Search Results - "Jesse Sykes "
Friday, December 15th, 2006
First: Sparklehorse and Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter. Mod Club. February 23. $21, on sale December 21. HELL YES.
Ahem.
Howe Gelb, who so dazzled at Pop Montreal in his Giant Sand guise is back in Toronto this Sunday with Ottawa’s Voices Of Praise gospel choir as The ‘Sno Angel Project, from whence his latest album ‘Sno Angel Like You got it’s name. Mixing new compositions with old ones rejigged for the format (compare the drunken roar of “Get To Leave” in it’s original form on Long Stem Rant with the hushed hymnal of that opens ‘Sno Angel), the record is bluesy and spiritual and despite its wintry title and Canadian origins, still carries a lot of Gelb’s trademark raffishness and distinctive Arizonan desert vibe throughout.
Released back in March, ‘Sno Angel is a slow, subtle and steady grower and has been a real late-year favourite for me – just in time for Sunday’s show. This one’s got my highest recommendation to check out, so if you’re free on Sunday night then I strongly urge you to head over to Lee’s – this is one of only three shows he’s doing with the ‘Sno Angel Project (they play Montreal and Ottawa tonight and tomorrow respectively) so you should go, if not for yourself than for the Gelb fans out there who’d probably give their left arm to be there. They go on at 9:15 – tickets are still available, $17.50 advance and $20 at the door.
He discusses the transcendent experience of the live performance with eye and the making of the album with NOW and The Toronto Star. Back in the Spring, he talked to Harp about discovering the Voices Of Praise choir and his long-simmering feud with former collaborators Calexico. And despite being one of the best-reviewed albums of 2006, I’ve noticed it to be conspicuously absent from many year-end lists which is really a damn shame.
Stream: Howe Gelb – “But I Did Not” (QT)
MySpace: Howe Gelb
Ottawa’s The Acorn are at Lee’s tonight with Elliott Brood and in regards to their new EP Tin Fist, this five-star review at eye says everything I would want to, only more articulately. It, and its short-form predecessor Blankets! are both wonderful and almost set the bar impossibly high for their full-length due out next Spring but you know what? I’m not worried. The Acorn are on at 11PM tonight.
And as long as I’m raiding this week’s eye for fodder, I’ll point out this nifty Great Lake Swimmers item – the Zunior/Great Lake Swimmers digital box set. It’s a USB drive with digital versions of the first two GLS albums, the new Hands In Dirty Ground EP, tour photos and the video for “To Leave It Behind”. Cute, eh? For those not so technologically inclined the new EP will also be available on 10″ vinyl. Tony Dekker tells The Waterloo Record to look for a new Great Lake Swimmers full-length in the Spring. And Zunior also has a free holiday mix available to download.
Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy discusses his next album, Heartland, with Pitchfork. He also talks about how he spent his Polaris winnings and his work with Arcade Fire, who are finally ready to drop their new album. It’s called Neon Bible, will be out in March and you can hear the first single, “Intervention”, at ArcadeFire.net. Update: MP3 is gone but link to BBC webcast from which it was taken is available. Expect Toronto show(s) to be announced soon-ish, as well. There are rumours flying about the where and when but I will refrain from spreading gossip until it’s confirmed.
The Sydney Morning Herald talks to Carl Newman of The New Pornographers about the art of songwriting. Newman and co will be at Nathan Phillips Square on February 3 as part of the WinterCity 2007 festival. Thanks to For The Records for the link to the sked.
Looking way ahead, Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out are at Lee’s Palace on March 3, tickets $13.50.
np – The Brother Kite / Waiting For The Time To Be Right
Monday, March 7th, 2005
Something of an inspired double-bill last night at the Horseshoe – A Girl Called Eddy and Keren Ann don’t have a whole lot in common, but they went together quite nicely. Compare and contrast New Jersey’s A Girl Called Eddy’s lush, lovelorn Bacharachian pop and Keren Ann’s delicate Gallic chamber folk. Wide-eyed innocence versus world-weary heartache. From that thematic point of view, it would have made more sense to have Keren Ann open things up, but I guess she rates as the bigger name so she got the closing timeslot.
I got a sneak preview of the night’s entertainment yesterday afternoon at Soundscapes where A Girl Called Eddy played a brief but excellent in-store set. Playing as a three-piece, her band had a whole lot of equipment for just three songs, but I’m not complaining – even in the stripped-down format, they shined. I got a few pics, but sadly, my camera technique appears better suited to dark clubs than record stores… Anyway, it certainly whetted my appetite for the evening’s performance.
