If you’re around downtown Oshawa Oct 1 drop by the Atria to hear Lights In The Valley. They have a Sloan meets Blue Oyster Cult pop punk sound, or at least they do on Bleeding Heart, a new track from their EP Fever Dreams dropping soon.
Lisa LeBlanc doubts whether she loves or loves not with Sam Roberts
Plucky New Brunswickian Lisa LeBlanc has released the track "I Love You, I Don't Love You, I Don't Know", from her album, 'Why You Wanna Leave, Runaway Queen' due Sept 30 2016. She is joined on the banjo driven number by the Sam Roberts of the Sam Robert's Band. Its a punchy big stomper not out of place on a Serena Ryder playlist. LeBlanc plays the Rivoli in TO Oct 14
Extraordinormal Laura Savage has heard the good news, have you?
Sneering leering like Oasis fronted by Lou Reed is New Brunswickian Laura Savage aka Vivianne Roy. She has released the video for the sneering leering like Oasis fronted by Lou Reed single "Have You Heard the Good New", from her album 'Extraordinormal'.
SIANspheric spin around again with eureka moment, 'I Have It'
Hamilton’s SIANspheric have been shoegazing since before the term releasing their debut in 1995. The interim between albums has been as long as the songs themselves but the good folks are back with a new album, 'Writing the Future in Letters of Fire', available on Sonic Unyon October 28 2016.
They have released the debut track “I Have It”. There’s a whole lot of floating in a tin can interstellar overdrive sonic atmospherics as one would expect but there is also a sharpness to the band, a conciseness in the sound and one that evokes more Jesus and Mary Chain then My Bloody Valentine.
SIANspheric will also been releasing their 1995 debut, Sominium on vinyl to coincide with this newest release.
Donovan Woods takes new EP away cross Canada, dates in Toronto, Peterborough
Donovan Woods is touring his latest release, the hey Are Going Away EP starting Oct. 13 2016. Joey Landreth will support. There are a couple of dates near the SlowCity.ca base, Oct 23 at the Gordon Best Theatre in Peterborough and at Trinity St. Paul's Church in TO Oct 28.
Woods has also been nominated for two Canadian Folk Music Awards; Contemporary Album of the Year and English Songwriter of the Year, for his album Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled. The EP contains songs written for the album but are ones that didn't quite fit, they needed their own platform and space. Its available on Meant Well, Woods' own label and digitally via Massey Hall.
Photo by Eva Michon
Tasseomancy twins cross Kate Bush with Bon Iver on new track 'Missoula'
Tasseomancy have released "Missoula", a sweetly atmospheric number that falls between Bon Iver and Kate Bush, evoking the siren songs of Homer's Odyssey. The song will be available on their upcoming album, Do Easy, due Nov 18 2016 on Hand Drawn Dracula/Outside. Tasseomancy is twins Sara and Romy Lightman, former members of Austra.
Hamilton Spruce Invaders taking over my head and my heart
Wandered the Peterborough Ont., downtown last night, heading to the Pig’s Ear to catch B.A. Johnston mastery. His fellow hammers, the Spruce Invaders opened. I couldn’t take my eyes of drummer Ian Kehoe (Marine Dreams, Attack In Black), he was feral, prowling, hunting, he watched it all, crouched, hunched over his low slung kit, keeping the beat but searching for what glimmer of movement he may discern from his bandmates, guage cues on direction. The band have been around for a few years. They play soft-spoken shiny happy tunes in the manner of Shotgun Jimmie but passed through Simply Saucer space-out psych-jams. I will make plans to see them again, in the meantime I'm grooving on the very topical Tropical Heatwave.
Jackson Reed takes it all back on Generation Vietnam
It's a funny old world when a dude who is clearly not old enough to be have been around in the early 1960s can make a track that sounds pretty near the real thing from that decade and without any influence from the interim years, no modern references and no irony. Like nothing, not even from some more modern 60s influenced acts like say REM. Nope, zip, zilch.
Was Jackson Reed locked in a box with his parents' record collection and not allowed anything else? If yes thats horrible for him but kinda cool for us. And really interesting that we live in a world where so much info from a given time is available, so much so that someone can create using just that info from that time. Its not looking back, its deeper than that, its living back. Anyway.
A couple of SlowCity faves from Evening Hymns and Wooden Sky are involved in the recording so we know for sure its a modern track. Its from Reed's debut EP November Gales out Oct. 14 2016 on Deadplant Records.
Fresh Snow layer fresh grooves on new album, One
Fresh sounds on Fresh Snow’s latest One spin along Kraftwerk’s Autobahn while waving at the Pet Shop Boys, Visage, Led Zeppelin, Arcade Fire, Pink Floyd, Bowie, The Clash, Ennio Morricone and Caribou in passing, possibly even the Gandharvas; there are Holy Fuck moments but there are also sonic atmospherics, serene contemplative synths and strings. The album One is a joyful deep play on rhythms gleamed from many many nights digging through the best record crates out there. One is available on Hand Drawn Dracula. Get it, dig it, dance, sway, groove.
