in or out of it, in or out of love. For some reason it’s pretty common for songwriters to write about love and I’m guilty of that too. I used to write about love almost all the time actually and on this record I’ve been trying to get away from that. Like there’s definitely some songs about love. There’s one about love in general, like “All You Need Is Love”, like one of those things. There’s a song about religion and how I don’t like people pushing religion on there, there’s a song about hard times, about my dad, lots of stuff.

M: But the songs that are about love, what’s the story behind them, give me the dirt.

B: Um, there’s a love song on there called “Guilty”, it’s kind of like Motown, it’s got horns. It’s a very simple love song about some forbidden love I had with a girl…for reasons I can’t get into. It was forbidden.

M: Common, nobody reads my blog, man.

B: (Laughs) She was young and her parents probably wouldn’t have appreciated it at the time. Um…and we just fell in love. She was a student of mine (I teach guitar) and the song is kind of about us getting together and the point where we actually were able to say, “fuck it,” we don’t care if anybody gives a shit or not.

M: Maybe I should get back into teaching guitar.

B: (Laughs)

M: Going back a bit, can you tell me a little bit more about what happened to you in Nicaragua?

B: So, my friend Carly - she’s singing with me tonight, she’s a backup singer in our band – has a friend of a friend who owns some land down in Nicaragua and they built cabins in the middle of the woods. Close to a beach but it’s kind of in the middle of the woods. So we were able to go there for a week and hang out. The first day in Nicaragua we had a great day, ate some food, got drunk. In the middle of the night that night, nobody knows what happened, I woke up to piss or puke or something – I wasn’t even that drunk, I wasn’t drunk enough that I think I would’ve been puking – but in the middle of the night I guess I woke up to piss and the front porch was about eight feet off the ground, there was no railing, it was really low key, and I fell face-first onto a post. I was found a few hours later covered in dried blood by one of the cabin neighbors. They found me just like crawling through the woods. I crawled to their cabin and they came out with a baseball bat thinking that I was trying to rob them because they heard some rustling in the bushes and somebody on their porch. They found that it was me, fucking covered in blood from head to toe. Then it was a couple hours to get out of the woods and to a Nicaraguan hospital. I spent the rest of the week in a Nicaraguan hospital, which was actually very nice, it was a brand new hospital like a year or two old. It was really nice and I was in good hands. Luckily. Because people back home heard that I was in a bad accident in Nicaragua they were scared shitless, because they probably thought I was in some fucking shack, but it was actually very nice. My head bled for a week straight. It finally stopped on the last day, when I was supposed to head back, so I caught a plane back and went to Sunnybrook and spent another week there and everything worked out. I’m not dead, I can still sing.

M: And what was going through your mind after that near death experience. What did you realize?

B: I was in shock for a long time. I was just fucking blown away that anything can happen to anybody at any time. Like, you realize that it can happen to you. You always think, “Oh, that won’t happen to me, I won’t get cancer, I won’t get whatever.” You realize that you’re really fragile and anything can happen at any time. I’m really happy anyways but after that accident I’m a little more careful and I just try and live a happy, positive life. That’s what I’ve learned. I guess.

P.S. Brett Caswell's working with a great publicity company called Audio Blood Media. :)

http://www.myspace.com/bcaswell

Awesome Album Covers

2010-07-14T08:16:00.001-07:00

Playaaaaaa...

Wolf Parade

2010-07-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week is one of my favourite bands ever. They're from Montreal, they're dirty, gritty, and explosively creative. The band of the week is...

WOLF PARADE!!!

As we all (should) know, Wolf Parade released their third album recently, the excellent Expo 86. Now, like all highly anticipated albums, people want to know, is it good? Is it better than the last? Is it better than their first? How is it different than what's come before?

Well, it's definitely good. It's better than their last, the solid At Mt. Zoomer, but not quite as good as their first, Apologies to the Queen Mary. The band itself sounds tighter than ever, and Howard Bilerman's production is a notable step-up from the tameness of drummer Arlen Thompsom's on Zoomer. However, the band will likely never sound as good as they did when they had Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock behind the boards coming up with the crazy arrangements and cacophony of sounds that resulted in Apologies' brilliance. My guess is that he was probably just a pain in the ass to work with - as geniuses often are.

