Moby and the Void Pacific Choir have released The Light Is Clear In My Eyes from the forthcoming album due on Arts and Crafts.
Photo by Joyce Kim
No Joy for Judith in new video
Montreal’s No Joy have released the video for the single Judith from their album More Faithful released June 9 2015 on Arts and Crafts. The track is a shoegazey whallop of My Bloody Valentine lushness but replace their whale song sound with static. Judith is brash lady. The band play the Danforth in Toronto Oct 11.
Choose Tom Jackson's Ballads Not Bullets
Actor, singer, producer and activist Tom Jackson has a simple message on his new album Ballads Not Bullets out Oct. 16 2015 - change your world, the rest will follow. Jackson’s first love has always been music but he is well known as an actor on the TV show, North of 60. He has organized the charitable annual Huron Carole Benefit Concert Tour for over 25 years and this year's holiday showcase will serve as his album’s release celebrations. A portion of the funds from Ballads Not Bullets will go towards the Red Cross. The single Blue Water is available for streaming.
Straight Outta Bedsit Land, AA Wallace plays Wasted Space Sep 26
Growing up in rural Nova Scotia AA Wallace says he gravitated to electronic music because he liked to work alone “and machines rarely offer unsolicited input.” He adds that EDM once favoured anonymity but that has changed with the rise of DJ as celebrity. Wallace is also no longer favouring anonymity. He is touring and has teamed up with Toronto’s Culvert label. He plays Oshawa’s Wasted Space Cafe & Gallery Sep 26.
He is on the road with a new track “VLT Girls (We Win Again)”, one that could be found on a mixtape from Small Sins or Russian Futurists. The accompanying video shot in and around Yarmouth puts a Trailer Park Boy B-Boy spin on it and we're not talking J-Roc here.
“I chose the images I did because it's what Nova Scotia represents to me. Most of my favourite people from rural Nova Scotia derive their character in spite of the areas they grew up in rather than having been nurtured by them. The video is kind of just a non narrative way of conveying that. . . . The truth is a lot of things have changed since I left. Many of the derelict buildings have been torn down and people seem to take more pride in the look of their towns based on how difficult it was for us to come up with suitable locations for the video. But with the changes in arts support in Nova Scotia, the regressive liquor laws and the feeling by most people that the provincial government is trying to turn Nova Scotia into a retirement province, It's hard to not feel that those changes are only superficial,” he says.
Wallace had issued a track, “This Can Heal”, on his debut album, disambiguation, but he backs away from saying music is a force that can overcome social ills.
“I guess it's possible but I try not to concern myself with it. If someone wants to take it as a political thing that's their prerogative. I watched Straight Outta Compton recently and I can relate to a point with the way Ice Cube describes his writing. He wasn't part of the problems he had to deal with but he couldn't help being affected by them and wrote about that, though sometimes in the lyrics it feels like he's in the thick of it. I feel like any mention I make of the real world is done in a similar way. Though I'd rather write about space or being misunderstood,” he says.
While he does not make message music he does have one message for others contemplating outsider life from within their bedrooms.
“If I could impart anything with my music it would be that sometimes it doesn't get better and it's ok to be weird. If people don't get you, thats on them,” he says.
I'm just going to leave this here because I think its relevant in a way.
54-40 unplug at Oshawa's Regent Theatre Jan 11, 2016
The first album I bought at Star Records in Oshawa was 54-40’s Green album, the Vancouver band's debut. It was 1986 and it was the first step on a lifelong trip through Canadian Music. There have been several 54-40 encounters along the road. 54-40 were the first band to play the Regent Theatre in Oshawa and they make a welcome return to the soft-seater venue for an unplugged set Saturday Jan. 11 2016. I played that Green album a lot and it still ranks as one of my all time faves. Ticket information is available at the Regent's website.
Then . . .
and now . . .
Hayden - Photo by Christie Greyerbiehl
Hayden, Bahamas, Weather Station and more for Dream Serenade 2015
The Weather Station is among the acts appearing at this year’s Dream Serenade to be held at Massey Hall Saturday Oct. 17. The Serenade is a fundraiser for the Beverley Junior Public School and is organized by Hayden, whose daughter attends the school for children with special needs. Also appearing will be Bahamas, Kevin Hearn and the Thin Buckle, Choir! Choir! Choir! and Joel Plaskett. A “supergroup” of fellow East Coasters, Chris Murphy (Sloan), Matt Murphy (Superfriendz) and Mike O’Neill (Inbreds) aka Tuns will also perform. Tickets are $35 available online or at the Roy Thomson Hall box office.
