Teagan Johnston creates an icy soundscape based on her Yukon upbringing, with sonic forays possibly by way of Cold Specks, definitely by way of Bjork. Johnston plays synths/ piano - the rest of the band who play the Drake in Toronto Oct 13 are drummer Mike Poisson, Bryon Patterson on guitar and Aretha Tilloston on bass. Trouble With Teeth comes out on EggHunt Records same day. Delirium, also from the debut, has a warmer touch as if wrapped in the heat of that coyote fur.
Photo by Conor Gray
Hairy Holler album release show at Oshawa Music Hall Aug 26
The Hairy Holler you say - well how to unravel these revellers? Well thems a loose affiliation of strings and growls, of beats and rolls, thems a family federation, an official branch of the Order of Outlawed Raw Ravens.
Thems midnight rooftop howlers, strolling electric blues thieves, Sharpe as Edward and twice as Magnetic, the blossom of bad seeds buried in a nick cave, thems a gogol of bordello bards in board shorts, a Lemony Sniketty Bucket orchestra, they are the boho felines of Disney’s Aristocats if Dickens had a co-write.
Thems a stream of canny pickpocketing punks in a rickety rockety caravan hijacking the middle of the mean main street for their steampunk shenanigans, their poetic ponderings, their brass musings, their sonic sonnetting. Need I go on.
See them hear them, when their fly foppery parade wines skinfully to King where they perform in all their hairy hollering personas at the Shwa’s Music Hall Aug 26 the night when the Conor turns Mayweather to fall weather in this scribbler's opinion.
As the gentlemen of the puglistic arts take to the ring the Mad hatted Hollers will beat out among others Dustbowl Woody’s class act, yes “Fascists” the saints that they are - its a celebration of sanity, a righteous party on the graves of those bound to be losers. The cover is a track from the Double H’s new record “For Madmen Only” just released and the birth of which shall be announced in song on stage and street.
Beyond the Music Hall vaudevillian antics the inn roving maniacs will then be seen to be marching on over the Kingdom to their perch inside the Motor City’s Moustache where once more they will. . .
They? Who is the they? The they are community, knitted and kin, kitted out in streamers and ribbons, bangles and braces. They are Myke Pulito, Mandy May, Jason Ducey, Seann Battams, Seamus Spring, Jon Sloan, Cab, and guest Bruce Mackinnon - and tunes are spun on washboards, djembe, fiddle, congas, sax, trumpet, clarinet and the tickle worthy ivories.
And that sax oh that sax wanders this album like a Paul Bowles character keening in the darkness of Marrakesh alleys. From the get-go of the titular track with its Middle Eastern airs wrapped like silk around a snarl, it continues through “Overwell” heavy with the swell of kush and what would you make of other tracks with forest wandering titles and swampy hooks - “Dragons”, “Voodoo”, “God Lived As A Devil Dog”, yes make that of them.
These Hollers are tipsy tavern poets in suede chaps and long coats, robbing, hoodwinking. They are merry pranksters but it only works when the sounds are pied piper sublime and they are - follow them at your peril.
edited Fri Aug 25.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
METZ - oh its a whole Mess of Wires and its beautiful and loud
“Mess of Wires” is “a reminder to myself to speak out and say what I believe. To be honest with myself. It is common to feel that your thoughts are inconsequential, a drop in the echo-chamber, but silence can be worse. Speak out about what you believe in, loud and often. In the spirit of this song, I want to strongly condemn the violent and hateful actions of the white-supremacists and neo-nazis in Charlottesville, VA this past week. Their vile attempts to incite division and fear through intimidation and violence have no place in this world.”
-Alex Edkins, METZ
Photo by Dustin Rabin
Terra Lightfoot shares 'Paradise'
Powerhouse stomping blues and an anthemic rolling in the rain are the way to Paradise the new single from Terra Lightfoot - and check the stacks in the video posted and notice the Lightfoot drowns them all out - oh yah turn them up to eleven, twelve, stack em high won't matter the Terra always go higher.
"My Only True Friend" has Gregg Allman's Southern Blood on the track
One could imagine the only positive about learning the manner in which one would die is it may afford some retrospection and focus, a certain clarity of priorities. The knowledge allows for one last kick at the can and some use the opportunity to create while their faculties are still in order. Final albums by Leonard Cohen and Bowie are cases in point, and so too is Gregg Allman's "Southern Blood" an album recorded while Brother Allman dealt with liver cancer. Allman died May 27 of this year. The single "My Only True Friend" from the album, a series of covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Willie Dixon and others, is a fitting beginning to learn about how Allman saw the end. The album drops Sept 8.