That being said though, Expo 86 is a solid second place and probably their most consistent album. It lacks the anthems of a generation like "Shine A Light" and "I'll Believe In Anything" but "Little Golden Age" and "Yulia" definitely stand out. Strangely, Spencer Krug - who for most of the band's existence seemed the more visionary and possibly more talented songwriter of the band - takes a slight backseat to Boeckner on the album. That's not to say the Krug phones it in: songs like "What Did My Lover Say", "In The Direction Of The Moon" and closer "Cave-O-Sapien", are phenomenal, classic spaced-out Krug tracks. Boeckner however seems to kick it just a little harder with the aforementioned highlights as well as with "Palm Road" and "Pobody's Nerfect". This might also be in part because Boeckner has always been the more classic rocker of the songwriting duo and with the band in more powerful shape than it's ever been, there's an added power to Boeckner's songs.

"Yulia" in particular was the one that kept me coming back. Underpinned by a churning synth (that sounds more like an organ) and sung over strangely anthemic chord changes, the song is about a (Russian?) astronaut being left to rot in space, told from the perspective of the astronaut addressing his wife back home in Prostranaya (perhaps a made up or misspelt place, Google results don't give back anything satisfactory).

Boeckner often fills his songs with images or feelings of desolation - we can refer to "Shine A Light" and it's depiction of the daily dredge and "You know our hearts beat time/They're waiting for something that will never arrive" for evidence of this. One can also point to the Handsome Furs track "What We Had" for a depiction of emotional desolation: "What we had/Don't mean a thing." There's plenty more evidence of this throughout his writing, I could spend all day pointing it out, but anyways.

In "Yulia", Boeckner uses the desolation of outer space to illustrate a number of things.

Firstly, the song's protagonist has been betrayed by his home country, even after he stood on "the platform" as one of "the favorite sons of history"; now he's being edited from history by the same people who sing a "patriot song, it's the devil that you know", they've flipped the switch and he's "never coming home." The emptiness of patriotism and the promises a government makes for its citizens - even its heroes - is pointed out. Those placed in trust of power could easily let you float out in space forever and edit your name from history, as if you never existed, and still sleep soundly at night.

Secondly, the emptiness of space represents the emptiness within the protagonist's heart, as he sings, "There's nothing out here/Nothing out here/Nothing out here/Nothing out here." Indeed, he's flown all that way into space, this achievement which many would hold so prized, but once he's out in space, there's nothing there. It's totally empty. And worse, he's left there separated from the woman he loves feeling as empty inside himself as the space around him appears, and so the lines, "there's nothing out here," really mean, "there's nothing in here", in his heart.

It also illustrates the irony of technological progress, in that mankind has come so far that we can fly into space - but for what? There's nothing out there. Technological progress is a hollow victory.

As brilliant as Spencer Krug is with his fantastical vision, it's almost always been the grittiness of Boeckner's writing, voice and vision that's really intrigued me. It's the conflict he seems to be continually trying to work through of compromising life in the modern world of technology and materialism with the inner world of emotion and the soul. Read his lyrics, you'll see what I mean.

http://www.myspace.com/wolfparade

Blind Void Remix

2010-07-10T23:23:00.000-07:00

Eddie from Phil Allister sampled my song "Blind Void" for this cool electro-dance track of his. Check it.

SCTLK '86 - Blind Void '86

Violens

2010-07-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

These moody rockers from New York are just like...really sweet. Weird, synthy, definitely pretty 80s, but really, really sweet. They're also on tour with MGMT right now.

Violens - Acid Reign

http://www.myspace.com/violens

PKEW PKEW PKEW (Gunshots)

2010-07-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Toronto indie-rockers with a sense of humour, PKEW PKEW PKEW (Gunshots) just put out an EP called Royalty. I particularly enjoyed the song "Asshole Pandemic", which features the brilliant line, "Why's this fucking dick gotta be such a cock." I think that's something we can all relate to.

PKEW PKEW PKEW (Gunshots) - Asshole Pandemic

http://www.myspace.com/pkewpkewpkewgunshots

Nude Beach

2010-07-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

While I was in Brooklyn, I wanted to find a cool, hip new band that nobody knew about yet. A guy at Academy Records turned me on to Nude Beach, a band of dudes who like to play fast, scrappy but pretty, melodic rock. They released a great self-titled album recently, check out the Byrds-y "Hit By A Hurricane" below. It's probably the most 'pop' song on the album by far, but being the pop-junkie I am, it was the track I got excited about.

