Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
The Weakerthans lend a hand to Library Voices with club show fundraiser
MySpaceThere’s bad luck, there’s worse luck, and then there’s Library Voices luck. Back in February of 2009, the boisterous Regina-based pop outfit had approximately $10,000 worth of equipment stolen in Vancouver; despite the loss, they managed to regroup, re-equip and record a new album which was released last month as Denim On Denim and were gearing up for a Summer tour to support when disaster struck – again. This time, it was an act of god – at least as far as their insurance is concerned – in the form of a burst water main in their rehearsal space, which in addition to causing immense damage to the Regina Cultural Exchange all-ages venue and community centre, destroyed all their gear.
While the band struggle to salvage what they can out of the situation, some of their prairie brethren are stepping in to lend a hand. Winnipeg’s Weakerthans, already in town for next week’s May 26 show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, have commandeered the preceding evening’s Nu Music Nite at the Horseshoe – that’s May 25 – and turned it into a fundraiser for Library Voices. Advance tickets for the night go on sale Thursday for $25 and a portion of proceeds will go to help out Library Voices get back on their feet. I really can’t remember the last time The Weakerthans played such a small room – that alone should be incentive to go, let alone the charitable angle. So yeah, good on The Weakerthans for chipping in, and here’s hoping that Library Voices are back on their feet by the time they arrive in town to play that very same Horseshoe stage on June 19 as part of NXNE.
MP3: The Weakerthans – “Sun In An Empty Room”
MP3: The Weakerthans – “Night Windows”
Chad Van Gaalen talks to Exclaim about what he’s been up to of late, working on “an electro record, there’s a rock record and then there’s a pretty much straight-up folk record,” which may see the light of day as individual efforts of mashed together into one typically all-over-the-place Van Gaalen album. He estimates a late 2010/early 2011 release window for whatever it ends up being.
Paste catches up with Carl Newman of The New Pornographers. They will be at the Sound Academy on June 15.
Chart talks to Hannah Georgas.
Examiner.com chats with Dan Mangan. He will be back in Toronto on June 9 taking part in the Alli’s Journey fundraiser at Koerner Hall in the Royal Conservatory of Music and his album Nice Nice Very Nice will be getting a US release via Arts & Crafts on August 10; Mangan talks to Spinner about how he came to work with the label.
The Balconies are featured in a new video session with Southern Souls to go along with their first one. They will play the Steam Whistle Roundhouse on May 28, cover $5.
So it appears Arcade Fire are finally ready to start off the feeding frenzy that will surround their third record. Dose reports that the band announced via handwritten postcard (scanned and posted online, of course) that a new single will be ready in a couple weeks and various sources around the interwebs point to it a) being available as a 12″, b) containing songs entitled “Suburbs” and “Month of May” and c) available June 1. Some or all of this may be true or untrue. What is for sure is this: GUYS, ARCADE FIRE ARE DOING STUFF.
Emily Haines of Metric talks to Spinner about being tapped to write the theme song for the next Twilight film. They are at the Molson Amphitheatre on July 9.
Wednesday night’s Hurricane Bells show at the El Mocambo is now free. So if you were looking for something to do that night… there you go.
So yeah, they sold out the Sound Academy lickety-split earlier this year, but can they do it with a venue five times the size? Vampire Weekend will find that out when they play the Molson Amphitheatre on September 7. Tickets range from $44 to $59.50 – seriously – but to sweeten the deal, they’re bringing along Beach House and Dum Dum Girls as support. Convinced yet? Presale starts today, regular on sale starts Friday.
MP3: Vampire Weekend – “Horchata”
MP3: Beach House – “Norway”
MP3: Dum Dum Girls – “Jail La La”
Monday, May 17th, 2010
Review of The National’s High Violet
Keith KlenowskiTo suggest I’m a little bit biased when it comes to The National is something of an understatement. The Cincinnati by way of Brooklyn band has put out two of my favourite records of the century in Alligator and Boxer, and when word came that their next record would arrive in 2010, I reserved a spot for it in my year-end list. That’s about as big a declaration of faith in the greatness of a record as a blogger can make.
The flipside of this, however, is the probably unrealistic expectations that accompany that faith. Boxer was almost exactly the record I needed at that point in my life, and the odds of that sort of synchronicity happening again with its successor is probably about nil. This understanding did allow me some perspective in contemplating High Violet, but didn’t change the fact that it had some enormous footsteps to follow in. After all, Boxer was widely considered to be a watershed album. How do you follow up a career peak?