Absolutely Free drop absolutely fab remix of WIN WIN
Ambient psych-groovers Absolutely Free and Arts & Crafts stablemates WIN WIN have paired off for a couple of remixs. Absolutely Free take on WIN WIn’s “Don’t Freak Out” and bring it underwater. Its one beaut of a trip into early morning Orbital territory. Simple, subtle and mesmerizing. WIN WIN take A.F’s Burred Lens and pare it down into a blip-pop dance track. The double A side digital single was created to mark Arts & Crafts return to Pop Montreal after a three year absence. Absolutely Free was long listed for the Polaris Music Prize. Its one fine album and could have gone further on to the short list.
TURF: Take The River And The Road
Toronto Urban Roots Festival takes place Sep 18, 19 and 20 at Fort York. Its a lot of bands, it’s a lot of time but there are three stages as well as shows at Lee’s Palace and the Legendary Horseshoe. SLOWCITY has some suggestions for you.
Saturday Sep. 19 - South Stage - 2:15 p.m. to 2:55 p.m.
Whichever route you take, The River And The Road will bring you to the same place. Call it Americana or Canadiana, possibly even Australiana as Andrew Phelan travelled from Oz to Vancouver where he met Keenan Lawlor and together they set out on a well trodden country path. Two became four and the band have developed a sound on their most recent album, Headlights, on Maple Music, not unlike a pairing of the Tragically Hip and Boy And Bear. They’ve been hooking up with Sam Roberts Band and the Arkells which would indicate a rockier road ahead of them rather the slipstream of the river but they are are a band on the move and one to seek out.
TURF: Cold Specks - music to sell your soul by
Toronto Urban Roots Festival takes place Sep 18, 19 and 20 at Fort York. Its a lot of bands, its a lot of time but there are three stages as well as shows at Lee’s Palace and the Legendary Horseshoe. SLOWCITY has some suggestions for you.
Photo by Steve Gullick
Wednesday Sep 16 - Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
Friday Sep 18 - East Main Stage - 2:10 p.m. to 2:50 p.m
If the Devil brought any music to his crossroads meeting with Robert Johnson it would be something along the airy eerie lines of Cold Specks. A shallow shroud wrapped over her lowered old soul shoulders, she would hum her dark hymns as the discussions progressed. Her chain gang spirituals and her spellbinding gothic gospel are the perfect soundtrack to selling your soul. And all from a Northern gal. There is something in Cold Specks that travels back through the ages, something within, a strength of song as the Great Deliverer. It’s been something to capture her force on record yet somehow her latest album, Neuroplasticity , on Arts & Crafts, does allow her the freedom to croon and rage and roar and keen. The record moves spritely into Chet Baker style jazz with spiralling beatific freeform sax all the while being held down by some tom thumping drums. Overall the voice of the Cold Specks, soars on, looking on, a spectre, as the Devil’s tallys up his accounts.
TURF: Northcote's songs from the factory of hope
Toronto Urban Roots Festival takes place Sep 18, 19 and 20 at Fort York. Its a lot of bands, its a lot of time but there are three stages as well as shows at Lee’s Palace and the Legendary Horseshoe. SLOWCITY has some suggestions for you.
Friday Sep 18 - South Stage - 5 p.m. to 5:45 p.m
Northcote, a.k.a. Matt Goud, has the inspirational ride like the wind hopefulness of all of the Boss’s big dreamers born to run from small town or street alley in his songs. Saskatchewan was Northcote’s nemesis rather than New Jersey but all towns are cages to the young no matter if the gilding is gold leaf or wheat sheaf. Goud, once a member of harcore punk band MEANS, launched with his solo folkie 2011 debut Gather No Dust, followed up with the self-titled in 2013 and is set to release his third full-length, Hope Is Made From Steel, on Sep 25 2015. He has a backing band (Stephen McGillivray, Mike Battle & Derek Heathfield) that charges with him but he’s essentially just a solitary man with throat full of gravel and a heart full of bleed, exclaiming cinematically, emblematically his anthemic empathy with the human condition. What can I say I’m a fan.
TURF: The Desaparecidos should not be missed
Toronto Urban Roots Festival takes place Sep 18, 19 and 20 at Fort York. Its a lot of bands, its a lot of time but there are three stages as well as shows at Lee’s Palace and the Legendary Horseshoe. SLOWCITY has some suggestions for you.
Friday Sep 18 - East Main Stage - 4 p.m. to 5 p.m
The Desaparecidos are named for The Disappeared, in particular during Chile’s General Pinochet’s rule. The Omaha, Nebraska, five piece punk outfit have disappeared for some length themselves so catch them as they while you can. Frontman Conor Oberst moved on with Bright Eyes just after The Desaparecidos formed in 2001. They’ve been on and off ever since releasing an initial album, Read Music/Speak Spanish, in 2002. In June 23 2015 they released Payola. Its streaming on their website.