Nude Beach - Hit By A Hurricane

http://www.myspace.com/nudebeachny

Awesome Album Covers

2010-07-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

Liz Phair really does not care anymore. Like, at all.

Burger King

2010-07-06T09:11:00.001-07:00

My good buddy Danny used to be in a band called The Weathermaking Challenge. A while ago they split up, which was really sad, because Danny is a phenomenal performer, the man is meant to be onstage. Rather than sit around and just talk about what a shame it was, Danny and I wrote a couple songs over the course of several months, usually in the morning when he'd sleep over at my place after we'd been out partying at Dance Cave. I'd later flesh out the song with drums, bass, guitars, keys, etc. until they sounded like legit band songs.

Danny is going to England this Fall, so I organized a show to help him raise some money for the trip. Of course my first thought was that it would only be right for him to play the show, so we got some cool peeps onboard and tried to cram in as much practice as possible. The show's this Thursday, July 8th, and we may not be totally ready, but whatever we lack in finesse we plan on making up in awesomeness.

The show will also serve as a de facto EP release show for the stuff Danny and I've been recording, the title of which will be Return of the Burger King. Below you can stream the songs from the EP.

1. Everything Is Wrong With The World

2. Something Else

3. Almost Found Myself

4. (I Won't) Give It Away

5. The Letting Go

http://soundcloud.com/burger-king

Houses

2010-07-06T06:29:00.000-07:00

Trevor Hawkins from Tearjerker sent me over the album he just finished up with his other band, slowgazers Houses. The guy's doing some good work, check out the song "Seasons" below.

Houses - Seasons

http://www.myspace.com/housesband

Band Of The Week

2010-07-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

This week's band of the week is a band that broke up way too soon, and perhaps now they'll never make the masterpieces they were meant to. Or maybe they broke up just before shit started going downhill. It's hard to say, all we have to judge by are the albums by the bands the two frontmen went on to start afterwards, those ranging from bad to decent. The band of the week is...

THE LIBERTINES!!!

In Britain these guys are a big deal. Just this summer they got paid millions to reunite and play some festival headlining slot. Here in North America they've got their fans but they're not so well known, mainly because they weren't around long enough to catch on. Interestingly enough, many people are aware of the band's frontman Pete Doherty because of his frequent drug-related tabloid appearances and because he was dating Kate Moss for a while. But I don't think many of the same people know exactly why he's famous to begin with.

Anyway. The Libertines released the album Up The Bracket in 2002 and it was a big hit with both critics and fans. The band earned the title of "the British Strokes" and that went a long way as well. Truth is they weren't really much like The Strokes at all, they simply had a streetwise attitude and played smart, old school rock, though theirs harkened back to 70s punk and britpop rather than the Velvet Underground and proto-punk.

Many people say Up The Bracket was The Libertines best album, but their self-titled second album is the easy winner in my books. Released in 2004, the album seems to wear everything on its sleeves, particularly Pete Doherty's escalating drug problems and his strained brotherly-love relationship with co-frontman Carl Barat, best exemplified in the song "What Became Of The Likely Lads."

A couple words about the song: it's one of the best songs ever written. Over a simple but brilliant set of changes and with vocals being traded back and forth between Doherty and Barat, the boys in the band lament "What became of the likely lads?/What became of all the dreams we had?" And despite all the strife between the two - including Doherty burgling Barat's flat, pissed off one night - they forgive eachother, because "Blood runs thicker oh/We're thick as thieves you know." It's a love song for a tragic love between best friends, but it's a song about the dreams of boyhood and how even when those dreams come true, the reality of them isn't what you thought it would be.

But alas, The Libertines was to be the group's final album. Pete Doherty went off with Babyshambles and a lot of heroin and Carl Barat went on to front Dirty Pretty Things. What happened with each of those bands is almost too predictable: each found a respectable level of success of their own, critically and commercially, with Doherty occasionally writing something brilliant between a load of drugged out bollocks and Barat writing fairly consistent good music that never approached the genius of his former group.

