Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
FacebookWho: Deer Tick
What: Rhode Islanders led by John McCauley arguably as well-known for their all-Nirvana covers sets as “Deervana” as their alcohol-friendly, roots-rocking ways
Why: With this being an election year, they’re doing their democratic duty to hit the road and stump for life, liberty, and their fourth album Divine Providence,
When: Monday, June 11, 2012
Where: Lee’s Palace in Toronto (19+)
Who else: Nashville’s Turbo Fruits are supporting on this tour.
How: Tickets for the show are $22.50 in advance but courtesy of Collective Concerts, I’ve got one pair of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Deer Tick” in the subject line and your full name in the body, and have that in to me before midnight, June 7.
What else: A cross-Canada tour brings the band into conversation with The Calgary Herald, The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Metro, Edmonton Sun, and Planet S.
MP3: Deer Tick – “Born At Zero”
MP3: Deer Tick – “Miss K”
MP3: Deer Tick – “Twenty Miles”
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
Frank YangWho: Zeus
What: Toronto quartet who want to be to ’70s-styled pop-rock what their namesake is to lightning.
Why: Though they played a raucous club set just ahead of the release of their second album during Canadian Musicfest, they’ve not had a hometown show since Busting Visions was set upon the world. That changes now.
When: Saturday, June 9, 2012
Where: The Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto (19+)
Who else: It’s a Canadian power-pop jamberoo with support coming from Two Hours Traffic and The Elwins.
How: Tickets for the show are $16 in advance but courtesy of Collective Concerts, I’ve got one pair of passes to give away for the show. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to see Zeus” in the subject line and your full name in the body, and have that in to me before midnight, June 7.
What else: There’s interviews with the band at Planet S, Uptown, and The Victoria Times Colonist and NPR has a World Cafe session to listen to.
MP3: Zeus – “Anything You Want Dear”
Friday, June 1st, 2012
The Hives are all, like, “hey come and listen to our new record Lex Hives!”
Travis SchneiderSweden’s premiere garage rock band and really, one of the few from anywhere who’ve outlived that so-called movement of the early part of this century with their fanbase intact – we’re talking about The Hives, in case that was unclear – are back with their fifth album and first in five years next Tuesday with Lex Hives. And while some bands might be taken to task for sticking to tried and true formulas at this point in their career, that’s pretty much exactly what folks want from The Hives – more loud and tuneful, stylish yet snotty old-school rock’n’roll – and that’s what Lex Hives delivers. All is right with the world.
The album is now up to stream in its entirety ahead of its release – plus bonus tracks at RCRDLBL and Rolling Stone – and there’s plenty of features on the band to leaf through (figuratively speaking) while you read. Frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist talked to MusicOhm, DIY, and The Guardian, Guitar World catches up with guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem, The New Yorker sends an 11-year old to interview them on their behalf and Paste has video annotations of the entire album from the band.
Their North American tour kicks off later this month and they’re at The Sound Academy in Toronto on June 26.
Video: The Hives – “Go Right Ahead”
Stream: The Hives – “Insane”
Stream: The Hives – “High School Shuffle”
Stream: The Hives / Lex Hives
Also here from Sweden on June 5 is the self-titled debut from Amanda Mair; she’s just released a new video from the record.
Video: Amanda Mair – “House”
M83 have finally released a second video from their breakout Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and it stars the creepy psychic kids from the first one. Hooray! They’re back in town on August 4 at Historic Fort York.
Video: M83 – “Reunion”
Bloc Party have announced via Kele Okereke’s blog that their fourth album is complete and will be out August 20 under the title Four. Hopefully this little play on words works out better musically than The Verve’s Forth did a few years ago. Hear the first new Bloc Party music in ages via the album trailer, which I guess I should accept is now officially a thing.
Trailer: Bloc Party / Four
NME talks to Gareth Paisey of Los Campesinos! about the non-album track they decided to give away as a free download this week.
MP3: Los Campesinos! – “Tiptoe Through The True Bits”
The first MP3 from Micachu & The Shapes’ forthcoming second album Never is available to download. The album is out July 24.
MP3: Micachu & The Shapes – “OK”
Spin finds out what’s on Laura Marling’s mind lately. Death, apparently. She’s at The Phoenix on June 17.
English singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich is at The Rivoli on December 6, tickets $15 in advance.
Video: Benjamin Francis Leftwich – “Pictures”
If for some reason you’ve never heard David Bowie’s seminal The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust, you can rectify that right now as NME is streaming the 40th anniversary remastered edition in its entirety, not that you’d likely be able to appreciate the remastering via a Soundcloud stream. But you can appreciate a classic album, so hop to it anyways.
Stream: David Bowie / The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust
The release date of Ladyhawke’s second album Anxiety has been something of a moving target, but it finally came out in North America this week and is available to stream over at Spinner. The Independent, The Herald Sun, and Vulture have interviews with Pip Browne and Nylon has an acoustic version of the single “Sunday Drive” available to download. I could point out those keyboards aren’t really acoustic, but I won’t.
MP3: Ladyhawke – “Sunday Drive” (acoustic)
Stream: Ladyhawke / Anxiety
Thursday, May 31st, 2012
Yeasayer are now big enough to play The Sound Academy, and other assorted sundry news items
Anna PalmaIt used to be that the room that every concert-goer in Toronto hated was The Kool Haus, a ridiculously-named concrete box on the waterfront that usually marked the point where a percentage of long-time fans would decide a band had gotten too big and would peel off to find the next big thing, only to have their places happily taken by folks from the more mainstream side of things who could care less that said band had been grinding it out in the clubs for years – they were that band with that one song that they’d heard on the radio/on a soundtrack/in and ad/whatever.
It was the circle of life, and it still applies now except that instead of the 2000-capacity Kool Haus marking that demarcation point, lately bands have been jumping straight from the clubs to the Sound Academy – an even more despised concrete box on the waterfront that, despite the number of people who swear they will never go to a show there, still sells out its 3000+ capacity with regularity. But on the plus side, people look at the Kool Haus a lot more affectionately these days.
All of which is to say that I’m mildly surprised – and yet not – that Brooklyn’s Yeasayer have booked themselves into The Sound Academy this Summer for their North American tour in support of their third album, Fragrant World. I guess I just didn’t think that Yeasayer had the sort of mass appeal that would justify a move from the 1000-person Phoenix, where they were their last time through in June 2011, to a room three times larger this time out. But hey, it’s happening – much to the dismay of many, I’m sure – on August 21, which also happens to be the day that the new album comes out. Tickets for that one will be $22.50 general admission and $32.50 for VIP balcony seats.
The first track from Fragrant World has been made available to download, and there’s a piece in Spin from last Fall where singer Chris Keating talked about the song, specifically.
MP3: Yeasayer – “Henrietta”
In other show announcements – The Dandy Warhols will play an in-store at Sonic Boom’s Annex location on June 3 at 4:30PM before their show at The Phoenix later that night. There’s interviews with the band at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Phoenix, and Vancouver Observer.
MP3: The Dandy Warhols – “Country Leaver”
Brooklyn’s Ava Luna have made a date at The Drake Underground for July 14, tickets $10 in advance. Their debut album Ice Level was released earlier this Winter.
MP3: Ava Luna – “Wrenning Day”
California’s RACES – yes, I believe the all caps is mandatory – will be at The Drake on July 23 in support of their debut Year Of The Witch, which is also available to stream in its entirety.
MP3: RACES – “Big Broom”
Stream: RACES / Year Of The Witch
Los Angeles ambient-electronic artist Julia Holter will be at The Horseshoe on September 22 in support of her widely-acclaimed second album Ekstasis. Tickets for that are $12 in advance and The Quietus has an interview.
Video: Julia Holter – “Our Sorrw”
Beachwood Sparks have released a second MP3 from their comeback record The Tarnished Gold, out June 26.
MP3: Beachwood Sparks – “Sparks Fly Again”
Rolling Stone has premiered the new animated video from Andrew Bird, taken from Break It Yourself. He plays Echo Beach on July 19.
Video: Andrew Bird – “eyeoneye”
Filter has a video session with School Of Seven Bells.
Room 205 has posted the second installment of their video series with Blouse.
Pitchfork solicits a guest list from Jana Hunter of Lower Dens, in town at Lee’s Palace on July 17.