Why you ever wanna leave Lisa Leblanc's latest album?
She’s sassy, brassy, livid, lively and lovely, witty and writerly. The 26 year-old Lisa Leblanc will release her latest Sept 30 on Bonsound. And it is a bonnie sound she has, like Courtney Barnet doing CCR.
On the album titled Why You Wanna Leave, Runaway Queen, Leblanc is Chrissy Hines with a banjo, she’s Pagliaro, first name Michelle, she ropes in 70s era pub rock, olde tyme blue grass, alt-country psychedelic jams a Sadie would salivate over and one heck of a balls on cover of Motorhead’s "Ace of Spades" on the new album. The Montreal by way of New Brunswick native weaves deceptively small subjects in to universal narratives in the way her sister in songwriting Julie Doiron does. She even whistles. Sam Roberts steps in to add his support to “I Love You, I Don’t Love You, I Don’t Know.” But we do know, answer in the positive.
Leblanc has been a featured performer at the Live at Massey Hall series but she is playing at the Rivoli when she plays Toronto. Date is Oct 10. Do it.
Tuesday Tunes - slow down the week with HarpACash, Jenny Berkel, Lisa LeBlanc, Preoccupations and Wintersleep
Barrie Ont., based trio HarpAcash and the Morals have been touring with the Cowboy Junkies, The Strumbellas and Elliott Brood. The band are set to release their debut LP Lamps on Latent Recordings Sept 23 2016. They have released the video for the first lead single, “Modern Comfortable”.
Drummer Dan Trickett says of the Barson Aghasan directed video, "as our culture moves with increasing speed towards a technology driven existence, it's easy to forget the simple joys that can be found by connecting with people and the environment that surrounds us. Barsin has managed to capture that feeling, and highlights how fleeting those moments can be.” HarpAcash have also been delving into covering other folks’ work including their labelmates, the Cowboy Junkies iconic “Blue Moon Revisited.”
Jenny Berkel’s album Pale Moon Kid was recorded with Dan Romano. Berkel has released the video for “St. Denis” a song seeped in the workings of Kate Bush and Loreena McKennitt, She plays Toronto Oct. 2 2016 at The Drake with special guest Jim Bryson.
Lisa LeBlanc has released the single “Could You Wait until I’ve had my Coffee”, a breakup track in the manner of Luke Doucet’s “Broken Heart”. Its a hard look at heart break sure but also at the boringly routine way it can happen. Marvellously brave. Massey Hall presents LeBlanc at the Rivoli in Toronto Oct 14 2016.
The Montreal based New Brunswicker has been a feature act previously at the Live at Massey Hall video series.
Preoccupations are my fave band at the moment and the more I hear from the more I dig them. The Calgary post-everything band have released an 11 minute long track, “Memory”, featuring Dan Boekner of Operators. The band will release their debut S/T on Sept 16 2016. They play the Danforth Hall Oct 8.
Wintersleep are heading out on a massive tour across Europe, the U.K. and Canada. They play The Danforth Hall in TO Nov. 30. The Halifax based band have released a new live video for the track “Spirit” of their new album, The Great Detachment on Dine Alone Records.
Strumbellas' arcade choir in mortal kombat on 'We Don't Know'
Okkervil River play TURF Saturday Sept. 17, latest album Away flows from new weird Americana
“A song that aims to sensitize the listener could sensitize her to, for example, the moment she’s in when she hears it: a breeze in the air, the wind in tree branches, light hitting the sidewalk a certain way,” he says. “A piece of music has the ability to take you out of your head — [out of] spinning with stress and anxiety and self-consciousness and self-hatred — and just put you in the moment, either alone or at a concert with a whole group of people.” Will Sheff CoS
Okkervil River’s latest album Away is a collar up brisk wind New England experience before the Fall. In the dying days of the track “Okkervil River RIP” there are the seeds of morning, a new americana. Its there throughout the rest of the album, in bird song and the undulations of widening word streams, long form narratives in the tradition of outside observers Bob Dylan and Lloyd Cole in his American circumstances. There is the embrace of the beauty inherent in death, the exuberant embrace of existentialism angst of Ian McCulloch and his Echos of Bunneymen.
But Will Sheff, the fount of Okkervil River is no outsider, he is deep inside his America. He has imagined sonic atmospherics ine the same channel as Patrick Watson or Bon Iver, six and seven minute long mid-rift musings, meanderings and free flow thoughts, even musically with flutters of flute and the thudderings of percussions set loose to disappear into the edges of the song.
Its as if Sheff gathered whatever flew up from the forest floor on early morning Walden-like walks, momentarily cupped it in his hands, a brief look through the bars of his fingers and then set free. Sheff has the airs of Springsteen and the drive to chase the dream, the desire and need to run and he has the great sense of the weightlessness of his life in the manner of Lou Reed and the whole great task of giving form to your own worth and with Away Okkervil River have made an album that belongs in the canon of Weird Americana, one stretching deep back into the woods and roots of those first European sons but one too that saunters along the sidewalks of leafy suburbs in the bright light of the inner moment.