By turning it into a plateau. If there were a way to actually quantify such things, High Violet would rate as almost as good or even better than Boxer, with the plus-minus determined only by one’s personal resonance with the material and the tone of the record. Whereas Boxer felt like a lightening of philosophy after the noir-ish Alligator, its elegiac mood has darkened again on High Violet. The glimmers of hopefulness that punctuated Boxer seem to have been muted and the angst and anxiety is again creeping in around the edges. This doesn’t, however, herald a return to the cathartic rock moves of Alligator; much to the dismay of fist-pumpers everywhere, it’s clear the band is well past its days of writing tracks like “Abel” and “Mr. November”. Instead, it manifests itself in a lyrical clarity that’s a ways removed from Matt Berninger’s typical obliqueness and his delivery, which finds him not necessarily expanding his range – I don’t think anyone expects him to find another octave anytime soon – but songs like “Anyone’s Ghost” and “Conversation 16” find him pushing it in unfamiliar directions or dwelling in parts of his voice that he might have only passed through fleetingly in the past en route to more comfortable territory.
Though longtime collaborator Peter Katis is still credited as providing additional production and mixing, High Violet notably lists the primary recording site as guitarist Aaron Dessner’s garage and the band as sole producers; it’s evident that the studio was heavily utilized as an instrument on this outing, which represents an aural shift from the cleaner textures of Boxer towards something denser and sometimes hazier. Album opener “Terrible Love” sounds almost filthy with its base of fuzzy, tremoloed guitars and I’m still not sure what the oscillating tones that bookend “Little Faith” are. More familiarly, the orchestral accents and choral vocals that embellished Boxer have returned, but feel more like integral parts of their sound.
Ultimately, High Violet triumphs by not trying to eclipse Boxer, but stand alongside it. The band offers growth without abandoning its strengths – hell, “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “England” are two of the most National songs they’ve ever recorded. It’s thoughtful, sad and stately and, for all the shadows it casts, is downright luminous. The National are incapable of disappointing.
There are features on the band at The Wall Street Journal, Spinner, The Fly, Canadian Press and The AV Club. Their live-to-web show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in support of the Red Hot Organization is still available to stream at YouTube and you’ll probably get a lot higher quality stream watching it after the fact than in real time.
The National play Massey Hall on June 8 and 9.
MP3: The National – “Afraid Of Everyone”
MP3: The National – “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
Video: The National – “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
MySpace: The National
The Antlers, who are opening both of those National dates and others on the tour, are interviewed by Beatroute and The Guardian.
Pitchfork interviews Craig Finn and Tad Kubler of The Hold Steady; they’re at the Kool Haus on July 18.
It was announced last week that bassist Carlos Dengler, upon completion of their new record, has left Interpol. Expect to see a new face – and perhaps moustache – holding down the low end when they open for U2 at the Rogers Centre on July 3. No release date for album number four has been confirmed.
PopMatters talks to The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt. Strange Powers, the documentary about he and his band, will be getting a limited theatrical release on October 27.
Trailer: Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
Acoustic Guitar interviews M Ward, who will be in town on June 9 at the Sound Academy as the “him” in She & Him.
Reuters and The State profile Band Of Horses, whose Infinite Arms is out tomorrow. They play the Toronto Islands on June 19.
Nada Surf busts out the covers for NPR’s World Cafe.
Also paying a visit to the World Cafe is Josh Ritter, who plays a few songs from his new record So The World Runs Away.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have released a video for the title track of last year’s Higher Than The Stars EP.
Video: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – “Higher Than The Stars”
Pitchfork reports that some industrious fans have compiled an album’s worth of Titus Andronicus rarities and made them available for download as Feats Of Strength. Odds of them busting out any of this material when they play The Horseshoe on July 14 are poor.
A couple of big shows have just gotten attached to NXNE – Eagles Of Death Metal at The Phoenix on June 16 and Girl Talk at the Sound Academy on June 18. Expect their names to show up in advertising all over the place and for a modest number of wristbands to get into each show (50 for Girl Talk). And speaking of NXNE, the schedule for this year’s festival is now online and yes, just like every other year, it’s impossible to use/navigate/save/do anything with. It’s called a grid, people – look into it.
Video: Eagles Of Death Metal – “Cherry Cola”
Video: Girl Talk – “Feed The Animals”
Au Revoir Simone have scheduled a date at the Great Hall for July 15. Their last release was 2009’s Still Night Still Light but they were recently featured in session at Daytrotter.
MP3: Au Revoir Simone – “Shadows”
MP3: Au Revoir Simone – “All Or Nothing”
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is back and will be exploding blues all over the Horseshoe Lee’s Palace on July 31. There’s no new material coming out of this short reunion, but there is a best-of comp in Dirty Shirt Rock ‘N’ Roll: The First Ten Years and reissues of the studio albums proper are imminent. Magnet has a Q&A with Spencer, who will be playing guest editor on their site this week.