They got a decent 50-minute set in last night, drawing mainly from her self-titled album but with a few new numbers thrown into the mix. Erin Moran has an amazingly emotive voice that tells as much of the story as her lyrics do, it’s really something to behold. Dusty Springfield is the obvious reference point (and Moran knows it, just look at her stage name), but from my frame of reference, there was more than a little Aimee Mann in her delivery. It’s a shame they couldn’t afford to tour with a drummer, as while the trio did an admirable job of filling out the arrangements on most of the material, the more dramatic numbers like “Tears All Over Town” and “Golden” really could have been put over the top with a real drummer instead of programmed beats. Ah well, perhaps next time.
Keren Ann, on the other hand, was touring as a two-piece – just herself on acoustic guitar and a keyboardist behind a wall of equipment. That was more than enough to recreate the lovely sparseness of her first English-language album, Not Going Anywhere, and some material from her forthcoming record Nolita, due out next week. While the roadhouse environs of the Horseshoe were a bit at odds with the hushed folk music being performed, the audience was impressively quiet and appreciative throughout the show that you didn’t really notice you weren’t in a small European jazz club with those little candles on the tables.
You know what Keren Ann’s music reminds me of? Disney soundtracks. Not the awful Elton John/Phil Collins tripe that they win Oscars with nowadays, but the old school, simple classic songs from the original cartoon features. If I close my eyes while listening to her stuff, I can picture the animated woodland creatures peeking out from behind the trees. And she almost looks like a dewey-eyed Disney ingenue. Of course, I mean this all in the most flattering sense.
So quite a good show of different but wholly complimentary singer-songwriters last night. I think I would have preferred a longer set from A Girl Called Eddy (and a drummer), but I won’t complain – I feel quite lucky to have gotten to see both these artists on the same bill. Here are some pics from right up front. It’s a shame the microphone was right in front of Keren Ann’s face, I had no angle on that whatsoever. And for the record, I was not the dude with the camera flashes that pissed off the keyboardist.
If you haven’t gotten your fill of smoky female vocals, head down to Lee’s Palace on April 10 to catch Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter. They were pretty good last time through at the Rivoli, so this could be one to see, though I wonder if they’re playing with someone else? Their free show at the Rivoli in September wasn’t really packed, so moving to a venue three-and-a-half times the size might be a little ambitious?
And speaking of the Rivoli, M Doughty will be there on May 10. The bastard never emailed me back about a guitar he was selling.
Splendid talks to Jens Lekman about his first North American tour which will bring him to town to play Wavelength next Sunday and a Soundscapes in-store that afternoon at 4.
Maybe they should have called it Moving Target… New Order’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call has had it’s North American release pushed back a couple weeks to April 26… which I think is where it was originally scheduled. Make up your minds, people. But! It will contain an exclusive mix of “Guilt Is A Useless Emotion”. If that matters to you.
And also on the calendar, albeit a long ways off, the new Idlewild album, Warnings/Promises, appears to have been given an August 16 North American release. If you can’t wait, you can get the UK edition from CDWow for 8.75 GBP, postpaid. Me, I can probably wait. Who knows – maybe the domestic edition will have an exclusive mix! I guess that means no North American tour till probably the Fall…
I am going to have some soup.
np – Ivy / In The Clear
Monday, September 27th, 2004
Combining the musical DNA of alt.country acts Hominy and Whiskeytown, Seattle’s Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter are supported mainly by the twin pillars of Sykes’ smoky alto voice and Wanscher’s deep, twangy guitar riffs. Their tour supporting sophomore album Oh, My Girl, out on Barsuk, brought them Toronto’s Rivoli last night and they played an hour of lovely, slow-burning country songs. The music was mesmerizing and helped make up for a defecit in stage presence among the performers – everyone except Sykes was near invisible in the low stage lights and she seemed to prefer hiding behind her hair. The turnout was pretty decent for a Sunday night, though it was helped out by the fact that the Sweet Hereafter’s drummer is originally from Brampton so the homecoming committee was out to cheer him on.
Opening the show were The Great Lake Swimmers who were an excellent choice for the bill. An act very much in the same vein as The Sweet Hereafter, the local outfit played a set of mostly sad, sparse acoustic songs tasefully accented by banjo, electric piano and brushed drums and anchored by Tony Dekker’s captivating voice. They’ve been around a while but this was my first time seeing them, and I was impressed.
