New tune “Hanging From the Ceiling” from Edmonton’s The Velveteins is all 1950s high school year-end do-wop and plaid jacketed choreography until Dennis Hopper shows up in a Kurt Cobain T-Shirt and sprays the ice cream coloured bobby-soxers with blood and fuzz. The track is from a new EP called A Hot Second with The Velveteins, produced by Lincoln Parish of Cage The Elephant. It will be available on Fierce Panda May 27.
As the Vancouver rockers Hot Hot Heat step out of the picture they have released the single “Kid Who Stays in the Picture” . Hot Hot Heat were part of a wave of modern garage rockers who stormed the charts in the early 2000s but they are shutting up the garage for good with their final album, Hot Hot Heat. Culvert in Canada and Kaw-Liga internationally are releasing the record June 24. The single has Wings-like pop assurance sure to leave fans grooving as the band steps away. Its either the end or a beginning.
Whitby based synth-punk Chastity (Brandon WIlliam's new project) have been picked up by Last Gang Records. They have released the slow burner Peroxide and accompanying video. They are on a UK tour but are heading back to Ontario with a Hamilton's Homegrown. No homegrown gig in Whitby just yet.
Vancouver's Old Man Canyon have a gig at the Adelaide Hall May 19 2016. The band recently aired a bonus track "Got You On A Ride" as a follow-up to their record Delirium. It plays as a breezy, light ride across a pink and silver sea, a dusky Lion's Gate crossing perhaps. They are crossing the country, with a May 19 date at Adelaide Hall in Toronto.
Canada faves The Skydiggers flew across the pond to dig through their anglo-folk roots by way of the songs of Gene Clarke of the Byrds. Their tribute album Here Without You - The Songs of Gene Clark is out now on Latent Recordings. The video for “Set You Free This Time” has been set free on the internet.
Bassist Emma Richardson steps up to the front on Band of Skull’s new album By Default. The first single, confidently titled “So Good” draws a line between Martha & The Muffins and Tame Impala and somehow Jane’s Addiction and Prince. I know but thats the vibe. Take a listen, video included. Russell Marsden is on guitar and Matt Hayward plays drums make up the Brit trio, the album drops May 27 on BMG. No North American dates on file but that will change for sure.
Photography b Caitlin McLafferty
Arts & Crafts has partnered with TO sonically youthful Frigs to releasetheir EP, Slush which comes out Jun 10. The Frigs are members of Heretical Objects Cooperative. Maintaining the communal, do-it-yourself spirit of the Co-op the band bought recording equipment and turned their Toronto apartment into a studio where they wrote, engineered, and mixed Slush. The first single “God Hates A Coward” is delightful slow stoner rock with husky vocals before leaning into spirited Hole territory. The Frigs have a sizeable UK tour schedule followed by a run through Canada and the States. They play Jun 8 at The Spill in Peterborough. They perform with Amsterdam’s Blue Crime, imagine Rick White from Eric’s Trip as four girls.
Blue Crime
With a gentle guitar strum and croon LA based musician Nico Yaryan begins his hummable sing-a-long spooky ballad about obsessive love, “You Belong to Me”, all weird old America and Dylan Basement Tapes material, all son of Sam and on the lam. Its a plucky track from his album What A Tease available on Last Gang dropping June 3 2016.
Meghan Patrick is a country singer from the Black Grass scene east of Toronto, Ontario. Patrick, from Bowmanville, grew up on bluegrass, folk and country, all of which found voice in The Stone Sparrows. She recently signed to Warner Canada and has released her debut solo album titled Grace & Grit, a reference to her own rural upbringing, one explored on the title track which kicks off the party.
While there are noticeable bluegrass elements on some songs, “Nothing But A Song” and “Forever Ain’t Enough Time”, in particular, the album is more gracious with its embrace of modern country, and the genre’s emphasis on booming backbeats and rocking riffs. Lead single “Bow Chicka Wow Wow” falls firmly on the modern rock side of country. Patrick does however manage to pay tribute to those musical roots, both in place “Be Country With Me” and person, “Long Way From Waylon”.
While the album is also a long way from Waylon Jennings there is still a whole lot of grit caught up in all the grace, leather and lace. Even the presence of champion polisher Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger (co-writer and co-producer) can't clean all the Darlington dirt of Patrick’s well worn cowboy boots.
Lyrically Grace & Grit seems to draw from Patrick's own experience of surrounding herself with music from an early age. There are songs about songs, songs about singing, songs about music, songs about musicians, songs about records. Along with the shout out to Jennings there are shout-outs to Prince. It’s all very meta but only because she gets music, it gets her. It gets inside her and more importantly she gets inside it.
