Photo by Jaime Rubian
Violinist and composer Sarah Neufeld will release The Ridge Feb. 26 2016 on Paper Bag Records. The Montreal-based Neufeld is a member of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre. She has most recently collaborated with saxophonist Colin Stetson. Jeremy Gara of Arcade Fire joins her on drums for the record. The first single, the titular "The Ridge" is available for streaming.
Ra Ra Riot have released a lyric video for "Water", the latest single from their upcoming Arts & Crafts issued album, Need Your Light. The track was a collaboration between the band and Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij. Rostam has previously worked with the Brooklyn five-piece but this is the first as a producer. Need Your Light is their fourth album and will be available Feb. 19 2016.
Once upon a time Attack In Black played at the Groove Lounge in Oshawa and I chatted with the band after their gig and they said they loved East Coast bands like Sloan and Thrush Hermit and Eric's Trip and I said hey Julie Doiron is at the Velvet Elvis tonight we should go and meet her, hook y'all up and I gave them directions but I don't recall them showing up but at some point they all did meet up and the video above is one of the many results from their collaborations, Fred Squires, Julie Doiron and AIB's Dan Romano playing together, from a record they made together.
The video is hosted on the Colin Medley's new project YCTV, a holding house for You've Changed Records stable of artists and videos. Romano also begat You've Changed Records with Steve Lambke of the Constantines. They are touring. They played The Mod Club in Toronto Nov. 11.
Romano's new album is a doozy of a record, he calls his music mosey and the album does mosey on but the sound is fat and full, full and far from the twangy thinness of old timey folk numbers. He uses all space available even filling between songs with lush Amercana orchestrations. His lonesome pining may be best suited to a house such as the Horseshoe Tavern or the Dakota but he brought the rock to the country and filled the space of the Mod Club just as he does on his album with much chunkier versions of his tracks, even adding a drum solo. Romano has a George Jones vibe with a Bob Dylan delivery but at the Mod he brought back the ghost of Handsome Ned and Stompin' Tom.
He may be moseying musically and metaphorically from bar to saloon to bar shedding tears into his beers but there's nothing sad about his tunes. Jason Gartshore of Americana Review reviews the album for SlowCity but I would add that Romano has created songs that swell with each listen and live they swell to fill every corner.
Double Double dose of the doubledare teen-boy skate thrash at Wasted Space Saturday Nov. 14 with three Oshawa acts and one -out-of-towner. The fun boy trio of Headswirl mash up bedroom pranks and Joe Strummer, the forthright Shyy have a little game they call "Turn it up to 11? We start at 11 and turn it up from there", Surf Cactus take on spiky alt-rock and Thee Carpenteers, from somewhere between Belleville and Hamilton, play rock that demands someone loses an eye. Should be one something of a rock 'n roll show, just don't tell your mom. Doors at 9, 10 dollars gets you in or PWYC.
Barenaked Ladies are rolling out their Silverball tour across Canada with a date Nov. 17 at Oshawa's General Motors Centre. Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea is opening.
Layer upon layer upon layer; the music of Yukon Blonde gets all meta with blatant and subversive nods and nudges that when all trimmed together says yes we're in a band, we make music that sounds like this and yes this sounds like that. Whatever. Just dig it. Tis good.
Lindi Ortega take her black grass and dark country chops a step further with the release of the video for "Ashes" and her recent Grand Ol Opry debut. Ortega is skirting the Greater Toronto Area with dates in December including Dec 11 at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts.
Marine Dreams and the Weather Station join Steve Lambke formerly known as Baby Eagle in the Colin Medley directed video. the track "Memory Forever" is on Lambke's lasest album available on You've Changed Records. The double moon artwork is by Shary Boyle. Lambke is on tour with Dan Romano. They play Toronto's Mod Club Wednesday, Nov. 11. 2015
The Sadies' holiday train pulls into the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto for New Years' Eve. Should be heck of a hootenanny as Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift are also on the bill.
Evening Hymns has released the Jared Raab directed video for the lead track "All My Life I Have Been Running" from the album Quiet Energies. Jonas Bonnetta aka Evening Hymns has been touring most recently with Hayden but has a series of headlining dates coming up.