All in all, a nice way to wind up a Sunday night – particularly for no cover. I’ve always wondered how promoters paid the performers when they play free shows. Not complaining, mind you, just curious. Some photos here.
Matador Records’ anniversary set Matador At 15 will be coming out October 12 and offer up two CDs and a DVD of retrospecitve goodness for the reasonable list price of $15.98 US. Since previous compilations What’s Up Matador? and Everything Is Nice did a bang up job covering the legendary label’s first decade in existance, the new set – one disc of ‘greatest hits’, one disc of rarities and a DVD of videos – will be dedicated to their last five years between 1999 and 2004. A full tracklisting is available here. Some nice stuff there, yessir.
The Fountains Of Wayne b-sides album has been pushed back to January 25.
Rented Starsky & Hutch – pretty much the textbook definition of a mediocre movie. Not particularly good, not particularly bad. Just… there. It was more a random collection of 70s-themed gags that needed some context to string them together. I suspect the cast had more fun making it I did watching it. I never watched the show so there wasn’t any sort of nostalgia factor working for me either. So yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Weather was perfect yesterday for Word On The Street, which happily snarled up traffic from Queen’s Park up to Bloor on Avenue Rd. The new digs made for a much more picturesque setting, it’s far preferable to wander the booths through the park than it is in the cramped confines of Queen St. Once you got up to the booths, however, it was still chaos as usual with people fighting to get at discounted books and magazines and whatnot. There were good deals to be had but you needed Gordie Howe elbows to get to them – I couldn’t be bothered – I came away with a cookbook and consider myself lucky to have done that well.
np – Rilo Kiley / Take-Offs And Landings
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
Happy first day of Fall, y’all. Just bits and pieces, odds and sods today.
Stop the presses – The Buffalo News’ crack investigative reporters have revealed that Nellie McKay is NOT actually a prodigiously gifted teenage singer/songwriter/pianist. She is, in fact, a forty-two year old North Tonowanda construction site foreman named Earl. We are shocked and dismayed, but this means we no longer feel quite so dirty for thinking she was pretty damn cute at her Lee’s Palace show some months back. Uh, I meant that in regards to her apparently being 22 years old and not 19, not for being a big sweaty construction guy. That part was a joke. I’ll shut up now. From Pop (All Love).
Rolling Stone sits down with Elvis Costello about his storied career (“Being the patron saint of a certain kind of woman-hating dweeb is not a great career”), married life, and his latest releases, The Delivery Man and Il Sogno. I just got The Delivery Man yesterday but haven’t had a chance to really listen to it yet, so no preliminary impressions to share. Article from LHB.
Here are the pics from Monday night’s Macha/Mahjongg show at Lee’s.
It’s just come to my attention that the Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter show with The Great Lakes Swimmers at the Rivoli September 26 is free. Sounds like a deal to me.
Pics of the cast of Fantastic Four film, in costume. Nice cleavage, Jessica Alba. And Michael Chilkis doesn’t look as bad in The Thing getup as I feared though odds of hearing him say, “Thing ring do your thing” are not good.
The New York Times presents the story of Brian Michael Bendis, scribe for half the Marvel Universe titles, in comic strip form. Natch.
This Sunday the 26th is the annual Word On The Street book festival here in the T-dot. It’s usually held on Queen West, but this year it’s been moved to Queen’s Park on the north side of the Parliment Buildings. Apparently the logistics of shutting down Queen W for a day were too much to deal with so they’re going to hang out in the park instead. So yeah, it’s no longer technically on a street, but it should be good anyway.
Construction and traffic forced me to cut through the heart of the University of Toronto campus on the way home yesterday. Seeing all the happy young collegiate types coming and going from class, sitting on the grass reading, playing frisbee on a gorgeous September afternoon… MAN sometimes I miss university. Sniff.
np – Elvis Costello & The Imposters / The Delivery Man
Friday, August 20th, 2004
Ever since my R.E.M. nostalgia kick a couple weeks back, I’ve been going through all their records giving them a re-evaluation. Hell, I’m even thinking about going to see them at the Hummingbird Centre on November 10 – if they get a solid opener, that could push me off the fence. Of course, if it was nostalgia I wanted, I should have gone to their greatest hits tour last year with Sparklehorse supporting. Anyway, here’s the Cole’s notes:
Murmur is still an amazing record. I remember them performing “Perfect Circle” on MTV Unplugged back in 91 or 92, and even though I didn’t know the song at the time it totally mesmerized me. I didn’t enjoy Reckoning as much as I thought I did. While “Harbourcoat” and “So. Central Rain” are still all-time faves, the rest of the material wasn’t quite as great as I remembered. Fables Of The Reconstruction is still my least favourite of the IRS era, but “Driver 8” is beyond reproach whereas Life’s Rich Pageant, for my money, is their loosest and most rocking affair. I’d forgotten how much I loved “Fall On Me”. Document – even though I wore my cassette copy out, I never really liked this record. The songs were too oblique and ‘difficult’. I still feel that way. Yeah, blasphemy.