Although many of the tracks on Grace and Grit seem to be about Patrick's own life, there is one, "Still Loving You", which is obviously not and yet she makes it so believable it is as if she has lived the story herself, if there was an Oscar for singing she'd be a shoo-in for the golden statuette.
"Still Loving You" is a duet with Grammy nominee, Joe Nichols. It was co-written with Patricia Conroy, Zach Abend and Patrick, and is the highlight of the album. It’s a simple homespun tale, all gingham and horses at dawn, but it is a truth for every couple, or at least Patrick and Nichols sing it so.
Over keys, fiddle and pedal steel a couple realise their relationship is done yet the love still remains. The track is sung with such intent, such maturity, such understanding of the emotions around the frustrations of love and the loss of love, one finds oneself rooting for the couple to stay together.
Patrick and Nichols are not a couple but how I wish they were, how I wish the song had a happy ending. Surely a couple with such musical harmony can figure out a way for their love to survive. One can imagine just before the close of the final notes, they rush back into each other’s arms, kisses met, children were born, porches were hung with swings and in their old age, old hands, worn smooth from the other's clasp, join again in the evening light and they look into each other’s eyes, eyes that say, still loving you. Curtain falls, audience goes wild. It is the power of love and the power of voice in one heartfelt delivery. The song itself has some wonderful lyrically moments, deep emotions slide from the pedal and off the fiddle bow but it is Patrick who becomes the song.
Great singers inhabit a song and Patrick lives deep in the centre of this one. Maybe the two will get back together on the next album but on this one, If nothing else there is a happy ending on the album. Patrick has found her one true love, singing foot stomping tear jerking hell raising firefly chasing gritty and graceful country music songs.
Listenability. When a band has a live show, a degree of expertise on instruments, spot-on harmonies, a tangible sense of camaraderie and proficient songwriters what can be added. AS HIGHS found out when they set to work with producer Luke Smith what can be added is listenability.
In essence its really what the song will sound like in someone else’s ears. A quick chat with HIGHS Doug Haynes and Joel Harrower prior to their recent gig at the Moustache Club in Oshawa revealed this gem of an approach.
Smith has worked in the past with Foals and Depeche Mode and he was chap HIGHS had requested to work with. Well if you don’t ask you don’t get and sometimes you get what you ask for.
When you go work with a big time rock n roll producer in a real pro studio one imagines it is like a trip to a musician’s Toys R Us. One great effect after another to play with, buttons, and switches and faders but in this case Smith had other ideas, the right idea it turns out.
HIGHS doesn’t need adorment. They have that, they have their sound, their musicality, their interests and experiments, they have a sense of themselves already. They are a band, they give great live, they absorb influences and meld them into something one can call HIGHS.
Smith did not adorn them, quite the opposite, he stripped them down to the skivvys of their songs. He hung them out to dry, they shrank further, they got small and when they were just threads of a song he gave them back.
HIGHS then on Dazzle Camouflage are unadorned. The dazzle is all smoke and light. The dazzle is all stage play and stage act and stage coaching. There is no camouflage, it would be a distraction. Therein lies the rub as the Bard of Avon’s neighbour said, therein lies their truth.
The trick is not in the light but in the song and these are songs, at their very bestest core they are songs. At their very centre the HIGHS have play and performance and harmony and tweaks and hooks and trickery and pop-of-the-day but they also have very very listenable songs that hold up again and again and again.
Canadian folk mainstays the Skydiggers release their tribute to Byrds singer/songwriter Gene Clark with back to back shows May 12 and 13 at Hugh's Room in Toronto. Here With You - The Songs of Gene Clark was recorded by Michael Timmins and will be available on Latent Recordings. Clark may be known for more fuzzed up pychedelic tracks but the Skydiggers have found a shared love of melody at the root of his songs and they explore those roots to fruition.
Oz duo Oh Pep! have previousy released the track "Doctor Doctor" and now share " Bushwick", both from their debut Stadium Cake available on Dualtone/Dine Alone June 24 2016. The bouncy pop of Oh Pep! has a certain Cub appeal if the Vancouver's punkettes had landed on the East Coast, Echo Lake in Nova Scotia which is where Oh Pep! found themselves recording with Daniel Ledwell. Its a long way from the outback for Pepita Emmerich and Olivia Hally but iworth the drive etc…. Oh Pep! play The Drake in Toronto Jun 24 and hit up the Vancouver and Calgary Folk fests in summer.
Multi-continental, multi-instrumentalist Mocky has released the Moxtape III. As usual he features multi-collaborators including Jamie Lidell, Joey Dosik and Mr. Oizo. He has released the video for the daisy chain funked "Put It Away," a psychedelic tricked out trip. It is however his subtle orchestral arrangements that drive this tape.