Get Ready for The Harpoonist and the Axe Murderer's Apocalipstick
BC duo H.A.M have a new album, Apocalipstick, its a fun ride through the end of times and single "Get Ready" adds a whole other level of fun. It is as the kids of yore would say an instant hit, and sometimes you have to say who even writes songs this poppy anymore since Huey Lewis and the News got Olds, well turns out these kats do. Get Ready.
White Hot Guilt help Toronto youth with 'Little Things'
True story - I heard this track and was thinking Small Sins but softer and then I do some reading and White Hot Guilt is another project from the prolific Thom D'Arcy, of the Small Sins, this time with July Talk's Josh Warburton. Its 6ix sounding disco but its the video which really plows into the dance heritage of TO with a homage to CityTV's Electric Circus - pretty cool. The duo have an EP available with proceeds going to SKETCH, an arts initiative for maginalized youth. Little Things folks, little things. . .
Photo by Fany Ducharme
Beyries releases video for 'Son', plays The Drake in TO Oct 13
The charmingly erudite Beyries is bringing the same sensitivity and sensibility of her songwriting to her videos. There is an assured artistry to the songs and it is carried over into the visuals. The latest is for "Son" from her album :anding. It was shot of 35mm film and directed by Phillipe Grenier. It is cinematic in scope even as it burrows down to the actions of one among a family. Beyries has a busy schedule of shows in Quebec with a dip into Toronto Oct 13 and Ottawa Nov 1st.
Greenbridge Celtic Folk Festival featuring Natalie MacMaster, Leahy and Dervish in Keene, Aug 25 and 26
The Gaelic heritage of Cape Breton in particular and Canada at large will be on show at the Greenbridge Celtic Folk Festival running Friday Aug 25 and Saturday 26 2017 in Keene, ON. The festival was founded by award winning fiddler Natalie MacMaster and her husband Donnell Leahy, This is the first of what they hope to be an annual event. It launches this year as part of Canada’s 150 celebrations.
The Celts will be coming from across the Atlantic for this bridging of the Greens if you will; Dervish, from Sligo, Ireland, will be performing. Also on the bill; Rhonda Vincent, the Double Cuts, Evans & Doherty, David Rankin and the Gaelic College as well as MacMaster’s Cape Breton Jam Band and Next Generation Leahy.
There will be workshops, the staple of folk festivals, on Gaelic cultural practises and language as well as on the music and of course the fiddle.
At the core of what one could call the Canadian Sound is the fiddle or violin. Lets call it the strings theory, the idea that the Celtic heritage of France, England, Scotland and Ireland has provided the nation with its own soundtrack, a soundtrack played on violins, guitars, ukulele, mandolin, cello or washtub, string and broom and of course the fiddle. It’s a soundtrack heard in music right across the country, from Hank Snow to Gordon Lightfoot to The Band to Blue Rodeo to Daniel Lanois to Arcade Fire as well as more obviously in Spirit of the West, Great Big Sea and Ashley MacIsaac.
While Celtic music has of course been long associated with the Maritimes Donnell Leahy says the music evolved and migrated as diverse groups from different parts of Europe interacted in work camps stretching from the East coast, across Quebec and northern Ontario and on into the prairies. The folk in the camps shared their music, their songs and their dancing and a new form grew from the interactions. This new form continues to influence and grow with each generation since.
Avante-garde violinist Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, winner of the first Polaris Music Prize, was once a member of a Celtic traditional band. Arcade Fire ride the pop charts with their unique blend of rock and orchestral instruments; violin and cello have equal weight as the electric guitar and drums.
The music of the violin and the fiddle flowed in and along with wave after wave of immigrants before settling into the pockets of the Canadian Shield. Here it grew its own culture, one peculiar to Canada, and as the nation celebrates 150 years since Confederation Greenbridge will celebrate its own federation of sounds, with a nod to the East Coast and one to the future.