Warner years: Green – Half great, half not so great, but the presence of “World Leader Pretend” and “Orange Crush” could elevate ANY record to respectability. Out Of Time was my gateway to the band and remains a sentimental fave. I think the best songs are the non-singles: “Texarkana”, “Country Feedback”, “Belong”, “Near Wild Heaven”, “Half A World Away”. Mike Mills really needs to step up to the mic more. Automatic For The People is near perfection from start to finish. “Find The River” is the most beautiful album closer, like, EVER (note – I will in no way debate or defend that last statement). Monster wasn’t as awful as I’d remembered, but the whole thing still sounds overly same-y and plodding. “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth” and “Star 69” are great and “Let Me In” always did get to me (in a good way). As I’ve said, New Adventures In Hi-Fi is my favourite Warners album. I love the wide variety of styles that keep things interesting. Don’t ask me to pick favourite tracks, I think I like almost every song on this record. Really. Up is the first post-Berry record, similar in feel and eclecticism to Hi-Fi. While not reaching the same overall level of quality, it’s still surprisingly solid. “At My Most Beautiful” is aptly titled and “Walk Unafraid” has got teeth. While Up was a pleasant surprise, Reveal was as big a let-down as I’d remembered. It sounds flat and uninterested. The only decent song was the first single “Imitation Of Life” and that’s the sort of song they could write in their sleep.
I have no idea what to expect from Around The Sun, out October 5, but if the first single “Around The Sun” is any indication, there’s less of the smothering electronics of Reveal but it’s still a laid-back affair. Hrmm. Two REM-centric posts in two weeks. Sorry, it just happened that way.
And now for something slightly different.
Goth-Country chaunteuse Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter are at the Rivoli September 26 with localers The Great Lakes Swimmers as support.
Le Tigre are at The Guvernment October 25, touring for the first time on a major-label’s nickel (they now call Universal Records home). Their new album The Island is out October 19. You notice how I didn’t call them “riot grrls” or “ex-riot grrls”? That was intentional.
Pinback are at the Horseshoe October 19, tickets $13 and go on sale September 9 (though their website says they’re playing Lee’s. Either/or). Their new record Summer in Abaddon will be out on Touch And Go on October 12.
Touch and Go also have the video for The New Year’s “Disease”, off of The End Is Near. Though utterly simplistic, I found it riveting. How can these guys not have a Fender endorsement deal? Some major Telecaster loving going on there. As for what the band is up to, their Shows page says “The band has been asked to do a festival in Spain, a tour of China, shows in France, Holland, Canada, England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, etc.
Maybe the festival in Spain in November for now… We’ll see.” So the likelihood of them playing Canada is on par with them doing a tour of China? Greaaaaat. But on the plus side, they have t-shirts for sale on their website, cheap. $11 US shipped! Nice.
If you didn’t surf through the comments in yesterday’s post (And why not? That’s where the good stuff is! Witty reparte!), you may have missed this tidbit from Five Seventeen – Absolutely Kosher is going to releasing a The Arms of his “ill”, a 7-song, 10″ EP (yeah, vinyl) of Hidden Cameras four-track recordings. It’s strictly limited to 1000 copies and can be pre-ordered from the label’s website. As an enticement, they’ve posted an mp3 of the four-track version of “Builds The Bone” from Mississauga Goddam. The link off the website is busted – use this one.
The Onion AV Club asks Steve Earle when he’s going to get back to writing chick songs and gets a great interview in response. From Hold My Life.
I just heard that The Strokes’ live album slated to come out in October has been cancelled. Hey guys, I’m sorry I made fun of you. You don’t have to take your ball and go home, though. Ah, what do I care.
And now for something completely different.
Conspiracy theory? What conspiracy theory? Rigorous Institution has compiled a massive list of 9/11 and Bush clan ‘coincidences’ that frankly, if even a fraction are true, is pretty damned terrifying.
So. Very. Wrong. From The Beat.
np – Drive-By Truckers / Decoration Day
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