Video: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – “Talk About The Blues”
I’m really not sure what you could expect from a Van Dyke Parks live show, but Toronto will find out on September 29 when the arranger to the likes of The Beach Boys and Joanna Newsom, along with Clare & The Reasons, plays the Music Gallery.
MP3: Clare & The Reasons – “Ooh You Hurt Me So”
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Gord Downie & The Sadies cover Iggy & The Stooges
Frank YangFuse was a show on CBC radio that sought to bring together two disparate Canadian artists in a live studio environment to collaborate on their own songs and covers – a great idea that yielded some great material before sadly coming to an end a couple of years ago. Putting The Sadies and Gord Downie together didn’t count as one of their most out-there combinations – The Sadies had opened up for The Tragically Hip on a number of tours and the two acts weren’t stylistically worlds apart, even though no one really sounds like The Sadies and no one writes or sings like Downie.
But even without the WTF factor, the pairing still yielded some fantastic results, including this explosive Iggy & The Stooges cover which, with The Sadies in a rare full rock-out mode and Downie giving his lungs a hell of a workout, is pretty much the definition of “raw power”. At least it was when I saw Downie join The Sadies on stage at the Horseshoe Tavern’s 60th anniversary party in December 2007 for this same song, which is to say it was awesome.
The Sadies’ new record Darker Circles is out this Tuesday and they have a couple of local dates coming up – a record release show at Lee’s Palace this Saturday, May 22 and as Canada Day headliners at Harbourfront Centre on July 1. Gord Downie’s third solo record The Grand Bounce is out June 8 and he’ll play the Hillside Festival in Guelph on June July 25. Iggy & The Stooges will headline NXNE with a free show at Yonge-Dundas Square on June 19.
MP3: Gord Downie & The Sadies – “Search & Destroy”
Video: Iggy & The Stooges – “Search & Destroy”
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
FacebookBetter late than never, right? That’s the only consolation I can offer myself for having largely ignored LCD Soundsystem for so long. And it’s not that I can claim ignorance (not being the same thing as ignoring, despite their etymological connection) – I gave their 2005 self-titled debut a passing writeup, saw them play at ACL 2007 and even saw them rank 6th in my 2007 reader’s poll for Sound Of Silver. So why, with all of this, have I never given them more than the most passing listen? I think I’d assumed that they were just a shouty, ironic dance-rock band and while they are all those things, but never twigged on to how smart, hilarious and utterly catchy their stuff was, either. Shame on me.
But finally revisiting (or visiting for the first time, in the case of Silver) their works in advance of next week’s release of their third – an possibly final – album This Is Happening has been a minor revelation, hitting a spot that I didn’t necessarily know I needed hit. And the timing is also ideal in that it allows me to hit up what might be their last show in Toronto – hey, last record generally means last tour – at the Kool Haus on May 25. Tickets for the show are $35 in advance but courtesy of Embrace, I have two pairs of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to lose my edge with LCD Soundsystem” in the subject line and your full name in the body, and get that in to me before midnight, May 20.
Clash has a five-part interview with LCD mainman James Murphy; The Guardian wraps up their feature piece in one.
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Someone Great”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “North American Scum”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Tribulations”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Daft Punk Is Playing”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Movement”
Video: LCD Soundsystem – “Losing My Edge”
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
fyfedangerfield.comI had always thought of The Guillemots as being a sort of overly-quirky, art-rock band – an opinion that was, apparently, not based in anything factual – at least if a listen to their MySpace is any indication. Because what they’ve got streaming there is big, lush and straight-ahead, anchored and buoyed by the blue-eyed soulful vocals of frontman Fyfe Dangerfield and that reality kind of tosses what I was initially going to write out the window. Which is that while singers will often take a break from their main gigs in order to do something odder, Dangerfield (a great name that I briefly made even greater by mis-typing as “Dangerfiend” but I digress) had to go solo to do something more mainstream.
So from my barely-informed POV, his solo debut Fly Yellow Moon doesn’t sound a lot different from the MySpace face of The Guillemots, which is to say quite good, the only distinction being perhaps some distinctive production touches from Bernard Butler (cue the strings!) and an advert-ready Billy Joel cover that probably wouldn’t have fit on a Guillemots record (though it’s turned out to be quite the hit for Dangerfield).
Dangerfield is coming to North America next week for a handful of dates, including one at the El Mocambo in Toronto on May 23. Tickets are $13.50 in advance, but courtesy of LiveNationa, I’ve got three pairs of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Fyfe Dangerfield” in the subject and your full name in the body and get that in to me before midnight, May 20.
Dangerfield talks to The Sunday Mercury about how the Billy Joel cover came to be.
MP3: Fyfe Dangerfield – “She Needs Me”
Video: Fyfe Dangerfield – “She Needs Me”
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