Prog-folkie Mappe Of debuts A Northern Star, A Perfect Stone, at the Drake
Heres the deal, The Good Music is being made. You lose because you don’t have a house to hear it and no, Spotify doesn’t cut it. You have to remove walls and go to the source, live. Thats where its at. We lose because Mappe Of has no house in Durham Region, oddly his home, unless I lose because I don’t know the house. Ya dig.
Has this Tom of Whitby who keens like that Thom of Yorke dipped beneath all radars, or flown over all radars or just mine. Were there nights in the Dungeon? Were there days on the beaches? Were there fireflies and firelight and Sunday afternoon Mall meet-ups? Where does it come from now the kids are not hung up on a hang out? Snapchat?
So I went to The Drake for Mappe Of’s debut show, an album release for “A Northern Star, A Perfect Stone, available on Paper Bag at your fave record shoppe.
Much is to be made of this young man Tom Meikle who is also more often known as Mappe Of. The olde English folk is very much part of the man, one could suppose him a suburban Nick Drake perhaps breathing the sparkling melodies on a lute for the assorted characters on the cover of A Trick of the Tail. But there’s more.
Mappe Of crosses generations and genres from Reign Ghost to Protest The Hero and Timber Timbre and like them would be familiar with the woods and winters around Whitby, the moody views. He would be familiar with the confining interiors of Canada, but he is also familiar with going long walkabout in red-eyed dry Australia. Down-Under would be where this Mappe Of begins to shape his prog-folk, his alt-airs, he takes them up and over into the ambiance of atmospheres but there’s more.
Mappe Of is ethereal as cloud nine sure, straining for the celestial but this Icarus has read the myth. One can soar from the cradle but the funereal pyre waits. Mappe Of sings with gravitas of one familiar with the unbearable lightness of being.
He also sings as one familiar with For Emma, but oh so Forever Ago and even one familiar with a Fleet Fox in Bedouin Dress. He sings like one who knows. Does he know? Is he still unfurling, destiny to be determined. Yes but no, there will be more.
Find a house, his house on wax, his house on wood and watch with the lights out, this man who knows. Who knew?
West Coast Cali rapper Delaimé steers the 'othership through Violet Sky
One can protest loudly or one can protest softly, with violence or with peace, one can do so with reason and compassion and one can do it by appealing to the other's inner funk. Declaimé steps up for the funk, the funk can move mountains, calm the storm, connect the Earth, - the message "Love now not later ya dig!"
Emily Haines Live at Massey Hall Tuesday December 5
The most excellent concert series Live at Massey Hall continues Tuesday Dec 5 2017 with Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton stepping onto the hallowed stage. The Metric vox has a solo album, Choir of the Mind, in September, and is touring small (or smaller than Metric size rather ) venues. Tickets for the Massey Hall show start at $18.94. It will be filmed for a short documentary of the gig and available online at the Live at Massey Hall site and on YouTube. Previous shows include Timber Timbre, Dan Bejar, Chilly Gonzales, Shad, the Rheostatics and The Constantines. Upcoming Live at Massy Hall shows include the New Pornographers with Born Ruffians Oct. 14, Japandroids with Cloud Nothings Oct 24 and Whitehorse and Terra Lightfoot Dec. 8 2017.
Photo by Mike Peleshok
Patrick Dorie to perform at 2017 Boots and Hearts Festival in Oro-Medonte, ON
Whitby raised singer/songwriter Patrick Dorie has been added to the 2017 Boots and Hearts festival taking place at Oro-Medonte near Barrie Aug 10 to 13. Headliners this year at the country music lovers gathering include Keith Urban, Luke Bryan, Keifer Sutherland, Doc Walker and Tomi Swick.
Dorie says Alex Patton, of Fource Entertianment and festival talent buyer, contacted him, on the advice of a friend.
"They were looking for an act to play a half hour set on the Saturday of Boots and Hearts at 2:00pm," says Dorie. "He said he heard about me through a friend of his. I'll be backed by Dan Liscio on bass and Dan Brooks on drums (The Blood Machine Band) and we have a set of both newer and older songs. We'll likely be performing Spider and The Lie and Aberdeen."
Dorie joins two other artists in the line up, both of whom have roots in Durham Region; Lindi Ortega and JJ Shiplett. Boots and Hearts too has roots in the Region. The festival started out at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville in 2012. The Fest organizers moved to Oro-Medonte where they now have a permanent home at Burl's Creek Event Grounds.