Its a fantastic heartfelt take on social issues wrapped up in smart as the whipped melodic hardcore this side of The Weakerthans. While the band’s name and album title recall the newsworthiness of civilians going missing seemingly randomly as well as past abuses of power (DJs taking backhanders to play certain songs) it is noteworthy that it is la Aparecida that are in the news of late. These dispossessed are visibly discontented with the status quo of protest tactics, swarming the towers of power and the government fortresses et al. They will no longer camp in the square; they will march right up to the borders and walk right on through. They will no longer just disappear from home lives or headlines; they will appear on our doorsteps. They wash up on our shores, come walking down the railroads. They are stepping off our screens onto our streets. They are on the march. The call is to build a wall but Oberst and his disenchanted band mates (Landon Hedges, Denver Dalley, Ian MacElroy, Matt Baum) are on top of it. They are ready with songs about Occupy and Anonymous, war crimes and Wall St criminals, apathy and our appetite for destruction. Payola may be the most overtly political pop-punk rock album since Green Day’s American Idiot and it is most welcome. To those with absolute power our message is don’t ignore the collective will of La Aparecida and our message to those who like their punks to protest to power is do not miss the Desaparecidos.
And whats a protest punk band with out a little shout out to The Clash.
Is newly discovered Homo naledi Montreal's Caveboy?
Somewhere in South Africa a whole lot of bones were found, the bones of people who lived thousands if not millions of years ago. These Cave people are a step in human evolution heretofore unknown. Connect the dots, connect the bones, connect the humans.
Here's Montreal's Caveboy and here's the why. You have to put some humanity into your synthetics. The electric has to reflect the organics. Its a fact. Its the connection. Its the sex and music has to have the sex and Montreal’s dream-popsters Caveboy have it. On “Home Is Where” from the their debut self-titled EP due on Oct. 9 2015, some Simple Minds hub cap reverb and Banarama fun girl fabulousness are a new gold dream with a Liz Frazer edginess, call it an evolution of the machine. The three-piece play Pop Montreal Sep 17 and 19.
In-Flight Safety report, their songs play well with others
In-Flight Safety, whose album Conversationalist came out in 2014, will play at the Moustache Club in Oshawa Sep. 10 2015. The Halifax-based indie rock band are on a short tour promoting the video for the single “Stockholm” and bringing out a new EP of B-sides plus a collaborative track with fan Rachel Corcoran of Kingston. That song grew out of a conversation guitarist and songwriter John Mullane had with Corcoran who uploaded video of her In-Flight Safety covers.
“We loved her voice so we asked to collaborate with her. She’s just really great. She does covers of Metric, and Jenn Grant and In-Flight Safety and Hollerado and Arkells. She is so talented and her voice reminded me of The Sundays and that lent itself to some stuff we were working on at the time,” says Mullane who along with drummer Glen Nicholson started talking about starting a band while students at Sackville’s Mt. Allison U.
A conversation can start so much. Early on in their career Canadian singer/songwriter Emm Gryner had a conversation with In-Flight Safety and then had a chat with David Bowie about the band and Bowie sent In-Flight Safety a very nice thumbs up email having heard their music through Gryner who was his keyboard player at the time. That started a conversation about possibly really having a future with this whole music thing.
Ten years later the band have several East Coast Music Awards and a couple of Juno nominations. Conversationalist is their third full length, “We do things slowly,” says Mullane, “we are an indie band.”
Mullane says the title fitted thematically with the direction the album took.
“The album to us was about conversations and the lack of conversation and how that can affect friendship. The idea with our music is that we like to make it put it out in the world and then maybe get something back. And if we are not getting something back then it doesn’t feel complete. So it was a cycle of putting energy out and receiving it back.” he says.
A conversation can be cyclical but it is rarely linear. What comes back can be totally divorced from the original introductory line. It is something, Mullane says, which took him some time to understand, in particular when happening upon cover versions of his band’s tracks.
“When someone covers your songs, which has only happened to us in the last five years, since the last record, We Are an Empire My Dear, when people cover our songs, that was the first time I really understood that this is not really mine. Once I put it out there it becomes something different and interpretative.” he says.
Of course the best conversations are when the other does fully understand and get the initial intent and a bond is made.
“There’s something very emotional about it because you are so connected to what this person is doing. I guess it’s because the kind of music we make is supposed to be experienced. It’s not just blasting and you listening. Its meant to be participatory so that was the ultimate compliment,” says Mullane.
It’s akin to having your kids play well with others he says.
“Your songs are like children when you don’t have any kids and so when they get out there and do things you are really proud that they are interacting with the world so that’s cool,” he says.