Coup de Main and Tulsa World talk to Annie Clark of St. Vincent.
Ume’s Lauren Larson chats with The Dallas Observer.
The Village Voice finds out what Amy Klein has been up to since leaving Titus Andronicus last Fall – mainly starting a new band, Leda. Which sounds like this.
MP3: Leda – “Halfway”
The Stool Pigeon talks to both Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of Beach House.
The Quietus profiles The Men, doing up NXNE with shows at The Garrison on June 14 and Wrongbar on June 15.
Blurt talks to Brett Netson of Electronic Anthology Project about synth-ing up the likes of Built To Spill and Dinosaur Jr.
Rolling Stone has a video interview with Greg Dulli about the Afghan Whigs reunion.
Bob Mould takes an in-depth look back at the Sugar years for The Quietus. Their catalog gets reissued in fancy form come July 24.
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
Blood Red Shoes are made for walking. Or touring.
Anton CoeneRemember, not so long ago, when big-ass bands with memberships numbering in the double-digits were all the fuss? Me neither. Seems two is all you need to make a racket and an impression, as yesterday’s post can attest and today’s can reinforce. What sets Brighton two-piece Blood Red Shoes apart from most of the other outfits who can tour in a Cooper Mini are the fact that though they’re plenty good at the loud, they’re much less reliant on the white noise bombast to get their message across.
Their 2010 release Fire Like This drew on plenty of ’90s-era grunge and alt.rock influences, but their strong melodic sensibilities and the mixture of drummer Steven Ansell and guitarist Laura-May Carter’s vocals had an innate sweetness, even when snarling, that couldn’t help but temper their aggression. That’s a relative statement, mind you, as anyone at their show at The Horseshoe in October 2010 could attest; there was plenty of aggression there to spare.
And there’ll be more to come. Their third album In Time To Voices was released in the UK back in March, but will get a North American release come July 24 and the band will follow that up with a North American tour that brings them back to Toronto for a show at The Drake Underground on September 26, tickets $12.50 in advance. Female First and Spoonfed have interviews with the band.
MP3: Blood Red Shoes – “Light It Up”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Lost Kids”
Video: Blood Red Shoes – “Cold”
Stream: Blood Red Shoes / In Time To Voices
Keeping on the blood theme – Blood Orange have released another new video from Coastal Grooves.
Video: Blood Orange – “I’m Sorry We Lied”
Coup de Main has an interview with Ryan Jarman of The Cribs, who’ve just released an interactive new video from In The Belly Of The Brazen Beast.
Video: The Cribs – “Glitters Like Gold”
2:54 have a new video from their just-released self-titled debut, and for good measure Filter has a live in-studio performance video of the same tune. Clash and Stereogum have interviews with the band, who’re at Lee’s Palace on June 16 for NXNE.
Video: 2:54 – “Creeping”
Boy, that Florence & The Machine sure do like making videos, don’t they? Here’s another from Ceremonials and head to DigitalSpy has a behind-the-scenes video of the David LaChapelle production. They’re at The Molson Amphitheatre on August 2.
Video: Florence & The Machine – “Spectrum”
Summer Camp are streaming the title track from their forthcoming new EP Always, due out July 10.
Stream: Summer Camp – “Always”
The Vaccines have announced a September 3 release date for their second album No Hope For The Vaccines and are streaming the first single and kind-of title track from it right now.
Stream: The Vaccines – “No Hope”
Also in the, “much-anticipated British sophomore efforts due out this Fall” category are Mumford & Sons, whose as-yet untitled second album will be out come September 24. Some details to be had at Paste.
DIY, Inthemix, and The Guardian interview Hot Chip, whose In Our Heads is out June 12 and who play The Sound Academy on July 15.
Clash and The Village Voice get to Elizabeth Morris of Allo Darlin’.
Daytrotter has a session up with The Wave Pictures.
The Big Takeover talks to Stevie Jackson about his new solo record (I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson, out in North America on July 3.
Undersong interviews James Graham of The Twilight Sad.
The Fly has a feature piece on Richard Hawley.
Pitchfork has a +1 video session and The Georgia Straight with Spiritualized.
Artrocker talks to Tim Burgess of The Charlatans.
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