Even if The Libertines were to regroup tomorrow, they'd likely never make the albums they could have and should have. True, some of this lends to the gravity of The Libertines as an album in terms of its historical important as well as its emotional resonance, but who knows if maybe they had a London Calling in them; Blur and Pulp certainly didn't hit their strides till well after their second albums. In my books, The Libertines were a band that never made their best album. And that's tragic, because they could have if Doherty hadn't been such a druggy fuck. But alas, such are musicians. I guess we can always splice together Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things albums and pretend...

http://www.myspace.com/thelibertines

Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk

2010-07-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

Heard about these guys from Delicious Scopitone. I'd label them noisy tribal pop (And yes, they're getting labelled, they can deal with it). Also, they've got an upcoming release called Skeletor and Me which is just an awesome title.

Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk - Last Night Sucked

http://www.myspace.com/babybirdsdontdrinkmilk

Awesome Album Covers!

2010-06-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Meghan Fox without makeup.

Oberhofer

2010-06-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

It's a sad day when people younger than you are getting critical acclaim before you are. Or after you...but maybe you haven't gotten any in a long time...any way...Oberhofer is a band from Brooklyn making sick indie tunes. Love the electric-telephone-line vocals and spastic, enthused rubber-band arrangement. They just put out a 7". It's good.

Oberhofer - Landline

http://www.myspace.com/oberhofermusic

Nirvana

2010-06-29T12:45:00.001-07:00

There are days when I think this week's band of the week is one of the most overrated bands of all time. Why were they so lauded by critics and adoring fans? The right sound for the angsty times, maybe? A suicide always boosts a bands profile significantly. But lately especially, I've been realizing something that perhaps I missed all along. A raw nerve exposed, perhaps. A level of honesty and directness; 'from our hearts to your searing eardrums'. The band of the week is...

NIRVANA!!!

How are hipsters supposed to feel about Nirvana?

On one hand, they were signed to Geffen, a major major-label; loved by masses of uneducated, unsophisticated persons who placed their CDs in binders alongside such despicable 90s choices as Dispatch and Dave Matthews; wrote possibly the song most covered song by terrible, teenage bands in the last 20 years; and then of course there's post-grunge to answer for, the genre that bands like Creed and Nickelback would classify themselves as.

But then again, they were loved by such hipster favorites as Sonic Youth (who owe their own Geffen-signing to the band, out of which came such classics as Goo and Dirty) and Dinosaur Jr.; their frontman was a troubled art-school graduate who was a pretentious pain in the ass for music biz people to work with - and then he killed himself; he helped popularize Daniel Johnston; and many consider the band singularly responsible for murdering hair metal (fwew).

My own answer is conflicted. Those shitty 'Teen Spirit' covers we all suffered through in highschool were enough to kill off the credibility of nearly any band save maybe The Beatles. And the awkward kids who wore Nirvana T-Shirts were usually the dumbest, most ridiculous pre-emo fuckheads. But you can't blame a band for their fans - a sentiment Kurt Cobain might want us all to remember: "He's the one/Who likes all our pretty songs/And he likes to sing along/And he likes to shoot his gun/But he knows not what it means."

Those hip kids who were there in the early 90s will tell you that Nirvana was like a godsend to them. Finally, a band that 'got it' and could actually rock. And they wrote pop songs! Amazing. My cousin Daniel says that Nirvana was one of the best bands he ever saw live. And sure, without Nirvana we might never have had to suffer through Nickelback, but there are those who would argue that we might never have gotten Radiohead either. Fuck, I just read that Panda Bear's next album was influenced in-large part by Cobain.

I recently saw the movie The Year Punk Broke (thanks entirely to Damian from Fucked Up, who is totally my hero) and while watching that movie and Nirvana's performances in it, I realized that nearly all the bands in the movie sound far more real than most bands today. Bands today pose and try and look cool. And yeah, many of them make awesome music, but can you imagine Julian Casablancas or Karen O or Kevin Drew - phenomenal frontpersons, all of them - actually losing their shit? Seriously letting loose the way Iggy Pop or Richard Hell could in the 70s? No. But Kurt Cobain was like that. There was some kind of shattered divide between him, his music, and his audience. Fucked Up are like that also, actually, which is why their shows are so insanely awesome.

Anyway, I gotta get to a band practice of my own. Maybe I'll go into this more some other time. In the meantime, relisten to In Utero (great album) and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.myspace.com/nirvana