Nov. 12 - Wakefield – Blacksheep Inn w/ Winchester Warm
Nov. 13 - Peterborough - Gordon Best Theatre w/ Kalle Mattson
Nov. 14 - Kingston - Grad Club w/ Kalle Mattson
Nov. 19 - Hamilton – Casbah w/ The Acorn (solo)
Nov 20 - Orillia – Brownstone Café w/ The Acorn (solo) - FREE SHOW
Nov. 21 - St. Catharines – Detour w/ The Acorn (solo)
Nov. 27 - Toronto - The Drake Hotel w/ The Acorn (solo)
Nov. 28 - Cherry Valley (PEC) - Cherry Valley United Church w/ The Weather Station
Tanya Tagaq has asked those attending her Massey Hall show to bring diapers. The Inuit throat singer and Polaris Music Prize winner is co-headling with Owen Pallett Dec 1 as part of the Live at Massey Hall series and is organizing a Diaper Drive at the show with donations going to The Diaper Bank in Toronto. Baby bottoms are an oft-overlooked part of those in need and anyone with kids will tell you clean bums don’t come cheap. Tagaq’s label Six Shooter is also selling raffle tickets with proceeds going to the Winnipeg-based Manitoba Inuit Association. The prize is a pair of Manitoba mukluks.
The Lighthouse and The Whaler recorded their album Mont Royal in, yes you guessed it, Montreal: The City of Saints, smoked meat and Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler and the Habs (Go Habs Go). Also home to Arcade Fire, Stars, The Dears, Patrick Watson, Wolf Parade, and too too many more. It is also home to music producer Marcus Paquin who has worked with many of the aforementioned bands putting Montreal on the music lovers' map. It was the desire to work with Paquin that brought Cleveland's The Lighthouse and The Whaler north.
Guitarist Mark Poro says moving to Paquin’s hometown also made sense as it took them literally outside their comfort zone and to a place where they could focus on the music and on being a band.
Poro is joined in The Lighthouse & The Whaler by bassist Ryan Walker, singer Mike LoPresti and drummer Mark LoProtesi. Mont Royal is the band’s third full-length and Poro says much of it was inspired by the city itself, highlighting the single “I Want To Feel Alive” in particular as the track with a Montreal vibe.
"That song was actually a song that started to develop in Cleveland but it finally took form in Montreal. I originally only had the lyrics “I want to feel alive” and the melody for them. I never really tried to write those lyrics they kept just coming to me, from somewhere deeper, it was almost spiritual, every time I sang it or worked on that song it felt bigger than me. I knew what I wanted the song to be but the construction of it was eluding me," says Poro, "The guys and I collaborated to create the verses for the song and I wrote the rest of the lyrics but I felt it was still missing something. When we left for Montreal I actually didn’t think it was gonna make the record. We ended up doing a lot of work on it in pre-production with Marcus. By the time we finished it the song really embodied it’s lyrics. It was very moving for me when we finished. It felt like the song embodied the journey this record took, a piece of itself being crafted every step of the process."
Poro says they felt like residents rather than visitors, spending much of their non-studio time just wandering around their immediate neighbourhood of Le Plateau. They did explore other territories, mostly of the sonic kind with Paquin.
"Marcus pushed us to try different arrangements of the demos we had sent him and ended his experienced ear to help us make the songs more interesting. We took a lot of time making sure we got the right sounds to make the album feel the way we wanted it to. I can’t say enough about how much we enjoyed working with Marcus. I think this was a natural progression from our older sound, moving it forward without being too overbearing," says Poro.
The Lighthouse & The Whaler will be returning to Canada on tour with a gig at The Drake Nov. 22 in Toronto but there are no scheduled dates for Montreal as of yet.
Calgary wunderkind Chad VanGaalen has created an animated video for the maestro of mosey Dan Romano. The track is "I'm Gonna Teach You". It has Wilf Carter's lonesome pine and a hint of a murder ballad. VanGaalen populates the soundscape with an array of creatures only he can come up with (or maybe its Robert Crumb's take on Star Wars' Mos Eilsey Cantina). Romano has some dates including It Ain't Hollywood in Hamilton with TV Freaks and Black Baron.
Nov 4 - KINGSTON, ON - The Grad Club
Nov 5 - MONTREAL, QC - Petit Campus
Nov 6 - OTTAWA, ON - National Arts Centre - Fourth Stage
Nov 7 - HAMILTON, ON - This Ain't Hollywood (w/ TV Freaks, Black Baron)
Nov 11 - TORONTO, ON - The Mod Club
Nov 12 - ST. CATHARINES, ON - FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre
Nov 13 - LONDON, ON - Call The Office